It was still early. When he had left her, Helen looked at her watch;
only half-past ten. She stood thinking. Should she go out, as usual,
take her place in a long chair under the limes, close her eyes and
pretend to sleep? No, she could not do that. Should she sit down in her
room with Dante and a dictionary? No, that she would not do. Should she
walk far away into the woods and lie upon the ground and weep? That
would be a singularly foolish plan, and at lunch everybody would see
that she had been crying. Yet it was impossible to remain here, to
remain still, and thinking. She must move quickly, and make her body
tired. She went to her room, pinned on her hat, drew on her gloves, and,
choosing a stick as she went through the hall, passed from the grounds
and through the meadow walk to a long road, climbing and winding, whose
walls, at either side, seemed to hold back the billows of the woodland.
The day was hot and dusty. The sky was like a blue stone, the green
monotonous, the road glared white. Helen, with the superficial
fretfulness of an agony controlled, said to herself that nothing more
like a bad water-colour landscape could be imagined; there were the
unskilful blots of heavy foliage, the sleekly painted sky, and the sunny
road was like the whiteness of the paper, picked out, for shadows, in
niggling cobalt. A stupid, bland, heartless day.
She walked along this road for several miles and left it to cross a
crisp, grassy slope from where, standing still and turning to see, she
looked down over all the country and saw, far away, the roofs of
Merriston House. She stood for a long time looking down at it, the hot
wind ruffling her skirts and hair. It was a heartless day and she
herself felt heartless. She felt herself as something silent, swift, and
raging. For now she was to taste to the full the bitter difference
between the finality of personal decision and a finality imposed,
fatefully and irrevocably, from without. She had thought herself
prepared for this ending of hope. She had even, imagining herself
hardened and indifferent, gone in advance of it and had sought to put
the past under her feet and to build up a new life. But she had not been
prepared; that she now knew. The imagination of the fact was not its
realisation in her very blood and bones, nor the standing ready, armed
for the blow, this feel of the blade between her ribs. And looking down
at the only home she had ever had, in moments long, sharp, dream-like,
her strength was drained from her as if by a fever, and she felt that
she was changed all through and that each atom of her being was set, as
it were, a little differently, making of her a new personality, through
this shock of sudden hopelessness.
She felt her knees weak beneath her and she moved on slowly, away from
the sun, to a lonely little wood that bordered the hill-top. In her
sudden weakness she climbed the paling that enclosed it with some
difficulty, wondering if she were most inconveniently going to faint,
and walking blindly along a narrow path, in the sudden cool and
darkness, she dropped down on the moss at the first turning of the way.
Here, at last, was beauty. The light, among the fanlike branches, looked
like sea-water streaked with gold; the tall boles of the beeches were
like the pillars of a temple sunken in the sea. Helen lay back, folded
her arms behind her head, and stared up at the chinks of far brightness
in the green roof overhead. It was like being drowned, deep beneath the
surface of things. If only she could be at peace, like a drowned thing.
Lying there, she longed to die, to dissolve away into the moss, the
earth, the cool, green air. And feeling this, in the sudden beauty,
tears, for the first time, came to her eyes. She turned over on her
face, burying it in her arms and muttering in childish language, 'I'm
sick of it; sick to death of it.'
As she spoke she was aware that some one was near her. A sudden
footfall, a sudden pause, followed her words. She lifted her head, then
she sat up. The tears had flowed and her cheeks were wet with them, but
of that she was not conscious, so great was her surprise at finding
Franklin Winslow Kane standing before her on the mossy path.
Mr. Kane carried his straw hat in his hand. He was very warm, his hair
was untidy on his moist brow, his boots were white with dust, his
trousers were turned up from them and displayed an inch or so of thin
ankle encased in oatmeal-coloured socks. His tie--Helen noted the one
salient detail among the many dull ones that made up a whole so
incongruous with the magic scene--was of a peculiarly harsh and ugly
shade of blue. He had only just climbed over a low wall near by and
that was why he had come upon her so inaudibly and had, so
inadvertently, been a witness of her grief.
He did not, however, show embarrassment, but looked at her with the
hesitant yet sympathetic attentiveness of a vagrant dog.
