It was after this little nocturnal encounter that Helen found herself
watching Mr. Kane with a dim, speculative sympathy. There was nothing
else of much interest to watch, as far as she was aware, for Helen's
powers of observation were not sharpened by much imaginativeness. Her
sympathy must be aroused for her to care to see, and just now she felt
no sympathy for any one but Mr. Kane.
Gerald, flirting far less flagrantly and sketching assiduously, was in
no need of sympathy; nor Althea, despite the fact that Helen felt her to
be a little reserved and melancholy. Althea, on the whole, seemed
placidly enough absorbed in her duties of hostess, and her state of
mind, at no time much preoccupying Helen, preoccupied her now less than
ever. The person who really interested her, now that she had come to
look at him and to realise that he was suffering, was Mr. Kane. He was
puzzling to her, not mystifying; there was no element of depth or shadow
about him; even his suffering--it was odd to think that a person with
such a small, flat nose should suffer--even his suffering was pellucid.
He puzzled her because he was different from anything she had ever
encountered, and he made her think of a page of trite phrases printed in
a half-comprehended dialect. If it was puzzling that any man should be
sufficiently in love with Althea to suffer over it, it was yet more
puzzling that, neglected as he so obviously was by his beloved, he
should show no dejection or consciousness of diminution. He seemed a
little aimless, it is true, but not in the least injured; and Helen, as
she watched him, found herself liking Mr. Kane.
He had an air, pleasant to her, of finding no one beneath him, and at
the same time he seemed as unaware of superiority--unless it were
definitely moral or intellectual. A general indiscriminating goodwill
was expressed in his manner towards everybody, and when he did
discriminate--which was always on moral issues--his goodwill seemed
unperturbed by any amount of reprobation. He remained blandly humane
under the most disconcerting circumstances. She overtook him one day in
a lane holding a drunkard by the shoulder and endeavouring to steer him
homeward, while he expounded to him in scientific tones the ill effects
of alcohol on the system, and the remarkable results to be attained by
steady self-suggestion. Mr. Kane's collar was awry and his coat dusty,
almost as dusty as the drunkard's, with whom he had evidently had to
grapple in raising him from the highway; and Helen, as she paused at the
turning of the road which brought her upon them, heard Franklin's words:
'I've tried it myself for insomnia. I'm a nervous man, and I was in a
bad way at the time; over-pressure, you know, and worry. I guess it's
like that with you, too, isn't it? You get on edge. Well, there's
nothing better than self-suggestion, and if you'll give it a try you'll
be surprised by the results, I'm sure of it.'
Helen joined them and offered her assistance, for the bewildered
proselyte seemed unable to move forward now that he was upon his feet.
'Well, if you would be so kind. Just your hand on his other shoulder,
you know,' said Franklin, turning a grateful glance upon her. 'Our
friend here is in trouble, you see. It's not far to the village, and
what he wants is to get to bed, have a good sleep and then a wash. He'll
feel a different man then.'
Helen, her hand at 'our friend's' left shoulder, helped to propel him
forward, and ten minutes took them to his door, where, surrounded by a
staring crowd of women and children, they delivered him into the keeping
of his wife, a thin and weary person, who looked upon his benefactors
with almost as much resentment as upon him.
'What he really needs, I'm afraid I think,' Helen said, as she and Mr.
Kane walked away, 'is a good whipping.' She said it in order to see the
effect of the ruthlessness upon her humanitarian companion.
Mr. Kane did not look shocked or grieved; he turned a cogitating glance
upon her, and she saw that he diagnosed the state of mind that could
make such a suggestion and could not take it seriously. He smiled,
though a little gravely, in answering: 'Why, no, I don't think so; and I
don't believe you think so, Miss Buchanan. What you want to give him is
a hold on himself, hope, and self-respect; it wouldn't give you
self-respect to be whipped, would it?'
'It might give me discretion,' said Helen, smiling back.
'We don't want human beings to have the discretion of animals; we want
them to have the discretion of men,' said Franklin; 'that is,
self-mastery and wisdom.'
