Helen was on one side of her and Mr. Digby sat in an opposite corner of
the railway carriage, and they were approaching the end of the journey
to Merriston House on a bright July day soon after Althea's arrival in
England. She had met Mr. Digby at Helen's the day before and had
suggested that he should come with them. Gerald had remarked that it
might be tiresome if she hated Merriston, and he were there to see that
she hated it; but Althea was so sure of liking it that her conviction
imposed itself.
Mr. Digby and Helen were both smoking; they had asked her very
solicitously whether she minded, and she had said she didn't, although
in fact she did not like the smell of tobacco, and Helen's constant
cigarette distressed her quite unselfishly on the score of health. The
windows were wide open, and though the gale that blew through ruffled
her smooth hair and made her veil tickle disagreeably, these minor
discomforts could not spoil her predominant sense of excitement and
adventure. Mr. Digby's presence, particularly, roused it. He was so
long, so limp, so graceful, lounging there in his corner. His socks and
his tie were of such a charming shade of blue and his hair such a
charming shade of light mouse-colour. He was vague and blithe, immersed
in his own thoughts, which, apparently, were pleasant and superficial.
When his eyes met Althea's, he smiled at her, and she thought his smile
the most engaging she had ever seen. For the rest, he hardly spoke at
all, and did not seem to consider it incumbent on him to make any
conversational efforts, yet his mere presence lent festivity to the
occasion.
Helen did not talk much either; she smoked her cigarette and looked out
of the window with half-closed eyes. Her slender feet, encased in grey
shoes, were propped on the opposite seat; her grey travelling-dress hung
in smoke-like folds about her; in her little hat was a bright green
wing.
Althea wondered if Mr. Digby appreciated his cousin's appearance, or if
long brotherly familiarity had dimmed his perception of it. She wondered
how her own appearance struck him. She knew that she was very trim and
very elegant, and in mere beauty--quite apart from charm, which she
didn't claim--she surely excelled Helen; Helen with her narrow eyes, odd
projecting nose, and small, sulkily-moulded lips. Deeply though she felt
the fascination of her friend's strange visage, she could but believe
her own the lovelier. So many people--not only Franklin Winslow
Kane--had thought her lovely. There was no disloyalty in recognising the
fact for oneself, and an innocent satisfaction in the hope that Mr.
Digby might recognise it too.
The day that flashed by on either side had also a festive quality: blue
skies heaped with snowy clouds; fields brimmed with breeze-swept grain,
green and silver, or streaked with the gold of butter-cups; swift
streams and the curves of summer foliage. It was a country remote,
wooded and pastoral, and Althea, a connoisseur in landscapes, was
enchanted.
'Do you like it?' Helen asked her as they passed along the edge of a
little wood, glimpses of bright meadow among its clearings. 'We are
almost there now, and it's like this all about Merriston.'
'I've hardly seen any part of England I like so much,' said Althea. 'It
has a sweet, untouched wildness rather rare in England.'
'I always think that it's a country to love and live in,' said Helen.
'Some countries seem made only to be looked at.'
Althea wondered, as she then went on looking at this country, whether
she were thinking of her girlhood and of her many journeys to Merriston.
She wondered if Mr. Digby were thinking of his boyhood. Ever since
seeing those two together yesterday afternoon she had wondered about
them. She had never encountered a relationship quite like theirs; it was
so close, so confident, yet so untender. She could hardly make out that
they liked each other; all that one saw was that they trusted, so that
it had something of the businesslike quality of a partnership. Yet she
found herself building up an absurd little romance about their past. It
might be, who knew, that Mr. Digby had once been in love with Helen and
that she had refused him; he was poor, and she had said that she must
marry money. Althea's heart tightened a little with compassion for Mr.
Digby. Only, if this ever had been, it was well over now; and more
narrowly observing Mr. Digby's charming and irresponsible face, she
reflected that he was hardly the sort of person to illustrate large
themes of passion and fidelity.
A fly was waiting for them at the station, and as they jolted away
Gerald remarked that she was now to see one of the worst features of
Merriston; it was over an hour from the station, and if one hadn't a
motor the drive was a great bore. Althea, however, didn't find it a
bore. Her companions talked now, their heads at the windows; it had been
years since they had traversed that country together; every inch of it
was known to them and significant of weary waits, wonderful runs, feats
and misadventures at gates and ditches; for their reminiscences were
mainly sportsmanlike. Althea listened, absorbed, but distressed. It was
Gerald who caught and interpreted the expression of her large, gentle
eyes.
'I don't believe you like fox-hunting, Miss Jakes,' he said.
'No, indeed, I do not,' said Althea, shaking her head.
'You mean you think it cruel?'
'Very cruel.'
'Yet where would we be without it?' said Gerald. 'And where would the
foxes be? After all, while they live, their lives are particularly
pleasant.'
'With possible intervals of torture? Don't you think that, if they could
choose, they would rather not live at all?'
