CHAPTER XX.
It was four days after Althea"s arrival in London that Gerald stood in Helen"s sitting-room and confronted her--smoking her cigarette in her low chair--as he had confronted her that summer on her return from Paris. Gerald looked rather absent and he looked rather worried, and Helen, who had observed these facts the moment he came in, was able to observe them for some time while he stood there before her, not looking at her, looking at nothing in particular, his eyes turning vaguely from the mist-enveloped trees outside to the flowers on the writing-table, and his eyebrows, always very expressive, knitting themselves a little or lifting as if in the attempt to dispel recurrent and oppressive preoccupations. It would have been natural in their free intercourse that, after a certain lapse of time, Helen should ask him what the matter was, helping him often, with the mere question, to recognise that something was the matter. But to-day she said nothing, and it was her silence instead of her questioning that made Gerald aware that he was standing there expecting to have his state of mind probed and then elucidated. It added a little to his sense of perplexity that Helen should be silent, and it was with a slight irritation that he turned and kicked a log before saying--"I"m rather bothered, Helen."
"What is it?" said Helen. "Money?" This had often been a bother to them both.
Half turned from her, he shook his head. "No, not money; that"s all right now, thanks to Althea."
"Well?" Helen questioned.
He faced her again, a little quizzical, a little confused and at a loss.
"I suppose it"s Althea herself."
"Oh!" said Helen. She said it with a perceptible, though very mild change of tone; but Gerald, in his preoccupation, did not notice the change.
"You"ve seen her several times since she came back?" he asked.
"Yes, twice; I lunched with her and these American friends of hers yesterday," said Helen.
"Well, I"ve seen her three times," said Gerald. "I went to her, as you know, directly I got back to London on Sat.u.r.day; I cut my visit at the Fanshawes two days shorter on purpose. I saw her on Sunday, and I"m just come from her now. No one could say that I didn"t show her every attention, could they?" It hardly seemed a question, and Helen did not answer it. "I don"t think she"s quite pleased with me," Gerald then brought out.
Still silent, Helen looked at him thoughtfully, but her gaze gave him no clue.
"Can you imagine why not?" he asked.
She reflected, then she said that she couldn"t.
"Well," said Gerald, "I think it"s because I didn"t go to meet her at Liverpool; from something she said, I think it"s that. But I never dreamed she"d mind, you know. And, really, I ask you, Helen, is it reasonable to expect a man to give up a long-standing engagement and take that dreary journey up to that dreary place--I"ve never seen the Liverpool docks, but I can imagine them at six o"clock in the morning--is it reasonable, I say, to expect that of any man? It wasn"t as if I wasn"t to see her the next day."
Again Helen carefully considered. "I suppose she found the docks very dreary--at six o"clock," she suggested.
"But surely that"s not a reason for wanting me to find them dreary too,"
Gerald laughed rather impatiently. "I"d have had to go up to Liverpool on Thursday and spend the night there; do you realise that?"
Helen went on with the theme of the docks: "I suppose she wouldn"t have found them so dreary if you"d been on them; and I suppose she expected you not to find them dreary for the same reason."
Gerald contemplated this lucid statement of the case. "Has she talked to you about it?" he asked.
"Not a word. Althea is very proud. If you have hurt her it is the last thing that she would talk about."
"I know she"s proud and romantic, and a perfect dear, of course; but do you really think it a ground for complaint? I mean--would you have felt hurt in a similar case?"
"I? No, I don"t suppose so; but Althea, I think, is used to a great deal of consideration."
"But, by Jove, Helen, I"m not inconsiderate!"
"Not considerate, in the way Althea is used to."
"Ah, that"s just it," said Gerald, as if, now, they had reached the centre of his difficulty; "and I can"t pretend to be, either. I can"t pretend to be like Mr. Kane. Imagine that quaint little fellow going up to meet her. You must own it"s rather grotesque--rather tasteless, too, I think, under the circ.u.mstances."
"They are very old friends."
"Well, but after all, he"s Althea"s rejected suitor."
"It wasn"t as a suitor, it was as a friend he went. The fact that she rejected him doesn"t make him any less her friend, or any less solicitous about her."
"It makes me look silly, her rejected suitor showing more solicitude than I do--unless it makes him look silly; I rather feel it"s that way.
