Gerald, after Althea had gone in, walked for some time in the garden,
taking counsel with himself. The expression of his face was still half
touched and half alarmed. He smoked two cigarettes and then came to the
conclusion that, until he could have a talk with Helen, there was no
conclusion to be come to. He never came to important conclusions
unaided. He would sleep on it and then have a talk with Helen.
He sought her out next morning on the first opportunity. She was in the
library writing letters. She looked, as was usual with her at early
morning hours, odd to the verge of ugliness. It always took her some
time to recover from the drowsy influences of the night. She was dimmed,
as it were, with eyelids half awake, and small lips pouting, and she
seemed at once more childlike and more worn than later in the day.
Gerald looked at her with satisfaction. To his observant and
appreciative eye, Helen was often at her most charming when at her
ugliest.
'I've something to talk over,' he said. 'Can you give me half an hour or
so?'
She answered, 'Certainly,' laying down her pen, and leaning back in her
chair.
'Your letters aren't important? I may keep you for a longish time.
Perhaps we might put it off till the afternoon?'
'They aren't in the least important. You may keep me as long as you
like.'
'Thanks. Have a cigarette?' He offered his case, and Helen took one and
lighted it at the match he held for her, and then Gerald, lighting his
own, proceeded to stroll up and down the room reflecting.
'Helen,' he began, 'I've been thinking things over.' His tone was
serene, yet a little inquiring. He might have been thinking over some
rather uncertain investment, or the planning of a rather exacting trip
abroad. Yet Helen's intuition leaped at once to deeper significances.
Looking out of the window at the lawn, bleached with dew, the trees, the
distant autumnal uplands, while she quietly smoked her cigarette, it was
as if her sub-consciousness, aroused and vigilant, held its breath,
waiting.
'You know,' said Gerald, 'what I've always really wanted to do more than
anything else. As I get older, I want it more and more, and get more and
more tired of my shambling sort of existence. I love this old place and
I love the country. I'd like nothing so much as to be able to live here,
try my hand at farming, paint a little, read a little, and get as much
hunting as I could.'
Helen, blowing a ring of smoke and watching it softly hover, made no
comment on these prefatory remarks.
'Well, as you know,' said Gerald, 'to do that needs money; and I've
none. And you know that the only solution we could ever find was that I
should marry money. And you know that I never found a woman with money
whom I liked well enough.' He was not looking at Helen as he said this;
his eyes were on the shabby old carpet that he was pacing. And in the
pause that followed Helen did not speak. She knew--it was all that she
had time to know--that her silence was expectant only, not ominous.
Consciousness, now, as well as sub-consciousness, seemed rushing to the
bolts and bars and windows of the little lodge of friendship, making it
secure--if still it might be made secure--against the storm that
gathered. She could not even wonder who Gerald had found. She had only
time for the dreadful task of defence, so that no blast of reality
should rush in upon them.
'Well,' said Gerald, and it was now with a little more inquiry and with
less serenity, 'I think, perhaps, I've found her. I think, Helen, that
your nice Althea cares about me, you know, and would have me.'
Helen sat still, and did not move her eyes from the sky and trees. There
was a long white cloud in the sky, an island floating in a sea of blue.
She noted its bays and peninsulas, the azure rivers that interlaced it,
its soft depressions and radiant uplands. She never forgot it. She could
have drawn the snowy island, from memory, for years. All her life long
she had waited for this moment; all her life long she had lived with the
sword of its acceptance in her heart. She had thought that she had
accepted; but now the sword turned--horribly turned--round and round in
her heart, and she did not know what she should do.
'Well,' Gerald repeated, standing still, and, as she knew, looking at
the back of her head in a little perplexity.
Helen looked cautiously down at the cigarette she held; it still smoked
languidly. She raised it to her lips and drew a whiff. Then, after that,
she dared a further effort. 'Well?' she repeated.
Gerald laughed a trifle nervously. 'I asked you,' he reminded her.
She was able, testing her strength, as a tight-rope walker slides a
careful foot along the rope, to go on. 'Oh, I see. And do you care about
her?'
Gerald was silent for another moment, and she guessed that he had run
his hand through his hair and rumpled it on end.
'She really is a little dear, isn't she?' he then said. 'You mayn't find
her interesting--though I really do; and she may be like _eau rougie_;
but, as you said, it's a pleasant draught to have beside one. She is
gentle and wise and good, and she seems to take her place here very
sweetly, doesn't she? She seems really to belong here, don't you think
so?'
Helen could not answer that question. 'Do you want me to tell you
whether you care for her?' she asked.
He laughed. 'I suppose I do.'
'And, on the whole, you hope I'll tell you that you do.'
'Well, yes,' he assented.
The dreadful steeling of her will at the very verge of swooning abysses
gave an edge to her voice. She tried to dull it, to speak very quietly
and mildly, as she said: 'I must have all the facts of the case before
me, then. I confess I hadn't suspected it was a case.'
'Which means that you'd never dreamed I could fall in love with Miss
Jakes.' Gerald's tone was a little rueful.
'Oh--you have fallen in love with her?'
'Why, that's just what I'm asking you!' he laughed again. 'Or, at least,
not that exactly, for of course it's not a question of being in love.
But I think her wise and good and gentle, and she cares for me--I think;
and it seems almost like the finger of destiny--finding her here. Have
you any idea how much money she has? It must be quite a lot,' said
Gerald.
Helen was ready with her facts. 'A very safe three thousand a year, I
believe. Not much, of course, but quite enough for what you want to do.
But,' she added, after the pause in which he reflected on this sum--it
was a good deal less than he had taken for granted--'I don't think that
Althea would marry you on that basis. She is very proud and very
romantic. If you want her to marry you, you will have to make her feel
that you care for her in herself.' It was her own pride that now
steadied her pulses and steeled her nerves. She would be as fair to
Gerald's case as though he were her brother; she would be too fair,
perhaps. Here was the pitfall of her pride that she did not clearly see.
