'Why, yes, of course I can see you. Do sit down.' Franklin spoke
gravely, scanning his visitor's face while he moved piles of pamphlets
from a chair and pushed aside the books and papers spread before him on
the table.
Gerald had found him, after a fruitless morning call, at his lodgings in
Clarges Street, and Franklin, in the dim little sitting-room, had risen
from the work that, for hours, had given him a feeling of anchorage--not
too secure--in a world where many of his bearings were painfully
confused. Seeing him so occupied, Gerald, in the doorway, had hesitated:
'Am I interrupting you? Shall I come another time? I want very much to
see you, if I may.' And Franklin had replied with his quick reassurance,
too kindly for coldness, yet too grave for cordiality.
Gerald sat down at the other side of the table and glanced at the array
of papers spread upon it. They gave him a further sense of being beyond
his depth. It was like seeing suddenly the whole bulk of some ocean
craft, of which before one had noticed only the sociable and very
insignificant decks and riggings, lifted, for one's scientific
edification, in its docks. All the laborious, underlying meaning of
Franklin's life was symbolised in these neat papers and heavy books.
Gerald tried to remember, with only partial success, what Franklin's
professional interests were; people's professional interests had rarely
engaged his attention. It was queer to realise that the greater part of
Franklin Kane's life was something entirely alien from his own
imagination, and Gerald felt, as we have said, beyond his depth in
realising it. Yet the fact of a significance he had no power of gauging
did not disconcert him; he was quite willing to swim as best he could
and even to splash grotesquely; quite willing to show Franklin Kane that
he was very helpless and very ignorant, and could only appeal for mercy.
'Please be patient with me if I make mistakes,' he said. 'I probably
shall make mistakes; please bear with me.'
Franklin, laying one pamphlet on another, did not reply to this, keeping
only his clear, kind gaze responsively on the other's face.
'In the first place,' said Gerald, looking down and reaching out for a
thick blue pencil which he seemed to examine while he spoke, 'I must ask
your pardon. I made a terrible fool of myself yesterday afternoon. As
you said, there were so many things I didn't see. I do see them now.'
He lifted his eyes from the pencil, and Franklin, after meeting them for
a moment, said gently: 'Well, there isn't much good in looking at them,
is there? As for asking my pardon--you couldn't have helped not knowing
those things.'
'Perhaps I ought to have guessed them, but I didn't. I was able to play
the fool in perfect good faith.'
'Well, I don't know about that; I don't know that you played the fool,'
said Franklin.
'My second point is this,' said Gerald. 'Of course I'm not going to
pretend anything. You know that I love Helen and that I believe she
loves me, and that for that reason I've a right to seem silly and
fatuous and do my best to get her. I quite see what you must both of you
have thought of me yesterday. I quite see that she couldn't stand my
blindness--to all you meant and felt, you know, and then my imagining
that everything could be patched up between her and me. She wants me to
feel my folly to the full, and no wonder. But that sort of bitterness
would have to go down where people love--wouldn't it? it's something
that can be got over. But that's what I want to ask you; perhaps I'm
more of a fool than I yet know; perhaps what her aunt tells me is true;
perhaps I've wrecked Helen as well as wrecked you. It's a very queer
question to ask--and you must forgive me--no one can answer it but you,
except Helen, and Helen won't see me. Do you really think I have wrecked
her?'
Everybody seemed to be asking this question of poor Franklin. He gave it
his attention in this, its new application, and before answering, he
asked:
'What's happened since I saw you?'
Gerald informed him of the events of the morning.
'I suppose,' said Franklin, reflecting, 'that you shouldn't have gone so
soon. You ought to have given her more time to adjust herself. It looked
a little too sure, didn't it? as if you felt that now that you'd settled
matters satisfactorily you could come and claim her.'
'I know now what it looked like,' said Gerald; 'but, you see, I didn't
know this morning. And I was sure, I am sure,' he said, fixing his
charming eyes sadly and candidly upon Franklin, 'that Helen and I belong
to one another.'
Franklin continued to reflect. 'Well, yes, I understand that,' he said.
'But how can you make her feel it? Why weren't you sure long ago?'
'Oh, you ask me again why I was a fool,' said Gerald gloomily, 'and I
can only reply that Helen was too clever. After all, falling in love is
suddenly seeing something and wanting something, isn't it? Well, Helen
never let me see and never let me want.'
'Yes, that's just the trouble. She's let you see, so that you do want,
now. But that can't be very satisfactory to her, can it?' said Franklin,
with all his impartiality.
'Of course it can't!' said Gerald, with further gloom. 'And don't,
please, imagine that I'm idiotic enough to think myself satisfactory. My
only point is that I belong to her, unsatisfactory as I am, and that,
unless I've really wrecked her, and myself--I must be able to make her
feel that it's her point too; that other things can't really count,
finally, beside it. Have I wrecked her?' Gerald repeated. 'I mean, would
she have been really happier with you? Forgive me for asking you such a
question.'
Franklin again resumed his occupation of laying the pamphlets of one
pile neatly upon those of the other. He had all his air of impartial
reflection, yet his hand trembled a little, and Gerald, noticing this,
murmured again, turning away his eyes: 'Forgive me. Please understand. I
must know what I've done.'
