Franklin Kane Part 25

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 n.o.ble 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 companions.h.i.+p 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 unfas.h.i.+onable 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sionate 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 pa.s.sed 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.'

CHAPTER XXIV.

Gerald had decided to stay on for another week at Merriston and to come up to town with Althea, and she fancied that the reason for his decision was that he found Sally Arlington such very good company. Sally played the violin exceedingly well and looked like an exceedingly lovely muse while she played, and Gerald, who was very fond of music, also expressed more than once to Althea his admiration of Miss Arlington's appearance.

There was nothing in Gerald's demeanour towards Sally to arouse a hint of jealousy; at least there would not have been had Althea been his wife. But she was not yet his wife, and he treated her--this was the fact that the week was driving home--as though she were, and as though with wifely tolerance she perfectly understood his admiring pretty young women who looked like muses and played the violin. She was not yet his wife; this was the fact, she repeated it over her hidden misery, that Gerald did not enough realise. She was not his wife, and she did not like to see him admiring other young women and behaving towards herself as though she were a comprehending and devoted spouse, who found pleasure in providing them for his delectation. She knew that she could trust Gerald, that not for a moment would he permit himself a flirtation, and not for a moment fail to discriminate between admiration of the newcomer and devotion to herself; yet that the admiration had been sufficient to keep him on at Merriston, while the devotion took for granted the right to all sorts of marital neglects, was the fact that rankled. It did more than rankle; it burned with all the other burnings.

Althea had, at all events, been dragged from her mood of introspection.

She had lost the sense of nonent.i.ty. She was conscious of a pa.s.sionate, protesting self that cried out for justice. Who was Gerald, after all, to take things so for granted? Why should he be so sure of her? He was not her husband. She was his betrothed, not his wife, and more, much more was due to a betrothed than he seemed to imagine. It was not so that another man would have treated her; it was not so that Franklin would have handled his good fortune. Her heart, bereft and starving, cried out for Franklin and for the love that had never failed, even while, under and above everything, was her love for Gerald, and the cold fear lest he should guess what was in her heart, should be angry with her and turn away. It was this fear that gave her self-mastery. She acted the part that Gerald took for granted; she was the tolerant, devoted wife. Yet even so she guessed that Gerald had still his instinct of something amiss. He, too, with all his grace, all his deference and sweetness, was guarded. And once or twice when they were alone together an embarra.s.sed silence had fallen between them.

Mrs. Peel and Sally left on Sat.u.r.day, and on Sat.u.r.day afternoon Miss Harriet Robinson was to arrive from Paris, to spend the Sunday, to travel up to town with Althea and Gerald on Monday, and to remain there with Althea until her marriage. Sat.u.r.day morning, therefore, after the departure of Mrs. Peel and Sally, would be empty, and when she and Gerald met, just before the rather bustled breakfast, Althea suggested to him that a walk together when her guests were gone would be nice, and Gerald had genially acquiesced. A little packet of letters lay beside Gerald's plate and a larger one by Althea's, hers mainly from America as she saw, fat, friendly letters, bearing the Boston postmark; a thin note from Franklin in London also, fixing some festivity for the coming week no doubt; but Sally and Mrs. Peel engaged her attention, and she postponed the reading until after they were gone. She observed, however, in Gerald's demeanour during the meal, a curious irritability and preoccupation. He ate next to nothing, drank his cup of coffee with an air of unconsciousness, and got up and strolled away at the first opportunity, not reappearing until Mrs. Peel and Sally were making their farewells in the hall. He and Althea stood to see them drive off, and then, since she was ready for the walk, they went out together.

It was a damp day, but without rain. A white fog hung closely and thickly over the country, and lay like a clogging, woollen substance among the scattered gold and russets of the now almost leafless trees.

Gerald walked beside Althea in silence, his hands in his pockets.

Althea, too, was silent, and in her breast was an oppression like that of the day--a dense, dull, clogging fear. They had walked for quite ten minutes, and had left the avenue and were upon the high road when Gerald said suddenly, 'I've had some news this morning.'

It was a relief to hear that there was some cause for his silence unconnected with her own inadequacy. But anger rose with the relief; it must be some serious cause to excuse him.

'Have you? It's not bad, I hope,' she said, hoping that it was.

'Bad? No; I don't suppose it's bad. It's very odd, though,' said Gerald.

He then put his hand in his breast-pocket and drew out a letter. Althea saw that the writing on the envelope was Helen's. 'You may read it,'

said Gerald.

The relief was now merged in something else. Althea's heart seemed standing still. It began to thump heavily as she opened the letter and read what Helen wrote:

'DEAR GERALD,--I have some surprising news for you; but I hardly think that you will be more surprised than I was. I am going to marry Mr. Kane. I accepted him some days ago, but have been getting used to the idea since then, and you are the first person, after Aunt Grizel, who knows. It will be announced next week and we shall probably be married very soon after you and Althea. I hope that both our ventures will bring us much happiness. The more I see of Mr.

Kane, the more I realise how fortunate I am.--Yours affectionately,

'HELEN.'