Franklin Kane. Anne Douglas Sedgwick
indignation, and she got up and rang rather sharply for tea, which was late; and after asking the garçon, with a smile that in its gentleness contrasted with the sharpness of the pull, that it might be brought at once, she paused near the table to lean over and smell her sheaf of roses, and to read again, listlessly, Miss Harriet Robinson's words of affectionate greeting. Miss Robinson was a middle-aged American lady who lived in Paris, and had long urged Althea to settle there near her. Ten years ago, when she had first met Miss Robinson in Boston, Althea had thought her a brilliant and significant figure; but she had by now met too many of her kind—in Rome, in Florence, in Dresden—to feel any wish for a more intimate relationship. She was fond of Miss Robinson, but she prayed that fate did not reserve for her a withering to the like brisk, colourless spinsterhood. This hope, the necessity for such hope, was the final depth of her gloomy mood, and she found herself looking at something very dark as she stood holding Miss Robinson's expensive roses. For, after all, what was going to become of her? The final depth shaped itself to-day in more grimly realistic fashion than ever before: what was she going to do with herself, in the last resort, unless something happened? Her mind dwelt upon all the visible alternatives. There was philanthropic lunch-going and lunch-giving spinsterhood in Boston; there was spinsterhood in Europe, semi-social, semi-intellectual, and monotonous in its very variety, for Althea had come to feel change as monotonous; or there was spinsterhood in England established near her friend, Miss Buckston, who raised poultry in the country, and went up to London for Bach choir practices and Woman's Suffrage meetings. Althea couldn't see herself as taking an interest in poultry or in Woman's Suffrage, nor did she feel herself fitted for patriotic duties in Boston. There was nothing for it, then, but to continue her present nomadic life. After seeing herself shut in to this conclusion, it was a real relief to her to hear the tea-tray chink outside, and to see it enter, high on the garçon's shoulder, as if with a trivial but cheerful reply to her dreary questionings. Tea, at all events, would always happen and always be pleasant. Althea smiled sadly as she made the reflection, for she was not of an Epicurean temperament. After she had drunk her tea she felt strengthened to go in and ask Amélie about her clothes. She might have to get a great many new ones, especially if she went home for the autumn and winter, as she half intended to do. She took up the roses, as she passed them, to show to Amélie. Amélie was a bony, efficient Frenchwoman, with high cheek-bones and sleek black hair. She had come to Althea first, many years ago, as a courier-maid, to take her back to America. Althea's mother had died in Dresden, and Althea had been equipped by anxious friends with this competent attendant for her sad return journey. Amélie had proved intelligent and reliable in the highest degree, and though she had made herself rather disagreeable during her first year in Boston, she had stayed on ever since. She still made herself disagreeable from time to time, and Althea had sometimes lacked only the courage to dismiss her; but she could hardly imagine herself existing without Amélie, and in Europe Amélie was seldom disagreeable. In Europe, at the worst, she was gruff and ungracious, and Althea was fond enough of her to ignore these failings, although they frightened her a little; but though an easily intimidated person, and much at a loss in meeting opposition or rudeness, she was also tenacious. She might be frightened, but people could never make her do what she didn't want to do, not even Amélie. Her relations with Amélie were slightly strained just now, for she had not taken her advice as to their return journey from Venice. Amélie had insisted on Mont Cenis, and Althea had chosen the St. Gothard; so that it was as a measure of propitiation that she selected three of the roses for Amélie as she went into the bedroom. Amélie, who was kneeling before one of the larger boxes and carefully lifting skirts from its trays, paused to sniff at the flowers, and to express a terse thanks and admiration. 'Ah, bien merci, mademoiselle,' she said, laying her share on the table beside her.
She was not very encouraging about the condition of Althea's wardrobe.
'Elles sont défraîchies—démodées—en vérité, mademoiselle,' she replied, when Althea asked if many new purchases were necessary.