Helen sat on the moss, her feet extended before her, and she returned
his look from her tearful eyes, making no attempt to soften the oddity
of the situation. She found, indeed, a gloomy amusement in it, and was
aware of wondering what Mr. Kane, who made so much of everything, would
make of their mutual predicament.
'Have you been having a long walk, too?' she asked.
He looked at her, smiling now a little, as if he wagged a responsive
tail; but he was not an ingratiating dog, only a friendly and a troubled
one.
'Yes, I have,' he said. 'We have got rather a long way off, Miss
Buchanan.'
'That's a comfort sometimes, isn't it,' said Helen. She took out her
handkerchief and dried her eyes, drawing herself, then, into a more
comfortable position against the trunk of a beech-tree.
'You'd rather I went away, wouldn't you,' said Mr. Kane; 'but let me say
first that I'm very sorry to have intruded, and very sorry indeed to see
that you're unhappy.'
She now felt that she did not want him to go, indeed she felt that she
would rather he stayed. After the loneliness of her despair, she liked
the presence of the friendly, wandering dog. It would be comforting to
have it sit down beside you and to have it thud its tail when you
chanced to look at it. Mr. Kane would not intrude, he would be a
consolation.
'No, don't go,' she said. 'Do sit down and rest. It's frightfully hot,
isn't it.'
He sat down in front of her, clasping his knees about, as was his wont,
and exposing thereby not only the entire oatmeal sock, but a section of
leg nearly matching it in tint.
'Well, I am rather tired,' he said. 'I've lost my way, I guess.' And,
looking about him, he went on: 'Very peaceful things aren't they, the
woods. Trees are very peaceful things, pacifying things, I mean.'
Helen looked up at them. 'Yes, they are peaceful. I don't know that I
find them pacifying.'
His eyes came back to her and he considered her again for a moment
before he said, smiling gently, 'I've been crying too.'
In the little pause that followed this announcement they continued to
look at each other, and it was not so much that their eyes sounded the
other's eyes as that they deepened for each other and, without effort or
surprise, granted to each other the quiet avowal of complete sincerity.
'I'm very sorry that you are unhappy, too,' said Helen. She noticed now
that his eyes were jaded and that all his clear, terse little face was
softened and relaxed.
'Yes, I'm unhappy,' said Franklin. 'It's queer, isn't it, that we should
find each other like this. I'm glad I've found you: two unhappy people
are better together, I think, than alone. It eases things a little,
don't you think so?'
'Perhaps it does,' said Helen. 'That is, it does if one of them is so
kind and so pacifying as you are; you do remind me of the trees,' she
smiled.
'Ah, well, that's very sweet of you, very sweet indeed,' said Franklin,
looking about him at the limpid green. 'It makes me feel I'm not
intruding, to have you say that to me. It didn't follow, of course,
because I'm glad to find you that you would be glad I'd come. You don't
show it much, Miss Buchanan'--he was looking at her again--'your
crying.'
'I'm always afraid that I show it dreadfully. That's the worst of it, I
don't dare indulge in it often.'
'No, you don't show it much. You sometimes look as though you had been
crying when I'm sure you haven't--early in the morning, for instance.'
Helen could but smile again. 'You are very observant. You really noticed
that?'
'I don't know that I'm so very observant, Miss Buchanan, but I'm
interested in everybody, and I'm particularly interested in you, so that
of course I notice things like that. Now you aren't particularly
interested in me--though you are so kind--are you?' and again Mr. Kane
smiled his weary, gentle smile.
It seemed very natural to sit under peaceful trees and talk to Mr. Kane,
and it was easy to be perfectly frank with him. Helen answered his
smile. 'No, I'm not. I'm quite absorbed in my own affairs. I'm
interested in hardly anybody. I'm very selfish.'
'Ah, you would find that you wouldn't suffer so--in just your way, I
mean--if you were less selfish,' Franklin Kane remarked.
'What other way is there?' Helen asked. 'What is your way?'
'Well, I don't know that I've found a much better one, our ways seem to
have brought us to pretty much the same place, haven't they,' he almost
mused. 'That's the worst of suffering, it's pretty much alike, at all
times and in all ways. I'm not unselfish either, you know, a mighty long
way from it. But I'm not sick of it, you know, not sick to death of it.
Forgive me if I offend in repeating your words.'
