Althea found, as she had hoped, that her whole situation was altered by
the arrival of her suitor. A woman boasting the possession of even the
most rayless of that species is in a very different category from the
woman as mere unsought unit. As unit she sinks easily into the
background, is merged with other unemphatic things, but as sought she is
always in the foreground, not only in her own, but in others' eyes. Be
she ever so unnoticeable, she then gains, at least, the compliment of
conjecture. The significance of her personal drama has a universal
interest; the issues of her situation are those that appeal forcibly to
all.
Althea and her steady, sallow satellite, became the centre of a watchful
circle; watchful and kindly. Even to others her charms became more
apparent, as, indeed, they were more actual. To be loved and to live in
the presence of the adorer is the most beautifying of circumstances.
Althea bloomed under it. Her eyes became larger, sweeter, sadder; her
lips softer; the mild fever of her indecision and of her sense of power
burned dimly in her cheeks. As the centre of watchfulness she gained the
grace of self-confidence.
Aunt Julia, observant and shrewd, smiled with half-ironic satisfaction.
She had felt sure that Althea must come to this, and 'this,' she
considered as on the whole fortunate for Althea. Anything, Aunt Julia
thought, was better than to become a wandering old maid, and she had,
moreover, the highest respect for Franklin Winslow Kane. As a suitor for
one of her own girls he would, of course, have been impossible; but her
girls she placed in a different category from Althea; they had the
rights of youth, charm, and beauty.
The girls, for their part, though seeing Franklin as a fair object for
chaff, conceived of him as wholly suitable. Though they chaffed him,
they never did so to his disadvantage, and they were respectful
spectators of his enterprise. They had the nicest sense of loyalty for
serious situations.
And Miss Buckston was of all the most satisfactory in her attitude. Her
contempt for the disillusions and impediments of marriage could not
prevent her from feeling an altogether new regard for a person to whom
marriage was so obviously open; moreover, she thought Mr. Kane highly
interesting. She at once informed Althea that she always found American
men vastly the superior in achievement and energy to the much-vaunted
American woman, and Althea was not displeased. She was amused but
gratified, when Miss Buckston told her what were Franklin's good
qualities, and said that though he had many foolish democratic notions,
he was more worth while talking to than any man she had met for a long
time. She took every opportunity for talking to him about sociology,
science, and international themes, and Althea even became a little irked
by the frequency of these colloquies and tempted sometimes to withdraw
Franklin from them; but the subtle flattery that Miss Buckston's
interest in Franklin offered to herself was too acceptable for her to
yield to such impulses. Yes, Franklin had a right to his air of careful
elation; she had never been so near it. She had not again allowed him to
kiss her--she was still rather ashamed when she remembered how often she
had, on that one occasion, allowed him to kiss her; yet, in spite of her
swift stepping back to discretion, she had never in all her life been so
near to saying 'yes' to Franklin as during the eight or ten days after
his arrival. And the fact that a third postcard from Helen expressed
even further vagueness as to the chance of Gerald's being able to be
with them that autumn at Merriston, added to the sense of inevitability.
Althea had been for this time so absorbed in Franklin, his effect on
others and on herself, that she had not felt, as she would otherwise
have done, Helen's unsatisfactory attitude. Helen was at last coming,
and she was fluttered at the thought of her coming, but she was far more
able to cope with Helen; there was more self to do it with; she was
stronger, more independent of Helen's opinion and of Helen's affection.
But dimly she felt also--hardly aware she felt it--that she was a more
effective self as the undecided recipient of Franklin's devotion than as
his affianced wife. A rayless person, it seemed, could crown one with
beams as long as one maintained one's distance from him; merged with him
one shared his insignificance. To accept Franklin might be to shear them
both of all the radiance they borrowed from each other.
Helen arrived on a very hot evening in mid-August. She had lost the best
train, which brought one to Merriston at tea-time--Althea felt that
Helen was the sort of person who would always lose the best train--and
after a tedious journey, with waits and changes at hot stations, she
received her friend's kisses just as the dressing-bell for dinner
sounded. Helen, standing among her boxes, while Amelie hurriedly got out
her evening things, looked extremely tired, and felt, Althea was sure,
extremely ill-tempered. It was characteristic of Helen, she knew it
intuitively, to feel ill-temper, and yet to have it so perfectly under
control that it made her manner sweeter than usual. Her sense of social
duty never failed her, and it did not in the least fail her now as she
smiled at Althea, and, while she drank the cup of tea that had been
brought to her, gave an account of her misfortunes. She had arrived in
London from Scotland the night before, spent two hours of the morning in
frantic shopping--the shops like ovens and the London pavements exhaling
a torrid heat; had found, on getting back to Aunt Grizel's--Aunt Grizel
was away--that the silly maid had muddled all her packing; then, late
already, had hurled herself into a cab, and observed, half-way to the
station, that the horse was on the point of collapse; had changed cabs
and had arrived at the station to see her train just going out. 'So
there I paced up and down like a caged, suffocating lioness for over an
hour, had a loathsome lunch, and read half a dozen papers before my
train started, I came third class with a weary mother and two babies,
the sun beat in all the way, and I had three changes. I'm hardly fit to
be seen, and not fit to speak. But, yes, I'll have a bath and come down
in time for something to eat. I'd rather come down; please don't wait
for me.'
