Helen returned to town on Monday afternoon, and, on going to her room,
found two notes there. One from Gerald said that he was staying on for
another week at Merriston, the other from Franklin said that he would
take his chances of finding her in at 5.30 that afternoon. Helen only
glanced at Franklin's note and then dropped it into the fire; at
Gerald's she looked long and attentively. She always, familiar as they
were, studied any letter of Gerald's that she received; they seemed, the
slightest of them, to have something of himself; the small crisp writing
was charming to her, and the very way he had of affixing his stamps in
not quite the same way that most people affixed theirs, ridiculously
endeared even his envelopes. She turned the note over in her fingers as
she stood before the fire, seeing all that it meant to him--how
little!--and all that it meant to her, and she laid it for a moment
against her cheek before tearing it across and putting it, too, into the
fire. Aunt Grizel was gone out and had left word that she would not be
in till dinner-time. Helen looked idly at the clock and decided that she
would take a lazy afternoon, have tea at home, and await Franklin.
When he arrived he found her reading before the fire in the little room
where she did not often receive him; it was usually in the drawing-room
that they met. Helen wore a black tea-gown, transparent and flowing, the
same gown, indeed, remodelled to more domestic uses, in which Althea had
first seen her. She looked pale and very thin.
Franklin, too, was aware of feeling pale; he thought that he had felt
pale ever since his talk with Miss Buchanan on Saturday. He had not yet
come to any decision about the motives that had made him acquiesce in
her proposal; he only knew that, whatever they were, they were not those
merely reasonable ones that she had put before him. A charming wife, a
home and children; these were not enough, and Franklin knew it, to have
brought him here to-day on his strange errand; nor was it an act of
chivalry; nor was it pity and sympathy for his friend. All these, no
doubt, made some small part of it; but they far from covered the case;
they would have left him as calm and as rational as, he knew, he looked;
but since he did not feel calm and rational he knew that the case was
covered by very different motives. What they were he could not clearly
see; but he felt that something was happening to him and that it was
taking him far out of his normal course. Even his love for Althea had
not taken him out of his course; it had never been incalculable; it had
been the ground he walked on, the goal he worked towards; what was
happening now was like a current, swift and unfathomable, that was
bearing him he knew not where.
Helen smiled at him and, turning in her chair to look up at him, gave
him her hand. 'You look tired,' she said. 'You'll have some tea?'
'I've been looking up some things at the British Museum,' said Franklin,
'and I had a glass of milk and a bun; the bun was very satisfying,
though I can't say that it was very satisfactory; I guess I shan't want
anything else for some hours yet.'
'A bun? What made you have a bun?' said Helen, laughing.
'Well, it seemed to go with the place, somehow,' said Franklin.
'I can imagine that it might; I've only been there once; very large and
very indigestible I found it, and most depressing. Yes, I see that it
might make a bun seem suitable.'
'Ah, but it's a very wonderful place, you know,' Franklin said. 'I
should have expected you to go oftener; you care about beauty.'
'Not beauty in a museum. I don't like museums. The mummies were what
impressed me most, after the Elgin marbles, and everything there seemed
like a mummy--dead and desecrated. Well, what have you been doing
besides eating buns at the British Museum? Has London been working you
very hard?'
'I've not seen much of London while you've been away,' said Franklin,
who had drawn a chair to the other side of the fire. 'I think that you
are London to me, and when you are out of it it doesn't seem to mean
much--beyond museums and work.'
'Come, what of all your scientific friends?'
'They don't mean London; they mean science,' said Franklin, smiling back
at her. She always made him feel happy for himself, and at ease, even
when he was feeling unhappy for her; and just now he was feeling
strangely, deeply unhappy for her. It wasn't humility, in the usual
sense, that showed his coming offer to him as so inadequate; he did not
think of himself as unworthy; but he did think of himself as
incongruous; and that this fine, sad, subtle creature should be brought,
from merely reasonable motives, to taking the incongruous intimately
into her life made him more unhappy for her than usual. He wished he
wasn't so incongruous; he wished he had something besides friendship and
millions; he wished, almost, that his case was hopeless and that
friendship and millions would not gain her. Yet, under these wishes,
which made his face look tired and jaded, was another feeling; it was
too selfless to be called a wish; rather it was a wonder, deep and
melancholy, as to what was being done to him, and what would be done, as
an end of it all. That something had been done he knew; it was because
of Helen--that was one thing at last seen clearly--that he had not, long
ago, left London.
