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HILDA LESSWAYS
BY ARNOLD BENNETT
1911
CONTENTS
BOOK I
HER START IN LIFE
I AN EVENT IN MR. SKELLORN'S LIFE
II THE END OF THE SCENE
III MR. CANNON
IV DOMESTICITY INVADED
V MRS. LESSWAYS' SHREWDNESS
VI VICTOR HUGO AND ISAAC PITMAN
VII THE EDITORIAL SECRETARY
VIII JANET ORGREAVE
IX IN THE STREET
X MISS GAILEY IN DECLENSION
XI DISILLUSION
XII THE TELEGRAM
XIII HILDA'S WORLD
XIV TO LONDON
BOOK II
HER RECOVERY
I SIN
II THE LITTLE ROOM
III JOURNEY TO BLEAKRIDGE
IV WITH THE ORGREAVES
V EDWIN CLAYHANGER
VI IN THE GARDEN
VII THE NEXT MEETING
BOOK III
HER BURDEN
I HILDA INDISPENSABLE
II SARAH'S BENEFACTOR
III AT BRIGHTON
IV THE SEA
BOOK IV
HER FALL
I THE GOING CONCERN
II THE UNKNOWN ADVENTURE
III FLORRIE AGAIN
BOOK V
HER DELIVERANCE
I LOUISA UNCONTROLLED
II SOME SECRET HISTORY
BOOK VI
HER PUNISHMENT
I EVENING AT BLEAKRIDGE
II A RENDEZVOUS
III AT THE WORKS
IV THE CALL FROM BRIGHTON
V THURSDAY AFTERNOON
VI MISCHANCE
* * * * *
BOOK I
HER START IN LIFE
CHAPTER I
AN EVENT IN MR. SKELLORN'S LIFE
I
The Lessways household, consisting of Hilda and her widowed mother, was
temporarily without a servant. Hilda hated domestic work, and because
she hated it she often did it passionately and thoroughly. That
afternoon, as she emerged from the kitchen, her dark, defiant face was
full of grim satisfaction in the fact that she had left a kitchen
polished and irreproachable, a kitchen without the slightest indication
that it ever had been or ever would be used for preparing human nature's
daily food; a show kitchen. Even the apron which she had worn was hung
in concealment behind the scullery door. The lobby clock, which stood
over six feet high and had to be wound up every night by hauling on a
rope, was noisily getting ready to strike two. But for Mrs. Lessways'
disorderly and undesired assistance, Hilda's task might have been
finished a quarter of an hour earlier. She passed quietly up the stairs.
When she was near the top, her mother's voice, at once querulous and
amiable, came from the sitting-room:
"Where are you going to?"
There was a pause, dramatic for both of them, and in that minute pause
the very life of the house seemed for an instant to be suspended, and
then the waves of the hostile love that united these two women resumed
their beating, and Hilda's lips hardened.
"Upstairs," she answered callously.
No reply from the sitting-room!
At two o'clock on the last Wednesday of every month, old Mr. Skellorn,
employed by Mrs. Lessways to collect her cottage-rents, called with a
statement of account, and cash in a linen bag. He was now due. During
his previous visit Hilda had sought to instil some common sense into her
mother on the subject of repairs, and there had ensued an altercation
which had never been settled.
"If I stayed down, she wouldn't like it," Hilda complained fiercely
within herself, "and if I keep away she doesn't like that either! That's
mother all over!"
She went to her bedroom. And into the soft, controlled shutting of the
door she put more exasperated vehemence than would have sufficed to bang
it off its hinges.
II
At this date, late October in 1878, Hilda was within a few weeks of
twenty-one. She was a woman, but she could not realize that she was a
woman. She remembered that when she first went to school, at the age of
eight, an assistant teacher aged nineteen had seemed to her to be
unquestionably and absolutely a woman, had seemed to belong definitely
to a previous generation. The years had passed, and Hilda was now older
than that mature woman was then; and yet she could not feel adult,
though her childhood gleamed dimly afar off, and though the intervening
expanse of ten years stretched out like a hundred years, like eternity.
She was in trouble; the trouble grew daily more and more tragic; and the
trouble was that she wanted she knew not what. If her mother had said to
her squarely, "Tell me what it is will make you a bit more contented,
and you shall have it even if it kills me!" Hilda could only have
answered with the fervour of despair, "I don't know! I don't know!"
Her mother was a creature contented enough. And why not--with a
sufficient income, a comfortable home, and fair health? At the end of a
day devoted partly to sheer vacuous idleness and partly to the
monotonous simple machinery of physical existence--everlasting cookery,
everlasting cleanliness, everlasting stitchery--her mother did not with
a yearning sigh demand, "Must this sort of thing continue for ever, or
will a new era dawn?" Not a bit! Mrs. Lessways went to bed in the placid
expectancy of a very similar day on the morrow, and of an interminable
succession of such days. The which was incomprehensible and offensive to
Hilda.
She was in a prison with her mother, and saw no method of escape, saw
not so much as a locked door, saw nothing but blank walls. Even could
she by a miracle break prison, where should she look for the unknown
object of her desire, and for what should she look? Enigmas! It is true
that she read, occasionally with feverish enjoyment, especially verse.
But she did not and could not read enough. Of the shelf-ful of books
which in thirty years had drifted by one accident or another into the
Lessways household, she had read every volume, except Cruden's
Concordance. A heterogeneous and forlorn assemblage! Lavater's
_Physiognomy_, in a translation and in full calf! Thomson's _Seasons_,
which had thrilled her by its romantic beauty! Mrs. Henry Wood's
_Danesbury House_, and one or two novels by Charlotte M. Yonge and Dinah
Maria Craik, which she had gulped eagerly down for the mere interest of
their stories. Disraeli's _Ixion_, which she had admired without
understanding it. A _History of the North American Indians!_ These were
the more exciting items of the set. The most exciting of all was a green
volume of Tennyson's containing _Maud_. She knew _Maud_ by heart. By
simple unpleasant obstinacy she had forced her mother to give her this
volume for a birthday present, having seen a quotation from it in a
ladies' magazine. At that date in Turnhill, as in many other towns of
England, the poem had not yet lived down a reputation for immorality;
but fortunately Mrs. Lessways had only the vaguest notion of its
dangerousness, and was indeed a negligent kind of woman. Dangerous the
book was! Once in reciting it aloud in her room, Hilda had come so near
to fainting that she had had to stop and lie down on the bed, until she
could convince herself that she was not the male lover crying to his
beloved. An astounding and fearful experience, and not to be too lightly
renewed! For Hilda, _Maud_ was a source of lovely and exquisite pain.
Why had she not used her force of character to obtain more books? One
reason lay in the excessive difficulty to be faced. Birthdays are
infrequent; and besides, the enterprise of purchasing _Maud_ had proved
so complicated and tedious that Mrs. Lessways, with that curious
stiffness which marked her sometimes, had sworn never to attempt to buy
another book. Turnhill, a town of fifteen thousand persons, had no
bookseller; the only bookseller that Mrs. Lessways had ever heard of did
business at Oldcastle. Mrs. Lessways had journeyed twice over the
Hillport ridge to Oldcastle, in the odd quest of a book called _Maud_ by
"Tennyson--the poet laureate"; the book had had to be sent from London;
and on her second excursion to Oldcastle Mrs. Lessways had been caught
by the rain in the middle of Hillport Marsh. No! Hilda could not easily
demand the gift of another book, when all sorts of nice, really useful
presents could be bought in the High Street. Nor was there in Turnhill a
Municipal Library, nor any public lending-library.
Yet possibly Hilda's terrific egoism might have got fresh books somehow
from somewhere, had she really believed in the virtue of books. Thus
far, however, books had not furnished her with what she wanted, and her
faith in their promise was insecure.
Books failing, might she not have escaped into some vocation? The sole
vocation conceivable for her was that of teaching, and she knew, without
having tried it, that she abhorred teaching. Further, there was no
economical reason why she should work. In 1878, unless pushed by
necessity, no girl might dream of a vocation: the idea was monstrous; it
was almost unmentionable. Still further, she had no wish to work for
work's sake. Marriage remained. But she felt herself a child, ages short
of marriage. And she never met a man. It was literally a fact that,
except Mr. Skellorn, a few tradesmen, the vicar, the curate, and a
sidesman or so, she never even spoke to a man from one month's end to
the next. The Church choir had its annual dance, to which she was
invited; but the perverse creature cared not for dancing. Her mother did
not seek society, did not appear to require it. Nor did Hilda acutely
feel the lack of it. She could not define her need. All she knew was
that youth, moment by moment, was dropping down inexorably behind her.
And, still a child in heart and soul, she saw herself ageing, and then
aged, and then withered. Her twenty-first birthday was well above the
horizon. Soon, soon, she would be 'over twenty-one'! And she was not yet
born! That was it! She was not yet born! If the passionate strength of
desire could have done the miracle time would have stood still in the
heavens while Hilda sought the way of life.
And withal she was not wholly unhappy. Just as her attitude to her
mother was self-contradictory, so was her attitude towards existence.
Sometimes this profound infelicity of hers changed its hues for an
instant, and lo! it was bliss that she was bathed in. A phenomenon which
disconcerted her! She did not know that she had the most precious of all
faculties, the power to feel intensely.
III
Mr. Skellorn did not come; he was most definitely late.
From the window of her bedroom, at the front of the house, Hilda looked
westwards up toward the slopes of Chatterley Wood, where as a child she
used to go with other children to pick the sparse bluebells that thrived
on smoke. The bailiwick of Turnhill lay behind her; and all the murky
district of the Five Towns, of which Turnhill is the northern outpost,
lay to the south. At the foot of Chatterley Wood the canal wound in
large curves on its way towards the undefiled plains of Cheshire and the
sea. On the canal-side, exactly opposite to Hilda's window, was a
flour-mill, that sometimes made nearly as much smoke as the kilns and
chimneys closing the prospect on either hand. From the flour-mill a
bricked path, which separated a considerable row of new cottages from
their appurtenant gardens, led straight into Lessways Street, in front
of Mrs. Lessways' house. By this path Mr. Skellorn should have arrived,
for he inhabited the farthest of the cottages.
Hilda held Mr. Skellorn in disdain, as she held the row of cottages in
disdain. It seemed to her that Mr. Skellorn and the cottages
mysteriously resembled each other in their primness, their smugness,
their detestable self-complacency. Yet those cottages, perhaps thirty in
all, had stood for a great deal until Hilda, glancing at them, shattered
them with her scorn. The row was called Freehold Villas: a consciously
proud name in a district where much of the land was copyhold and could
only change owners subject to the payment of 'fines' and to the feudal
consent of a 'court' presided over by the agent of a lord of the manor.
Most of the dwellings were owned by their occupiers, who, each an
absolute monarch of the soil, niggled in his sooty garden of an evening
amid the flutter of drying shirts and towels. Freehold Villas symbolized
the final triumph of Victorian economics, the apotheosis of the prudent
and industrious artisan. It corresponded with a Building Society
Secretary's dream of paradise. And indeed it was a very real
achievement. Nevertheless Hilda's irrational contempt would not admit
this. She saw in Freehold Villas nothing but narrowness (what long
narrow strips of gardens, and what narrow homes all flattened
together!), and uniformity, and brickiness, and polished brassiness, and
righteousness, and an eternal laundry.
From the upper floor of her own home she gazed destructively down upon
all that, and into the chill, crimson eye of the descending sun. Her own
home was not ideal, but it was better than all that. It was one of the
two middle houses of a detached terrace of four houses built by her
grandfather Lessways, the teapot manufacturer; it was the chief of the
four, obviously the habitation of the proprietor of the terrace. One of
the corner houses comprised a grocer's shop, and this house had been
robbed of its just proportion of garden so that the seigneurial
garden-plot might be triflingly larger than the others. The terrace was
not a terrace of cottages, but of houses rated at from twenty-six to
thirty-six pounds a year; beyond the means of artisans and petty
insurance agents and rent-collectors. And further, it was well built,
generously built; and its architecture, though debased, showed some
faint traces of Georgian amenity. It was admittedly the best row of
houses in that newly settled quarter of the town. In coming to it out of
Freehold Villas Mr. Skellorn obviously came to something superior,
wider, more liberal.
Suddenly Hilda heard her mother's voice, in a rather startled
conversational tone, and then another woman speaking; then the voices
died away. Mrs. Lessways had evidently opened the back door to somebody,
and taken her at once into the sitting-room. The occurrence was unusual.
Hilda went softly out on to the landing and listened, but she could
catch nothing more than a faint, irregular murmur. Scarcely had she
stationed herself on the landing when her mother burst out of the
sitting-room, and called loudly:
"Hilda!" And again in an instant, very impatiently and excitedly, long
before Hilda could possibly have appeared in response, had she been in
her bedroom, as her mother supposed her to be: "Hilda!"
Hilda could see without being seen. Mrs. Lessways' thin, wrinkled face,
bordered by her untidy but still black and glossy hair, was upturned
from below in an expression of tragic fretfulness. It was the
uncontrolled face, shamelessly expressive, of one who thinks himself
unwatched. Hilda moved silently to descend, and then demanded in a low
tone whose harsh self-possession was a reproof to that volatile
creature, her mother:
"What's the matter?"
Mrs. Lessways gave a surprised "Oh!" and like a flash her features
changed in the attempt to appear calm and collected.
"I was just coming downstairs," said Hilda. And to herself: "She's
always trying to pretend I'm nobody, but when the least thing happens
out of the way, she runs to me for all the world like a child." And as
Mrs. Lessways offered no reply, but simply stood at the foot of the
stairs, she asked again: "What is it?"
"Well," said her mother lamentably. "It's Mr. Skellorn. Here's Mrs.
Grant--"
"Who's Mrs. Grant?" Hilda inquired, with a touch of scorn, although she
knew perfectly well that Mr. Skellorn had a married daughter of that
name.
"Hsh! Hsh!" Mrs. Lessways protested, indicating the open door of the
sitting-room. "You know Mrs. Grant! It seems Mr. Skellorn has had a
paralytic stroke. Isn't it terrible?"
Hilda continued smoothly to descend the stairs, and followed her mother
into the sitting-room.
CHAPTER II
THE END OF THE SCENE
I
The linen money-bag and the account-book, proper to the last Wednesday
in the month, lay on the green damask cloth of the round table where
Hilda and her mother took their meals. A paralytic stroke had not been
drastic enough to mar Mr. Skellorn's most precious reputation for
probity and reliability. His statement of receipts and expenditure,
together with the corresponding cash, had been due at two o'clock, and
despite the paralytic stroke it was less than a quarter of an hour late.
On one side of the bag and the book were ranged the older women,--Mrs.
Lessways, thin and vivacious, and Mrs. Grant, large and solemn; and on
the other side, as it were in opposition, the young, dark, slim girl
with her rather wiry black hair, and her straight, prominent eyebrows,
and her extraordinary expression of uncompromising aloofness.
"She's just enjoying it, that's what she's doing!" said Hilda to
herself, of Mrs. Grant.
And the fact was that Mrs. Grant, quite unconsciously, did appear to be
savouring the catastrophe with pleasure. Although paralytic strokes were
more prevalent at that period than now, they constituted even then a
striking dramatic event. Moreover, they were considered as direct
visitations of God. Also there was something mysteriously and agreeably
impressive in the word 'paralytic,' which people would repeat for the
pleasure of repeating it. Mrs. Grant, over whose mighty breast flowed a
black mantle suited to the occasion, used the word again and again as
she narrated afresh for Hilda the history of the stroke.
"Yes," she said, "they came and fetched me out of my bed at three
o'clock this morning; and would you believe me, though he couldn't
hardly speak, the money and this here book was all waiting in his desk,
and he would have me come with it! And him sixty-seven! He always was
like that. And I do believe if he'd been paralysed on both sides instead
of only all down his right side, and speechless too, he'd ha' made me
understand as I must come here at two o'clock. If I'm a bit late it's
because I was kept at home with my son Enoch; he's got a whitlow that's
worrying the life out of him, our Enoch has."
Mrs. Lessways warmly deprecated any apology for inexactitude, and wiped
her sympathetic eyes.
"It's all over with father," Mrs. Grant resumed. "Doctor hinted to me
quiet-like as he'd never leave his bed again. He's laid himself down for
the rest of his days.... And he'd been warned! He'd had warnings. But
there!..."
Mrs. Grant contemplated with solemn gleeful satisfaction the
overwhelming grandeur of the disaster that had happened to her father.
The active old man, a continual figure of the streets, had been cut off
in a moment from the world and condemned for life to a mattress. She
sincerely imagined herself to be filled with proper grief; but an
aesthetic appreciation of the theatrical effectiveness of the misfortune
was certainly stronger in her than any other feeling. Observing that
Mrs. Lessways wept, she also drew out a handkerchief.
"I'm wishful for you to count the money," said Mrs. Grant. "I wouldn't
like there to be any--"
"Nay, that I'll not!" protested Mrs. Lessways.
Mrs. Grant's pressing duties necessitated her immediate departure. Mrs.
Lessways ceremoniously insisted on her leaving by the front door.
"I don't know where you'll find another rent-collector that's worth his
salt--in this town," observed Mrs. Grant, on the doorstep. "I can't
think _what_ you'll do, Mrs. Lessways!"
"I shall collect my rents myself," was the answer.
When Mrs. Grant had crossed the road and taken the bricked path leading
to the paralytic's house, Mrs. Lessways slowly shut the door and bolted
it, and then said to Hilda:
"Well, my girl, I do think you might have tried to show just a little
more feeling!"
They were close together in the narrow lobby, of which the heavy pulse
was the clock's ticking.
Hilda replied:
"You surely aren't serious about collecting those rents yourself, are
you, mother?"
"Serious? Of course I'm serious!" said Mrs. Lessways.
II
"Why shouldn't I collect the rents myself?" asked Mrs. Lessways.
This half-defiant question was put about two hours later. In the
meantime no remark had been made about the rents. Mother and daughter
were now at tea in the sitting-room. Hilda had passed the greater part
of those two hours upstairs in her bedroom, pondering on her mother's
preposterous notion of collecting the rents herself. Alone, she would
invent conversations with her mother, silencing the foolish woman with
unanswerable sarcastic phrases that utterly destroyed her illogical
arguments. She would repeat these phrases, repeat even entire
conversations, with pleasure; and, dwelling also with pleasure upon her
grievances against her mother, would gradually arrive at a state of
dull-glowing resentment. She could, if she chose, easily free her brain
from the obsession either by reading or by a sharp jerk of volition; but
often she preferred not to do so, saying to herself voluptuously: "No, I
_will_ nurse my grievance; I'll nurse it and nurse it and nurse it! It
is mine, and it is just, and anybody with any sense at all would admit
instantly that I am absolutely right." Thus it was on this afternoon.
When she came to tea her face was formidably expressive, nor would she
attempt to modify the rancour of those uncompromising features. On the
contrary, as soon as she saw that her mother had noticed her condition,
she deliberately intensified it.
Mrs. Lessways, who was incapable of sustained thought, and who had
completely forgotten and recalled the subject of the cottage-rents
several times since the departure of Mrs. Grant, nevertheless at once
diagnosed the cause of the trouble; and with her usual precipitancy
began to repulse an attack which had not even been opened. Mrs. Lessways
was not good at strategy, especially in conflicts with her daughter. She
was an ingenuous, hasty thing, and much too candidly human. And not only
was she deficient in practical common sense and most absurdly unable to
learn from experience, but she had not even the wit to cover her
shortcomings by resorting to the traditional authoritativeness of the
mother. Her brief, rare efforts to play the mother were ludicrous. She
was too simply honest to acquire stature by standing on her maternal
dignity. By a profound instinct she wistfully treated everybody as an
equal, as a fellow-creature; even her own daughter. It was not the way
to come with credit out of the threatened altercation about
rent-collecting.
As Hilda offered no reply, Mrs. Lessways said reproachfully:
"Hilda, you're too bad sometimes!" And then, after a further silence:
"Anyhow, I'm quite decided."
"Then what's the good of talking about it?" said the merciless child.
"But _why_ shouldn't I collect the rents myself? I'm not asking you to
collect them. And I shall save the five per cent., and goodness knows we
need it."
"You're more likely to lose twenty-five per cent.," said Hilda. "I'll
have some more tea, please."
Mrs. Lessways was quite genuinely scandalized. "You needn't think I
shall be easy with those Calder Street tenants, because I shan't! Not
me! I'm more likely to be too hard!"
"You'll be too hard, and you'll be too easy, too," said Hilda savagely.
"You'll lose the good tenants and you'll keep the bad ones, and the
houses will all go to rack and ruin, and then you'll sell all the
property at a loss. That's how it will be. And what shall you do if
you're not feeling well, and if it rains on Monday mornings?"
Hilda could conceive her mother forgetting all about the rents on Monday
morning, or putting them off till Monday afternoon on some grotesque
excuse. Her fancy heard the interminable complainings, devisings, futile
resolvings, of the self-appointed collector. It was impossible to
imagine a woman less fitted by nature than her mother to collect rents
from unthrifty artisans such as inhabited Calder Street. The project
sickened her. It would render the domestic existence an inferno.
As for Mrs. Lessways, she was shocked, for her project had seemed very
beautiful to her, and for the moment she was perfectly convinced that
she could collect rents and manage property as well as anyone. She was
convinced that her habits were regular, her temper firm and tactful, and
her judgment excellent. She was more than shocked; she was wounded. She
wept, as she pushed forward Hilda's replenished cup.
"You ought to take shame!" she murmured weakly, yet with certitude.
"Why?" said Hilda, feigning simplicity. "What have I said? _I_ didn't
begin. You asked me. I can't help what I think."
"It's your tone," said Mrs. Lessways grievously.
III
Despite all Hilda's terrible wisdom and sagacity, this remark of the
foolish mother's was the truest word spoken in the discussion. It was
Hilda's tone that was at the root of the evil. If Hilda, with the
intelligence as to which she was secretly so complacent, did not
amicably rule her mother, the unavoidable inference was that she was
either a clumsy or a wicked girl, or both. She indeed felt dimly that
she was a little of both. But she did not mind. Sitting there in the
small, familiar room, close to the sewing-machine, the steel fender, the
tarnished chandelier, and all the other daily objects which she at once
detested and loved, sitting close to her silly mother who angered her,
and yet in whom she recognized a quality that was mysteriously precious
and admirable, staring through the small window at the brown, tattered
garden-plot where blackened rhododendrons were swaying in the October
blast, she wilfully bathed herself in grim gloom and in an affectation
of despair.
Somehow she enjoyed the experience. She had only to tighten her
lips--and she became oblivious of her clumsiness and her cruelty,
savouring with pleasure the pain of the situation, clasping it to her!
Now and then a thought of Mr. Skellorn's tragedy shot through her brain,
and the tenderness of pity welled up from somewhere within her and
mingled exquisitely with her dark melancholy. And she found delight in
reading her poor mother like an open book, as she supposed. And all the
while her mother was dreaming upon the first year of Hilda's life,
before she had discovered that her husband's health was as unstable as
his character, and comparing the reality of the present with her early
illusions. But the clever girl was not clever enough to read just that
page.
"We ought to be everything to each other," said Mrs. Lessways, pursuing
her reflections aloud.
Hilda hated sentimentalism. She could not stand such talk.
"And you know," said Hilda, speaking very frigidly and with even more
than her usual incisive clearness of articulation, "it's not your
property. It's only yours for life. It's my property."
The mother's mood changed in a moment.
"How do you know? You've never seen your father's will." She spoke in
harsh challenge.
"No; because you've never let me see it."
"You ought to have more confidence in your mother. Your father had. And
I'm trustee and executor." Mrs. Lessways was exceedingly jealous of her
legal position, whose importance she never forgot nor would consent to
minimize.
"That's all very well, for you," said Hilda; "but if the property isn't
managed right, I may find myself slaving when I'm your age, mother. And
whose fault will it be?... However, I shall--"
"You will what?"
"Nothing."
"I suppose her ladyship will be consulting her own lawyer next!" said
Mrs. Lessways bitterly.
They looked at each other. Hilda's face flushed to a sombre red. Mrs.
Lessways brusquely left the room. Then Hilda could hear her rattling
fussily at the kitchen range. After a few minutes Hilda followed her to
the kitchen, which was now nearly in darkness. The figure of Mrs.
Lessways, still doing nothing whatever with great vigour at the range,
was dimly visible. Hilda approached her, and awkwardly touched her
shoulder.
"Mother!" she demanded sharply; and she was astonished by her
awkwardness and her sharpness.
"Is that you?" her mother asked, in a queer, foolish tone.
They kissed. Such a candid peacemaking had never occurred between them
before. Mrs. Lessways, as simple in forgiveness as in wrath, did not
disguise her pleasure in the remarkable fact that it was Hilda who had
made the overture. Hilda thought: "How strange I am! What is coming over
me?" She glanced at the range, in which was a pale gleam of red, and
that gleam, in the heavy twilight, seemed to her to be inexpressibly,
enchantingly mournful. And she herself was mournful about the future--
very mournful. She saw no hope. Yet her sadness was beautiful to her.
And she was proud.
CHAPTER III
MR. CANNON
I
A little later Hilda came downstairs dressed to go out. Her mother was
lighting a glimmer of gas in the lobby. Ere Mrs. Lessways could descend
from her tiptoes to her heels and turn round Hilda said quickly,
forestalling curiosity:
"I'm going to get that thread you want. Just give me some money, will
you?"
Nobody could have guessed from her placid tone and indifferent demeanour
that she was in a state of extreme agitation. But so it was. Suddenly,
after kissing her mother in the kitchen, she had formed a tremendous
resolve. And in a moment the resolve had possessed her, sending her
flying upstairs, and burning her into a fever, as with the assured
movements of familiarity she put on her bonnet, mantle, 'fall,' and
gloves in the darkness of the chamber. She held herself in leash while
her mother lifted a skirt and found a large loaded pocket within and a
purse in the pocket and a sixpence in the purse. But when she had shut
the door on all that interior haunted by her mother's restlessness, when
she was safe in the porch and in the windy obscurity of the street, she
yielded with voluptuous apprehension to a thrill that shook her.
"I might have tidied my hair," she thought. "Pooh! What does my hair
matter?"
Her mind was full of an adventure through which she had passed seven
years previously, when she was thirteen and a little girl at school. For
several days, then, she had been ruthlessly mortifying her mother by
complaints about the meals. Her fastidious appetite could not be suited.
At last, one noon when the child had refused the whole of a plenteous
dinner, Mrs. Lessways had burst into tears and, slapping four pennies
down on the table, had cried, "Here! I fairly give you up! Go out and
buy your own dinner! Then perhaps you'll get what you want!" And the
child, without an instant's hesitation, had seized the coins and gone
out, hatless, and bought food at a little tripe-shop that was also an
eating-house, and consumed it there; and then in grim silence returned
home. Both mother and daughter had been stupefied and frightened by the
boldness of the daughter's initiative, by her amazing, flaunting
disregard of filial decency. Mrs. Lessways would not have related the
episode to anybody upon any consideration whatever. It was a shameful
secret, never even referred to. But Mrs. Lessways had unmistakably
though indirectly referred to it when in anger she had said to her
daughter aged twenty: "I suppose her ladyship will be consulting her own
lawyer next!" Hilda had understood, and that was why she had blushed.
And now, as she turned from Lessways Street into the Oldcastle Road, on
her way to the centre of the town, she experienced almost exactly the
intense excitement of the reckless and supercilious child in quest of
its dinner. The only difference was that the recent reconciliation had
inspired her with a certain negligent compassion for her mother, with a
curious tenderness that caused her to wonder at herself.
II
The Market Square of Turnhill was very large for the size of the town.
The diminutive town hall, which in reality was nothing but a
watch-house, seemed to be a mere incident on its irregular expanse, to
which the two-storey shops and dwellings made a low border. Behind this
crimson, blue-slated border rose the loftier forms of a church and a
large chapel, situate in adjacent streets. The square was calm and
almost deserted in the gloom. It typified the slow tranquillity of the
bailiwick, which was removed from the central life of the Five Towns,
and unconnected therewith by even a tram or an omnibus. Only within
recent years had Turnhill got so much as a railway station--rail-head of
a branch line. Turnhill was the extremity of civilization in those
parts. Go northwards out of this Market Square, and you would soon find
yourself amid the wild and hilly moorlands, sprinkled with iron-and-coal
villages whose red-flaming furnaces illustrated the eternal damnation
which was the chief article of their devout religious belief. And in the
Market Square not even the late edition of the _Staffordshire Signal_
was cried, though it was discreetly on sale with its excellent sporting
news in a few shops. In the hot and malodorous candle-lit factories,
where the real strenuous life of the town would remain cooped up for
another half-hour of the evening, men and women had yet scarcely taken
to horse-racing; they would gamble upon rabbits, cocks, pigeons, and
their own fists, without the mediation of the _Signal_. The one noise in
the Market Square was the bell of a hawker selling warm pikelets at a
penny each for the high tea of the tradesmen. The hawker was a deathless
institution, a living proof that withdrawn Turnhill would continue
always to be exactly what it always had been. Still, to the east of the
Square, across the High Street, a vast space was being cleared of hovels
for the erection of a new town hall daringly magnificent.
Hilda crossed the Square, scorning it.
She said to herself: "I'd better get the thing over before I buy the
thread. I should never be able to stand Miss Dayson's finicking! I
should scream out!" But the next instant, with her passion for proving
to herself how strong she could be, she added: "Well, I just _will_ buy
the thread first!" And she went straight into Dayson's little fancy
shop, which was full of counter and cardboard boxes and Miss Dayson, and
stayed therein for at least five minutes, emerging with a miraculously
achieved leisureliness. A few doors away was a somewhat new building, of
three storeys--the highest in the Square. The ground floor was an
ironmongery; it comprised also a side entrance, of which the door was
always open. This side entrance showed a brass-plate, "Q. Karkeek,
Solicitor." And the wire-blinds of the two windows of the first floor
also bore the words: "Q. Karkeek, Solicitor. Q. Karkeek, Solicitor." The
queerness of the name had attracted Hilda's attention several years
earlier, when the signs were fresh. It was an accident that she had
noticed it; she had not noticed the door-plates or the wire-blinds of
other solicitors. She did not know Mr. Q. Karkeek by sight, nor even
whether he was old or young, married or single, agreeable or repulsive.
The side entrance gave directly on to a long flight of naked stairs, and
up these stairs Hilda climbed into the unknown, towards the redoubtable
and the perilous. "I'm bound to be seen," she said to herself, "but I
don't care, and I _don't_ care!" At the top of the stairs was a passage,
at right angles, and then a glazed door with the legend in black
letters, "Q. Karkeek, Solicitor," and two other doors mysteriously
labelled "Private." She opened the glazed door, and saw a dirty
middle-aged man on a stool, and she said at once to him, in a harsh,
clear, deliberate voice, without giving herself time to reflect:
"I want to see Mr. Karkeek."
The man stared at her sourly, as if bewildered.
She said to herself: "I shan't be able to stand this excitement much
longer."
"You can't see Mr. Karkeek," said the man. "Mr. Karkeek's detained at
Hanbridge County Court. But if you're in such a hurry like, you'd better
see Mr. Cannon. It's Mr. Cannon as they generally do see. Who d'ye come
from, miss?"
"Come from?" Hilda repeated, unnerved.
"What name?"
She had not expected this. "I suppose I shall have to tell him!" she
said to herself, and aloud: "Lessways."
"Oh! Ah!" exclaimed the man. "Bless us! Yes!" It was as if he had said:
"Of course it's Lessways! And don't I know all about _you!_" And Hilda
was overwhelmed by the sense of the enormity of the folly which she was
committing.
The man swung half round on his stool, and seized the end of an
india-rubber tube which hung at the side of the battered and littered
desk, just under a gas-jet. He spoke low, like a conspirator, into the
mouthpiece of the tube. "Miss Lessways--to see you, sir." Then very
quickly he clapped the tube to his ear and listened. And then he put it
to his mouth again and repeated: "Lessways." Hilda was agonized.
"I'll ask ye to step this way, miss," said the man, slipping off his
stool. At the same time he put a long inky penholder, which he had been
holding in his wrinkled right hand, between his teeth.
"Never," thought Hilda as she followed the clerk, in a whirl of horrible
misgivings, "never have I done anything as mad as this before! I'm under
twenty-one!"
III
There she was at last, seated in front of a lawyer in a lawyer's
office--her ladyship consulting her own lawyer! It seemed incredible! A
few minutes ago she had been at home, and now she was in a world
unfamiliar and alarming. Perhaps it was a pity that her mother had
unsuspectingly put the scheme into her head!
However, the deed was done. Hilda generally acted first and reflected
afterwards. She was frightened, but rather by the unknown than by
anything she could define.
"You've come about the property?" said Mr. Cannon amiably, in a
matter-of-fact tone.
He had deep black eyes, and black hair, like Hilda's; good, regular
teeth, and a clear complexion; perhaps his nose was rather large, but it
was straight. With his large pale hands he occasionally stroked his long
soft moustache; the chin was blue. He was smartly dressed in dark blue;
he had a beautiful neck-tie, and the genuine whiteness of his wristbands
was remarkable in a district where starched linen was usually either
grey or bluish. He was not a dandy, but he respected his person; he
evidently gave careful attention to his body; and this trait alone set
him apart among the citizens of Turnhill.
"Yes," said Hilda. She thought: "He's a very handsome man! How strange I
don't remember seeing him in the streets!" She was in awe of him. He was
indefinitely older than herself; and she felt like a child, out of place
in the easy-chair.
"I suppose it's about the rent-collecting?" he pursued.
"Yes--it is," she answered, astonished that he could thus divine her
purpose. "I mean--"
"What does your mother want to do?"
"Oh!" said Hilda, speaking low. "It's not mother. I've come to consult
you myself. Mother doesn't know. I'm nearly twenty-one, and it's really
my property, you know!" She blushed with shame.
"Ah!" he exclaimed. He tried to disguise his astonishment in an easy,
friendly smile. But he was most obviously startled. He looked at Hilda
in a different way, with a much intensified curiosity.
"Yes," she resumed. He now seemed to her more like a fellow-creature,
and less like a member of the inimical older generation.
"So you're nearly twenty-one?"
"In December," she said. "And I think under my father's will--" She
stopped, at a loss. "The fact is, I don't think mother will be quite
able to look after the property properly, and I'm afraid--you see, now
that Mr. Skellorn has had this stroke--"
"Yes," said Mr. Cannon, "I heard about that, and I was thinking perhaps
Mrs. Lessways had sent you.... We collect rents, you know."
"I see!" Hilda murmured. "Well, the truth is, mother hasn't the
slightest idea I'm here. Not the slightest! And I wouldn't hurt her
feelings for anything." He nodded sympathetically. "But I thought
something ought to be done. She's decided to collect our Calder Street
rents herself, and she isn't fitted to do it. And then there's the
question of the repairs.... I know the rents are going down. I expect
it's all mother's for life, but I want there to be something left for me
when she's gone, you see! And if--I've never seen the will. I suppose
there's no way of seeing a copy of it, somewhere?... I can't very well
ask mother again."
"I know all about the will," said Mr. Cannon.
"You do?"
Wondrous, magical man!
"Yes," he explained. "I used to be at Toms and Scoles's. I was there
when it was made. I copied it."
"Really!" She felt that he would save her, not only from any possible
unpleasant consequences of her escapade, but also from suffering
ultimate loss by reason of her mother's foolishness.
"You're quite right," he continued. "I remember it perfectly. Your
mother is what we call tenant-for-life; everything goes to you in the
end."
"Well," Hilda asked abruptly. "All I want to know is, what I can do."
"Of course, without upsetting your mother?"
He glanced at her. She blushed again.
"Naturally," she said coldly.
"You say you think the property is going down--it _is_, everybody knows
that--and your mother thinks of collecting the rents herself.... Well,
young lady, it's very difficult, very difficult, your mother being the
trustee and executor."
"Yes, that's what she's always saying--she's the trustee and executor."
"You'd better let me think it over for a day or two."
"And shall I call in again?"
"You might slip in if you're passing. I'll see what can be done. Of
course it would never do for you to have any difficulty with your
mother."
"Oh no!" she concurred vehemently. "Anything would be better than that.
But I thought there was no harm in me--"
"Certainly not."
She had a profound confidence in him. And she was very content so far
with the result of her adventure.
"I hope nobody will find out I've been here," she said timidly. "Because
if it _did_ get to mother's ears--"
"Nobody will find out," he reassured her.
Assuredly his influence was tranquillizing. Even while he insisted on
the difficulties of the situation, he seemed to be smoothing them away.
She was convinced that he would devise some means of changing her
mother's absurd purpose and of strengthening her own position. But when,
at the end of the interview, he came round the large table which
separated them, and she rose and looked up at him, close, she was
suddenly very afraid of him. He was a tall and muscular man, and he
stood like a monarch, and she stood like a child. And his gesture seemed
to say: "Yes, I know you are afraid. And I rather like you to be afraid.
But I am benevolent in the exercise of my power." Under his gaze, her
gaze fastened on the wire-blind and the dark window, and she read off
the reversed letters on the blind.
Like a mouse she escaped to the stairs. She was happy and fearful and
expectant.... It was done! She had consulted a lawyer! She was astounded
at herself.
In the Market Square it was now black night. She looked shyly up at the
lighted wire-blinds over the ironmongery. "I was there!" she said. "He
is still there." The whole town, the whole future, seemed to be drenched
now in romance. Nevertheless, the causes of her immense discontent had
not apparently been removed nor in any way modified.
CHAPTER IV
DOMESTICITY INVADED
I
Early in the afternoon, two days later, Hilda came, with an air of
reproach, into her mother's empty bedroom. Mrs. Lessways had contracted
a severe cold in the head, a malady to which she was subject and which
she accepted with fatalistic submission, even pleasurably giving herself
up to it, as a martyr to the rack. Mrs. Lessways' colds annoyed Hilda,
who out of her wisdom could always point to the precise indiscretion
which had caused them, and to whom the spectacle of a head wrapped day
and night in flannel was offensively ridiculous. Moreover, Hilda in
these crises was further and still more acutely exasperated by the
pillage of her handkerchiefs. Although she possessed a supply of
handkerchiefs far beyond her own needs, she really hated to lend to her
mother in the hour of necessity. She did lend, and she lent without
spoken protest, but with frigid bitterness. Her youthful passion for
order and efficiency was aggrieved by her mother's negligent and
inadequate arrangements for coping with the inevitable plague. She now
made a police-visit to the bedroom because she considered that her
mother had been demanding handkerchiefs at a stage too early in the
progress of the disease. Impossible that her mother should have come to
the end of her own handkerchiefs! She knew with all the certitude of her
omniscience that numerous clean handkerchiefs must be concealed
somewhere in the untidiness of her mother's wardrobe.
See her as she enters the bedroom, the principal bedroom of the house,
whose wide bed and large wardrobe recall the past when she had a father
as well as a mother, and when that bedroom awed her footsteps! A thin,
brown-frocked girl, wearing a detested but enforced small black apron;
with fine, pale, determined features, rather unfeminine hair, and
glowering, challenging black eyes. She had a very decided way of putting
down her uncoquettishly shod feet. Absurdly young, of course; wistfully
young! She was undeveloped, and did not even look nearly twenty-one. You
are at liberty to smile at her airs; at that careless critical glance
which pityingly said: "Ah! if this were my room, it would be different
from what it is;" at that serious worried expression, as if the anxiety
of the whole world's deficiencies oppressed the heart within; and at
that supreme conviction of wisdom, which after all was little but an
exaggerated perception of folly and inconsistency in others!... She is
not to be comprehended on an acquaintance of three days. Years must go
to the understanding of her. She did not understand herself. She was not
even acquainted with herself. Why! She was naive enough to be puzzled
because she felt older than her mother and younger than her beautiful
girlish complexion, simultaneously!
She opened the central mirrored door of the once formidable wardrobe,
and as she did so the image of the bed and of half the room shot across
the swinging glass, taking the place of her own reflection. And
instantly, when she inserted herself between the exposed face of the
wardrobe and its door, she was precipitated into the most secret
intimacy of her mother's existence. There was the familiar odour of old
kid gloves.... She was more intimate with her mother now than she could
ever be in talking to her. The lower part of this section of the
wardrobe consisted of three deep drawers with inset brass handles, an
exquisitely exact piece of mahogany cabinetwork. From one of the drawers
a bit of white linen untidily protruded. Her mother! The upper part was
filled with sliding trays, each having a raised edge to keep the
contents from falling out. These trays were heaped pell-mell with her
mother's personal belongings--small garments, odd indeterminate trifles,
a muff, a bundle of whalebone, veils, bags, and especially cardboard
boxes. Quantities of various cardboard boxes! Her mother kept
everything, could not bear that anything which had once been useful
should be abandoned or destroyed; whereas Hilda's propensity was to
throw away with an impatient gesture whatever threatened to be an
encumbrance. Sighing, she began to arrange the contents of the trays in
some kind of method. Incompetent and careless mother! Hilda wondered how
the old thing managed to conduct her life from day to day with even a
semblance of the decency of order. It did not occur to her that for
twenty-five years before she was born, and for a long time afterwards,
Mrs. Lessways had contrived to struggle along through the world, without
her daughter's aid, to the general satisfaction of herself and some
others. At length, ferreting on the highest shelf but one, she had the
deep, proud satisfaction of the philosopher who has correctly deduced
consequences from character. Underneath a Paisley shawl she discovered a
lost treasure of clean handkerchiefs. One, two, three, four--there were
eleven! And among them was one of her own, appropriated by her mother
through sheer inexcusable inadvertence. They had probably been lying
under the shawl for weeks, months!
Still, she did not allow herself to be vexed. Since the singular
hysterical embrace in the twilight of the kitchen, she had felt for her
mother a curious, kind, forbearing, fatalistic indulgence. "Mother is
like that, and there you are!" And further, her mood had been so changed
and uplifted by excitement and expectation that she could not be
genuinely harsh. She had been thrilled by the audacity of the visit to
Mr. Cannon. And though she hoped from it little but a negative
advantage, she was experiencing the rare happiness of adventure. She had
slipped out for a moment from the confined and stifling circle of
domestic dailiness. She had scented the feverish perfume of the world.
And she owed all this to herself alone! She meant on the morrow, while
her mother was marketing, to pursue the enterprise; the consciousness of
this intention was sweet, but she knew not why it was sweet. She only
knew that she lived in the preoccupation of a dream.
Having taken two of the handkerchiefs, she shut the wardrobe and turned
the key. She went first to her own small, prim room to restore stolen
property to its rightful place, and then she descended towards the
kitchen with the other handkerchief. Giving it to her mother, and
concealing her triumph beneath a mask of wise, long-suffering
benevolence, she would say: "I've found ten of your handkerchiefs,
mother. Here's one!" And her mother, ingenuously startled and pleased,
would exclaim: "Where, child?" And she, still controlling herself, as
befitted a superior being, would reply casually: "In your wardrobe, of
course! You stuck to it there weren't any; but I was sure there were."
II
The dialogue which actually did accompany the presentation of the
handkerchief, though roughly corresponding to her rehearsal of it, was
lacking in the dramatic pungency necessary for a really effective
triumph; the reason being that the thoughts of both mother and daughter
were diverted in different ways from the handkerchief by the presence of
Florrie in the kitchen.
Florrie was the new servant, and she had come into the house that
morning. Sponsored by an aunt who was one of the best of the Calder
Street tenants, Florrie had been accepted rather unwillingly, the
objection to her being that she was too young--thirteen and a half. Mrs.
Lessways had a vague humanitarian sentiment against the employment of
children; as for Hilda's feeling, it was at one moment more
compassionate even than her mother's, and at another almost cynically
indifferent. The aunt, however, a person of powerful common sense, had
persuaded Mrs. Lessways that the truest kindness would be to give
Florrie a trial. Florrie was very strong, and she had been brought up to
work hard, and she enjoyed working hard. "Don't you, Florrie?" "Yes,
aunt," with a delightful smiling, whispering timidity. She was the
eldest of a family of ten, and had always assisted her mother in the
management of a half-crown house and the nurture of a regiment of
infants. But at thirteen and a half a girl ought to be earning money for
her parents. Bless you! She knew what a pawnshop was, her father being
often out of a job owing to potter's asthma; and she had some knowledge
of cookery, and was in particular very good at boiling potatoes. To take
her would be a real kindness on the part of Mrs. Lessways, for the
'place' was not merely an easy place, it was a 'good' place. Supposing
that Mrs. Lessways refused to have her,--well, Florrie might go on to a
'potbank' and come to harm, or she might engage herself with
tradespeople, where notoriously the work was never finished, or she
might even be forced into a public-house. Her aunt knew that they wanted
a servant at the "Queen Adelaide," where the wages would be pretty high.
But no! No niece of hers should ever go into service at a public-house
if she could help it! What with hot rum and coffee to be ready for
customers at half-past five of a morning, and cleaning up at nights
after closing, a poor girl would never see her bed! Whereas at Mrs.
Lessways'...! So Mrs. Lessways took Florrie in order to save her from
slavery.
The slim child was pretty, with graceful and eager movements, and
certainly a rapid comprehension. Her grey eyes sparkled, and her brown
hair was coquettishly tied up, rather in the manner of a horse's tail on
May Day. She had arrived all by herself in the morning, with a tiny
bundle, and she made a remarkably neat appearance--if you did not look
at her boots, which had evidently been somebody else's a long time
before. Hilda had been clearly aware of a feeling of pleasure at the
prospect of this young girl's presence in the house.
Hilda now saw her in another aspect. She wore a large foul apron of
sacking, which made her elegant body quite shapeless, and she was
kneeling on the red-and-black tiled floor of the kitchen, with her
enormous cracked boots sticking out behind her. At one side of her was a
pail full of steaming brown water, and in her red coarse little hands,
which did not seem to belong to those gracile arms, she held a dripping
clout. In front of her, on a half-dried space of clean, shining floor,
stood Mrs. Lessways, her head wrapped in a flannel petticoat. Nearer to
the child stretched a small semi-circle of liquid mud; to the rear was
the untouched dirty floor. Florrie was looking up at her mistress with
respectful, strained attention. She could not proceed with her work
because Mrs. Lessways had chosen this moment to instruct her, with much
snuffling, in the duties and responsibilities of her position.
"Yes, mum," Florrie whispered. She seemed to be incapable of speaking
beyond a whisper. But the whisper was delicate and agreeable; and
perhaps it was a mysterious sign of her alleged unusual physical
strength.
"You'll have to be down at half-past six. Then you'll light your kitchen
fire, but of course you'll get your coal up first. And then you'll do
your boots. Now the bacon--but never mind that--either Miss Hilda or me
will be down to-morrow morning to show you."
"Yes, mum," Florrie's whisper was grateful.
"When you've got things going a bit like, you'll do your parlour--I've
told you all about that, though. But I didn't tell you--except on
Wednesdays. On Wednesdays you give your parlour a thorough turn-out
_after_ breakfast, and mind it's got to be all straight for dinner at
half-past twelve."
"Yes, mum."
