On a chill day in late October, Franklin Winslow Kane walked slowly down
a narrow street near Eaton Square examining the numbers on the doors as
he passed. He held his umbrella open over his shoulder, for propitiation
rather than for shelter, since the white fog had not yet formed into a
drizzle. His trousers were turned up, and his feet, wisely, for the
streets were wet and slimy, encased in neat galoshes. After a little
puzzling at the end of the street, where the numbers became confusing,
he found the house he sought on the other side--a narrow house, painted
grey, a shining knocker upon its bright green door, and rows of evenly
clipped box in each window. Franklin picked his way over the road and
rang the bell. This was his first stay in London since his departure
from Merriston in August. He had been in Oxford, in Cambridge, in
Birmingham, and Edinburgh. He had made friends and found many interests.
The sense of scientific links between his own country and England had
much enlarged his consciousness of world-citizenship. He had ceased
altogether to feel like a tourist, he had almost ceased to feel like an
alien; how could he feel so when he had come to know so many people who
had exactly his own interests? This wider scope of understanding
sympathy was the main enlargement that had come to him, at least it was
the main enlargement for his own consciousness. Another enlargement
there was, but it seemed purely personal and occupied his thoughts far
less.
He waited now upon the doorstep of old Miss Buchanan's London house, and
he had come there to call upon young Miss Buchanan. The memory of
Helen's unobtrusive, wonderfully understanding kindness to him during
his last days at Merriston, remained for him as the only bright spot in
a desolate blankness. He had not seen her again. She had been paying
visits, but she had written in return to a note of inquiry from
Cambridge, to say that she was settled, now, in London for a long time
and that she would be delighted to see him on the day he suggested--that
of his arrival in town.
He was ushered by the most staid, most crisp of parlour-maids, not into
Helen's own little sanctum downstairs, but into the drawing-room. It was
a narrow room, running to the back of the house where a long window
showed a ghostly tree in the fog outside, and it was very much crowded
with over-large furniture gathered together from Miss Buchanan's past.
There were chintz-covered chairs and sofas that one had to make one's
way around, and there were cabinets filled with china, and there were
tables with reviews and book-cutters laid out on them. And it was the
most cheerful of rooms; three canaries sang loudly in a spacious gilt
cage that stood in a window, the tea-table was laid before the fire, and
the leaping firelight played on the massive form of the black cat,
dozing in his basket, on the gilt of the canaries' cage, on the china
in the cabinets, the polished surface of the chintz, and the copper
kettle on the tea-table.
Franklin stood and looked about him, highly interested. He liked to
think that Helen had such a comfortable refuge to fall back upon, though
by the time that old Miss Buchanan appeared he had reflected that so
much comfort might be just the impediment that had prevented her from
taking to her wings as he felt persuaded she could and should do. Old
Miss Buchanan interested him even more than her room. She was a firm,
ample woman of over sixty, with plentiful grey hair brushed back
uncompromisingly from her brow, tight lips, small, attentive eyes with
projecting eyebrows over them, and an expression at once of reticence
and cordiality. She wore a black dress of an old-fashioned cut, and
round her neck was a heavy gold chain and a large gold locket.
Helen would be in directly, she said, and expected him.
Franklin saw at once that she took him for granted, and that she was
probably in the habit of taking all Helen's acquaintances for granted,
and of making them comfortable until Helen came and took them off her
hands. She had, he inferred, many interests of her own, and did not
waste much conjecture on stray callers. Franklin was quite content to
count as a stray caller, and he had always conjecture enough for two in
any encounter. He talked away in his even, deliberate tones, while they
drank tea and ate the hottest of muffins that stood in a covered dish on
a brass tripod before the fire, and, while they talked, Miss Buchanan
shot rather sharper glances at him from under her eyebrows.
'So you were at Merriston with Helen's Miss Jakes,' she said, placing
him. 'It made a match, that party, didn't it? Quite a good thing for
Gerald Digby, too, I hear. Miss Jakes is soon to be back, Helen tells
me.'
'Next week,' said Franklin.
'And the wedding for November.'
'So I'm told.'
'You've known Miss Jakes for some time?'