They did, however, and she was very late. The windows in the
drawing-room were widely open to the evening air, and the lamps had not
yet been lit; and when Helen came she made Althea think a little of a
beautiful grey moth, hovering vaguely in the dusk.
Captain Merton dined with them that evening, and young Harry Evans, son
of a neighbouring squire; and Herbert Vaughan was still at Merriston,
the masculine equivalent of Mildred and Dorothy, an exquisitely
appointed youth, frank and boisterous, with charming, candid eyes, and
the figure of an Adonis. These young men's eyes were fixed upon Helen as
they took their places at the dinner-table, though not altogether,
Althea perceived, with admiration. Helen, wherever she was, would always
be centre; things and people grouped themselves about her; she made the
picture, and she was the focus of interest. Why was it? Althea wondered,
as, with almost a mother's wistful pleasure, she watched her friend and
watched the others watch her. Pale, jaded, in her thin grey dress,
haggard and hardly beautiful, Helen was full of apathetic power, and
Helen was interested in nobody. It was Althea's pride to trace out
reasons and to see in what Helen's subjugating quality consisted.
Franklin had taken Helen in, and she herself sat at some distance from
them, her heart beating fast as she wondered what Helen would think of
him. She could not hear what they said, but she could see that they
talked, though not eagerly. Helen had, as usual, the air of giving her
attention to anything put before her. One never could tell in the least
what she really thought of it. She smiled with pale lips and weary eyes
upon Franklin, listened to him gravely and with concentration, and, when
she did speak, it was, once or twice, with gaiety, as though he had
amused and surprised her. Yet Althea felt that her thoughts were far
from Franklin, far from everybody in the room. And meanwhile, of
everybody in the room, it was the lean, sallow young man beside her who
seemed at once the least impressed and the most interested. But that was
so like Franklin; no one could outdo him in interest, and no one could
outdo him in placidity. That he could examine Helen with his calm,
careful eye, as though she were an object for mental and moral
appraisement only; that he could see her so acutely, and yet remain so
unmoved by her rarity, at once pleased and displeased Althea. It showed
him as so safe, but it showed him as so narrow. She found herself
thinking almost impatiently that Franklin simply had no sense of charm
at all. Helen interested him, but she did not stir in him the least
wistfulness or wonder, as charm should do. Miss Buckston interested him,
too. And she was very sure that Franklin while liking Helen as a human
creature--so he liked Miss Buckston--disapproved of her as a type. Of
course, he must disapprove of her. Didn't she contradict all the things
he approved of--all the laboriousness, the earnestness, the tolerant
bias towards the views and feelings of the majority? And Althea felt,
with a rather sharp satisfaction, that it would give her some pleasure
to show Franklin that she differed from him; that she had other tastes
than his, other needs--needs which Helen more than satisfied.
She had no opportunity that night for fathoming Helen's impressions of
Franklin, and indeed felt that the task was a delicate one to undertake.
If Helen didn't volunteer them she could hardly ask for them. Loyalty to
Franklin and to the old bond between them, to say nothing of the new,
made it unfit that Helen should know that her impressions of Franklin
were of any weight with her friend. But the next morning Helen did not
come down to breakfast, and there was no reason why, in a stroll round
the garden with Franklin afterwards, she should not be point blank; the
only unfairness here was that in his opinion of Helen it would not be
Helen he judged, but himself.
'How do you like her, my new friend?' she asked.
Franklin was very willing to talk and had already clear impressions. The
clearest was the one he put at once before her in the vernacular he had
never taken the least pains to modify. 'She looks sick; I'd be worried
about her if I were you. Can't you rouse her?'
'Rouse her? She is always like that. Only she was particularly tired
last night.'
'A healthy young woman oughtn't to get so tired. If she's always like
that she always needs rousing.'
'Don't be ridiculous, Franklin. What do you mean?'
'Why, I'm perfectly serious. I think she looks sick. She ought to take
tonics and a lot of outdoor exercise.'
'Is that all that you can find to say about her?' Althea asked, half
amused and half indignant.
'Why no,' Franklin replied. 'I think she's very attractive; she has a
great deal of poise. Only she's half alive. I'd like to see her doing
something.'