"I shall show you about your fire-irons--" Mrs. Lessways was continuing
to make everything in the house the private property of Florrie, when
Hilda interrupted her about the handkerchief, and afterwards with an
exhortation to beware of the dampness of the floor, which exhortation
Mrs. Lessways faintly resented; whereupon Hilda left the kitchen; it was
always imprudent to come between Mrs. Lessways and a new servant.
Hilda remained listening in the lobby to the interminable and rambling
instruction. At length Mrs. Lessways said benevolently:
"There's no reason why you shouldn't go to bed at half-past eight, or
nine at the latest. No reason whatever. And if you're quick and handy
--and I'm sure you are--you'll have plenty of time in the afternoon for
plain sewing and darning. I shall see how you can darn," Mrs. Lessways
added encouragingly.
"Yes, mum."
Hilda's heart revolted, less against her mother's defects as an
organizer than against the odious mess of the whole business of
domesticity. She knew that, with her mother in the house, Florrie would
never get to bed at half-past eight and very seldom at nine, and that
she would never be free in the afternoons. She knew that if her mother
would only consent to sit still and not interfere, the housework could
be accomplished with half the labour that at present went to it. There
were three women in the place, or at any rate, a woman, a young woman,
and a girl--and in theory the main preoccupation of all of them was this
business of domesticity. It was, of course, ridiculous, and she would
never be able to make anyone see that it was ridiculous. But that was
not all. The very business itself absolutely disgusted her. It disgusted
her to such a point that she would have preferred to do it with her own
hands in secret rather than see others do it openly in all its squalor.
The business might be more efficiently organized--for example, there was
no reason why the sitting-room should be made uninhabitable between
breakfast and dinner once a week--but it could never be other than
odious. The kitchen floor must inevitably be washed every day by a girl
on her knees in sackcloth with terrible hands. She was witnessing now
the first stage in the progress of a victim of the business of
domesticity. To-day Florrie was a charming young creature, full of
slender grace. Soon she would be a dehumanized drudge. And Hilda could
not stop it! All over the town, in every street of the town, behind all
the nice curtains and blinds, the same hidden shame was being enacted: a
vast, sloppy, steaming, greasy, social horror--inevitable! It amounted
to barbarism, Hilda thought in her revolt. She turned from it with
loathing. And yet nobody else seemed to turn from it with loathing.
Nobody else seemed to perceive that this business of domesticity was not
life itself, was at best the clumsy external machinery of life. On the
contrary, about half the adult population worshipped it as an exercise
sacred and paramount, enlarging its importance and with positive gusto
permitting it to monopolize their existence. Nine-tenths of her mother's
conversation was concerned with the business of domesticity--and withal
Mrs. Lessways took the business more lightly than most!
III
There was an impatient knock at the front door,--rare phenomenon, but
not unknown.
Mrs. Lessways cried out thickly from the folds of her flannel petticoat:
"Hilda, just see who that is, will you?... knocking like that! Florrie
can't come."
And just as Hilda reached the front door, her mother opened the kitchen
door wide, to view the troublesome disturber and to inform him, if as
was probable he was exceeding his rights, that he would have done better
to try the back door.
It was Mr. Cannon at the front door.
Hilda heard the kitchen door slammed to behind her, but the noise was
like a hallucination in her brain. She was staggered by the apparition
of Mr. Cannon in the porch. She had vaguely wondered what he might do to
execute his promise of aid; she had felt that time was running short if
her mother was to be prevented from commencing rent-collector on the
Monday; she had perhaps ingenuously expected from him some kind of
miracle; but of a surety she had never dreamed that he would call in
person at her home. "He must be mad!" she would have exclaimed to
herself, if the grandeur of his image in her heart had not made any such
accusation impossible to her. He was not mad; he was merely inscrutable,
terrifyingly so. It was as if her adventurous audacity, personified, had
doubled back on her, and was exquisitely threatening her.
"Good afternoon!" said Mr. Cannon, smiling confidently and yet with
ceremoniousness. "Is your mother about?"
"Yes." Hilda did not know it, but she was whispering quite in the manner
of Florrie.
"Shall I come in?"
"Oh! Please do!" The words jumped out of her mouth all at once, so
anxious was she to destroy any impression conceivably made that she did
not desire him to come in.
He crossed the step and took her hand with one gesture. She shut the
door. He waited in suave silence. There was barely space for them
together in the narrow lobby, and she scarce dared look up at him. He
easily dominated her. His bigness subdued her, and the handsomeness of
his face and his attire was like a moral intimidation. He had a large
physical splendour that was well set off and illustrated by the
brilliance of his linen and his broadcloth. She was as modest as a mouse
beside him. The superior young woman, the stern and yet indulgent
philosopher, had utterly vanished, and only a poor little mouse
remained.
"Will you please come into the drawing-room?" she murmured when, after
an immense effort to keep full control of her faculties, she had decided
where he must be put.
"Thanks," he said.
As she diminished herself, with beautiful shy curves of her body,
against the wall so that he could manoeuvre his bigness through the
drawing-room doorway, he gave her a glance half benign and half politely
malicious, which seemed to say again: "I know you're afraid, and I
rather like it. But you know you needn't be."
"Please take a seat," she implored. And then quickly, as he seemed to
have no intention of speaking to her confidentially, "I'll tell mother."
Leaving the room, she saw him sink smoothly into a seat, his rich-piled
hat in one gloved hand and an ebony walking-stick in the other. His
presence had a disastrous effect on the chill, unfrequented
drawing-room, reducing it instantly to a condition of paltry shabbiness.
The kitchen door was still shut. Yes, all the squalor of the business of
domesticity must be hidden from this splendid being! Hilda went as a
criminal into the kitchen. Mrs. Lessways with violent movements
signalled her to close the door before speaking. Florrie gazed
spellbound upwards at both of them. The household was in a high fever.
"You don't mean to tell me that's Mr. Cannon!" Mrs. Lessways excitedly
whispered.
"Do--do--you know him?" Hilda faltered.
"Do I know him!... What does he want?"
"He wants to see you."
"What about?"
"I suppose it's about property or something," Hilda replied, blushing.
Never had she felt so abject in front of her mother.
Mrs. Lessways rapidly unpinned the flannel petticoat and then threw it,
with a desperate gesture of sacrifice, on to the deal table. The
situation had to be met. The resplendent male awaited her in the
death-cold room. The resplendent male had his overcoat, but she,
suffering, must face the rigour and the risk unprotected. No matter if
she caught bronchitis! The thing had to be done. Even Hilda did not
think of accusing her mother of folly. Mrs. Lessways having patted her
hair, emptied several handkerchiefs from the twin pockets of her
embroidered black apron, and, snatching at the clean handkerchief
furnished by Hilda, departed to her fate. She was certainly startled and
puzzled, but she was not a whit intimidated, and the perception of this
fact inspired Hilda with a new, reluctant respect for her mother.
Hilda, from the kitchen, heard the greetings in the drawing-room, and
then the reverberations of the sufferer's nose. She desired to go into
the drawing-room. Her mother probably expected her to go in. But she
dared not. She was afraid.
"I was wondering," said the voice of Mr. Cannon, "whether you've ever
thought of selling your Calder Street property, Mrs. Lessways." And then
the drawing-room door was closed, and the ticking of the grandfather's
clock resumed possession of the lobby.
CHAPTER V
MRS. LESSWAYS' SHREWDNESS
I
Waiting irresolute in the kitchen doorway, Hilda passed the most
thrillingly agreeable moments that destiny had ever vouchsafed to her.
She dwelt on the mysterious, attractive quality of Mr. Cannon's
voice,--she was sure that, though in speaking to her mother he was
softly persuasive, he had used to herself a tone even more intimate and
ingratiating. He and she had a secret; they were conspirators together:
which fact was both disconcerting and delicious. She recalled their
propinquity in the lobby; the remembered syllables which he had uttered
mingled with the faint scent of his broadcloth, the whiteness of his
wristbands, the gleam of his studs, the droop of his moustaches, the
downward ray of his glance, and the proud, nimble carriage of his great
limbs,--and formed in her mind the image of an ideal. An image regarded
not with any tenderness, but with naive admiration, and unquestioning
respect! And yet also with more than that, for when she dwelt on his
glance, she had a slight transient feeling of faintness which came and
went in a second, and which she did not analyse--and could not have
analysed.
Clouds of fear sailed in swift capriciousness across the sky of her
dreaming, obscuring it: fear of Mr. Cannon's breath-taking initiative,
fear of the upshot of her adventure, and a fear without a name.
Nevertheless she exulted. She exulted because she was in the very midst
of her wondrous adventure and tingling with a thousand apprehensions.
After a long time the latch of the drawing-room door cracked warningly.
Hilda retired within the kitchen out of sight of the lobby. She knew
that the child in her would compel her to wait like a child until the
visitor was gone, instead of issuing forth boldly like a young woman.
But to Florrie the young mistress with her stern dark mask and
formidable eyebrows and air of superb disdain was as august as a
goddess. Florrie, moving backwards, had now got nearly to the scullery
door with her wringing and splashing and wiping; and she had dirtied
even her face. As Hilda absently looked at her, she thought somehow of
Mr. Cannon's white wristbands. She saw the washing and the ironing of
those wristbands, and a slatternly woman or two sighing and grumbling
amid wreaths of steam, and a background of cinders and suds and
sloppiness.... All that, so that the grand creature might have a rim of
pure white to his coat-sleeves for a day! It was inevitable. But the
grand creature must never know. The shame necessary to his splendour
must be concealed from him, lest he might be offended. And this was
woman's loyalty! Her ideas concerning the business of domesticity were
now mixed and opposing and irreconcileable, and she began to suspect
that the bases of society might be more complex and confusing than in
her youthful downrightness she had imagined.
II
"Well, you've got your way!" said Mrs. Lessways, with a certain grim,
disdainful cheerfulness, from which benevolence was not quite absent.
The drastic treatment accorded to her cold seemed to have done it good.
At any rate she had not resumed the flannel petticoat, and the nasal
symptoms were much less pronounced.
"Got my way?" Hilda repeated, at a loss and newly apprehensive.
Mother and daughter were setting tea. Florrie had been doing very well,
but she was not yet quite equal to her situation, and the mistresses
were now performing her lighter duties while she changed from the
offensive drudge to the neat parlour-maid. Throughout the afternoon
Hilda had avoided her mother's sight; partly because she wanted to be
alone (without knowing why), and partly because she was afraid lest Mr.
Cannon, as a member of the older generation, might have betrayed her to
her mother. This fear was not very genuine, though she pretended that it
was and enjoyed playing with it: as if she really desired a catastrophe
for the outcome of her adventure. She had only come downstairs in
response to her mother's direct summons, and instantly on seeing her she
had known that Mr. Cannon was not a traitor. Which knowledge somehow
rendered her gay in spite of herself. So that, what with this gaiety,
and the stimulation produced in Mrs. Lessways by the visit of Mr.
Cannon, and the general household relief at the obvious fact that
Florrie would rather more than 'do,' the atmosphere around the tinkling
tea-table in the half-light was decidedly pleasant.
Nevertheless the singular turn of Mrs. Lessways' phrase,--"You've got
your way,"--had startled the guilty Hilda.
"Mr. Cannon's going to see to the collecting of the Calder Street
rents," explained Mrs. Lessways. "So I hope you're satisfied, miss."
Hilda was aware of self-consciousness.
"Yes, you may well colour up!" Mrs. Lessways pursued, genial but
malicious. "You're as pleased as Punch, and you're saying to yourself
you've made your old mother give way to ye again! And so you needn't
tell me!"
"I thought," said Hilda, with all possible prim worldliness,--"I thought
I heard him saying something about buying the property?"
Mrs. Lessways laughed, sceptically, confidently, as one who could not be
deceived. "Pooh!" she said. "That was only a try-on. That was only so
that he could begin his palaver! Don't tell me! I may be a simpleton,
but I'm not such a simpleton as he thinks for, nor as some other folks
think for, either!" (At this point Hilda had to admit that in truth her
mother was not completely a simpleton. In her mother was a vein of
perceptive shrewdness that occasionally cropped out and made all Hilda's
critical philosophy seem school-girlish.) "Do you think I don't know
George Cannon? He came here o' purpose to get that rent-collecting.
Well, he's got it, and he's welcome to it, for I doubt not he'll do it a
sight better than poor Mr. Skellorn! But he needn't hug himself that
he's been too clever for me, because he hasn't. I gave him the
rent-collecting because I thought I would!... Buy! He's no more got a
good customer for Calder Street than he's got a good customer for this
slop-bowl!"
Hilda resented this casual detraction of a being who had so deeply
impressed her. And moreover she was convinced that her mother, secretly
very flattered and delighted by the visit, was adopting a derisive
attitude in order to 'show off' before her daughter. Parents are thus
ingenuous! But she was so shocked and sneaped that she found it more
convenient to say nothing.
"George Cannon could talk the hind leg off a horse," Mrs. Lessways
continued quite happily. "And yet it isn't as if he said a great deal.
He doesn't. I'll say this for him. He's always the gentleman. And I
couldn't say as much for his sister being a lady, and I'm sorry for it.
He's the most gentlemanly man in Turnhill, and always so spruce, too!"
"His sister?"
"Well, his half-sister, since you're so particular, Miss Precise!"
"Not Miss Gailey?" said Hilda, who began faintly to recall a forgotten
fact of which she thought she had once been cognizant.
"Yes, Miss Gailey," Mrs. Lessways snapped, still very genial and
content. "I did hear she's quarrelled out and out with _him_, too, at
last!" She tightened her lips. "Draw the blind down."
Miss Gailey, a spinster of superior breeding and a teacher of dancing,
had in the distant past been an intimate friend of Mrs. Lessways. The
friendship was legendary in the house, and the grand quarrel which had
finally put an end to it dated in Hilda's early memories like a
historical event. For many years the two had not exchanged a word.
Mrs. Lessways lit the gas, and the china and the white cloth and the
coloured fruit-jelly and the silver spoons caught the light and threw it
off again, with gaiety.
"Has she swept the hearth? Yes, she has," said Mrs. Lessways, glancing
round at the red fire.
Hilda sat down to wait, folding her hands as it were in meekness. In a
few moments Florrie entered with the teapot and the hot-water jug. The
child wore proudly a new white apron that was a little too long for her,
and she smiled happily at Mrs. Lessways' brief compliment on her
appearance and her briskness. She might have been in paradise.
"Come in for your cup in three minutes," said Mrs. Lessways; and to
Hilda when Florrie had whispered and gone: "Now we shall see if she can
make tea. I told her very particularly this morning, and she seems quick
enough."
And when three minutes had expired Mrs. Lessways tasted the tea. Yes, it
was good. It was quite good. Undeniably the water had boiled within five
seconds of being poured on the leaves. There was something _in_ this
Florrie. Already she was exhibiting the mysterious quality of
efficiency. The first day, being the first day, had of course not been
without its discouraging moments, but on the whole Florrie had proved
that she could be trusted to understand, and to do things.
"Here's an extra piece of sugar for you," said Mrs. Lessways, beaming,
as Florrie left the parlour with her big breakfast-cup full of steaming
tea, to drink with the thick bread-and-butter on the scrubbed kitchen-
table, all by herself. "And don't touch the gas in the kitchen--it's
quite high enough for young eyes," Mrs. Lessways cried out after her.
"Little poppet!" she murmured to herself, maternally reflecting upon
Florence's tender youth.
III
She was happy, was Mrs. Lessways, in her domesticity. She foresaw an
immediate future that would be tranquil. She was preparing herself to
lean upon the reliability of Florrie as upon a cushion. She liked the
little poppet. And she liked well-made tea and pure jelly. And she had
settled the Calder Street problem; and incidentally Hilda was thereby
placated. Why should she not be happy? She wished for nothing else. And
she was not a woman to meet trouble half-way. One of her greatest
qualities was that she did not unduly worry. (Hilda might say that she
did not worry enough, letting things go.) In spite of her cold, she
yielded with more gusto than usual to the meal, and even said that if
Florrie 'continued to shape' they would have hot toast again. Hot toast
had long since been dropped from the menu, as an item too troublesome.
As a rule the meals were taken hurriedly and negligently, like a
religious formality which has lost its meaning but which custom insists
on.
Hilda could not but share her mother's satisfaction. She could not
entirely escape the soft influence of the tranquillity in which the
household was newly bathed. The domestic existence of unmated women
together, though it is full of secret exasperations, also has its hours
of charm--a charm honied, perverse, and unique. Hilda felt the charm.
But she was suddenly sad, and she again found pleasure in her sadness.
She was sad because her adventure was over--over too soon and too
easily. She thought, now, that really she would have preferred a
catastrophe as the end of it. She had got what she desired; but she was
no better off than she had been before the paralytic stroke of Mr.
Skellorn. Domesticity had closed in on her once more. Her secret
adventure had become sterile. Its risks were destroyed, and nothing
could spring from it. Nevertheless it lived in her heart. After all it
had been tremendous! And the virtue of audacious initiative was
miraculous!... Yes, her mother was shrewd enough--that could not be
denied--but she was not so shrewd as she imagined; for it had never
occurred to her, and it never would occur to her, even in the absurdest
dream--that the author of Mr. Cannon's visit was the girl sitting
opposite to her and delicately pecking at jelly!
"How is he Miss Gailey's half-brother?" Hilda demanded half-way through
the meal.
"Why! Mrs. Gailey--Sarah Gailey's mother, that is--married a foreigner
after her first husband died."
"But Mr. Cannon isn't a foreigner?"
"He's half a foreigner. Look at his eyes. Surely you knew all about
that, child!... No, it was before your time."
Hilda then learnt that Mrs. Gailey had married a French modeller named
Canonges, who had been brought over from Limoges (or some such sounding
place) by Peels at Bursley, the great rivals of Mintons and of
Copelands. And that in course of time the modeller had informally
changed the name to Cannon, because no one in the Five Towns could
pronounce the true name rightly. And that George Cannon, the son of the
union, had been left early an orphan.
"How did he come to be a solicitor?" Hilda questioned eagerly.
"They say he isn't really a solicitor," said Mrs. Lessways. "That is, he
hasn't passed his examinations like. But I dare say he knows as much law
as a lot of 'em, _and_ more! And he has that Mr. Karkeek to cover him
like. That's what they _say_.... He used to be a lawyer's clerk--at Toms
and Scoles's, I think it was. Then he left the district for a year or
two--or it might be several. And then his lordship comes back all of a
sudden, and sets up with Mr. Karkeek, just like that."
"Can he talk French?"
"Who? Mr. Cannon? He can talk _English_! My word, he can that! Eh, he's
a 'customer,' he is--a regular' customer'!"
Hilda, instead of being seated at the table, was away in far realms of
romance.
The startling thought occurred to her:
"Of course, he'll expect me to go and see him! He's done what I asked
him, and he'll expect me to go and see him and talk it over. And I
suppose I shall have to pay him something. I'd forgotten that, and I
ought not to have forgotten it."
CHAPTER VI
VICTOR HUGO AND ISAAC PITMAN
I
The next morning, Saturday, Hilda ran no risk in visiting Mr. Cannon.
Her mother's cold, after a fictitious improvement, had assumed an
aggravated form in order to prove that not with impunity may nature be
flouted in unheated October drawing-rooms; and Hilda had been requested
to go to market alone. She was free. And even supposing that the visit
should be observed by the curious, nobody would attach any importance to
it, because everybody would soon be aware that Mr. Cannon had assumed
charge of the Calder Street property.
Past the brass plates of Mr. Q. Karkeek, out of the straw-littered
hubbub of the market-place, she climbed the long flight of stairs
leading to the offices on the first floor. In one worsted-gloved hand
she held a market-basket of multi-coloured wicker, which dangled a
little below the frilled and flounced edge of her blue jacket. Secure in
the pocket of her valanced brown skirt--for at that time and in that
place it had not yet occurred to any woman that pockets were a
superfluity--a private half-sovereign lay in the inmost compartment of
her purse; this coin was destined to recompense Mr. Cannon. Her free
hand went up to the heavy chignon that hung uncertainly beneath her
bonnet--a gesture of coquetry which she told herself she despised.
Her face was a prim and rather forbidding mask, assuredly a mysterious
mask. She could not have explained her own feelings. She was still in
the adventure, but the end of it was immediate. She had nothing to hope
from the future. Her essential infelicity was as profound and as
enigmatic as ever. She might have said with deliberate and vehement
sincerity that she was not happy. Wise, experienced observers, studying
her as she walked her ways in the streets, might have said of her with
sympathetically sad conviction, "That girl is not happy! What a pity!"
It was so. And yet, in her unhappiness she was blest. She savoured her
unhappiness. She drank it down passionately, as though it were the very
water of life--which it was. She lived to the utmost in every moment.
The recondite romance of existence was not hidden from her. The sudden
creation--her creation--of the link with Mr. Cannon seemed to her
surpassingly strange and romantic; and in so regarding it she had no
ulterior thought whatever: she looked on it with the single-mindedness
of an artist looking on his work. And was it not indeed astounding that
by a swift caprice and stroke of audacity she should have changed and
tranquillized the ominous future for her unsuspecting mother and
herself? Was it not absolutely disconcerting that she and this Mr.
Cannon, whom she had never known before and in whom she had no other
interest, should bear between them this singular secret, at once
innocent and guilty, in the midst of the whole town so deaf and blind?
II
A somewhat shabby-genteel, youngish man appeared at the head of the
stairs; he was wearing a silk hat and a too ample frock-coat. And
immediately, from the hidden corridor at the top, she heard the voice of
Mr. Cannon, imperious:
"Karkeek!"
The shabby-genteel man stopped. Hilda wanted to escape, but she could
not, chiefly because her pride would not allow. She had to go on. She
went on, frowning.
The man vanished back into the corridor. She could hear that Mr. Cannon
had joined him in conversation. She arrived at the corridor.
"How-d'ye-do, Miss Lessways?" Mr. Cannon greeted her with calm
politeness, turning from Mr. Karkeek, who raised his hat. "Will you come
this way? One moment, Mr. Karkeek."
Through a door marked "Private" Mr. Cannon introduced Hilda straight
into his own room; then shut the door on her. He held in one hand a
large calf-bound volume, from which evidently he was expounding
something to Mr. Karkeek. The contrast between the expensive informality
of Mr. Cannon's new suit and the battered ceremoniousness of Mr.
Karkeek's struck her just as much as the contrast between their
demeanours; and she felt, vaguely, the oddness of the fact that the name
of the deferential Mr. Karkeek, and not the name of the commanding Mr.
Cannon, should be upon the door-plates and the wire-blinds of the
establishment. But of course she was not in a position to estimate the
full significance of this remarkable phenomenon. Further, though she
perfectly remembered her mother's observations upon Mr. Cannon's status,
they did not in the slightest degree damage him in her eyes--when once
those eyes had been set on him again. They seemed to her inessential.
The essential, for her, was the incontestable natural authority and
dignity of his bearing.
She sat down, self-consciously, in the chair--opposite the owner's
chair--which she had occupied at her first visit, and thus surveyed,
across the large flat desk, all the ranged documents and bundles with
the writing thereon upside down. There also was his blotting-pad, and
his vast inkstand, and his pens, and his thick diary. The disposition of
the things on the desk seemed to indicate, sharply and incontrovertibly,
that orderliness, that inexorable efficiency, which more than aught else
she admired in the external conduct of life. The spectacle satisfied
her, soothed her, and seemed to explain the attractiveness of Mr.
Cannon.
Immediately to her left was an open bookcase almost filled with heavy
volumes. The last of a uniform row of Law Reports was absent from its
place--being at that moment in the corridor, in the hands of Mr. Cannon.
The next book, a thin one, had toppled over sideways and was bridging
the vacancy at an angle; several other similar thin books filled up the
remainder of the shelf. She stared, with the factitious interest of one
who is very nervously awaiting an encounter, at the titles, and
presently deciphered the words, 'Victor Hugo,' on each of the thin
volumes. Her interest instantly became real. Characteristically abrupt
and unreflecting, she deposited her basket on the floor and, going to
the bookcase, took out the slanting volume. Its title was _Les Rayons et
Les Ombres_. She opened it by hazard at the following poem, which had no
heading and which stood, a small triptych of print, rather solitary in
the lower half of a large white page:
Dieu qui sourit et qui donne
Et qui vient vers qui l'attend
Pourvu que vous soyez bonne,
Sera content.
Le monde ou tout etincelle,
Mais ou rien n'est enflamme,
Pourvu que vous soyez belle,
Sera charme.
Mon coeur, dans l'ombre amoureuse,
Ou l'enivrent deux beaux yeux,
Pourvu que tu sois heureuse,
Sera joyeux.
That was all. But she shook as though a miracle had been enacted. Hilda,
owing partly to the fondness of an otherwise stern grandfather and
partly to the vanity of her unimportant father, had finally been sent to
a school attended by girls who on the average were a little above
herself in station--Chetwynd's, in the valley between Turnhill and
Bursley. (It was still called Chetwynd's though it had changed hands.)
Among the staff was a mistress who was known as Miss Miranda--she seemed
to have no surname. One of Miss Miranda's duties had been to teach
optional French, and one of Miss Miranda's delights had been to dictate
this very poem of Victor Hugo's to her pupils for learning by heart. It
was Miss Miranda's sole French poem, and she imposed it with unfading
delight on the successive generations whom she 'grounded' in French.
Hilda had apparently forgotten most of her French, but as she now read
the poem (for the first time in print), it re-established itself in her
memory as the most lovely verse that she had ever known, and the
recitations of it in Miss Miranda's small classroom came back to her
with an effect beautiful and tragic. And also there was the name of
Victor Hugo, which Miss Miranda's insistent enthusiasm had rendered
sublime and legendary to a sensitive child! Hilda now saw the sacred
name stamped in gold on a whole set of elegant volumes! It was
marvellous that she should have turned the page containing just that
poem! It was equally marvellous that she should have discovered the
works of Victor Hugo in the matter-of-fact office of Mr. Cannon! But was
it? Was he not half-French, and were not these books precisely a
corroboration of what her mother had told her? Mr. Cannon's origin at
once assumed for her the strange seductive hues of romance; he shared
the glory of Victor Hugo. Then the voices in the corridor ceased, and
with a decisive movement he unlatched the door. She relinquished the
book and calmly sat down as he entered.
III
"Of course, your mother's told you?"
"Yes."
"I had no difficulty at all. I just asked her what she was going to do
about the rent-collecting."
Standing up in front of Hilda, but on his own side of the desk, Mr.
Cannon smiled as a conqueror who can recount a triumph with pride, but
without conceit. She looked at him with naive admiration. To admire him
was agreeable to her; and she liked also to feel unimportant in his
presence. But she fought, unsuccessfully, against the humiliating idea
that his personal smartness convicted her of being shabby--of being even
inefficient in one department of her existence; and she could have
wished to be magnificently dressed.
"Mrs. Lessways is a very shrewd lady--very shrewd indeed!" said Mr.
Cannon, with a smile, this time, to indicate humorously that Mrs.
Lessways was not so easy to handle as might be imagined, and that even
the cleverest must mind their p's and q's with such a lady.
"Oh yes, she _is_!" Hilda agreed, with an exaggerated emphasis that
showed a lack of conviction. Indeed, she had never thought of her mother
as a _very_ shrewd lady.
Mr. Cannon continued to smile in silence upon the shrewdness of Mrs.
Lessways, giving little appreciative movements of the diaphragm, drawing
in his lips and by consequence pushing out his cheeks like a child's;
and his eyes were all the time saying lightly: "Still, I managed her!"
And while this pleasant intimate silence persisted, the noises of the
market-place made themselves prominent, quite agreeably--in particular
the hard metallic stamping and slipping, on the bricked pavement under
the window, of a team of cart-horses that were being turned in a space
too small for their grand, free movements, and the good-humoured
cracking of a whip. Again Hilda was impressed, mystically, by the
strangeness of the secret relation between herself and this splendid
effective man. There they were, safe within the room, almost on a
footing of familiar friendship! The atmosphere was different from that
of the first interview. And none knew! And she alone had brought it all
about by a simple caprice!
"I was fine and startled when I saw you at our door, Mr. Cannon!" she
said.
He might have said, "Were you? You didn't show it." She was half
expecting him to say some such thing. But he became reflective, and
began: "Well, you see--" and then hesitated.
"You didn't tell me you thought of calling."
"Well," he proceeded at last--and she could not be sure whether he was
replying to her or not--"I was pretty nearly ready to buy that Calder
Street property. And I thought I'd talk _that_ over with your mother
first! It just happened to make a good beginning, you see." He spoke
with all the flattering charm of the confidential.
Hilda flushed. Under her mother's suggestion, she had been misjudging
him. He had not been guilty of mere scheming. She was profoundly glad.
The act of apology to him, performed in her own mind, gave her a curious
delight.
"I wish she would sell," said Hilda, to whom the ownership of a slum was
obnoxious.
"Very soon your consent would be necessary to any sale."
"Really!" she exclaimed, agreeably flattered, but scarcely surprised by
this information. "I should consent quick enough! I can't bear to walk
down the street!"
He laughed condescendingly. "Well, I don't think your mother _would_
care to sell, if you ask me." He sat down.
Hilda frowned, regretting her confession and resenting his laughter.
"What will your charges be, please, Mr. Cannon?" she demanded abruptly,
and yet girlishly timid. And at the same moment she drew forth her
purse, which she had been holding ready in her hand.
For a second he thought she was referring to the price of
rent-collecting, but the appearance of the purse explained her meaning.
"Oh! There's no charge!" he said, in a low voice, seizing a penholder.
"But I must pay you something! I can't--"
"No, you mustn't!"
Their glances met in conflict across the table. She had known that he
would say exactly that. And she had been determined to insist on paying
a fee--utterly determined! But she could not, now, withstand the force
of his will. Her glance failed her. She was disconcerted by the sudden
demonstration of her inferiority. She was distressed. And then a feeling
of faintness, and the gathering of a mist in the air, positively
frightened her. The mist cleared. His glance seemed to say, with
kindness: "You see how much stronger I am than you! But you can trust
me!" The sense of adventure grew even more acute in her. She marvelled
at what life was, and hid the purse like a shame.
"It's very kind of you," she murmured.
"Not a bit!" he said. "I've got a job through this. Don't forget that.
We don't collect rents for nothing, you know--especially Calder Street
sort of rents!"
She picked up her basket and rose. He also rose.
"So you've been looking at my Victor Hugo," he remarked, putting his
right hand negligently into his pocket instead of holding it forth in
adieu.
IV
So overset was she by the dramatic surprise of his challenging remark,
and so enlightened by the sudden perception of it being perfectly
characteristic of him, that her manner changed in an instant to a
delicate, startled timidity. All the complex sensitiveness of her nature
was expressed simultaneously in the changing tints of her face, the
confusion of her eyes and her gestures, and the exquisite hesitations of
her voice as she told him about the coincidence which had brought back
to her in his office the poem of her schooldays.
He came to the bookcase and, taking out the volume, handled it
carelessly.
"I only brought these things here because they're nicely bound and fill
up the shelf," he said. "Not much use in a lawyer's office, you know!"
He glanced from the volume to her, and from her to the volume. "Ah! Miss
Miranda! Yes! Well! It isn't so wonderful as all that. My father used to
give her lessons in French. This Hugo was his. He thought a great deal
of it." Mr. Cannon's pose exhibited pride, but it was obvious that he
did not share his father's taste. His tone rather patronized his father,
and Hugo too. As he let the pages of the book slip by under his thumb,
he stopped, and with a very good French accent, quite different from
Hilda's memory of Miss Miranda's, murmured in a sort of chanting--"_Dieu
qui sourit et qui donne_."
"That's the very one!" cried Hilda.
"Ah! There you are then! You see--the bookmark was at that page." Hilda
had not noticed the thin ribbon almost concealed in the jointure of the
pages. "I wouldn't be a bit astonished if my father had lent her this
very book! Curious, isn't it?"
It was. Nevertheless, Hilda felt that his sense of the miraculousness of
life was not so keen as her own; and she was disappointed.
"I suppose you're very fond of reading?" he said.
"No, I'm not," she replied. Her spirit lifted a little courageously, to
meet his with defiance, like a ship lifting its prow above the
threatening billow. Her eyes wavered, but did not fall before his.
"Really! Now, I should have said you were a great reader. What do you do
with yourself?" He now spoke like a brother, confident of a trustful
response.
"I just waste my time," she answered coldly. She saw that he was
puzzled, interested, and piqued, and that he was examining her quite
afresh.
"Well," he said shortly, after a pause, adopting the benevolent tone of
an uncle or even a great-uncle, "you'll be getting married one of these
days."
"I don't want to get married," she retorted obstinately, and with a
harder glance.
"Then what do you want?"
"I don't know." She discovered great relief, even pleasure, in thus
callously exposing her mind to a stranger.
Tapping his teeth with one thumb, he gazed at her, apparently in
meditation upon her peculiar case. At last he said:
"I tell you what you ought to do. You ought to go in for phonography."
"Phonography?" She was at a loss.
"Yes; Pitman's shorthand, you know."
"Oh! shorthand--yes. I've heard of it. But why?"
"Why? It's going to be the great thing of the future. There never was
anything like it!" His voice grew warm and his glance scintillated. And
now Hilda understood her mother's account of his persuasiveness; she
felt the truth of that odd remark that he could talk the hind leg off a
horse.
"But does it lead to anything?" she inquired, with her strong sense of
intrinsic values.
"I should say it did!" he answered. "It leads to everything! There's
nothing it won't lead to! It's the key of the future. You'll see. Look
at Dayson. He's taken it up, and now he's giving lessons in it. He's got
a room over his aunt's. I can tell you he staggered me. He wrote in
shorthand as fast as ever I could read to him, and then he read out what
he'd written, without a single slip. I'm having one of my chaps taught.
I'm paying for the lessons. I thought of learning myself--yes, really!
Oh! It's a thing that'll revolutionize all business and secretarial work
and so on--revolutionize it! And it's spreading. It'll be the Open
Sesame to everything. Anybody that can write a hundred and twenty words
a minute'll be able to walk into any situation he wants--straight _into_
it! There's never been anything like it. Look! Here it is!"
He snatched up a pale-green booklet from the desk and opened it before
her. She saw the cryptic characters for the first time. And she saw them
with his glowing eyes. In their mysterious strokes and curves and dots
she saw romance, and the key of the future; she saw the philosopher's
stone. She saw a new religion that had already begun to work like leaven
in the town. The revelation was deliciously intoxicating. She was
converted, as by lightning. She yielded to the ecstasy of discipleship.
Here--somehow, inexplicably, incomprehensively--here was the answer to
the enigma of her long desire. And it was an answer original, strange,
distinguished, unexpected, unique; yes, and divine! How lovely, how
beatific, to be the master of this enchanted key!
"It must be very interesting!" she said, low, with the venturesome
shyness of a deer that is reassured.
"I don't mind telling you this," Mr. Cannon went on, with the fire of
the prophet. "I've got something coming along pretty soon"--he repeated
more slowly--"I've got something coming along pretty soon, where
there'll be scope for a young lady that can write shorthand _well_. I
can't tell you what it is, but it's something different from anything
there's ever been in this town; _and_ better."
His eyes masterfully held hers, seeming to say: "I'm vague. But I was
vague when I told you I'd see what could be done about your mother--and
look at what I did, and how quickly and easily I did it! When I'm vague,
it means a lot." And she entirely understood that his vagueness was
calculated--out of pride.
They talked about Mr. Dayson a little.
"I must go now," said Hilda awkwardly.
"I'd like you to take that Hugo," he said. "I dare say it would interest
you.... Remind you of old times."
"Oh no!"
"You can return it, when you like."
Her features became apologetic. She had too hastily assumed that he
wished to force a gift on her.
"Please!" he ejaculated. No abuse this time of moral authority! But an
appeal, boyish, wistful, supplicating. It was irresistible, completely
irresistible. It gave her an extraordinary sense of personal power.
He wrapped up the book for her in a sheet of blue "draft" paper that
noisily crackled. While he was doing so, a tiny part of her brain was,
as it were, automatically exploring a box of old books in the attic at
home and searching therein for a Gasc's French-English Dictionary which
she had used at school and never thought of since.
"My compliments to your mother," he said at parting.
She gazed at him questioningly.
"Oh! I was forgetting," he corrected himself, with an avuncular, ironic
smile. "You're not supposed to have seen me, are you?"
Then she was outside in the din; and from thrilling altitudes she had to
bring her mind to marketing. She hid under apples the flat blue parcel
in the basket.
CHAPTER VII
THE EDITORIAL SECRETARY
I
Arthur Dayson, though a very good shorthand writer, and not without
experience as a newspaper reporter and sub-editor, was a nincompoop.
There could be no other explanation of his bland, complacent
indifference as he sat poking at a coke stove one cold night of January,
1880, in full view of a most marvellous and ravishing spectacle. The
stove was in a room on the floor above the offices labelled as Mr. Q.
Karkeek's; its pipe, supported by wire stays, went straight up nearly to
the grimy ceiling, and then turned horizontally and disappeared through
a clumsy hole in the scorched wall. It was a shabby stove, but not more
so than the other few articles of furniture--a large table, a small
desk, three deteriorated cane-chairs, two gas brackets, and an old
copying-press on its rickety stand. The sole object that could emerge
brightly from the ordeal of the gas-flare was a splendid freshly printed
blue poster gummed with stamp-paper to the wall: which poster bore the
words, in vast capitals of two sizes: "_The Five Towns Chronicle and
Turnhill Guardian_." Copies of this poster had also been fixed, face
outwards, on the two curtainless black windows, to announce to the
Market Square what was afoot in the top storey over the ironmonger's.
A young woman, very soberly attired, was straining at the double
iron-handles of the copying-press. Some copying-presses have a screw so
accurately turned and so well oiled, and handles so massively like a
fly-wheel, that a touch will send the handles whizzing round and round
till they stop suddenly, and then one slight wrench more, and the
letters are duly copied! But this was not such a press. It had been
outworn in Mr. Karkeek's office; rust had intensified its original
defects of design, and it produced the minimum of result with the
maximum of means. Nevertheless, the young woman loved it. She clenched
her hands and her teeth, and she frowned, as though she loved it. And
when she had sufficiently crushed the letter-book in the press, she
lovingly unscrewed and drew forth the book; and with solicitude she
opened the book on the smaller table, and tenderly detached the
blotting-paper from the damp tissue paper, and at last extracted the
copied letter and examined its surface.
"Smudged!" she murmured, tragic.
And the excellent ass Dayson, always facetiously cheerful, and without a
grain of humour, remarked:
"Copiousness with the H2O, Miss Lessways, is the father of smudged
epistles. I'm ready to go through these proofs with you as soon as you
are."
He was over thirty. He had had affairs with young women. He reckoned
that there remained little for him to learn. He had deliberately watched
this young woman at the press. He had clearly seen her staring under the
gas-jet at the copied letter. And yet in her fierce muscular movements,
and in her bendings and straightenings, and in her delicate caressings,
and in her savage scowlings and wrinklings, and in her rapt gazings, and
in all her awful absorption, he had quite failed to perceive the
terrible eager outpouring of a human soul, mighty, passionate, and
wistful. He had kept his eyes on her slim bust and tight-girded waist
that sprung suddenly neat and smooth out of the curving skirt-folds, and
it had not occurred to him to exclaim even in his own heart: "With your
girlishness and your ferocity, your intimidating seriousness and your
delicious absurdity, I would give a week's wages just to take hold of
you and shake you!" No! The dolt had seen absolutely naught but a
conscientious female beginner learning the duties of the post which he
himself had baptized as that of 'editorial secretary.'
II
Hilda was no longer in a nameless trouble. She no longer wanted she knew
not what. She knew beyond all questioning that she had found that which
she had wanted. For nearly a year she had had lessons in phonography
from Miss Dayson's nephew, often as a member of a varying night-class,
and sometimes alone during the day. She could not write shorthand as
well as Mr. Dayson, and she never would, for Mr. Dayson had the
shorthand soul; but, as the result of sustained and terrific effort, she
could write it pretty well. She had grappled with Isaac Pitman as with
Apollyon and had not been worsted. She could scarcely believe that in
class she had taken down at the rate of ninety words a minute Mr.
Dayson's purposely difficult political speechifyings (which always
contained the phrase 'capital punishment,' because 'capital punishment'
was a famous grammalogue); but it was so, Mr. Dayson's watch proved it.
About half-way through the period of study, she had learnt from Mr.
Cannon, on one of his rare visits to her mother's, something about his
long-matured scheme for a new local paper. She had at once divined that
he meant to offer her some kind of a situation in the enterprise, and
she was right. Gratitude filled her. Mrs. Lessways, being one of your
happy-go-lucky, broad-minded women, with an experimental disposition--a
disposition to let things alone and see how they will turn out--had made
little objection, though she was not encouraging.
Instantly the newspaper had become the chief article of Hilda's faith.
She accepted the idea of it as a nun accepts the sacred wafer, in
ecstasy. Yet she knew little about it. She was aware that Mr. Cannon
meant to establish it first as a weekly, and then, when it had grown, to
transform it into a daily and wage war with that powerful monopolist,
_The Staffordshire Signal_, which from its offices at Hanbridge covered
the entire district. The original title had been _The Turnhill Guardian
and Five Towns General Chronicle,_ and she had approved it; but when Mr.
Cannon, with a view to the intended development, had inverted the title
to _The Five Towns Chronicle and Turnhill Guardian_, she had
enthusiastically applauded his deep wisdom. Also she had applauded his
project of moving, later on, to Hanbridge, the natural centre of the
Five Towns. This was nearly the limit of her knowledge. She neither knew
nor cared anything about the resources or the politics or the programme
or the prospects of the paper. To her all newspapers were much alike.
She did not even explore, in meditation, the extraordinary psychology of
Mr. Cannon--the man whose original energy and restless love of
initiative was leading him to found a newspaper on the top of a
successful but audaciously irregular practice as a lawyer. She
incuriously and with religious admiration accepted Mr. Cannon as she
accepted the idea of the paper. And being, of course, entirely ignorant
of journalism, she was not in a position to criticize the organizing
arrangements of the newspaper. Not that these would have seemed
excessively peculiar to anybody familiar with the haphazard
improvisations of minor journalism in the provinces! She had indeed, in
her innocence, imagined that the basic fact of a newspaper enterprise
would be a printing-press; but when Mr. Dayson, who had been on _The
Signal_ and on sundry country papers in Shropshire, assured her that the
majority of weekly sheets were printed on jobbing presses in private
hands, she corrected her foolish notion.
Her sole interest--but it was tremendous!--lay in what she herself had
to do--namely, take down from dictation, transcribe, copy, classify, and
keep letters and documents, and occasionally correct proofs. All beyond
this was misty for her, and she never adjusted her sight in order to
pierce the mist.
Save for her desire to perfect herself in her duties, she had no desire.
She was content. In the dismal, dirty, untidy, untidiable, uncomfortable
office, arctic near the windows, and tropic near the stove, with dust on
her dress and ink on her fingers and the fumes of gas in her quivering
nostrils, and her mind strained and racked by an exaggerated sense of
her responsibilities, she was in heaven! She who so vehemently objected
to the squalid mess of the business of domesticity, revelled in the
squalid mess of this business. She whose heart would revolt because
Florrie's work was never done, was delighted to wait all hours on the
convenience of men who seemed to be the very incarnation of incalculable
change and caprice. And what was she? Nothing but a clerk, at a
commencing salary of fifteen shillings per week! Ah! but she was a
priestess! She had a vocation which was unsoiled by the economic excuse.
She was a pioneer. No young woman had ever done what she was doing. She
was the only girl in the Five Towns who knew shorthand. And in a
fortnight (they said) the paper was to come out!
III
At the large table which was laden with prodigious, heterogeneous masses
of paper and general litter, she bent over the proofs by Mr. Dayson's
side. He had one proof; she had a duplicate; the copy lay between them.
It was the rough galley of a circular to the burgesses that they were
correcting together. Reading and explaining aloud, he inscribed the
cabalistic signs of correction in the margin of his proof, and she
faithfully copied them in the margin of hers, for practice.
"l.c.," he intoned.
"What does that mean?"
"Lower case," he explained grandiosely, in the naive vanity of his
knowledge. "Small letter; not a capital."
"Thank you," she said, and, writing "l.c.," noted in her striving brain
that 'lower case' meant a small letter instead of a capital; but she
knew not why, and she did not ask; the reason did not trouble her.
"I think we'll put 'enlightened' there, before 'public' Ring it, will
you?"
"Ring it? Oh! I see!"
"Yes, put a ring round the word in the margin. That's to show it isn't
the intelligent compositor's mistake, you see!"
Then there was a familiar and masterful footstep on the stairs, and the
attention of both of them wavered.
IV
Arthur Dayson and his proof-correcting lost all interest and all
importance for Hilda as Mr. Cannon came into the room. The unconscious,
expressive gesture, scornful and abrupt, with which she neglected them
might have been terribly wounding to a young man more sensitive than
Dayson. But Dayson, in his self-sufficient, good-natured mediocrity, had
the hide of an alligator. He even judged her movement quite natural, for
he was a flunkey born. Hilda gazed at her master with anxiety as he
deposited his black walking-stick in the corner behind the door and
loosed his white muffler and large overcoat (which Dayson called an
'immensikoff.') She thought the master looked tired and worried.
Supposing he fell ill at this supreme juncture! The whole enterprise
would be scotched, and not forty Daysons could keep it going! The master
was doing too much--law by day and journalism by night. They were
perhaps all doing too much, but the others did not matter. Nevertheless,
Mr. Cannon advanced to the table buoyant and faintly smiling,
straightening his shoulders back, proudly proving to himself and to them
that his individual force was inexhaustible. That straightening of the
shoulders always affected Hilda as something wistful, as almost pathetic
in its confident boyishness. It made her feel maternal and say to
herself (but not in words) with a sort of maternal superiority: "How
brave he is, poor thing!" Yes, in her heart she would apply the epithet
'poor thing' to this grand creature whose superiority she acknowledged
with more fervour than anybody. As for the undaunted straightening of
the shoulders, she adopted it, and after a time it grew to be a
characteristic gesture with her.
"Well?" Mr. Cannon greeted them.
"Well," said Arthur Dayson, with a factitious air of treating him as an
equal, "I've been round to Bennions and made it clear to him that if he
can't guarantee to run off a maximum of two thousand of an eight-page
sheet we shall have to try Clayhanger at Bursley, even if it's the last
minute."
"What did he say?"
"Grunted."
"I shall risk two thousand, any way."
"Paper delivered, governor?" Dayson asked in a low voice, leering
pawkily, as though to indicate that he was a man who could be trusted to
think of everything.
"Will be to-morrow, I think," said Mr. Cannon. "Got that letter ready,
Miss Lessways?"
Hilda sprang into life.
"Yes," she said, handing it diffidently. "But if you'd like me to do it
again--you see it's--"
"Plethora of H2O," Dayson put in, indulgent.
"Oh no!" Mr. Cannon decided. Having read the letter, he gave it to
Dayson. "It doesn't matter, but you ought to have signed it before it
was copied in the letter-book."
"Gemini! Miss!" murmured Dayson, glancing at Hilda with uplifted brows.
