Miss Grizel had known Gerald all his life, and yet she was not intimate
with him, and during the years that Helen had lived with her she had
come to feel a certain irritation against him. Her robust and caustic
nature had known no touch of jealousy for the place he held in Helen's
life. It was dispassionately that she observed, and resented on Helen's
account, the exacting closeness of a friendship with a man who, she
considered, was not worth so much time and attention. She suspected
nothing of the hidden realities of Helen's feeling, yet she did suspect,
acutely, that, had it not been for Gerald, Helen might have had more
time for other things. It was Gerald who monopolised and took for
granted. He came, and Helen was always ready. Miss Grizel had not liked
Gerald to be so assured. She was pleased, now, in going downstairs, that
Gerald Digby should find, for once, and at a moment of real need, that
Helen could not see him.
He was standing before the fire, his eyes on the door, and as she looked
at him Miss Grizel experienced a certain softening of mood. She decided
that she had, to some extent, misjudged Gerald; he had, then, capacity
for caring deeply. Miss Jakes's defection had knocked him about badly.
There was kindness in her voice as she said: 'Good morning,' and gave
him her hand.
But Gerald was not thinking of her or of her kindness. 'Where is Helen?'
he asked, shaking and then automatically retaining her hand.
'You can't see Helen to-day,' said Miss Grizel, a little nettled by the
open indifference. 'She is not at all well. This whole affair, as you
may imagine, has been singularly painful for her to go through. She asks
me to tell you that she can see nobody for a long time. We are going
away; we are going to the Riviera,' said Miss Grizel, making the resolve
on the spot.
Gerald held her hand and looked at her with a feverish unseeing gaze. 'I
must see Helen,' he said.
'My dear Gerald,' Miss Grizel disengaged her hand and went to a chair,
'this really isn't an occasion for musts. Helen has had a shock as well
as you, and you certainly shan't see her.'
'Does she say I shan't?'
Miss Grizel's smile was again grim. 'She says you shan't, and so do I.
She's not fit to see anybody.'
Gerald looked at her for another moment and then turned to the
writing-table. 'I beg your pardon; I don't mean to be rude. Only I
really must see her. Do you mind my writing a line? Will you have it
taken to her?'
'Certainly,' said Miss Grizel, compressing her lips.
Gerald sat down and wrote, quickly, yet carefully, pausing between the
sentences and fixing the same unseeing gaze on the garden. He then rose
and gave the note to Miss Grizel, who, ringing, gave it to the maid,
after which she and Gerald remained sitting on opposite sides of the
room in absolute silence for quite a long while.
Gerald's note had been short. 'Don't be so unspeakably cruel,' it ran,
without preamble. 'You know, don't you, that it has all turned out
perfectly? Althea has thrown me over and taken Kane. I've made them
happy at all events. As for us--O Helen, you must see me. I can't wait.
I can't wait for an hour. I beseech you to come. Only let me see
you.--GERALD.'
To this appeal the maid presently brought the answer, which Gerald,
oblivious of Miss Grizel's scrutiny, tore open and read.
'Don't make me despise you, Gerald. You come because of what I told you
yesterday, and I told you because it was over, so that you insult me by
coming. You must believe me when I say that it is over, and until you
can meet me as if you had forgotten, I cannot see you. I will not see
you now. I do not want to see you.--HELEN.'
He read this, and Miss Grizel saw the blood surge into his face. He
leaned back in his chair, crumpled Helen's note in his fingers, and
looked out of the window. Again Miss Grizel was sorry for him, though
with her sympathy there mingled satisfaction. Presently Gerald looked at
her, and it was as if he were, at last, aware of her. He looked for a
long time, and suddenly, like some one spent and indifferent, he said,
offering his explanation: 'You see--I'm in love with Helen--and she
won't have me.'
Miss Grizel gasped and gazed. 'In love with Helen? You?' she repeated.
The gold locket on her ample bosom had risen with her astounded breath.
'Yes,' said Gerald, 'and she won't have me.'
'But Miss Jakes?' said Miss Grizel.
'She is in love with Kane, and Kane with her--as he always has been, you
know. They are all right. Everything is all right, except Helen.'
A queer illumination began to shoot across Miss Grizel's stupor.
'Perhaps you told Helen that you loved her before Miss Jakes threw you
over. Perhaps you told Mr. Kane that Miss Jakes loved him before she
threw you over. Perhaps it's you who have upset the apple-cart.'
'I suppose it is,' said Gerald, gloomily, but without contrition. 'I
thought it would bring things right to have the facts out. It has
brought them right--for Althea and Kane; they will be perfectly happy
together.'
