Franklin Kane Part 21

'My dear Mr. Kane, I do congratulate you,' she said.

'Why?' asked Franklin.

'Why, it's glorious news,' said Helen.

'I don't know about that,' said Franklin. 'I'm not a glorious person.

The mere fact of being a millionaire isn't glorious; it may be lamentable.'

'The mere fact of power is glorious. What shall you do?' asked Helen, gazing thoughtfully at him as though to see in him all the far, new possibilities.

'Well, I shall do as much as I can for my own science of physics--that is rather glorious, I own. I shall be able to help the first-rate men to get at all sorts of problems, perhaps. Yes, that is rather glorious.'

'And won't you build model villages and buy a castle and marry a princess?'

'I don't like castles and I don't know anything about princesses,' said Franklin, smiling. 'As for philanthropy, I'll let people wiser than I am at it think out plans for doing good with the money. I'll devote myself to doing what I know something about. I do know something about physics, and I believe I can do something in that direction.'

'You take your good fortune very calmly, Mr. Kane,' Miss Grizel now observed. 'How long have you known about it?'

'Well, I heard a week ago, and news has been piling in ever since. I'm fairly snowed up with cables,' said Franklin. 'It's an old uncle of mine--my mother's brother--who's left it to me. He always liked me; we were always great friends. He went out west and built railroads and made a fortune--honestly, too; the money is clean--as clean as you can get it nowadays, that is to say. I couldn't take it if it wasn't. The only thing to do with money that isn't clean is to hand it over to the people it's been wrongfully taken from--to the nation, you know. It's a pity that isn't done; it would be a lot better than building universities and hospitals with it--though it's a problem; yes, I know it's a problem.'

Franklin seemed to-day rather oppressed with a sense of problems. He gave this one up after a thoughtful survey of the fire, and went on: 'He was a fine old fellow, my uncle; I didn't see him often, but we sometimes wrote, and he used to like to hear how I was getting on in my work. He didn't know much about it; I don't think he ever got over thinking that atoms were a sort of bug,' Franklin smiled, unaware of his listeners' surprise; 'but he seemed to like to hear, so I always told him everything I'd time to write about. It made me sad to hear he'd gone; but it was a fine life, yes, it was a mighty big, fine, useful life,' said Franklin Kane, looking thoughtfully into the fire. And while he looked, musing over his memories, Miss Buchanan and her niece exchanged glances. 'This is a very odd creature, and a very nice one,'

Miss Grizel's glance said; and Helen's replied, with playful eyebrows and tender lips, 'Isn't he a funny dear?'

'Now, see here,' said Franklin, looking up from his appreciative retrospect and coming back to the present and its possibilities, 'now that I've got all this money, you must let me spend a little of it on having good times. You must let me take you to plays and concerts--anything you've time for; and I hope, Miss Buchanan,' said Franklin, turning his bright gaze upon the older lady, 'that I can persuade you to come too.'

Helen said that she would be delighted, and Miss Grizel avowed herself a devoted playgoer, and Franklin, taking out his notebook, inscribed their willingness to do a play on Wednesday night. 'Now,' he said, scanning its pages, 'Althea lands on Friday and Mr. Digby goes to meet her, I suppose. They must come in, too; we'll all have fun together.'

'Gerald can't meet her,' said Helen; 'he has an engagement in the country, and doesn't get back to London till Sat.u.r.day. It's an old standing engagement for a ball. I'm to welcome Althea back to London for him.'

Franklin paused, his notebook in his hand, and looked over it at Helen.

He seemed taken aback, though at once he mastered his surprise. 'Oh, is that so?' was his only comment. Then he added, after a moment's reflection: 'Well, I guess I'll run up and meet her myself, then. I've always met and seen her off in America, and we'll keep up the old custom on this side.'

'That would be very nice of you,' said Helen. 'Of course she has that invaluable Amelie to look after her, and, of course, Gerald knew that she would be all right, or he would have managed it.'