The fact was that both of them had forgotten this formality. Dayson took
a pen, and after describing a few flourishes in the air, about a quarter
of an inch above the level of the paper, he magnificently signed:
"Dayson & Co." Such was the title of the proprietorship. Just as Karkeek
was Mr. Cannon's dummy in the law, so was Dayson in the newspaper
business. But whereas Karkeek was privately ashamed, Dayson was proud of
his role, which gave him the illusion of power and glory.
"Just take this down, will you?" said Mr. Cannon.
Hilda grasped at her notebook and seized a pencil, and then held herself
tense to receive the message, staring downwards at the blank page.
Dayson lolled in his chair, throwing his head back. He knew that the
presence of himself, the great shorthand expert, made Hilda nervous when
she had to write from dictation; and this flattered his simple vanity.
Hilda hated and condemned her nervousness, but she could not conquer it.
Mr. Cannon, standing over the table, pushed his hat away from his broad,
shining forehead, and then, meditative, absently lifted higher his
carefully tended hand and lowered the singing gas-jet, only to raise it
again.
"Mr. Ezra Brunt. Dear Sir, Re advertisement. With reference to your
letter replying to ours in which you inquire as to the circulation of
the above newspaper, we beg to state that it is our intention to print
four thousand of--"
"Two thousand," Hilda interrupted confidently.
Unruffled, Mr. Cannon went on politely: "No--four thousand of the first
number. Our representative would be pleased to call upon you by
appointment. Respectfully yours.--You might sign that, Dayson, and get
it off to-night. Is Sowter here?"
For answer, Dayson jerked his head towards an inner door. Sowter was the
old clerk who had first received Hilda into the offices of Mr. Q.
Karkeek. He was earning a little extra money by clerical work at nights
in connection with the advertisement department of the new organ.
Mr. Cannon marched to the inner door and opened it. Then he turned and
called:
"Dayson--a moment."
"Certainly," said Dayson, jumping up. He planted his hat doggishly at
the back of his head, stuck his hands into his pockets, and swaggered
after his employer.
The inner door closed on the three men. Hilda, staring at the notebook,
blushing and nibbling at the pencil, was left alone under the gas. She
could feel her heart beating violently.
CHAPTER VIII
JANET ORGREAVE
I
"Our friend is waiting for that letter to Brunt," said Arthur Dayson,
emerging from the inner room, a little later.
"In one moment," Hilda replied coldly, though she had not begun to write
the letter.
Dayson disappeared, nodding.
She resented his referring to Mr. Cannon as 'our friend,' but she did
not know why, unless it was that she vaguely regarded it as
presumptuous, or, in the alternative, if he meant to be facetious, as
ill-bred, on the part of Arthur Dayson. She chose a sheet of paper, and
wrote the letter in longhand, as quickly as she could, but with arduous
care in the formation of every character; she wrote with the whole of
her faculties fully applied. Even in the smallest task she could not
economize herself; she had to give all or nothing. When she came to the
figures--4000--she intensified her ardour, lavishing enormous
unnecessary force: it was like a steamhammer cracking a nut. Her
conscience had instantly and finally decided against her. But she
ignored her conscience. She knew and owned that she was wrong to abet
Mr. Cannon's deception. And she abetted it. She would have abetted it if
she had believed that the act would involve her in everlasting
damnation,--not solely out of loyalty to Mr. Cannon; only a little out
of loyalty; chiefly out of mere unreasoning pride and obstinate
adherence to a decision.
The letter finished, she took it into the inner room, where the three
men sat in mysterious conclave. Mr. Cannon read it over, and then Arthur
Dayson borrowed the old clerk's vile pen and with the ceremonious delays
due to his sense of his own importance, flourishingly added the
signature.
When she came forth she heard a knock at the outer door.
"Come in," she commanded defiantly, for she was still unconsciously in
the defiant mood in which she had offered the lying letter to Mr.
Cannon.
II
A well-dressed, kind-featured, and almost beautiful young woman, of
about the same age as Hilda, opened the door, with a charming gesture of
diffidence.
For a second the two gazed at each other astounded.
"Well, Hilda, of all the--"
"Janet!"
It was an old schoolfellow, Janet Orgreave, daughter of Osmond Orgreave,
a successful architect at Bursley. Janet had passed part of her
schooldays at Chetwynd's; and with her brother Charlie she had also
attended Sarah Gailey's private dancing-class (famous throughout
Turnhill, Bursley, and Hanbridge) at the same time as Hilda. She was
known, she was almost notorious, as a universal favourite. By instinct,
without taking thought, she pleased everybody, great and small. Nature
had spoiled her, endowing her with some beauty, and undeniable elegance,
and abundant sincere kindliness. She had only to smile, and she made a
friend; it cost her nothing. She smiled now, and produced the illusion,
not merely in Hilda but in herself also, that her pleasure in this very
astonishing encounter was quite peculiarly poignant.
They shook hands, as women of the world.
"Did you know I was here?" Hilda questioned, characteristically on her
guard, with a nervous girlish movement of the leg that perhaps sinned
against the code of authentic worldliness.
"No indeed!" exclaimed Janet.
"Well, I am! I'm engaged here."
"How splendid of you!" said Janet enthusiastically, with no suggestion
whatever in her tone that Hilda's situation was odd, or of dubious
propriety, or aught but enviable.
But Hilda surveyed her with secret envy, transient yet real. In the
half-dozen years that had passed since the days of the dancing-class,
Janet had matured. She was now the finished product. She had the charm
of her sex, and she depended on it. She had grace and an overflowing
goodness. She had a smooth ease of manner. She was dignified. And, with
her furs, and her expensive veil protecting those bright apple-red
cheeks, and all the studied minor details of her costume, she was
admirably and luxuriously attired. She was the usual, as distinguished
from the unusual, woman, brought to perfection. She represented no
revolt against established custom. Doubts and longings did not beset
her. She was content within her sphere: a destined queen of the home.
And yet she could not be accused of being old-fashioned. None would dare
to despise her. She was what Hilda could never be, had never long
desired to be. She was what Hilda had definitely renounced being. And
there stood Hilda, immature, graceless, harsh, inelegant, dowdy, holding
the letter between her inky fingers, in the midst of all that hard
masculine mess,--and a part of it, the blindly devoted subaltern, who
could expect none of the ritual of homage given to women, who must sit
and work and stand and strain and say 'yes,' and pretend stiffly that
she was a sound, serviceable, thick-skinned imitation man among men! If
Hilda had been a valkyrie or a saint she might have felt no envy and no
pang. But she was a woman. Self-pity shot through her tremendous pride;
and the lancinating stab made her inattentive even to her curiosity
concerning the purpose of Janet's visit.
III
"I came to see Mr. Cannon," said Janet. "The housekeeper downstairs told
me he was here somewhere."
"He's engaged," answered Hilda in a low voice, with the devotee's
instinct to surround her superior with mystery.
"Oh!" murmured Janet, checked.
Hilda wondered furiously what she could be wanting with Mr. Cannon.
Janet recommenced: "It's really about Miss Gailey, you know."
"Yes--what?"
Hilda nodded eagerly, speaking in a tone still lower and more careful.
Janet dropped her voice accordingly: "She's Mr. Cannon's sister, of
course?"
"Half-sister."
"I mean. I've just come away from seeing her." She hesitated. "I only
heard by accident. So I came over with father. He had to come to a
meeting of the Guardians here, or something. They've quarrelled, haven't
they?"
"Who? Miss Gailey and Mr. Cannon? Well, you see, she quarrels with every
one." Hilda appeared to defend Mr. Cannon.
"I'm afraid she does, poor thing!"
"She quarrelled with mother."
"Really! when was that?"
"Oh! Years and years ago! I don't know when. I was always surprised
mother let me go to the class."
"It was very nice of your mother," said Janet, appreciative.
"Is she in trouble?" Hilda asked bluntly.
"I'm afraid she is."
"What?"
Janet suddenly gave a gesture of intimacy. "I believe she's starving!"
"Starving!" Hilda repeated in a blank whisper.
"Yes, I do! I do really believe she hasn't got enough to eat. She's
quarrelled with just about everybody there was to quarrel with. She
suffers fearfully with rheumatism. She never goes out--or scarcely
ever. You know her dancing-classes have all fallen away to nothing. I
fancy she tried taking lodgers--"
"Yes, she did. I understood she was very good at housekeeping."
"She hasn't got any lodgers now. There she is, all alone in that house,
and--"
"But she can't be _starving_!" Hilda protested. At intervals she glanced
at the inner door, alarmed.
"I really think she is," Janet persisted, softly persuasive.
"But what's to be done?"
"That's the point. I've just seen her. I went on purpose, because I'd
heard.... But I had to pretend all sorts of things to make an excuse for
myself. I couldn't offer her anything, could I? Isn't it dreadful?"
They were much worried, these two young maids, full of health and vigour
and faith, and pride and simplicity, by this startling first glimpse
into one of the nether realities of existence. And they loyally tried to
feel more worried than they actually were; they did their best, out of
sympathy, to moderate the leaping, joyous vitality that was in them,--
and did not succeed very well. They were fine, they were touching--but
they were also rather deliciously amusing--as they concentrated all
their resources of solemnity and of worldly experience on the tragic
case of the woman whom life had defeated. Hilda's memory rushed
strangely to Victor Hugo. She was experiencing the same utter
desolation--but somehow less noble--as had gripped her when she first
realized the eternal picture, in _Oceana Nox_, of the pale-fronted
widows who, tired of waiting for those whose barque had never returned
out of the tempest, talked quietly among themselves of the
lost--stirring the cinders in the fireplace and in their hearts.... Yet
Sarah Gailey was not even a widow. She was an ageing dancing-mistress.
She had once taught the grace of rhythmic movement to young limbs; and
now she was rheumatic.
"Nobody but Mr. Cannon can do anything," Janet murmured.
"I'm sure he hasn't the slightest idea--not the slightest!" said Hilda
half defensively. But she was saying to herself: "This man made me write
a lie, and now I hear that his sister is starving--in the same town!"
And she thought of his glossy opulence. "I'm quite sure of _that_!" she
repeated to Janet.
"Oh! So am I!" Janet eagerly concurred. "That's why I came.... Somebody
had to give him a hint.... I never dreamt of finding you, dear!"
"It is strange, isn't it?" said Hilda, the wondrous romance of things
seizing her. Seen afresh, through the eyes of this charming, sympathetic
acquaintance, was not Mr. Cannon's originality in engaging her
positively astounding?
"I suppose _you_ couldn't give him a hint?"
"Yes, I'll tell him," said Hilda. "Of course!" In spite of herself she
was assuming a certain proprietorship in Mr. Cannon.
"I'm so glad!" Janet replied. "It is good of you!"
"It seems to me it's you that's good, Janet," Hilda said grimly. She
thought: "Should _I_, out of simple kindliness and charity, have
deliberately come to tell a man I didn't know... that his sister was
starving? Never!"
"He's bound to see after it!" said Janet, content.
"Why, of course!" said Hilda, clinching the affair, in an intimate,
confidential murmur.
"You'll tell him to-night?"
Hilda nodded.
They exchanged a grave glance of mutual appreciation and understanding.
Each was sure of the other's high esteem. Each was glad that chance had
brought about the meeting between them. Then they lifted away their
apprehensive solicitude for Sarah Gailey, and Janet, having sighed
relief, began to talk about old times. And their voices grew louder and
more free.
"Can you tell me what time it is?" Janet asked, later. "I've broken the
spring of my watch, and I have to meet father at the station at
ten-fifteen."
"I haven't a notion!" said Hilda, rather ashamed.
"I hope it isn't ten o'clock."
"I could ask," said Hilda hesitatingly. The hour, for aught she knew,
was nine, eleven, or even midnight. She was oblivious of time.
"I'll run," said Janet, preparing to go. "I shall tell Charlie I've seen
you, next time I write to him. I'm sure he'll be glad. And you must come
to see us. You really must, now! Mother and father will be delighted. Do
you still recite, like you used to?"
Hilda shook her head, blushing.
She made no definite response to the invitation, which surprised,
agitated, and flattered her. She wanted to accept it, but she was
convinced that she never would accept it. Before departing, Janet lifted
her veil, with a beautiful gesture, and offered her lips to kiss. They
embraced affectionately. The next moment Hilda, at the top of the dim,
naked, resounding stair, was watching Janet descend--a figure infinitely
stylish and agreeable to the eye.
CHAPTER IX
IN THE STREET
I
A few minutes later, just as Hilda had sealed up the last of the
letters, Mr. Cannon issued somewhat hurriedly out of the inner room,
buttoning his overcoat at the neck.
"Good night," he said, and took his stick from the corner where he had
placed it.
"Mr. Cannon!"
"Well?"
"I wanted to speak to you."
"What is it? I'm in a hurry."
She glanced at the inner door, which he had left open. From beyond that
door came the voices of Arthur Dayson and the old clerk; Hilda lacked
the courage to cross the length of the room and deliberately close it,
and though Mr. Cannon did not seem inclined to move, his eyes followed
the direction of hers and he must have divined her embarrassment. She
knew not what to do. A crisis seemed to rise up monstrous between them,
in an instant. She was trembling, and in acute trouble.
"It's rather important," she said timidly, but not without an
unintentional violence.
"Well, to-morrow afternoon."
He, too, was apparently in a fractious state. The situation was perhaps
perilous. But she could not allow her conduct to be influenced by danger
or difficulty, which indeed nearly always had the effect of confirming
her purpose. If something had to be done, it had to be done--and let
that suffice! He waited, impatient, for her to agree and allow him to
go.
"No," she answered, with positive resentment in her clear voice. "I must
speak to you to-night. It's very important."
He made with his tongue an inarticulate noise of controlled
exasperation.
"If you've finished, put your things on and walk along with me," he
said.
She hurried to obey, and overtook him as he slowly descended the lower
flight of stairs. She had buttoned her jacket and knotted her thick
scarf, and now, with the letters pressed tightly under her arm lest they
should fall, she was pulling on her gloves.
"I have an appointment at the Saracen's," he said mildly, meaning the
Saracen's Head--the central rendezvous of the town, where Conservative
and Liberal met on neutral ground.
II
He turned to the left, toward the High Street and the great cleared
space out of which the cellarage of the new Town Hall had already been
scooped. He carried his thick gloves in his white and elegant hand, as
one who did not feel the frost. She stepped after him. Their breaths
whitened the keen air. She was extremely afraid, and considered herself
an abject coward, but she was determined to the point of desperation. He
ought to know the truth and he ought to know it at once: nothing else
mattered. She reflected in her terror: "If I don't begin right off, he
will be asking me to begin, and that will be worse than ever." She was
like one who, having boastfully undertaken to plunge into deep, cold
water from a height, has climbed to the height, and measured the fearful
distance, and is sick, and dares not leap, but knows that he must leap.
"I suppose you know Miss Gailey is practically starving," she said
abruptly, harshly, staring at the gutter.
She had leapt. Life seemed to leave her. She had not intended to use
such words, nor such a tone. She certainly did not suppose that he knew
about Miss Gailey's condition. She had affirmed to Janet Orgreave her
absolute assurance that he did not know. As for the tone, it was
accusing, it was brutal, it was full of the unconscious and terrible
clumsy cruelty of youth.
"What?" His head moved sharply sideways, to look at her.
"Miss Gailey--she's starving, it seems!" Hilda said timidly now, almost
apologetically. "I felt sure you didn't know. I thought _some_ one
should tell you."
"What do you mean--starving?" he asked gruffly.
"Not enough to eat," she replied, with the direct simplicity of a child.
"And how did this tale get about?"
"It's true," she said. "I was told to-night."
"Who told you?"
"A friend of mine--who's seen her!"
"But who?"
"It wouldn't be right for me to tell you who."
They walked on in an appalling silence to the corner of the Square and
the High Street.
"Here's the letter-box," he said, stopping.
She dropped the letters with nervous haste into the box. Then she looked
up at him appealingly. In the brightness of the starry night she saw
that his face had a sardonic, meditative smile. The middle part of the
lower lip was pushed out, while the corners were pulled down--an
expression of scornful disgust. She burst out:
"Of course, I know very well it's not your fault. I know, if you'd
_known_... but what with her never seeing you, and perhaps people not
caring to--"
"I'm very much obliged to you," he interrupted her quietly, still
meditative. He was evidently sincere. His attitude was dignified. Many
men would have been ashamed, humiliated, even though aware of innocence.
But he contrived to rise above such weakness. She was glad; she admired
him. And she was very glad also that he did not deign to asseverate that
he had been ignorant of his half-sister's plight. Naturally he had been
ignorant!
III
She was suddenly happy; she was inspired by an unreasoning joy. She was
happy because she was so young and fragile and inexperienced, and he so
much older, and more powerful and more capable. She was happy because
she was a mere girl and he a mature and important male. She thought
their relation in that moment exquisitely beautiful. She was happy
because she had been exceedingly afraid and the fear had gone. The dark
Square and far-stretching streets lay placid and void under the night,
surrounding their silence in a larger silence: and because of that also
she was happy. A policeman with his arms hidden under his cloak marched
unhasting downwards from the direction of the Bank.
"Fine night, officer," said Mr. Cannon cordially.
"Yes, sir. Good night, sir," the policeman responded, with respect and
sturdy self-respect, his footsteps ringing onwards.
And the sight and bearing of this hardy, frost-defying policeman
watching over the town, and the greetings between him and Mr. Cannon--
these too seemed strangely beautiful to Hilda. And then a train
reverberated along its embankment in the distance, and the gliding
procession of yellow windows was divided at regular intervals by the
black silhouettes of the scaffolding-poles of the new Town Hall.
Beautiful! She was filled with a delicious sadness. It was Janet's
train. In some first-class compartment Janet and her father were shut
together, side by side, intimate, mutually understanding. Again, a
beautiful relation! From the summit of a high kiln in the middle
distance, flames shot intermittently forth, formidable. Crockery was
being fired in the night: and unseen the fireman somewhere flitted about
the mouths of the kiln. And here and there in the dim faces of the
streets a window shone golden... there were living people behind the
blind! It was all beautiful, joy-giving. The thought of her mother
fidgeting for her return home was delightful. The thought of Mr. Cannon
and Miss Gailey, separated during many years, and now destined to some
kind of reconciliation was indescribably touching, and beautiful in a
way that she could not define.
"I was only thinking the other day," said Mr. Cannon, treating her as an
equal in years and wisdom--"I was only thinking I'd got the very thing
for my half-sister--the very opening for her--a chance in a thousand, if
only she'd..." It was unnecessary for him to finish the sentence.
"And is it too late now?" Hilda asked eagerly.
"No," he said. "It isn't too late. I shall go round and see her
to-morrow morning first thing. It wouldn't do for me to go to-night--you
see--might seem too odd."
"Yes," Hilda murmured. "Well, good night."
They separated. She knew that he was profoundly stirred. Nevertheless,
he had inquired for no further details concerning Miss Gailey. He was
too proud, and beneath his inflexibility too sensitive, to do so. He
meant to discover the truth for himself. He had believed--that was the
essential. His behaviour had been superb. The lying letter to Ezra Brunt
was a mere peccadillo, even if it was that, even if it was not actually
virtuous.
She walked off rapidly, trying to imitate the fine, free, calmly defiant
bearing of Mr. Cannon and the policeman.
IV
"Florrie gone to bed?" she asked briskly of her mother, who was fussing
about her in the parlour, pretending to be fretful, but secretly
enchanted to welcome her, with a warm fire and plenteous food, back
again into the house. And Hilda, too, was enchanted at her reception.
"Florrie gone to bed? I should just think Florrie has gone to bed.
Half-past ten and after! Eh my! This going out after tea. I never heard
of such doings. Now do warm your feet."
"I should have been home sooner, only something happened," said Hilda.
"Oh!" Mrs. Lessways exclaimed indifferently. She had in fact no
curiosity as to the affairs of Dayson and Company. The sole thing that
interested her was Hilda's daily absence and daily return. She seemed
quite content to remain in ignorance of what Hilda did in the mysterious
office. Her conversation, profuse when she was in good spirits, rarely
went beyond the trifling separate events of existence personal and
domestic--the life of the house hour by hour and minute by minute. It
was often astounding to Hilda that her mother never showed any sign of
being weary of these topics, nor any desire to discover other topics.
"Yes," said Hilda. "Miss Gailey--"
Mrs. Lessways became instantly a different creature.
"And does he know?" she asked blankly, when Hilda had informed her of
Janet's visit and news.
"Yes. I told him--of course."
"You?"
"Well, somebody had to tell him," said Hilda, with an affectation of
carelessness. "So I told him myself."
"And how did he take it?"
"Well, how should he take it?" Hilda retorted largely. "He _had_ to take
it! He was much obliged, and he said so."
Mrs. Lessways began to weep.
"What ever's the matter?"
"I was only thinking of poor Sarah!" Mrs. Lessways answered the implied
rebuke of Hilda's brusque question. "I shall go and see her to-morrow
morning."
"But, mother, don't you think you'd better wait?"
Mrs. Lessways spoke up resolutely: "I shall go and see Sarah Gailey
to-morrow morning, and let that be understood! I don't need my daughter
to teach me when I ought to go and see my friends and when I
oughtn't.... I knew Sarah Gailey before your Mr. Cannon was born."
"Oh, very well! Very well!" Hilda soothed her lightly.
"I shall tell Sarah Gailey she's got to reckon with me, whether she
wants to or not! That's what I shall tell Sarah Gailey!" Mrs. Lessways
wiped her eyes.
"Mother," Hilda asked, when they had gone upstairs, "did you wind the
clock?"
"I don't think I did," answered the culprit uncertainly from her bedroom
door.
"Mother, how tiresome you are! Night before last you wouldn't let me
touch it. You said you preferred to do it yourself. And now I shall be
waiting for it to strike to-morrow morning, to get up--lend me that
candle, do!"
She tripped down to the lobby gladly, and opened the big door of the
clock, and put her hand into the dark cavity and, grimacing, hauled up
the heavy weights. This forgetfulness of her mother's somehow increased
her extraordinary satisfaction with life. She remounted the shadowy
stairs on the wings of a pure and ingenuous elation.
CHAPTER X
MISS GAILEY IN DECLENSION
I
Knowing whom she was to meet, Hilda came home to tea, on the next day
but one, with a demeanour whose characteristics were heightened by
nervousness. The weather was still colder, and she had tied the broad
ribbons of her small bonnet rather closely under her chin, the double
bow a little to the left. A knitted bodice over the dress and under the
jacket made the latter tighter than usual, so that the fur edges of it
curved away somewhat between the buttons, and all the upper part of the
figure seemed to be too strictly confined, while the petticoats surged
out freely beneath. A muff, brightly coloured to match the skirt and the
bonnet and her cheeks, completed the costume. She went into the house
through the garden and delicately stamped her feet on the lobby tiles,
partly to warm them and shake off a few bits of snow, and partly to
announce clearly her arrival. Then, just as she was, hands in muff, she
entered the parlour. She was tingling with keen, rosy life, and with the
sense of youthful power. She had the deep, unconscious conviction of the
superiority of youth to age. And there were the two older women, waiting
for her, as it were on the defensive, and as nervous as she!
"Good afternoon, Miss Gailey," she said, with a kind and even very
cordial smile, and heartily shook the flaccid, rheumatic hand that was
primly held out to her. And yet in spite of herself, perhaps unknown to
herself, there was in her tone and her smile and her vigorous clasp
something which meant, "Poor old thing!" pityingly, indulgently,
scornfully.
She had not spoken to Miss Gailey, and she had scarcely seen her, since
the days of the dancing-class. A woman who is in process of losing
everything but her pride can disappear from view as easily in a small
town as in a great city; her acquaintances will say to each other, "I
haven't met So-and-so lately. I wonder..." And curiosity will go no
further. And in a short time her invisibility will cease to excite any
remark, except, "She keeps herself to herself nowadays." To Hilda Miss
Gailey appeared no older; her brown hair had very little grey in it, and
her skin was fairly smooth and well-preserved. But she seemed curiously
smaller, and less significant, this woman who, with a certain pedagogic
air, used to instruct girls in grace and boys in gallantry, this woman
who was regarded by all her pupils as the authoritative source of
correctness and ease in deportment. "Now, Master Charles," Hilda could
remember her saying, "will you ask me for the next polka all over again,
and try not to look as if you were doing me a favour and were rather
ashamed of yourself?" She had a tongue for the sneaping of too casual
boys, and girls also.
And she spoke so correctly, as correctly as she performed the figures of
a dance! Hilda, who also spoke without the local peculiarities, had been
deprived of her Five Towns accent at Chetwynd's School, where the purest
Kensingtonian was inculcated; but Miss Gailey had lost hers in
Kensington itself--so rumour said--many years before. And now, in her
declension, she was still perfect of speech. But the authority and the
importance were gone in substance: only the shadow of them remained. She
had now, indeed, a manner half apologetic and half defiant, but
timorously and weakly defiant. Her head was restless with little nervous
movements; her watery eyes seemed to say: "Do not suppose that I am not
as proud and independent as ever I was, because I _am_. Look at my silk
dress, and my polished boots, and my smooth hair, and my hands! Can
anyone find any trace of shabbiness in _me_?" But beneath all this
desperate bravery was the wistful acknowledgment, continually-peeping
out, that she had after all come down in the world, albeit with a
special personal dignity that none save she could have kept.
II
The two women were seated at a splendid fire. Hilda, whose nervousness
was quickly vanishing, came between them to warm her hands that were
shining with cold, despite muff and gloves. "Here, mother!" she said
teasingly, putting the muff and gloves in her mother's lap.
Sarah Gailey rose with slow stiffness from her chair.
"Now don't let this child disturb you, Sarah!" Mrs. Lessways protested.
"Oh no, Caroline!" said Miss Gailey composedly. "I was only getting my
apron."
From a reticule on the table she drew forth a small black satin apron on
which was embroidered in filoselle a spray of moss-roses. It was
extremely elegant--much more so than Mrs. Lessways'--though not in quite
the latest style of fashionable aprons; not being edible, it had
probably been long preserved in a wardrobe, on the chance of just such
an occasion as this. She adjusted the elastic round her thin waist, and
sat down again. The apron was a sign that she had come definitely to
spend the whole evening. It was a proof of the completeness of the
reconciliation between the former friends.
As the conversation shifted from the immediate topic of the weather to
the great general question of cures for chilblains, Hilda wondered what
had passed between her mother and Miss Gailey, and whether her mother
had overcome by mere breezy force or by guile: which details she never
learnt, for Mrs. Lessways was very loyal to her former crony, and
moreover she had necessarily to support the honour of the older
generation against the younger. It seemed incredible to Hilda that this
woman who sat with such dignity and such gentility by her mother's fire
was she who the day before yesterday had been starving in the
pride-imposed prison of her own house. Could Miss Gailey have known that
Hilda knew!... But Hilda knew that Miss Gailey knew that she knew--and
that others guessed! Such, however, was the sublime force of convention
that the universal pretence of ignorance securely triumphed.
Then Florrie--changed, grown, budded, practised in the technicalities of
parlours, but timid because of "company"--came in to set the tea. And
Miss Gailey inspected her with the calm and omniscient detachment of a
deity, and said to Caroline when she was gone that Florrie seemed a
promising little thing--with the 'makings of a good servant' in her.
Afterwards the mistress recounted this judgment to Florrie, who was
thereby apparently much impressed and encouraged in well-doing.
III
"And so you're thinking of going to London, Miss Gailey?" said Hilda,
during tea. The meal was progressing satisfactorily, though Caroline
could not persuade Sarah to eat enough.
Miss Gailey flushed slightly, with the characteristic nervous movement
of the head. Evidently her sensitiveness was extreme.
"And what do you know about it, you inquisitive little puss?" Mrs.
Lessways intervened hastily, though it was she who had informed Hilda of
the vague project. Somehow, in presence of her old friend, Mrs. Lessways
seemed to feel herself under an obligation to play the assertive and
crushing mother.
"Has Mr. Cannon mentioned it?" said Miss Gailey politely. Miss Gailey,
at any rate, recognized in the most scrupulous way that Hilda was an
adult, and no longer a foal-legged pupil for dancing. "Well, he seems so
set on it. He came round to see me about it yesterday morning, without
any warning. And he was full of it! I told you how full he was of it,
didn't I, Caroline? You know how he is when anything takes him."
"Do I know how he is?" murmured Caroline, arching her eyebrows. She
spoke much more broadly than either of the others.
Miss Gailey continued to Hilda, with seriousness: "It's a boarding-house
that he's got control of up there. Something about a bill of sale on the
furniture, I think. But perhaps you know?"
"No, I don't," said Hilda.
"Oh!" said Miss Gailey, relieved. "Well, anyhow he's bent on me taking
charge of this boarding-house. He will have it it's just the thing for
me. But--but I don't know!" She finished weakly.
"Everyone knows you're a splendid housekeeper," said Mrs. Lessways.
"Always were."
"I remember the refreshments at your annual dances," said Hilda,
politely enthusiastic.
"I always attended to those myself," Miss Gailey judicially observed.
"I don't know anything about refreshments at dances," said Mrs.
Lessways, "but I do know what your housekeeping is, Sarah!"
"Well, that's what George says!" Sarah simpered. "He says he never had
such meals and such attention as that year he lived with me."
"I'm sure he's been sorry many a time he ever left you!" exclaimed
Caroline. "Many and many a time!"
"Oh, well.... Relatives, you know...." Sarah murmured vaguely. This was
the only reference to the estrangement. She went on with more vivacity.
"And then Mr. Cannon has always had ideas about boarding-houses and
furnished rooms and so on. He always did say there was lots of money to
be made out of them if only they were managed properly; only they never
are.... He ought to know; he's been a bachelor long enough, and he's
tried enough of them! He says he isn't at all comfortable where he is,"
she added, as it were aside to Caroline. "It's some people who used to
let lodgings to theatre people at Hanbridge."
"Oh! _Them_!" cried Caroline.
The talk meandered into a maze of reminiscences, and Hilda had to
realize her youthfulness and the very inferior range of her experience:
Sarah and Caroline recalled to each other dozens of persons and events,
opening up historical vistas in a manner that filled the young girl with
envious respect, in spite of herself.
"Do you remember Hanbridge Theatre being built, Sarah?" questioned
Caroline. "My grandfather--Hilda's great-grandfather--tendered for
it--not that he got the job--but he was very old."
"Did he now? No, I don't. But I dare say I was in London then."
"I dare say that would be it."
"Yes," said Sarah, turning to Hilda once more, "that's just what Mr.
Cannon says. He says it isn't as if I didn't know what London is.... But
it's such a long time ago!" She glanced at Caroline as if for sympathy.
"Come, come, Sarah!" Caroline protested stoutly, and yet with a care for
Sarah's sensitiveness. "It isn't so long ago as all that!"
"It seems so long," said Sarah, reflective; and her mouth worked
uneasily. Then, after a pause: "He's so set on it!"
"Set on what? On your going to London?"
"Yes."
"And why not?"
"Well, I don't know whether I could--"
"Paw!" scoffed Caroline lightly and flatteringly. "You're younger than I
am, and I'm not going to have anyone making out that I'm getting old.
Now do finish that bit of cake."
"No, thank you, Caroline. I really couldn't."
"Not but what I should be sorry enough to lose you," Caroline concluded.
"There's no friends like the old friends."
"Ah! No!" Sarah thickly muttered, gazing with her watery eyes at a spot
on the white diaper.
"Hilda, do turn down that there gas a bit," said Mrs. Lessways sharply
and self-consciously. "It's fizzing." And she changed the subject.
IV
With a nervous exaggeration of solicitude Hilda sprang to the gas-jet.
Suddenly she was drenched in the most desolating sadness. She could not
bear to look at Miss Gailey; and further, Miss Gailey seemed unreal to
her, not an actual woman, but an abstract figure of sorrow that fancy
had created. A few minutes previously Hilda had been taking pride in the
tact and the enterprise of George Cannon, who possessed a mysterious
gift of finding an opportunity for everybody who needed it. He had set
Hilda on her feet; and he was doing the same for his half-sister, and
with such skilful diplomacy that Miss Gailey was able to pretend to
herself and to others that George Cannon, and not Sarah Gailey, was the
obliged person. But now Hilda saw Sarah Gailey afraid to go to London,
and George Cannon pushing her forward with all the ruthless strength of
his enterprising spirit. And the sight was extraordinarily,
incomprehensibly tragic. Sarah Gailey's timorous glance seemed to be
saying: "I am terrified to go. It isn't beyond my strength--it's beyond
my spirit. But I shall have to go, and I shall have to seem glad to go.
And nobody can save me!"
And Miss Gailey's excellent silk dress, and her fine apron, and her
primness and dignified manners, and her superb pretence of being
undamaged struck Hilda as intolerably pathetic--so that she was obliged
to look away lest she might weep at the sight of that pathos. Yes, it
was a fact that she could not bear to look! Nor could she bear to let
her imagination roam into Miss Gailey's immediate past! She said to
herself: "Only yesterday morning perhaps she didn't know where her next
meal was coming from. He must have managed somehow to give her some
money. Only yesterday morning perhaps she didn't know where her next
meal--If I say that to myself once more I shall burst out crying!" She
balanced her spoon on her teacup and let it fall.
"Now, Miss Fidgety!" her mother commented, with good humour. And then
they all heard a knock at the front door.
"Will Florrie have heard it?" Mrs. Lessways asked nervously. What she
meant was: "Who on earth can this be?" But such questions cannot be put
in the presence of a newly reconciled old friend. It was necessary to
behave as though knocks at the front door were a regular accompaniment
of tea.
CHAPTER XI
DISILLUSION
I
The entrance of George Cannon into the parlour produced a tumult greatly
stimulating the vitality and the self-consciousness of all three women.
Sarah Gailey's excitement was expressed in flushing, and in
characteristic small futile movements of the head and hands, and in
monosyllables that conveyed naught except a vague but keen apprehension.
Mrs. Lessways was perturbed and somewhat apprehensive also; but she was
flattered and pleased. Hilda was frankly suspicious during the first
moments. She guessed that Mr. Cannon was aware of his sister's visit,
and that he had come to further his own purposes. He confirmed her idea
by greeting his sister without apparent surprise; but as, in response to
Mrs. Lessways' insistence, he took off his great overcoat, with those
large, powerful gestures which impress susceptible women and give
pleasure even to the indifferent, he said casually to Sarah Gailey, "I
didn't expect to meet you here, Sally. I've come to have a private word
with Mrs. Lessways about putting one of her Calder Street tenants on to
the pavement." Sarah laughed nervously and said that she would retire,
and Mrs. Lessways said that Sarah would do no such thing, and that she
was very welcome to hear all that Mr. Cannon might have to say
concerning the Calder Street property.
In a minute Mr. Cannon was resplendently sitting down to the table with
them, and rubbing his friendly hands, and admitting that he should not
refuse a cup of tea if pressed. And Hilda received her mother's sharp
instructions to get a cup and saucer from the sideboard and a spoon from
the drawer. She bore these to the table like a handmaid, but like a
delicate and superior handmaid, and it pleased her to constitute herself
a delicate and superior handmaid. Mr. Cannon sat next to her mother, and
Hilda put down the tinkling cup and saucer on the white cloth between
them; and as she did so Mr. Cannon turned and thanked her with a
confidential smile, to which she responded. They were not now employer
and employee, but exclusively in the social world; nevertheless, their
business relations made an intimacy which it was piquant to feel in the
home. Moreover, Sarah Gailey was opposite to them, and Hilda could not
keep out of her dark eyes the intelligence: "If she is here, if you are
all amicable together, it is due to me." Delicious and somehow perilous
secret!... Going back to her seat, she arranged more safely the vast
overcoat which he had thrown carelessly down on her mother's rocking-
chair. It was inordinately heavy, and would have outweighed a dozen of
her skimpy little jackets; she, who would have been lost in it like a
cat in a rug, enjoyed the thought of the force of the creature capable
of wearing it lightly for a garment. Withal the rough, soft surface of
it was agreeable to the hand. Out of one of the immense pockets hung the
end of a coloured silk muffler, filmy as anything that she herself wore.
Then they were all definitely seated, and Mr. Cannon accepted his tea
from the hand of Mrs. Lessways. The whiteness of his linen, the new
smartness of his suit, the elegance and gallantry of his gestures--these
phenomena incited the women to a responsive emulation; they were
something which it was a feminine duty to live up to. Archness reigned,
especially between the hostess and the caller. Hilda answered to the
mood. And Sarah Gailey, though she said little and never finished a
sentence, did her best to answer to it by noddings and nervous
appreciative smiles, and swift turnings of the head from one to another.
When Mr. Cannon and Mrs. Lessways, in half a dozen serious words
interjected among the archness, had adversely settled the fate of a
whole family in Calder Street, there remained scarcely a trace, in the
company's demeanour, of the shamed consciousness that only two days
before its members had been divided by disastrous enmities and that one
of them had lacked the means of life.
II
"Oh no! my dear girl! You're too modest--that's what's the matter with
you," said George Cannon eagerly to his half-sister. The epithet
flattered but did not allay her timidity. To Hilda it seemed
mysteriously romantic.
The supreme topic had worked its way into the conversation. Uppermost in
the minds of all, it seemed to have forced itself out by its own
intrinsic energy, against the will of the company. Impossible to decide
who first had let it forth! But George Cannon had now fairly seized it
and run off with it. He was almost boyishly excited over it. The Latin
strain in him animated his features and his speech. He was a poet as he
talked of the boarding-house that awaited a mistress. He had pulled out
of his pocket the cutting of an advertisement of it from the London
_Daily Telegraph_, a paper that was never seen in Turnhill. And this bit
of paper, describing in four lines the advantages of the boarding-house,
had the effect of giving the actual house a symbolic reality. "There it
is!" he exclaimed, slapping down the paper. And there it appeared really
to be. The bit of paper was extraordinarily persuasive. It compelled
everybody to realize, now for the first time, that the house did in fact
exist. George Cannon had an overwhelming answer to all timorous
objections. The boarding-house was remunerative; boarders were at that
very moment in it. The nominal proprietor was not leaving it because he
was losing money on the boarding-house, but because he had lost money in
another enterprise quite foreign to it, and had pledged all the contents
of the boarding-house as security. The occasion was one in a thousand,
one in a million. He, George Cannon, through a client, had the entire
marvellous affair between his finger and thumb, and most obviously Sarah
Gailey was the woman of all women for the vacant post at his
disposition. Chance was waiting on her. She had nothing whatever to do
but walk into the house as a regent into a kingdom, and rule. Only,
delay was impossible. All was possible except delay. She would
inevitably succeed; she could not fail. And it would be a family
affair....
Tea was finished and forgotten.
"For your own sake!" he wound up a peroration. "It really doesn't matter
to me.... Don't you agree with me, Mrs. Lessways?" His glance was a
homage.
"Oh, you!" exclaimed Mrs. Lessways, smiling happily. "You've only got to
open your mouth, and you'd talk anybody into the middle of next week."
"Mother!" Hilda mildly reproved. She was convinced now that Mr. Cannon
had come on purpose to clinch the affair.
He laughed appreciatively.
"But really! Seriously!" he insisted.
And Mrs. Lessways, straightening her face, said, with slight
self-consciousness: "Oh, _I_ think it's worth while considering!"
"There you are!" cried Mr. Cannon to Miss Gailey.
"I shall be all alone up there!" said Miss Gailey, as cheerfully as she
could.
"I'll go up with you and see you into the place. I should have to come
back the same night--I'm so tremendously busy just now--what with the
paper and so on."
"Yes, but--I quite admit all you say, George--but--"
"Here's another idea," he broke out. "Why don't you ask Mrs. Lessways to
go up with you and stay a week or two? It would be a rare change for
her, and company for you."
Miss Gailey looked quickly at her old friend.
"Oh! Bless you!" said Mrs. Lessways. "I've only been to London once, and
that was only for two days--before Hilda was born. I should be no use in
London, at my time of life. I'm one of your home-stayers." Nevertheless
it was plain that the notion appealed to her fancy, and that she would
enjoy flirting with it.
"Nonsense, Mrs. Lessways!" said George Cannon. "It would do you a world
of good, and it would make all the difference to Sally."
"That it would!" Sarah agreed, still questioning Caroline with her
watery, appealing eyes. In Caroline, Sarah saw her salvation, and
snatched at it. Caroline could no nothing well; she had no excellence;
all that Caroline could do Sarah could do better. And yet Caroline, by
the mysterious virtue of her dry and yet genial shrewdness, and of the
unstable but reliable equilibrium of her temperament, was the skilled
Sarah's superior. They both knew it and felt it. The lofty Hilda
admitted it. Caroline herself negligently admitted it by a peculiar,
brusque, unaffected geniality of condescension towards Sarah.
"Do go, mother!" said Hilda. To herself she had been saying: "Another of
his wonderful ideas!" The prospect of being alone in the house with
Florrie, of being free for a space to live her own life untrammelled and
throw all her ardour into her work, was inexpressibly attractive to
Hilda. It promised the most delicious experience that she had ever had.
"Yes," retorted Mrs. Lessways. "And leave you here by yourself! A nice
thing!"
"I shall be all right," said Hilda confidently and joyously. She was
sure that the excursion to London had appealed to her mother's latent
love of the unexpected, and that her faculty for accepting placidly
whatever fate offered would prevent her from resisting the pressure that
Sarah Gailey and Mr. Cannon would obviously exert.
"Shall you!" Mrs. Lessways muttered.
"Why not take your daughter with you, too?" Mr. Cannon suggested.
"Oh!" cried Hilda, shocked. "I couldn't possibly leave my work just
now.... The paper just coming out.... You couldn't spare me." She spoke
with pride, using phrases similar to those which he had used to explain
to Sarah Gailey why he could not remain with her in London even for a
night.
"Oh yes, I could," he answered kindly, lightly, carelessly,
shattering--in his preoccupation with one idea--all her fine, loyal
pretensions. "We should manage all right."
III
She was hurt. She was mortally pierced. The blow was too cruel. She
lowered her glance before his, and fixed it on the table-cloth. Her brow
darkened. Her lower lip bulged out. She was the child again. He had with
atrocious inhumanity reduced her to the unimportance of a child. She had
bestowed on him and his interests the gift of her whole soul, and he had
said that it was negligible. And the worst was that he was perfectly
unaware of what he had done. He had not even observed the symptoms of
her face. He had turned at once to the older women and was continuing
the conversation. He had ridden over her, and ridden on without a look
behind. The conversation moved, after a pause, back to the plausible
excuse for his call. He desired to see some old rent-book which would
show how the doomed tenant in Calder Street had originally fallen into
arrears.
"Where is that old book of Mr. Skellorn's, Hilda?" her mother asked.
She could not speak. The sob was at her throat. If she had spoken it
would have burst through, and she would have been not merely the child,
but the disgraced child.
"Hilda!" repeated her mother.
Her singular silence drew the attention of all. She blushed a sombre
scarlet. No! She could not speak. She cursed herself. "What a little
fool I am! Surely I can..." Useless! She could not speak. She took the
one desperate course open to her, and ran out of the room, to the
astonishment of three puzzled and rather frightened adults. Her shame
was now notorious. "Baby! Great baby!" she gnashed at her own
inconceivable silliness. Had she no pride?... And now she was in the
gloom of the lobby, and she could hear Florrie in the kitchen softly
whistling.... She was out in the dark lobby exactly like a foolish,
passionate child.... She knew all the time that she could easily
persuade her mother to leave her alone with Florrie in the house; she
had levers to move her mother.... But of what use, now, to do that?
CHAPTER XII
THE TELEGRAM
I
It was the end of February 1880. A day resembling spring had come,
illusive, but exquisite. Hilda, having started out too hurriedly for the
office after the midday dinner, had had to return home for a proof which
she had forgotten.
She now had the house to herself, as a kingdom over which she reigned;
for, amid all her humiliation and pensive dejection, she had been able
to exert sufficient harsh force to drive her mother to London in company
with Miss Gailey. She was alone, free; and she tasted her freedom to the
point of ecstasy. She conned corrected proofs at her meals: this was
life. When Florrie came in with another dish, Hilda looked up
impatiently from printed matter, as if disturbed out of a dream, and
Florrie put on an apologetic air, to invoke pardon. It was largely
pretence on Hilda's part, but it was life. Then she had the delicious
anxiety of being responsible for Florrie. "Now, Florrie, I'm going out
to-night, to see Miss Orgreave at Bleakridge. I shall rely on you to go
to bed not later than nine. I've got the key. _I may not be back till
the last train_." "Yes, miss!" And what with Hilda's solemnity and
Florrie's impressed eyes, the ten-forty-five was transformed into a
train that circulated in the dark and mysterious hour just before
cockcrow. Hilda, alone, was always appealing to Florrie's loyalty.
Sometimes when discreetly abolishing some old-fashioned, work-increasing
method of her mother's, she would speak to Florrie in a tone of sudden,
transient intimacy, raising her for a moment to the rank of an
intellectual equal as her voice hinted that her mother after all
belonged to the effete generation.
Awkwardly, with her gloved hands, turning over the pages of a book in
which the slip-proof had been carelessly left hidden, Hilda, from her
bedroom, heard Florrie come whistling down the attic stairs. Florrie had
certainly heard nothing of her young mistress since the door-bang which
had signalled her departure for the office. In the delusion that she was
utterly solitary in the house, Florrie was whistling, not at all like a
modest young woman, but like a carter. Hilda knew that she could
whistle, and had several times indicated to her indirectly that
whistling was undesirable; but she had never heard her whistling as she
whistled now. Her first impulse was to rush out of the bedroom and
'catch' Florrie and make her look foolish, but a sense of honour
restrained her from a triumph so mean, and she kept perfectly still. She
heard Florrie run into her mother's bedroom; and then she heard that
voice, usually so timid, saying loudly, exultantly, and even coarsely:
"Oh! How beautiful I am! How beautiful I am! Shan't I just mash the men!
Shan't I just mash 'em!" This new and vulgar word 'mash' offended Hilda.
II
She crept noiselessly to the door, which was ajar, and looked forth like
a thief. The door of her mother's room was wide open, and across the
landing she could see Florrie posturing in front of the large mirror of
the wardrobe. The sight shocked her in a most peculiar manner. It was
Florrie's afternoon out, and the child was wearing, for the first time,
an old brown skirt that Hilda had abandoned to her. But in this long
skirt she was no more a child. Although scarcely yet fifteen years old,
she was a grown woman. She had astoundingly developed during her service
with Mrs. Lessways. She was scarcely less tall than Hilda, and she
possessed a sturdy, rounded figure which put Hilda's to shame. It was
uncanny--the precocity of the children of the poor! It was disturbing!
On a chair lay Florrie's new 'serviceable' cloak, and a cheap but sound
bonnet: both articles the fruit of a special journey with her aunt to
Baines's drapery shop at Bursley, where there was a small special sober
department for servants who were wise enough not to yield to the
temptation of 'finery.' Florrie, who at thirteen and a half had never
been able to rattle one penny against another, had since then earned
some two thousand five hundred pennies, and had clothed herself and put
money aside and also poured a shower of silver upon her clamorous
family. Amazing feat! Amazing growth! She seized the 'good' warm cloak
and hid her poor old bodice beneath it, and drew out her thick pig-tail,
and shook it into position with a free gesture of the head; and on the
head she poised the bonnet, and tied the ribbons under the delightful
chin. And then, after a moment of hard scrutiny, danced and whistled,
and cried again: "How beautiful I am! How pretty I am!"
