Franklin Kane Part 20

CHAPTER XVIII.

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 pa.s.sed. 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 un.o.btrusive, 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 s.p.a.cious gilt cage that stood in a window, the tea-table was laid before the fire, and the leaping firelight played on the ma.s.sive 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 m.u.f.fins that stood in a covered dish on a bra.s.s 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 a.s.surance 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 n.o.ble 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 ident.i.ty. You think of them as borrowing worth and ident.i.ty 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.body 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.