'Of course,' said Franklin. 'And we'll keep up the old custom.'

That evening there arrived for Miss Buchanan and her niece two large boxes--one for Miss Grizel, containing carnations and roses, and one for Helen containing violets. Also, for the younger lady, was a smaller--yet still a large box--of intricately packed and very sophisticated sweets.

Upon them Mr. Kane had laid a card which read: 'I don't approve of them, but I'm sending them in the hope that you do.' Another box for Miss Grizel contained fresh groundsel and chickweed for her canaries.

CHAPTER XIX.

Althea was an excellent sailor and her voyage back to England was as smooth and as swift as money could make it. She had been seen off by many affectionate friends, and, since leaving America, the literature, the flowers and the fruit with which they had provided her had helped to pa.s.s the hours, tedious at best on ship-board. Two other friends, not so near, but very pleasant--they were New York people--were also making the voyage, but as they were all very sea-sick, intercourse with them consisted mainly in looking in upon them as they lay, mute and enduring, within their berths, and cheering them with the latest reports of progress. Althea looked in upon them frequently, and she read all her books, and much of her time, besides, had been spent in long, formless meditations--her eyes fixed on the rippled, grey expanse of the Atlantic while she lay encased in furs on her deck chair. These meditations were not precisely melancholy, it was rather a brooding sense of vague perplexity that filled the dream-like hours. She had left her native land, and she was speeding towards her lover and towards her new life; there might have been exhilaration as well as melancholy in these facts.

But though she was not melancholy, she was not exhilarated. It was a confused regret that came over her in remembering Boston, and it was a confused expectancy that filled her when she looked forward to Gerald.

Gerald had written to her punctually once a week while she had been in America, short, but very vivid, very interesting and affectionate letters. They told her about what he was doing, what he was reading, the people he saw and his projects for their new life together. He took it for granted that this was what she wanted, and of course it was what she wanted, only--and it was here that the confused regrets arose in remembering Boston--the letters received there, where she was so much of a centre and so little of a satellite, had seemed, in some way, lacking in certain elements that Boston supplied, but that Merriston House, she more and more distinctly saw, would never offer. She was, for her own little circle, quite important in Boston. At Merriston House she would be important only as Gerald Digby's wife and as the mistress of his home, and that indeed--this was another slightly confusing fact--would not be great importance. Even in Boston, she had felt, her importance was still entirely personal; she had gained none from her coming marriage. Her friends were perfectly accustomed to the thought of coronets and ancient estates in connection with foreign alliances, and Althea was a little vexed in feeling that they really did not appreciate at its full value the significance of a simple English gentleman with a small country seat. 'I suppose you'll live quite quietly, Althea, dear,'

more than one old friend had said, with an approbation not altogether grateful to her. 'Your aunt tells me that it's such a nice little place, your future home. I'm so glad you are not making a great worldly match.' Althea had no wish to make a great worldly match, but she did not care that her friends should see her upon such an over-emphatically sober background.

The report of Gerald's charm had been the really luminous fact in her new situation, and it had been most generously spread by Aunt Julia.

Althea had felt warmed by the compensatory brightness it cast about her.

Althea Jakes was not going to make a great match, but she was, and everybody knew it, going to marry a 'perfectly charming' man. This, after all, was to be crowned with beams. It was upon the thought of that charm that she dwelt when the long meditations became oppressively confused. She might be giving up certain things--symbolised by the books, the fruit, the flowers, that testified to her importance in Boston; she might be going to accept certain difficulties and certain disappointments, but the firm ground on which she stood was the fact that Gerald was charming. At moments she felt herself yearn towards that charm; it was a reviving radiance in which she must steep her rather numbed and rather weary being. To see his eyes, to see his smile, to hear his voice that made her think of bells and breezes, would be enough to banish wistfulness, or, at all events, to put it in its proper place as merely temporary and negligible.