She was. She positively did not look a bit like a drudge. She was not
the Florrie of the kitchen and of the sack-apron, but a young, fledged
creature with bursting bosom who could trouble any man by the capricious
modesty of a gaze downcast. The miraculous skirt, odious on Hilda, had
the brightness of a new skirt. Her hands and arms were red and chapped,
but her face had bloomed perfect in the kitchen like a flower in a
marl-pit. It was a face that an ambitious girl could rely on. Its charm
and the fluid charm of her movements atoned a thousand times for all her
barbaric ignorance and crudity; the grime on her neck was naught.
Hilda watched, intensely ashamed of this spying, but she could not bring
herself to withdraw. She was angry with Florrie; she was outraged. Then
she thought: "Why should I be angry? The fact is I'm being mother all
over again. After all, why shouldn't Florrie...?" And she was a little
jealous of Florrie, and a little envious of her, because Florrie had the
naturalness of a savage or of an animal, unsophisticated by ideals of
primness. Hilda was disconcerted at the discovery of Florrie as an
authentic young woman. Florrie, more than seven years her junior! She
felt experienced, and indulgent as the old are indulgent. For the first
time in her life she did honestly feel old. And she asked herself--half
in dismay: "Florrie has got thus far. Where am _I_? What am _I_ doing?"
It was upsetting.
At length Florrie took off the bonnet and ran upstairs, and shut the
door of her attic. Apparently she meant to improve the bonnet by some
touch. After waiting nervously a few moments, the aged Hilda slipped
silently downstairs, and through the kitchen, and so by the garden,
where with their feet in mire the hare trees were giving signs of hope
under the soft blue sky, into the street. Florrie would never know that
she had been watched.
III
Ten minutes later, when she went into the office of Dayson & Co., Hilda
was younger than ever. It was a young, fragile girl, despite the dark
frown of her intense seriousness, who with accustomed gestures poked the
stove, and hung bonnet and jacket on a nail and then sat down to the
loaded desk; it was an ingenuous girl absurdly but fiercely anxious to
shoulder the world's weight. She had passed a whole night in revolt
against George Cannon's indignity; she had called it, furiously, an
insult. She had said to herself: "Well, if I'm so useless as all that,
I'll never go near his office again." But the next afternoon she had
appeared as usual at the office, meek, modest, with a smile, fatigued
and exquisitely resigned, and a soft voice. And she had worked with even
increased energy and devotion. This kissing of the rod, this irrational
instinctive humility, was a strange and sweet experience for her. Such
was the Hilda of the office; but Hilda at home, cantankerous, obstinate,
and rude, had offered a remarkable contrast to her until the moment when
it was decided that her mother should accompany Miss Gailey to London.
From that moment Hilda at home had been an angel, and the Hilda of the
office had shown some return of sturdy pride.
To-day the first number of _The Five Towns Chronicle_ was to go to
press.... The delays had been inexplicable and exasperating to Hilda,
though she had not criticized them, even to herself; they were now over.
The town had no air of being excited about the appearance of its new
paper. But the office was excited. The very room itself looked feverish.
It was changed; more tables had been brought into it, and papers and
litter had accumulated enormously; it was a room humanized by
habitation, with a physiognomy that was individual and sympathetic.
From beyond the closed door of the inner room came the sound of men's
rapid voices. Hilda could distinguish Mr. Cannon's and Arthur Dayson's;
there was a third, unfamiliar to her. Having nothing to do, she began to
make work, rearranging the contents of her table, fingering with a
factitious hurry the thick bundles of proofs of correspondence from the
villages (so energetically organized by the great Dayson), and the now
useless 'copy,' and the innumerable letters, that Dayson was always
disturbing, and the samples of encaustic tiles brought in by an inventor
who desired the powerful aid of the press, and the catalogues, and
Dayson's cuttings from the Manchester, Birmingham, and London papers,
and the notepaper and envelopes and cards, and Veale Chifferiel & Co.'s
almanac that had somehow come up with other matters from Mr. Karkeek's
office below. And then she dusted, with pursed lips that blamed the
disgraceful and yet excusable untidiness of men, and then she examined,
with despair and with pride, her dirty little hands, whose finger-tips
all clustered together (they were now like the hands of a nice, careless
schoolboy), and lightly dusted one against the other. Then she found a
galley-proof under the table. It was a duplicate proof of _The Five
Towns Chronicle's_ leading article, dictated to her by a prodigious
Arthur Dayson, in Mr. Cannon's presence, on the previous day, and
dealing faithfully with "The Calder Street Scandal" and with Mr.
Enville, a member of the Local Board--implicated in the said scandal.
The proof was useless now, for the leader-page was made up.
Nevertheless, Hilda carefully classified it "in case..."
IV
On a chair was _The Daily Telegraph_, which Dayson had evidently been
reading, for it was blue pencilled. Hilda too must read it; her duty was
to read it: Dayson had told her that she ought never to neglect the
chance of reading any newspaper whatever, and that a young woman in her
responsible situation could not possibly know too much. Which advice,
though it came from a person ridiculous to her, seemed sound enough, and
was in fact rather flattering. In the _Telegraph_ she saw, between
Dayson's blue lines, an account of a terrible military disaster. She was
moved by it in different ways. It produced in her a grievous, horror-
struck desolation; but it also gave her an extraordinary sensation of
fervid pleasure. It was an item of news that would have to appear in the
_Chronicle_, and this would mean changes in the make-up, and work at
express speed, and similar delights. Already the paper was supposed to
be on the machine, though in fact, as she well knew, it was not. No
doubt the subject of discussion in the inner room was the disaster!...
Yes, she was acutely and happily excited. And always afterwards, when
she heard or saw the sinister word 'Majuba' (whose political
associations never in the least interested her), she would recall her
contradictory, delicious feelings on that dramatic afternoon.
While she was busily cutting out the news from the _Telegraph_ to be
ready for Arthur Dayson, there was a very timid knock at the door, and
Florrie entered, as into some formidable cabinet of tyrannic rulers.
"If you please, miss--" she began to whisper.
"Why, Florrie," Hilda exclaimed, "what have you put that old skirt on
for, when I've given you mine? I told you--"
"I did put it on, miss. But there came a telegram. I told the boy you
were here, but he said that wasn't no affair of his, so I brought it
myself, and I thought you wouldn't care for to see me in your skirt,
miss, not while on duty, miss, 'specially here like! So I up quick and
changed it back."
"Telegram?" Hilda repeated the word.
Florrie, breathless after running and all this whispering, advanced in
the prettiest confusion towards the throne, and Hilda took the telegram
with a gesture as casual as she could manage. Florrie's abashed mien,
and the arrival of the telegram, stiffened her back and steadied her
hand. Imagine that infant being afraid of her, Hilda! This too was life!
And the murmur of the men in the inner room was thrilling to Hilda's
ears.
She brusquely opened the telegram and read: "Lessways, Lessways Street,
Turnhill. Mother ill. Can you come?--Gailey."
CHAPTER XIII
HILDA'S WORLD
I
The conversation in the inner room promised to be interminable. Hilda
could not decide what to do. She felt no real alarm on her mother's
account. Mrs. Lessways, often slightly indisposed, was never seriously
ill; she possessed one of those constitutions which do not go to
extremes of disease; if a malady overtook her, she invariably 'had' it
in a mild form. Doubtless Sarah Gailey, preoccupied and worried by new
responsibilities, desired to avoid the added care of nursing the sick.
Hence the telegram. Moreover, if the case had been grave, she would not
have put the telegram in the interrogative; she would have written,
'Please come at once.' No, Hilda was not unduly disturbed. Nevertheless,
she had an odd idea that she ought to rush to the station and catch the
next train, which left Knype at five minutes to four; this idea did not
spring from her own conscience, but rather from the old-fashioned
collective family conscience. But at a quarter to four, when it was
already too late to catch the local train at Turnhill, the men had not
emerged from the inner room; nor had Hilda come to any decision. As the
departure of her mother and Miss Gailey had involved much solemn poring
over time-tables, it happened that she knew the times of all the trains
to London; to catch the next and last she would have to leave Turnhill
at _5.55_. She said that she would wait and see. Her work for the first
number of the paper was practically done, but there was this mysterious
conclave which fretted her curiosity and threatened exciting
development; also the Majuba disaster would mean trouble for somebody.
And in any event she hated the very thought of quitting Turnhill before
the _Chronicle_ was definitely out. She had lived for the moment of its
publication, and she could not bear to miss it. She was almost angry
with her mother; she was certainly angry with Miss Gailey. All the
egotism of the devotee in her was aroused and irate.
Then the men came forth from the inner room, with a rather unexpected
suddenness. Mr. Cannon appeared first; and after him Mr. Enville; lastly
Arthur Dayson, papers in hand. Intimidated by the presence of the
stranger, Hilda affected to be busy at her table. Mr. Enville shook
hands very amicably with George Cannon, and instantly departed. As he
passed down the stairs she caught sight of him; he was a grizzled man of
fifty, lean and shabby, despite his reputation for riches. She knew that
he was a candidate for the supreme position of Chief Bailiff at the end
of the year, and he did not accord with her spectacular ideal of a Chief
Bailiff; the actual Chief Bailiff was a beautiful and picturesque old
man, with perfectly tended white whiskers, and always a flower in his
coat. Further, she could not reconcile this nearly effusive friendliness
between Mr. Enville and Mr. Cannon with the animadversions of the
leading article which Arthur Dayson had composed, and Mr. Cannon had
approved, only twenty-four hours earlier.
As Mr. Cannon shut the door at the head of the stairs, she saw him give
a discreet, disdainful wink to Dayson. Then he turned sharply to Hilda,
and said, thoughtful and stern:
"Your notebook, please."
Bracing herself, and still full of pride in her ability to write this
mysterious shorthand, she opened her notebook, and waited with poised
pencil. The mien of the two men had communicated to her an excitement
far surpassing their own, in degree and in felicity. The whole of her
vital force was concentrated at the point of her pencil, and she seemed
to be saying to herself: "I'm very sorry, mother, but see how important
this is! I shall consider what I can do for you the very moment I am
free."
Arthur Dayson coughed and plumped heavily on a chair.
II
It was in such moments as this that Dayson really lived, with all the
force of his mediocrity. George Cannon was not a journalist; he could
compose a letter, but he had not the trick of composing an article. He
felt, indeed, a negligent disdain for the people who possessed this
trick, as for performers in a circus; he certainly did not envy them,
for he knew that he could buy them, as a carpenter buys tools. His
attitude was that of the genuine bourgeois towards the artist:
possessive, incurious, and contemptuous. Dayson, however, ignored George
Cannon's attitude, perhaps did not even perceive what it was. He gloried
in his performance. Accustomed to dictate extempore speeches on any
subject whatever to his shorthand pupils, he was quite at his ease,
quite master of his faculties, and self-satisfaction seemed to stand out
on his brow like genial sweat while the banal phrases poured glibly from
the cavern behind his jagged teeth; and each phrase was a perfect model
of provincial journalese. George Cannon had to sit and listen,--to
approve, or at worst to make tentative suggestions.
The first phrase which penetrated through the outer brain of the
shorthand writer to the secret fastness where Hilda sat in judgment on
the world was this:
"The campaign of vulgar vilification inaugurated yesterday by our
contemporary _The Staffordshire Signal_ against our esteemed
fellow-townsman Mr. Richard Enville..."
This phrase came soon after such phrases as "Our first bow to the
public"... "Our solemn and bounden duty to the district which it is our
highest ambition to serve..." etc. Phrases which had already occurred in
the leading article dictated on the previous day.
Hilda soon comprehended that in twenty-four hours Mr. Enville, from
being an unscrupulous speculator who had used his official position to
make illicit profits out of the sale of land to the town for town
improvements, had become the very mirror of honesty and high fidelity to
the noblest traditions of local government. Without understanding the
situation, and before even she had formulated to herself any criticism
of the persons concerned, she felt suddenly sick. She dared not look at
George Cannon, but once when she raised her head to await the flow of a
period that had been arrested at a laudatory superlative, she caught
Dayson winking coarsely at him. She hated Dayson for that; George Cannon
might wink at Dayson (though she regretted the condescending
familiarity), but Dayson had no right to presume to wink at George
Cannon. She hoped that Mr. Cannon had silently snubbed him.
As the article proceeded there arose a crying from the Square below. A
_Signal_ boy, one of the earliest to break the silent habit of the
Square, was bawling a fresh edition of Arthur Dayson's contemporary, and
across the web of the dictator's verbiage she could hear the words:
"South Africa--Details--" Mr. Cannon glanced at his watch impatiently.
Hilda could see, under her bent and frowning brow, his white hand moving
on the dark expanse of his waistcoat.
Immediately afterwards Mr. Cannon, interrupting, said:
"That'll be all right. Finish it. I must be off."
"Right you are!" said Dayson grandly. "I'll run down with it to the
printer's myself--soon as it's copied."
Mr. Cannon nodded. "And tell him we've got to be on the railway
bookstalls first thing to-morrow morning."
"He'll never do it."
"He must do it. I don't care if he works all night."
"But--"
"There hasn't got to be any 'buts,' Dayson. There's been a damned sight
too much delay as it is."
"All right! All right!" Dayson placated him hastily.
Mr. Cannon departed.
It seemed to Hilda that she shivered, but whether with pain or pleasure
she knew not. Never before had Mr. Cannon sworn in her presence. All day
his manner had been peculiar, as though the strain of mysterious
anxieties was changing his spirit. And now he was gone, and she had said
naught to him about the telegram from Miss Gailey!
Arthur Dayson rolled oratorically on in defence of the man whom
yesterday he had attacked.
And then Sowter, the old clerk, entered.
"What is it? Don't interrupt me!" snapped Dayson.
"There's the _Signal_.... Latest details.... This here Majuba business!"
"What do I care about your Majuba?" Dayson retorted. "I've got something
more important than your Majuba."
"It was the governor as told me to give it you," said Sowter, restive.
"Well, give it me, then; and don't waste my time!" Dayson held out an
imperial hand for the sheet. He looked at Hilda as if for moral support
and added, to her, in a martyred tone: "I suppose I shall have to dash
off a few lines about Sowter's Majuba while you're copying out my
article."
"And the governor said to remind you that Mr. Enville wants a proof of
his advertisement," Sowter called out sulkily as he was disappearing
down the stairs.
Hilda blushed, as she had blushed in writing George Cannon's first lie
about the printing of the first issue. She had accustomed herself to
lies, and really without any difficulty or hesitation. Yes! She had even
reached the level of being religiously proud of them! But now her
bullied and crushed conscience leaped up again, and in the swift alarm
of the shock her heart was once more violently beating. Yet amid the
wild confusion of her feelings, a mechanical intelligence guided her
hand to follow Arthur Dayson's final sentences. And there shone out from
her soul a contempt for the miserable hack, so dazzling that it would
have blinded him--had he not been already blind.
III
That evening she sat alone in the office. The first number of _The Five
Towns Chronicle_, after the most astounding adventures, had miraculously
gone to press. Dayson and Sowter had departed. There was no reason why
Hilda should remain,--burning gas to no purpose. She had telegraphed, by
favour of a Karkeek office-boy, to Miss Gailey, saying that she would
come by the first train on the morrow--Saturday, and she had therefore
much to do at home. Nevertheless, she sat idle in the office, unable to
leave. Her whole life was in that office, and it was just when she was
most weary of the environment that she would vacillate longest before
quitting it. She was unhappy and apprehensive, much less about her
mother than about the attitude of her conscience towards the morals of
this new world of hers. The dramatic Enville incident had spoiled the
pleasure which she had felt in sacrificing her formal duty as a daughter
to her duty as a clerk. She had been disillusioned. She foresaw the
future with alarm.
And yet, strangely, the disillusion and the fear were a source of
pleasure. She savoured them with her loyalty, that loyalty which had
survived even the frightful blow of George Cannon's casual disdain at
her mother's tea-table! Whatever this new world might be, it was hers,
it was precious. She would no more think of abandoning it than a young
mother would think of abandoning a baby obviously imperfect.... Nay, she
would cling to it the tighter!
George Cannon came up the stairs with his decisive and rapid step. She
rose from her chair at the table as he entered. He was wearing a new
overcoat, that she had never seen before, with a fine velvet collar.
"You're going?" he asked, a little breathless.
"I _was_ going," she replied in her clear, timid voice, implying that
she was ready to stay.
"Everything all right?"
"Mr. Dayson said so."
"He's gone?"
"Yes. Mr. Sowter's gone too."
"Good!" he murmured. And he straightened his shoulders, and, putting his
hands in the pockets of his trousers, began to walk about the room.
Hilda moved to get her bonnet and jacket. She moved very quietly and
delicately, and, because he was there, she put on her bonnet and jacket
with gestures of an almost apologetic modesty. He seemed to ignore her,
so that she was able to glance surreptitiously at his face. He was now
apparently less worried. Still, it was an enigmatic face. She had no
notion of what he had been doing since his hurried exit in the
afternoon. He might have been attending to his legal practice, or he
might have been abroad on mysterious errands.
"Funny business, this newspaper business is, isn't it?" he remarked,
after a moment. "Just imagine Enville, now! Upon my soul I didn't think
he had it in him!... Of course,"--he threw his head up with a careless
laugh,--"of course, it would have been madness for us to miss such a
chance! He's one of the men of the future, in this town."
"Yes," she agreed, in an eager whisper.
In an instant George Cannon had completely changed the attitude of her
conscience,--by less than a phrase, by a mere intonation. In an instant
he had reassured her into perfect security. It was plain, from every
accent of his voice, that he had done nothing of which he thought he
ought to be ashamed. Business was business, and newspapers were
newspapers; and the simple truth was that her absurd conscience had been
in the wrong. Her duty was to accept the standards of her new world. Who
was she? Nobody! She did accept the standards of her new world, with
fervour. She was proud of them, actually proud of their apparent
wickedness. She had accomplished an act of faith. Her joy became
intense, and shot glinting from her eyes as she put on her gloves. Her
life became grand to her. She knew she was known in the town as 'the
girl who could write shorthand.' Her situation was not ordinary; it was
unique. Again, the irregularity of the hours, and the fact that the work
never commenced till the afternoon, seemed to her romantic and
beautiful. Here she was, at nine o'clock, alone with George Cannon on
the second floor of the house! And who, gazing from the Square at the
lighted window, would guess that she and he were there alone?
All the activities of newspaper production were poetized by her fervour.
The _Chronicle_ was not a poor little weekly sheet, struggling into
existence anyhow, at haphazard, dependent on other newspapers for all
except purely local items of news. It was an organ! It was the
courageous rival of the ineffable _Signal_, its natural enemy! One day
it would trample on the _Signal_! And though her role was humble, though
she understood scarcely anything of the enterprise beyond her own
duties, yet she was very proud of her role too. And she was glad that
the men were seemingly so careless, so disorderly, so forgetful of
details, so--in a word--childish! For it was part of her role to remind
them, to set them right, to watch over their carelessness, to restore
order where they had left disorder. In so far as her role affected them,
she condescended to them.
She informed George Cannon of her mother's indisposition, and that she
meant to go to London the next morning, and to return most probably in a
few days. He stopped in his walk, near her. Like herself, he was not
seriously concerned about Mrs. Lessways, but he showed a courteous
sympathy.
"It's a good thing you didn't go to London when your mother went," he
said, after a little conversation.
He did not add: "You've been indispensable." He had no air of
apologizing for his insult at the tea-table. But he looked firmly at
her, with a peculiar expression.
Suddenly she felt all her slimness and fragility; she felt all the girl
in herself and all the dominant man in him, and all the empty space
around them. She went hot. Her sight became dim. She was ecstatically
blissful; she was deeply ashamed. She desired the experience to last for
ever, and him and herself to be eternally moveless; and at the same time
she desired to fly. Or rather, she had no desire to fly, but her voice
and limbs acted of themselves, against her volition.
"Good-night, then."
"But I say! Your wages. Shall I pay you now?"
"No, no! It doesn't matter in the least, thanks."
He shook hands with a careless, good-natured smile, which seemed to be
saying: "Foolish creature! You can't defend yourself, and these airs are
amusing. But I am benevolent." And she was ashamed of her shame, and
furious against the childishness that made her frown, and lower her
eyes, and escape out of the room like a mouse.
CHAPTER XIV
TO LONDON
I
In the middle of the night Hilda woke up, and within a few seconds she
convinced herself that her attitude to Miss Gailey's telegram had been
simply monstrous. She saw it, in the darkness, as an enormity. She ought
to have responded to the telegram at once; she ought to have gone to
London by the afternoon train. What had there been to prevent her from
knocking at the door of the inner room, and saying to Mr. Cannon, in the
presence of no matter whom: "I am very sorry, Mr. Cannon, but I've just
had a telegram that mother is ill in London, and I must leave by the
next train"? There had been nothing to prevent her! At latest she should
have caught the evening train. Business was of no account in such a
crisis. Her mother might be very ill, might be dying, might be dead. It
was not for trifles that people sent such telegrams. The astounding
thing was that she should have been so blind to her obvious duty.... And
she said to herself, thinking with a mysterious and beautiful remorse of
the last minute of her talk with Mr. Cannon: "If I had done as I ought
to have done, I should have been in London, or on my way to London,
instead of in the room with him there; and _that_ would not have
occurred!" But what 'that' was, she could not have explained.
Nevertheless, Mr. Cannon's phrase, "It's a good thing you didn't go to
London," still gave her a pleasure, though the pleasure was dulled.
Then she tried to reassure herself. Sarah Gailey was nervous and easily
frightened. Her mother had an excellent constitution. The notion of her
mother being seriously ill was silly. In a few hours she would be with
her mother, and would be laughing at these absurd night-fears. In any
case there would assuredly be a letter from Sarah Gailey by the first
post, so that before starting she would have exact information. She
succeeded, partially, in reassuring herself for a brief space; but soon
she was more unhappy than ever in the clear conviction of her
wrongdoing. Again and again she formulated, in her fancy, scenes of the
immediate future, as for example at her mother's dying bed, and she
imagined conversations and repeated the actual words used by herself and
others, interminably. And then she returned to the previous day, and
hundreds of times she went into the inner room and said to Mr. Cannon:
"I'm very sorry, Mr. Cannon, but I've just had a telegram--" etc. Why
had she not said it?... Thus worked the shuttles of her mind, with
ruthless, insane insistence, until she knew not whether she was awake or
asleep, and the very tissues of her physical brain seemed raw.
She thought feebly: "If I got up and lighted the candle and walked
about, I should end this." But she could not rise. She was netted down
to the bed. And when she tried to soothe herself with other
images--images of delight--she found that they had lost their power.
Undressing, a few hours earlier, she had lived again, in exquisite and
delicious alarm, through the last minute of her talk with Mr. Cannon;
she had gone to sleep while reconstituting those instants. But now their
memory left her indifferent, even inspired repugnance. And her remorse
little by little lost its mysterious beauty.
She clung to the idea of the reassuring letter which she would receive.
That was her sole glint of consolation.
II
At six she was abroad in the house, intensely alive, intensely conscious
of every particle of her body, and of every tiniest operation of her
mind. In less than two hours the letter would drop into the lobby! At
half-past six both she and Florrie were dressed, and Florrie, stern with
the solemnity and importance of her mission, was setting forth to the
Saracen's Head to order a cab to be at the door at eight o'clock.
Hilda had much to do, for it was of course necessary to shut up the
house, and the packing of her trunk had to be finished, and the trunk
locked and corded, and a label found; and there was breakfast to cook.
Mrs. Lessways would have easily passed a couple of days in preparing the
house for closure. Nevertheless, time, instead of flying, lagged. At
seven-thirty Hilda, in the partially dismantled parlour, and Florrie in
the kitchen, were sitting down to breakfast. "In a quarter of an hour,"
said Hilda to herself, "the post will be here." But in four minutes she
had eaten the bacon and drunk the scalding tea, and in five she had
carried all the breakfast-things into the kitchen, where Florrie was
loudly munching over the sloppy deal table. She told Florrie sharply
that there would be ample time to wash up. Then she went to her bedroom,
and, dragging out her trunk, slid it unaided down the stairs. Back again
in the bedroom, she carelessly glanced at the money in her purse, and
then put on her things for the journey. Waiting, she stood at the window
to look for the postman. Presently she saw him in the distance; he
approached quickly, but spent an unendurable minute out of sight in the
shop next door. When he emerged Hilda was in anguish. Had he a letter
for her? Had he not? He seemed to waver at the gateway, and to decide to
enter.... She heard the double blow of his drumstick baton.... Now in a
few seconds she would know about her mother.
Proudly restraining herself, she walked with composure to the stairs.
She was astonished to see Florrie bending down to pick up the letter.
Florrie must have been waiting ready to rush to the front door. As she
raised her body and caught sight of Hilda, Florrie blushed.
The stairs were blocked by the trunk which Hilda had left on the
stair-mat for the cabman to deal with. Standing behind the trunk, Hilda
held forth her hand for the letter.
"Please, miss, it's for me," Florrie whispered, like a criminal.
"For you?" Hilda cried, startled.
In proof Florrie timidly exposed the envelope, on which Hilda plainly
saw, in a coarse, scrawling masculine hand, the words "Miss Florrie
Bagster." Florrie's face was a burning peony.
Hilda turned superciliously away, too proud to demand any explanations.
All her alarms were refreshed by the failure of a letter from Miss
Gailey. In vain she urged to herself that Miss Gailey had thought it
unnecessary to write, expecting to see her; or that the illness having
passed, Miss Gailey, busy, had put off writing. She could not dismiss a
vision of a boarding-house in London upset from top to bottom by the
grave illness of one person in it, and a distracted landlady who had not
a moment even to scribble a post card. And all the time, as this vision
tore and desolated her, she was thinking: "Fancy that child having a
follower, at her age! She's certainly got a follower!"
The cab came five minutes before it was due.
III
As the cab rolled through Market Square, where the Saturday stalls were
being busily set up, the ironmongery building was framed for an instant
by the oblong of the rattling window. Hilda seemed to see the place
anew--for the first time. A man was taking down the shutters of the
shop. Above that were the wire-blinds with the name of "Q. Karkeek"; and
above the blinds the blue posters of the _Five Towns Chronicle_. No
outward sign of Mr. Cannon! And yet Mr. Cannon.... She had an extremely
disconcerting sensation of the mysteriousness of Mr. Cannon, and of the
mysteriousness of all existence. Mr. Cannon existed somewhere at that
moment, engaged in some activity. In a house afar off, unknown to her,
her mother existed--if she was not dead! Florrie, with a bundle of
personal goods on her lap, and doubtless the letter in her bosom, sat
impressed and subdued, opposite to her in the shifting universe of the
cab, which was moving away from the empty and silent home. Florrie was
being thrown back out of luxury into her original hovel, and was
accepting the stroke with the fatalism of the young and of the poor. And
one day Hilda and her mother and Florrie would be united again in the
home now deserted, whose heavy key was in the traveller's satchel....
But would they?
At the station there was a quarter of an hour to wait. Hilda dismissed
Florrie, with final injunctions, and followed her trunk to the bleak
platform. The old porter was very kind. She went to the little yellow
bookstall. There, under her hand, was a low pile of _The Five Towns
Chronicle._ Miracle! Miraculous George Cannon! She flushed with pride,
with a sense of ownership, as she took a penny from her purse to pay for
a copy.
"It's th' new peeper," drawled the bookstall lad, with a most foolish
condescension towards the new paper.
"Lout!" she addressed him in her heart. "If you knew whom you were
talking to--!"
With what pride, masked by careful indifference, she would hand the copy
of the _Chronicle_ to her mother! Her mother would exclaim "Bless us!"
and spend a day or two in conning the thing, making singular discoveries
in it at short intervals.
IV
It was not until she had reached Euston, and driven through a tumultuous
and shabby thoroughfare to King's Cross, and taken another ticket, and
installed herself in another train, that Hilda began to feel suddenly,
like an abyss opening beneath her strength, the lack of food. Meticulous
in her clerical duties, and in many minor mechanical details of her
personal daily existence, she was capable of singular negligences
concerning matters which the heroic part of her despised and which did
not immediately bear on a great purpose in hand. Thus, in her
carelessness, she found herself with less than two shillings in her
pocket after paying for the ticket to Hornsey. She thought, grimly
resigned: "Never heed! I shall manage. In half an hour I shall be there,
and my anxiety will be at an end."
The train, almost empty, waited forlornly in a forlorn and empty part of
the huge, resounding ochreish station. Then, without warning or signal,
it slipped off, as though casually, towards an undetermined goal. Often
it ran level with the roofs of vague, far-stretching acres of houses--
houses vile and frowsy, and smoking like pyres in the dank air. And
always it travelled on a platform of brick arches. Now and then the
walled road received a tributary that rounded subtly into it, and this
tributary could be seen curving away, on innumerable brick arches,
through the chimneypots, and losing itself in a dim horizon of gloom. At
intervals a large, lifeless station brought the train to a halt for a
moment, and the march was resumed. A clock at one of these stations said
a quarter to two.
Then the name of Hornsey quickened her apprehensive heart. As she
descended nervously from the train, her trunk was shot out from the
guard's van behind. She went and stood over it, until the last of a
series of kindly porters came along and touched his cap. When she asked
for a cab, he seemed doubtful whether a cab was available, and looked
uncertainly along the immense empty platform and across at other
platforms. The train had wandered away. She strove momentarily to
understand the reason of these great sleeping stations; but fatigue,
emotional and physical, had robbed her of all intelligent curiosity in
the phenomena of the mysterious and formidable city.
Presently the porter threw the trunk on his shoulder and she trudged
after him up steps and over an iron bridge and down steps; and an
express whizzed like a flying shell through the station and vanished.
And at a wicket, in a ragged road, there actually stood a cab and a
skeleton of a horse between the shafts. The driver bounced up,
enheartened at sight of the trunk and the inexperienced, timid girl; but
the horse did not stir in its crooked coma.
"What address, miss?" asked the cabman.
"Cedars House, Harringay Park Road."
The cabman paused in intense thought, and after a few seconds responded
cheerfully: "Yes, miss."
The porter touched his cap for threepence. The lashed horse plunged
forward. Hilda leaned back in the creaking and depraved vehicle, and
sighed, "So this is their London!"
She found herself travelling in the direction from which she had come,
parallel to the railway, down the longest street that she had ever seen.
On her left were ten thousand small new houses, all alike. On her right
were broken patches of similar houses, interspersed with fragments of
green field and views of the arches of the railway; the conception of
the horrible patience which had gone to the construction of these
endless, endless arches made her feel sick.
The cab turned into another road, and another; and then stopped. She saw
the words "Cedars House" on a gateway. She could not open the door of
the cab. The cabman opened it.
"Blinds down here, miss!" he said, with appropriate mournfulness.
It seemed a rather large house; and every blind was drawn. Had the
incredible occurred, then? Had this disaster befallen just her, of all
the young women in the world?
She saw the figure of Sarah Gailey.
"Good afternoon," she called out calmly. "Here I am. Only I'm afraid I
haven't got enough to pay the cabman."
But while she was speaking she knew from Sarah Gailey's face that the
worst and the most ridiculous of her night-fears had been justified by
destiny.
Three days previously Mrs. Lessways had been suddenly taken ill in the
street. A doctor passing in his carriage had come to her assistance and
driven her home. Food eaten on the previous evening had 'disagreed' with
her. At first the case was not regarded as very serious. But as the
patient did not improve in the night Miss Gailey telegraphed to Hilda.
Immediately afterwards, the doctor, summoned in alarm, diagnosed
peritonitis caused by a perforating cancer. Mrs. Lessways had died on
the third day at eleven in the morning, while Hilda was in the train.
Useless to protest that these catastrophes were unthinkable, that Mrs.
Lessways had never been ill in her life! The catastrophe had happened.
And upstairs a corpse lay in proof.
* * * * *
BOOK II
HER RECOVERY
CHAPTER I
SIN
I
From her bed Hilda could see the trees waving in the wind. Every morning
she had thus watched them, without interest. At first the branches had
been utterly bare, and beyond their reticulation had been visible the
rosy facade of a new Board-school. But now the branches were rich with
leafage, hiding most of the Board-school, so that only a large upper
window of it could be seen. This window, upon which the sun glinted
dazzlingly, threw back the rays on to Hilda's bed, giving her for a few
moments the illusion of direct sunlight. The hour was eleven o'clock. On
the night-table lay a tea-tray in disorder, and on the turned-down sheet
some crumbs of toast. A low, nervous tap at the door caused Hilda to
stir in the bed. Sarah Gailey entered hurriedly. In her bony yellowed
hand she held a collection of tradesmen's account-books.
"Good morning, dear, how are you?" she asked, bending awkwardly over the
bed. In the same instant she looked askance at the tray.
"I'm all right, thanks," said Hilda lazily, observing the ceiling.
"You haven't been too cold without the eiderdown? I forgot to ask you
before. You know I only took it off because I thought the weather was
getting too warm.... I didn't want it for another bed. I assure you it's
in the chest of drawers in my room." Sarah Gailey added the last words
as if supplicating to be believed.
"You needn't tell me that," said Hilda. She was not angry, but bored, by
this characteristic remark of Miss Gailey's. In three months she had
learnt a great deal about the new landlady of the Cedars, that strange
neurotic compound of ability, devotion, thin-skinned vanity, and sheer,
narrow stupidity. "I've been quite warm enough," Hilda added as quickly
as she could, lest Miss Gailey might have time to convince herself to
the contrary.
"And the toast? I do hope--after all I've said to that Hettie about--"
"You see I've eaten it all," Hilda interrupted her, pointing to the
plate.
Their faces were close together; they exchanged a sad smile. Miss Gailey
was still bending over her, anxiously, as over a child. Yet neither the
ageing and worn woman nor the flaccid girl felt the difference between
them in age. Nor was Hilda in any ordinary sense ill. The explanation of
Miss Gailey's yearning attitude lay in an exaggerated idea of her duty
to Hilda, whose mother's death had been the result of an act of
friendliness to her. If Mrs. Lessways had not come to London in order to
keep company with Sarah, she might--she would, under Providence--have
been alive and well that day; such was Sarah's reasoning, which by the
way ignored certain statements of the doctor. Sarah would never forgive
herself. But she sought, by an infatuated devotion, to earn the
forgiveness of Caroline's daughter. Her attentions might have infuriated
an earlier Hilda, or at least have been met with disdain only half
concealed. But on the present actual Hilda they produced simply no
effect of any kind. The actual Hilda, living far within the mysterious
fastness of her own being, was too solitary, too preoccupied, and too
fatigued, to be touched even by the noble beauty that distinguished the
expiatory and protective gesture of the spinster, otherwise somewhat
ludicrous, as she leaned across the bed and cut off the sunshine.
II
On the morning of her mother's funeral, Hilda had gone to Hornsey
Station to meet an uncle of Mrs. Lessways, who was coming down from
Scotland by the night-train. She scarcely knew him, but he was to be
recognizable by his hat and his muffler, and she was to await him at the
ticket-gate. An entirely foolish and unnecessary arrangement, contrived
by a peculiar old man: the only possible course was to accept it.
She had waited over half an hour, between eight and nine, and in that
time she had had full opportunity to understand why those suburban
stations had been built so large. A dark torrent of human beings,
chiefly men, gathered out of all the streets of the vicinity, had dashed
unceasingly into the enclosure and covered the long platforms with
tramping feet. Every few minutes a train rolled in, as if from some
inexhaustible magazine of trains beyond the horizon, and, sucking into
itself a multitude and departing again, left one platform for one moment
empty,--and the next moment the platform was once more filled by the
quenchless stream. Less frequently, but still often, other trains
thundered through the station on a line removed from platforms, and
these trains too were crammed with dark human beings, frowning in study
over white newspapers. For even in 1880 the descent upon London from the
suburbs was a formidable phenomenon. Train after train fled downwards
with its freight towards the hidden city, and the torrent still surged,
more rapid than ever, through the narrow gullet of the station. It was
like the flight of some enormous and excited population from a country
menaced with disaster.
Borne on and buffeted by the torrent, Hilda had seen a well-dressed
epileptic youth, in charge of an elderly woman, approaching the station.
He had passed slowly close by her, as she modestly waited in her hasty
mourning, and she had had a fearful vision of his idiotic greenish face
supported somehow like a mask at the summit of that shaky structure of
limbs. He had indeed stared at her with his apelike eyes. She had
watched him, almost shuddering, till he was lost amid the heedless crowd
within. Then, without waiting longer for her relative, without
reflecting upon what she did, she had walked tremblingly back to the
Cedars, checked by tributaries of the torrent at every street corner....
She had known nothing of the funeral. She had not had speech with the
relative. She was in bed, somehow. The day had elapsed. And in the
following night, when she was alone and quite awake, she had become
aware that she, she herself, was that epileptic shape; that that
epileptic shape was lying in her bed and that there was none other in
the bed. Nor was this a fancy of madness! She knew that she was not mad,
that she was utterly sane; and the conviction of sanity only intensified
her awful discovery. She passed a trembling hand over her face, and felt
the skin corrupt and green. Gazing into the darkness, she knew that her
stare was apelike. She had felt, then, the fullest significance of
horror. In the morning she had ceased to be the epileptic shape, but the
risk of re-transformation had hovered near her, and the intimidation of
it was such that she had wept, aghast and broken as much by the future
as by the past. She had been discovered weeping....
Later, the phrase 'nervous breakdown' had lodged in her confused memory.
The doctor had been very matter-of-fact, logical, and soothing.
Overwork, strain, loss of sleep, the journey, anxiety, lack of food, the
supreme shock, the obstinate refusal of youth to succumb, and then the
sudden sight of the epileptic (with whom the doctor was acquainted):
thus had run the medical reasoning, after a discreet but thorough
cross-examination of her; and it had seemed so plausible and so
convincing that the doctor's pride in it was plain on his optimistic
face as he gave the command: "Absolute repose." But to Hilda the
reasoning and the resultant phrase, 'nervous breakdown,' had meant
nothing at all. Words! Empty words! She knew, profoundly and fatally,
the evil principle which had conquered her so completely that she had no
power left with which to fight it. This evil principle was Sin; it was
not the force of sins, however multifarious; it was Sin itself. She was
the Sinner, convicted and self-convicted. One of the last intelligent
victims of a malady which has now almost passed away from the civilized
earth, she existed in the chill and stricken desolation of incommutable
doom.
III
She had sinned against her mother, and she could not make amends. The
mere thought of her mother, so vivacious, cheerful, life-loving,
even-tempered, charitable, disorderly, incompetent, foolish, and yet
shrewd, caused pain of such intensity that it ceased to be pain. She
ought to have seen her mother before she died; she might have seen her,
had she done what was obviously her duty. It was inconceivable to her,
now, that she should have hesitated to fly instantly to London on
receipt of the telegram. But she had hesitated, and her mother had
expired without having sight of her. All exculpatory arguments were
futile against the fact itself. In vain she blamed the wording of the
telegram! In vain she tried to reason that chance, and not herself, was
the evil-doer! In vain she invoked the aid of simple common sense
against sentimental fancy! In vain she went over the events of the
afternoon preceding the death, in order to prove that at no moment had
she been aware of not acting in accordance with her conscience! The
whole of her conduct had been against her conscience, but pride and
selfishness had made her deaf to conscience. She was the Sinner.
Her despair, except when at intervals she became the loathed epileptic
shape, had been calm. Its symptoms had been, and remained, a complete
lack of energy, and a most extraordinary black indifference to the
surrounding world. Save in the deep centre of her soul, where she
agonized, she seemed to have lost all capacity for emotion. Nothing
moved her, or even interested her. She sat in the house, and ate a
little, and talked a little, like an automaton. She walked about the
streets like a bored exile, but an exile who has forgotten his home. Her
spirit never responded to the stimulus of environment. Suggestions at
once lost their tonic force in the woolly cushion of her apathy. If she
continued to live, it was by inertia; to cease from life would have
required an effort. She did not regret the vocation which she had
abandoned; she felt no curiosity about the fortunes of the newspaper. A
tragic nonchalance held her.
After several weeks she had naturally begun to think of religion; for
the malady alone was proof enough that she had a profoundly religious
nature. Miss Gailey could rarely go to church, but one Sunday morning--
doubtless with intent--she asked Hilda if they should go together, and
Hilda agreed. As they approached the large, high-spired church, Hilda
had vague prickings of hope, and was thereby much astonished. But the
service in no way responded to her expectations. "How silly I am!" she
thought disdainfully. "This sort of thing has never moved me before. Why
should it move me now?" The sermon, evangelical, was upon the Creed, and
the preacher explained the emotional quality of real belief. It was a
goodish sermon. But the preacher had effectually stopped the very last
of those exquisite vague prickings of hope. Hilda agreed with his
definition of real belief, and she knew that real belief was impossible
for her. She could never say, with joyous fervour: "I believe!" At best
she could only assert that she did not disbelieve--and was she so sure
even of that? No! Belief had been denied to her; and to dream of
consolation from religion was sentimentally womanish; even in her
indifference she preferred straightforward, honest damnation to the soft
self-deceptions of feminine religiosity. Ah! If she could have been a
Roman Catholic, genuine and convinced--with what ardour would she have
cast herself down before the confessional, and whispered her sinfulness
to the mysterious face within; and with what ecstasy would she have
received the absolution--that cleansing bath of the soul! Then--she
could have recommenced!... But she was not a Roman Catholic. She could
no more become a Roman Catholic than she could become the queen of some
romantic Latin country of palaces and cathedrals. She was a young
provincial girl staying in a boarding-house at Hornsey, on the Great
Northern line out of London, and she was suffering from nervous
breakdown. Such was the exterior common sense of the situation.
Occasionally the memory of some verse of Victor Hugo, sounding the beat
of one of his vast melancholies, would float through her mind and cause
it to vibrate for an instant with a mournful sensation that resembled
pleasure.
IV
"Are you thinking of getting up, dear?" asked Sarah Gailey, as she
arranged more securely the contents of the tray and found space on it
for her weekly books.
"Yes, I suppose I may as well," Hilda murmured. "It'll be lunch-time
soon." The days were long, yet somehow they seemed short too. Already
before getting up, she would begin to think of the evening and of going
to bed; and Saturday night followed quickly on Monday morning. It was
scarcely credible that sixteen weeks had passed, thus, since her
mother's death,--sixteen weeks whose retrospect showed no achievement of
any kind, and hardly a desire.
"I've given those Boutwoods notice," said Sarah Gailey suddenly, the
tray in her hands ready to lift.
"Not really?"
"They were shockingly late for breakfast again, this morning, both of
them. And Mr. Boutwood had the face to ask for another egg. Hettie came
and told me, so I went in myself. I told him breakfast was served in my
house at nine o'clock, and there was a notice to that effect in the
bedrooms, not to mention the dining-room. And as good a breakfast as
they'd get in any of their hotels, I lay! If the eggs are cold at ten
o'clock and after, that's not my fault. They're both of them perfectly
healthy, and yet they're bone-idle. They never want to go to bed and
they never want to get up. It isn't as if they went to theatres and got
home late and so on. I could make excuses for that--now and then. No!
It's just idleness and carelessness. And if you saw their bedroom! Oh,
my! A nice example to servants! Well, he was very insulting--most
insulting. He said he paid me to give him not what I wanted, but what
_he_ wanted! He said if I went into a shop, and they began to tell me
what I ought to want and when I ought to want it, I should be annoyed. I
said I didn't need anyone to tell me that, I said! And my house wasn't a
shop. He said it was a shop, and if it wasn't, it ought to be! Can you
imagine it?"
Hilda tried to exhibit a tepid sympathy. Miss Gailey's nostrils were
twitching, and the tears stood in those watery eyes. She could manage
the house. By the exertion of all her powers and her force she had made
of herself an exceptionally efficient mistress. But she could not manage
the boarders, because she had not sufficient imagination to put herself
in their place. Presiding over all her secret thoughts was the axiom
that the Cedars was a perfect machine, and that the least that a
grateful boarder could do was to fit into the machine.
"And so you said they could go?"
"That I did! And I'll tell you another thing, my dear, I--"
There was a knock at the door. Sarah Gailey stopped in her confidences
like a caught conspirator, and opened the door. Hettie stood on the
mat--the Hettie who despite frequent protests would leave Hilda's toast
to cool into leather on the landing somewhere between the kitchen and
the bedroom. In Hettie's hand was a telegram, which Miss Gailey
accepted.
"Here, take the tray, Hettie," said she, nervously tearing at the
envelope. "Put these books in my desk," she added.
"And I wonder what _he'll_ say!" she observed, staring absently at the
opened telegram, after Hettie had gone.
"Who?"
"George. He says he'll be up here for lunch. He's bound to be vexed
about the Boutwoods. But he doesn't understand. Men don't, you know!
They don't understand the strain it is on you." The appeal of her eyes
was strangely pathetic.
Hilda said:
"I don't think I shall get up for lunch to-day."
Sarah Gailey moved to the bed, forgetting her own trouble.
"You aren't so well, then, after all!" she muttered, with mournful
commiseration. "But, you know, he'll have to see you, _this_ time. He
wants to."
"But why?"
"Your affairs, I suppose. He says so. 'Coming lunch one. Must see
Hilda.--George.'"
Sarah Gailey offered the telegram. But Hilda could not bear to take it.
This telegram was the first she had set eyes on since the telegram
handed to her by Florrie in George Cannon's office. The mere sight of
the salmon-tinted paper agitated her. "Is it possible that I can be so
silly?" she thought, "over a bit of paper!" But so it was.
On a previous visit of George Cannon's to Hornsey she had kept her bed
throughout the day, afraid to meet him, ashamed to meet him,
inexplicably convinced that to meet him would be a crime against filial
piety. There were obscure grottoes in her soul which she had not had the
courage to explore candidly.
"I think," said Sarah Gailey, reflective and anxious, "I think if you
_could_ get up, it would be nicer than him seeing you here in bed."
Hilda perceived that at last she would be compelled to face George
Cannon.
CHAPTER II
THE LITTLE ROOM
I
After lunch Sarah Gailey left Hilda and Mr. Cannon in 'the little room'
together.
'The little room'--about eight feet square--had no other name; it was
always spoken of affectionately by the boarders, and by the landlady
with pride in its coziness. Situated on the first floor, over the front
part of the hall, it lay between the two principal bedrooms. Old
boarders would discover the little room to new boarders, or new boarders
would discover it for themselves, with immense satisfaction. It was the
chamber of intimacy and of confidences; it was a refuge from the public
life of the Cedars, and, to a certain extent, from the piano. Two women,
newly acquainted, and feeling a mutual attraction, would say to each
other: "Shall we go up to the little room?" "Oh yes, do let us!" And
they would climb the stairs in a fever of anticipation. "Quite the most
charming room in the house, dear Miss Gailey!" another simpering
spinster would say. Yet it contained nothing but an old carpet, two
wicker arm-chairs, a small chair, a nearly empty dwarf bookcase, an
engraving of Marie Antoinette regally facing the revolutionary mob, and
a couple of photographs of the Cedars.