'Science is perfectly impersonal, perfectly cosmopolitan, you know,' he
went on. 'Now you are intensely personal and intensely local.'
'I don't think of myself as London, then, if I'm local,' said Helen, her
eyes on the fire. 'I think of myself as Scotland, in the moorlands, on a
bleak, grey day, when the heather is over and there's a touch of winter
in the wind. You don't know the real me.'
'I'd like to,' said Franklin, quietly and unemphatically.
They sat for a little while in silence, and Helen, so unconscious of
what was approaching her, seemed in no haste to break it. She was
capable of sitting thus in silent musing, her cheek on her hand, her
eyes on the fire, for half an hour with Mr. Kane beside her.
Franklin was reflecting. It wouldn't do to put it to her as her need; it
must be put to her as his; as his reasonable need for the castle, the
princess, the charming wife, the home, and children. And it must be that
need only, the need of the dry, matter-of-fact friend who could give her
a little and to whom she could give much. To hint at other needs--if
other needs there were--would not be in keeping with the spirit of the
transaction, and would, no doubt, endanger it. He well remembered old
Miss Buchanan's hint; it was as a husband that Helen might contemplate
him, not as a lover. 'Miss Buchanan,' he said at last, 'you don't
consider that love, romantic love, is necessary in marriage, do you?
I've gathered more than once from remarks of yours that that point of
view is rather childish to you.'
Helen turned her eyes on him with the look of kindly scrutiny to which
he was accustomed. She had felt, in these last weeks, that London might
be having some unforeseen effect on Franklin Kane; she thought of him as
very clear and very fixed, yet of such a guilelessly open nature as
well, that new experience might impress too sharply the candid tablets
of his mind. She did not like to think of any alteration in Franklin.
She wanted him to remain a changeless type, tolerant of alteration, but
in itself inalterable. 'To tell you the truth, I used to think so,' she
said, 'for myself, I mean. And I hope that you will always think so.'
'Why?' asked Franklin.
'I want you to go on believing always in the things that other people
give up--the nice, beautiful things.'
'Well, that's just my point; can't marriage without romantic love be
nice and beautiful?'
'Well, can it?' Helen smiled.
Franklin appeared conscientiously to ponder. 'I've a high ideal of
marriage,' he said. 'I think it's the happiest state for men and women;
celibacy is abnormal, isn't it?'
'Yes, I suppose it is,' Helen acquiesced, smiling on.
'A mercenary or a worldly marriage is a poor thing; it can't bring the
right sort of growth,' Franklin went on. 'I'm not thinking of anything
sordid or self-seeking, except in the sense that self-development is
self-seeking. I'm thinking of conditions when a man and woman, without
romantic love, might find the best chances of development. Even without
romantic love, marriage may mean fine and noble things, mayn't it? a
home, you know, and shared, widened interests, and children,' said poor
Franklin, 'and the mutual help of two natures that understand and
respect each other.'
'Yes, of course,' said Helen, as he paused, fixing his eyes upon her;
'it may certainly mean all that, the more surely, perhaps, for having
begun without romance.'
'You agree?'
She smiled now at his insistence. 'Of course I agree.'
'You think it might mean happiness?'
'Of course; if they are both sensible people and if neither expects
romance of the other; that's a very important point.'
Franklin again paused, his eyes on hers. With a little effort he now
pursued. 'You know of my romance, Miss Buchanan, and you know that it's
over, except as a beautiful and sacred memory. You know that I don't
intend to let a memory warp my life. It may seem sudden to you, and I
ask your pardon if it's too sudden; but I want to marry; I want a home,
and children, and the companionship of some one I care for and respect,
very deeply. Therefore, Miss Buchanan,' he spoke on, turning a little
paler, but with the same deliberate steadiness, 'I ask you if you will
marry me.'
