Aunt Julia was not a person to allow a steam-roller to pa.s.s over her without protest, and Althea felt that she herself had been cowardly when she saw how Aunt Julia resented, for them both, Miss Buckston"s methods.
Miss Buckston had a manner of saying rude things in sincere unconsciousness that they could offend anybody. She herself did not take offence easily; she was, as she would have said, "tough." But Mrs.
Pepperell had all the sensitiveness--for herself and for others--of her race, the British race, highly strung with several centuries of transplantation to an electric climate. If she was rude it was never unconsciously so. After her first talk with Miss Buckston, in which the latter, as was her wont, told her a number of unpleasant facts about America and the Americans, Mrs. Pepperell said to her niece, "What an intolerable woman!"
"She doesn"t mean it," said Althea feebly.
"Perhaps not," said Aunt Julia; "but I intend that she shall see what I mean."
Althea"s feeling was of mingled discomfort and satisfaction. Her sympathies were with Aunt Julia, yet she felt a little guilty towards Miss Buckston, for whom her affection was indeed wavering. Inner loyalty having failed she did not wish outer loyalty to be suspected, and in all the combats that took place she kept in the background and only hoped to see Aunt Julia worst Miss Buckston. But the trouble was that Aunt Julia never did worst her. Even when, pa.s.sing beyond the bounds of what she considered decency, she became nearly as outspoken as Miss Buckston, that lady maintained her air of cheerful yet impatient tolerance. She continued to tell them that the American wife and mother was the most narrow, the most selfish, the most complacent of all wives and mothers; and, indeed, to Miss Buckston"s vigorous virginity, all wives and mothers, though sociologically necessary, belonged to a slightly inferior, more rudimentary species. The American variety, she said, were immersed in mere domesticity or social schemes and squabbles. "Oh, they talked. I never heard so much talk in all my life as when I was over there," said Miss Buckston; "but I couldn"t see that they got anything done with it. They had debates about health, and yet one could hardly for love or money get a window open in a train; and they had debates on the ethics of citizenship, and yet you are governed by bosses. Voluble and inefficient creatures, I call them."
Aunt Julia, conscious of her own honourable career, with its achievements in enlightened philanthropy and its background of careful study, heard this with inexpressible ire; but when she was dragged to the execrable taste of a retaliation, and pointed to the British countryside matron, as they saw her at Merriston--a creature, said Aunt Julia, hardly credible in her complacency and narrowness, Miss Buckston rejoined with an unruffled smile: "Ah, we"ll wake them up. They"ve good stuff in them--good, staying stuff; and they do a lot of useful work in keeping down Radicalism and keeping up the sentiment of our imperial responsibilities and traditions. They are solid, at all events, not hollow." And to this poor Aunt Julia, whose traditions did not allow her the retort of sheer brutality, could find no answer.
The absurd outcome of the situation was that Althea and Aunt Julia came to look for succour to the girls. The girls were able--astonishingly so, to cope with Miss Buckston. In the first place, they found her inexpressibly funny, and neither Althea nor Aunt Julia quite succeeded at that; and in the second, they rather liked her; they did not argue with her, they did not take her seriously for a moment; they only played buoyantly about her. A few months before, Althea would have been gravely disturbed by their lack of reverence; she saw it now with guilty satisfaction. Miss Buckston, among the nets they spread for her, plunged and floundered like a good-tempered bull--at first with guileless acquiescence in the game, and then with growing bewilderment. They flouted gay cloaks before her dizzy eyes, and planted ribboned darts in her quivering shoulders. Even Althea could not accuse them of aggressiveness or rudeness. They never put themselves forward; they were there already. They never twisted the tail of the British lion; they never squeezed the eagle; they were far too secure under his wings for that. The bird, indeed, had grown since Althea"s youth, and could no longer be carried about as a hostile trophy. They took it for granted, gaily and kindly, that America was "G.o.d"s country," and that all others were schools or playgrounds for her children. They were filled with a confident faith in her future and in their own part in making that future better. And something in the faith was infectious. Even Miss Buckston felt it. Miss Buckston felt it, indeed, more than Althea, whose att.i.tude towards her own native land had always been one of affectionate apology.