Hilda sat down in one of the arm-chairs, and George Cannon in the other;
he had a small black bag which he placed on the floor by his side.
Hilda's diffidence was extreme. Throughout lunch she had scarcely
spoken; but as there had been eight people at the table, and George
Cannon had chatted with all of them, her taciturnity had passed
inconspicuous. Now she would be obliged to talk. And the sensations
which she had experienced on first meeting George Cannon in the
dining-room were renewed in a form even more acute.
She had, in the first place, the self-consciousness due to her mourning
attire, which drew attention to herself; it might have been a
compromising uniform; and the mere fact of her mother's death--quite
apart from the question of her conduct in relation thereto--gave her, in
an interview with a person whom she had not seen since before the death,
a feeling akin to guiltiness--guiltiness of some misdemeanour of taste,
some infraction of the social law against notoriety. She felt, in her
mourning, like one who is being led publicly by policemen to the
police-station. In her fancy she could hear people saying: "Look at that
girl in deep mourning," and she could see herself blushing, as it were
apologetic.
But much worse than this general mortification in presence of an
acquaintance seen after a long interval was the special constraint due
to the identity of the acquaintance. It was with George Cannon that she
had first deceived and plotted against her ingenuous mother's hasty
plans. It was her loyalty to George Cannon that had been the cause of
her inexplicable disloyalty to her mother. She could not recall her
peculiar and delicious agitations during the final moments of her
previous interview with Cannon--that night of February in the newspaper
office, while her mother was dying in London--without a profound
unreasoning shame which intensified most painfully her natural grief as
an orphan.
There was this to be said: she was now disturbed out of her torpid
indifference to her environment. As she fidgeted there, pale and
frowning, in the noisy basket-chair, beneath George Cannon's eyes, she
actually perceived again that romantic quality of existence which had
always so powerfully presented itself to her in the past. She reflected:
"How strange that the dreaded scene has now actually begun! He has come
to London, and here we are together, in this house, which at the
beginning of the year was nothing but a name to me! And mother is away
there in the churchyard, and I am in black! And it is all due to him. He
sent Miss Gailey and mother to London. He willed it!... No! It is all
due to me! I went to see him one late afternoon. I sought him out. He
didn't seek me out. And just because I went to see him one afternoon,
mother is dead, and I am here! Strange!" These reflections were dimly
beautiful to her, even in her sadness and in her acute distress. The
coma had assuredly passed, if only for a space.
II
"Well, now," he said, after a few inanities had been succeeded by an
awkward pause. "I've got to talk business with you, so I suppose we may
as well begin, eh?" His tone was fairly blithe, but it was that of a man
who was throwing off with powerful ease the weariness of somewhat
exasperating annoyances. Since lunch he had had a brief interview with
Sarah Gailey.
"Yes," she agreed glumly.
"Have you decided what you're going to do?" He began to smile
sympathetically as he spoke.
"I'm not going back to the paper," she curtly answered, cutting short
the smile with fierceness, almost with ferocity. Beyond question she was
rude in her bitterness. She asked herself: "Why do I talk like this? Why
can't I talk naturally and gently and cheerfully? I've really got
nothing against him." But she could not talk otherwise than she did
talk. It was by this symptom of biting acrimony that her agitation
showed itself. She knew that she was scowling as she looked at the
opposite wall, but she could not smooth away the scowl.
"No, I suppose not," he said quietly. "But are you thinking of coming
back to Turnhill?"
She remained mute for some seconds. A feeling of desolation came over
her, and it seemed to her that she welcomed it, trying to intensify it,
and yielding her features to it. "How do I know?" she muttered at
length, shrugging her shoulders.
"Because if you aren't," he resumed, "it's no use you keeping that house
of yours empty. You must remember it's just as you left it; and the
things in it aren't taking any good, either."
She shrugged her shoulders again.
"I don't see that it matters to anybody but me," she said, after another
pause, with a sort of frigid and disdainful nonchalance. And once more
she reflected: "Is it possible that I can behave so odiously?"
He stood up suddenly.
"I don't know what you and Sarah have been plotting together," he said,
wounded and contemptuous, yet with lightness. "But I'm sure I don't want
to interfere in your affairs. With Sarah's I've got to interfere,
unfortunately, and a famous time I'm having!" His nostrils grew
fastidious. "But not yours! I only promised your uncle.... Your uncle
told me you wanted me to--" He broke off.
In an instant she grew confused, alarmed, and extremely ashamed. Her
mood had changed in a flash. It seemed to her that she was in presence
of a disgraceful disaster, which she herself had brought about by wicked
and irresponsible temerity. She was like a child who, having naughtily
trifled with danger, stands aghast at the calamity which his
perverseness has caused. She was positively affrighted. She reflected in
her terror: "I asked for this, and I've got it!"
George Cannon stooped and picked up his little bag. There he towered,
high and massive, above her! And she felt acutely her slightness, her
girlishness, and her need of his help. She could not afford to transform
sympathy into antipathy. She was alone in the world. Never before had
she realized, as she realized then, the lurking terror of her
loneliness. The moment was critical. In another moment he might be gone
from the room, and she left solitary to irremediable humiliation and
self-disgust.
"Please!" she whispered appealingly. The whole of her being became an
appeal--the glance, the gesture, the curve of the slim and fragile body.
She was like a slave. She had no pride, no secret reserve of thought.
She was an instinct. Tears showed in her eyes and affected her voice.
He gave the twisted, difficult, rather foolish smile of one who is
cursing the mortification of a predicament into which he has been cast
through no fault of his own.
"Please what?"
"Please sit down."
He waved a hand, deprecatingly, and obeyed.
"It's all right," he said. "All right! I ought to have known--" Then he
smiled generously.
"Known what?" Her voice was now weak and liquid with woe.
"You'd be likely to be upset."
Not furtively, but openly, she wiped her eyes.
"No, no!" she protested honestly. "It's not that. It's--but--I'm very
sorry."
"I reckon I know a bit what worry is, myself!" he added, with a brief,
almost harsh, laugh.
These strange words struck her with pity.
III
"Well, now,"--he seemed to be beginning again--let's leave Lessways
Street for a minute.... I can sell the Calder Street property for you,
if you like. And at a pretty good price. Sooner or later the town will
have to buy up all that side of the street. You remember I told your
mother last year but one I could get a customer for it? but she wasn't
having any."
"Yes," said Hilda eagerly; "I remember."
In her heart she apologized to George Cannon, once more, for having
allowed her mother to persuade her, even for a day, that that attempt to
buy was merely a trick on his part invented to open negotiations for the
rent-collecting.
"You know what the net rents are," he went on, "as you've had 'em every
month. I dare say the purchase money if it's carefully invested will
bring you in as much. But even if it doesn't bring in quite as much, you
mustn't forget that Calder Street's going down--it's getting more and
more of a slum. And there'll always be a lot of bother with tenants of
that class."
"I wish I could sell everything--everything!" she exclaimed
passionately. "Lessways Street as well! Then I should be absolutely
free!"
"You can!" he said, with dramatic emphasis. "And let me tell you that
ten years hence those Lessways Street houses won't be worth what they
are now!"
"Is that property going down, too?" she asked. "I thought they were
building all round there."
"So they are," he answered. "But cheap cottages. Your houses are too
good for that part of the town; that's what's the matter with them.
People who can afford L25 a year--and over--for rent won't care to live
there much longer. You know the end house is empty."
All houses seemed to her to be a singularly insecure and even perilous
form of property. And the sale of everything she possessed presented
itself to her fancy as a transaction which would enfranchise her from
the past. It symbolized the starting-point of a new life, of a
recommencement unhampered by the vestiges of grief and error. She could
go anywhere, do what she chose. The entire world would lie before her.
"Please do sell it all for me!" she pleaded wistfully. "Supposing you
could, about how much should I have--I mean income?"
He glanced about, and then, taking a pencil from his waistcoat pocket,
scribbled a few figures on his cuff.
"Quite three pounds a week," he said.
IV
After a perfunctory discussion, which was somewhat self-consciously
prolonged by both of them in order to avoid an appearance of hastiness
in an important decision, George Cannon opened his black bag and then
looked round for ink. The little room, having no table, had no inkpot,
and the lawyer took from his pocket an Eagle indelible pencil--the
fountain-pen of those simple days. It needed some adjustment; he stepped
closer to the window, and held the pointed end of the case up to the
light, while screwing the lower end; he was very fastidious in these
mechanical details of his vocation. Hilda watched him from behind, with
an intentness that fascinated herself.
"And how's the _Chronicle_ getting on?" she asked, in a tone of friendly
curiosity which gave an exaggerated impression of her actual feeling.
She was more and more ashamed that during lunch she had not troubled to
put a question about the paper. She was even ashamed of her social
indifference. That Sarah Gailey, narrow and preoccupied, should be
indifferent, should never once in three months have referred to her
brother's organ, was not surprising; but it was monstrous that she,
Hilda, the secretary, the priestess, should share this uncivil apathy;
and it was unjust to mark the newspaper, as somehow she had been doing,
with the stigma of her mother's death. She actually began to
characterize her recent mental attitude to her past life as morbid.
"Oh!" he murmured absently, with gloomy hesitation, as he manipulated
the pencil.
She went on still more persuasively:
"I suppose you've got a new secretary?"
"No," he said, as though it fatigued and annoyed him to dwell on the
subject. "I told 'em they must manage without.... It's no fun starting a
new paper in a God-forsaken hole like the Five Towns, I can tell you."
Plainly his high exuberant hopes had been dashed, had perhaps been
destroyed.
She did not reply. She could not. She became suddenly sad with sympathy,
and this sadness was beautiful to her. Already, when he was scribbling
on it, she had noticed that his wristband was frayed. Now, silhouetted
against the window, the edge of the wristband caught her attention
again, and grew strangely significant. This man was passing through
adversity! It seemed tragic and shocking to her that he should have to
pass through adversity, that he could not remain for ever triumphant,
brilliant, cocksure in all his grand schemes, and masculinely scathless.
It seemed wrong to her that he should suffer, and desirable that anybody
should suffer rather than he. George Cannon with faulty linen! By what
error of destiny had this heart-rending phenomenon of discord been
caused? (Yes, heart-rending!) Was it due to weary carelessness, or to
actual, horrible financial straits? Either explanation was very painful
to her. She had a vision of a whole sisterhood of women toiling amid
steam and soapsuds in secret, and in secret denying themselves, to
provide him with all that he lacked, so that he might always emerge into
the world unblemished and glitteringly perfect. She would have
sacrificed the happiness of multitudes to her sense of fitness.
V
There being no table, George Cannon removed a grotesque ornament from
the dwarf bookcase, and used the top of the bookcase as a writing-board.
Hilda was called upon to sign two papers. He explained exactly what
these papers were, but she did not understand, nor did she desire to
understand. One was an informal sale-note and the other was an
authority; but which was which, and to what each had reference, she
superbly and wilfully ignored. She could, by a religious effort of
volition, make of herself an excellent clerk, eagerly imitative and
mechanical, but she had an instinctive antipathy to the higher forms of
business. Moreover, she wanted to trust herself to him, if only as a
mystic reparation of her odious rudeness at the beginning of the
interview. And she thought also: "These transactions will result in
profit to him. It is by such transactions that he lives. I am helping
him in his adversity."
When he gave her the Eagle pencil, and pointed to the places where she
was to sign, she took the pencil with fervour, more and more anxious to
atone to him. For a moment she stood bewildered, in a dream, staring at
the scratched mahogany top of the bookcase. And the bookcase seemed to
her to be something sentient, patient, and helpful, that had always been
waiting there in the corner to aid George Cannon in this
crisis--something human like herself. She loved the bookcase, and the
Eagle pencil, and the papers, and the pattern on the wall. George Cannon
was standing behind her. She felt his presence like a delicious danger.
She signed the papers, in that large scrawling hand which for a few
brief weeks she had by force cramped down to the submissive caligraphy
of a clerk. As she signed, she saw the name "Karkeek" in the midst of
one of the documents, and remembered, with joyous nonchalance, that
George Cannon's own name never appeared in George Cannon's affairs.
He took her place in front of the little bookcase, and folded the
documents. There he was, beside her, in all his masculinity--his
moustache, his blue chin, his wide white hands, his broadcloth--there he
was planted on his massive feet as on a pedestal! She did not see him;
she was aware of him. And she was aware of the closed door behind them.
One of the basket-chairs, though empty, continued to creak, like a thing
alive. Faintly, very faintly, she could hear the piano--Mrs. Boutwood
playing! Overhead were the footsteps of Sarah Gailey and Hettie--they
were checking the linen from the laundry, as usual on Saturday
afternoon. And she was aware of herself, thin, throbbing, fragile,
mournful, somehow insignificant!
He looked round at her, with a half-turn of the head. In his glance was
good humour, good nature, protectiveness, and rectitude; and, more than
these, some of the old serenely smiling triumphant quality. He was not
ruined! He was not really in adversity! He remained the conqueror! She
thrilled with her relief.
"You're in my hands now--no mistake!" he murmured roguishly, picking up
the documents, and bending over the bag.
Hilda could hear a heavy footstep on the stairs, ascending.
In the same instant she had an extraordinary and disconcerting impulse
to seize his hand--she knew not why, whether it was to thank him, to
express her sympathy, or to express her submission. She struggled
against this impulse, but the impulse was part of herself and of her
inmost self; She was afraid, but her fear was pleasurable. She was
ashamed, but her shame was pleasurable. She wanted to move away from
where she stood. She thought: "If only I willed to move away, I could
move away. But, no! I shall not will it. I like remaining just here, in
this fear, this shame, and this agitation." She had a clear, dazzling
perception of the splendour and the fineness of sin; but she did not
know what sin! And all the time the muscles of her arm were tense in the
combat between the weakening desire to keep her arms still and the
growing desire to let her hand seize the hand of George Cannon. And all
the time the heavy footstep was ascending the interminable staircase.
And all the time George Cannon, with averted head, was fumbling in the
bag. And then, in a flash, she was really afraid; the fear was no longer
pleasurable, and her shame had become a curse. She said to herself: "I
cannot move, now. In a minute I shall do this horrible thing. Nothing
can save me." Despairing, she found a dark and tumultuous joy in
despair. The trance endured for ages, while disaster approached nearer
and nearer.
Then, after the heavy footstep had been climbing the staircase since
earth began, the door was brusquely opened, and the jovial fat face of
Mr. Boutwood appeared, letting in the louder sound of the piano.
"Oh, I beg pardon!" he muttered, pretending that he had assumed the
little room to be empty. The fact was that he was in search of George
Cannon, in whom he had recognized a fraternal spirit.
"Come in, Mr. Boutwood," said Hilda, with an easy, disdainful calm which
absolutely astounded herself. "That's all, then?" she added, to George
Cannon, glancing at him indifferently. She departed without waiting for
an answer.
VI
Putting on a bonnet, and taking an umbrella to occupy her hands, she
went out into the remedial freedom of the streets. And after turning the
first corner she saw coming towards her the figure of a woman whom she
seemed to know, elegant, even stately, in youthful grace. It was Janet
Orgreave, wearing a fashionable fawn-coloured summer costume. As they
recognized each other the girls blushed slightly. Janet hastened
forward. Hilda stood still. She was amazed at the chance which had sent
her two unexpected visitors in the same day. They shook hands and
kissed.
"So I've found you!" said Janet. "How are you, you poor dear? Why didn't
you answer my letter?"
"Letter?" Hilda repeated, wondering. Then she remembered that she had
indeed received a letter from Janet, but in her comatose dejection had
neglected to answer it.
"I'm up in London with father for the weekend. We want you to come with
us to the Abbey to-morrow. And you must come back with us to Bursley on
Monday. You _must_! We're quite set on it. I've left father all alone
this afternoon, to come up here and find you out. Not that he minds!
What a way it is! But how are you, Hilda?"
Hilda was so touched by Janet's affectionate solicitude that her eyes
filled with tears. She looked at that radiating and innocent goodness,
and thought: "How different I am from her! She hasn't the least idea how
different I am!"
For a moment, Janet seemed to her to be a sort of angel--modish, but
exquisitely genuine. She saw in the invitation to the Five Towns a
miraculous defence against a peril the prospect of which was already
alarming her. She would be compelled to go to Turnhill in order to visit
Lessways Street and decide what of her mother's goods she must keep. She
would of course take Janet with her. In all the Turnhill affairs Janet
should accompany her. Her new life should begin under the protection of
Janet's society. And her heart turned from the old life towards the new
with hope and a vague brightening expectation of happiness.
At the Cedars she led Janet to her bedroom, and then came out of the
bedroom to bid good-bye to George Cannon. The extreme complexity of
existence and of her sensations baffled and intimidated her.
CHAPTER III
JOURNEY TO BLEAKRIDGE
I
Hilda and Janet were mounting the precipitous Sytch Bank together on
their way from Turnhill into Bursley. It was dark; they had missed one
train at Turnhill and had preferred not to wait for the next. Although
they had been very busy in Hilda's house throughout all the afternoon
and a part of the evening, and had eaten only a picnic meal, neither of
them was aware of fatigue, and the two miles to Bursley seemed a trifle.
Going slowly up the steep slope, they did not converse. Janet said that
the weather was changing, and Hilda, without replying, peered at the
black baffling sky. The air had, almost suddenly, grown warmer. Above,
in the regions unseen, mysterious activities were in movement, as if
marshalling vast forces. The stars had vanished. A gentle but equivocal
wind on the cheek presaged rain, and seemed to be bearing downwards into
the homeliness of the earth some strange vibration out of infinite
space. The primeval elements of the summer night encouraged and
intensified Hilda's mood, half joyous, half apprehensive. She thought:
"A few days ago, I was in Hornsey, with the prospect of the visit to
Turnhill before me. Now the visit is behind me. I said that Janet should
be my companion, and she has been my companion. I said that I would cut
myself free, and I have cut myself free. I need never go to Turnhill
again, unless I like. The two trunks will be sent for to-morrow; and all
the rest will be sold--even the clock. The thing is done. I have
absolute liberty, and an income, and the intimacy of this splendid
affectionate Janet.... How fortunate it was that Mr. Cannon was not at
his office when we called! Of course I was obliged to call.... And yet
would it not be more satisfactory if I had seen him?... I must have been
in a horribly morbid state up at Hornsey.... Soon I must decide about my
future. Soon I shall actually have decided!... Life is very queer!" She
had as yet no notion whatever of what she would do with her liberty and
her income and the future; but she thought vaguely of something heroic,
grandiose, and unusual.
II
In her hand she carried a small shabby book, bound in blue and gold,
with gilt edges a little irregular. She had found this book while
sorting out the multitudinous contents of her mother's wardrobe, and at
the last moment, perceiving that it had been overlooked, and being
somehow ashamed to leave it to the auctioneers, she had brought it away,
not knowing how she would ultimately dispose of it. The book had
possibly been dear to her mother, but she could not embarrass her
freedom by conserving everything that had possibly been dear to her
mother. It was entitled _The Girl's Week-day Book_, by Mrs. Copley, and
it had been published by the Religious Tract Society, no doubt in her
mother's girlhood. The frontispiece, a steel engraving, showed a group
of girls feeding some swans by the terraced margin of an ornamental
water, and it bore the legend, "Feeding the Swans." And on the title-
page was the text: "That our daughters may be as corner-stones, polished
after the similitude of a palace. Psalm cxliv. 12." In the table of
contents were such phrases as: "One thing at a time. Darkness and Light.
Respect for Ministers. The Drowning Fly. Trifling with words of
Scripture. Goose and Swan. Delicate Health. Conscientious Regard to
Truth. Sensibility and Gentleness contrasted with Affectation. Curiosity
and Tattling. Instability of Worldly Possessions." A book representing,
for Hilda, all that was most grotesque in an age that was now definitely
finished and closed! A silly book!
During the picnic meal she had idly read extracts from it to Janet,
amusing sentences; and though the book had once been held sacred by her
who was dead, and though they were engaged in stirring the scarce-cold
ashes of a tragedy, the girls had nevertheless permitted themselves a
kindly, moderate mirth. Hilda had quoted from a conversation in it:
"Well, I would rather sit quietly round this cheerful fire, and talk
with dear mamma, than go to the grandest ball that ever was known!" and
Janet had plumply commented: "What a dreadful lie!" And then they had
both laughed openly, perhaps to relieve the spiritual tension caused by
the day's task and the surroundings. After that, Hilda had continued to
dip into the book, but silently. And Janet had imagined that Hilda was
merely bored by the monotonous absurdity of the sentiments expressed.
Janet was wrong. Hilda had read the following: "One word more. Do not
rest in your religious impressions. You have, perhaps, been the subject
of terror on account of sin; your mind has been solemnized by some event
in Providence; by an alarming fit of sickness, or the death of a
relative, or a companion.... This is indeed to be reckoned a great
mercy; but then the danger is, lest you should rest here; lest those
tears, and terrors, and resolutions, should be the only evidences on
which you venture to conclude on the safety of your immortal state. What
is your present condition?..."
Which words intimidated Hilda in spite of herself. In vain she repeated
that the book was a silly book. She really believed that it was silly,
but she knew also that there was an aspect of it which was not silly.
She was reminded by it that she had found no solution of the problem
which had distracted her in Hornsey. 'What is your present condition?'
Her present condition was still that of a weakling and a coward who had
sunk down inertly before the great problem of sin. And now, in the
growing strength of her moral convalescence, she was raising her eyes
again to meet the problem. Her future seemed to be bound up with the
problem. As she breasted the top of the Sytch under the invisible
lowering clouds, with her new, adored friend by her side, and the
despised but powerful book in her hand, she mused in an ambiguous
reverie upon her situation, dogged by the problem which alone was
accompanying her out of the past into the future. Her reverie was shot
through by piercing needles of regret for her mother; and even with the
touch of Janet's arm against her own in the darkness she had sharp
realizations of her extreme solitude in the world. Withal, the sense of
life was precious and beautiful. She was not happy; but she was filled
with the mysterious vital elation which surpasses happiness.
III
They descended gently into Bursley, crossing the top of St. Luke's
Square and turning eastwards into Market Square, ruled by the sombre and
massive Town Hall in whose high tower an illuminated dial shone like a
topaz. To Hilda, this nocturnal entry into Bursley had the romance of an
entry into a town friendly but strange and recondite. During the few
days of her stay with the Orgreaves in the suburb of Bleakridge, she had
scarcely gone into the town once. She had never seen it at night. In the
old Turnhill days she had come over to Bursley occasionally with her
mother; but to shoppers from Turnhill, Bursley meant St. Luke's Square
and not a yard beyond.
Now the girls arrived at the commencement of the steam-car track, where
a huge engine and tram were waiting, and as they turned another corner,
the long perspective of Trafalgar Road, rising with its double row of
lamps towards fashionable Bleakridge, was revealed to Hilda. She
thought, naturally, that every other part of the Five Towns was more
impressive and more important than the poor little outskirt, Turnhill,
of her birth. In Turnhill there was no thoroughfare to compare with
Trafalgar Road, and no fashionable suburb whatever. She had almost the
feeling of being in a metropolis, if a local metropolis.
"It's beginning to rain, I think," said Janet.
"Who's that?" Hilda questioned abruptly, ignoring the remark in the
swift, unreflecting excitement of a sensibility surprised.
"Where?"
"There!"
They were going down Duck Bank into the hollow. On the right, opposite
the lighted Dragon Hotel, lay Duck Square in obscure somnolence; at the
corner of Duck Square and Trafalgar Road was a double-fronted shop, of
which all the shutters were up except two or three in the centre of the
doorway. Framed thus in the aperture, a young man stood within the shop
under a bright central gas-jet; he was gazing intently at a large sheet
of paper which he held in his outstretched hands, and the girls saw him
in profile: tall, rather lanky, fair, with hair dishevelled, and a
serious, studious, and magnanimous face; quite unconscious that he made
a picture for unseen observers.
"That?" said Janet, in a confidential and interested tone. "That's young
Clayhanger--Edwin Clayhanger.[1] His father's the printer, you know.
Came from Turnhill, originally."
"I never knew," said Hilda. "But I seem to have heard the name."
"Oh! It must have been a long time ago. He's got the best business in
Bursley now. Father says it's one of the best in the Five Towns. He's
built that new house just close to ours. Don't you remember I pointed it
out to you? Father's the architect. They're going to move into it next
week or the week after. I expect that's why the son and heir's working
so late to-night, packing and so on, perhaps."
The young man moved out of sight. But his face had made in those few
thrilling seconds a deep impression on Hilda; so that in her mind she
still saw it, with an almost physical particularity of detail. It
presented itself to her, in some mysterious way, as a romantic visage,
wistful, full of sad subtleties, of the unknown and the seductive, and
of a latent benevolence. It was as recondite and as sympathetic as the
town in which she had discovered it.
She said nothing.
"Old Mr. Clayhanger is a regular character," Janet eagerly went on, to
Hilda's great content. "Some people don't like him. But I rather do like
him." She was always thus kind. "Grandmother once told me he sprang from
simply nothing at all--worked on a potbank when he was quite a child."
"Who? The father, you mean?"
"Yes, the father. Now, goodness knows how much he isn't worth I Father
is always saying he could buy _us_ up, lock, stock, and barrel." Janet
laughed. "People often call him a miser, but he can't be so much of a
miser, seeing that he's built this new house."
"And I suppose the son's in the business?"
"Yes. He wanted to be an architect. That was how father got to know him.
But old Mr. Clayhanger wouldn't have it. And so he's a printer, and one
day he'll be one of the principal men in the town."
"Oh! So you know him?"
"Well, we do and we don't. I go into the shop sometimes; and then I've
seen him once or twice up at the new house. We've asked him to come in
and see us. But he's never come, and I don't think he ever will. I
believe his father does keep him grinding away rather hard. I'm sure
he's frightfully clever."
"How can you tell?"
"Oh! From bits of things he says. And he's read everything, it seems!
And once he saved a great heavy printing-machine from going through the
floor of the printing-shop into the basement. If it hadn't been for him
there'd have been a dreadful accident. Everybody was talking about that.
He doesn't look it, does he?"
They were now passing the corner at which stood the shop. Hilda peered
within the narrowing, unshuttered slit, but she could see no more of
Edwin Clayhanger.
"No, he doesn't," she agreed, while thinking nevertheless that he did
look precisely that. "And so he lives all alone with his father. No
mother?"
"No mother. But there are two sisters. The youngest is married, and just
going to have a baby, poor thing! The other one keeps house. I believe
she's a splendid girl, but neither of them is a bit like Edwin. Not a
bit. He's--"
"What?"
"I don't know. Look here, miss! What about this rain? I vote we take the
car up the hill."
IV
The steam-car was rumbling after them down Duck Bank. It stopped, huge
above them, and they climbed into it through an odour of warm grease
that trailed from the engine. The conductor touched his hat to Janet,
who smiled like a sister upon this fellow-being. Two middle-aged men
were the only other occupants of the interior of the car; both raised
their hats to Janet. The girls sat down in opposite corners next to the
door. Then, with a deafening continuous clatter of loose glass-panes and
throbbing of its filthy floor, the vehicle started again, elephantine.
It was impossible to talk in that unique din. Hilda had no desire to
talk. She watched Janet pay the fares as in a dream, without even
offering her own penny, though as a rule she was touchily punctilious in
sharing expenses with the sumptuous Janet. Without being in the least
aware of it, and quite innocently, Janet had painted a picture of the
young man, Edwin Clayhanger, which intensified a hundredfold the strong
romantic piquancy of Hilda's brief vision of him. In an instant Hilda
saw her ideal future--that future which had loomed grandiose,
indefinite, and strange--she saw it quite precise and simple as the wife
of such a creature as Edwin Clayhanger. The change was astounding in its
abruptness. She saw all the delightful and pure vistas of love with a
man, subtle, baffling, and benevolent, and above all superior; with a
man who would be respected by a whole town as a pillar of society, while
bringing to his intimacy with herself an exotic and wistful quality
which neither she nor anyone could possibly define. She asked: "What
attracts me in him? I don't know. _I like him_." She who had never
spoken to him! She who never before had vividly seen herself as married
to a man! He was clever; he was sincere; he was kind; he was
trustworthy; he would have wealth and importance and reputation. All
this was good; but all this would have been indifferent to her, had
there not been an enigmatic and inscrutable and unprecedented something
in his face, in his bearing, which challenged and inflamed her
imagination.
It did not occur to her to think of Janet as in the future a married
woman. But of herself she thought, with new agitations: "I am innocent
now! I am ignorant now! I am a girl now! But one day I shall be so no
longer. One day I shall be a woman. One day I shall be in the power and
possession of some man--if not this man, then some other. Everything
happens; and this will happen!" And the hazardous strangeness of life
enchanted her.
CHAPTER IV
WITH THE ORGREAVES
I
The Orgreave family was holding its nightly session in the large
drawing-room of Lane End House when Hilda and Janet arrived. The
bow-window stood generously open in three different places, and the
heavy outer curtains as well as the lace inner ones were moving gently
in the capricious breeze that came across the oval lawn. The
multitudinous sound of rain on leaves entered also with the wind; and a
steam-car could be heard thundering down Trafalgar Road, from which the
house was separated by only a few intervening minor roofs.
Mrs. Orgreave, the plump, faded image of goodness, with Janet's full red
lips and Janet's kindly eyes, sat as usual, whether in winter or in
summer, near the fireplace, surveying with placidity the theatre where
the innumerable dramas of her motherhood had been enacted. Tom, her
eldest, the thin, spectacled lawyer, had, as a boy of seven, rampaged on
that identical Turkey hearthrug, when it was new, a quarter of a century
earlier. He was now seated at the grand piano with the youngest child,
Alicia, a gawky little treasure, always alternating between pertness and
timidity, aged twelve. Jimmie and Johnnie, young bloods of nineteen and
eighteen, were only present in their mother's heart, being in process of
establishing, by practice, the right to go forth into the world of an
evening and return when they chose without suffering too much from
family curiosity. Two other children--Marian, eldest daughter and sole
furnisher of grandchildren to the family, and Charlie, a young doctor--
were permanently away in London. Osmond Orgreave, the elegant and
faintly mocking father of the brood, a handsome grizzled man of between
fifty and sixty, was walking to and fro between the grand piano and the
small upright piano in the farther half of the room.
"Well, my dear?" said Mrs. Orgreave to Hilda. "You aren't wet?" She drew
Hilda towards her and stroked her shoulder, and then kissed her. The
embrace was to convey the mother's sympathy with Hilda in the ordeal of
the visit to Turnhill, and her satisfaction that the ordeal was now
over. The ageing lady seemed to kiss her on behalf of the entire
friendly family; all the others, appreciating the delicacy of the
situation, refrained from the peril of clumsy speech.
"Oh no, mother!" Janet exclaimed reassuringly. "We came up by car. And I
had my umbrella. And it only began to rain in earnest just as we got to
the gate."
"Very thoughtful of it, I'm sure!" piped the pig-tailed Alicia from the
piano. She could talk, in her pert moments, exactly like her brothers.
"Alicia, darling," said Janet coaxingly, as she sat on the sofa flanked
by the hat, gloves, and jacket which she had just taken off, "will you
run upstairs with these things, and take Hilda's too? I'm quite
exhausted. Father will swoon if I leave them here. I suppose he's
walking about because he's so proud of his new birthday slippers."
"But I'm just playing the symphony with Tom!" Alicia protested.
"I'll run up--I was just going to," said Hilda.
"You'll do no such thing!" Mrs. Orgreave announced, sharply. "Alicia,
I'm surprised at you! Here Janet and Hilda have been out since noon, and
you--"
"And so on and so on," said Alicia, jumping up from the piano in
obedience.
"We didn't wait supper," Mrs. Orgreave went on. "But I told Martha to
leave--"
"Mother, dearest," Janet stopped her. "Please don't mention food. We've
stuffed ourselves, haven't we, Hilda? Anyone been?"
"Swetnam," said Alicia, as she left the room with her arms full.
"_Mr_. Swetnam," corrected Mrs. Orgreave.
"Which one? The Ineffable?"
"The Ineffable," replied Mr. Orgreave, who had wandered, smiling
enigmatically, to the sofa. His legs, like the whole of his person, had
a distinguished air; and he held up first one slippered foot and then
the other to the silent, sham-ecstatic inspection of the girls. "He may
look in again, later on. It's evidently Hilda he wants to see." This
said, Mr. Orgreave lazily sank into an easy chair, opposite the sofa,
and lighted a cigarette. He was one of the most industrious men in the
Five Towns, and assuredly the most industrious architect; but into an
idle hour he could pack more indolence than even Johnnie and Jimmie,
alleged wastrels, could accomplish in a week.
"I say, Janet," Tom sang out from the piano, "you aren't really
exhausted, are you?"
"I'm getting better."
"Well, let's dash through the scherzo before the infant comes back. She
can't take it half fast enough."
"And do you think I can?" said Janet, rising. In theory, Janet was not a
pianist, and she never played solos, nor accompanied songs; but in the
actual practice of duet-playing her sympathetic presence of mind at
difficult crises of the music caused her to be esteemed by Tom, the
expert and enthusiast, as superior to all other performers in the
family.
II
Hilda listened with pleasure and with exaltation to the scherzo. Beyond
a little part-singing at school she had no practical acquaintance with
music; there had never been a piano at home. But she knew that this
music was Beethoven's; and from the mere intonation of that name, as it
was uttered in her presence in the house of the Orgreaves, she was aware
of its greatness, and the religious faculty in her had enabled her at
once to accept its supremacy as an article of genuine belief; so that,
though she understood it not, she felt it, and was uplifted by it.
Whenever she heard Beethoven--and she heard it often, because Tom, in
the words of the family, had for the moment got Beethoven on the
brain--her thoughts and her aspirations were ennobled.
She was singularly content with this existence amid the intimacy of the
Orgreaves. The largeness and prodigality and culture of the family life,
so different from anything she had ever known, and in particular so
different from the desolating atmosphere of the Cedars, soothed and
flattered her in a manner subtly agreeable. At the same time she was but
little irked by it, for the reason that her spirit was not one to be
unduly affected by exterior social, intellectual, and physical
conditions. Moreover, the Orgreaves, though obviously of a class
superior to her own, had the facile and yet aristocratic
unceremoniousness which, unconsciously, repudiates such distinctions
until circumstances arise that compel their acknowledgment. To live
among the Orgreaves was like living in a small private republic that
throbbed with a hundred activities and interests. Each member of it was
a centre of various energy. And from each, Hilda drew something that was
precious: from Mrs. Orgreave, sheer love and calm wisdom; from Janet,
sheer love and the spectacle of elegance; from little Alicia candour and
admiration; from Tom, knowledge, artistic enthusiasm, and shy, curt
sympathy; from Johnnie and Jimmie the homage of their proud and naive
mannishness: as for Mr. Orgreave, she admired him perhaps as much as she
admired even Janet, and once when he and she had taken a walk together
up to Toft End, she had thought him quite exquisite in his attitude to
her, quizzical, worldly, and yet sensitively understanding and humane.
And withal they never worried her by interferences and criticisms; they
never presumed on their hospitality, but left her as free as though her
age had been twice what it was. Undoubtedly, in the ardour of her
gratitude she idealized every one of them. The sole reproach which in
secret she would formulate against them had reference to their quasi-
cynical levity in conversation. They would never treat a serious topic
seriously for more than a few minutes. Either one or another would yield
to the temptation of clever facetiousness, and clever facetiousness
would always carry off the honours in a discussion. This did not apply
to Mrs. Orgreave, who was incapable of humour; but it applied a little
even to Janet.
The thought continually arising in Hilda's mind was: "Why do they care
for me? What can they see in me? Why are they so good to me? I was never
good to them." She did not guess that, at her very first visit to Lane
End House, the force and mystery of her character had powerfully
attracted these rather experienced amateurs of human nature. She was
unaware that she had made her mark upon Janet and Charlie so far back as
the days of the dancing-classes. And she under-estimated the appeal of
her situation as an orphan and a solitary whose mother's death, in its
swiftness, had amounted to a tragedy.
The scherzo was finished, and Alicia had not returned into the
drawing-room. The two pianists sat hesitant.
"Where is that infant?" Tom demanded. "If I finish it all without her
she'll be vexed."
"I can tell you where she ought to be," said Mrs. Orgreave placidly.
"She ought to be in bed. No wonder she looks pale, stopping up till this
time of night!"
Then there were unusual and startling movements behind the door,
accompanied by giggling. And Alicia entered, followed by
Charlie--Charlie who was supposed at that precise instant to be in
London!
"Hello, mater!" said the curly-headed Charlie, with a sublime
affectation of calmness, as though he had slipped out of the next room.
He produced an effect fully equal to his desires.
III
In a little while, Charlie, on the sofa, was seated at a small table
covered with viands and fruit; the white cloth spread on the table made
a curiously charming patch amid the sombre colours of the drawing-room.
He had protested that, having consumed much food en route, he was not
hungry; but in vain. Mrs. Orgreave demolished such arguments by the
power of her notorious theory, which admitted no exceptions, that any
person coming off an express train must be in need of sustenance. The
odd thing was that all the others discovered mysterious appetites and
began to eat and drink with gusto, sitting, standing, or walking about,
while Charlie, munching, related how he had miraculously got three days'
leave from the hospital, and how he had impulsively 'cabbed it' to
Euston, and how, having arrived at Knype, he had also 'cabbed it' from
Knype to Bleakridge instead of waiting for the Loop Line train. The blot
on his advent, in the eyes of Mrs. Orgreave, was that he had no fresh
news of Marian and her children.
"You don't seem very surprised to find Hilda here," said Alicia.
"It's not my business to be surprised at anything, kid," Charlie
retorted, smiling at Hilda, who sat beside him on the sofa. "Moreover,
don't I get ten columns of news every three days? I know far more about
this town than you do, I bet!"
Everybody laughed at Mrs. Orgreave, the great letter-writer and
universal disseminator of information.
"Now, Alicia, you must go to bed," said Mrs. Orgreave. And Alicia
regretted that she had been so indiscreet as to draw attention to
herself.
"The kid can stay up if she will say her piece," said Charlie mockingly.
He knew that he could play the autocrat, for that evening at any rate.
"What piece?" the child demanded, blushing and defiant.
"Her 'Abou Ben Adhem,'" said Charlie. "Do you think I don't know all
about that too?"
"Oh, mother, you are a bore!" Alicia exclaimed, pouting. "Why did you
tell him that?... Well, I'll say it if Hilda will recite something as
well."
"Me!" murmured Hilda, staggered. "I never recite!"
"I've always understood you recite beautifully," said Mrs. Orgreave.
"You know you do, Hilda!" said Janet.
"Of course you do," said Charlie.
"_You've_ never heard me, anyhow!" she replied to him obstinately. How
could they have got it fixed into their heads that she was a reciter?
This renown was most disconcerting.
"Now, Hilda!" Mr. Orgreave soothingly admonished her from the back of
the sofa. She turned her head and looked up at him, smiling in her
distress.
"Go ahead, then, kid! It's agreed," said Charlie.
And Alicia galloped through Leigh Hunt's moral poem, which she was
preparing for an imminent speech-day, in an extraordinarily short space
of time.
"But I can't remember anything. I haven't recited for years and years,"
Hilda pleaded, when the child burst out, "Now, Hilda!"
"_Stuff_!" Charlie pronounced.
"Some Tennyson?" Mrs. Orgreave suggested. "Don't you know any Tennyson?
We must have something, now." And Alicia, exulting in the fact that she
had paid the penalty imposed, cried that there could be no drawing back.
Hilda was lost. Mrs. Orgreave's tone, with all its softness, was a
command. "Tennyson? I've forgotten 'Maud,'" she muttered.
"I'll prompt you," said Charlie. "Thomas!"
Everybody looked at Tom, expert in literature as well as in music; Tom,
the collector, the owner of books and bookcases. Tom went to a bookcase
and drew forth a green volume, familiar and sacred throughout all
England.
"Oh dear!" Hilda moaned.
"Where do you mean to begin?" Charlie sternly inquired. "It just happens
that I'm reading 'In Memoriam,' myself. I read ten stanzas a day."
Hilda bent over the book with him.
"But I must stand up," she said, with sudden fire. "I can't recite
sitting down."
They all cried "Bravo!" and made a circle for her. And she stood up.
The utterance of the first lines was a martyrdom for her. But after that
she surrendered herself frankly to the mood of the poem and forgot to
suffer shame, speaking in a loud, clear, dramatic voice which she
accompanied by glances and even by gestures. After about thirty lines
she stopped, and, regaining her ordinary senses, perceived that the
entire family was staring at her with an extreme intentness.
"I can't do any more," she murmured weakly, and dropped on to the sofa.
Everybody clapped very heartily.
"It's wonderful!" said Janet in a low tone.
"I should just say it was!" said Tom seriously, and Hilda was saturated
with delicious joy.
"You ought to go on the stage; that's what you ought to do!" said
Charlie.
For a fraction of a second, Hilda dreamt of the stage, and then Mrs.
Orgreave said softly, like a mother:
"I'm quite sure Hilda would never dream of any such thing!"
IV
There was an irruption of Jimmie and Johnnie, and three of the Swetnam
brothers, including him known as the Ineffable. Jimmie and Johnnie
played the role of the absolutely imperturbable with a skill equal to
Charlie's own; and only a series of calm "How-do's?" marked the
greetings of these relatives. The Swetnams were more rollickingly
demonstrative. Now that the drawing-room was quite thickly populated,
Hilda, made nervous by Mr. Orgreave's jocular insinuation that she
herself was the object of the Swetnams' call, took refuge, first with
Janet, and then, as Janet was drawn into the general crowd, with
Charlie, who was absently turning over the pages of "In Memoriam."
"Know this?" he inquired, friendly, indicating the poem.
"I don't," she said. "It's splendid, isn't it?"
"Well," he answered. "It's rather on the religious tack, you know.
That's why I'm reading it." He smiled oddly.
"Really?"
He hesitated, and then nodded. It was the strangest avowal from this
young dandy of twenty-three with the airy and cynical tongue. Hilda
thought: "Here, then, is another!" And her own most secret troubles
recurred to her mind.
"What's that about Teddy Clayhanger?" Charlie cried out, suddenly
looking up. He had caught the name in a distant conversation.
Janet explained how they had seen Edwin, and went on to say that it was
impossible to persuade him to call.
"What rot!" said Charlie. "I bet you what you like I get him here
to-morrow night." He added to Hilda: "Went to school with him!" Hilda's
face burned.
"I bet you don't," said Janet stoutly, from across the room.
"I'll bet you a shilling I do," said Charlie.
"Haven't a penny left," Janet smiled. "Father, will you lend me a
shilling?"
"That's what I'm here for," said Mr. Orgreave.
"Mr. Orgreave," the youngest Swetnam put in, "you talk exactly like the
dad talks."
The bet was made, and according to a singular but long-established
family custom, Tom had to be stake-holder.
Hilda became troubled and apprehensive. She hoped that Charlie would
lose, and then she hoped that he would win. Looking forward to the
intimate bedroom chat with Janet which brought each evening to a
heavenly close, she said to herself: "If he _does_ come, I shall make
Janet promise that I'm not to be asked to recite or anything. In fact, I
shall get her to see that I'm not discussed."
CHAPTER V
EDWIN CLAYHANGER
I
The next evening, Mr. and Mrs. Orgreave, Hilda, Janet, and Alicia were
in the dining-room of the Orgreaves awaiting the advent at the supper-
table of sundry young men whose voices could be heard through open doors
in the distance of the drawing-room.
Charlie Orgreave had won his bet: and Edwin Clayhanger was among those
young men who had remained behind in the drawing-room to exchange,
according to the practice of young men, ideas upon life and the world.
Hilda had been introduced to him, but owing to the performance of
another Beethoven symphony there had been almost no conversation before
supper, and she had not heard him talk. She had stationed herself behind
the grand piano, on the plea of turning over the pages for the musicians
(though it was only with great uncertainty, and in peril of missing the
exact instant for turning, that she followed the music on the page), and
from this security she had furtively glanced at Edwin when her task
allowed. "Perhaps I was quite mistaken last night," she said to herself.
"Perhaps he is perfectly ordinary." The strange thing was that she could
not decide whether he was ordinary or not. At one moment his face
presented no interest, at another she saw it just as she had seen it,
framed in the illuminated aperture of the shop-shutters, on the previous
night. Or she fancied that she saw it thus. The more she tried to
distinguish between Edwin's reality and her fancies concerning Edwin,
the less she succeeded. She would pronounce positively that her fancies
were absurd and even despicable. But this abrupt positiveness did not
convince. Supposing that he was after all marvellous among men! During
the day she had taken advantage of the mention of his name to ascertain
discreetly some details of the legendary feat by which as a boy he had
saved his father's printing-shop from destruction. The details were
vague, and not very comprehensible, but they seemed to indicate on his
part an astounding presence of mind, a heroic promptitude in action.
Assuredly, the Orgreaves regarded him as a creature out of the common
run. And at the same time they all had the air of feeling rather sorry
for him.
Standing near the supper-table, Hilda listened intently for the sound of
his voice among the other voices in the drawing-room. But she could not
separate it from the rest. Perhaps he was keeping silence. She said to
herself: "Yet what do I care whether he is keeping silence or not?"
Mr. Orgreave remarked, in the suspense, glancing ironically at his wife:
"I think I'll go upstairs and do an hour's planning. They aren't likely
to be more than an hour, I expect?"
"Hilda," said Mrs. Orgreave, quite calm, but taking her husband quite
seriously, "will you please go and tell those young men from me that
supper is waiting?"
II
Of course Hilda obeyed, though it appeared strange to her that Mrs.
Orgreave had not sent Alicia on such an errand. Passing out of the
bright dining-room where the gas was lit, she hesitated a moment in the
dark broad corridor that led to the drawing-room. The mission, she felt,
would make her rather prominent in front of Edwin Clayhanger, the
stranger, and she had an objection to being prominent in front of him;
she had, indeed, taken every possible precaution against such a danger.
"How silly I am to loiter here!" she thought. "I might be Alicia!"
The boys, she could now hear, were discussing French literature, and in
particular Victor Hugo. When she caught the name of Victor Hugo she
lifted her chin, and moved forward a little. She worshipped Victor Hugo
with a passion unreflecting and intense, simply because certain detached
lines from his poems were the most splendid occupants of her memory,
dignifying every painful or sordid souvenir. At last Charlie's clear,
gay voice said:
"It's all very well, and Victor Hugo _is_ Victor Hugo; but you can say
what you like--there's a lot of this that'll bear skipping, your
worships."
Already she was at the doorway. In the dusk of the unlighted chamber the
faces of the four Orgreaves and Clayhanger showed like pale patches on
the gloom.
"Not a line!" she said fiercely, with her extremely clear articulation.
She had no right to make such a statement, for she had not read the
twentieth part of Victor Hugo's work; she did not even know what book
they were discussing--Charlie held the volume lightly in his hand--but
she was incensed against the mere levity of Charlie's tone.
She saw Edwin Clayhanger jump at the startling interruption. And all
five looked round. She could feel her face burning.
Charlie quizzed her with a word, and then turned to Edwin Clayhanger for
support. "Don't _you_ think that some of it's dullish, Teddy?"