'You are unselfish, I'm sure of that,' said Helen. 'And so you must have
other things to live for. My life is very narrow, and when things I care
about are ruined I see nothing further.'
'Things are never ruined in life, Miss Buchanan. As long as there is
life there is hope and action and love. As long as you can love you
can't be sick to death of it.' Mr. Kane spoke in his deliberate,
monotonous tones.
Helen was silent for a little while. She was wondering; not about Mr.
Kane, nor about his suffering, nor about the oddity of thus talking with
him about her own. It was no more odd to talk to him than if he had been
the warm-hearted dog, dowered for her benefit with speech; she was
wondering about what he said and about that love to which he alluded.
'Perhaps I don't know much about love,' she said, and more to herself
than to Mr. Kane.
'I've inferred that since knowing you,' said Franklin.
'I mean, of course,' Helen defined, 'the selfless love you are talking
of.'
'Yes, I understand,' said Franklin. 'Now, you see, the other sort of
love, the sort that makes people go away and cry in the woods--for I've
been crying because I'm hopelessly in love, Miss Buchanan, and I presume
that you are too--well, that sort of love can't escape ruin sometimes.
That side of life may go to pieces and then there's nothing left for it
but to cry. But that side isn't all life, Miss Buchanan.'
Helen did not repudiate his interpretation of her grief. She was quite
willing that Mr. Kane should know why she had been crying, but she did
not care to talk about that side to him. It had been always, and it
would always be, she feared, all life to her. She looked sombrely before
her into the green vistas.
'Of course,' Franklin went on, 'I don't know anything about your
hopeless love affair. I'm only sure that your tragedy is a noble one and
that you are up to it, you know--as big as it is. If it's hopeless, it's
not, I'm sure, because of anything in you. It's because of fate, or
circumstance, or some unworthiness in the person you care for. Now with
me one of the hardest things to bear is the fact that I've nothing to
blame but myself. I'm not adequate, that's the trouble; no charm, you
see,' Mr. Kane again almost mused, 'no charm. Charm is the great thing,
and it means more than it seems to mean, all evolution, the survival of
the fittest--natural selection--is in it, when you come to think of it.
If I'd had charm, personality, or, well, greatness of some sort, I'd
have probably won Althea long ago. You know, of course, that it's Althea
I'm in love with, and have been for years and years. Well, there it is,'
Franklin was picking tall blades of grass that grew in a little tuft
near by and putting them neatly together as he spoke. 'There it is, but
even with the pain of just that sort of failure to bear, I don't intend
that my life shall be ruined. It can't be, by the loss of that hope. I'm
not good enough for Althea. I've got to accept that; natural selection
rejects me,' looking up from his grass blades he smiled gravely at his
companion; 'but I'm good enough for other beautiful things that need
serving. And I'm good enough to go on being Althea's friend, to be of
some value to her in that capacity. So my life isn't ruined, not by a
long way, and I wish you'd try to feel the same about yours.'
Helen didn't feel in the least inclined to try, but she found herself
deeply interested in Mr. Kane's attitude; for the first time Mr. Kane
had roused her intent interest. She looked hard at him while he sat
there, demonstrating to her the justice of life's dealings with him and
laying one blade of grass so accurately against another, and she was
wondering now about him. It was not because she thought her own feelings
sacred that she preferred them to be concealed, but she saw that Mr.
Kane's were no less sacred to him for being thus unconcealed. She even
guessed that his revelation of feeling was less for his personal relief
than for her personal benefit; that he was carrying out, in all the
depths of his sincerity, a wish to comfort her, to take her out of
herself. Well, he had taken her out of herself, and after having heard
that morning what Althea's significance could be in the life of another
man, she was curious to find what her so different significance could be
in the life of this one, as alien from Gerald in type and temperament
as it was possible to imagine. Why did Althea mean anything at all to
Gerald, and why did she mean everything to Mr. Kane? And through what
intuition of the truth had Mr. Kane come to his present hopelessness?
'Do you think women always fall in love with the adequate man, and _vice
versa_?' she asked, and her eyes were gentle as they mused on him. 'Why
should you say that it's because you're not adequate that Althea isn't
in love with you?'
