"Yes, that"s just the trouble. She"s let you see, so that you do want, now. But that can"t be very satisfactory to her, can it?" said Franklin, with all his impartiality.
"Of course it can"t!" said Gerald, with further gloom. "And don"t, please, imagine that I"m idiotic enough to think myself satisfactory. My only point is that I belong to her, unsatisfactory as I am, and that, unless I"ve really wrecked her, and myself--I must be able to make her feel that it"s her point too; that other things can"t really count, finally, beside it. Have I wrecked her?" Gerald repeated. "I mean, would she have been really happier with you? Forgive me for asking you such a question."
Franklin again resumed his occupation of laying the pamphlets of one pile neatly upon those of the other. He had all his air of impartial reflection, yet his hand trembled a little, and Gerald, noticing this, murmured again, turning away his eyes: "Forgive me. Please understand. I must know what I"ve done."
"You see," said Franklin, after a further silence, while he continued to transfer the pamphlets; "quite apart from my own feelings--which do, I suppose, make it a difficult question to answer--I really don"t know how to answer, because what I feel is that the answer depends on you. I mean," said Franklin, glancing up, "do you love her most, or do I? And even beyond that--because, of course, the man who loved her least might make her happiest if she loved him--have you got it in you to give her life? Have you got it in you to give her something beyond yourself to live for? Helen doesn"t love me, she never could have loved me, and I believe, with you, that she loves you; but even so it"s quite possible that in the long-run I might have made her happier than you can, unless you have--in yourself--more to make her happy with."
Gerald gazed at Franklin, and Franklin gazed back at him. In Gerald"s face a flush slowly mounted, a vivid flush, sensitive and suffering as a young girl"s. And as if Franklin had borne a mild but effulgent light into the innermost chambers of his heart, and made self-contemplation for the first time in his life, perhaps, real to him, he said in a gentle voice: "I"m afraid you"re making me hopeless. I"m afraid I"ve nothing to give Helen--beyond myself. I"m a worthless fellow, really, you know. I"ve never made anything of myself or taken anything seriously at all. So how can Helen take me seriously? Yes, I see it, and I"ve robbed her of everything. Only," said Gerald, leaning forward with his elbows on the table and his forehead on his hands, while he tried to think it out, "it is serious, now, you know. It"s really serious at last. I would try to give her something beyond myself and to make things worth while for her--I see what you mean; but I don"t believe I shall ever be able to make her believe it now."
They sat thus for a long time in silence--Gerald with his head leant on his hands, Franklin looking at him quietly and thoughtfully. And as a result of long reflection, he said at last: "If she loves you still, you won"t have to try to make her believe it. I"d like to believe it, and so would you; but if Helen loves you, she"ll take you for yourself, of course. The question is, does she love you? Does she love you enough, I mean, to want to mend and grow again? Perhaps it"s that way you"ve wrecked her; perhaps it"s withered her--going on for all these years caring, while you didn"t see and want."
From behind his hands Gerald made a vague sound of acquiescent distress.
"What shall I do?" he then articulated. "She won"t see me. She says she won"t see me until I can meet her as if I"d forgotten. It isn"t with Helen the sort of thing it would mean with most women. She"s not saving her dignity by threats and punishments she won"t hold to. Helen always means what she says--horribly."
Franklin contemplated the bent head. Gerald"s thick hair, disordered by the long, fine fingers that ran up into it; Gerald"s att.i.tude sitting there, miserable, yet not undignified, helpless, yet not humble; Gerald"s whole personality, its unused strength, its secure sweetness, affected him strangely. He didn"t feel near Gerald as he had, in a sense, felt near Helen. They were aliens, and would remain so; but he felt tenderly towards him. And, even while it inflicted a steady, probing wound to recognise it, he recognised, profoundly, sadly, and finally, that Gerald and Helen did belong to each other, by an affinity deeper than moral standards and immeasurable by the test of happiness.
Helen had been right to love him all her life. He felt as if he, from his distance, loved him, for himself, and because he was loveable. And he wanted Helen to take Gerald. He was sure, now, that he wanted it.
"See here," he said, in his voice of mild, fraternal deliberation, "I don"t know whether it will do much good, but we"ll try it. Helen has a very real feeling for me, you know; Helen likes me and thinks of me as a true friend. I"m certainly not satisfactory to her," and Franklin smiled a little; "but all the same she"s very fond of me; she"d do a lot to please me; I"m sure of it. So how would it be if I wrote to her and put things to her, you know?"