Edwin Clayhanger, shamefaced, looked at Hilda wistfully, as if in
apology, as if appealing to her clemency against her fierceness; and
said slowly:
"Well--yes."
He had agreed with Charlie; but while disagreeing with Hilda he had
mysteriously proved to her that she had been right in saying to herself
on the previous evening: "_I like him_."
The incident appeared to her to be enormous and dramatic. She moved
away, as it were breathless under emotion, and then, remembering her
errand, threw over her shoulder:
"Mrs. Orgreave wants to know when you're coming to supper."
III
The supper-table was noisy and joyous--more than usually so on account
of the presence of Charlie, the gayest member of the family. At either
end of the long, white-spread board sat Mr. and Mrs. Orgreave; Alicia
stood by Mr. Orgreave, who accepted her caresses with the negligence of
a handsome father. Along one side sat Hilda, next to Janet, and these
two were flanked by Jimmie and Johnnie, tall, unbending, apparently
determined to prove by a politely supercilious demeanor that to pass a
whole evening thus in the home circle was considered by them to be a
concession on their part rather than a privilege. Edwin Clayhanger sat
exactly opposite to Hilda, with Charlie for sponsor; and Tom's
spectacles gleamed close by.
Hilda, while still constrained, was conscious of pleasure in the scene,
and of a certain pride in forming part of it. These prodigal and
splendid persons respected and liked her, even loved her. Her recitation
on the previous evening had been a triumph. She was glad that she had
shown them that she could at any rate do one thing rather well; but she
was equally glad that she had obtained Janet's promise to avoid any
discussion of her qualities or her situation. After all, with her
self-conscious restraint and her pitiful assured income of three pounds
a week, she was a poor little creature compared with the easy, luxurious
beings of this household, whose upkeep could not cost less than three
pounds a day. Janet, in rich and complicated white, and glistening with
jewels at hand and neck, was a princess beside her. She hated her spare
black frock, and for the second time in her life desired expensive
clothes markedly feminine. She felt that she was at a grave
disadvantage, and that to remedy this disadvantage would be necessary,
not only dresses and precious stones, but an instinctive faculty of soft
allurement which she had not. Each gesture of Janet's showed seductive
grace, while her own rare gestures were stiffened by a kind of masculine
harshness. Every time that the sad-eyed and modest Edwin Clayhanger
glanced at Janet, and included herself in the glance, she fancied that
he was unjustly but inevitably misprising herself. And at length she
thought: "Why did I make Janet promise that I shouldn't be talked about?
Why shouldn't he know all about my mourning, and that I'm the only girl
in the Five Towns that can write shorthand. Why should I be afraid to
recite again? However much I might have suffered through nervousness if
I'd recited, I should have shown I'm not such a poor little thing as all
that! Why am I such a baby?" She wilted under her own disdain.
It was strange to think that Edwin Clayhanger, scarcely older than the
irresponsible Charlie, was the heir to an important business, was
potentially a rich and influential man. Had not Mr. Orgreave said that
old Mr. Clayhanger could buy up all the Orgreaves if he chose? It was
strange to think that this wistful and apparently timid young man, this
nice boy, would one day be the head of a household, and of a table such
as this! Yes, it would assuredly arrive! Everything happened. And the
mother of that household? Would it be she? Her imagination leaped far
into the future, as she exchanged a quiet, furtive smile with Mrs.
Orgreave, and she tried to see herself as another Mrs. Orgreave, a
strenuous and passionate past behind her, honoured, beloved, teased,
adored. But she could not quite see herself thus. Impossible that she,
with her temperament so feverish, restive, and peculiar, should ever
reach such a haven! It was fantastically too much to expect! And yet, if
not with Edwin Clayhanger, then with another, with some mysterious being
whom she had never seen!... Did not everything happen?... But then,
equally, strange and terrible misfortunes might be lying in wait for
her!... The indescribable sharp savour of life was in her nostrils.
IV
The conversation had turned upon Bradlaugh, the shameless free-thinker,
the man who had known how to make himself the centre of discussion in
every house in England. This was the Bradlaugh year, the apogee of his
notoriety. Dozens of times at the Cedar's meal-table had she heard the
shocking name of Bradlaugh on outraged tongues, but never once had a
word been uttered in his favour. The public opinion of the
boarding-house was absolutely unanimous in reckoning him a scoundrel. In
the dining-room of the Orgreaves the attitude towards him was different.
His free-thought was not precisely defended, but champions of his right
to sit in the House of Commons were numerous. Hilda grew excited, and
even more self-conscious. It was as if she were in momentary expectation
of being challenged by these hardy debaters: "Are not _you_ a
free-thinker?" Her interest was personal; the interest of one in peril.
Compared to the discussions at the Cedars, this discussion was as the
open, tossing, windy sea to a weed-choked canal. The talk veered into
mere profane politics, and Mr. Orgreave, entrenching himself behind an
assumption of careless disdain, was severely attacked by all his sons
except Jimmie, who, above Hilda's left shoulder, pretended to share the
paternal scorn. The indifference of Hilda to politics was complete. She
began to feel less disturbed; she began to dream. Then she suddenly
heard, through her dream, the name of Bradlaugh again; and Edwin
Clayhanger, in response to a direct question from Mr. Orgreave, was
saying:
"You can't help what you believe. You can't make yourself believe
anything. And I don't see why you should, either. There's no virtue in
believing."
And Tom was crying "Hooray!"
Hilda was thunderstruck. She was blinded as though by a mystic
revelation. She wanted to exult, and to exult with all the ardour of her
soul. This truth which Edwin Clayhanger had enunciated she had indeed
always been vaguely aware of; but now in a flash she felt it, she faced
it, she throbbed to its authenticity, and was free. It solved every
difficulty, and loosed the load that for months past had wearied her
back. "There's no virtue in believing." It was fundamental. It was the
gift of life and of peace. Her soul shouted, as she realized that just
there, in that instant, at that table, a new epoch had dawned for her.
Never would she forget the instant and the scene--scene of her re-birth!
Mrs. Orgreave remonstrated with mild sadness:
"No virtue in believing! Eh, Mr. Edwin!" And Hilda, under the ageing
lady's grieved glance, tried to quench the exultation on her face,
somewhat like a child trapped. But she could not. Tom again cried
"Hooray!" His tone, however, grated on her sensibility. It lacked
emotion. It was the tone of a pugilist's backer. And Janet permitted
herself some pleasantry. And Charlie became frankly facetious. Was it
conceivable that Charlie could be interested in religion? She liked him
very much, partly because he and she had learnt to understand each other
at the dancing-classes, and partly because his curly hair and his candid
smile compelled sympathy. But her esteem for him had limits. It was
astonishing that a family otherwise simply perfect should be content
with jocosity when jocosity was so obviously out of place. Were they,
then, afraid of being serious?... Edwin Clayhanger was not laughing; he
had blushed. Her eyes were fixed on him with the extremest intensity,
studying him, careless of the danger that his gaze might catch hers. She
was lost in him. And then, he caught her; and, burning with honest
shame, she looked downwards.
CHAPTER VI
IN THE GARDEN
I
That evening Janet did not stay long in Hilda's bedroom, having
perceived that Hilda was in one of her dark, dreamy moods.
As soon as she was gone, Hilda lowered the gas a little, and then went
to the window, and opened it wider, and, drawing aside the blind, looked
forth. The night was obscure and warm; and a wet wind moved furtively
about in the elm-trees of the garden. The window was at the side of the
house; it gave on the west, and commanded the new house just finished by
Mr. Orgreave for the Clayhanger family. The block of this generously
planned dwelling rose massively at a distance of perhaps forty feet,
dwarfing a whole row of cottages in the small street behind Lane End
House; its various chimneypots stood out a deeper black against the
enigmatic sky. Beyond the Clayhanger garden-plot, as yet uncultivated,
and its high boundary wall, ran the great silent thoroughfare, Trafalgar
Road, whose gas-lamps reigned in the nocturnal silence that the last
steam-car had left in its wake.
Hilda gazed at the house; and it seemed strange to her that the house,
which but a short time ago had no existence whatever, and was yet cold
and soulless, was destined to be the living home of a family, with
history in its walls and memories clinging about it. The formidable
magic of life was always thus discovering itself to her, so that she
could not look upon even an untenanted, terra-cotta-faced villa without
a secret thrill; and the impenetrable sky above was not more charmed and
enchanted than those brick walls. When she reflected that one day the
wistful, boyish Edwin Clayhanger would be the master of that house, that
in that house his will would be stronger than any other will, the
mystery that hides beneath the surface of all things surged up and
overwhelmed thought. And although scarcely a couple of hours had elapsed
since the key of the new life had been put into her hands, she could not
make an answer when she asked herself: "Am I happy or unhappy?"
II
The sound of young men's voices came round the corner of the house from
the lawn. Some of the brothers Orgreave were saying good-night to Edwin
Clayhanger in the porch. She knew that they had been chatting a long
time in the hall, after Clayhanger had bidden adieu to the rest of the
family. She wondered what they had been talking about, and what young
men did in general talk about when they were by themselves and
confidential. In her fancy she endowed their conversations with the
inexplicable attractiveness of masculinity, as masculinity is understood
by women alone. She had an intense desire to overhear such a
conversation, and she felt that she would affront the unguessed perils
of it with delight, drinking it up eagerly, every drop, even were the
draught deadly. Meanwhile, the mere inarticulate sound of those distant
voices pleased her, and she was glad that she was listening and that the
boys knew it not.
Silence succeeded the banging of the front door. And then, after a
pause, she was startled to hear the crunching of gravel almost under her
window. In alarm she dropped the blind, but continued to peer between
the edge of the blind and the window-frame. At one point the contiguous
demesnes of the Orgreaves and the Clayhangers were separated only by a
poor, sparse hedge, a few yards in length. Somebody was pushing his way
through this hedge. It was Edwin Clayhanger. Despite the darkness of the
night she could be sure that the dim figure was Edwin Clayhanger's by
the peculiar, exaggerated swing of the loose arms. He passed the hedge,
carelessly brushed his clothes with his hands, and walked slowly up the
Clayhanger garden towards the new house, and in the deep shadow of the
house was lost. Still, she could catch vague noises of movement. In a
state of extreme excitation she wondered what he could be doing. It
seemed to her that he and she were sharing the night together.
III
She thought:
"I would give anything to be able to speak to him privately and ask him
a little more about what he said to-night. I ought to. I may never see
him again. At any rate, I may never have another chance. He may have
meant something else. He may not have been serious...." The skin of her
face prickled, and a physical wave of emotion seemed to sweep downwards
through her whole body. The thrill was exquisite, but it was
intimidating.
She whispered to herself:
"I could go downstairs and outside, and find him, and just ask him."
The next instant she was opening the door of her bedroom.... No, all the
household had not yet retired, for a light was still burning in the
corridor. Nevertheless she might go. She descended the stairs, asking
herself aghast: "Why am I doing this?" Another light was burning in the
hall, and through the slit of the half-shut door of the breakfast-room
she could see light. She stood hesitant. Then she heard the striking of
a match in the breakfast-room, and she boldly pushed the door open. Tom,
with a book before him, was lighting his pipe.
"Hello!" he said. "What's the matter?"
"Oh, nothing!" she replied. "Only, I'm just going to walk about in the
garden a minute. I shan't go to sleep unless I do." She spoke quite
easily.
"All serene!" he agreed. "So long as you keep off the grass! It's bound
to be damp. I'll unchain the door for you, shall I?"
She said that she could unfasten the door for herself, and he did not
insist. The hospitality of the Orgreaves was never irksome. Tom had
scarcely half-risen from his chair.
"I shan't be long," she added casually.
"That's all right, Hilda," he said. "I'm not going to bed just yet."
"All the others gone?"
He nodded. She pulled the door to, tripped delicately through the hall,
and unchained the heavy front door as quietly as she could.
IV
She was outside, amid all the influences of the night. Gradually her
eyes accustomed themselves again to the gloom. She passed along the
facade of the house until she came to the corner, where the breeze
surprised her, and whence she could discern the other house and, across
the indistinct hedge, the other garden. Where was Edwin Clayhanger? Was
he wandering in the other garden, or had he entered the house? Then a
brief flare lit up a lower window of the dark mass for a few instants.
He was within. She hesitated. Should she go forward, or should she go
back? At length she went forward, and, finding in the hedge the gap
which Clayhanger had made, forced her way through it. Her skirt was torn
by an obstinate twig. Quite calmly she bent down and with her fingers
examined the rent; it was not important. She was now in the garden of
the Clayhangers, and he whom she sought was moving somewhere in the
house. "Supposing I _do_ meet him," she thought, "what shall I say to
him?" She did not know what she should say to him, nor why she had
entered upon this singular adventure. But the consciousness of self, the
fine, disturbing sense of being alive in every vein and nerve, was a
rich reward for her audacity. She wished that that tense moment of
expectation might endure for ever.
She approached the house, trembling. It was not by volition that she
walked over the uneven clayey ground, but by instinct. She was in front
of the garden-porch, and here she hesitated again, apparently waiting
for a sign from the house. She glanced timidly about her, as though in
fear of marauders that might spring out upon her from the shadow. Just
over the boundary wall the placid flame of a gas-lamp peeped. Then,
feeling with her feet for the steps, she ascended into the shelter of
the porch. Almost at the same moment there was another flare behind the
glass of the door; she heard the sound of unlatching; the flare expired.
She was absolutely terror-struck now.
The door opened, grating on some dirt or gravel.
"Who's there?" demanded a queer, shaking voice.
She could see his form.
"Me!" she answered, in a harsh tone which was the expression of her
dismay.
The deed was done, irretrievably. In her bedroom she had said that she
would try to speak with him, and lo! they were face to face, in the
dark, in secret! Her terror was now, at any rate, desperately calm. She
had plunged; she was falling into the deep sea; she was hopelessly cut
off from the past.
"Oh!" came the uncertain voice weakly. "Did you want me? Did anyone want
me?"
She heard the door being closed behind him.
She told him, with peculiar curtness, how she had seen him from her
window, and how she wished to ask him an important question.
"I dare say you think it's very queer of me," she added.
"Not at all," he said, with an insincerity that annoyed her.
"Yes, you do!" she sharply insisted. "But I want to know"--what did she
want to know?--"I want to know--did you mean it when you said--you know,
at supper--that there's no virtue in believing?"
He stammered: "Did I say there was no virtue in believing?"
She cried out, irritated: "Of course you did! Do you mean to say you can
say a thing like that and then forget about it? If it's true, it's one
of the most wonderful things that were ever said. And that's why I
wanted to know if you meant it, of whether you were only saying it
because it sounded clever."
She stopped momentarily, wondering why she was thus implying an untruth;
for the fact was that she had never doubted that he had been in earnest.
"That's what they're always doing in that house, you know--being
clever!" she went on, in a tone apparently inimical to 'that house.'
"Yes," came the voice. "I meant it. Why?"
And the voice was so simple and so sincere that it pierced straight to
her heart and changed her secret mood swiftly to the religious, so that
she really was occupied by the thoughts with which, a moment previously,
she had only pretended to be occupied; and the splendour of the
revelation was renewed. Nevertheless, some impulse, perverse or
defensive, compelled her to assume a doubt of his assurance. She
suspected that, had she not adopted this tactic, she might have melted
before him in gratitude.
"You did?" she murmured.
She thanked him, after that, rather coldly; and they talked a little
about the mere worry of these religious questions. He protested that
they never worried him, and reaffirmed his original proposition.
"I hope you are right," she said softly, in a thrilled voice. She was
thinking that this was the most wonderful, miraculous experience that
she had ever had.
V
Silence.
"Now," she thought, "I must go back." Inwardly she gave a delicious
sigh.
But just as she was about to take her prim leave, the scarce-discerned
figure of her companion stepped out into the garden.
"By Jove!" said Edwin Clayhanger. "It's beginning to rain, I do
believe."
The wind blew, and she felt rain on her cheek. Clayhanger advised her to
stand against the other wall of the porch for better protection. She
obeyed. He re-entered the porch, but was still exposed to the rain. She
called him to her side. Already he was so close that she could have
touched his shoulder by outstretching her arm.
"Oh! I'm all right!" he said lightly, and did not move.
"You needn't be afraid of me!" She was hurt that he had refused her
invitation to approach her. The next instant she would have given her
tongue not to have uttered those words. But she was in such a tingling
state of extreme sensitiveness as rendered it impossible for her to
exercise a normal self-control.
Scarcely conscious of what she did, she asked him the time. He struck a
match to look at his watch. The wind blew the match out, but she saw his
wistful face, with his disordered hair under the hat. It had the quality
of a vision.
He offered to get a light in the house, but abruptly she said good
night.
Then they were shaking hands--she knew not how or why. She could not
loose his hand. She thought: "Never have I held a hand so honest as this
hand." At last she dropped it. They stood silent while a trap rattled up
Trafalgar Road. It was as if she was bound to remain moveless until the
sounds of the trap had died away.
She walked proudly out into the rain. He called to her: "I say, Miss
Lessways!" But she did not stop.
In a minute she was back again in Lane End House.
"That you?" Tom's voice from the breakfast-room!
"Yes," she answered clearly. "I've put the chain on. Good night."
"Good night. Thanks."
She ascended the stairs, smiling to herself, with the raindrops fresh on
her cheek. In her mind were no distinct thoughts, either concerning the
non-virtue of belief, or the new epoch, or Edwin Clayhanger, or even the
strangeness of her behaviour. But all her being vibrated to the
mysterious and beautiful romance of existence.
CHAPTER VII
THE NEXT MEETING
I
For several days the town of Bursley was to Hilda simply a place made
perilous and redoubtable by the apprehension of meeting Edwin Clayhanger
accidentally in the streets thereof. And the burden of her meditations
was: "What can he have thought of me?" She had said nothing to anybody
of the deliberately-sought adventure in the garden. And with the
strangest ingenuous confidence she assumed that Edwin Clayhanger, too,
would keep an absolute silence about it. She had therefore naught to
fear, except in the privacy of his own mind. She did not blame
herself--it never occurred to her to do so--but she rather wondered at
herself, inimically, prophesying that one day her impulsiveness would
throw her into some serious difficulty. The memory of the night
beautifully coloured her whole daily existence. In spite of her
avoidance of the town, due to her dread of seeing Clayhanger, she was
constantly thinking: "But this cannot continue for ever. One day I am
bound to meet him again." And she seemed to be waiting for that day.
It came with inevitable quickness. The last day but one of June was
appointed throughout the country for the celebration of the Centenary of
Sunday Schools. Neither Hilda nor any of the Orgreave children had ever
seen the inside of a Sunday School; and the tendency up at Lane End
House was to condescend towards the festival as towards a rejoicing of
the proletariat. But in face of the magnitude of the affair, looming
more enormous as it approached, this attitude could not be maintained.
The preparations for the Centenary filled newspapers and changed the
physiognomy of towns. And on the morning of the ceremonial service,
gloriously flattered by the sun, there was candid excitement at the
breakfast-table of the Orgreaves. Mr. Orgreave regretted that pressure
of work would prevent him from seeing the fun. Tom was going to see the
fun at Hanbridge. Jimmie and Johnnie were going to see the fun, but they
would not say where. The servants were going to see the fun. Charlie had
returned to London. Alicia wanted to go and see the fun, but as she was
flushed and feverish, Mrs. Orgreave forbade and decided to remain at
home with Alicia. Otherwise, even Mrs. Orgreave would have gone to see
the fun. Hilda and Janet apparently hesitated about going, but Mr.
Orgreave, pointing out that there could not under the most favourable
circumstance be another Centenary of Sunday Schools for at least a
hundred years, sarcastically urged them to set forth. The fact was, as
Janet teasingly told him while she hung on his neck, that he wished to
accentuate as much as possible his own martyrdom to industry. Were not
all the shops and offices of the Five Towns closed? Did not every member
of his family, save those detained by illness, attend the historic
spectacle of the Centenary? He alone had sacrificed pleasure to work.
Thus Janet's loving, ironic smiles foretold, would the father of the
brood discourse during the next few days.
II
Hilda and Janet accordingly went down a be-flagged and sunlit Trafalgar
Road together. Janet was wearing still another white dress, and Hilda,
to her marked relief, had abandoned black for a slate-coloured frock
made by a dressmaker in Bleakridge. It was Mrs. Orgreave herself who had
first counselled Hilda, if she hated black, as she said she did, to
abandon black. The entire family chorus had approved.
The risk of encountering Edwin Clayhanger on that day of multitudes was
surely infinitesimal. Nevertheless, in six minutes the improbable had
occurred. At the corner of Trafalgar Road and Duck Square Janet,
attracted by the sight of banners in the distance, turned to the left
along Wedgwood Street and past the front of Clayhanger's shop.
Theoretically shops were closed, but one shutter of Clayhanger's was
down, and in its place stood Edwin Clayhanger. Hilda felt her features
stiffening into a sort of wilful and insincere hostility as she shook
hands. Within the darkness of the shop she saw the figure of two dowdy
women--doubtless the sisters of whom Janet had told her; they
disappeared before Janet and Hilda entered.
"It has happened! I have seen him again!" Hilda said to herself as she
sat in the shop listening to Janet and to Edwin Clayhanger. It appeared
likely that Edwin Clayhanger would join them in the enterprise of
witnessing the historic spectacle.
A few minutes later everybody was startled by the gay apparition of
Osmond Orgreave swinging his cane. Curiosity had been too much for
industriousness, and Osmond Orgreave had yielded himself to the general
interest.
"Oh! Father!" cried Janet. "What a deceitful thing you are!"
"Only a day or two ago," Hilda was thinking, "I had never even heard of
him. And his shop seemed so strange and romantic to me. And now I am
sitting in his shop like an old friend. And nobody suspects that he and
I have had a secret meeting!" The shop itself seemed to be important and
prosperous.
Mr. Orgreave, having decided for pleasure, was anxious to find it at
once, and, under his impatience, they left the shop. Janet went out
first with her gay father. Edwin Clayhanger waited respectfully for
Hilda to pass. But just as she was about to step forth she caught sight
of George Cannon coming along the opposite side of Wedgwood Street in
the direction of Trafalgar Road; he was in close conversation with
another man. She kept within the shelter of the shop until the two had
gone by. She did not want to meet George Cannon, with whom she had not
had speech since the interview at the Cedars; he had written to her
about the property sales, and she had replied. There was no reason why
she should hesitate to meet him. But she wished not to complicate the
situation. She thought: "If he saw me, he'd come across and speak to me,
and I might have to introduce him to all these people, and goodness
knows what!" The contretemps caused her heart to beat.
When they emerged from the shop Janet, a few yards ahead with Mr.
Orgreave, was beckoning.
III
Hilda stood on a barrel by the side of Edwin Clayhanger on another
barrel. There, from the top of St. Luke's Square, they surveyed a vast
rectangular carpet of upturned faces that made a pattern of pale dots on
a coloured and black groundwork. Nearly all the children of Bursley,
thousands upon thousands, were massed in the Square, wedged in tight
together, so that there seemed not to be an inch of space anywhere
between the shuttered shop fronts on the east of the Square and the
shuttered shop fronts on the west of the Square. At the bottom of the
Square a row of railway lorries were crammed with tiny babes--or such
they appeared--toddlers too weak to walk in processions. At the top of
the Square a large platform full of bearded adults rose like an island
out of the unconscious sea of infants. And from every window of every
house adults looked down in safe ease upon that wavy ocean over which
banners gleamed in the dazzling and fierce sunshine.
She might have put up her sunshade. But she would not do so. She
thought: "If all those children can stand the sun without fainting, I
can!" She was extraordinarily affected by the mere sight of the immense
multitude of children; they were as helpless and as fatalistic as sheep,
utterly at the mercy of the adults who had herded them. There was about
them a collective wistfulness that cut the heart; to dwell on the idea
of it would have brought her to tears. And when the multitude sang, so
lustily, so willingly, so bravely, pouring forth with the brass
instruments a volume of tone enormous and majestic, she had a tightness
of the throat that was excrutiating. The Centenary of Sunday Schools was
quite other than she had expected; she had not bargained for these
emotions.
It was after the hymn "There is a fountain filled with blood," during
the quietude of a speech, that Edwin Clayhanger, taking up an
evangelistic phrase in the speech, whispered to her:
"More blood!"
"What?" she asked, amazed by his ironical accent, which jarred on her
mood, and also by his familiar manner of leaning towards her and
dropping the words in her ear.
"Well," he said. "Look at it! It only wants the Ganges at the bottom of
the Square!"
Evidently for Edwin Clayhanger all religions were equally heathenish!
She was quite startled out of her amazement, and her response was an
almost humble entreaty not to make fun. The next moment she regretted
that she had not answered him with sharp firmness. She was somewhat out
of humour with him. He had begun by losing sight of Mr. Orgreave and
Janet--and of course it was hopeless to seek for them in those thronging
streets around St. Luke's Square. Then he had said to her, in a most
peculiar tone: "I hope you didn't catch cold in the rain the other
night," and she had not liked that. She had regarded it as a fault in
tact, almost as a sexual disloyalty on his part to refer at all to the
scene in the garden. Finally, his way of negotiating with the barrel man
for the use of two barrels had been lacking, for Hilda, in the qualities
of largeness and masterfulness; any one of the Orgreave boys would, she
was sure, have carried the thing off in a more worldly manner.
The climax of the service came with the singing of "When I survey the
wondrous Cross." The physical effect of it on Hilda was nearly
overwhelming. The terrible and sublime words seemed to surge upon her
charged with all the multitudinous significance of the crowd. She was
profoundly stirred, and to prevent an outburst of tears she shook her
head.
"What's the matter?" said Edwin Clayhanger.
"Clumsy dolt!" she thought. "Haven't you got enough sense to leave me
alone?" And she said aloud, passionately transforming her weakness into
ferocity: "That's the most splendid religious verse ever written! You
can say what you like. It's worth while believing anything, if you can
sing words like that and mean them!"
He agreed that the hymn was fine.
"Do you know who wrote it?" she demanded threateningly.
He did not. She was delighted.
"Dr. Watts, of course!" she said, with a scornful sneer. What did Janet
mean by saying that he had read simply everything?
IV
An episode which supervened close to their barrels did a great deal to
intensify the hostility of her mood. On the edge of the crowd an old
man, who had been trying to force his way through it, was being guyed by
a gang of louts who had surrounded an ice-cream barrow. Suddenly she
recognized this old man. His name was Shushions; he was a familiar
figure of the streets of Turnhill, and he had the reputation of being
the oldest Sunday School teacher in the Five Towns. He was indeed
exceedingly old, foolish, and undignified in senility; and the louts
were odiously jeering at his defenceless dotage, and a young policeman
was obviously with the louts and against the aged, fatuous victim.
Hilda gave an exclamation of revolt, and called upon Edwin Clayhanger to
go to the rescue of Mr. Shushions. Not he, however, but she jumped down
first and pushed towards the barrow. She made the path, and he followed.
She protested to the policeman, and he too modestly seconded her. Yet
the policeman, ignoring her, addressed himself to Edwin Clayhanger.
Hilda was infuriated. It appeared that old Mr. Shushions had had a
ticket for the platform, but had lost it.
"He must be got on to the platform somehow!" she decided, with a fiery
glance.
But Edwin Clayhanger seemed to be incapable of an heroic action. He
hesitated. The policeman hesitated. Fortunately, the plight of the
doting oldest Sunday School teacher in the Five Towns had been observed
from the platform, and two fussy, rosetted officials bustled up and
offered to take charge of him. And Hilda, dissolving in painful pity,
bent over him softly and arranged his disordered clothes; she was
weeping.
"Shall we go back to our barrels?" Edwin Clayhanger rather sheepishly
suggested after Mr. Shushions had been dragged away.
But she would not go back to the barrels.
"I think it's time we set about to find Janet and Mr. Orgreave," she
replied coldly, and they drew out of the crowd. She was profoundly
deceived in Edwin Clayhanger, so famous for his presence of mind in
saving printing-shops from destruction! She did not know what he ought
to have done; she made no attempt to conceive what he ought to have
done. But that he ought to have done something--something decisive and
grandly masculine--she was sure.
V
Later, after sundry adventures, and having found Mr. Orgreave and Janet,
they stood at the tail of the steam-car, which Janet had decided should
carry her up to Bleakridge; and Edwin shook hands. Yes, Hilda was
profoundly deceived in him. Nevertheless, his wistful and honest glance,
as he parted from her, had its effect. If he had not one quality, he had
another. She tried hard to maintain her scorn of him, but it was
exceedingly difficult to do so.
Mr. Orgreave wiped his brow as the car jolted them out of the tumult of
the Centenary. It was hot, but he did not seem to be in the slightest
degree fatigued or dispirited, whereas Janet put back her head and shut
her eyes.
"Caught sight of a friend of yours this morning, Hilda!" he said
pleasantly.
"Oh!"
"Yes. Mr. Cannon. By the way, I forgot to tell you yesterday that his
famous newspaper--_yours_--has come to an end." He spoke, as it were,
with calm sympathy. "Yes! Well, it's not surprising, not surprising!
Nothing's ever stood up against the _Signal_ yet!"
Hilda was saddened. When they reached Lane End House, a few seconds in
front of the hurrying and apologetic servants, Mrs. Orgreave told her
that Mr. George Cannon had called to see her, and had left a note for
her. She ran up to her room with the note. It said merely that the
writer wished to have an interview with her at once.
* * * * *
BOOK III
HER BURDEN
CHAPTER I
HILDA INDISPENSABLE
I
Hilda made no response of any kind to George Cannon's request for an
immediate interview, allowing day after day to pass in inactivity, and
wondering the while how she might excuse or explain her singular conduct
when circumstances should bring the situation to a head. She knew that
she ought either to go over to Turnhill, or write him with an
appointment to see her at Lane End House; but she did nothing; nor did
she say a word of the matter to Janet in the bedroom at nights. All that
she could tell herself was that she did not want to see George Cannon;
she was not honestly persuaded that she feared to see him. In the
meantime, Edwin Clayhanger was invisible, though the removal of the
Clayhanger household to the new residence at Bleakridge had made a
considerable stir of straw and litter in Trafalgar Road.
On Tuesday in the following week she received a letter from Sarah
Gailey. It was brought up to her room early in the morning by a
half-dressed Alicia Orgreave, and she read it as she lay in bed. Sarah
Gailey, struggling with the complexities of the Cedars, away in Hornsey,
was unwell and gloomily desolate. She wrote that she suffered from
terrible headaches on waking, and that she was often feverish, and that
she had no energy whatever. "I am at a very trying age for a woman," she
said. "I don't know whether you understand, but I've come to a time of
life that really upsets one above a bit, and I'm fit for nothing." Hilda
understood; she was flattered, even touched, by this confidence; it made
her feel older, and more important in the world, and a whole generation
away from Alicia, who was drawing up the blind with the cries and
awkward gestures of a prattling infant. To the letter there was a
postscript: "Has George been to see you yet about me? He wrote me he
should, but I haven't heard since. In fact, I've been waiting to hear.
I'll say nothing about that yet. I'm ashamed you should be bothered.
It's so important for you to have a good holiday. Again, much love,
S.G." The prim handwriting got smaller and smaller towards the end of
the postscript and the end of the page, and the last lines were
perfectly parallel with the lower edge of the paper; all the others
sloped feebly downwards from left to right.
"Oh!" piped Alicia from the window. "Maggie Clayhanger has got her
curtains up in the drawing-room! Oh! Aren't they proud things! _Oh_!--I
do believe she's caught me staring at her!" And Alicia withdrew abruptly
into the room, blushing for her detected sin of ungenteel curiosity. She
bumped down on the bed. "Three days more," she said. "Not counting
to-day. Four, counting to-day."
"School?"
Alicia nodded, her finger in her mouth. "Isn't it horrid, going to
school on a day like this? I hear you and Janet are off up to Hillport
this afternoon again, to play tennis. You do have times!"
"No," said Hilda. "I've got to go to Turnhill this afternoon."
"But Janet told me you were--" Her glance fell on the letter. "Is it
business?"
"Yes."
The child was impressed, and her change of tone, her frank awe, gave
pleasure to Hilda's vanity. "Shall I go and tell Jane? She isn't near
dressed."
"Yes, do."
Off scampered Alicia, leaving the door unlatched behind her.
Hilda gazed at the letter, holding it limply in her left hand amid the
soft disorder of the counterpane. It had come to her, an intolerably
pathetic messenger and accuser, out of the exacerbating frowsiness of
the Cedars. Yesterday afternoon care-ridden Sarah Gailey was writing it,
with sighs, at the desk in her stuffy, uncomfortable bedroom. As Hilda
gazed at the formation of the words, she could see the unhappy Sarah
Gailey writing them, and the letter was like a bit of Sarah Gailey's
self, magically and disconcertingly projected into the spacious,
laughing home of the Orgreaves, and into the mysterious new happiness
that was forming around Hilda. The Orgreaves, so far as Hilda could
discover, had no real anxieties. They were a joyous lot, favoured alike
by temperament and by fortune. And she, Hilda--what real anxieties had
she? None! She was sure of a small but adequate income. Her grief for
her mother was assuaged. The problem of her soul no longer troubled: in
part it had been solved, and in part it had faded imperceptibly away.
Nor was she exercised about the future, about the 'new life.' Instead of
rushing ardently to meet the future, she felt content to wait for its
coming. Why disturb oneself? She was free. She was enjoying existence
with the Orgreaves. Yes, she was happy in this roseate passivity.
The letter shook her, arousing as it did the sharp sense of her
indebtedness to Sarah Gailey, who alone had succoured her in her long
period of despairing infelicity. Had she guessed that it was Sarah
Gailey's affair upon which George Cannon had desired to see her, she
would not have delayed an hour; no reluctance to meet George Cannon
would have caused her to tarry. But she had not guessed; the idea had
never occurred to her.
She rose, picked up the envelope from the carpet, carefully replaced the
letter in it, and laid it with love on the glittering dressing-table.
Through the unlatched door she heard a tramping of unshod masculine feet
in the passage, and the delightful curt greeting of Osmond Orgreave and
his sleepy son Jimmie--splendid powerful males. She glanced at the
garden, and at the garden of the Clayhangers, swimming in fresh
sunshine. She glanced in the mirror, and saw the deshabille of her black
hair and of her insecure nightgown, and thought: "Truly, I am not so
bad-looking! And how well I feel! How fond they all are of me! I'm just
at the right age. I'm young, but I'm mature. I've had a lot of
experience, and I'm not a fool. I'm strong--I could stand anything!" She
put her shoulders back, with a challenging gesture. The pride of life
was hers.
And then, this disturbing vision of Sarah Gailey, alone, unhappy,
unattractive, enfeebled, ageing--ageing! It seemed to her inexpressibly
cruel that people must grow old and weak and desolate; it seemed
monstrous. A pang, momentary but excruciating, smote her. She said to
herself: "Sarah Gailey has nothing to look forward to, except worry.
Sarah Gailey is at the end, instead of at the beginning!"
II
When she got off the train at Turnhill station, early that afternoon,
she had no qualm at the thought of meeting George Cannon; she was not
even concerned to invent a decent excuse for her silence in relation to
his urgent letter. She went to see him for the sake of Sarah Gailey, and
because she apparently might be of use in some affair of Sarah's--she
knew not what. She was proud that either Sarah or he thought that she
could be of use, or that it was worth while consulting her. She had a
grave air, as of one to whom esteem has brought responsibilities.
In Child Street, leading to High Street, she passed the office of
Godlimans, the auctioneers. And there, among a group of white posters
covering the large window, was a poster of the sale of "valuable
household furniture and effects removed from No. 15 Lessways Street."
And on the poster, in a very black line by itself, stood out saliently
the phrase: "Massive Bedroom Suite." Her mother's! Hers! She had to stop
and read the poster through, though she was curiously afraid of being
caught in the act. All the principal items were mentioned by the
faithful auctioneers; and the furniture, thus described, had a strange
aspect of special importance, as if it had been subtly better, more
solid, more desirable, than any other houseful of furniture in the
town,--Lessways' furniture! She sought for the date. The sale had taken
place on the previous night, at the very hour when she was lolling and
laughing in the drawing-room of Lane End House with the Orgreaves! The
furniture was sold, dispersed, gone! The house was empty! The past was
irremediably closed! The realization of this naturally affected her,
raising phantoms of her mother, and of the face of the cab-driver as he
remarked on the drawn blinds at the Cedars. But she was still more
affected by the thought that the poster was on the window, and the
furniture scattered, solely because she had willed it. She had said:
"Please sell all the furniture, and you needn't consult me about the
sale. I don't want to know. I prefer not to know. Just get it done." And
it had been done! How mysteriously romantic! Some girls would not have
sold the furniture, would not have dared to sell it, would have accepted
the furniture and the house as a solemn charge, and gone on living among
those relics, obedient to a tradition. But she had dared! She had
willed--and the solid furniture had vanished away! And she was
adventurously free!
She went forward. At the corner of Child Street and High Street the new
Town Hall was rising to the skies. Already its walls were higher than
the highest house in the vicinity. And workmen were crawling over it,
amid dust, and a load of crimson bricks was trembling and revolving
upwards on a thin rope that hung down from the blue. Glimpses of London
had modified old estimates of her native town. Nevertheless, the new
Town Hall still appeared extraordinarily large and important to her.
She saw the detested Arthur Dayson in the distance of the street, and
crossed hurriedly to the Square, looking fixedly at the storeys above
the ironmonger's so that Arthur Dayson could not possibly catch her eye.
There was no sign of the _Five Towns Chronicle_ in the bare windows of
the second storey. This did not surprise her; but she was startled by
the absence of the Karkeek wire-blinds from the first-floor windows,
equally bare with those of the second. When she got to the entrance she
was still more startled to observe that the Karkeek brass-plate had been
removed. She climbed the long stairs apprehensively.
III
"Anybody here?" she called out timidly. She was in the clerk's office,
which was empty; but she could hear movements in another room. The place
seemed in process of being dismantled.
Suddenly George Cannon appeared in a doorway, frowning.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Cannon!"
"Good afternoon, Miss Lessways." He spoke with stiff politeness. His
face looked weary.
After a slight hesitation he advanced, and they shook hands. Hilda was
nervous. Her neglect of his letter now presented itself to her as
inexcusable. She thought: "If he is vexed about it I shall have to
humour him. I really can't blame him. He must think me very queer."
"I was wondering what had become of you," he said, amply polite, but not
cordial.
"Well," she said, "every day I was expecting you to call again, or to
send me a note or something.... And what with one thing and another--"
"I dare say your time's been fully occupied," he filled up her pause.
And she fancied that he spoke in a peculiar tone. She absurdly fancied
that he was referring to the time which she had publicly spent with
Edwin Clayhanger at the Centenary. She conceived that he might have seen
her and Edwin Clayhanger together.
"I had a letter from Miss Gailey this morning," she said. "And it seems
that it's about her that you wanted--"
"Yes."
"I do wish I'd known. If I'd had the slightest idea I should have come
over instantly." She spoke with eager seriousness, and then added,
smiling as if in appeal to be favourably understood: "I thought it was
only about _my_ affairs--sale or what not. And as I'd asked you to
manage all these things exactly as you thought best, I didn't trouble--"
He laughed, and either forgave or forgot.
"Will you come this way?" he invited, in a new tone of friendliness.
"We're rather in a mess here."
"You're all alone, too," she said, following him into his room.
"Sowter's out," he answered laconically, waiting for her to precede him.
He said nothing as to the office-boy, nor as to Mr. Karkeek. Hilda was
now sure that something strange had happened.
"So you've heard from Sarah, have you?" he began, when they were both
seated in his own room. There were still a lot of papers, though fewer
than of old, on the broad desk; but the bookcase was quite empty, and
several of the shelves in it had supped from the horizontal; the front
part of the shelves was a pale yellow, and behind that, an irregular
dark band of dust indicated the varying depths of the vanished tomes.
The forlornness of the bookcase gave a stricken air to the whole room.
"She's not well."
"Or she imagines she's not well."
"Oh no!" said Hilda warmly. "It isn't imagination. She really isn't
well."
"You think so?"
"I don't think--I know!" Hilda spoke proudly, but with the restraint
which absolute certainty permits. She crushed, rather than resented,
George Cannon's easy insinuation, full of the unjustified superiority of
the male. How could he judge--how could any man judge? She had never
before felt so sure of herself, so adult and experienced, as she felt
then.
"But it's nothing serious?" he suggested with deference.
"N--no--not what you'd call serious," said Hilda judicially,
mysteriously.
"Because she wants to give up the boarding-house business altogether--
that's all!"
Having delivered this dramatic blow, George Cannon smiled, as it were,
quizzically. And Hilda was reassured about him. She had been thinking:
"Is he ruined? If he is not ruined, what is the meaning of these
puzzling changes here?" And she had remembered her shrewd mother's
hints, and her own later fears, concerning the insecurity of his
position: and had studied his tired and worn face for an equivocal sign.
But this smile, self-confident and firm, was not the smile of a ruined
man; and his flashing glance seemed to be an omen of definite success.
"Wants to give it up?" exclaimed Hilda.
He nodded.
"But why? I thought she was doing rather well."
"So she is."
"Then why?"
"Ah!" George Cannon lifted his head with a gesture signifying enigma.
"That's just what I wanted to ask you. Hasn't she said anything to you?"
"As to giving it up? No!... So it was this that you wanted to see me
about?"
He nodded. "She wrote me a few days after you came away, and suggested I
should see you and ask you what you thought."
"But why me?"
"Well, she thinks the world of you, Sarah does."
Hilda thought: "How strange! She did nothing but look after me, and wait
on me hand and foot, and I never helped her in any way; and yet she
turns to me!" And she was extremely flattered and gratified, and was
aware of a delicious increase of self-respect.
"But supposing she does give it up?" Hilda said aloud. "What will she
do?"
"Exactly!" said George Cannon, and then, in a very confidential,
ingratiating manner: "I wish you'd write to her and put some reason into
her. She mustn't give it up. With her help--and you know in the
management she's simply wonderful--with her help, I think I shall be
able to bring something about that'll startle folks. Only, she mustn't
throw me over. And she mustn't get too crotchety with the boarders. I've
had some difficulty in that line, as it is. In fact, I've had to be
rather cross. You know about the Boutwoods, for instance! Well, I've
smoothed that over.... It's nothing, nothing--if she'll keep her head.
If she'll keep her head it's a gold mine--you'll see! Only--she wants a
bit of managing. If you'd write--"
"I shan't write," said Hilda. "I shall go and see her--at once. I should
have gone in any case, after her letter this morning saying how unwell
she is. She wants company. She was so kind to me I couldn't possibly
leave her in the lurch. I can't very well get away to-day, but I shall
go to-morrow, and I shall drop her a line to-night."
"It's very good of you, I'm sure," said George Cannon. Obviously he was
much relieved.
"Not at all!" Hilda protested. She felt very content and happy.
"The fact is," he went on, "there's nobody but you can do it. Your
mother was the only real friend she ever had. And this is the first time
she's been left alone up there, you see. I'm quite sure you can save the
situation."
He was frankly depending on her for something which he admitted he could
not accomplish himself. Those two people, George Cannon and Sarah
Gailey, had both instinctively turned to her in a crisis. None could do
what she could do. She, by the force of her individuality, could save
the situation. She was no longer a girl, but a mature and influential
being. Her ancient diffidence before George Cannon had completely gone;
she had no qualms, no foreboding, no dubious sensation of weakness.
Indeed, she felt herself in one respect his superior, for his confidence
in Sarah Gailey's housewifely skill, his conviction that it was unique
and would be irreplaceable, struck her as somewhat naif, as being yet
another example of the absurd family pride which she and her mother had
often noticed in the Five Towns. She was not happy at the prospect of so
abruptly quitting the delights of Lane End House and the vicinity of
Edwin Clayhanger; she was not happy at the prospect of postponing the
consideration of plans for her own existence; she was not happy at the
prospect of Sarah Gailey's pessimistic complainings. She was above
happiness. She was above even that thrill of sharp and intense vitality
which in times past had ennobled trouble and misery. She had the most
exquisite feeling of triumphant self-justification. She was splendidly
conscious of power. She was indispensable.
And the dismantled desolation of the echoing office, and the mystery of
George Cannon's personal position, somehow gave a strange poignancy to
her mood.
They talked of indifferent matters: her property, the Orgreaves, even
the defunct newspaper, as to which George Cannon shrugged his shoulders.
Then the conversation drooped.
"I shall go up by the four train to-morrow," she said, clinching the
interview, and rising.
"I may go up by that train myself," said George Cannon.
She started. "Oh! are you going to Hornsey, too?"
"No! Not Hornsey. I've other business."
CHAPTER II
SARAH'S BENEFACTOR
I
On the following afternoon Hilda travelled alone by the local train from
Bleakridge to Knype, the central station where all voyagers for London,
Birmingham, and Manchester had to foregather in order to take the fast
expresses that unwillingly halted there, and there only, in their
skimming flights across the district. It was a custom of Five Towns
hospitality that a departing guest should be accompanied as far as Knype
and stowed with personal attentions into the big train. But on this
occasion Hilda had wished otherwise. "I should _prefer_ nobody to go
with me to Knype," she had said, in a characteristic tone, to Janet. It
was enough. The family had wondered; but it was enough. The family knew
its singular, its mysterious Hilda. And instead of at Knype, the
leave-takings had occurred at the little wayside station of Bleakridge,
with wavy moorland behind, factory chimneys in front, and cinder and
shawd heaps all around. Hilda had told Janet: "Mr. Cannon may be meeting
me at Knype. He's probably going to London too." And the discreet Janet,
comprehending Hilda, had not even mentioned this fact to the rest of the
family.
George Cannon, in a light summer suit and straw hat, was already on the
platform at Knype. Hilda had feared that at Bleakridge he might be
looking out of the window of the local train, which started from
Turnhill; she had desired not to meet him in the presence of any of the
Orgreaves. But either he had caught the previous train to Knype, or he
had driven down. Holding a Gladstone bag and a stick in one hand, he
stood talking to another man of about his own age and height. The
conversation was vivacious, at any rate on George Cannon's part. Hilda
passed close by him amid the populous stir of the expectant platform. He
saw her, turned, and raised his hat, but in a perfunctory, preoccupied
manner; and instantly resumed the speech to his companion. Hilda
recognized the latter. It was 'young Lawton,' son and successor to 'old
Lawton,' the most famous lawyer in the Five Towns. Young Lawton had a
branch office at Turnhill, and lived in an important house half-way
between Turnhill and Bursley, where, behind the Town Hall, was the
historic principal office of the firm.
The express came loudly in, and Hilda, having climbed into a
second-class compartment, leaned out from it, to descry her porter and
bestow on him a threepenny bit. George Cannon and young Lawton were
still in argument, and apparently quite indifferent to the train. Young
Lawton's thin face had its usual faint, harsh smile; his limbs were
moveless in an exasperating and obstinate calm; Hilda detested the man
from his mere looks. But George Cannon was very obviously under
excitement. His face was flushed; he moved his free arm violently--even
the Gladstone bag swung to and fro; he punctuated his sentences with
sharp, angry nods of the head, insisting and protesting and insisting,
while the other, saying much less, maintained his damnable stupid
disdainful grin.