Helen did not feel able to argue the point; indeed, it did not interest
her; but she asked Mr. Kane, some days later, how his roadside friend
was progressing towards the discretion of a man.
'Oh, he'll be all right,' said Franklin. 'He'll pull round.
Self-suggestion will do it. It's not a bad case. He couldn't get hold of
the idea at first--he's not very bright; but I found out that he'd got
some very useful religious notions, and I work it in on these.'
From the housekeeper, a friend of her youth, Helen learned that in the
village Mr. Kane's ministrations to Jim Betts were regarded with
surprise, yet not without admiration. He was supposed to be some strange
sort of foreign clergyman, not to be placed in any recognisable
category. 'He's a very kind gentleman, I'm sure,' said Mrs. Fielding.
Mr. Kane was fond, Helen also observed, of entering into conversation
with the servants. The butler's political views--which were guarded--he
determinedly pursued, undeterred by Baines's cautious and deferential
retreats. He considered the footman as a potential friend, whatever the
footman might consider him. Their common manhood, in Franklin's eyes,
entirely outweighed the slight, extraneous accidents of fortune--nay,
these differences gave an additional interest. The footman had, no
doubt, a point of view novel and valuable, if one could get at it.
Franklin did not attempt to get at it by any method subversive of order
or interfering with Thomas's duties; he observed all the conventions
demanded by varying function. But Helen, strolling one morning before
breakfast outside the dining-room windows, heard within and paused to
listen to Mr. Kane's monotonous and slightly nasal tones as he shared
the morning news with Thomas, who, with an air of bewildered if obedient
attention, continued his avocations between the sideboard and the
breakfast-table.
'Now I should say,' Franklin remarked, 'that something of that
sort--Germany's doing wonders with it--could be worked here in England
if you set yourselves to it.'
'Yes, sir,' said Thomas.
'Berlin has eliminated the slums, you know,' said Franklin, looking
thoughtfully at Thomas over the top of the paper. 'What do you feel
about it, all of you over here? It's a big question, you know, that of
the housing of the poor.'
'Well, I can't say, sir,' said Thomas, compelled to a guarded opinion.
'Things do look black for the lower horders.'
'You're right, Thomas; and things will go on looking black for helpless
people until they determine to help themselves, or until people who
aren't helpless--like you and me--determine they shan't be so black.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Talk it over, you know. Get your friends interested in it. It's a
mighty big subject, of course, that of the State and its poor, but it's
wonderful what can be done by personal initiative.'
Helen entered at this point, and Thomas turned a furtive eye upon her,
perhaps in appeal for protection against these unprovoked and
inexplicable attacks. 'One might think the gentleman thought I had a
vote and was canvassing me,' he said to Baines, condescending in this
their common perplexity. And Baines replied: 'I'm sure I don't know what
he's up to.'
Meanwhile Franklin, in the dining-room, folded his paper and said: 'You
know, Miss Buchanan, that Thomas, though a nice fellow, is remarkably
ignorant. I can't make out that there's anything of a civic or national
nature that he's interested in. He doesn't seem to read anything in the
papers except the racing and betting news. He doesn't seem to feel that
he has any stake in this great country of yours, or any responsibility
towards it. It makes me believe in manhood suffrage as I've never
believed before. Our people may be politically corrupt, but at least
they're interested; they're alive--alive enough to want to understand
how to get the best of things--as they see best. I've rarely met an
American that I couldn't get to talk; now it's almost impossible to get
Thomas to talk. Yet he's a nice young fellow; he has a nice, open,
intelligent face.'
'Oh yes, has he?' said Helen, who was looking over the envelopes at her
place. 'I hadn't noticed his face; very pink, isn't it?'