But, apart from that, about Althea, I"m really bothered. It"s all right, of course; I"ve brought her round. I laughed at her a little and teased her a little, and told her not to be a dear little goose, you know. But, Helen, deuce take it! the trouble is----" Again Gerald turned and kicked the log, and then, his hands on the mantelpiece, he gazed with frowning intentness into the flames. "She takes it all so much more seriously than I do," so he finally brought out his distress; "so much more seriously than I can, you know. It"s all right, of course; only one doesn"t know quite how to get on." And now, turning to Helen, he found her eyes on his, and her silence became significant to him. There was no response in her eyes; they were veiled, mute; they observed him; they told him nothing. And he had a sense, new to him and quite inexpressibly painful, of being shut out. "I may go on talking to you--about everything--as I have always done, Helen?" he said. It was hardly a question; he couldn"t really dream that there was anything not to be talked out with Helen. But there was. Gerald received one of the ugliest shocks of his life when Helen said to him in her careful voice: "You may not talk about Althea to me; not about her feeling for you--or yours for her."
There was a pause after this, and then Gerald got out: "I say--Helen!"
on a long breath, staring at her. "You mean----" he stammered a little.
"That you owe it to Althea--just because we had to talk her over once, before you were sure that you wanted to make her your wife--not to discuss her feelings or her relation to you with anybody, now that she is to be your wife. I should think you would see that for yourself, Gerald. I should think you would see that Althea would not marry you if she thought that you were capable of talking her over with me."
Gerald had flushed deeply and vividly. "But Helen--with _you_!" he murmured. It was a helpless appeal, a helpless protest. His whole life seemed to rise up and confront her with the contrast between their reality--his relation and hers--and the relative triviality of this new episode in his life. And there was his error, and there her inexorable opposition; the episode was one no longer; he must not treat it as trivial, a matter for mutual musings and conjectures. His "With you!"
shook Helen"s heart; but, looking past him and hard at the fire, she only moved her head in slow, slight, and final negation.
Gerald was silent for a long time, and she knew that he was gazing at her as a dog gazes when some inexorable and inexplicable refusal turns its world to emptiness. And with her pain for his pain came the rising of old anger and old irony against him; for whose fault was it that even the bitter joy of perfect freedom was cut off? Who had been so blind as not to see that a wife must, in common loyalty, bring circ.u.mspection and a careful drawing of limits? Who was it who, in his folly, had not known that his impulsive acquiescence, his idle acceptance of the established comfort and order held out to him, had cut away half of their friendship? Absurd for Gerald, now, to feel reproach and injury. For when he spoke again it was, though in careful tones, with uncontrollable reproach. "You know, Helen, I never expected this. I don"t know that I"d have been able to face this----" He checked himself; already he had learned something of what was required of him. "It"s like poisoning part of my life for me."
Helen did not allow the bitter smile to curl her lips; her inner rejoinder answered him with: "Whose fault is it that all my life is poisoned?"
"After all," said Gerald, and now with a tremor in his voice, "an old friend--a friend like you--a more than sister--is nearer than any new claims." She had never heard Gerald"s voice break before--for anything to do with her, at least--and she felt that her cheek whitened in hearing it; but she was able to answer in the same even tones: "I don"t think so. No one can be near enough to talk about your wife with you."
He then turned his back and looked for a long time into the fire. She guessed that there were tears in his eyes, and that he was fighting with anger, pain, and amazement, and the knowledge filled her with cruel joy and with a torturing pity. She longed to tell him that she hated him, and she longed to put her arms around him and to comfort him--comfort him because he was going to marry some one else, and must be loyal to the woman preferred as wife. It was she, however, who first recovered herself. She got up and pinched a withered flower from the fine azalea that Franklin Kane had sent her the day before, and, dropping it into the waste-paper basket, she said at last, very resolutely, "Come, Gerald, don"t be silly."
He showed her now the face of a miserable, sulky boy, and Helen, smiling at him, went on: "We have a great many other subjects of conversation, you will recollect. We can still talk about all the things we used to talk about. Sit down, and don"t look like that, or I shall be angry with you."
She knew her power over him; it was able to deceive him as to their real situation, and this was to have obeyed pity, not anger. Half unwillingly he smiled a little, and, rubbing his hand through his hair and sinking into a chair, he said: "Laugh at me if you feel like it; I"m ill-used."
"Terribly ill-used, indeed," said Helen. "I shall go on laughing at you while you are so ridiculous. Now tell me about the ball at the Fanshawes, and who was there, and who was the prettiest woman in the room."
CHAPTER XXI.