'For almost all my life,' said Franklin, with his calm and candid smile.
'Oh, old friends, then. You come from Boston, too, perhaps?'
'Well, I come from the suburbs, in the first place, but I've been in the
hub itself for a long time now,' said Franklin. 'Yes, I'm a very old
friend of Miss Jakes's. I'm very much attached to her.'
'Ah, and are you pleased with the match?'
'It seems to please Althea, and that's the main thing. I think Mr. Digby
will make her happy; yes, I'm pleased.'
'Yes,' said Miss Buchanan meditatively. 'Yes, I suppose Gerald Digby
will make a pleasant husband. He's a pleasant creature. I've always
considered him very selfish, I confess; but women seem to fall in love
with selfish men.'
Franklin received this ambiguous assurance with a moment or so of
silence, and then remarked that marriage might make Mr. Digby less
selfish.
'You mean,' said Miss Buchanan, 'that she's selfish too, and won't let
him have it all his own way?'
Franklin did not mean that at all. 'Life with a high-minded,
true-hearted woman sometimes alters a man,' he commented.
'Oh, she's that, is she?' said Miss Buchanan. 'I've not met her yet, you
see. Well, I don't know that I've much expectation of seeing Gerald
Digby alter. But he's a pleasant creature, as I said, and I don't think
he's a man to make any woman unhappy. In any case your friend is
probably better off married to a pleasant, selfish man than not married
at all,' and Miss Buchanan smiled a tight, kindly smile. 'I don't like
this modern plan of not getting married. I want all the nice young women
I know to get married, and the sooner the better; it gives them less
time to fuss over their feelings.'
'Well, it's better to fuss before than after, isn't it?' Franklin
inquired.
'Fussing after doesn't do much harm,' said Miss Buchanan, 'and there's
not so much time for fussing then. It's fussing before that leaves so
many of the nicest girls old maids. My niece Helen is the nicest girl I
know, and I sometimes think she'll never marry now. It vexes me very
much,' said Miss Buchanan.
'She's a very nice girl,' said Franklin. 'And she's a very noble woman.
But she doesn't know it; she doesn't know her own capacities. I'm very
much attached to your niece, Miss Buchanan.'
Miss Buchanan shot him another glance and then laughed. 'Well, we can
shake hands over that,' she remarked. 'So am I. And you are quite right;
she is a fine creature and she's never had a chance.'
'Ah, that's just my point,' said Franklin gravely. 'She ought to have a
chance; it ought to be made for her, if she can't make it for herself.
And she's too big a person for that commonplace solution of yours, Miss
Buchanan. You're of the old ideas, I see; you don't think of women as
separate individuals, with their own worth and identity. You think of
them as borrowing worth and identity from some man. Now that may be good
enough for the nice girl who's only a nice girl, but it's not good
enough for your niece, not good enough for a noble woman. I'd ask a
happy marriage for her, of course, but I'd ask a great deal more. She
ought to put herself to some work, develop herself, find herself all
round.'
Miss Buchanan, while Franklin delivered himself of these convictions,
leaned back in her chair, her arms crossed on her bosom, and observed
him with amused intentness. When he had done, she thus continued to
observe him for some moments of silence. 'No, I'm of the old ideas,' she
said at last. 'I don't want work for Helen, or development, or anything
of that sort. I want happiness and the normal life. I don't care about
women doing things, in that sense, unless they've nothing better to do.
If Helen were married to a man of position and ability she would have
quite enough to occupy her. Women like Helen are made to hold and
decorate great positions; it's the ugly, the insignificant women, who
can do the work of the world.'
Franklin heard her with a cheerful, unmoved countenance, and after a
moment of reflection observed, 'Well, that seems to me mighty hard on
the women who aren't ugly and insignificant--mighty hard,' and as Miss
Buchanan looked mystified, he was going on to demonstrate to her that
to do the work of the world was every human creature's highest
privilege, when Helen entered.