'You see,' said Franklin, after a further silence, while he continued
to transfer the pamphlets; 'quite apart from my own feelings--which do,
I suppose, make it a difficult question to answer--I really don't know
how to answer, because what I feel is that the answer depends on you. I
mean,' said Franklin, glancing up, 'do you love her most, or do I? And
even beyond that--because, of course, the man who loved her least might
make her happiest if she loved him--have you got it in you to give her
life? Have you got it in you to give her something beyond yourself to
live for? Helen doesn't love me, she never could have loved me, and I
believe, with you, that she loves you; but even so it's quite possible
that in the long-run I might have made her happier than you can, unless
you have--in yourself--more to make her happy with.'
Gerald gazed at Franklin, and Franklin gazed back at him. In Gerald's
face a flush slowly mounted, a vivid flush, sensitive and suffering as a
young girl's. And as if Franklin had borne a mild but effulgent light
into the innermost chambers of his heart, and made self-contemplation
for the first time in his life, perhaps, real to him, he said in a
gentle voice: 'I'm afraid you're making me hopeless. I'm afraid I've
nothing to give Helen--beyond myself. I'm a worthless fellow, really,
you know. I've never made anything of myself or taken anything seriously
at all. So how can Helen take me seriously? Yes, I see it, and I've
robbed her of everything. Only,' said Gerald, leaning forward with his
elbows on the table and his forehead on his hands, while he tried to
think it out, 'it is serious, now, you know. It's really serious at
last. I would try to give her something beyond myself and to make
things worth while for her--I see what you mean; but I don't believe I
shall ever be able to make her believe it now.'
They sat thus for a long time in silence--Gerald with his head leant on
his hands, Franklin looking at him quietly and thoughtfully. And as a
result of long reflection, he said at last: 'If she loves you still, you
won't have to try to make her believe it. I'd like to believe it, and so
would you; but if Helen loves you, she'll take you for yourself, of
course. The question is, does she love you? Does she love you enough, I
mean, to want to mend and grow again? Perhaps it's that way you've
wrecked her; perhaps it's withered her--going on for all these years
caring, while you didn't see and want.'
From behind his hands Gerald made a vague sound of acquiescent distress.
'What shall I do?' he then articulated. 'She won't see me. She says she
won't see me until I can meet her as if I'd forgotten. It isn't with
Helen the sort of thing it would mean with most women. She's not saving
her dignity by threats and punishments she won't hold to. Helen always
means what she says--horribly.'
Franklin contemplated the bent head. Gerald's thick hair, disordered by
the long, fine fingers that ran up into it; Gerald's attitude sitting
there, miserable, yet not undignified, helpless, yet not humble;
Gerald's whole personality, its unused strength, its secure sweetness,
affected him strangely. He didn't feel near Gerald as he had, in a
sense, felt near Helen. They were aliens, and would remain so; but he
felt tenderly towards him. And, even while it inflicted a steady,
probing wound to recognise it, he recognised, profoundly, sadly, and
finally, that Gerald and Helen did belong to each other, by an affinity
deeper than moral standards and immeasurable by the test of happiness.
Helen had been right to love him all her life. He felt as if he, from
his distance, loved him, for himself, and because he was loveable. And
he wanted Helen to take Gerald. He was sure, now, that he wanted it.
'See here,' he said, in his voice of mild, fraternal deliberation, 'I
don't know whether it will do much good, but we'll try it. Helen has a
very real feeling for me, you know; Helen likes me and thinks of me as a
true friend. I'm certainly not satisfactory to her,' and Franklin smiled
a little; 'but all the same she's very fond of me; she'd do a lot to
please me; I'm sure of it. So how would it be if I wrote to her and put
things to her, you know?'
Gerald raised his head and looked over the table across the piled
pamphlets at Franklin. For a long time he looked at him, and presently
Franklin saw that tears had mounted to his eyes. The emotion that he
felt to be so unusual, communicated itself to him. He really hadn't
known till he saw Gerald Digby's eyes fill with tears what his own
emotion was. It surged up in him suddenly, blotting out Gerald's face,
overpowering the long resistance of his trained control; and it was with
an intolerable sense of loss and desolation that, knowing that he loved
Gerald and that Gerald's tears were a warrant for his loveableness and
for the workings of fate against himself, he put his head down on his
arms and, not sobbing, not weeping, yet overcome, he let the waves of
his sorrow meet over him.
He did not know, then, what he thought or felt. All that he was
conscious of was the terrible submerging of will and thought and the
engulfing sense of desolation; and all that he seemed to hear was the
sound of his own heart beating the one lovely and agonising word:
'Helen--Helen--Helen!'
He was aware at last, dimly, that Gerald had moved, had come round the
table, and was leaning on it beside him. Then Gerald put his hand on
Franklin's hand. The touch drew him up out of his depths. He raised his
head, keeping his face hidden, and he clasped Gerald's hand for a
moment. Then Gerald said brokenly: 'You mustn't write. You mustn't do
anything for me. You must let me take my own chances--and if I've none
left, it will be what I deserve.'
These words, like air breathed in after long suffocation under water,
cleared Franklin's mind. He shook his head, and he found Gerald's hand
again while he said, able now, as the light grew upon him, to think:
'I want to write. I want you to have all the chances you can.'
'I don't deserve them,' said Gerald.
'I don't know about that,' said Franklin, 'I don't know about that at
all. And besides'--and now he found something of his old whimsicality to
help his final argument--'let's say, if you'd rather, that Helen
deserves them. Let's say that it's for Helen's sake that I want you to
have every chance.'