While Franklin spoke, it had crossed Helen's mind that perhaps he had
determined to follow her suggestion--buy a castle and find a princess to
put in it; it had crossed her mind that he might be going to ask her
advice on this momentous step--she was used to giving advice on such
momentous steps; but when he brought out his final sentence she was so
astonished that she rose from her chair and stood before him. She became
very white, and, with the strained look that then came to them, her eyes
opened widely. And she gazed down at Franklin Winslow Kane while, in
three flashes, searing and swift, like running leaps of lightning, three
thoughts traversed her mind: Gerald--All that money--A child. It was in
this last thought that she seemed, then, to fall crumblingly, like a
burnt-out thing reduced to powder. A child. What would it look like, a
child of hers and Franklin Kane's? How spare and poor and insignificant
were his face and form. Could she love a child who had a nose like
that--a neat, flat, sallow little nose? A spasm, half of laughter, half
of sobbing, caught her breath.
'I've startled you,' said Franklin, who still sat in his chair looking
up at her. 'Please forgive me.'
A further thought came to her now, one that she could utter, was able to
utter. 'I couldn't live in America. Yes, you did startle me. But I am
much honoured.'
'Thank you,' said Franklin. 'I needn't say how much I should consider
myself honoured if you would accept my proposal.' He rose now, but it
was to move a little further away from her, and, taking up an ornament
from the mantelpiece, he examined it while he said: 'As for America, I
quite see that; that's what I was really thinking of in what I was
saying about London. You are London, and it wouldn't do to take you away
from it. I shouldn't think of taking you away. What I would ask you to
do would be to take me in. Since being over here, this time, and seeing
some of the real life of the country--what it's working towards, what it
needs and means--and, moreover, taking into consideration the character
of my own work, I should feel perfectly justified in making a compromise
between my patriotism and my--my affection for you. Some day you might
perhaps find that you'd like to pay us a visit, over there; I think
you'd find it interesting, and it wouldn't, of course, be my America
that you'd see, not the serious and unfashionable America; it would be a
very different America from that that you'd find waiting to welcome you.
So that what I should suggest--and feel justified in suggesting--would
be that I spent three months alternately in England and America; I
should in that way get half a year of home life and half a year of my
own country, and be able, perhaps, to be something of a link between
the English and American scientific worlds. As for our life
here'--Franklin remembered old Miss Buchanan's words--'you should have
your own establishments and,' he lifted his eyes to hers, now, and
smiled a little, 'pursue the just and the beautiful under the most
favourable conditions.'
Helen, when he smiled so at her, turned from him and sank again into her
chair. She leaned her elbow on the arm and put her hand over her eyes. A
languor of great weariness went over her, the languor of the burnt-out
thing floating in the air like a drift of ashes.
Here, at last, in her hand, however strange the conditions, was the
power she had determined to live for. She could, with Franklin's
millions, mould circumstances to her will, and Franklin would be no more
of an odd impediment than the husbands of many women who married for
money--less of an impediment, indeed, than most, for--though it could
only be for his money--she liked him, she was very fond of him, dear,
good, and exquisite little man. Impossible little man she, no doubt,
would once have thought him--impossible as husband, not as friend; but
so many millions made all the difference in possibility. Franklin was
now as possible as any prince, though, she wondered with the cold
languor, could a prince have a nose like that?
Franklin was possible, and it was in her hand, the power, the high
security; yet she felt that it would be in weariness rather than in
strength that the hand would close. It must close, must it not? If she
refused Franklin what, after all, was left to her, what was left in
herself or in her life that could say no to him? Nothing; nothing at
all, no hope, no desire, no faith in herself or in life. If it came to
that, the clearest embodiment of faith and life she knew sat opposite to
her waiting for an answer. He was good; she was fond of him; he had
millions; what could it be but yes? Yet, while her mind sank, like a
feather floating downwards in still air, to final, inevitable
acquiescence, while the little clock ticked with a fine, insect-like
note, and the flames made a soft flutter like the noise of shaken silk,
a blackness of chaotic suffering rose suddenly in her, and her thoughts
were whirled far away. In flashes, dear and terrible, she saw it--her
ruined youth. It rose in dim symbolic pictures, the moorland where
melancholy birds cried and circled, where the rain fell and the wind
called with a passionate cadence among the hills. To marry Franklin
Kane--would it not be to abandon the past; would it not be to desecrate
it and make it hers no longer? Was not the solitary moorland better, the
anguish and despair better than the smug, warm, sane life of purpose and
endeavour? If she was too tired, too indifferent, if she acquiesced, if
she married Franklin Kane, would she forget that the reallest thing in
her life had not been its sanity, and its purpose, but its wild, its
secret, its broken-hearted love? Surely the hateful wisdom of the daily
fact would not efface the memory so that, with years, she would come to
smile over it as one smiles at distant childish griefs? Surely not. Yet
the presage of it passed bleakly over her soul. Life was so reasonable.