Perhaps it was with a grim touch of retribution that she promised
herself that since he could think of Althea Jakes, he most certainly
should have her.
'Yes, she is proud,' said Gerald. 'That's one of the things one so likes
in her. She'd never hold out a finger, however much she cared.'
'You will have to hold out both hands,' said Helen.
'You think she won't have me unless I can pretend to be in love with
her? I'm afraid I can't take that on.'
'I'm glad you can't. She is too good for such usage. No,' said Helen,
holding her scales steadily, 'perfect frankness is the only way. If she
knows that you really care for her--even if you are not romantic--if you
can make her feel that the money--though a necessity--is secondary, and
wouldn't have counted at all unless you had come to care, I should say
that your chances are good--since you have reason to believe that she
has fallen in love with you.'
'It's not as if I denied her anything I had to give, is it?' Gerald
pondered on the point of conscience she put before him.
'You mean that you're incapable of caring more for any woman than for
Althea?'
'Of course not. I care a great deal more for you,' said Gerald, again
rather rueful under her probes. 'I only mean that I'm not likely to fall
in love again, or anything of that sort. She can be quite secure about
me. I'll be her devoted and faithful husband.'
'I think you care,' said Helen. 'I think you can make her happy.'
But Gerald now came and sat on the corner of the writing-table beside
her, facing her, his back to the window. 'It's a tremendous thing to
decide on, isn't it, Helen?'
She turned her eyes on him, and he looked at her with a gaze troubled
and a little groping, as though he sought in her further elucidations;
as though, for the first time, she had disappointed him a little.
'Is it?' she asked. 'Is marriage really a tremendous thing?'
'Well, isn't it?'
'I'm not sure. In one way, of course, it is. But people, perhaps,
exaggerate the influence of their own choice on the results. You can't
be sure of results, choose as carefully as you will; it's what comes
after that decides them, I imagine--the devotion, the fidelity you speak
of. And since you've found some one to whom you can promise those, some
one wise and good and gentle, isn't that all that you need be sure of?'
Gerald continued to study her face. 'You're not pleased, Helen,' he now
said. It was a curious form of torture that Helen must smile under.
'Well, it's not a case for enthusiasm, is it?' she said. 'I'm certainly
not displeased.'
'You'd rather I married her than Frances Pickering?'
'Would Frances have you, too, irresistible one?'
'Oh, I don't think so; pretty sure not. She would want a lot of things I
can't give. I was only wondering which you'd prefer.'
Helen heard the clamour of her own heart. Frances! Frances! She is
trivial; she will not take your place: she will not count in his life at
all. Althea will count; she will count more and more. She will be his
habit, his _haus-frau_, the mother of his children. He is not in love
with her; but he will come to love her, and there will be no place for
friendship in his life. Hearing that clamour she dragged herself
together, hating herself for having heard it, and answered: 'Althea, of
course; she is worth three of Frances.'
Gerald gave a little sigh. 'Well, I'm glad we agree there,' he said.
'I'm glad you see that Althea is worth three of her. What I do wish is
that you cared more about Althea.'
What he was telling her was that if she would care more about Althea, he
would too, and she wondered if this, also, were a part of pride; should
she help him to care more for Althea? A better pride sustained her; she
felt the danger in these subtleties of her torment. 'I like Althea,' she
said. 'I, too, think that she is wise and good and gentle. I think that
she will be the best of wives, the best of wives and mothers. But, as I
said, I don't feel enthusiasm; I don't feel it a case for enthusiasm.'
'Of course it's not a case for enthusiasm,' said Gerald, who was
evidently eager to range himself completely with her. 'I'm fond, and
I'll grow fonder; and I believe you will too. Don't you, Helen?'
'No doubt I shall,' said Helen. She got up now and tossed her cigarette
into the waste-paper basket, and stood for a moment looking past
Gerald's head at the snowy island, now half dissolved in blue, as though
its rivers had engulfed it. They were parting, he and she, she knew it,
and yet there was no word that she could say to him, no warning or
appeal that she could utter. If he could see that it was the end he
would, she knew, start back from his shallow project. But he did not
know that it was the end and he might never know. Did he not really
understand that an adoring wife could not be fitted into their
friendship? His innocent unconsciousness of inevitable change made
Helen's heart, in its deeper knowledge of human character, sink to a
bitterness that felt like a hatred of him, and she wondered, looking
forward, whether Gerald would ever miss anything, or ever know that
anything was gone.
Gerald sat still looking up at her as though expecting some further
suggestion, and as her eyes came back to him, she smiled to him with
deliberate sweetness, showing him thus that her conclusions were all
friendly. And he rose, smiling back, reassured and fortified. 'Well,' he
said, 'since you approve, I suppose it's settled. I shan't ask her at
once, you know. She might think it was because of what I'd guessed. I'll
lead up to it for a day or two. And, Helen, you might, if you've a
chance, put in a good word for me.'
'I will, if I've a chance,' said Helen.
Gerald, as if aware that he had taken up really too much of her time,
now moved towards the door. But he went slowly, and at the door he
paused. He turned to her smiling. 'And you give me your blessing?' he
asked.
He was most endearing when he smiled so. It was a smile like a child's,
that caressed and cajoled, and that saw through its own cajolery and
pleaded, with a little wistfulness, that there was more than could show
itself, behind. Helen knew what was behind--the sense of strangeness,
the affection and the touch of fear. She had never refused that smile
anything; she seemed to refuse it nothing now, as she answered with a
maternal acquiescence, 'I give you my blessing, dear Gerald.'