Would he let the train go, in his feverish preoccupation? Hilda was
seriously afraid that he would. The last trunks were flung into the
front van, the stationmaster in his tall hat waved curtly to the
glittering guard; the guard waved his flag, and whistled; a porter
banged the door of Hilda's compartment, ignoring her gestures; the
engine whistled. And at that moment George Cannon, throwing apparently a
last malediction at young Lawton, sprang towards the train, and, seeing
Hilda's face, rushed to the door which she strained to open again.
"I was afraid you'd be left behind," she said, as he dropped his bag on
the seat and the affronted stationmaster himself shut the door.
"Not quite!" ejaculated Cannon grimly.
The smooth, irresistible gliding of the train became apparent,
establishing a sudden aloof calm. Hilda perceived that all her muscles
were tense.
In the compartment was a middle-aged couple.
"What's this place?" asked the woman.
"Looks like Tamworth," said the man sleepily.
"Knype, sir!" George Cannon corrected him very sharply. He was so
wrought up that he had omitted even to shake hands with Hilda. Making no
effort to talk, and showing no curiosity about Hilda's welfare or
doings, he moved uneasily on his seat, and from time to time opened and
shut the Gladstone bag. Gradually the flush paled from his face.
At Lichfield the middle-aged couple took advice from a porter and
stumbled out of the train.
II
"We're fairly out of the smoke now," said Hilda, when the train began to
move again. As a fact, they had been fairly out of the smoke of the Five
Towns for more than half an hour; but Hilda spoke at random, timidly,
nervously, for the sake of speaking. And she was as apologetic as though
it was she herself who by some untimely discretion had annoyed George
Cannon.
"Yes, thank God!" he replied fiercely, blowing with pleasure upon the
embers of his resentment. "And I'll take good care I never go into it
again--to live, that is!"
"Really?" she murmured, struck into an extreme astonishment.
He produced a cigar and a match-box.
"May I?" he demanded carelessly, and accepted her affirmative as of
course.
"You've heard about my little affair?" he asked, after lighting the
cigar. And he gazed at her curiously.
"No."
"Do you mean to say that none of the Orgreaves have said anything this
last day or two?" He leaned forward. They were in opposite corners.
"No," she repeated stiffly. Nevertheless, she remembered a peculiar
glance of Tom's to his father on the previous day, when George Cannon's
name had been mentioned.
"Well," said he. "You surprise me! That's all!"
"But--" She stopped, full of misgivings.
"Never heard any gossip about me--never?" he persisted, as it were,
menacing her.
She shook her head.
"Never heard that I'm not really a solicitor?"
"Oh! well--I think mother once did say something--"
"I thought so."
"But I don't understand those things," she said simply. "Is anything the
matter? Is--"
"Nothing!" he replied, calm and convincing. "Only I've been done! Done!
You'll hear about it some day, I dare say.... Shall I tell you? Would
you like me to tell you?" He smiled rather boyishly and leaned back.
"Yes," she nodded.
His attitude was very familiar, recalling their former relation of
employer and employed. It seemed as natural to her as to him that he
should not too ceremoniously conceal his feelings or disguise his mood.
"Well, you see, I expect I know as much about law as any of 'em, but
I've never been admitted, and so--" He stopped, perceiving that she did
not comprehend the significance of such a word as 'admitted.' "If you
want to practise as a solicitor you have to pass examinations, and I
never have passed examinations. Very expensive, all that! And I couldn't
afford when I was young. It isn't the exams that are difficult--you may
tell that from the fellows that pass them. Lawton, for instance. But
after a certain age exams become a nuisance. However, I could do
everything else. I might have had half a dozen situations as managing
clerk in the Five Towns if I'd wanted. Only I didn't want! I wanted to
be on my own. I could get clients as quick as any of them. _And_
quicker! So I found Karkeek--the excellent Mr. Karkeek! Another of the
bright ones that could pass the exams! Oh! He'd passed the exams all
right! He'd spent five years and I don't know how many hundred pounds in
passing the exams, and with it all he couldn't get above a couple of
pounds a week. There are hundreds of real solicitors up and down the
country who aren't earning more. And they aren't worth more. But I gave
him more, and a lot more. Just to use his name on my door and my blinds.
See? In theory I was his clerk, but in reality he was mine. It was all
quite clear. He understood--I should think he did, by Jove!" George
Cannon laughed shortly. "Every one understood. I got a practice together
in no time. _He_ didn't do it. He wouldn't have got a practice together
in a thousand years. I had the second-best practice in Turnhill, and I
should soon have had the best--if I hadn't been done."
"Yes?" said Hilda. The confidence flattered her.
"Well, Karkeek came into some money,--and he simply walked out of the
office! Simply walked out! Didn't give me time to turn round. I'd always
treated him properly. But he was jealous."
"What a shame!" Hilda's scorn shrivelled up Mr. Karkeek. There was
nothing that she detested so much as a disloyalty.
"Yes. I couldn't stop him, of course. No formal agreement between us.
Couldn't be, in a case like ours! So he had me. He'd taken my wages
quick enough as long as it suited him. Then he comes into money, and
behaves like that. Jealousy! They were all jealous,--always had been. I
was doing too well. So I had the whole gang down on me instantly like a
thousand of bricks. They knew I was helpless, and so they came on.
Special meeting of the committee of the North Staffordshire Law Society,
if you please! Rumours of prosecution--oh yes! I don't know what!... All
because I wouldn't take the trouble to pass their wretched exams....
Why, I could pass their exams on my head, if I hadn't anything better to
do. But I have. At first I thought I'd retire for five years and pass
their exams, and then come back and make 'em sit up. And wouldn't I have
made 'em sit up! But then I said to myself, 'No. It isn't good enough.'"
Hilda frowned. "What isn't?"
"What? The Five Towns isn't good enough! I can find something better
than the law, and I can find something better than the Five Towns!...
And here young Lawton has the impudence to begin to preach to me on
Knype platform, and to tell me I'm wise in going! He's the President of
the local Law Society, you know! No end of a President! And hasn't even
got gumption enough to keep his father's practice together! Stupid ass!
Well, I let him have it, and straight! He's no worse than the rest.
They've got no brains in this district. And they're so narrow--narrow
isn't the word! Thick-headed's the word. Stupid! Mean!... Mean!... What
did it matter to them? I kept to all their rules. There was a real
solicitor on the premises, and there'd soon have been another, if I'd
had time. No concern of theirs how the money was divided between me and
the real solicitor. But they were jealous--there you are! They don't
understand enterprise. They hate it. Nothing ever moves in the Five
Towns. And they've got no manners--I do believe that's the worst. Look
at Lawton's manners! Nothing but a boor! They aren't civilized
yet--that's what's the matter with them! That's what my father used to
say. Barbarians, he used to say. '_Ce sont des barbares!_'... Kids used
to throw stones at him because of his neck-tie. The grown-ups chuck a
brick at anything they don't quite fancy. That's their idea of wit."
Hilda was afraid of his tempestuous mood. But she enjoyed her fear, as
she might have enjoyed exposure to a dangerous storm. She enjoyed the
sensation of her fragility and helplessness there, cooped up with him in
the close intimacy of the compartment. She was glad that he did not
apologize to her for his lack of restraint, nor foolishly pretend that
he was boring her.
"It does seem a shame!" she murmured, her eyes candidly admitting that
she felt enormously flattered.
He sighed and laughed. "How often have I heard my father say that--'_Ce
sont des barbares_!' Peels only brought him over because they could find
nobody in the Five Towns civilized enough to do the work that he did....
I can imagine how he must have felt when he first came here!... My
God!... Environment!... I tell you what--it's only lately I've realized
how I loathe the provinces!"
The little interior in which they were, swept steadily and smoothly
across the central sunlit plain of England, passing canals and brooks
and cottages and churches--silent and stolid in that English stupidity
that he was criticizing. And Hilda saw of George Cannon all that was
French in him. She saw him quite anew, as something rather exotic and
entirely marvellous. She thought: "When I first met him, I said to
myself he was a most extraordinary man. And I was right. I was more
right than I ever imagined. No one down there has any idea of what he
really is. They're too stupid, as he says."
He imposed on her his scorn of the provincial. She had to share it. She
had a vision of the Five Towns as a smoky blotch on the remote
horizon,--negligible, crass, ridiculous in its heavy self-complacency.
The very Orgreaves themselves were tinged with this odious English
provincialism.
He smiled to himself, and then said, very quietly: "It isn't of the
least importance, you know. In fact I'm rather glad. I've never had any
difficulty in making money, and when I've settled up everything down
there I shan't be precisely without. And I shall have no excuse for not
branching out in a new line."
She meekly encouraged him to continue.
"Oh yes!" he went on. "The law isn't the only thing--not by a long way.
And besides, I'm sick of it. Do you know what the great thing of the
future is, I mean the really great thing--the smashing big thing?" He
smiled, kindly and confidential.
She too smiled, shaking her head.
"Well, I'll tell you. Hotels!"
"Hotels?" She was perfectly nonplussed.
"Hotels! There'll be more money and more fun to be got out of hotels,
soon, than out of any other kind of enterprise in the world. You should
see those hotels that are going up in London! They'd give you a start,
and no mistake! Yes, hotels! There aren't twenty people in England who
know what a hotel is! But I know!" He paused, and added reflectively, in
a comically naive tone: "Curious how these things come to you, bit by
bit! Now, if it hadn't been for Sarah--and that boarding-house--"
He was using his straw hat as a fan. With an unexpected and almost
childlike gesture he suddenly threw the hat up on to the rack above his
head, "How's that?"
"What a boy he is, after all!" thought Hilda sympathetically, wondering
why in the midst of all her manifold astonishment she felt so
light-hearted and gay.
"Funny parcel you've got up there!" he idly observed, glancing from one
rack to the other.
The parcel contained Mrs. Orgreave's generous conception of a repast
proper to be eaten in a train in place of high tea. He helped her to eat
it.
As the train approached London he resumed his manhood. And he was
impeccably adult as he conducted her from Euston to King's Cross, and
put her into a train in a corner of the station that the summer twilight
had already taken possession of.
III
Late at night Hilda sat with Sarah Gailey in the landlady's small
bedroom at the Cedars. It was lighted by a lamp, because the builder of
the house, hating excess, had thought fit not to carry gas-pipes higher
than the first floor. A large but old bedstead filled half the floor
space. On the shabby dressing-table a pile of bills and various papers
lay near the lamp. Clothes were hung behind the door, and a vague wisp
of muslin moved slightly in the warm draught from the tiny open window.
There were two small cane-chairs, enamelled, on which the women sat,
close to each other, both incommoded by the unwholesome sultriness of
the only chamber that could be spared for the private use of the
house-mistress. This small bedroom was Sarah Gailey's home; its
amenities were the ultimate nightly reward of her labours. If George
Cannon had obtained possession of the Cedars as an occupation for Sarah,
this room and Sarah's pleasure therein were the sole justification of
the entire mansion.
As Hilda looked at Sarah Gailey's bowed head, but little greyed, beneath
the ray of the lamp, and at her shrivelled, neurotic, plaintive face in
shadow, and at her knotty hands loosely clasped, she contrasted her
companion and the scene with the youthfulness and the spaciousness and
the sturdy gay vigour of existence in the household of the Orgreaves.
She thought, with a renewed sense of the mysterious strangeness of life:
"Last night I was there, far away--all those scores of miles of fields
and towns are between!--and to-night I am here. Down there I was nothing
but an idler. Here I am the strongest. I am indispensable. I am the one
person on whom she depends. Without me everything will go to pieces."
And she thought of George Cannon's vast enigmatic projects concerning
grand hotels. In passing the immense pile of St. Pancras on the way from
Euston to King's Cross, George Cannon had waved his hand and said: "Look
at that! Look at that! It's something after that style that I want for a
toy! And I'll have it!" Yes, the lofty turrets of St. Pancras had not
intimidated him. He, fresh from little Turnhill and from defeats, could
rise at once to the height of them, and by the force of imagination make
them his own! He could turn abruptly from the law--to hotels! A
disconcerting man! And the mere tone in which he mentioned his
enterprise seemed, in a most surprising way, to dignify hotels, and even
boarding-houses; to give romance to the perfectly unromantic business of
lodging and catering!... And the seed from which he was to grow the
magic plant sat in the room there with Hilda: that bowed head! The
ambition and the dream resembled St. Pancras: the present reality was
the Cedars, and Sarah's poor, stuffy little bedroom in the Cedars.
Sarah began to cry, weakly.
"But what's the matter?" asked Hilda, the strong succourer.
"Nothing. Only it's such a relief to me you've come."
Hilda deprecated lightly. "I should have come sooner if I'd known. You
ought to have sent word before."
"No, I couldn't. After all, what is it? I'm only silly. There's nothing
really the matter. The minute you come I can see that. I can even stand
those Boutwoods if you're here. You know George made it up with them;
and I won't say he wasn't right. But I had to put my pride in my pocket.
And yesterday it nearly made me scream out to see Mrs. Boutwood stir her
tea."
"But why?"
"I don't know. It's nerves, that's what it is.... Well, I've got to go
through these." She fingered the papers on the dressing-table with her
left hand while drying her tears with the right. "He's very wishful for
proper accounts, George is. That's right enough. But--well--I think I
can make a shilling go as far as anyone, and choose flesh-meat with
anyone, too--that I will say--but these accounts...! George is always
wanting to know how much it costs a head a week for this that and the
other.... It's all very well for him, but if he had the servants to look
after and--"
"I'm going to keep your accounts for you," Hilda soothed her.
"But--"
"I'm going to keep your accounts for you," And she thought: "How exactly
like mother I was just then!"
It appeared to Hilda that she was making a promise, and shouldering a
responsibility, against her will, and perhaps against her common sense.
She might keep accounts at the Cedars for a week, a fortnight, a month.
But she could not keep accounts there indefinitely. She was sowing
complications for herself. Freedom and change and luxury were what she
deemed she desired; not a desk in a boarding-house. And yet something
within her compelled her to say in a firm, sure, kindly voice:
"Now give me all those papers, Miss Gailey."
And amid indefinite regret and foreboding, she was proud and happy in
her role of benefactor.
When Hilda at length rose to go to her own room, Sarah Gailey had to
move her chair so that she might pass. At the door both hesitated for an
instant, and then Hilda with a sudden gesture advanced her lips. It was
the first time she and Sarah had ever kissed. The contact with that
desiccated skin intensified to an extraordinary degree Hilda's emotional
sympathy for the ageing woman. She thought, poignantly: "Poor old
thing!"
And when she was on the dark little square landing under the roof,
Sarah, holding the lamp, called out in a whisper.
"Hilda!"
"Well?"
"Did he say anything to you about Brighton?"
"Brighton?" She perceived with certainty from Sarah's eager and yet
apologetic tone, that the question had been waiting for utterance
throughout the evening, and that Sarah had lacked courage for it until
the kiss had enheartened her. And also she perceived that Sarah was
suspecting her of being somehow in conspiracy with George Cannon.
"Yes," said Sarah. "He's got into his head that Brighton's the only
place for this boarding-house business if it's to be properly done."
"He never said a word to me about Brighton," Hilda whispered positively.
"Oh!"
Hilda descended the stairs, groping. Brighton? What next?
CHAPTER III
AT BRIGHTON
I
She thought vividly, one afternoon about three months later, of that
final scrap of conversation. Just as she had sat opposite George Cannon
in a second-class compartment, so now she was sitting opposite Sarah
Gailey in a second-class compartment. The train, having passed Lewes,
was within a few minutes of Brighton. And following behind them,
somewhere at the tail of the train, were certain trunks containing all
that she possessed and all that Sarah Gailey possessed of personal
property--their sole chattels and paraphernalia on earth. George Cannon
had willed it and brought it about. He was to receive them on the
platform of Brighton Station. She had not seen very much of him in the
interval, for he had been continually on the move between Brighton and
Turnhill. "In a moment we shall all be together again," she reflected.
"This meeting also will happen, as everything else has happened, and a
new period will definitely have begun." And she sat and stared at the
closed eyes of the desiccated Sarah Gailey, and waited for the instant
of arrival apprehensively and as it were incredulously--not with fear,
not with pleasure, but with the foreboding of adventure and a curious
idea that the instant of arrival never would come.
For thirteen weeks, which had gone very quickly, she had devoted herself
to Sarah Gailey, acting as George Cannon's precursor, prophet, and
expounder. While the summer cooled into autumn, and the boarding-house
season slackened and once more feebly brightened, she had daily
conversed with Sarah about George's plans, making them palatable to her,
softening the shocks of them, and voluntarily promising not to quit her
until the crisis was past. She had had to discourse on the unique
advantages of Brighton as a field for George's enterprise, and on
George's common sense and on Sarah's common sense, and the
interdependence of the two. When the news came that George had acquired
down there a house in going order, she had had to prove that it was not
the end of the world that was announced. When the news came that George
had re-sold the Cedars to its original occupier, she had had to prove
that the transaction did not signify a mysterious but mortal insult to
Sarah. When the news came that the Cedars must be vacated before noon on
a given Saturday, she had had to begin all her demonstrations afresh,
and in addition attempt to persuade Sarah that George was not utterly
mad--buying and selling boarding-house tenancies all over the South of
England!--and that the exit from the Cedars would not be the ruin of
dignity and peace, and the commencement of fatal disasters. In the hour
when Sarah Gailey learnt the immutable Saturday of departure, the
Cedars, which had been her hell, promised to become, on that very
Saturday, a paradise.
On the whole, the three months had constituted a quarter of exceeding
difficulty and delicacy. The first month had been rendered memorable by
Sarah's astonishing behaviour when Hilda had desired to pay, as before,
for her board and lodging. The mere offer of the money had made plain to
Sarah--what she then said she had always suspected--that Hilda was her
enemy in disguise and (like the rest) bent on humiliating her, and
outraging her most sacred feelings. In that encounter, but in no other,
Sarah had won. The opportune withdrawal of the Boutwoods from the
boarding-house had assisted the establishment of peace. When the
Boutwoods left, Miss Gailey seemed to breathe the drawing-room air as
though it were ozone of the mountains. But her joy had been quickly
dissipated, for to dissipate joy was her chief recreation. A fortnight
before the migration to Brighton Hilda, contemplating all that had to be
done, had thought, aghast: "I shall never he able to humour her into
doing it all!" Closing of accounts, dismissals, inventories, bills,
receipts, packing, decision concerning trains, reception of the former
proprietor (especially that!), good-byes, superintending the stowage of
luggage on the cab...! George Cannon had not once appeared in the last
sensitive weeks, and he had therein been wise. And all that had to be
done had been done--not by Hilda, but by Sarah Gailey the touchy and the
competent. Hilda had done little but the humouring.
II
And there sat Sarah Gailey, deracinated and captive, to prove how
influential a person Hilda was! With the eyes shut, Sarah's worn face
under her black bonnet had precisely the aspect of a corpse--and the
corpse of somebody who had expired under the weight of all the world's
woe! Hilda thought: "When she is dead she will look just like that!...
And one day, sooner or later, she will be dead." Strange that Sarah
Gailey, with no malady except her chronic rheumatism, and no material
anxiety, and every prospect of security in old age, could not be
content, could not at any rate refrain from being miserable! But she
could not. She was an exhaustless fount of worry and misery. "I suppose
I like her," thought Hilda. "But why do I like her? She isn't agreeable.
She isn't amusing. She isn't pretty. She isn't even kind, now. She's
only depressing and tedious. As soon as she's fixed up here, I shall go.
I shall leave her. I've done enough, and I've had enough. I must attend
to my own affairs a bit. After all--" And then Hilda's conscience
interrupted: "But can you leave her altogether? Without you, what will
happen to her? She's getting older and worse every day. Perhaps in a few
years she won't even be competent. Already she isn't perhaps quite,
quite as competent as she was." And Hilda said: "Well, of course, I
shall have to keep an eye on her; come and see her sometimes--often."
And she knew that as long as they both lived she could never be free
from a sense of responsibility towards Sarah Gailey. Useless to argue:
"It's George Cannon's affair, not mine!" Useless to ask: "_Why_ should I
feel responsible?" Only after she had laid Sarah Gailey in the tomb
would she be free. "And that day too will come!" she thought again. "I
shall have to go through it, and I shall go through it!"
The poignant romance of existence enveloped her in its beautiful veils.
And through these veils she saw, vague and diminished, the far vista of
the hours which she had spent with the Orgreaves. She saw the night of
Edwin Clayhanger's visit, and herself and him together in the porch,
and she remembered the shock of his words, "There's no virtue in
believing." The vision was like that of another and quite separate life.
Would she ever go back to it? Janet was her friend, in theory her one
intimate friend: she had seen her once in London,--beautiful, agreeable,
affectionate, intelligent; all the Orgreaves were lovable. The glance of
Edwin Clayhanger, and the sincerity of his smile, had affected her in a
manner absolutely unique.... But would she ever go back? It seemed to
her fantastic, impossible, that she should ever go back. It seemed to
her that she was netted by destiny. In any case she knew that she could
not, meanwhile, give to that group in Bursley even a part of herself.
Hilda could never give a part of herself. Moreover, she was a bad
letter-writer. And so, if among themselves the group at Bursley charged
her with inconstancy, she must accept the accusation, to which she was
inevitably exposed by the very ardour of her temperament.
The putting-on of brakes took her unawares. The train was in Brighton,
sliding over the outskirts of the town. Miss Gailey opened her
apprehensive eyes. Hilda saw steep streets of houses that sprawled on
the hilly mounds of the great town like ladders: reminiscent of certain
streets of her native district, yet quite different, a physiognomy
utterly foreign to her. This then, was Brighton. That which had been a
postmark became suddenly a reality, shattering her preconceptions of it,
and disappointing her she knew not why. She glanced forward, through the
window, and saw the cavern of the station. In a few seconds they would
have arrived, and her formal mission would be over. She was very
agitated and very nervous. George Cannon had promised to meet them.
Would he meet them?
The next instant she saw the platform. She saw George Cannon,
conspicuous and debonair in a new suit, swinging his ebony stick. The
train stopped. He descried them.
"There he is!" she said, bravely pretending to be gay. And she thought:
"I could not believe that this moment would come, but it has come."
She had anticipated relief from this moment, but she was aware of no
relief. On the contrary, she felt most uncomfortably apologetic to Sarah
Gailey for George Cannon, and to George Cannon for Sarah Gailey. She had
the constraint of a sinner. And, by the side of George Cannon on the
platform, she was aware of her shabbiness and of her girlish fragility.
Nevertheless, she put her shoulders back with a gesture like his own,
thinking proudly, and trying to make her eyes speak: "Well, here is
Sarah Gailey,--thanks to me!"
As Sarah greeted him, Hilda observed, with some dismay, a curious, very
slight stiffening of her demeanour--familiar phenomenon, which denoted
that Sarah was in the grip of a secret grievance. "Poor old thing!" she
thought ruefully. "I'd imagined she'd forgiven him for bringing her
here; but she hasn't."
III
They drove down from the station in an open carriage, unencumbered by
the trunks, which George Cannon had separately disposed of. He sat with
his back to the horse, opposite the two women, and talked at intervals
about the weather, the prospects of the season, and the town. His
familiarity with the town was apparently such that he seemed to be a
native of it, and even in some mysterious way to have assisted in its
creation and development; so that he took pride in its qualities and
accepted responsibility for its defects. When he ceremoniously saluted
two women who went by in another carriage, Hilda felt sharply the
inferiority of an ignorant stranger in presence of one for whom the
place had no secrets.
Her first disappointment changed slowly into expectant and hopeful
curiosity. The quaint irregularities of the architecture, and the
vastness of the thronged perspectives, made promises to her romantic
sense. The town seemed to be endless as London. There were hotels,
churches, chapels, libraries, and music-shops on every hand. The more
ordinary features of main streets--the marts of jewellery, drapery, and
tobacco--had an air of grandiose respectability; while the narrow alleys
that curved enigmatically away between the lofty buildings of these fine
thoroughfares beckoned darkly to the fancy. The multiplicity of beggars,
louts, and organ-grinders was alone a proof of Brighton's success in the
world; the organ-grinders, often a man and a woman yoked together, were
extraordinarily English, genteel, and prosperous as they trudged in
their neat, middle-class raiment through the gritty mud of the macadam,
stolidly ignoring the menace of high-stepping horses and disdainful
glittering wheels. Brighton was evidently a city apart. Nevertheless,
Hilda did not as yet understand why George Cannon should have considered
it to be the sole field worthy of his enterprise.
Then the carriage rounded into King's Road, and suddenly she saw the
incredible frontage of hotels, and _pensions_ and apartments, and she
saw the broad and boundless promenade alive with all its processions of
pleasure, and she saw the ocean. And everything that she had seen up to
that moment fell to the insignificance of a background. She understood.
After a blusterous but mild autumn day the scarlet sun was setting
calmly between a saffron sky and saffron water; it flashed upon waves
and sails and flags, and upon the puddles in the road, and upon
bow-windows and flowered balconies, giving glory to human pride. The
carriage, merged in a phalanx of carriages, rolled past innumerable
splendid houses, and every house without exception was a hostel and an
invitation. Some were higher than any she had ever seen; and one
terrific building, in course of construction, had already far overtopped
the highest of its neighbours. She glanced at George Cannon, who, by a
carefully casual demeanour, was trying not to take the credit of the
entire spectacle; and she admitted that he was indeed wonderful.
"Of course, Sarah," he said, as the carriage shortly afterwards turned
up Preston Street, where the dying wind roughly caught them, "we aren't
beginning with anything as big as all that, so you needn't shiver in
your shoes. You know what my notion is"--he included Hilda in his
address--"my notion is to get some experience first in a smaller house.
We must pay for our experience, and my notion is to pay as little as
possible. I can tell you there's quite a lot of things that have to be
picked up before you've got the hang of a town like this--quite a lot."
Sarah grimly nodded. She had scarcely spoken.
"We're beginning rather well. I've told you all about the Watchett
sisters, haven't I? They're an income, a positive income! And then
Boutwood and his wife have decided to come--did I tell you?"
"Bou--"
The syllable escaped explosively from Sarah Gailey's mouth, overcoming
her stern guard. Instantly, by a tremendous effort, she checked the
flow. But the violent shock of the news had convulsed her whole being.
The look on her face was changed to desperation. Hilda trembled, and
even the splendid and ever-resurgent George Cannon was discountenanced.
Not till then had Hilda realized with what intense bitterness the
souvenir of the Boutwoods festered in Sarah Gailey's unreasoning heart.
IV
"Here we are!" said George Cannon jauntily, as the carriage stopped in
front of No. 59 Preston Street. But his jauntiness seemed factitious.
The demeanour of all three was diffident and unnatural, for now had
arrived the moment when George Cannon had to submit his going concern to
the ordeal of inspection by the women, and especially by Sarah Gailey.
There the house stood, a physical fact, forcing George to justify it,
and beseeching clemency from the two women. The occasion was critical;
therefore everybody had to pretend that it was a perfectly ordinary
occasion, well knowing the futility of the pretence. And the inevitable
constraint was acutely aggravated by Sarah's silent and terrible
reception of the news concerning the Boutwoods.
While George Cannon was paying the driver, Sarah and Hilda hesitated
awkwardly on the pavement, their hands occupied with small belongings.
They had the sensation of being foreigners to the house; they could not
even mount the steps without his protection; scarcely might they in
decency examine the frontage of the house. They could not, however,
avoid seeing that a workman was fixing a new and splendid brass-plate at
the entrance, and that this plate bore the words, "Cannon's Boarding-
house." Hilda thought, startled: "At last he is using his own name!"
He turned to them.
"You have a view of the sea from the bow-window of the drawing-room--on
the first floor," he remarked.
Neither Hilda nor Sarah responded.
"And of course from the other bow-window higher up," he added, almost
pitifully, in his careful casualness.
Hilda felt sorry for him, and she could not understand why she felt
sorry, why it seemed a shame that he should be mysteriously compelled
thus to defend the house before it had been attacked.
"Oh yes!" she murmured foolishly, almost fatuously.
The street and the house were disappointing. After the grandeur of the
promenade, the street appeared shabby and third-rate; it had the
characteristics of a side street; it was the retreat of those who could
not afford anything better, and its base inhabitants walked out on to
the promenade and swaggeringly feigned to be the equals of their
superiors. The house also was shabby and third-rate--with its poor
little glimpse of the sea. Although larger than the Cedars, it was
noticeably smaller and meaner than any house on the promenade, and
whereas the Cedars was detached, No. 59 was not even semi-detached, but
one of a gaunt, tall row of stuccoed and single-fronted dwellings. It
looked like a boarding-house (which the Cedars did not), and not all the
style of George Cannon's suit and cane and manner, as he mounted the
steps, nor the polish of his new brass-plate, could redeem it from the
disgrace of being a very ordinary boarding-house.
George Cannon had made a serious mistake in bringing the carriage round
by the promenade. True, he had exhibited the glory of Brighton, but he
had done so to the detriment of his new enterprise. That No. 59 ought to
be regarded as merely an inexpensive field for the acquiring of
preliminary experience did not influence the judgment of the women in
the slightest degree. For them it was a house that rightly apologized
for itself, and whose apologetic air deserved only a condescending
tolerance.
The front door stood open for the convenience of the artisan who was
screwing at the brass-plate. He moved aside, with the servility that
always characterizes the worker in a city of idlers, and the party
passed into a long narrow hall, whose walls were papered to imitate
impossible blocks of mustard-coloured marble. The party was now at home.
"Here we are!" said Hilda, with a gaiety that absolutely desolated
herself, and in the same instant she remembered that George Cannon had
preceded her in saying 'Here we are!' She looked from the awful glumness
of Sarah Gailey to the equally awful alacrity of George Cannon, and felt
as though she had committed some crime whose nature she could not guess.
A middle-aged maid appeared, like a suspicious scout, at the far end of
the hall, beyond the stairs, having opened a door which showed a glimpse
of a kitchen.
"That tea ready?" asked George Cannon.
"No, sir," said the maid plumply.
"Well, let it be got ready."
"Yes, sir." The maid vanished, flouncing.
Sarah Gailey, with a heavy sigh, dropped her small belongings on to a
narrow bare table that stood against the wall near the foot of the
stairs. Daylight was fading.
"Well," said George Cannon, balancing his hat on his cane, "your luggage
will be here directly. This is the dining-room." He pushed at a
yellow-grained door.
The women followed him into the dining-room, and stared at the dining-
room in silence.
"There's a bedroom behind," he said, as they came out, and he displayed
the bedroom behind. "That's the kitchen." He pointed to the adjoining
door.
"The drawing-room's larger," he said. "It includes the width of the
hall."
They climbed the narrow stairs after him wearily. The door of the
drawing-room was ajar, and the chatter of thin feminine voices could be
heard within. George Cannon gave a soundless warning whisper: "The
Watchetts." And Sarah Gailey frowned back the information that she did
not wish to meet the Watchetts just then. With every precaution against
noise, George Cannon opened two other doors, showing bedrooms. And then,
as it were, hypnotized by him, the women climbed another flight of
narrow stairs, darkening, and saw more rooms, and then still another
flight, and still more rooms, and finally the boasted view of the sea!
After all, Hilda was obliged to admit to herself that the house was more
impressive than she had at first supposed. Although single-fronted, it
was deep, and there were two bedrooms on the first floor, and four
each--two large and two small--on the second and third. Eleven in all,
they had seen, of which three were occupied by the Watchetts, and one,
temporarily, by George Cannon. The rest were empty; but the season had
scarcely begun, and the Boutwoods were coming. George Cannon had said
grandly that Hilda must choose her room; she chose the smallest on the
top floor. The furniture, if shabby and old-fashioned, was everywhere
ample.
They descended, and not a word had been said about Sarah's room.
On the first-floor landing, where indeed the danger was acutest, they
were trapped by two of the Watchetts. These elderly ladies shot almost
roguishly out of the drawing-room, and by their smiles struck the
descending party into immobility.
"Oh! We saw you arrive, Mr. Cannon!" said the elder, shaking her head.
"So this is Miss Gailey! Good afternoon, Miss Gailey! So pleased to make
your acquaintance!"
There was handshaking. Then it was Hilda's turn.
"We're so sorry our eldest sister isn't here to welcome you to No. 59,"
said the younger. "She's had to go to London for the day. We're very
fond of No. 59. There's no place quite like it, to our minds. And we're
quite sure we shall be quite as comfortable with dear Miss Gailey as we
were with dear Mrs. Granville, poor thing. It was quite a wrench when we
had to say good-bye to her last night. Do come into the drawing-room,
please! There's a beautiful view of the sea!"
Sarah Gailey hesitated. A noise of bumping came from the hall below.
"I think that's the luggage," she said. The smile with which she forced
herself to respond to the fixed simper of the Watchetts seemed to cause
her horrible torment. She motioned nervously to George Cannon, who was
nearest the stairs.
"A little later, then! A little later, then!" said both the Watchetts,
bowing the party away with the most singular grimaces.
In the hall, a lad, perspiring and breathing quickly, stood behind the
trunks.
"Wait a moment," George Cannon said to him, and murmured to Sarah: "This
is the basement, here."
The middle-aged maid appeared at the kitchen door with a large loaded
tray. "Come along with that tea, Louisa," he added pleasantly.
He went first, Sarah next, and Hilda last, cautiously down a short, dark
flight of stone steps beneath the stairs; the servant followed. At the
foot a gas-jet burned.
"Those Watchetts might be the landladies!" muttered Sarah, strangely
ignoring the propinquity of the maid; and sniffed.
Hilda gave a short, uneasy laugh. She had a desire to laugh loudly and
wildly, and by so doing to snap the nervous tension, which seemed to
grow tighter and tighter every minute. Her wretchedness had become so
exquisite that she could begin to enjoy it, to savour it like a
pleasure.
And she thought, with conscious and satisfied grimness:
"So this is Brighton!"
CHAPTER IV
THE SEA
I
In the evening Hilda, returning from a short solitary walk as far as the
West Pier, found Sarah Gailey stooping over her open trunks in the
bedroom which had been assigned to her. There were two quite excellent
though low-ceiled rooms, of which this was one, in the basement; the
other was to be used as a private parlour by the managers of the house.
At night, with the gas lighted and the yellow blind drawn and the loose
bundle of strips paper gleaming in the grate, the bedroom seemed very
cozy and habitable in its shabbiness; like the rest of the house it had
an ample supply of furniture, and especially of those trifling articles,
useful or useless, which collect only by slow degrees, and which are a
proof of long humanizing habitation. In that room Sarah Gailey was
indeed merely the successor of the regretted Mrs. Granville, the
landlady who had mysteriously receded into the unknown before the advent
of Sarah and Hilda, but with whom George Cannon must have had many
interviews. No doubt the room was an epitome of the character of Mrs.
Granville, presumably a fussy and precise celibate, with a place for
everything and everything in its place, and an indiscriminating tendency
to hoard.
Sarah Gailey was at that stage of unpacking when, trunks being nearly
empty and drawers having scarcely begun to fill, bed, table, and chairs
are encumbered with confused masses of goods apparently far exceeding
the cubical contents of the trunks.
"Can I do anything for you?" asked Hilda.
The new landlady raised her watery and dejected eyes. "If you wouldn't
mind taking every single one of those knick-knacks off the mantelpiece
and putting them away on the top shelf of the cupboard--"
Hilda smiled. "It's a bit crowded, isn't it?"
"Crowded!" By her intonation of this one word Sarah Gailey condemned
Mrs. Granville's whole life.
"Can I empty this chair? I shall want something to stand on," said
Hilda.
"Better see if the shelf's dusty," Sarah gloomily warned her.
"Well," murmured Hilda, on the chair. "If my feather doesn't actually
touch the ceiling!" Sarah Gailey made no response to this
light-heartedness, and Hilda, with her hands full of vain gewgaws, tried
again: "I wonder what Mrs. Granville would say if she saw me!... My
word, it's quite hot up here!"
A resonant, very amiable voice came from beyond the door: "Is she
there?"
"Who?" demanded Sarah, grievous.
"Miss Lessways." It was George Cannon.
"Yes."
"I just want to speak to her if she's at liberty," said George Cannon.
Hilda cried from the ceiling: "I'll come as soon as I've--"
"Please go now," Sarah interrupted in tense accents. Hilda glanced down
at her, astonished, and saw in her eyes an almost childish appeal, weak
and passionate, which gripped the heart painfully.
She jumped from the chair. Sarah Gailey was now sitting on the bed. Yes,
in her worn face of a woman who has definitely passed the climacteric,
and in the abandoned pose of those thin arms, there was the look and
gesture of a young girl desperately beseeching. Hilda was puzzled and
intimidated. She had meant to be jocular, and to insist on staying till
the task was finished. But she kept silence and obeyed the supplication,
from a motive of prudence.
"I wouldn't keep you from him for anything," murmured Sarah Gailey
tragically, as Hilda opened the door and left her sitting forlorn among
all her skirts and linen.
II
"I'm here," George Cannon called out from the parlour when he heard the
sound of the door. He was looking from the window up at the street; the
blind had not been drawn. He turned as Hilda entered.
"You've been out!" he said, observing that she was in street attire.
"What is it?" she asked nervously, fearing that some altercation had
already occurred between brother and sister.
"It's about your private affairs--that's all," he said easily, and
half-humourously. "If you'll just come in."
"Oh!" she smiled her relief; but nevertheless she was still preoccupied
by the image of the woman in the next room.
"They've been dragging on quite long enough," said George Cannon, as he
stooped to poke the morsel of fire in the old-fashioned grate, which had
a hob on either side. On one of these hobs was a glass of milk. Hilda
had learnt that day for the first time that at a certain hour every
evening George Cannon drank a glass of warm milk, and that this glass of
warm milk was an important factor in his daily comfort. He now took the
glass and drank it off. And Hilda had a peculiar sensation of being more
intimate with him than she had ever been before.
They sat down to the square table in the middle of the room crowded with
oddments of furniture, including a desk which George Cannon had
appropriated to his own exclusive use. This desk was open and a portion
of its contents were spread abroad on the crimson cloth of the table.
Among them Hilda noticed, with her accustomed clerkly eye, two numbers
of _The Hotel-Keeper and Boarding-House Review_, several sheets of
advertisement-scales, and a many-paged document with the heading,
"Inventory of Furniture at No. 59 Preston Street"; also a large legal
envelope inscribed, "Lessways Estate."
From the latter George Cannon drew forth an engraved and flourished
paper, which he silently placed in front of her. It was a receipt signed
by the manager of the Brighton branch of the Southern Counties Bank for
the sum of three thousand four hundred and forty-five pounds deposited
at call by Miss Hilda Lessways.
"Everything is now settled up," he said. "Here are all the figures," and
he handed her another paper showing the whole of the figures for the
realization of her real property and of her furniture. "It's in your
name, and nobody can touch it but you."
She glanced at the figures vaguely, not attempting to comprehend them.
As for the receipt, it fascinated her. The fragile scrap represented her
livelihood, her future, her salvation. It alone stood between her and
unimagined terrors. And she was surprised to see it, surprised by its
assurance that no accident had happened to her possessions during the
process of transformation carried out by George Cannon. For, though he
had throughout been almost worryingly meticulous in his business
formalities and his promptitudes--never had any interest or rent been a
day late!--she admitted to herself now that she had been afraid... that,
in fact, she had not utterly trusted him.
"And what's got to be done with this?" she asked simply, fingering the
receipt.
He smiled at her, with a touch of protective and yet sardonic
condescension, without saying a word.
And suddenly it struck her that ages had elapsed since her first
interview with him in the office over the ironmonger's at Turnhill, and
that both of them were extraordinarily changed. (She was reminded of
that interview not by his face and look, nor by their relative positions
at the table, but by a very faint odour of gas-fumes, for at Turnhill
also a gas-jet had been between them.) After an interval of anxiety and
depression he had regained exactly the triumphant self-sure air which
was her earliest recollection of him. He was not appreciably older. But
for her he was no longer the same man, because she saw him differently;
knowing much more of him, she read in his features a thousand minor
significances to which before she had been blind. The dominating
impression was not now the impression of his masculinity; there was no
clearly dominating impression. He had lost, for her, the romantic
allurement of the strange and the unknown.
Still, she liked and admired him. And she felt an awe, which was
agreeable to her, of his tremendous enterprise and his obstinate
volition. That faculty which he possessed, of uprooting himself and
uprooting others, put her in fear of him. He had willed to be
established as a caterer in Brighton--he who but yesterday (as it
seemed) was a lawyer in Turnhill--and, on this very night, he was
established in Brighton, and his sister with him, and she with his
sister! The enormous affair had been accomplished. This thought had been
obsessing Hilda all the afternoon and evening.
When she reflected upon the change in herself, the untravelled Hilda of
Turnhill appeared a stranger to her, and a simpleton!; no more!
As George Cannon offered no answer to her question, she said:
"I suppose it will have to be invested, all this?"
He nodded.
"Well, considering it's only been bringing in one per cent. per annum
for the last week... Of course I needn't have put it on deposit, but I
always prefer that way. It's more satisfactory."
Hilda could hear faintly, through the thin wooden partition, the
movements of Sarah Gailey in the next room. And the image of the
mournful woman returned to disquiet her. What could be the meaning of
that hysteric appeal and glance? Then she heard the door of the bedroom
open violently, and the figure of Sarah Gailey passed like a flash
across the doorway of the parlour. And the footsteps of Sarah Gailey
pattered up the stone stairs; and the front door banged; and the skirts
and feet of Sarah Gailey intercepted for an instant the light of the
street-lamp that shone on the basement-window of the parlour.
"Excuse me a minute," muttered Hilda, frowning. By one of her swift and
unreflecting impulses she abandoned George Cannon and her private
affairs, and scurried by the area steps into the street.
III
Bareheaded, and with no jacket or mantle, Sarah Gailey was walking
quickly down Preston Street towards the promenade, and Hilda, afraid but
courageous, followed her at a distance of thirty or forty yards. Hilda
could not decide why she was afraid, nor why it should be necessary, in
so simple an undertaking as a walk down Preston Street, to call upon her
courage. Assuming even that Sarah Gailey turned round and caught
her--what then? The consequences could not be very terrible. But Sarah
Gailey did not turn round. She went straight forward, as though on a
definite errand in a town with which she was perfectly familiar, and,
having arrived at the corner of Preston Street and the promenade,
unhesitatingly crossed the muddy roadway of the promenade, and, after a
moment's halt, vanished down the steps in the sea-wall to the left-hand
of the pier. The pier, a double rope of twinkling lamps, hung magically
over the invisible sea, and at the end of it, constant and grave, a red
globe burned menacingly in the wind-haunted waste of the night. And
Hilda thought, as she hastened with gathering terror across the
promenade: "Out there, at the end of the pier, the water is splashing
and beating against the piles!"
She stopped at the parapet of the sea-wall, and looked behind her, like
a thief. The wrought-iron entrance to the pier was highly illuminated,
but except for a man's head and shoulders caged in the ticket-box of the
turnstile, there was no life there; the man seemed to be waiting
solitary with everlasting patience in the web of wavering flame beneath
the huge dark sky. Scores of posters, large and small, showed that
Robertson's "School" was being performed in the theatre away over the
sea at the extremity of the pier. The promenade, save for one gigantic
policeman, and a few distant carriages, was apparently deserted, and the
line of dimly lighted hotels, stretching vaguely east and west, had an
air grim and forlorn at that hour.
Hilda ran down the steps; at the bottom another row of lamps defined the
shore, and now she could hear the tide lapping ceaselessly amid the
supporting ironwork of the pier. She at once descried the figure of
Sarah Gailey in the gloom. The woman was moving towards the faintly
white edge of the sea. Hilda started to run after her, first across
smooth asphalt, and then over some sails stretched out to dry; and then
her feet sank at each step into descending ridges of loose shingle, and
she nearly fell. At length she came to firm sand, and stood still.
Sarah Gailey was now silhouetted against the pale shallows of foam that
in ever-renewed curves divided the shore from the sea. After a time, she
bent down, rose again, moved towards the water, and drew back. Hilda did
not stir. She could not bring herself to approach the lonely figure. She
felt that to go and accost Sarah Gailey would be indelicate and
inexcusable. She felt as if she were basely spying. She was completely
at a loss, and knew not how to act. But presently she discerned that the
white foam was circling round Sarah's feet, and that Sarah was standing
careless in the midst of it. And at last, timid and shaking with
agitation, she ventured nearer and nearer. And Sarah heard her on the
sand, and looked behind.
"Miss Gailey!" she appealed in a trembling voice.
Sarah made no response of any kind, and Hilda reached the edge of the
foam.
"Please, please don't stand there! You'll catch a dreadful cold, and
you've got nothing on your shoulders, either!"
"I want to make a hole in the water," said Sarah miserably. "I wanted to
make a hole in the water!"
"Please do come back with me!" Hilda implored; but she spoke
mechanically, as though saying something which she was bound to say, but
which she did not feel.
The foam capriciously receded, and Hilda, still without any effort of
her own will, stepped across the glistening, yielding sand and took
Sarah Gailey's arm. There was no resistance.
"I wanted to make a hole in the water," Sarah repeated. "But I made a
mistake. I ought to have gone to that groin over there. I knew there was
a groin near here, only it's so long since I was here. I'd forgotten
just the place."
"But what's the matter?" Hilda asked, leading her away from the sea.
She was not extremely surprised. But she was shocked into a most solemn
awe as she pressed the arm of the poor tragic woman who, but for an
accident, might have plunged off the end of the groin into water deep
enough for drowning. She did really feel humble before this creature who
had deliberately invited death; she in no way criticized her; she did
not even presume to condescend towards the hasty clumsiness of Sarah
Gailey's scheme to die. She was overwhelmed by the woman's utterly
unconscious impressiveness, which exceeded that of a criminal reprieved
on the scaffold, for the woman had dared an experience that only the
fierce and sublime courage of desperation can affront. She had a feeling
that she ought to apologize profoundly to Sarah Gailey for all that
Sarah must have suffered. And as she heard the ceaseless, cruel play of
the water amid the dark jungle of ironwork under the pier, and the soft
creeping of the foam-curves behind, and the vague stirrings of the
night-wind round about--these phenomena combined mysteriously with the
immensity of the dome above and with the baffling strangeness of the
town, and with the grandeur of the beaten woman by her side; and
communicated to Hilda a thrill that was divine in its unexampled
poignancy.
The great figure of the policeman, suspicious, was descending from the
promenade discreetly towards them. To avoid any encounter with him Hilda
guided her companion towards the pier, and they sheltered there under
the resounding floor of the pier. By the light of one of the lower lamps
Hilda could now clearly see Sarah Gailey's face. It showed no sign of
terror. It was calm enough in its worn, resigned woe. It had the girlish
look again, beneath the marks of age. Hilda could distinguish the young
girl that Sarah had once been.
"Come home, will you?" she entreated.
Sarah Gailey sighed terribly. "I give it up," she said, with weariness.
"I could never do it! I could never do it--now!"
Hilda pulled gently at her unwilling arm. She could not speak. She could
not ask her again: "What's the matter?"