And there it sat in the person of Franklin Winslow Kane; life, wise,
kind, commonplace, and inexorably given to the fact, to the present, to
the future that the present built, inexorably oblivious of the past. Her
tragic, rebel heart cried out against it, but her mind whispered with a
hateful calm that life conquered tragedy.
Let it be so, then. She faced it. In the very fact of submission to life
her tragedy would live on; the tragedy--and this she would never
forget--would be to feel it no longer. She would be life's captive, not
its soldier, and she would keep to the end the captive's bitter heart.
She knew, as she put down her hand at last and looked at Franklin Kane,
that it was to be acquiescence, unless he could not accept her terms.
She was ready, ironically, wearily ready for life; but it must be on her
own terms. There must be no loophole for misunderstanding between her
and her friend--if she were to marry him. Only by the clearest
recognition of what she owed him could her pride be kept intact; and she
owed him cold, cruel candour. 'Do you understand, I wonder,' she said to
him, and in a voice that he had never heard from her before, the voice,
he knew, of the real self, 'how different I am from what you think a
human being should be? Do you realise that, if I marry you, it will be
because you have money--because you have a great deal of money--and only
for that? I like you, I respect you; I would be a loyal wife to you, but
if you weren't rich--and very rich--I should not think of marrying you.'
Franklin received this information with an unmoved visage, and after a
pause in which they contemplated each other deeply, he replied: 'All
right.'
'That isn't all,' said Helen. 'You are very good--an idealist. You think
me--even in this frankness of mine--far nicer than I am. I have no
ideals--none at all. I want to be independent and to have power to do
what I please. As for justice and beauty--it's too kind of you to
remember so accurately some careless words of mine.'
Franklin remained unperturbed, unless the quality of intent and
thoughtful pity in his face were perturbation. 'You don't know how nice
you are,' he remarked, 'and that's the nicest thing about you. You are
the honestest woman I've met, and you seem to me about the most unhappy.
I guessed that. Well, we won't talk about unhappiness, will we? I don't
believe that talking about it does much good. If you'll marry me, we'll
see if we can't live it down somehow. As for ideals, I'll trust you in
doing what you like with your money; it will be yours, you know. I shall
make half my property over to you for good; then if I disapprove of what
you do with it, you'll at all events be free to go on pleasing yourself
and displeasing me. I won't be able to prevent you by force from doing
what I think wrong any more than you will me. You'll take your own
responsibility, and I'll take mine. And I don't believe we shall quarrel
much about it,' said Franklin, smiling at her.
Tears rose to Helen's eyes. Franklin Kane, since she had become his
friend, often touched her; something in him now smote upon her heart; it
was so gentle, so beautiful, and so sad.
'My dear friend,' she said, 'you will be marrying a hard, a selfish, and
a broken-hearted woman who will bring you nothing.'
'All right,' said Franklin again.
'I won't do you any good.'
'You won't do me any harm.'
'You want me to marry you, even if I'm not to do you any good?'
He nodded, looking brightly and intently at her.
She rose now and stood beside him. With all the strange new sense of
unity between them there was a stronger sense of formality, and that
seemed best expressed by their clasp of hands over what, apparently, was
an agreement. 'You understand, you are sure you understand,' said Helen.
'What I want to understand is that you are going to marry me,' said
Franklin.
'I will marry you,' Helen said.
And now, rather breathlessly, as if after a race hardly won, Franklin
answered: 'Well, I guess you can leave the rest to me.'