Franklin fixed his eye upon her and it had now a new light, it deepened
for other problems than Helen's and his own. 'Not adequate for her--not
what she wants--that's my point,' he said. 'But there are other sorts of
mistakes to make, of course. If Althea falls in love with a man equipped
as I'm not equipped, that does prove that I lack something that would
have won her; but it doesn't prove that she's found the right man. We've
got beyond natural selection when it comes to life as a whole. He may be
the man for her to fall in love with, but is he the man to make her
happy? That's just the question for me, Miss Buchanan, and I wish you'd
help me with it.'
'Help you?' Helen rather faltered.
'Yes, please try. You must see--I see it plainly enough--that Mr. Digby
is going to marry Althea.' He actually didn't add, 'If she'll have him.'
Helen wondered how far his perspicacity went; had he seen what Gerald
had seen, and what she had not seen at all?
'You think it's Gerald who is in love with her?' she asked.
Again Franklin's eye was on her, and she now saw in it his deep
perplexity. She couldn't bear to add to it. 'I've guessed nothing,' she
said. 'You must enlighten me.'
'I wasn't sure at first,' said Franklin, groping his way. 'He seemed so
devoted to Lady Pickering; but for some days it's been obvious, hasn't
it, that that wasn't in the least serious?'
'Not in the least.'
'I couldn't have reconciled myself,' said Franklin, 'to the idea of a
man, who could take Lady Pickering seriously, marrying Althea. I can't
quite reconcile myself to the idea of a man who could, well, be so
devoted to Lady Pickering, marrying Althea. He's your friend, I know,
Miss Buchanan, as well as your relative, but you know what I feel for
Althea, and you'll forgive my saying that if I'm not big enough for her
he isn't big enough either; no, upon my soul, he isn't.'
Helen's eyes dwelt on him. She knew that, with all the forces of
concealment at her command, she wanted to keep from Mr. Kane the
blighting irony of her own inner comments; above everything, now, she
dreaded lest her irony should touch one of Mr. Kane's ideals. It was so
beautiful of him to think himself not big enough for Althea, that she
was well content that he should see Gerald in the same category of
unfitness. Perhaps Gerald was not big enough for Althea; Gerald's
bigness didn't interest Helen; the great point for her was that Mr. Kane
should not guess that she considered Althea not big enough for him. 'If
Gerald is the lucky man,' she said, after the pause in which she gazed
at him; 'if she cares enough for Gerald to marry him, then I think he
will make her happy; and that's the chief thing, isn't it?'
Mr. Kane could not deny that it was, and yet, evidently, he was not
satisfied. 'I believe you'll forgive me if I go on,' he said. 'You see
it's so tremendously important to me, and what I'm going to say isn't
really at all offensive--I mean, people of your world and Mr. Digby's
world wouldn't find it so. I'll tell you the root of my trouble, Miss
Buchanan. Your friend is a poor man, isn't he, and Althea is a fairly
rich woman. Can you satisfy me on this point? I can give Althea up; I
must give her up; but I can hardly bear it if I'm to give her up to a
mere fortune-hunter, however happy he may be able to make her.'
Helen's cheeks had coloured slightly. 'Gerald isn't a mere
fortune-hunter,' she said. 'People of my world do think fortune-hunting
offensive.'
'Forgive me then,' said Franklin, gazing at her, contrite but
unperturbed. 'I'm very ignorant of your world. May I put it a little
differently. Would Mr. Digby be likely to fall in love with a woman if
she hadn't a penny?'
She had quite forgiven him. She smiled a little in answering. 'He has
often fallen in love with women without a penny, but he could hardly
marry a woman who hadn't one.'
'He wouldn't wish to marry Althea, then, if she had no money?'
'However much he would wish it, I don't think he would be so foolish as
to do it,' said Helen.
'Can't a man worth his salt work for the woman he loves?'