'It's enough for her to be, I think.'
'Enough for you, perhaps; but is it enough for her? She'd be a mighty
lot happier if she had some work.'
'Really, Franklin, you are absurd,' said Althea laughing. 'There is room
in the world, thank goodness, for other people besides people who work.'
'Oh no, there isn't; not really. The trouble with the world is that
they're here and have to be taken care of; there's not room for them.
It's lovely of you to care so much about her,' he went on, turning his
bright gaze upon her. 'I see how you care for her. It's because of
that--for her sake, you know--what it can mean to her--that I emphasise
the side that needs looking after. You look after her, Althea; that'll
be the best thing that can happen to her.'
With all his acuteness, how guileless he was, the dear! She saw herself
'looking after' Helen!
'You might have a great deal of influence on her,' Franklin added.
Althea struggled for a moment with her pride. She liked Franklin to have
this high opinion of her ministering powers, and yet she liked even more
to have the comfort of confiding in him; and she was willing to add to
Helen's impressiveness at the expense of her own. 'I've no influence
with her,' she said. 'I never shall have. I don't believe that any one
could influence Helen.'
Franklin looked fixedly at her for some time as though probing what
there must be of pain for her in this avowal. Then he said, 'That's too
bad. Too bad for her, I mean. You're all right, dear. She doesn't know
what she misses.'
They sat out on the lawn that afternoon in the shade of the great trees.
Mildred and Dorothy, glittering in white, played lawn-tennis
indefatigably with Herbert Vaughan and Captain Merton. Aunt Julia
embroidered, and Miss Buckston read a review with a concentrated brow
and an occasional ejaculation of disapproval. Helen was lying prone in a
green linen chair; her garden hat was bent over her eyes and she seemed
to doze. Franklin sat on the grass in front of Althea, just outside the
radius of shadow, clasping his thin knees with his thin hands. He looked
at his worst out of doors, on a lawn and under trees. He was typically
civic. Even with his attempts to adapt his clothes to rural
requirements, he was out of place. His shoes seemed to demand a
pavement, and his thin grey coat and trousers an office stool. Althea
also eyed his tie with uncertainty. He wasn't right; he didn't in the
least look like Herbert Vaughan, who was elegant, or like Captain
Merton, who was easy. He sat out in the sunlight, undisturbed by it,
though he screwed up his features in a very unbecoming way while he
talked, the sun in his eyes. In her cool green shadow, Helen now and
then opened her eyes and looked at him, and Althea wished that he would
not remain in so resolutely disadvantageous a situation.
'See here, Althea,' he was saying, 'if you've gone so much into this
matter'--the topic was that of sweated industries--'I don't see how you
can avoid feeling responsible--making some use of all you know. I don't
ask you to come home to do it, though we need you and your kind badly
there, but you ought to lend a hand here.'
'I don't really think I could be of any use,' said Althea.
'With all your knowledge of political economy? Why, Miss Buckston could
set you to something at once. Knowledge is always of use, isn't it, Miss
Buckston?'
'Yes, if one cares enough about things to put them through,' said Miss
Buckston. 'I always tell Althea that she might make herself very useful
to me.'
'Exactly,' said Franklin. 'And she does care. All you need do, Althea,
is to harness yourself. You mustn't drift.'
'The number of drifting American women one sees over here!' Miss
Buckston ejaculated; to which Franklin cheerfully replied: 'Oh, we'll
work them all in; they are of use to us in their own way, though they
often don't know it. They are learning a lot; they are getting equipped.
The country will get the good of it some day. Look at Althea, for
instance. You might say she drifted, but she's been a hard scholar; I
know it; all she needs now is to get harnessed.'
It was not lover-like talk; yet what talk, in its very impartiality,
could from a lover be more gratifying? Althea again glanced at Helen,
but Helen again seemed to slumber. Her face in repose had a look of
discontent and sorrow, and Franklin's eyes, following her own, no doubt
recognised what she did. He observed Helen for some moments before
returning to the theme of efficiency.
It was a little later on that Althea's opportunity--and crisis--came.
Aunt Julia had gone in and Miss Buckston suggested to Franklin that he
should take a turn with her before tea. Franklin got up at once and
walked away beside her, and Althea knew that his alacrity was the
greater because he felt that by going with Miss Buckston he left her
alone with her cherished friend. As he and Miss Buckston disappeared in
the shrubberies, Helen opened her eyes and looked at them.
'How do you like Miss Buckston now that you see her at closer quarters?'
Althea asked, hoping to approach the subject that preoccupied her by a
circuitous method.
Helen smiled. 'One hardly likes her better at closer quarters, does one?
She is like a gun going off every few moments.'
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 pronouncing 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 lassitude, 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 lassitude, 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 attitude 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 circumstances
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.