'Yes, he has a healthy colour,' said Franklin, still meditating on
Thomas's impenetrability. 'It's not that I don't perfectly understand
his being uncommunicative when he's engaged in his work--it was rather
tactless of me to talk to him just now, only the subject came up. I'd
been talking to Baines about the Old Age Pensions yesterday. That's one
of my objections to domestic service; it creates an artificial barrier
between man and man; but I know that the barrier is part of the
business, while the business is going on, and I've no quarrel with
social convention, as such. But even when they are alone with me--and
I'm referring to Baines now as much as to Thomas--they are very
uncommunicative. I met Thomas on the road to the village the other day
and could hardly get a word out of him till I began to talk about
cricket and ask him about it.'
'He is probably a stupid boy,' said Helen, 'and you frighten him.'
'If you say that, it's an indictment on the whole system, you know,'
said Franklin very gravely.
'What system?' Helen asked, opening her letters, but looking at Mr.
Kane.
'The system that makes some people afraid of others,' said Franklin.
'It will always frighten inferior people to be talked to by their
superiors as if they were on a level. You probably talk to Thomas about
things he doesn't understand, and it bewilders him.' Helen, willing to
enlighten his idealism, smiled mildly at him, glancing down at her
letters as she spoke.
Mr. Kane surveyed her with his bright, steady gaze. Her simple
elucidation evidently left him far from satisfied, either with her or
the system. 'In essentials, Miss Buchanan,' he said, 'in the power of
effort, endurance, devotion, I've no doubt that Thomas and I are
equals, and that's all that ought to matter.'
The others now were coming in, and Helen only shook her head, smiling on
and quite unconvinced as she said, taking her chair, and reaching out
her hand to shake Althea's, 'I'm afraid the inessentials matter most,
then, in human intercourse.'
From these fortuitous encounters Helen gathered the impression by
degrees that though Mr. Kane might not find her satisfactory, he found
her, in her incommunicativeness, quite as interesting as Thomas the
footman. He spent as much time in endeavouring to probe her as he did in
endeavouring to probe Baines, even more time. He would sit beside her
garden-chair looking over scientific papers, making a remark now and
then on their contents--contents as remote from Helen's comprehension as
was the housing of the Berlin poor from Thomas's; and sometimes he would
ask her a searching question, over the often frivolous answer to which
he would carefully reflect.
'I gather, Miss Buchanan,' he said to her one afternoon, when they were
thus together under the trees, 'I gather that the state of your health
isn't good. Would it be inadmissible on my part to ask you if there is
anything really serious the matter with you?'
'My state of health?' said Helen, startled. 'My health is perfectly
good. Who told you it wasn't?'
'Why, nobody. But since you've been here--that's a fortnight now--I've
observed that you've led an invalid's life.'
'I am lazy, that's all; and I'm in rather a bad temper,' Helen smiled;
'and it's very warm weather.'
'Well, when you're not lazy; when you're not in a bad temper; when it's
cold weather--what do you do with yourself, anyway?' Franklin, now that
he had fairly come to his point, folded his papers, clasped his hands
around his knees and looked expectantly at her.
Helen returned his gaze for some moments in silence; then she found that
she was quite willing to give Mr. Kane all he asked for--a detached
sincerity. 'I can't say that I do anything,' she replied.
'Haven't you any occupation?'
'Not unless staying about with people is an occupation,' Helen
suggested. 'I'm rather good at that--when I'm not too lazy and not too
out of temper.'
'You don't consider society an occupation. It's only justifiable as a
recreation when work's done. Every one ought to have an occupation.
You're not alive at all unless you've a purpose that's organising your
life in some way. Now, it strikes me,' said Franklin, eyeing her
steadily, 'that you're hardly half alive.'
'Oh, dear!' Helen laughed. 'Why, pray?'
'Don't laugh at it, Miss Buchanan. It's a serious matter; the most
serious matter there is. No, don't laugh; you distress me.'
'I beg your pardon,' said Helen, and she turned her head aside a little,
for the laugh was not quite genuine, and she was suddenly afraid of
those idiotic tears. 'Only it amuses me that any one should think me a
serious matter.'
'Don't be cynical, Miss Buchanan; that's what's the trouble with you;
you take refuge in cynicism rather than in thought. If you'd think about
it and not try to evade it, you'd know perfectly well that there is
nothing so serious to you in all the world as your own life.'