Franklin, as he rose and saw his friend again, had a new impression of
her and a rather perturbing one. Little versed as he was in the lore of
the world--the world in Miss Buchanan's sense--he felt that Helen,
perhaps, expressed what Miss Buchanan could not prove. It was true, her
lovely, recondite personality seemed to flash it before him, she didn't
fit easily into his theories of efficiency and self-development by
effort. Effort--other people's effort--seemed to have done long ago all
that was necessary for her. She was developed, she was finished, she
seemed to belong to quite another order of things from that which he
believed in, to an order framed for her production, as it were, and
justified, perhaps, by her mere existence. She was like a flower, and
ought a flower to be asked to do more than to show itself and bloom in
silence?
Franklin hardly formulated these heresies; they hovered, only, as a sort
of atmosphere that had its charm and yet its sadness too, and that
seemed, in charm and sadness, to be part of Helen Buchanan's very being.
She had taken his hand and was looking at him with those eyes of distant
kindness--so kind and yet so distant--and she said in the voice that was
so sincere and so decisive, a voice sweet and cold as a mountain brook,
that she was very glad to see him again.
Yes, she was like a flower, a flower removed immeasurably from his
world; a flower in a crystal vase, set on a high and precious cabinet,
and to be approached only over stretches of shining floor. What had he
to do with, or to think of, such a young woman who, though
poverty-stricken, looked like a princess, and who, though smiling, had
at her heart, he knew, a despair of life?
'I'm very glad indeed to see you,' he said gravely, despite himself, and
scanning her face; 'it seems a very long time.'
'Does that mean that you have been doing a great deal?'
'Yes; and I suppose it means that I've missed you a great deal, too,'
said Franklin. 'I got into the habit of you at Merriston; I feel it's
queer not to find you in a chair under a tree every day.'
'I know,' said Helen; 'one gets so used to people at country houses;
it's seeing them at breakfast that does it, I think. It was nice under
that tree, wasn't it? and how lazy I was. I'm much more energetic now;
I've got to the Purgatory, with the dictionary. Am I to have a fresh pot
of tea to myself, kind Aunt Grizel? You see how I am spoiled, Mr. Kane.'
She had drawn off her gloves and tossed aside her long, soft coat--that
looked like nobody else's coat--and, thin and black and idle, she sat in
a low chair by the fire, and put out her hand for her cup. 'I've been to
a musical,' she said. And she told them how she had been wedged into a
corner for an interminable sonata and hadn't been able to get away. 'I
tried to, once, but my hostess saw me and made a most ominous hiss at
me; every one's eye was turned on me, and I sank back again, covered
with shame and confusion.'
Then she questioned him, and Franklin told her about his interesting
little tour, and the men he had met and the work they were doing.
'Splendid work, I can tell you,' said Franklin, 'and you have splendid
men. It's been a great time for me; it's done me a lot of good. I feel
as if I'd got hold of England; it's almost like being at home when you
find so many splendid people interested in the things that interest
you.'
And presently, after a little pause, in which he contemplated the fire,
he added, lifting his eyes to Helen and smiling over the further idea:
'And see here, I'm forgetting another thing that's happened to me since
I saw you.'
'Something nice, I hope.'
'Well, that depends on how one looks at it,' said Franklin, considering.
'I can't say that it pleases me; it rather oppresses me, in fact. But
I'm going to get even with it, though that will take thought--thought
and training.'
'It sounds as though you were going to be a jockey.'
'No, I'm not going to be a jockey,' said Franklin. 'It's more solemn
than you think. What do you say to this? I'm a millionaire; I'm a
multi-millionaire. If that isn't solemn I don't know what is.'
Miss Grizel Buchanan put down the long golf-stocking she was knitting,
and, over her spectacles, fixed her eyes on the strange young man who
had delayed till now the telling of this piece of news. She examined
him. In all her experience she had never come across anything like him.
Helen gave a little exclamation.
'My dear Mr. Kane, I do congratulate you,' she said.
'Why?' asked Franklin.
'Why, it's glorious news,' said Helen.
'I don't know about that,' said Franklin. 'I'm not a glorious person.
The mere fact of being a millionaire isn't glorious; it may be
lamentable.'
'The mere fact of power is glorious. What shall you do?' asked Helen,
gazing thoughtfully at him as though to see in him all the far, new
possibilities.
