Althea smiled too; she no longer felt many qualms of loyalty on Miss Buckston"s behalf.
Helen said no more, and the subject was still unapproached. "And how do you like Mr. Kane?" Althea now felt herself forced to add.
She had not intended to use that casual tone, nearly the same tone that she had used for Miss Buckston. But she had a dimly apprehended and strongly felt wish not to forestall any verdict of Helen"s; to make sure that Helen should have an open field for p.r.o.nouncing her verdict candidly. Yet she was hardly prepared for the candour of Helen"s reply, though in the shock that attended it she knew in a moment that she had brought it upon herself. One didn"t question people about one"s near friends in that casual tone.
"Funny little man," said Helen.
After the shock of it--her worst suspicions confirmed--it was a deep qualm that Althea felt, a qualm in which she knew that something definite and final had happened to her; something sharp yet vague, all blurred by the balmy softness of the day, the sense of physical well-being, the beauty of green branches and bays of deep blue sky above. It was difficult to know, for a moment, just what had happened, for it was not as if she had ever definitely told herself that she intended to marry Franklin. The clearest contrast between the moment of revelation and that which had gone before lay in the fact that not until Helen spoke those idle, innocent words had she ever definitely told herself that she could never marry him. And there was a pang in the knowledge, and with it a drowsy la.s.situde, as of relief and certainty.
The reason now was there; it gazed at her. Not that she couldn"t have seen it for herself, but pity, loneliness, the craving for love had blinded her. Franklin was a funny little man, and that was why she could not marry him. And now, with the la.s.situde, the relief from long tension, came a feeling of cold and sickness.
Helen, baleful in her unconsciousness, had again closed her eyes. Althea looked at her, and she was aware of being angry with Helen. She was further aware that, since all was over for Franklin, she owed him something. She owed it to him at least to make clear to Helen that she didn"t place him with Miss Buckston.
"Yes," she said, "Franklin is funny in his way. He is very quaint and original and simple; but he is a dear, too, you know."
Helen did not open her eyes. "I"m sure he is," she acquiesced. Her placid acceptance of whatever interpretation of Mr. Kane Althea should choose to set before her, made Althea still angrier--with herself and with Helen.
"He is quite a noted scientist," she went on, keeping her voice smooth, "and has a very interesting new theory about atoms that"s exciting a good deal of attention."
Her voice was too successful; Helen still suspected nothing. "Yes," she said. "Really."
"You mustn"t judge him from his appearance," said Althea, smiling, for Helen had now opened her eyes and was looking dreamily at the lawn-tennis players." His clothes are odd, of course; he doesn"t know how to dress; but his eyes are fine; one sees the thinker in them." She hoped by sacrificing Franklin"s clothes to elicit some appreciation of his eyes. But Helen merely acquiesced again with: "Yes; he doesn"t know how to dress."
"He isn"t at all well off, you know," said Althea. "Indeed, he is quite poor. He spends most of his money on research and philanthropy."
"Ah, well!" Helen commented, "it"s extraordinary how little difference money makes if a man knows how to dress."
The thought of Gerald Digby went like a dart through Althea"s mind. He was poor. She remembered his socks and ties, his general rightness. She wondered how much he spent on his clothes. She was silent for a moment, struggling with her trivial and with her deep discomfitures, and she saw the figures of Miss Buckston and of Franklin--both so funny, both so earnest--appear at the farther edge of the lawn engaged in strenuous converse. Helen looked at them too, kindly and indifferently. "That would be quite an appropriate attachment, wouldn"t it?" she remarked.
"They seem very much interested in each other, those two."
Althea grew very red. Her mind knew a horrid wrench. She did not know whether it was in pride of possessorship, or shame of it, or merely in helpless loyalty that, after a pause, she said: "Perhaps I ought to have told you, Helen, that Franklin has wanted to marry me for fifteen years.
I"ve no intention of accepting him; but no one can judge as I can of how big and dear a person he is--in spite of his funniness." As she spoke she remembered--it was with a gush of undiluted dismay--that to Helen she had in Paris spoken of the "delightful" suitor, the "only one." Did Helen remember? And how could Helen connect that delightful "one" with Franklin, and with her own att.i.tude towards Franklin?
But Helen now had turned her eyes upon her, opening them--it always seemed to be with difficulty that she did it--widely. "My dear," she said, "I do beg your pardon. You never gave me a hint."
How, indeed, could the Paris memory have been one?
"There wasn"t any hint to give, exactly," said Althea, blushing more deeply and trying to prevent the tears from rising. "I"m not in the least in love with Franklin. I never shall be."
"No, of course not," Helen replied, full of solicitude. "Only, as you say, you must know him so well;--to have him talked over, quite idly and ignorantly, as I"ve been talking.--Really, you ought to have stopped me."
"There was no reason for stopping you. I can see Franklin with perfect detachment. I see him just as you do, only I see so much more. His devotion to me is a rare thing; it has always made me feel unworthy."
"Dear me, yes. Fifteen years, you say; it"s quite extraordinary," said Helen.