"Nice creatures," said Miss Buckston, "undisciplined and mannerless as they are; but that"s a failing they share with our younger generation. I see more hope for your country in that type than in anything else you can show me. They are solid, and don"t ape anything."
So by degrees a species of friendship grew up between Miss Buckston and the girls, who said that she was a jolly old thing, and more fun than a goat, especially when she sang Bach. Mildred and Dorothy sang exceptionally well and were highly equipped musicians.
Althea could not have said why it was, but this progress to friendliness between her cousins and Miss Buckston made her feel, as she had felt in the Paris hotel drawing-room over a month ago, jaded and unsuccessful.
So did the fact that the vicar"s eldest son, a handsome young soldier with a low forehead and a loud laugh, fell in love with Dorothy. That young men should fall in love with them was another of the pleasant things that Mildred and Dorothy took for granted. Their love affairs, frank and rather infantile, were of a very different calibre from the earnest pa.s.sions that Althea had aroused--pa.s.sions usually initiated by intellectual sympathy and nourished on introspection and a constant interchange of serious literature.
It was soon evident that Dorothy, though she and Captain Merton became the best of friends, had no intention of accepting him. Mrs. Merton, the vicar"s wife, had at first been afraid lest she should, not having then ascertained what Mrs. Pepperell"s fortune might be; but after satisfying herself on this point by a direct cross-examination of Althea, she was as much amazed as incensed when her boy told her ruefully that he had been refused three times. Althea was very indignant when she realised that Mrs. Merton, bland and determined in her latest London hat, was trying to find out whether Dorothy was a good enough match for Captain Merton, and it was pleasant to watch Mrs. Merton"s subsequent discomfiture. At the same time, she felt that to follow in Mildred and Dorothy"s triumphant wake was hardly what she had expected to do at Merriston House.
Other things, too, were discouraging. Helen had hardly written at all.
She had sent a postcard from Scotland to say that she would have to put off coming till later in August. She had sent another, in answer to a long letter of Althea"s, in which Gerald had been asked to come with her, to say that Gerald was yachting, and that she was sure he would love to come some time in the autumn, if his plans allowed it; and Althea, on reading this, felt certain that if she counted for little with Helen, she counted for nothing with Mr. Digby. Whom did she count with? That was the question that once more a.s.sailed her as she saw herself sink into insignificance beside Mildred and Dorothy. If Mildred and Dorothy counted for more than she, where was she to look for response and sympathy? And now, once again, as if in answer to these dismal questionings, came a steamer letter from Franklin Winslow Kane, announcing his immediate arrival. Althea had thought very little about Franklin in these last weeks; her mind had been filled with those foreground figures that now seemed to have become uncertain and vanishing. And it was not so much that Franklin came forward as that there was nothing else to look at; not so much that he counted, as that to count so much, in every way, for him might almost atone for counting with no one else. Physically, mentally, morally, Franklin"s appreciations of her were deep; they were implied all through his letter, which was at once sober and eager. He said that he would stay at Merriston House for "just as long as ever she would let him." Merely to be near her was to him, separated as he was from her for so much of his life, an unspeakable boon. Franklin rarely dealt in demonstrative speeches, but, in this letter, after a half-shy prelude to his own daring, he went on to say: "Perhaps, considering how long it"s been since I saw you, you"ll let me kiss your beautiful hands when we meet."
Franklin had only once kissed her beautiful hands, years ago, on the occasion of her first touched refusal of him. She had severe scruples as to encouraging, by such graciousness, a person you didn"t intend to marry; but she really thought, thrilling a little as she read the sentence, that this time, perhaps, Franklin might. Franklin himself never thrilled her; but the words he wrote renewed in her suddenly a happy self-confidence. Who, after all, was Franklin"s superior in insight? Wrapped in the garment of his affection, could she not see with equanimity Helen"s vagueness and Gerald"s indifference? Why, when one came to look at it from the point of view of the soul, wasn"t Franklin their superior in every way? It needed some moral effort to brace herself to the inquiry. She couldn"t deny that Franklin hadn"t their charm; but charm was a very superficial thing compared to moral beauty.