Althea's heart beat fast as the sh.o.r.es of Ireland stole softly into sight on a pearly horizon, and it really fluttered, like that of any love-sick girl, when her packet of letters was brought to her at Queenstown. In Gerald's she would feel the central rays coming out to greet her. But when she had read Gerald's letter it was as if a blank curtain had fallen before her, shutting out all rays. He was not coming to meet her at Liverpool. The sharpness of her dismay was like a box on the ear, and it brought tears to her eyes and anger to her heart. Yes, actually, with no contrition, or consciousness of the need for it, he said quite gaily and simply that he would see her in London on Sat.u.r.day; he had a ball in the country for Friday night. He offered not the least apology. He was perfectly unaware of guilt. And it was this innocence that, after the first anger, filled poor Althea with fear. What did it bode for the future? Meanwhile there was the humiliating fact to face that she, the cherished and appreciated Althea, who had never returned to America without at least three devoted friends to welcome her, was to land on the dismal Liverpool docks and find no lover to greet her there.

What would Mrs. Peel and Sally Arlington think when they saw her so bereft? It was the realisation of what they would think, the memory of the American wonder at the Englishman's traditional indifference to what the American woman considered her due in careful chivalry, that roused her pride to the necessity of self-preservation. Mrs. Peel and Sally, at all events, should not imagine her to be either angry or surprised. She would show them the untroubled matter-of-fact of the English wife. And she succeeded admirably in this. When Miss Arlington, sitting up and dressed at last, said, in Mrs. Peel's cabin, where, leaning on Althea's arm, she had feebly crept to tea, 'And what fun, Althea, to think that we shall see him to-morrow morning,' Althea opened candidly surprised eyes: 'See him? Who, dear?'

'Why, Mr. Digby, of course. Who else could be him?' said Miss Arlington.

'But he isn't coming to Liverpool,' said Althea blandly.

'Not coming to meet you?' Only tact controlled the amazement in Miss Arlington's question.

'Didn't you know? Gerald is a very busy man; he has had a long-standing engagement for this week, and besides I shouldn't have liked him to come. I'd far rather meet comfortably in London, where I shall see him the first thing on Sat.u.r.day. And then you'll see him too.'

She only wished that she could really feel, what she showed them--such calm, such reasonableness, and such detachment.

It was with a gloomy eye that she surveyed the Liverpool docks in the bleak dawn next morning, seated in her chair, Amelie beside her, a competent Atlas, bearing a complicated a.s.sortment of bags, rugs, and wraps. No, she had nothing to hope from these inhospitable sh.o.r.es; no welcoming eyes were there to greet hers. It was difficult not to cry as she watched the ugly docks draw near and saw the rows of ugly human faces upturned upon it--peculiarly ugly in colour the human face at this hour of the morning. Then, suddenly, Amelie made a little exclamation and observed in dispa.s.sionate yet approving tones, 'Tiens; et voila Monsieur Frankline.'

'Who? Where?' Althea rose in her chair.

'Mais oui; c'est bien Monsieur Frankline,' Amelie pointed. 'Voila ce qui est gentil, par exemple,' and by this comment of Amelie's Althea knew that Gerald's absence was observed and judged. She got out of her chair, yet with a strange reluctance. It was not pleasure that she felt; it was, rather, a fuller realisation of pain. Going to the railing she looked down at the wharf. Yes, there was Franklin's pale buff-coloured countenance raised to hers, serene and smiling. He waved his hat. Althea was only able not to look dismayed and miserable in waving back. That Franklin should care enough to come; that Gerald should care too little.

But she drew herself together to smile brightly down upon her faithful lover. Franklin--Franklin above all--must not guess what she was feeling.

'Well,' were his first words, as she came down the gangway, 'I thought we'd keep up our old American habits.' The words, she felt, were very tactful; they made things easier for her; they even comforted her a little. One mustn't be too hard on Gerald if it was an American habit.

