Miss Buchanan now poured out the tea and handed Franklin his cup. 'I shouldn't think about going yet, then,' she observed. 'London is an admirable place for the sort of work you are interested in, and I entirely sympathise with your wish to see as much as you can of Helen.' She added, after a little pause in which Franklin, still further startled to self-contemplation, wondered whether it was work, Althea's wedding, or Helen who had most kept him in London,—'I'm troubled about Helen; she's not looking at all well; hasn't been feeling well all the summer. I trace it to that attack of influenza she had in Paris when she met Miss Jakes.'
Franklin's thoughts were turned from himself. He looked grave. 'I'm afraid she's delicate,' he said.
'There is nothing sickly about her, but she is fragile,' said Miss Buchanan. 'She can't stand wear and tear. It might kill her.'
Franklin looked even graver. The thought of his friend killed by wear and tear was inexpressibly painful to him. He remembered—he would never forget—the day in the woods, Helen's 'I'm sick to death of it.' That Helen had a secret sorrow, and that it was preying upon her, he felt sure, and there was pride for him in the thought that he could help her there; he could help her to hide it; even her aunt didn't know that she was sick to death of it. 'What do you suggest might be done?' he now inquired. 'Do you think she goes out too much? Perhaps a rest-cure.'
'No; I don't think she over-tires herself; she doesn't go out nearly as much as she used to. There is nothing to cure and nothing to rest from. It isn't so much now; I'm here now to make things possible for her. It's after I'm gone. I'm an old woman; I'm devoted to my niece, and I don't see what's to become of her when I'm dead.'
If Franklin had been startled before, he was shocked now. He had never given much thought to the economic basis of Helen's life, taking it for granted that though she would like more money, she had, and always would have, quite enough to live on happily. The idea of an insecure future for her had never entered his head. He now knew that, for all his theories of the independence of women, it was quite intolerable to contemplate an insecure future for Helen. Some women might have it in them to secure themselves—she was not one of them. She was a flower in a vase; if the vase were taken away the flower would simply lie where it fell and wither. He had put down his tea-cup while Miss Buchanan spoke, and he sat gazing at her. 'Isn't Miss Helen provided for?' he asked.
'Yes, in a sense she is,' said Miss Buchanan, who, after drinking her tea, did not go on to her muffin, but still leaned back with folded arms, her deep-set, small grey eyes fixed on Franklin's face. 'I've seen to that as best I could; but one can't save much out of a small annuity. Helen, after my death, will have an income of £150 a year. It isn't enough. You have only to look at Helen to see that it isn't enough. She's not fit to scrape and manage on that.'
Franklin repeated the sum thoughtfully. 'Well, no, perhaps not,' he half thought, only half agreed; 'not leading the kind of life she does now. If she could only work at something as well; bring in a little more like that.' But Miss Buchanan interrupted him.
'Nonsense, my dear man; what work is there—work that will bring in money—for a decorative, untrained idler like Helen? And what time would she have left to live the only life she's fit to lead if she had to make money? I'm not worried about bare life for Helen; I'm worried about what kind of life it's to be. Helen was brought up to be an idler and to make a good marriage—like most girls of her class—and she hasn't made it, and she's not likely to make it now.'
'One hundred and fifty pounds isn't enough,' said Franklin, still thoughtfully, 'for a decorative idler.'