This simplicity, in the face of her own deep knowledge--the knowledge
she had built on in sending for Franklin Kane a week ago--roused a
ruthless ire in Miss Grizel. 'I'm afraid that you've let your own wishes
sadly deceive you,' she said. 'I must tell you, since you evidently
don't know it, that Mr. Kane is in love with Helen; deeply in love with
her. From what I understand of the situation you have sacrificed him to
your own feeling, and perhaps sacrificed Miss Jakes too; but I don't go
into that.'
It was now Gerald's turn to gaze and gasp; he did not gasp, however; he
only gazed--gazed with a gaze no longer inward and unseeing. He was, at
last, seeing everything. He fell back on the one most evident thing he
saw, and had from the beginning seen. 'But Helen--she could never have
loved him. Such a marriage would be unfit for Helen. I'm not excusing
myself. I see I've been an unpardonable fool in one way.'
Miss Grizel's ire increased. 'Unfit for Helen? Why, pray? He would have
given her the position of a princess--in our funny modern sense. I
intended, and I made the marriage. I saw he'd fallen in love with
her--dear little man--though at the time he didn't know it himself. And
since then I've had the satisfaction--one of the greatest of my life--of
seeing how happy I had made both of them. It was obvious, touchingly so,
that he was desperately in love with Helen. Yes, Gerald, don't come to
me for sympathy and help. You've wrecked a thing I had set my heart on.
You've wrecked Mr. Kane, and my opinion is that you've wrecked Helen
too.'
Gerald, who had become very pale, kept his eyes on her, and he went back
to his one foothold in a rocking world. 'Helen could never have loved
him.'
Miss Grizel shook her hand impatiently above her knee. 'Love! Love! What
do you all mean with your love, I'd like to know? What's this sudden
love of yours for Helen, you who, until yesterday, were willing to marry
another woman for her money--or were you in love with her too? What's
Miss Jakes's love of Mr. Kane, who, until a week ago, thought herself in
love with you? And you may well ask me what is Mr. Kane's love of Helen,
who, until a week ago, thought himself in love with Miss Jakes? But
there I answer you that he is the only one of you who seems to me to
know what love is. One can respect his feeling; it means more than
himself and his own emotions. It means something solid and dependable.
Helen recognised it, and Helen's feeling for him--though it certainly
wasn't love in your foolish sense--was something that she valued more
than anything you can have to offer her. And I repeat, though I'm sorry
to pain you, that it is clear to me that you have wrecked her life as
well as Mr. Kane's.'
Miss Grizel had had her say. She stood up, her lips compressed, her eyes
weighty with their hard, good sense. And Gerald rose, too. He was at a
disadvantage, and an unfair one, but he did not think of that. He
thought, with stupefaction, of what he had done in this room the day
before to Franklin and to Helen. In the depths of his heart he couldn't
wish it undone, for he couldn't conceive of himself now as married to
Althea, nor could he, in spite of Miss Grizel's demonstrations, conceive
of Helen as married to Franklin Kane. But with all the depths of his
heart he wished what he had done, done differently. And although he
couldn't conceive of Helen as married to Franklin Kane, although he
couldn't accept Miss Grizel's account of her state as final, nor believe
her really wrecked--since, after all, she loved him, not Franklin--he
could clearly conceive from Miss Grizel's words that by doing it as he
had, he had wrecked many things and endangered many. What these things
were her words only showed him confusedly, and his clearest impulse now
was to see just what they were, to see just what he had done. Miss
Grizel couldn't show him, for Miss Grizel didn't know the facts; Helen
would not show him, she refused to see him; his mind leaped at once, as
he rose and stood looking rather dazedly about before going, to Franklin
Kane. Kane, as he had said yesterday, was the one person in the world
before whom one could have such things out. Even though he had wrecked
Kane, Kane was still the only person he could turn to. And since he had
wrecked him in his ignorance he felt that now, in his enlightenment, he
owed him something infinitely delicate and infinitely deep in the way of
apology.
'Well, thank you,' he said, grasping Miss Grizel's hand. 'You had to say
it, and it had to be said. Good-bye.'
Miss Grizel, not displeased with his fashion of taking her chastisement,
returned his grasp. 'Yes,' she said, 'you couldn't go on as you were.
But all the same, I'm sorry for you.'
'Oh,' Gerald smiled a little. 'I don't suppose you've much left for me,
and no wonder.'
'Oh yes, I've plenty left for you,' said Miss Grizel. And, in thinking
over his expression as he had left her, the smile, its self-mockery, yet
its lack of bitterness, his courage, and yet the frankness of his
disarray, she felt that she liked Gerald more than she had ever liked
him.