To Althea it seemed that Helen"s candour was merciless, and revealed her to herself as uncandid, crooked, and devious. It was with a stronger wish than ever to atone to Franklin that she persisted: "_He_ is extraordinary; that"s what I mean about him. I am devoted to him. And my consolation is that since I can"t give him love he finds my friendship the next best thing in life."
"Really?" Helen repeated. She was silent then, evidently not considering herself privileged to ask questions; and the silence was fraught for Althea with keenest discomfort. It was only after a long pause that at last, tentatively and delicately, as though she guessed that Althea perhaps was resenting something, and perhaps wanted her to ask questions, Helen said: "And--you don"t think you can ever take him?"
"My dear Helen! How can you ask me? He isn"t a man to fall in love with, is he?"
"No, certainly not," said Helen, smiling a little constrainedly, as though her friend"s vehemence struck her as slightly excessive. "But he might, from what you tell me, be a man to marry."
"I couldn"t marry a man I was not in love with."
"Not if he were sufficiently in love with you? Such faithful and devoted people are rare."
"You know, Helen, that, however faithful and devoted he were, you couldn"t fancy yourself marrying Franklin."
Helen, at this turning of the tables, looked slightly disconcerted.
"Well, as you say, I hardly know him," she suggested.
"However well you knew him, you do know that under no circ.u.mstances could you marry him."
"No, I suppose not."
Her look of readjustment was inflicting further and subtler wounds.
"Can"t I feel in the same way?" said Althea.
Helen, a little troubled by the feeling she could not interpret in her friend"s voice, hesitated before saying--as though in atonement to Mr.
Kane she felt bound to put his case as favourably as possible: "It doesn"t quite follow, does it, that somebody who would suit you would suit me? We are so different, aren"t we?"
"Different? How?"
"Well, I could put up with a very inferior, frivolous sort of person.
You"d have higher ideas altogether."
Althea still tried to smile. "You mean that Franklin is too high an idea for you?"
"Far, far too high," said Helen, smiling back.
Franklin and Miss Buckston were now approaching them, and Althea had to accept this ambiguous result of the conversation. One result, however, was not ambiguous. She seemed to see Franklin, as he came towards her over the thick sward, in a new light, a light that diminished and removed him; so that while her heart ached over him as it had never ached, it yet, strangely, was hardened towards him, and almost hostile.
How had she not seen for herself, clearly and finally, that she and Helen were alike, and that whether it was that Franklin was too high, or whether it was that Franklin was merely funny--for either or for both reasons, Franklin could never be for her.
Her heart was hard and aching; but above everything else one hot feeling pulsed: Helen should not have said that he was funny and then glided to the point where she left him as too high for herself, yet not too high for her friend. She should not have withdrawn from her friend and stranded her with Franklin Winslow Kane.
CHAPTER XI.
In the course of the next few days Miss Buckston went back to her Surrey cottage, and two friends of Helen"s arrived. Helen was fulfilling her promise of giving Althea all the people she wanted. Lady Pickering was widowed, young, coquettish, and pretty; Sir Charles Brewster a lively young bachelor with high eyebrows, upturned tips to his moustache, and an air of surprise and competence. They made great friends at once with Mildred, Dorothy and Herbert Vaughan, who shared in all Sir Charles"s hunting and yachting interests. Lady Pickering, after a day of tennis and flirtation, would drift at night into Dorothy and Mildred"s rooms to talk of dresses, and for some days wore her hair tied in a large black bow behind, reverting, however, to her usual dishevelled picturesqueness. "One needs to look as innocent as a pony to have that bow really suit one," she said.
Althea, in this accession of new life, again felt relegated to the background. Helen did not join in the revels, but there was no air of being relegated about her; she might have been the jaded and kindly queen before whom they were enacted. "Dear Helen," said Lady Pickering to Mildred and Althea, "I can see that she"s down on her luck and very bored with life. But it"s always nice having her about, isn"t it? Always nice to have her to look at."
Althea felt that her guests found no such decorative uses for herself, and that they took it for granted that, with a suitor to engage her attention, she would be quite satisfied to remain outside, even if above, the gayer circle. She could not deny that her acceptance of Franklin"s devotion before Helen"s arrival, their air of happy withdrawal--a withdrawal that had then made them conspicuous, not negligible--absolutely justified her guests in their over-tactfulness.
They still took it for granted that she and Franklin wanted to be alone together; they still left them in an isolation almost bridal; but now Althea did not want to be left alone with Franklin, and above all wished to detach herself from any bridal a.s.sociation; and she tormented herself with accusations concerning her former graciousness, responsible as it was for her present discomfort. She knew that she was very fond of dear Franklin, and that she always would be fond of him, but, with these accusations crowding thickly upon her, she was ill at ease and unhappy in his presence. What could she say to Franklin? "I did, indeed, deceive myself into thinking that I might be able to marry you, and I let you see that I thought it; and then my friend"s chance words showed me that I never could. What am I to think of myself, Franklin? And what can you think of me?" For though she could no longer feel pride in Franklin"s love; though it had ceased, since Helen"s words, to have any decorative value in her eyes, its practical value was still great; she could not think of herself as not loved by Franklin. Her world would have rocked without that foundation beneath it; and the fear that Franklin might, reading her perplexed, unstable heart, feel her a person no longer to be loved, was now an added complication.