Gerald raised his head and looked over the table across the piled pamphlets at Franklin. For a long time he looked at him, and presently Franklin saw that tears had mounted to his eyes. The emotion that he felt to be so unusual, communicated itself to him. He really hadn"t known till he saw Gerald Digby"s eyes fill with tears what his own emotion was. It surged up in him suddenly, blotting out Gerald"s face, overpowering the long resistance of his trained control; and it was with an intolerable sense of loss and desolation that, knowing that he loved Gerald and that Gerald"s tears were a warrant for his loveableness and for the workings of fate against himself, he put his head down on his arms and, not sobbing, not weeping, yet overcome, he let the waves of his sorrow meet over him.
He did not know, then, what he thought or felt. All that he was conscious of was the terrible submerging of will and thought and the engulfing sense of desolation; and all that he seemed to hear was the sound of his own heart beating the one lovely and agonising word: "Helen--Helen--Helen!"
He was aware at last, dimly, that Gerald had moved, had come round the table, and was leaning on it beside him. Then Gerald put his hand on Franklin"s hand. The touch drew him up out of his depths. He raised his head, keeping his face hidden, and he clasped Gerald"s hand for a moment. Then Gerald said brokenly: "You mustn"t write. You mustn"t do anything for me. You must let me take my own chances--and if I"ve none left, it will be what I deserve."
These words, like air breathed in after long suffocation under water, cleared Franklin"s mind. He shook his head, and he found Gerald"s hand again while he said, able now, as the light grew upon him, to think:
"I want to write. I want you to have all the chances you can."
"I don"t deserve them," said Gerald.
"I don"t know about that," said Franklin, "I don"t know about that at all. And besides"--and now he found something of his old whimsicality to help his final argument--"let"s say, if you"d rather, that Helen deserves them. Let"s say that it"s for Helen"s sake that I want you to have every chance."
CHAPTER x.x.xII.
Helen received Franklin"s letter by the first post next morning. She read it in bed, where she had remained ever since parting from him, lying there with closed eyes in the drowsy apathy that had fallen upon her.
"DEAR HELEN,"--Franklin wrote, and something in the writing pained her even before she read the words--"Gerald Digby has been with me here. Your aunt has been telling him things. He knows that I care for you and what it all meant yesterday. It has been a very painful experience for him, as you may imagine, and the way he took it made me like him very much. It"s because of that that I"m writing to you now. The thing that tormented me most was the idea that, perhaps, with all my deficiencies, I could give you more than he could. I hadn"t a very high opinion of him, you know. I felt you might be safer with me. But now, from what I"ve seen, I"m sure that he is the man for you. I understand how you could have loved him for all your life. He"s not as big as you are, nor as strong; he hasn"t your character; but you"ll make him grow--and no one else can, for he loves you with his whole heart, and he"s a broken man.
"Dear Helen, I know what it feels like now. You"re withered and burnt out. It"s lasted too long to be felt any longer and you believe it"s dead. But it isn"t dead, Helen; I"m sure it isn"t.
Things like that don"t die unless something else comes and takes their place. It"s withered, but it will grow again. See him; be kind to him, and you"ll find out. And even if you can"t find out yet, even if you think it"s all over, look at it this way. You know our talk about marriage and how you were willing to marry me, not loving me; well, look at it this way, for his sake, and for mine. He needs you more than anything; he"ll be nothing, or less and less, without you; with you he"ll be more and more. Think of his life. You"ve got responsibility for that, Helen; you"ve let him depend on you always--and you"ve got responsibility, too, for what"s happened now.
You told him--I"m not blaming you--I understand--I think you were right; but you changed things for him and made him see what he hadn"t seen before; nothing can ever be the same for him again; you mustn"t forget that; your friendship is spoiled for him, after what you"ve done. So at the very least you can feel sorry for him and feel like a mother to him, and marry him for that--as lots of women do.
"Now I"m going to be very egotistical, but you"ll know why. Think of my life, dear Helen. We won"t hide from what we know. We know that I love you and that to give you up--even if, in a way, I had to--was the greatest sacrifice of my life. Now, what I put to you is this: Is it going to be for nothing--I mean for nothing where you are concerned? If I"m to think of you going on alone with your heart getting harder and drier every year, and everything tender and trustful dying out of you--I don"t see how I can bear it.
"So what I ask you is to try to be happy; what I ask you is to try to make him happy; just look at it like that; try to make him happy and to help him to grow to be a fine, big person, and then you"ll find out that you are growing, too, in all sorts of ways you never dreamed of.
"When you get this, write to him and tell him that he may come. And when he is with you, be kind to him. Oh--my dear Helen--I do beg it of you. Put it like this--be kind to me and try.--Your affectionate
FRANKLIN."
