Gerald Digby stood before the fireplace looking with satisfaction at his companion. He enjoyed looking at Helen, for he admired her more than any woman he knew. It was always a pleasure to see her again; and, like Aunt Grizel, he trusted and respected her deeply, though again, like Aunt Grizel, he did not, perhaps, know her quite down to the ground. He thought, however, that he did; he knew that Helen was as intimate with nobody in the world as with him, not even with Aunt Grizel, and it was one of his most delightful experiences to saunter through all the chambers of Helen's mind, convinced that every door was open to him.
Gerald Digby was a tall and very slender man; he tilted forward when he walked, and often carried his hands in his pockets. He had thick, mouse-coloured hair, which in perplexed or meditative moments he often ruffled by rubbing his hand through it, and even when thus disordered it kept its air of fashionable grace. His large, long nose, his finely curved lips and eyelids, had a delicately carved look, as though the sculptor had taken great care over the details of his face. His brown eyes had thick, upturned lashes, and were often in expression absent and irresponsible, but when he looked at any one, intent and merry, like a gay dog's eyes. And of the many charming things about Gerald Digby the most charming was his smile, which was as infectious as a child's, and exposed a joyous array of large white teeth.
He was smiling at his cousin now, for she was telling him, dryly, yet with a mocking humour all her own, of her Paris fiasco that had delayed her return to London by a fortnight, and, by the expense it had entailed upon her, had deprived her of the new hat and dress that she had hoped in Paris to secure. Talking of Paris led to the letter she had sent him four or five days ago. 'About this rich American,' said Gerald; 'is she really going to take Merriston, do you think? It's awfully good of you, Helen, to try and get a tenant for me.'
'I don't know that you'd call her rich—not as Americans go; but I believe she will take Merriston. She wanted to take it at once, on faith; but I insisted that she must see it first.'
'You must have cried up the dear old place for her to be so eager.'
'I think she is eager about pleasing me,' said Helen. 'I told her that I loved the place and hadn't been there for years, and that moved her very much. She has taken a great fancy to me.'
'Really,' said Gerald. 'Why?'
'I'm sure I don't know. She is a dear little person, but rather funny.'
'Of course, there is no reason why any one shouldn't take a fancy to you,' said Gerald, smiling; 'only—to that extent—in so short a time.'
'I appealed to her pity, I think; she came in and took care of me, and was really unspeakably kind. And she seemed to get tremendously interested in me. But then, she seemed capable of getting tremendously interested in lots of things. I've noticed that Americans often take things very seriously.'
'And you became great pals?'
'Yes, I suppose we did.'
'She interested you?'
Helen smiled a little perplexedly, and lit a cigarette before answering. 'Well, no; I can't say that she did that; but that, probably, was my own fault.'
'Why didn't she interest you?' Gerald went on, taking a cigarette from the case she offered. He was fond of such desultory pursuit of a subject; he and Helen spent hours in idle exchanges of impression.
Helen's answer was hardly illuminating: 'She wasn't interesting.'
'It was rather interesting of her to take such an interest in you,' said Gerald subtly.
'No.' Helen warmed to the theme. It had indeed perplexed her, and she was glad to unravel her impressions to this understanding listener. 'No, that's just what it wasn't; it might have been if one hadn't felt her a person so easily affected. She had—how can I put it?—it seems brutal when she is such a dear—but she had so little stuff in her; it was as if she had to find it all the time in other things and people. She is like a glass of water that would like to be wine, and she has no wine in her; it could only be poured in, and there's not room for much. At best she can only be eau rougie.'
Gerald laughed. 'How you see things, and say them! Poor Miss Jakes!—that's her name, isn't it? She sounds tame.'
'She is tame.'
'Is she young, pretty?'
'Not young, about my age; not pretty, but it's a nice face; wistful, with large, quite lovely eyes. She knows a lot about everything, and has been everywhere, and has kept all her illusions intact—a queer mixture of information and innocence. It's difficult to keep one's mind on what she's saying; there is never any background to it. She wants something, but she doesn't know whether it's what other people want or whether it's what she wants, so that she can't want anything very definitely.'
Gerald still laughed. 'How you must have been taking her in!'
'I suppose I must have been, though I didn't know it. But I did like her, you know. I liked her very much. A glass of water is a nice thing sometimes.'
'Nicer than eau rougie; I'm afraid she's eau rougie.'
'Eau rougie may be nice, too, if one is tired and thirsty and needs mild refreshment, not altogether tasteless, and not at all intoxicating. She was certainly that to me. I was very much touched by her kindness.'
'I shall be touched if she'll take Merriston. I'm fearfully hard up. I suppose it would only be a little let; but that would be better than nothing.'
'She might stay for the winter if she liked it. I shan't try to make her like it, but I'll do my best to make her stay on if she does, and with a clear conscience, for I think that her staying will depend on her seeing me.'
'Wouldn't that mean that she'd be a great deal on your hands?'
'I shouldn't mind that; we get on very well. She will be here next week, you know. You must come to tea and meet her.'
'Well, I don't know. I don't think that I'm particularly eager to meet her,' Gerald confessed jocosely.
'You'll have to meet her a good deal if you are to see much of me,' said Helen; on which he owned that, with that compulsion put upon him, he and Miss Jakes might become intimates.
Gerald Digby was a young man who did very little work. He had been vaguely intended, by an affectionate but haphazard family, for the diplomatic service, but it was found, after he had done himself some credit at Eton and Oxford, that the family resources didn't admit of this obviously suitable career for him; and an aged and wealthy uncle, who had been looked to confidently for succour, married at the moment, most unfeelingly, so that Gerald's career had to be definitely abandoned. Another relation found him a berth in the City, where he might hope to amass quite a fortune; but Gerald soon said that he far preferred poverty. He thought that he would like to paint and be an artist; he had a joyful eye for delicate, minute forms of beauty, and was most happily occupied when absorbed in Japanese-like studies of transient loveliness—a bird in flight, a verdant grasshopper on a wheat-blade, the tangled festoons of a wild convolvulus spray. His talent, however, though genuine, could hardly supply him with a livelihood, and he would have been seriously put to it had not his father's death left him a tiny income, while a half-informal secretaryship to a political friend, offered him propitiously at the same time, gave him leisure for his painting as well as for a good many other pleasant things. He had leisure, in especial, for going from country-house to country-house, where he was immensely in demand, and where he hunted, danced, and acted in private theatricals—usually in company with his cousin Helen. Helen's position in life was very much like his own, but that she hadn't even an informal secretaryship