CHAPTER XII.
It was after this little nocturnal encounter that Helen found herself watching Mr. Kane with a dim, speculative sympathy. There was nothing else of much interest to watch, as far as she was aware, for Helen's powers of observation were not sharpened by much imaginativeness. Her sympathy must be aroused for her to care to see, and just now she felt no sympathy for any one but Mr. Kane.
Gerald, flirting far less flagrantly and sketching assiduously, was in no need of sympathy; nor Althea, despite the fact that Helen felt her to be a little reserved and melancholy. Althea, on the whole, seemed placidly enough absorbed in her duties of hostess, and her state of mind, at no time much preoccupying Helen, preoccupied her now less than ever. The person who really interested her, now that she had come to look at him and to realise that he was suffering, was Mr. Kane. He was puzzling to her, not mystifying; there was no element of depth or shadow about him; even his suffering—it was odd to think that a person with such a small, flat nose should suffer—even his suffering was pellucid. He puzzled her because he was different from anything she had ever encountered, and he made her think of a page of trite phrases printed in a half-comprehended dialect. If it was puzzling that any man should be sufficiently in love with Althea to suffer over it, it was yet more puzzling that, neglected as he so obviously was by his beloved, he should show no dejection or consciousness of diminution. He seemed a little aimless, it is true, but not in the least injured; and Helen, as she watched him, found herself liking Mr. Kane.
He had an air, pleasant to her, of finding no one beneath him, and at the same time he seemed as unaware of superiority—unless it were definitely moral or intellectual. A general indiscriminating goodwill was expressed in his manner towards everybody, and when he did discriminate—which was always on moral issues—his goodwill seemed unperturbed by any amount of reprobation. He remained blandly humane under the most disconcerting circumstances. She overtook him one day in a lane holding a drunkard by the shoulder and endeavouring to steer him homeward, while he expounded to him in scientific tones the ill effects of alcohol on the system, and the remarkable results to be attained by steady self-suggestion. Mr. Kane's collar was awry and his coat dusty, almost as dusty as the drunkard's, with whom he had evidently had to grapple in raising him from the highway; and Helen, as she paused at the turning of the road which brought her upon them, heard Franklin's words:
'I've tried it myself for insomnia. I'm a nervous man, and I was in a bad way at the time; over-pressure, you know, and worry. I guess it's like that with you, too, isn't it? You get on edge. Well, there's nothing better than self-suggestion, and if you'll give it a try you'll be surprised by the results, I'm sure of it.'
Helen joined them and offered her assistance, for the bewildered proselyte seemed unable to move forward now that he was upon his feet.
'Well, if you would be so kind. Just your hand on his other shoulder, you know,' said Franklin, turning a grateful glance upon her. 'Our friend here is in trouble, you see. It's not far to the village, and what he wants is to get to bed, have a good sleep and then a wash. He'll feel a different man then.'
Helen, her hand at 'our friend's' left shoulder, helped to propel him forward, and ten minutes took them to his door, where, surrounded by a staring crowd of women and children, they delivered him into the keeping of his wife, a thin and weary person, who looked upon his benefactors with almost as much resentment as upon him.
'What he really needs, I'm afraid I think,' Helen said, as she and Mr. Kane walked away, 'is a good whipping.' She said it in order to see the effect of the ruthlessness upon her humanitarian companion.