'A man well worth his salt may not be trained for making money,' Helen
returned. She knew the question clamouring in his heart, the question he
must not ask, nor she answer: 'Is he in love with Althea?' Mr. Kane
could never accept nor understand what the qualified answer to such a
question would have to be, and she must leave him with his worst
perplexity unsolved. But one thing she could do for him, and she hoped
that it might soften a little the bitterness of his uncertainty. The
sunlight suddenly had failed, and a slight wind passed among the boughs
overhead. Helen got upon her feet, straightening her hat and putting
back her hair. It was time to be going homewards. They went down the
path and climbed over the palings, and it was on the hill-top that Helen
said, looking far ahead of her, far over the now visible roofs of
Merriston:
'I've known Gerald Digby all my life, and I know Althea, now, quite
well. And if Gerald is to be the lucky man I'd like to say, for him, you
know--and I think it ought to set your mind at rest--that I think Althea
will be quite as lucky as he will be, and that I think that he is worthy
of her.'
Franklin kept his eyes on her as she spoke, and though she did not meet
them, her far gaze, fixed ahead, seemed in its impersonal gravity to
commune with him, for his consolation, more than an answering glance
would have done. She was giving him her word for something, and the very
fact that she kept it impersonal, held it there before them both, made
it more weighty and more final. Franklin evidently found it so. He
presently heaved a sigh in which relief was mingled with
acceptance--acceptance of the fact that, from her, he must expect no
further relief. And presently, as they came out upon the winding road,
he said: 'Thanks, that's very helpful.'
They walked on then in silence. The sun was gone and the wind blew
softly; the freshness of the coming rain was in the air. Helen lifted
her face to them as the first slow drops began to fall. In her heart,
too, the fierceness of her pain was overcast. Something infinitely sad,
yet infinitely peaceful, stilled her pulses. Infinitely sad, yet
infinitely funny too. How small, how insignificant, this tangle of the
whole-hearted and the half-hearted; what did it all come to, and how
feel suffering as tragic when farce grimaced so close beside it? Who
could take it seriously when, in life, the whole-hearted were so
deceived and based their loves on such illusion? To feel the irony was
to acquiesce, perhaps, and acquiescence, even if only momentary, like
the lull and softness in nature, was better than the beating fierceness
of rebellion. Everything was over. And here beside her went the dear
ungainly dog. She turned her head and smiled at him, the raindrops on
her lashes.
'You don't mind the rain, Miss Buchanan?' said Franklin, who had looked
anxiously at the weather, and probably felt himself responsible for not
producing an umbrella for a lady's need.
'I like it.' She continued to smile at him.
'Miss Buchanan,' said Franklin, looking at her earnestly and not smiling
back, 'I want to say something. I've seemed egotistic and I've been
egotistic. I've talked only about my own troubles; but I don't believe
you wanted to talk about yours, did you?' Helen, smiling, slightly
shook her head. 'And at the same time you've not minded my knowing that
you have troubles to bear.' Again she shook her head. 'Well, that's what
I thought; that's all right, then. What I wanted to say was that if ever
I can help you in any way--if ever I can be of any use--will you please
remember that I'm your friend.'
Helen, still looking at him, said nothing for some moments. And now,
once more, a slight colour rose in her cheeks. 'I can't imagine why you
should be my friend,' she said. 'I feel that I know a great deal about
you; but you know nothing about me, and please believe me when I say
that there's very little to know.'
Already he knew her well enough to know that the slight colour,
lingering on her cheek, meant that she was moved. 'Ah, I can't believe
you there,' he said. 'And at all events, whatever there is to know, I'm
its friend. You don't know yourself, you see. You only know what you
feel, not at all what you are.'
'Isn't that what I am?' She looked away, disquieted by this analysis of
her own personality.
'By no means all,' said Franklin. 'You've hardly looked at the you that
can do things--the you that can think things.'
She didn't want to look at them, poor, inert, imprisoned creatures. She
looked, instead, at the quaint, unexpected, and touching thing with
which she was presented--Mr. Kane's friendship. She would have liked to
have told him that she was grateful and that she, too, was his friend;
but such verbal definitions as these were difficult and alien to her,
as alien as discussion of her own character and its capacities. It
seemed to be claiming too much to claim a capacity for friendship. She
didn't know whether she was anybody's friend, really--as Mr. Kane would
have counted friendship. She thought him dear, she thought him good, and
yet she hardly wanted him, would hardly miss him if he were not there.
He touched her, more deeply than she perhaps quite knew, and yet she
seemed to have nothing for him. So she gave up any explicit declaration,
only turning her eyes on him and smiling at him again through her
rain-dimmed lashes, as they went down the winding road together.