Franklin was gone and Sir Charles was gone, and Lady Pickering soon
followed, not in the least discomfited by the unexpected turn of events.
Lady Pickering could hardly have borne to suspect that Gerald preferred
to flirt with Miss Jakes rather than with herself; that he preferred to
marry her was nothing of an affront. Althea herself was very soon to
return to America for a month with Aunt Julia and the girls, settle
business matters and see old friends before turning her face, this time
for good, to the country that was now to be her home.
Franklin was gone, and Gerald and Helen were left, and all that Gerald
more and more meant, all that was bright and alien too--the things of
joy and the things of adjustment and of wonder--effaced poor Franklin
while it emphasised those painful truths that he had seen and shown her
and that she had only been able to protest against. The thought of
Franklin came hardly at all, though the truths he had put before her
lingered in a haunting sense of disappointment with herself; she had
failed Franklin in deeper, more subtle ways than in the mere shattering
of his hopes.
Althea had never been a good business woman; her affairs were taken care
of for her in Boston by wise and careful cousins; but she found that
Gerald, in spite of his air of irresponsibility, was a very good
business man, and it was he who pointed out to her, with cheerful and
affectionate frankness, that her fortune was not as large as she, with
her heretofore unexacting demands on it, had imagined. It was only when
Althea took for granted that it could suffice for much larger, new
demands, that Gerald pointed out the facts of limitation; to himself, he
made this clear and sweet, the facts were amply sufficient; there was
more than enough for his sober wants. But Althea, sitting over the
papers with him in the library, and looking rather vague and wistful,
realised that if Gerald's wants were to be the chief consideration many
of her own must, indeed, go unsatisfied. Gerald evidently took it
perfectly for granted that her wants would be his. Looking up at the
flat and faded portraits of bygone Digbys, while this last one, his
charming eyes lifted so brightly and so intelligently upon her, made
things clear, looking up, over his head, at these ancestors of her
affianced, Althea saw in their aspect of happy composure that they, too,
had always taken it for granted that their wives' wants were just
that--just their own wants. She couldn't--not at first--lucidly
articulate to herself any marked divergence between her wants and
Gerald's; she, too, wanted to see Merriston House restored and made
again into a home for Digbys; but Merriston House had been seen by her
as a means, not as an end. She had seen it as a centre to a larger life;
he saw it as a boundary beyond which they could not care to stray. After
the golden bliss of the first days of her new life there, as Gerald's
promised wife, there came for her a pause of rather perplexed reaction
in this sense of limits, this sense of being placed in a position that
she must keep, this strange sense of slow but sure metamorphosis into
one of a succession of Mrs. Digbys whose wants were their husbands'.
'Yes, yes, I quite see, dear,' she said at intervals, while Gerald
explained to her what it cost to keep up even such a small place. 'What
a pity that those stocks of mine you were telling me about don't yield
more. It isn't much we have, is it?'
'I think it's a great deal,' laughed Gerald. 'It's quite enough to be
very happy on. And, first and foremost, when it's a question of
happiness, and since you are so dear and generous, I shall be able to
hunt at last and keep my own horses. I'm sick of being dependent on my
friends for a mount now and then. Not that you'll have much sympathy
with that particular form of happiness, I know,' he added, smiling, as
he put his hand on her shoulder and scanned the next document.
Althea was silent for a moment. She hardly knew what the odd shock that
went through her meant; then she recognised that it was fear. To see it
as that gave her courage; at all events, love Gerald as she did, she
would not be a coward for love of him. The effort was in her voice,
making it tremulous, as she said: 'But, Gerald, you know I don't like
hunting; you know I think it cruel.'
He looked at her; he smiled. 'So do I, you nice dear.'
'But you won't pain me by doing it--you will give it up?'
It was now his turn to look really a little frightened. 'But it's in my
blood and bones, the joy of it, Althea. You wouldn't, seriously, ask me
to give it up for a whim?'
'Oh, it isn't a whim.'
'A theory, then.'
'I think you ought to give it up for a theory like that one. Yes, I even
think that you ought to give it up to please me.'
'But why shouldn't you give up your theory to please me?' He had turned
his eyes on his papers now, and was feigning to scan them.
'It is a question of right and wrong to me.'
Gerald was silent for a moment. He was not irritated, she saw that; not
angry. He quite recognised her point, and he didn't like her the less
for holding to it; but he recognised his own point just as clearly, and,
after the little pause, she found that he was resolute in holding to it.
'I'm afraid I can't give it up--even to please you, dear,' he said.
Althea sat looking down at the papers that lay on the table; she saw
them through tears of helpless pain. There was nothing to be done and
nothing to be said. She could not tell him that, since he did not love
her sufficiently to give up a pleasure for her sake, she must give him
up; nor could she tell him that he must not use her money for pleasures
that she considered wrong. But it was this second impossible retort--the
first, evidently, did not cross his mind--that was occupying Gerald. He
was not slow in seeing delicacies, though he was slow indeed in seeing
what might have been solemnities. The position couldn't strike him as
solemn; he couldn't conceive that a woman might break off her
engagement for such a cause; but he did see his own position of
beneficiary as delicate.