'It _is_ a nice one,' she said, grasping Franklin's hand. 'I must make Gerald acquire it.'

'Why don't you keep it for me?' smiled Franklin. She felt, as he piloted her to the Customs, that either his tact or his ingenuousness was sublime. She leaned on it, whichever it was.

'Have you seen Gerald?' she asked, as they stood beside her marshalled array of boxes. 'He seemed very fit and happy in the letters I had at Queenstown.'

'No, I've not seen him yet,' smiled Franklin, looking about to catch the eye of an official.

'Then'--was on the tip of Althea's tongue--'how did you know I was not going to be met?' She checked the revealing question, and Franklin's next remark--whether tactful or ingenuous in its appropriateness she once more could not tell--answered it: 'I've been seeing a good deal of Miss Buchanan; she told me Mr. Digby wouldn't be able to come up here.'

'Oh--Helen!' Althea was thankful to be able to pa.s.s from the theme of Gerald and his inabilities. 'So you have been seeing her. Have you been long in London? Have you seen her often?'

'I got to London last Monday, and I've seen her as often as she could let me. We're very good friends, you know,' said Franklin.

She didn't know at all, and she found the information rather bewildering. At Merriston her own situation had far too deeply absorbed her to leave her much attention for other people's. She had only noticed that Helen had been kind to Franklin. She suspected that it was now his ingenuousness that idealised Helen's tolerant kindness. But though her superior sophistication made a little touch of irony unavoidable, it was overwhelmed in the warm sense of grat.i.tude.

Everything was in readiness for her; her corner seat in the train, facing the engine; a foot-warmer; the latest magazines, and a box of fruit. How it all brought back Boston--dear Boston--and the reviving consciousness of imaginative affection. And how it brought back Franklin. Well, everybody ought to be his good friend, even if they weren't so in reality.

'You didn't suppose I'd forget you liked muscatels?' inquired Franklin, with a mild and unreproachful gentleness when she exclaimed over the nectarines and grapes. 'Now, please, sit back and let me put this rug around you; it's chilly, and you look rather pale.' He then went off and looked out for her friends and for Amelie. Mrs. Peel and Sally, when they arrived with him, showed more than the general warmth of compatriots in a foreign land. They knew Franklin but slightly, and he could but have counted with them as one of Althea's former suitors; but now, she saw it, he took his place in their eyes as the devoted friend, and, as the journey went on, counted for more and more in his own right.

Sally and Mrs. Peel evidently thought Franklin a dear. Althea thought so too, her eyes dwelling on him with wistful observation. There was no charm; there never had been charm; but the thought of charm sickened her a little just now. What she rested in was this affection, this kindness, this constant devotion that had never failed her in the greatest or the littlest things. And though it was not to see him change into a different creature, not to see him move on into a different category--as he had changed and moved in the eyes of the Miss Buchanans--he did gain in significance when, after a little while, he informed them of the new fact in his life--the fact of millions. They were Americans of an old stock, and millions meant to them very external and slightly suspicious things--things a.s.sociated with rawness and low ideals; but they couldn't a.s.sociate Franklin with low ideals. They exclaimed with interest and sympathy over his adventure, and they felt nothing funny in his projects for benefiting physics. They all understood each other; they took light things--like millions--lightly, and grave things--like ideals and responsibilities--gravely. And, ah yes, there it was--Althea turning her head to look at the speeding landscape of autumnal pearl and gold, thought, over her sense of smothered tears--they knew what things were really serious. They couldn't mistake the apparent for the real triviality; they knew that some symbols of affection--trifling as they might be--were almost necessary. But then they understood affection. It was at this point that her sore heart sank to a leaden depression.

Affection--cherishing, forestalling, imaginative affection--there was no lack of it, she was sure of that, in this beautiful England of pearl and gold which, in its melancholy, its sweetness, its breathing out of memories immemorial, so penetrated and possessed her; but was there not a terrible lack of it in the England that was to be hers, and where she was to make her home?