'Well, I shall do as much as I can for my own science of physics--that
is rather glorious, I own. I shall be able to help the first-rate men to
get at all sorts of problems, perhaps. Yes, that is rather glorious.'
'And won't you build model villages and buy a castle and marry a
princess?'
'I don't like castles and I don't know anything about princesses,' said
Franklin, smiling. 'As for philanthropy, I'll let people wiser than I am
at it think out plans for doing good with the money. I'll devote myself
to doing what I know something about. I do know something about physics,
and I believe I can do something in that direction.'
'You take your good fortune very calmly, Mr. Kane,' Miss Grizel now
observed. 'How long have you known about it?'
'Well, I heard a week ago, and news has been piling in ever since. I'm
fairly snowed up with cables,' said Franklin. 'It's an old uncle of
mine--my mother's brother--who's left it to me. He always liked me; we
were always great friends. He went out west and built railroads and made
a fortune--honestly, too; the money is clean--as clean as you can get
it nowadays, that is to say. I couldn't take it if it wasn't. The only
thing to do with money that isn't clean is to hand it over to the people
it's been wrongfully taken from--to the nation, you know. It's a pity
that isn't done; it would be a lot better than building universities and
hospitals with it--though it's a problem; yes, I know it's a problem.'
Franklin seemed to-day rather oppressed with a sense of problems. He
gave this one up after a thoughtful survey of the fire, and went on: 'He
was a fine old fellow, my uncle; I didn't see him often, but we
sometimes wrote, and he used to like to hear how I was getting on in my
work. He didn't know much about it; I don't think he ever got over
thinking that atoms were a sort of bug,' Franklin smiled, unaware of his
listeners' surprise; 'but he seemed to like to hear, so I always told
him everything I'd time to write about. It made me sad to hear he'd
gone; but it was a fine life, yes, it was a mighty big, fine, useful
life,' said Franklin Kane, looking thoughtfully into the fire. And while
he looked, musing over his memories, Miss Buchanan and her niece
exchanged glances. 'This is a very odd creature, and a very nice one,'
Miss Grizel's glance said; and Helen's replied, with playful eyebrows
and tender lips, 'Isn't he a funny dear?'
'Now, see here,' said Franklin, looking up from his appreciative
retrospect and coming back to the present and its possibilities, 'now
that I've got all this money, you must let me spend a little of it on
having good times. You must let me take you to plays and
concerts--anything you've time for; and I hope, Miss Buchanan,' said
Franklin, turning his bright gaze upon the older lady, 'that I can
persuade you to come too.'
Helen said that she would be delighted, and Miss Grizel avowed herself a
devoted playgoer, and Franklin, taking out his notebook, inscribed their
willingness to do a play on Wednesday night. 'Now,' he said, scanning
its pages, 'Althea lands on Friday and Mr. Digby goes to meet her, I
suppose. They must come in, too; we'll all have fun together.'
'Gerald can't meet her,' said Helen; 'he has an engagement in the
country, and doesn't get back to London till Saturday. It's an old
standing engagement for a ball. I'm to welcome Althea back to London for
him.'
Franklin paused, his notebook in his hand, and looked over it at Helen.
He seemed taken aback, though at once he mastered his surprise. 'Oh, is
that so?' was his only comment. Then he added, after a moment's
reflection: 'Well, I guess I'll run up and meet her myself, then. I've
always met and seen her off in America, and we'll keep up the old custom
on this side.'
'That would be very nice of you,' said Helen. 'Of course she has that
invaluable Amelie to look after her, and, of course, Gerald knew that
she would be all right, or he would have managed it.'
'Of course,' said Franklin. 'And we'll keep up the old custom.'
That evening there arrived for Miss Buchanan and her niece two large
boxes--one for Miss Grizel, containing carnations and roses, and one for
Helen containing violets. Also, for the younger lady, was a smaller--yet
still a large box--of intricately packed and very sophisticated sweets.
Upon them Mr. Kane had laid a card which read: 'I don't approve of them,
but I'm sending them in the hope that you do.' Another box for Miss
Grizel contained fresh groundsel and chickweed for her canaries.