When Helen had read this letter she did not weep, but she felt as if some hurt, almost deeper than she could endure, was being inflicted on her. It had begun with the first sight of Franklin"s letter; the writing of it had looked like hard, steady breathing over some heart-arresting pain. Franklin"s suffering flowed into her from every gentle, careful sentence; and to Helen, so unaware, till now, of any one"s suffering but her own, this sharing of Franklin"s was an experience new and overpowering. No tears came, while she held the letter and looked before her intently, and it was not as if her heart softened; but it seemed to widen, as if some greatness, irresistible and grave, forced a way into it. It widened to Franklin, to the thought of Franklin and to Franklin"s suffering; its sorrow and its compa.s.sion were for Franklin; and as it received and enshrined him, it shut Gerald out. There was no room for Gerald in her heart.
She would do part of what Franklin asked of her, of course. She would see Gerald; she would be kind to him; she would even try to feel for him. But the effort was easy because she was so sure that it would be fruitless. For Gerald, she was withered and burnt out. If she were to "grow"--dear, funny phrases, even in her extremity, Helen could smile over them; even though she loved dear Franklin and enshrined him, his phrases would always seem funny to her--but if she were to grow it must be for Franklin, and in a different way from what he asked. She would indeed try not to become harder and drier; she would try to make of her life something not too alien from his ideal for her; she would try to pursue the just and the beautiful. But to rekindle the burnt-out fires of her love was a miracle that even Franklin"s love and Franklin"s suffering could not perform, and as for marrying Gerald in order to be a mother to him, she did not feel it possible, even for Franklin"s sake, to a.s.sume that travesty.
It was at five o"clock that she asked Gerald to come and see her. She went down to him in her sitting-room, when, on the stroke of the clock, he was announced. She felt that it required no effort to meet him, beyond the forcing of her weariness.
Gerald was standing before the fire, and in looking at him, as she entered and closed the door, she was aware of a little sense of surprise. She had not expected to find him, since the crash of Aunt Grizel"s revelations, as fatuous as the day before yesterday; nor had she expected the boyish sulkiness of that day"s earlier mood. She expected change and the signs of discomfort and distress. It was this haggard brightness for which she was unprepared. He looked as if he hadn"t slept or eaten, and under jaded eyelids his eyes had the sparkling fever of insomnia.
Helen felt that she could thoroughly carry out the first of Franklin"s requests; she could be kind and she could be sorry; yes, Gerald was very unhappy; it was strange to think of, and pitiful.
"Have you had any tea?" she asked him, giving him her hand, which he pressed mechanically.
"No, thanks," said Gerald.
"Do have some. You look hungry."
"I"m not hungry, thanks." He was neither hostile nor pleading; he only kept his eyes fixed on her with bright watchfulness, rather as a patient"s eyes watch the doctor who is to p.r.o.nounce a verdict, and Helen, with all her kindness, felt a little irked and ill at ease before his gaze.
"You"ve heard from Kane?" Gerald said, after a pause. Helen had taken her usual place in the low chair.
"Yes, this morning."
"And that"s why you sent for me?"
"Yes," said Helen, "he asked me to."
Gerald looked down into the fire. "I can"t tell you what I think of him.
You can"t care to hear, of course. You know what I"ve done to him, and that must make you feel that I"m not the person to talk about him. But I"ve never met any one so good."
"He is good. I"m glad to hear you say it. He is the best person I"ve ever met, too," said Helen. "As for what you did to him, you didn"t know what you were doing."
"I don"t think that stupidity is any excuse. I ought to have felt he couldn"t be near you like that, and not love you. I robbed him of you, didn"t I? If it hadn"t been for what I did, you would have married him, all the same--in spite of what you told me, I mean."
Helen had coloured a little, and after a pause in which she thought over his words she said: "Yes, of course I would have married him all the same. But it was really I, in what I told you, who brought it upon myself and upon Franklin."
For a little while there was silence and then Gerald said, delicately, yet with a directness that showed he took for granted in her a detached candour equal to his own: "I think I asked it stupidly. I suppose the thing I can"t even yet realise is that, in a way, I robbed you too. I"ve robbed you of everything, haven"t I, Helen?"
"Not of everything," said Helen, glad really of the small consolation she could offer him. "Not of financial safety, as it happens. It will make you less unhappy to hear, so I must tell you, Franklin is arranging things with Aunt Grizel so that when she dies I shall come into quite a nice little bit of money. I shall have no more sordid worries. In that way you mustn"t have me on your conscience."
Gerald"s eyes were on her and they took in this fact of her safety with no commotion; it was but one--and a lesser--among the many strange facts he had had to take in. And he forced himself to look squarely at what he had conceived to be the final impossibility as he asked: "And--in other ways?--Could you have fallen in love with him, Helen?"
It was so bad, so inconceivably bad a thing to face, that his relief was like a joy when Helen answered. "No, I could never have fallen in love with dear Franklin. But I cared for him very much, the more, no doubt, from having ceased to care about love. I felt that he was the best person, the truest, the dearest, I had ever known, and that we would make a success of our life together."