Althea could not have faced the perturbing fact that charm, to her, counted for more than goodness. She clung to her ethical valuations of life, feeling, instinctively, that only in this category lay her own significance. To abandon the obvious weights and measures was to find herself buffeted and astray in a chaotic and menacing universe. Goodness was her guide, and she could cling to it if the enchanting will-o"-the-wisp did not float into sight to beckon and bewilder her.
She indignantly repudiated the conception of a social order founded on charm rather than on solid worth; yet, like other frail mortals, she found herself following what allured her nature rather than what responded to the neatly tabulated theories of her mind. It was her beliefs and her instincts that couldn"t be made to tally, and in her refusal to see that they did not tally lay her danger, as now, when with an artificially simplified att.i.tude she waited eagerly for the coming of somebody who would restore to her her own sense of significance.
Franklin Winslow Kane arrived late one afternoon, and Althea arranged that she should greet him alone. Miss Buckston, Aunt Julia, the girls, and Herbert Vaughan had driven over to a neighbouring garden-party, and Althea alleged the arrival of her old friend as a very valid excuse. She walked up and down the drawing-room, dressed in one of her prettiest dresses; the soft warmth and light of the low sun filled the air, and her heart expanded with it. She wondered if--ah, if only!--Franklin would himself be able to thrill her, and her deep expectation almost amounted to a thrill. Expectation culminated in a wave of excitement and emotion as the door opened and her faithful lover stood before her.
Franklin Winslow Kane (he signed himself more expeditiously as Franklin W. Kane) was a small, lean man. He had an air of tension, constant, yet under such perfect control, that it counted as placidity rather than as strain. His face was sallow and clean-shaven, and the features seemed neatly drawn on a flat surface rather than modelled, so discreet and so meagre were the sallies and shadows. His lips were calm and firmly closed, and had always the appearance of smiling; of his eyes one felt the bright, benignant beam rather than the shape or colour. His straight stiff hair was shorn in rather odd and rather ugly lines along his forehead and temples, and of his clothes the kindest thing to say was that they were un.o.btrusive. Franklin had once said of himself, with comic dispa.s.sionateness, that he looked like a cheap cigar, and the comparison was apt. He seemed to have been dried, pressed, and moulded, neatly and expeditiously, by some mechanical process that turned out thousands more just like him. A great many things, during this process, had been done to him, but they were commonplace, though complicated things, and they left him, while curiously finished, curiously undifferentiated. The hurrying streets of any large town in his native land would, one felt, be full of others like him: good-tempered, shrewd, alert, yet with an air of placidity, too, as though it were a world that required effort and vigilance of one, and yet, these conditions fulfilled, would always justify one"s expectations. If differences there were in Franklin Kane, they were to be sought for, they did not present themselves; and he himself would have been the last to be conscious of them. He didn"t think of himself as differentiated; he didn"t desire differentiation.
He advanced now towards his beloved, after a slight hesitation, for the sunlight in which she stood as well as her own radiant appearance seemed to have dazzled him a little. Althea held out her hands, and the tears came into her eyes; it was as if she hadn"t known, until then, how lonely she was. "O Franklin, I"m so glad to see you," she said.
He held her hands, gazing at her with a gentle yet intent rapture, and he forgot, in a daring greater than any he had ever known, to kiss them.
Franklin never took anything for granted, and Althea knew that it was because he saw her tears and saw her emotion that he could ask her now, hesitatingly, yet with sudden confidence: "Althea, it"s been so long--you are so lovely--it will mean nothing to you, I know; so may I kiss you?"
Put like that, why shouldn"t he? Conscience had not a qualm, and Franklin had never seemed so dear to her. She smiled a sisterly benison upon his request, and, still holding her hands, he leaned to her and kissed her. Closing her eyes she wondered intently for a moment, able, in the midst of her motion, to a.n.a.lyse it; for, yes, it had thrilled her. She needed to be kissed, were it only Franklin who kissed her.