His next words showed it: 'Of course I won't hunt here, if you really
say not. I could go away to hunt. The difficulty is that we want to keep
horses, don't we? and if I have a hunter it will be rather funny never
to use him at home.'
Althea saw that it would be rather funny. 'If you have a hunter I would
far rather you hunted here than that you went away to hunt.'
'Perhaps you'd rather I had a horse that couldn't hunt. The hunter would
be your gift, of course. I could just go on depending on my friends for
a mount, though that would look funny, too, wouldn't it?'
'If you will hunt, I want to give you your hunter.'
'In a sense it will be using your money to do something you disapprove
of.' Gerald was smiling at her as though he felt that he was bringing
her round to reasonableness. 'Perhaps that's ugly.'
'Please don't speak of the money; mine is yours.'
'That makes me seem all the dingier, I know,' said Gerald, half
ruefully, yet still smiling at her. 'I do wish I could give it up, just
to please you, but really I can't. You must just shut your eyes and
pretend I'm not a brute.'
After this little encounter, which left its mark on Althea's heart, she
felt that Gerald ought to be the more willing to yield in other things
and to enter into her projects. 'Don't you think, dear,' she said to him
a day or two after, when they were walking together, 'don't you think
that you ought soon to be thinking of a seat in Parliament? That will
be such a large, worthy life for you.'
Gerald, as they walked, was looking from right to left, happily,
possessively, over the fields and woods. He brought his attention to her
suggestion with a little effort, and then he laughed. 'Good gracious,
no! I've no political views.'
'But oughtn't you to have them?'
'You shall provide me with them, dear.'
'Gladly; and will you use them?'
'Not in Parliament,' laughed Gerald.
'But seriously, dear, I hope you will think of it.'
He turned gay, protesting, and now astonished eyes upon her. 'But I
can't think of it seriously. Old Battersby is a member for these parts,
and his seat is as firm as a rock.'
'Can't you find another seat?'
'But, my dear, even if I had any leaning that way, which I haven't,
where am I to find the time and money?'
'Give less time and money to hunting,' she could not repress.
But, over the sinking of her heart, she kept her voice light, and
Gerald, all unsuspecting, answered, as if it were a harmless jest they
were bandying, 'What a horrid score! But, yes, it's quite true; I want
my time for hunting and farming and studying a bit, and then you mustn't
forget that I enjoy dabbling at my painting in my spare moments and have
the company of my wise and charming Althea to cultivate. I've quite
enough to fill my time with.'
She was baffled, perplexed, and hurt. Her thoughts fixed with some irony
on his painting. Dabble at it indeed. Gerald had shown her some of his
sketches and they had hardly seemed to Althea to merit more than that
description. Her own tastes had grown up securely framed by books and
lectures. Her speciality was early Italian art. She liked pictures of
Madonnas surrounded by exquisite accessories--all of which she
accurately remembered. She didn't at all care for Japanese prints, and
Gerald's sketches looked to her rather like Japanese prints. She really
didn't imagine that he intended her to take them seriously, and when he
had brought them out and shown them to her she had said, 'Pretty, very
pretty indeed, dear; really you have talent, I'm sure of it. With hard
work, under a good master, you might have become quite a painter.' She
had then seen the little look of discomfiture on Gerald's face, though
he laughed good-humouredly as he put away his sketches, saying to Helen,
who was present, 'I'm put in my place, you see.'
Althea had hastened to add, 'But, dear, really I think them very pretty.
They show quite a direct, simple feeling for colour. Don't they, Helen?
Don't you feel with me that they are very pretty?'
Helen had said that she knew nothing about pictures, but liked Gerald's
very much.
It was hard now to be asked to accept this vagrant artistry instead of
the large, political life she had seen for him. And what of the London
drawing-room?
'You must keep in touch with people, Gerald,' she said. 'You mustn't
sink into the country squire for ever.'
'Oh, but that's just what I want to sink into,' said Gerald. 'Don't
bother about people, though, dear. We can have plenty of people to stay
with us, and go about a bit ourselves.'
'But we must be in London for part of the year,' said Althea.
'Oh, you will run up now and then for a week whenever you like,' said
Gerald.
'A week! How can one keep in touch with what is going on in a week?
Can't we take a little house there? One of those nice little old houses
in Westminster, for example?'
'A house, my dear! Why, you don't want to leave Merriston, do you? What
would become of Merriston if we had a house in London--and of all our
plans? We really couldn't manage that, dear--we really couldn't afford
it.'
Yes, she saw the life very distinctly, now; that of the former Mrs.
Digbys--that of cheerful squiress and wise helpmate. And, charmed though
she was with her lover, Althea was not charmed with that prospect. She
promised herself that things should turn out rather differently. What
was uncomfortable already was to find that her promises were becoming
vague and tentative. There was a new sense of bondage. Bliss was in it,
but the bonds began to chafe.