Franklin Kane

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

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 unfashionable 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 circumstances 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 passionate 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 passed 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.