Althea had intended to fix the time of her marriage for the end of November; but, not knowing quite why, she felt on her return to England that she would prefer a slightly more distant date. It might be foolish to give oneself more time for uneasy meditation, yet it might be wise to give oneself more time for feeling the charm. The charm certainly worked. While Gerald opened his innocent, yet so intelligent eyes, rallied her on her dejection, called her a dear little goose, and kissed her in saying it, she had known that however much he might hurt her she was helplessly in love with him. In telling him that she would marry him just before Christmas--they were to have their Christmas in the Riviera--she didn"t intend that he should be given more opportunities for hurting her, but more opportunities for charming her. Helplessly as she might love, her heart was a tremulously careful one; it could not rush recklessly to a goal nor see the goal clearly when pain intervened.
It was not now actual pain or doubt it had to meet, but it was that mist of confusion, wonder, and wistfulness; it needed to be dispersed, and Gerald, she felt sure, would disperse it. Gerald, after a questioning lift of his eyebrows, acquiesced very cheerfully in the postponement.
After all, they really didn"t know each other very well; they would shake down into each other"s ways all the more quickly, after marriage, for the wisdom gained by a longer engagement. He expressed these reasonable resignations to Althea, who smiled a little wanly over them.
She was now involved in the rush of new impressions. They were very crowded. She was to have but a fortnight of London and then, accompanied by Mrs. Peel and Sally, to go to Merriston for another fortnight or so before coming back to London for final preparations. Gerald was to be at Merriston for part of the time, and Miss Harriet Robinson was coming over from Paris to sustain and guide her through the last throes of her trousseau. Already every post brought solemn letters from Miss Robinson filled with detailed questionings as to the ordering of _lingerie_. So it was really in this fortnight of London that she must gain her clearest impression of what her new environment was to be; there would be no time later on.
There were two groups of impressions that she felt herself, rather breathlessly, observing; one group was made by Helen and Franklin and herself, and one by Gerald"s friends and relatives, with Gerald himself as a bright though uncertain centre to it.
Gerald"s friends and relations were all very nice to her and all very charming people. She had never, she thought, met so many people at once to whom the term might be applied. Their way of dressing, their way of talking, their way of taking you, themselves, and everything so easily, seemed as nearly perfect, as an example of human achievement, as could well be. Life pa.s.sed among them would a.s.suredly be a life of gliding along a sunny, unruffled stream. If there were dark things or troubled things to deal with, they were kept well below the shining surface; on the surface one always glided. It was charming, indeed, and yet Althea looked a little dizzily from side to side, as if at familiar but unattainable sh.o.r.es, and wondered if some solid foothold on solid earth were not preferable. She wondered if she would not rather walk than glide, and under the gliding she caught glimpses, now and then, of her own dark wonders. They were all very nice to her; but it was as Gerald"s wife that they were nice to her; she herself counted for nothing with them. They were frivolous people for the most part, though some among them were serious, and often the most frivolous were those from whom she would have expected gravity, and the serious those whom, on a first meeting, she had thought perturbingly frivolous. Some of the political friends--one who was in the Cabinet, for instance--seemed to think more about hunting and bridge than about their functions in the State; while an aunt of Gerald"s, still young and very pretty, wrote articles on philosophy and was ardently interested in ethical societies, in spite of the fact that she rouged her cheeks, wore clothes so fashionable as to look recondite, and had a reputation perfectly presentable for social uses, but not exempt from private whispers. Althea caught such whispers with particular perturbation. The question of morals was one that she had imagined herself to face with a cosmopolitan tolerance; but she now realised that to live among people whose code, in this respect, seemed one of manners only, was a very different thing from reading about them or seeing them from afar, as it were, in foreign countries. Gerald"s friends and relatives were anything rather than Bohemian, and most of them were flawlessly respectable; but they were also anything but unworldly; they were very worldly, and, from the implied point of view of all of them, what didn"t come out in the world it didn"t concern anybody to recognise--except in whispers. It all resolved itself, in the case of people one disapproved of, into a faculty for being nice to them without really having anything to do with them; and to poor Althea this was a difficult task to undertake; social life, in her experience, was more involved in the life of the affections and matched it more nearly.
She found, when the fortnight was over, that she was glad, very glad, to get away to Merriston. The comparative solitude would do her good, she felt, and in it, above all, the charm would perhaps work more restoringly than in London. She had been, through everything, more aware than of any new impression that the old one held firm; but, in that breathless fortnight, she found that the charm, persistently, would not be to her what she had hoped it might be. It did not revive her; it did not lift and glorify her; rather it subjugated her and held her helpless and in thrall. She was not crowned with beams; rather, it seemed to her in moments of dizzy insight, dragged at chariot wheels. And more than once her pride revolted as she was whirled along.