'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 pass 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 gratitude.
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 Amélie. 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 associated with rawness and low ideals; but they couldn't associate 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?
CHAPTER XX.
It was four days after Althea's arrival in London that Gerald stood in Helen's sitting-room and confronted her—smoking her cigarette in her low chair—as he had confronted her that summer on her return from Paris. Gerald looked rather absent and he looked rather worried, and Helen, who had observed these facts the moment he came in, was able to observe them for some time while he stood there before her, not looking at her, looking at nothing in particular, his eyes turning vaguely from the mist-enveloped trees outside to the flowers on the writing-table, and his eyebrows, always very expressive, knitting themselves a little or lifting as if in the attempt to dispel recurrent and oppressive preoccupations. It would have been natural in their free intercourse that, after a certain lapse of time, Helen should ask him what the matter was, helping him often, with the mere question, to recognise that something was the matter. But to-day she said nothing, and it was her silence instead of her questioning that made Gerald aware that he was standing there expecting to have his state of mind probed and then elucidated. It added a little to his sense of perplexity that Helen should be silent, and it was with a slight irritation that he turned and kicked a log before saying—'I'm rather bothered, Helen.'
'What is it?' said Helen. 'Money?' This had often been a bother to them both.