'Oh, a canny old fox doesn't mind the run so much, you know--enjoys it
after a fashion, no doubt.'
'Don't salve your conscience by that sophism, Gerald; the fox is canny
because he has been terrified so often,' said Helen. 'Let us own that it
is barbarous, but such glorious sport that one tries to forget the fox.'
It required some effort for Althea to testify against her and Mr. Digby,
but she felt so strongly on the subject of animals, foxes in particular,
that her courage did not fail her. 'I think it is when we forget, that
the dreadful things in life, the sins and cruelties, happen,' she said.
Gerald's gay eyes were cogitatingly fixed on her, and Helen continued to
look out of the window; but she thought that they both liked her the
better for her frankness, and she felt in the little ensuing silence
that it had brought them nearer--bright, alien creatures that they were.
Her first view of Merriston House hardly confirmed her hopes of it,
though she would not have owned to herself that this was so. It was
neither so beautiful nor so imposing as she had expected; it was even,
perhaps, rather commonplace; but in a moment she was able to
overcome this slight disloyalty and to love it the more for its
unpretentiousness. A short, winding avenue of limes led to it, and it
stood high among lawns that fell away to lower shrubberies and woods. It
was a square stone house, covered with creepers, a white rose clustering
over the doorway and a group of trees over-topping its chimneys.
Inside, where the housekeeper welcomed them and tea waited for them, was
the same homely brightness. Hunting prints hung in the hall; rows of
mediocre, though pleasing, family portraits in the dining-room. The long
drawing-room at the back of the house, overlooking the lawns and a far
prospect, was a much inhabited room, cheerful and shabby. There were
old-fashioned water-colour landscapes, porcelain in cabinets and on
shelves, and many tables crowded with ivory and silver bric-a-brac;
things from India and things from China, that Digbys in the Army and
Digbys in the Navy had brought home.
'What a Philistine room it is,' said Gerald, smiling as he looked around
him; 'but I must say I like it just as it is. It has never made an
aesthetic effort.'
Gerald's smile irradiated the whole house for Althea, and lit up, in
especial, the big, sunny school-room where he and Helen found most
memories of all. 'The same old table, Helen,' he said, 'and other
children have spilled ink on it and scratched their initials just as we
used to; here are yours and mine. Do you remember the day we did them
under Fraeulein's very nose? And here are all our old books, too. Look,
Helen, the Roman history with your wicked drawings on the fly-leaves:
Tullia driving over her poor old father, and Cornelia--ironic little
wretch you were even then--what a prig she is with her jewels! And what
splendid butter-scotch you used to make over the fire on winter
evenings.'
Helen remembered everything, smiling as she followed Gerald about the
room and looked at ruthless Tullia; and Althea, watching them, was
touched--for them, and then, with a little counter-stroke of memory, for
herself. She remembered her old home too--the dignified old house in
steep Chestnut Street, and the little house on the blue Massachusetts
coast where she had often passed long days playing by herself, for she
had been an only child. She loved it here, for it was like a home,
peaceful and sheltering; but where in all the world had she really a
home? Where in all the world did she belong? The thought brought tears
to her eyes as she looked out of the schoolroom window and listened to
Gerald and Helen. It had ended, of course, for of course it had really
begun, in Althea's decision to take Merriston House. It was quite fixed
now, and on the way back she had made her new friends promise to be
often together with her in the home of their youth. She had made them
promise this so prettily and with such gentle warmth that it was very
natural that Gerald, in talking over the event with Helen that evening,
should say, strolling round Helen's little sitting-room, 'She's rather a
dear, that little friend of yours.'
Helen was tired and lay extended on the divan in the grey dress she had
not had time to change. She had doffed her hat and, thrusting its
hatpins through it, had laid it on her knees, so that, as Gerald had
remarked, she looked rather like Bruenhilde on her rocky couch. But,
unlike Bruenhilde, her hands were clasped behind her neck, and she looked
up at the ceiling. 'A perfect little dear,' she assented.
'Did you notice her eyes when she was talking about the foxes? They were
as sorrowful and piteous as a Mater Dolorosa's. She is definite enough
about some things, isn't she? Things like right and wrong, I mean, as
she sees them.'
'Yes; she is clear about outside things, like right and wrong.'
'It's a good deal to be clear about, isn't it?'
'I suppose so,' Helen reflected. 'I don't feel that I really understand
Althea. People who aren't clear about themselves are difficult to
understand, I think.'
'It's that that really gives them a mystery. I feel that she really is a
little mysterious,' said Gerald. 'One wonders what she would do in
certain cases, and feel in certain situations, and one can't remotely
imagine. She is a sealed book.'
'_She_ wonders,' said Helen.
'And you suspect that her pages are empty?'
Helen reflected, but nothing seemed to come. She closed her eyes,
smiling, and said, 'Be off, please. I'm getting too sleepy to have
suspicions. We have plenty of time to find out whether anything is
written on Althea's pages.'