They went, hand in hand, to a sofa, and there she was able to show him only the sisterly benignity that he knew so well. She questioned him sweetly about his voyage, his health, his relatives--his only near relative was a sister who taught in a college--and about their mutual friends and his work. To all he replied carefully and calmly, though looking at her delightedly while he spoke. He had a very deliberate, even way of speaking, and in certain words so broadened the a"s that, almost doubled in length by this treatment, they sounded like little bleats. His "yes" was on two notes and became a dissyllable.
After he had answered all her questions he took up the thread himself.
He had tactfully relinquished her hand at a certain moment in her talk.
Althea well remembered his sensitiveness to any slightest mood in herself; he was wonderfully imaginative when it came to any human relation. He did not wait for her to feel consciously that it was not quite fitting that her hand should be held for so long.
"This is a nice old place you"ve got, Althea," he said, looking about.
"Homelike and welcoming. I liked the look of it as I drove up. Have you a lot of English people with you?"
"Only one; Miss Buckston, you know. Aunt Julia and the girls are here, and Herbert Vaughan, their friend. You know Herbert Vaughan; such a nice young creature; his mother is a Bostonian."
"I know about him; I don"t know him," said Franklin, who indeed, as she reflected, would not be likely to have met the fashionable Herbert. "And where is that attractive new friend of yours you wrote to me about--the one you took care of in Paris--the Scotch lady?"
"Helen Buchanan? She is coming; she is in Scotland now."
"Oh, she"s coming. I am to see her, I hope."
"You are to see everybody, dear Franklin," said Althea, smiling upon him. "You are to stay, you know, for as long as you will."
"That"s sweet of you, Althea." He looked at her. Her kindness still buoyed him above his wonted level. He had never allowed himself to become utterly hopeless, yet he had become almost resigned to hope deferred; a pressing, present hope grew in him now. "But it"s ambiguous, you know," he went on, smiling back. "If I"m to stay as long as I will, I"m never to leave you, you know."
Hope was becoming to Franklin. Althea felt herself colouring a little under his eyes. "You still feel that?" she said rather feebly.
"I"ll always feel that."
"It"s very wonderful of you, Franklin. It makes me, sometimes, feel guilty, as though I kept you from fuller happiness."
"You can"t do that. You are the only person who can give me fuller happiness."
"And I give you happiness, like this--even like this?--really?"
"Of course; but," he smiled a little forcedly, "I can"t pretend it"s anything like what I want. I want a great deal."
Althea"s eyes fell before the intent and gentle gaze.
"Dear Franklin--I wish----"
"You wish you could? I wonder--I wonder, Althea, if you feel a little nearer to it just now. I seem to feel, myself, that you are."
Was she? How she wished she were. Yet the wish was mixed with fear. She said, faltering, "Don"t ask me now. I"m so glad to see you--so glad; but that"s not the same thing, is it?"
"It may be on the way to it."
"May it?" she sighed tremblingly.
There was a silence; and then, taking her hand again, he again kissed it, and holding it for an insistent moment said, "Althea, won"t you try being engaged to me?"
She said nothing, turning away her face.
"You might make a habit of loving me, you know," he went on half whimsically. "No one would know anything about it. It would be our secret, our little experiment. If only you"d try it. Dearest, I do love you so deeply."
And then--how it was she did not know, but it was again Franklin"s words rather than Franklin that moved her, so that he must have seen the yielding to his love, if not to him, in her face--she was in his arms, and he was kissing her and saying, "O Althea, won"t you try?"
Althea"s mind whirled. She needed to be kissed; that alone was evident; for she did not draw away; but the tears came, of perplexity and pathos, and she said, "Franklin, dear Franklin, I"ll try--I mean, I"ll try to be in love with you--I can"t be engaged, not really engaged--but I will try."
"Darling--you are nearer it----"
"Yes--I don"t know, Franklin--I mustn"t bind myself. I can"t marry you unless I am in love with you--can I, Franklin?"