'I don't know,' said Helen, after a little pause, sobered, though still
amused. 'I don't know that I feel anything very serious, except all the
unpleasant things that happen, or the pleasant things that don't.'
'Well, what's more serious than suffering?' Mr. Kane inquired, and as
she could really find no answer to this he went on: 'And you ought to go
further; you ought to be able to take every human being seriously.'
'Do you do that?' Helen asked.
'Any one who thinks must do it; it's all a question of thinking things
out. Now I've thought a good deal about you, Miss Buchanan,' Franklin
continued, 'and I take you very seriously, very seriously indeed. I feel
that you are very much above the average in capacity. You have a great
deal in you; a great deal of power. I've been watching you very
carefully, and I've come to the conclusion that you are a woman of
power. That's why I take it upon myself to talk to you like this; that's
why it distresses me to see you going to waste--half alive.'
Helen, her head still turned aside in her chair, looked up at the green
branches above her, no longer even pretending to smile. Mr. Kane at once
startled and steadied her. He made her feel vaguely ashamed of herself,
and he made her feel sorry for herself, too, so that, funny as he was,
his effect upon her was to soften and to calm her. Her temper felt less
bad and her nerves less on edge.
'You are very kind,' she said, after a little while. 'It is very good of
you to have thought about me like that. And you do think, at all events,
that I am half alive. You think I have wants, even if I have no
purposes.'
'Yes, that's it. Wants, not purposes; though what they are I can't find
out.'
She was willing to satisfy his curiosity. 'What I want is money.'
'Well, but what do you want to do with money?' Franklin inquired,
receiving the sordid avowal without a blink.
'I really don't know,' said Helen; 'to use what you call my power, I
suppose.'
'How would you use it? You haven't trained yourself for any use of
it--except enjoyment--as far as I can see.'
'I think I could spend money well. I'd give the people I liked a good
time.'
'You'd waste their time, and yours, you mean. Not that I object to the
spending of money--if it's in the right way.'
'I think I could find the right way, if I had it.' She was speaking with
quite the seriousness she had disowned. 'I hate injustice, and I hate
ugliness. I think I could make things nicer if I had money.'
Franklin now was silent for some time, considering her narrowly, and
since she had now looked down from the branches and back at him, their
eyes met in a long encounter. 'Yes,' he said at length, 'you'd be all
right--if only you weren't so wrong. If only you had a purpose--a
purpose directed towards the just and the beautiful; if only instead of
waiting for means to turn up, you'd created means yourself; if only
you'd kept yourself disciplined and steady of aim by some sort of hard
work, you'd be all right.'
Helen, extended in her chair, an embodiment of lovely aimlessness, kept
her eyes fixed on him. 'But what work can I do?' she asked. She was well
aware that Mr. Kane could have no practical suggestions for her case,
yet she wanted to show him that she recognised it as a case, she wanted
to show him that she was grateful, and she was curious besides to hear
what he would suggest. 'What am I fit for? I couldn't earn a penny if I
tried. I was never taught anything.'
But Mr. Kane was ready for her, as he had been ready for Jim Betts.
'It's not a question of earning that I mean,' he said, 'though it's a
mighty good thing to measure yourself up against the world and find out
just what your cash value is, but I'm not talking about that; it's the
question of getting your faculties into some sort of working order that
I'm up against. Why don't you study something systematically, something
you can grind at? Biology, if you like, or political economy, or charity
organisation. Begin at once. Master it.'
'Would Dante do, for a beginning?' Helen inquired, smiling rather wanly.
'I brought him down, with an Italian dictionary. Shall I master Dante?'
'I should feel more comfortable about you if it was political economy,'
said Franklin, now smiling back. 'But begin with Dante, by all means.
Personally I found his point of view depressing, but then I read him in
a translation and never got even as far as the Purgatory. Be sure you
get as far as the Paradise, Miss Buchanan, and with your dictionary.'