Althea sighed. 'All the fittings!'
'Il faut souffrir pour être belle,' said Amélie unsympathetically.
Althea had not dared yet to tell her that she might be going back to America that winter. The thought of Amélie's gloom cast a shadow over the project, and she could not yet quite face it. She wandered back to the sitting-room, and, thinking of Amélie's last words, she stood for some time and looked at herself in the large mirror which rose from mantelpiece to cornice, enclosed in cascades of gilt. One of the things that Althea, in her mild assurance, was really secure of—for, as we have intimated, her assurance often covered a certain insecurity—was her own appearance. She didn't know about 'belle,' that seemed rather a trivial term, and the English equivalent better to express the distinctive characteristic of her face. She had so often been told she was nobly beautiful that she did not see herself critically, and she now leaned her elbow on the mantelpiece and gazed at herself with sad approbation. The mirror reflected only her head and shoulders, and Miss Jakes's figure could not, even by a partisan, have been described as beautiful; she was short, and though immature in outline, her form was neither slender nor graceful. Althea did not feel these defects, and was well satisfied with her figure, especially with her carriage, which was full of dignity; but it was her head that best pleased her, and her head, indeed, had aspects of great benignity and sweetness. It was a large head, crowned with coils of dull gold hair; her clothing followed the fashions obediently, but her fashion of dressing her hair did not vary, and the smooth parting, the carved ripples along her brow became her, though they did not become her stiffly conventional attire. Her face, though almost classic in its spaces and modelling, lacked in feature the classic decision and amplitude, so that the effect was rather that of a dignified room meagrely furnished. For these deficiencies, however, Miss Jakes's eyes might well be accepted as atonement. They were large, dark, and innocent; they lay far apart, heavily lidded and with wistful eyebrows above them; their expression varied easily from lucid serenity to a stricken, expectant look, like that of a threatened doe, and slight causes could make Miss Jakes's eyes look stricken. They did not look stricken now, but they looked profoundly melancholy.
Here she stood, in the heartless little French sitting-room, meaning so well, so desirous of the best, yet alone, uncertain of any aim, and very weary of everything.
CHAPTER II.
Althea, though a cosmopolitan wanderer, had seldom stayed in an hotel unaccompanied. She did not like, now, going down to the table d'hôte dinner alone, and was rather glad that her Aunt Julia and Aunt Julia's two daughters were to arrive in Paris next week. It was really almost the only reason she had for being glad of Aunt Julia's arrival, and she could imagine no reason for being glad of the girls'. Tiresome as it was to think of going to tea with Miss Harriet Robinson, to think of hearing from her all the latest gossip, and all the latest opinions of the latest books and pictures—alert, mechanical appreciations with which Miss Robinson was but too ready—it was yet more tiresome to look forward to Aunt Julia's appreciations, which were dogmatic and often belated, and to foresee that she must run once more the gauntlet of Aunt Julia's disapproval of expatriated Americans. Althea was accustomed to these assaults and met them with weary dignity, at times expostulating: 'It is all very well for you, Aunt Julia, who have Uncle Tom and the girls; I have nobody, and all my friends are married.' But this brought upon her an invariable retort: 'Well, why don't you get married then? Franklin Winslow Kane asks nothing better.' This retort angered Althea, but she was too fond of Franklin Winslow Kane to reply that perhaps she, herself, did ask something better. So that it was as a convenience, and not as a comfort, that she looked forward to Aunt Julia; and to the girls she did not look forward at all. They were young, ebullient, slangy; they belonged to a later generation than her own, strange to her in that it seemed weighted with none of the responsibilities and reverences that she had grown up among. It was a generation that had no respect for and no anxiety concerning Europe; that played violent outdoor games, and went without hats in summer.
The dining-room was full when she went down to dinner, her inward tremor of shyness sustained by the consciousness of the perfect fit and cut of her elaborate little dress. People sat at small tables, and the