So by degrees a species of friendship grew up between Miss Buckston and the girls, who said that she was a jolly old thing, and more fun than a goat, especially when she sang Bach. Mildred and Dorothy sang exceptionally well and were highly equipped musicians.
Althea could not have said why it was, but this progress to friendliness between her cousins and Miss Buckston made her feel, as she had felt in the Paris hotel drawing-room over a month ago, jaded and unsuccessful. So did the fact that the vicar's eldest son, a handsome young soldier with a low forehead and a loud laugh, fell in love with Dorothy. That young men should fall in love with them was another of the pleasant things that Mildred and Dorothy took for granted. Their love affairs, frank and rather infantile, were of a very different calibre from the earnest passions that Althea had aroused—passions usually initiated by intellectual sympathy and nourished on introspection and a constant interchange of serious literature.
It was soon evident that Dorothy, though she and Captain Merton became the best of friends, had no intention of accepting him. Mrs. Merton, the vicar's wife, had at first been afraid lest she should, not having then ascertained what Mrs. Pepperell's fortune might be; but after satisfying herself on this point by a direct cross-examination of Althea, she was as much amazed as incensed when her boy told her ruefully that he had been refused three times. Althea was very indignant when she realised that Mrs. Merton, bland and determined in her latest London hat, was trying to find out whether Dorothy was a good enough match for Captain Merton, and it was pleasant to watch Mrs. Merton's subsequent discomfiture. At the same time, she felt that to follow in Mildred and Dorothy's triumphant wake was hardly what she had expected to do at Merriston House.
Other things, too, were discouraging. Helen had hardly written at all. She had sent a postcard from Scotland to say that she would have to put off coming till later in August. She had sent another, in answer to a long letter of Althea's, in which Gerald had been asked to come with her, to say that Gerald was yachting, and that she was sure he would love to come some time in the autumn, if his plans allowed it; and Althea, on reading this, felt certain that if she counted for little with Helen, she counted for nothing with Mr. Digby. Whom did she count with? That was the question that once more assailed her as she saw herself sink into insignificance beside Mildred and Dorothy. If Mildred and Dorothy counted for more than she, where was she to look for response and sympathy? And now, once again, as if in answer to these dismal questionings, came a steamer letter from Franklin Winslow Kane, announcing his immediate arrival. Althea had thought very little about Franklin in these last weeks; her mind had been filled with those foreground figures that now seemed to have become uncertain and vanishing. And it was not so much that Franklin came forward as that there was nothing else to look at; not so much that he counted, as that to count so much, in every way, for him might almost atone for counting with no one else. Physically, mentally, morally, Franklin's appreciations of her were deep; they were implied all through his letter, which was at once sober and eager. He said that he would stay at Merriston House for 'just as long as ever she would let him.' Merely to be near her was to him, separated as he was from her for so much of his life, an unspeakable boon. Franklin rarely dealt in demonstrative speeches, but, in this letter, after a half-shy prelude to his own daring, he went on to say: 'Perhaps, considering how long it's been since I saw you, you'll let me kiss your beautiful hands when we meet.'
Franklin had only once kissed her beautiful hands, years ago, on the occasion of her first touched refusal of him. She had severe scruples as to encouraging, by such graciousness, a person you didn't intend to marry; but she really thought, thrilling a little as she read the sentence, that this time, perhaps, Franklin might. Franklin himself never thrilled her; but the words he wrote renewed in her suddenly a happy self-confidence. Who, after all, was Franklin's superior in insight? Wrapped in the garment of his affection, could she not see with equanimity Helen's vagueness and Gerald's indifference? Why, when one came to look at it from the point of view of the soul, wasn't Franklin their superior in every way? It needed some moral effort to brace herself to the inquiry. She couldn't deny that Franklin hadn't their charm; but charm was a very superficial thing compared to moral beauty.
Althea could not have faced the perturbing fact that charm, to her, counted for more than goodness. She clung to her ethical valuations of life, feeling, instinctively, that only in this category lay her own significance. To abandon the obvious weights and measures was to find herself buffeted and astray in a chaotic and menacing universe. Goodness was her guide, and she could cling to it if the enchanting will-o'-the-wisp did not float into sight to beckon and bewilder her. She indignantly repudiated the conception of a social order founded on charm rather than on solid worth; yet, like other frail mortals, she found herself following what allured her nature rather than what responded to the neatly tabulated theories of her mind. It was her beliefs and her instincts that couldn't be made to tally, and in her refusal to see that they did not tally lay her danger, as now, when with an artificially simplified attitude she waited eagerly for the coming of somebody who would restore to her her own sense of significance.
Franklin Winslow Kane arrived late one afternoon, and Althea arranged that she should greet him alone. Miss Buckston, Aunt Julia, the girls, and Herbert Vaughan had driven over to a neighbouring garden-party, and Althea alleged the arrival of her old friend as a very valid excuse. She walked up and down the drawing-room, dressed in one of her prettiest dresses; the soft warmth and light of the low sun filled the air, and her heart expanded with it. She wondered if—ah, if only!—Franklin would himself be able to thrill her, and her deep expectation almost amounted to a thrill. Expectation culminated in a wave of excitement and emotion as the door opened and her faithful lover stood before her.
Franklin Winslow Kane (he signed himself more expeditiously as Franklin W. Kane) was a small, lean man. He had an air of tension, constant, yet under such perfect control, that it counted as placidity rather than as strain. His face was sallow and clean-shaven, and the features seemed neatly drawn on a flat surface rather than modelled, so discreet and so meagre were the sallies and shadows. His lips were calm and firmly closed, and had always the appearance of smiling; of his eyes one felt the bright, benignant beam rather than the shape or colour. His straight stiff hair was shorn in rather odd and rather ugly lines along his forehead and temples, and of his clothes the kindest thing to say was that they were unobtrusive. Franklin had once said of himself, with comic dispassionateness, that he looked like a cheap cigar, and the comparison was apt. He seemed to have been dried, pressed, and moulded, neatly and expeditiously, by some mechanical process that turned out thousands more just like him. A great many things, during this process, had been done to him, but they were commonplace, though complicated things, and they left him, while curiously finished, curiously undifferentiated. The hurrying streets of any large town in his native land would, one felt, be full of others like him: good-tempered, shrewd, alert, yet with an air of placidity, too, as though it were a world that required effort and vigilance of one, and yet, these conditions fulfilled, would always justify one's expectations. If differences there were in Franklin Kane, they were to be sought for, they did not present themselves; and he himself would have been the last to be conscious of them. He didn't think of himself as differentiated; he didn't desire differentiation.
He advanced now towards his beloved, after a slight hesitation, for the sunlight in which she stood as well as her own radiant appearance seemed to have dazzled him a little. Althea held out her hands, and the tears came into her eyes; it was as if she hadn't known, until then, how lonely she was. 'O Franklin, I'm so glad to see you,' she said.
He held her hands, gazing at her with a gentle yet intent rapture, and he forgot, in a daring greater than any he had ever known, to kiss them. Franklin never took anything for granted, and Althea knew that it was because he saw her tears and saw her emotion that he could ask her now, hesitatingly, yet with sudden confidence: 'Althea, it's been so long—you are so lovely—it will mean nothing to you, I know; so may I kiss you?'