"It isn't that the house is too large," Sarah Gailey went on half
meditatively; "though just think of all those stairs, and not a tap on
any of the upper floors! No! And it isn't that I'm not ready enough to
oblige him. No! I know as well as anybody there's only him between me
and starvation. No! It isn't that he doesn't consider me! No! But when
he goes and settles behind my back with those Boutwoods--" She began to
weep. "And when I can hear you and him discussing me in the next room,
and plotting against me--it's--it's more--" The tears gradually drowned
her voice, and she ceased.
"I assure you, you're quite mistaken," Hilda burst out, with passionate
and indignant persuasiveness. "We never mentioned you. He wanted to talk
to me about my money. And if you feel like that over the Boutwoods, I'm
certain he'll tell them they mustn't come."
Sarah Gailey shook her head blankly.
"I'm certain he will!" Hilda persisted. "Please--"
The other began to walk away, dragging Hilda with her. The policeman,
inspecting them from a distance, coughed and withdrew. They climbed a
flight of steps on the far side of the pier, crossed the promenade, and
went up Preston Street in silence.
"I should prefer not to be seen going in with you," said Sarah Gailey
suddenly. "It might--" she freed her arm.
"Go down the area steps," said Hilda, "and I'll wait a moment and then
go in at the front door."
Sarah Gailey hurried forward alone.
Hilda, watching her, and observing the wet footmarks which she left on
the pavement, was appalled by the sense of her own responsibility as to
the future of Sarah Gailey. Till this hour, even at her most
conscientious, she had under-estimated the seriousness of Sarah Gailey's
case. Everybody had under-estimated the seriousness of Sarah Gailey's
case.
She became aware of some one hurrying cautiously up the street on the
other side. It was George Cannon. As soon as Sarah had disappeared
within the house he crossed over.
"What's the matter?" he inquired anxiously.
"Well--"
"She hasn't been trying to drown herself, has she?"
Hilda nodded, and, speechless, moved towards the house. He turned
abruptly away.
The front door of No. 59 was still open. Hilda passed through the silent
hall, and went timorously down the steps to the basement. The gas was
still burning, and the clothes were still strewn about in Sarah Gailey's
bedroom, just as though naught had happened. Sarah stood between her two
trunks in the middle of the floor.
"Where's George?" she asked, in a harsh, perfectly ordinary voice.
"I don't think he's in the parlour," Hilda prevaricated.
"Promise me you won't tell him!"
"Of course I won't!" said Hilda kindly. "Do get into bed, and let me
make you some tea."
Sarah Gailey rushed at her and embraced her.
"I know I'm all wrong! I know it's all my own fault!" she murmured, with
plaintive, feeble contrition, crying again. "But you've no idea how I
try! If it wasn't for you--"
IV
That night Hilda, in her small bedroom at the top of the house, was
listlessly arranging, at the back of the dressing-table, the few volumes
which had clung to her, or to which she had clung, throughout the
convulsive disturbances following her mother's death. Among them was one
which she did not wish to keep, _The Girls' Week-day Book,_ and also the
whole set of Victor Hugo, which did not belong to her. George Cannon had
lent her the latter in instalments, and she had omitted to return it.
She was saying to herself that the opportunity to return it had at
length arrived, when she heard a low, conspiratorial tapping at the
door. All her skin crept as, after a second's startled hesitation, she
moved to open the door.
George Cannon, holding a candle, stood on the landing. She had not seen
him since the brief colloquy between them outside the house. Having
satisfied herself that Sarah Gailey was safe, and to a certain extent
tranquillized, for the night, she had awaited George Cannon's
reappearance a long time in vain, and had then retired upstairs.
"You aren't gone to bed!" he whispered very cautiously. Within a few
feet of them was an airless kennel where Louisa, the chambermaid, slept.
"No! I'm just--I stayed up for you I don't know how long."
"Is she all right?"
"Well--she's in bed."
"I wish you'd come to one of these other rooms," he continued to
whisper. All the sibilants in his words seemed to detach themselves,
hissing, from the rest of the sounds.
She gave a gesture of assent. He tiptoed over the traitorous boards of
the landing, and slowly turned the knob of a door in the end wall. The
door exploded like the firing of a pistol; frowning, he grimly pushed it
open. Hilda followed him, noiselessly creeping. He held the door for
her. She entered, and he shut the door on the inside. They were in a
small bedroom similar to Hilda's own; but the bed was stripped, the
square of carpet rolled, the blind undrawn, and the curtains looped up
from the floor. He put the candle on the tiny iron mantelpiece, and sat
on the bed, his hands in his pockets.
"You don't mean to say she was wanting to commit suicide?" he said,
after a short reflective silence, with his head bent but his eyes raised
peeringly to Hilda's.
The crudity of the word, 'suicide,' affected Hilda painfully.
"If you ask me," said she, standing with her back rubbing against the
small wardrobe, "she didn't know quite what she was doing; but there's
no doubt that was what she went out for."
"You overtook her? I saw you coming up from the beach."
Hilda related what had happened.
"But had you any notion--before--"
"Me? No! Why?"
"Nothing! Only the way you rushed out like that!"
"Well--it struck me all of a sudden!... You've not seen her since you
came in?"
He shook his head. "I thought I'd better keep out of the way. I thought
I'd better leave it all to you. It's appalling, simply appalling!...
Just when everything was shaping so well!"
Hilda thought, bewildered: 'Shaping so well?' With her glance she took
in the little cheerless bedroom, and herself and George Cannon within
it, overwhelmed. In imagination she saw all the other bedrooms, dark,
forlorn, and inanimate, waiting through long nights and empty days until
some human creature as pathetic as themselves should come and feebly
vitalize them into a spurious transient homeliness; and she saw George
Cannon's bedroom--the harsh bedroom of the bachelor who had never had a
home; and the bedrooms of those fearsome mummies, the Watchetts, each
bed with its grisly face on the pillow in the dark; and the kennels of
the unclean servants; and so, descending through the floors, to Sarah
Gailey's bedroom in the very earth, and the sleepless form on that bed,
beneath the whole! And the organism of the boarding-house seemed
absolutely tragic to her, compact of the stuff of sorrow itself! And yet
George Cannon had said, 'Shaping so well!'
"What's to be done?" he inquired plaintively.
"Nothing that I can see!" she said. She had a tremendous desire to
escape from the responsibility thrust on her by the situation; but she
knew that she could never escape from it; that she was immovably pinned
down by it.
"I can't see anything either," said he, quietly responsive, and speaking
now in a gentle voice. "Supposing I tell her that she can go, and that
I'll make her an allowance? What could she do, then? It would be madness
for her to live alone any more. She's the very last person who ought to
live alone. Moreover, she wouldn't accept the allowance. Well, then, she
must stay with me--here. And if she stays here she must work, otherwise
she'd never stay--not she! And she must be the mistress. She wouldn't
stand having anyone above her, or even equal with her, that's a
certainty! Besides, she's so good at her job. She hasn't got a great
deal of system, so far as I can see, but she can get the work out of the
servants without too much fuss, and she's so mighty economical in her
catering! Of course she can't get on the right side of a boarder--but
then I _can_! And that's the whole point! With me on the spot to _run_
the place, she'd be perfect--perfect! Couldn't wish for anything better!
And now she--I assure you I'm doing the best I can do for her. I do
honestly assure you! If anybody can suggest to me anything else that I
can do--I'll do it like a shot." He threw up his arms.
Hilda was touched by the benevolence of his tone. Nevertheless, it only
intensified her helpless perplexity. Sarah Gailey was inexpressibly to
be pitied, but George Cannon was not to be blamed. She had a feeling
that for any piteous disaster some one ought to be definitely blamable.
"Do you think she'll settle down?" George Cannon asked, in a new voice.
"Oh yes!" said Hilda. "I think she will. It was just a sort of--attack
she had, I think."
"She's not vexed with me?"
Hilda could not find courage to say: "She thinks you and I are plotting
against her." And yet she wondered why she should hesitate to say it.
After a pause she murmured, as casually as possible: "She doesn't like
the Boutwoods coming back."
"I knew you were going to say that!" he frowned.
"If you could manage to stop them--"
"No, no!" He interrupted--nervous, impatient. "It wouldn't do, that
wouldn't! It'd never do! A boarding-house can't be run on those lines.
It isn't that I care so much as all that about losing a couple of
boarders, and I'm not specially keen on the Boutwoods. But it wouldn't
do! It's the wrong principle. You haven't got to let customers get on
your nerves, so long as they pay and behave respectably. If I gave way,
the very first thing Sarah would do would be to find a grievance against
some other boarder, and there'd be no end to it. The fact is she wants a
grievance, she must have a grievance--whether it's the Boutwoods or
somebody else makes no matter!... Oh no!" He repeated softly, gently,
"Oh no!"
She knew that his argument was unanswerable. She was perfectly aware
that she ought to yield to it. Nevertheless, the one impulse of her
being in that moment was to fight blindly and irrationally against it.
Her instinct said: "I don't care for arguments. The Boutwoods must be
stopped from coming. If they aren't stopped, I don't know what I shall
do! I can't bear to think of that poor woman meeting them again! I can't
bear it." She drew breath sharply. Startling hot tears came into her
eyes; and she stepped forward on her left foot.
"Please!" she entreated, "please don't let them come!"
There was a silence. In the agonizing silence she felt acutely her
girlishness, her helplessness, her unreason, confronted by his strong
and shrewd masculinity. At the bottom of her soul she knew how wrong she
was. But she was ready to do anything to save Sarah Gailey from the
distress of one particular humiliation. With the whole of her volition
she wanted to win.
"Oh well!" he said. "Of course, if you take it so much to heart--"
A peculiar bright glance shot from his eyes--the old glance that at once
negligently asserted his power over her, and reassured her against his
power. Her being was suffused with gladness and pride. She had won. She
had won in defiance of reason. She had appealed and she had conquered.
And she enjoyed his glance. She gloried in it. She blushed. A spasm of
exquisite fear shot through her, and she savoured it deliciously. The
deep organic sadness of the house presented itself to her in a new
light. It was still sadness, but it was beautiful in the background. Her
sympathy for Sarah Gailey was as keen as ever, but it had a different
quality--an anguish less desolating. And the fact that a joint
responsibility for Sarah Gailey's welfare bound herself and George
Cannon together in spite of themselves--this fact seemed to her
grandiose and romantic, no longer oppressive. To be alone with him in
the secrecy of the small upper room seemed to endow her with a splendid
worldly importance. And yet all the time a scarce-heard voice was saying
clearly within her: "This appeal and this abandonment are unworthy. No
matter if this man is kind and sincere and admirable! This appeal and
this abandonment are unworthy!" But she did not care. She ignored the
voice.
"I'll tell Sarah in the morning," he said.
"Please don't!" she begged. "You might pretend later on that you've had
a letter from the Boutwoods and they can't come. If you tell her
to-morrow, she'll guess at once I've been talking to you; and you're not
supposed to know anything at all about what happened to-night. She made
me promise. But of course she didn't know that you'd found out for
yourself, you see!"
George Cannon walked away to the window, and then to the mantelpiece,
from which he took up the candle.
"I'm very much obliged to you," he said simply, putting a faint emphasis
on the last word. She knew that he meant it, without any reserves. But
in his urbane tone there was a chill tranquillity that astonished and
vaguely disappointed her.
* * * * *
BOOK IV
HER FALL
CHAPTER I
THE GOING CONCERN
I
On a Saturday afternoon of the following August, Hilda was sitting at a
book in the basement parlour of "Cannon's Boarding-house" in Preston
Street. She heard, through the open window, several pairs of feet
mounting wearily to the front door, and then the long remote tinkling of
the bell. Within the house there was no responsive sound; but from the
porch came a clearing of throats, a muttering, impatient and yet
resigned, and a vague shuffling. After a long pause the bell rang again;
and then the gas globe over Hilda's head vibrated for a moment to
footsteps in the hall, and the front door was unlatched. She could not
catch the precise question; but the reply of Louisa, the chambermaid--
haughty, scornful, and negligently pitying--was quite clear:
"Sorry, sir. We're full up. We've had to refuse several this very
day.... No! I couldn't rightly tell you where.... You might try No. 51,
'Homeleigh' as they call it; but we're full up. Good afternoon, sir, 'd
afternoon 'm."
The door banged arrogantly. The feet redescended to the pavement, and
Hilda, throwing a careless glance at the window, saw two men and a woman
pass melancholy down the hot street with their hand-luggage.
And although she condemned and despised the flunkey-souled Louisa, who
would have abased herself with sickly smiles and sweet phrases before
the applicants, if the house had needed custom; although in her mind she
was saying curtly to the mature Louisa: "It's a good thing Mr. Cannon
didn't hear you using that tone to customers, my girl;" nevertheless,
she could not help feeling somewhat as Louisa felt. It was indubitably
agreeable to hear a prosperous door closed on dusty and disappointed
holiday-makers, and to realize, in her tranquil retreat, that she was
part of a very thriving and successful concern.
II
George Cannon, in a light and elegant summer suit, passed slowly in
front of the window, and, looking for Hilda in her accustomed place, saw
her and nodded. Surprised by the unusual gesture, she moved uneasily and
blushed; and as she did so, she asked herself resentfully: "Why do I
behave like this? I'm only his clerk, and I shall never be anything else
but his clerk; and yet I do believe I'm getting worse instead of
better." George Cannon skipped easily up to the porch; he had a
latchkey, but before he could put it into the keyhole Louisa had flown
down the stairs and opened the door to him; she must have been on the
watch from an upper floor. George Cannon would have been well served,
whatever his situation in the house, for he was one of those genial
bullies who are adored by the menials whom they alternately cajole and
terrorize. But his situation in the house was that of a god, and like a
god he was attended. He was the very creator of the house; all its life
flowed from him. Without him the organism would have ceased to exist,
and everybody in it was quite aware of this. He had fully learnt his
business. He had learnt it in the fishmarket on the beach at seven
o'clock in the morning, and in the vegetable market at eight, and in the
shops; he had learnt it in the kitchen and on the stairs while the
servants were cleaning; and he had learnt it at the dinner-table
surrounded by his customers. There was nothing that he did not know and,
except actual cooking and mending, little that he could not do. He
always impressed his customers by the statement that he had slept in
every room in the house in order to understand personally its qualities
and defects; and he could and did in fact talk to each boarder about his
room with the intimate geographical knowledge of a native. The boarders
were further flattered by the mien and appearance of this practical
housekeeper, who did not in the least resemble his kind, but had rather
the style of a slightly doggish stockbroker. To be strolling on the
King's Road in converse with George Cannon was a matter, of pride to
boarders male and female. And there was none with whom he could not talk
fluently, on any subject from cigars to ozone, according to the needs of
the particular case. Nor did he ever seem to be bored by conversations.
But sometimes, after benignantly speeding, for instance, one of the
Watchetts on her morning constitutional, he would slip down into the
basement and ejaculate, 'Cursed hag!' with a calm and natural
earnestness, which frightened Hilda, indicating as it did that he must
be capable of astounding duplicities.
He came, now, directly to the underground parlour, hat on head and ebony
stick in hand. Hilda did not even look up, but self-consciously bent a
little lower over her volume. Her relation to George Cannon in the
successful enterprise was anomalous, and yet the habit of ten months had
in practice defined it. Neither paying board nor receiving wages, she
had remained in the house apparently as Sarah Gailey's companion and
moral support; she had remained because Sarah Gailey had never been in a
condition to be left--and the months had passed very quickly. But her
lack of occupation and her knowledge of shorthand, and George Cannon's
obvious need of clerical aid, had made it inevitable that they should
resume their former roles of principal and clerk. Hilda worked daily at
letters, circularizing, advertisements, and--to a less extent--accounts
and bills; the second finger of her right hand had nearly always an
agreeable stain of ink at the base of the nail; and she often dreamed
about letter-filing. In this prosperous month of August she had, on the
whole, less work than usual, for both circulating and advertisements
were stopped.
George Cannon went to the desk in the dark corner between the window and
the door, where all business papers were kept, but where neither he nor
she actually wrote. When his back was turned she surreptitiously glanced
at him without moving her head, and perceived that his hand was only
moving idly about among the papers while he stared at the wall. She
thought, half in alarm: "What is the matter now?" Then he came over to
the table and hesitated by her shoulder. Still, she would not look up.
She could no longer decipher a single word on the page. Her being was
somehow monopolized by the consciousness of his nearness.
"Interesting?" he inquired.
She turned her head at last and glanced at him with a friendly smile of
affirmation, fingering the leaves of the book nervously. It was
Cranswick's _History of Printing_. One day, a fortnight earlier, while
George Cannon, in company with her, was bargaining for an old London
Directory outside a bookseller's shop in East Street, she had seen
Cranswick's _History of Printing_ (labelled "published at _L1_ 1s., our
price 6s. 6d.") and had opened it curiously. George Cannon, who always
kept an eye on her, had said teasingly: "I suppose it's your
journalistic past that makes you interested in that?" "I suppose it is,"
she answered. Which statement was an untruth, for the sole thought in
her mind had been that Edwin Clayhanger was a printer. A strange, idle
thought! She had laid the book down. The next day, however, George
Cannon had brought it home, saying carelessly: "I bought that book--five
and six; the man seemed anxious to do business, and it's a book to
have." He had not touched it since.
"Page 473!" he murmured, looking at the number of the page. "If you keep
on at this rate, you'll soon know more about printing than young
Clayhanger himself!"
She was thunderstruck. Never before had the name of Clayhanger been
mentioned between them! Could he, then, penetrate her thoughts? Could he
guess that in truth she was reading Cranswick solely because Edwin
Clayhanger happened to be a printer? No! It was impossible! The reason
of her interest in Cranswick, inexplicable even to herself, was too
fantastic to be divined. And yet was not his tone peculiar? Or was it
only in her fancy that his tone was peculiar? She blushed scarlet, and
her muscles grew rigid.
"I say," George Cannon continued, in a tone that now was unmistakably
peculiar, "I want you to come out with me. I want to show you something
on the front. Can you come?"
"At once?" she muttered glumly and painfully. What could be the mystery
beneath this most singular behaviour?
"Yes."
"Florrie will be arriving at five," said Hilda, after artificially
coughing. "I ought to be here then, oughtn't I?"
"Oh!" he cried. "We shall be back long before five."
"Very well," she agreed.
"I'll be ready in three minutes," he said, going gaily towards the door.
From the door he gave her a glance. She met it, courageously exposing
her troubled features and nodded.
III
Hilda went into the bedroom behind the parlour, to get her hat and
gloves. A consequence of the success of the boarding-house was that she
was temporarily sharing this chamber with Sarah Gailey. She had insisted
on making the sacrifice, and she enjoyed the personal discomfort which
it involved. When she cautiously lay down on the narrow and lumpy
truckle-bed that had been insinuated against an unoccupied wall, and
when she turned over restlessly in the night and the rickety ironwork
creaked and Sarah Gailey moaned, and when she searched vainly for a
particular garment lost among garments that were hung pell-mell on
insecure hooks and jutting corners of furniture,--she was proud and glad
because her own comfortable room was steadily adding thirty shillings or
more per week to the gross receipts of the enterprise. The benefit was
in no way hers, and yet she gloated on it, thinking pleasurably of
George Cannon's great japanned cash-box, which seemed to be an
exhaustless store of gold sovereigns and large silver, and of his
mysterious--almost furtive--visits to the Bank. Her own capital,
invested by George Cannon in railway stock, was bringing in four times
as much as she disbursed; and she gloated also on her savings. The more
money she amassed, the less willing was she to spend. This nascent
avarice amused her, as a new trait in his character always amuses the
individual. She said to herself: "I am getting quite a miser," with the
assured reservation: "Of course I can stop being a miser whenever I feel
like stopping."
Sarah Gailey was lulling herself in a rocking-chair when Hilda entered,
and she neither regarded Hilda nor intermitted her see-saw. Her features
were drawn into a preoccupied expression of martyrdom, and in fact she
constantly suffered physical torture. She had three genuine
complaints--rheumatism, sciatica, and neuritis; they were all painful.
The latest and worst was the neuritis, which had attacked her in the
wrist, producing swollen joints that had to be fomented with hot water.
Sarah Gailey's life had indeed latterly developed into a continual
fomentation and a continual rocking. She was so taken up with the
elemental business of fomenting and of keeping warm, that she had no
energy left for other remedial treatments, such as distraction in the
open air. She sat for ever shawled, generally with heavy mittens on her
arms and wrists, and either fomenting or rocking, in the eternal
twilight of the basement bedroom. She eschewed aid--she could manage for
herself--and she did not encourage company, apparently preferring to be
alone with fate. In her easier hours, one hand resting on another and
both hugged close to her breast, rocking to and fro with an astounding
monotonous perseverance, she was like a mysterious Indian god in a
subterranean temple. Above her, unseen by her, floor beyond floor, the
life of the boarding-house functioned in the great holiday month of
August.
"I quite forgot about the make-up bed for Florrie," said Sarah Gailey
plaintively as she rocked. "Would you have time to see to it? Of course
she will have to be with Louisa."
"Very well," said Hilda curtly, and not quite hiding exasperation.
There were three reasons for her exasperation. In the first place, the
constant spectacle of Sarah Gailey's pain, and the effect of the pain on
Sarah's character, was exasperating--to Hilda as well as to George
Cannon. Both well knew that the watery-eyed, fretful spinster was a
victim, utterly innocent and utterly helpless, of destiny, and that she
merited nothing but patient sympathy; yet often the strain of
relationship with Sarah produced in them such a profound feeling of
annoyance that they positively resented Sarah's sufferings, and with a
sad absence of logic blamed her in her misfortune, just as though she
had wilfully brought the maladies upon herself in order to vex them.
Then, further, it was necessary always to minister to Sarah's illusion
that Sarah was the mainstay of the house, that she attended to
everything and was responsible for everything, and that without her
governance the machine would come to a disastrous standstill: the fact
being that she had grown feeble and superfluous. Sarah had taught all
she knew to two highly intelligent pupils, and had survived her
usefulness. She had no right place on earth. But in her morose
inefficiency she had developed into an unconscious tyrant--a tyrant
whose power lay in the loyalty of her subjects and not at all in her own
soul. She was indeed like a deity, immanent, brooding, and unaware of
itself!... Thus, the question of Florrie's bed had been discussed and
settled long before Sarah Gailey had even thought of it; but Hilda might
not tell her so. Lastly, this very question of Florrie's bed was
exasperating to Hilda. Already Louisa's kennel was inadequate for
Louisa, and now another couch had been crowded into it. Hilda was
ashamed of the shift; but there was no alternative. Here, for Hilda, was
the secret canker of George Cannon's brilliant success. The servants
were kindly ill-treated. In the commercial triumph she lost the sense of
the tragic forlornness of boarding-house existence, as it had struck her
on the day of her arrival. But the image of the Indian god in the
basement and of the prone forms of the servants in stifling black
cupboards under the roof and under the stairs--these images embittered
at intervals the instinctive and reflecting exultation of her moods.
She adjusted her small, close-fitting flowered hat, dropped her parasol
across the bed, and began to draw on her cotton gloves.
"Where are you going, dear?" asked Sarah Gailey.
"Out with Mr. Cannon."
"But where?"
"I don't know." In spite of herself there was a certain unnecessary
defiance in Hilda's voice.
"You don't know, dear?" Sarah Gailey suddenly ceased rocking, and
glanced at Hilda with the mournful expression of acute worry that was so
terribly familiar on her features. Although it was notorious that
baseless apprehensions were a part of Sarah's disease, nevertheless
Hilda could never succeed in treating any given apprehension as quite
baseless. And now Sarah's mere tone begot in Hilda's self-consciousness
a vague alarm.
She continued busy with her gloves, silent.
"And on Saturday afternoon too, when everybody's abroad!" Sarah Gailey
added gloomily, with her involuntary small movements of the head.
"He asked me if I could go out with him for a minute or two at once,"
said Hilda, and picked up the parasol with a decisive gesture.
"There's a great deal too much talk about you and George as it is," said
Sarah with an acrid firmness.
"Talk about me and--!" Hilda cried, absolutely astounded.
She had no feeling of guilt, but she knew that she was looking guilty,
and this knowledge induced in her the actual sensations of a criminal.
"I'm sure I don't want--" Sarah Gailey began, and was interrupted by a
quiet tap at the door.
George Cannon entered.
"Ready, miss?" he demanded, smiling, before he had caught sight of her
face.
For the second time that afternoon he saw her scarlet, and now there
were tears in her eyes, too.
She hesitated an instant.
"Yes," she answered with a painful gulp, and moved towards the door.
CHAPTER II
THE UNKNOWN ADVENTURE
I
When they were fairly out in the street Hilda felt like a mariner who
has escaped from a lee shore, but who is beset by the vaguer and even
more formidable perils of the open sea. She was in a state of extreme
agitation, and much too self-conscious to be properly cognisant of her
surroundings; she did not feel the pavement with her feet; she had no
recollection of having passed out of the house. There she was walking
along on nothing, by the side of a man who might or might not be George
Cannon, amid tall objects that resembled houses! Her situation was in a
high degree painful, but she could not have avoided it. She could not,
in Sarah's bedroom, have fallen into sobs, or into a rage, or into the
sulks, and told George Cannon that she would not go with him; she could
not have dashed hysterically away and hidden herself on an upper floor,
in the manner of a startled fawn. Her spirit was too high for such
tricks. On the other hand, she was by no means sufficiently mistress of
herself to be able to hide from him her shame. Hence she faced him and
followed him, and let him see it. Their long familiarity had made this
surrender somewhat easier for her. After all, in the countless daily
contacts, they had grown accustomed to minor self-exposures--and Hilda
more so than George Cannon; Hilda was too impatient and impulsive not to
tear, at increasingly frequent intervals, the veil of conventional
formality.
Her mood now, as she accompanied George Cannon on the unknown adventure,
was one of abashed but still fierce resentment. She of course believed
Sarah Gailey's statement that there had been "talk" about herself and
the landlord, and yet it was so utterly monstrous as to be almost
incredible. She was absolutely sure that she had never by her behaviour
furnished the slightest excuse for such "talk." No eavesdropper could
ever have caught the least word or gesture to justify it. Could a
malicious eavesdropper have assisted at the secret operations of her
inmost mind, even then he could scarcely have seen aught to justify it.
Existence at Brighton had been too strenuous and strange--and, with
Sarah Gailey in the house, too full of responsibilities--to favour
dalliance. Hilda, examining herself, could not say that she had not once
thought of George Cannon as a husband; because just as a young solitary
man will imagine himself the spouse of a dozen different girls in a
week, so will an unmated girl picture herself united to every eligible
and passably sympathetic male that crosses her path. It is the everyday
diversion of the fancy. But she could say that she had not once thought
seriously of George Cannon as a husband. Why, he was not of her
generation! Although she did not know his age, she guessed that he must
be nearer forty than thirty. He was of the generation of Sarah Gailey,
and Sarah Gailey was the contemporary of her dead mother! And he had
never shown for her any sentiment but that of a benevolently teasing
kindliness. Moreover, she was afraid of him, beyond question. And
withal, he patently lacked certain qualities which were to be found in
her image of a perfect man. No! She had more often thought of Edwin
Clayhanger as a husband. Indeed she had married Edwin Clayhanger several
times. The haunting youth would not leave her alone. And she said to
herself, hot and indignant: "I shall have to leave Brighton! I can see
that! Sarah Gailey's brought it on herself!" Yes, she was actually angry
with Sarah Gailey, who however had only informed her of a fact which she
would have been sorry not to know! And in leaving Brighton, that fancy
of hers took her straight to Bursley, to stay with Janet Orgreave in the
house next to the new house of the Clayhangers!
Whither was George Cannon leading her? He had not yet said a word in
explanation of the errand, nor shown in any way that he had observed her
extraordinary condition. He was silent, swinging his stick. She also was
silent. She could not have spoken, not even to murmur: "Where are you
taking me to?" They went forward as in an enchantment.
II
They were on the King's Road; and to the left were the high hotels and
houses, stretching east and west under the glare of the sun into
invisibility, and to the right was the shore, and the sea so bright that
the eye could scarcely rest on it. Both the upper and the lower
promenades were crowded with gay people surging in different directions.
The dusty roadway was full of carriages, and of the glint of the sun on
wheelspokes and horses' flanks, and of rolling, clear-cut shadows. The
shore was bordered with flags and masts and white and brown sails; and
in the white-and-green of billows harmlessly breaking could be seen the
yellow bodies of the bathers. A dozen bare-legged men got hold of a
yacht under sail with as many passengers on board, and pushed it
forcibly right down into the sea, and then up sprang its nose and it
heeled over and shot suddenly off, careering on the waves into the
offing where other yachts were sliding to and fro between the piers,
dominating errant fleets of rowboats. And the piers also were loaded
with excited humanity and radiant colour. And all the windows of all the
houses and hotels were open, and blowing with curtains and flowers and
hats. The whole town was enfevered.
Hilda thought, her heart still beating, but less noisily, "I scarcely
ever come here. I don't come here often enough." And she saw Sarah
Gailey rocking and sighing and rocking and shaking her head in the
mournful twilight of the basement in Preston Street. The contrasts of
existence struck her as magnificent, as superb. The very misery and
hopelessness of Sarah's isolation seemed romantic, splendid, touchingly
beautiful. And she thought, inexplicably: "Why am I here? Why am I not
at home in Turnhill? Why am I so different from what mother was? What am
I going to be and to do? This that I now am can't continue for ever."
She saw thousands of women with thousands of men. And, quite forgetting
that to the view of the multitude she was just as much as any of them
with a man (and a rather fine man, too!), she began to pity herself
because she was not with a man! She dreamed, in her extreme excitation,
of belonging absolutely to some man. And despite all her pride and
independence, she dwelt with pleasure and longing on the vision of being
his, of being at his disposal, of being under his might, of being
helpless before him. She thought, desolated: "I am nobody's. And so
there is 'talk'!" She scorned herself for being nobody's. To belong
utterly to some male seemed to be the one tolerable fate for her in the
world. And it was a glorious fate, whether it brought good or evil. Any
other was ignobly futile, was despicable. And then she thought,
savagely: "And just see my clothes! Why don't I take the trouble to look
nice?"
Suddenly George Cannon stopped on the edge of the pavement, and turned
towards the houses across the street.
"You see that?" he said, pointing with his stick.
"What?"
"The Chichester."
She saw, in gold letters over the front of a tall corner house: "The
Chichester Private Hotel."
"Well?"
"I've taken it--from Christmas. I signed about an hour ago. I just had
to tell someone."
"Well I never!" Hilda exclaimed.
He was beyond question an extraordinary and an impressive man. He had
said that, after experimenting in Preston Street, he should take a
larger place, and lo! in less than a year, he had fulfilled his word. He
had experimented in Preston Street, with immense success and now he was
coming out into the King's Road! (Only those who have lived in a side
street can pronounce the fine words 'King's Road' with the proper accent
of deference.) And every house in the King's Road, Hilda now newly
perceived, was a house of price and distinction. Nothing could be common
in the King's Road: the address and the view were incomparably precious.
Being established there, George Cannon might, and no doubt would,
ultimately acquire one of the largest public hotels; indeed, dominate
the promenade! It would be just like him to do so! A year ago he was a
solicitor in Turnhill. To-day he was so perfectly and entirely a
landlord that no one could ever guess his first career. He was not
merely extraordinary: he was astounding. There could not be many of his
calibre in the whole world.
"How does it strike you?" he asked, with an eagerness that touched her.
"Oh! It's splendid!" she answered, trying to put more natural enthusiasm
into her voice. But the fact was that the Chichester had not yet struck
her at all. It was only the idea of being in the King's Road that had
struck her--and with such an effect that her attention was happily
diverted from her trouble, and her vexatious self-consciousness
disappeared. She had from time to time remarked the Chichester, but
never with any particularity; it had been for her just an establishment
among innumerable others, and not one of the best,--the reverse of
imposing. It stood at the angle of King's Road and Ship Street, and a
chemist's shop occupied the whole of the frontage, the hotel-entrance
being in Ship Street; its architecture was fiat and plain, and the place
seemed neglected, perhaps unprosperous.
"Twenty bow-windows!" murmured George Cannon, and then smiled at
himself, as if ashamed of his own naivete.
And Hilda counted the windows. Yes, there were eight on King's Road and
twelve at the side. The building was high, and it was deep, stretching
far down Ship Street. In a moment it began to put on, for Hilda, quite
special qualities. How high it was! How deep it was! And in what a
situation! It possessed mysterious and fine characteristics which set it
apart. Strange that hitherto she had been so blind to it! She and George
Cannon were divided from the house by the confused and noisy traffic of
the roadway, and by the streaming throngs on the opposite pavement. And
none of these people riding or driving or walking, and none of the
people pushing past them on the pavement behind, guessed that here on
the kerb was the future master of the Chichester, an amazing man, and
that she, Hilda Lessways, by his side, was the woman to whom he had
chosen first to relate his triumph! This unrecognised secrecy in the
great animated street was piquant and agreeable to Hilda, a source of
pride.
"I suppose you've bought it?" she ventured. She had no notion of his
financial resources, but her instinct was to consider them infinite.
"No! I've not exactly bought it," he laughed. "Not quite! I've got the
lease, from Christmas. How much d'ye think the rent is?" He seemed to
challenge her.
"Oh! Don't ask me!"
"Five hundred a year," he said, and raised his chin. "Five hundred a
year! Ten pounds a week! Nearly thirty shillings a day! You've got to
pay that before you can even begin to think of your own profits."
"But it's enormous!" Hilda was staggered. All her mother's houses put
together had brought in scarcely a third of the rental of that single
house, which was nevertheless only a modest unit in several miles of
houses. "But can you make it pay?"
"I fancy so! Else I shouldn't have taken it. The present man can't. But
then he's paying L550 for one thing, and he's old. And he doesn't know
his business.... Oh yes! I think I can see my money back.... Wait till
Christmas is turned and I make a start!"
She knew that the future would justify his self-confidence. How he
succeeded she could not define. Why should he succeed where another was
failing? He could not go out and drag boarders by physical force into
his private hotel! Yet he would succeed. In every gesture he was the
successful man. She looked timidly up at his eyes under the strong black
eyelashes. His glance caught hers. He smiled conqueringly.
"Haven't said a word to Sarah yet!" he almost whispered, so low was his
voice; and he put on a mock-rueful smile. Hilda smiled in response.
"Shall you keep Preston Street?" she asked.
"Of course!" he said with pride--"I shall run the two, naturally." He
put his shoulders back. "One will help the other, don't you see?"
She thought she saw, and nodded appreciatively. He meant to run two
establishments! At the same moment a young and stylish man drove rather
slowly by in a high dog-cart. He nodded carelessly to George Cannon, and
then, perceiving that George Cannon was with a lady, raised his hat in
haste. George Cannon responded. The young man gazed for an instant hard
at Hilda, with a peculiar expression, and passed on. She did not know
who he was. Of George Cannon's relationships in the town she was
entirely ignorant, but that he had relationships was always obvious.
She blushed, thinking of what Sarah Gailey had said about 'talk'
concerning herself and George Cannon. In the young man's glance there
had been something to annoy and shame her.
"Come across and have a look at the place," said George Cannon, suddenly
stepping down into the gutter, with a look first in one direction and
then in the other for threatening traffic.
"I don't think I'll come now," she replied.
"But why not? Are you in a hurry? You've plenty of time before five
o'clock--heaps!"
"I'd prefer not to come," she insisted, in an abashed and diffident
voice.
"But what's up?" he demanded, stepping back to the pavement, and
glancing directly into her eyes.
She blushed more and more, dropping her eyelids.
"I don't want to be talked about _too_ much!" she muttered, mortified.
Her inference was unmistakable. The whole of her mind seemed now to be
occupied with an enormous grievance which she somehow had against the
world in general. Her very soul, too, was bursting with this grievance.
"Talked about? But who--"
"Never mind! I know! I've been told!" she interrupted him.
"Oh! I see!" He was now understanding the cause of her trouble in Sarah
Gailey's bedroom.
"Now look here!" He went on. "I've just got to have a few words with
you. You come across the road, please." He was imperious.
She raised her glance for a timid moment to his face, and saw to her
intense astonishment that he also was blushing. Never before had she
seen him blush.
"Come along!" he urged.
She followed him obediently across the dangerous road. He waited for her
at the opposite kerb, and then they went up Ship Street. He turned into
the entrance of the Chichester, which was grandiose, with a flight of
shallow steps, and then a porch with two basket chairs, and then another
flight of shallow steps ending in double doors which were noticeably
higher than the street level. She still followed.
"Nobody in here, I expect," said George Cannon, indicating a door on the
right, to an old waiter who stood in the dark hall.
"No, sir."
George Cannon opened the door as a master, ushered Hilda into a tiny
room furnished with a desk and two chairs, and shut the door.
III
The small window was of ground glass and gave no prospect of the outer
world, from which it seemed to Hilda that she was as completely cut off
as in a prison. She was alone with George Cannon, and beyond the narrow
walls which caged them together, and close together, there was nothing!
All Brighton, save this room, had ceased to exist. Hilda was now more
than ever affrighted, shamed, perturbed, agonised. Yet at the same time
she had the desperate calm of the captain of a ship about to founder
with all hands. And she saw glimpses, beautiful and compensatory, of the
romantic quality of common life. She was in a little office of a
perfectly ordinary boarding-house--(she could even detect the stale
odours of cooking)--with a realistic man of business, and they were
about to discuss a perfectly ordinary piece of scandal; and surely they
might be called two common-sense people! And withal, the ordinariness
and the midland gumption of the scene were shot through with the bright
exotic rays of romance! She thought: "It is painful and humiliating to
be caught and fixed as I am. But it is wonderful too!"
"The fact is," said George Cannon, in an easy reassuring tone, "we never
get the chance of a bit of quiet chat. Upon my soul we don't! Now I
suppose it's Sarah who's been worrying you?"
"Yes."
"What did she say?... You'd better sit down, don't you think?" He swung
round the pivoted arm-chair in front of the closed desk and pointed her
to it.
"Oh!" Hilda hesitated, and then sank on to the chair without looking at
it. "She simply said there was a lot of talk about you and me. Has she
been saying anything to you?"
He shook his head, staring down at her. Hilda put her arms on the arms
of the chair, and, shirking the man's gaze, stared down at the worn
carpet and at his boots thereon. One instinct in her desired that he
should move away or that the room should be larger, but another instinct
wanted him to remain close, lest the savour of life should lose its
sharpness.
"It passes me how people can say such things!" she went on, in a low,
thrilled, meditative voice. "I can't understand it!" She was quite
sincere in her astonished indignation. Nevertheless, she experienced a
positive pride at being brought into a scandal with George Cannon; she
derived from it a certain feeling of importance; it proved that she was
no longer a mere girlish miss.
George Cannon kept silence.
"I shall leave Brighton," Hilda continued. "That I've quite decided! I
don't like leaving your sister, as ill as she is! But really--" And she
thought how prudent she was, and how capable of taking care of
herself--she all alone in the world!
"Where should you go to? Bursley? The Orgreaves?" George Cannon asked
absently and carelessly.
"I don't know," said Hilda, with curtness.
He stepped aside, in the direction of the window, and examined curiously
the surface of the glass, as though in search of a concealed message
which it might contain. In a new and much more animated voice he said to
the window:
"Of course I know it's all my fault!"
Hilda glanced up at his back; he was still not more than three feet away
from her.
"How is it your fault?" she asked, after a pause.
He made another pause.
"The way I look at you," he said.
These apparently simple words made Hilda tremble, and deprived her of
speech. They shifted the conversation to another plane. 'The way I look
at you! The way I look at you!' What did he mean? How did he look at
her? She could not imagine what he was driving at! Yes, she could! She
knew quite well. All the time, while pretending to herself not to
understand, she understood. It was staggering, but she perfectly
understood. He had looked at her 'like that' on the very first day of
their acquaintance, in his office at Turnhill, and again at the house in
Lessways Street, and again in the newspaper office, and on other
occasions, and again on the night of their arrival at Brighton. But
surely not lately! Or did he look at her 'like that' behind her back?
Was it possible that people noticed it?... Absurd! His explanation of
the origin of the gossip did not convince her. She had, however,
suddenly lost interest in the origin of the gossip. She was entirely
occupied with George Cannon's tone, and his calm, audacious reference to
a phenomenon which had hitherto seemed to her to be far beyond the
region of words.
She was frightened. She was like some one walking secure in the night,
who is stopped by the sound of rushing water and stands with all his
senses astrain, afraid to move a step farther, too absorbed and
intimidated to be aware of astonishment. The point was not whether or
not she had known or guessed the existence of this unseen and formidable
river; the point was that she was thrillingly on its brink, in the dark.
Every instant she heard its swelling current plainer and plainer. She
thought: "Am I lost? How strange that this awful and exquisite thing
should happen to just me!" She was quite fatalistic.
He turned his head suddenly and caught her guilty eyes for an instant
before she could lower them.
"You don't mean to say you don't know what I mean?" he said.
She still could not speak. Her trouble was acute, her self-consciousness
far keener than it had ever been before. She thought: "But it's
impossible that this awful and exquisite thing should happen in this
fashion!" George Cannon moved a step towards her. She could not see his
face, but she knew that he was looking at her with his expression at
once tyrannic and benevolent. She could feel, beating upon her, the
emanating waves of his personality. And she was as confused as though
she had been sitting naked in front of him.... And he had brought all
this about by simply putting something into words--by saying: "It's the
way I look at you!"
He went on:
"I can't help it, you know.... The very first minute I ever set eyes on
you.... Of course I'm thirty-six. But there it is!... I've never seen
any one like you; and I've seen a few! The fact is, Hilda, I do believe
you don't know how fine you are." He spoke more quickly and with boyish
enthusiasm; his voice became wonderfully persuasive. "You are fine, you
know! And you're beautiful! I didn't think so at first, but you are!
You're being wasted. Why, a woman like you...! You've no idea. You're so
proud and stiff, when you want to be... I'd trust you with anything.
You're absolutely the only woman I ever met that I'd trust like a man!
And that's a fact.... Now, nobody could ever think as much of you as I
do. I'm quite certain of it. It couldn't be done. I _know_ you, you see!
I understand everything you do, and whatever you do, it's just fine for
me. You couldn't be as happy with any one else! You couldn't! I feel
that in my bones.... Now--now, I must tell you something--"
The praise, the sympathy, the passion were astounding, marvellous, and
delicious to her. Was it conceivable that this experienced and worldly
man had been captivated by such a mere girl as herself? She had never
guessed it! Or had she always guessed it? An intense pride warmed her
blood like a powerful cordial. Life was even grander than she had
thought!... She drooped into an intoxication. Among all that he had
said, he had not said that he was not stronger than she. He had not
relinquished his authority. She felt it, sitting almost beneath him in
the slippery chair. She knew that she would yield to him. She desired to
yield to him. Her mind was full of sensuous images based on the
abdication of her will in favour of his.
"Now, look here, Hilda. I want to tell you--"
He perhaps did not intend that she should look up; but she looked up.
And she was surprised to see that his face was full of troubled
hesitations, showing almost dismay. He made the motion of swallowing.
She smiled; and set her shoulders back--the very gesture that she had
learned from him.
"What?" she questioned, in a whisper.
Her brief mood of courage was over. She sank before him again, and
waited with bowed head.
Profoundly disturbed, he stood quite still for a few seconds, with shut
lips, and then he made another step to approach.
"Your name's got to be Cannon," she heard him say.
She thought, still waiting: "If this goes on a moment longer I shall die
of anticipation, in bliss." And when she felt his hand on her shoulder,
and the great shadow of him on part of her face, her body seemed to
sigh, acquiescent and for the moment assuaged: "This is a miracle, and
life is miraculous!" She acknowledged that she had lacked faith in life.
She was now on the river, whirling. But at the same time she was in the
small, hot room, and both George Cannon's hands were on her unresisting
shoulders; and then they were round her, and she felt his physical
nearness, the texture of his coat and of his skin; she could see in a
mist the separate hairs of his tremendous moustache and the colours
swimming in his eyes; her nostrils expanded in transient alarm to a
faint, exciting masculine odour. She was disconcerted, if not
panic-struck, by the violence of his first kiss; but her consternation
was delectable to her.
And amid her fright and her joy, and the wonder of her extreme surprise,
and the preoccupation of being whirled down the river, she calmly
reflected, somewhere in her brain: "The door is not locked. Supposing
some one were to come in and see us!" And she reflected also, in an
ecstasy of relief: "My life will be quite simple, now. I shall have
nothing to worry about. And I can help him." For during a year past she
had never ceased to ask herself what she must do to arrange her life;
her conscience had never ceased to tell her that she ought not to be
content to remain in the narrow ideas of her mother, and that though she
preferred marriage she ought to act independently of the hope of it.
Throughout her long stay in Preston Street she had continually said:
"After this--what? This cannot last for ever. When it comes to an end
what am I to do to satisfy my conscience?" And she had thought vaguely
of magnificent activities and purposes--she knew not what.... The
problem existed no more. Her life was arranged. And now, far more
sincerely than in the King's Road twenty minutes earlier, she regarded
the career of a spinster with horror and with scorn. At best, she
suddenly perceived with blinding clearness, it would have been
pitiful--pitiful! Twenty minutes earlier, in the King's Road, she had
dreamt of belonging absolutely to some man, of being at his disposal, of
being under his might, of being helpless before him. And now!... Miracle
thrice miraculous! Miracle unconceived, inconceivable!... No more 'talk'
now!...
She told herself how admirable was the man. She assured herself that he
was entirely admirable. She reminded herself that she had always deemed
him admirable, that only twenty minutes earlier, in the King's Road,
when there was in her mind no dimmest, wildest notion of the real
future, she had genuinely admired him. How clever, how tactful, how
indomitable, how conquering, how generous, how kind he was! How kind to
his half-sister! How forbearing with her! Indeed, she could not recall
his faults. And he was inevitably destined to brilliant success. She
would be the wife of a great and a wealthy man. And in her own secret
ways she could influence him, and thus be greater than the great.
Love? It is an absolute fact that the name of 'love' did not in the
first eternal moments even occur to her. And when it did she gave it but
little importance. She had to admit that she had not consciously thought
of George Cannon with love--at any rate with love as she had imagined
love to be. Indeed, her immediate experience would not fit any theory
that she could formulate. But with the inexorable realism of her sex she
easily dismissed inconvenient names and theories, and accommodated
herself to the fact. And the fact was that she overwhelmingly wanted
George Cannon, and, as she now recognized, had wanted him ever since she
first saw him. The recognition afforded her intense pleasure. She
abandoned herself candidly to this luxury of an unknown desire. It was
incomparably the most splendid and dangerous experience that she had
ever had. She did not reason and she had no wish to reason. She was set
above reason. Happy to the point of delicious pain, she yet yearned
forward to a happiness far more excruciating. She was perfectly aware
that her bliss would be torment until George Cannon had married her,
until she had wholly surrendered to him.
Yet at intervals a voice said very clearly within her: "All this is
wrong. This is base and shameful. This is something to blush for,
really!" She did blush. But her blushes were a part of the delight. And
the voice was not persistent. She could silence it with scarcely an
effort, despite its clarity.
"Kiss me!" George Cannon demanded of her, with eager masterfulness.
The request shocked her for an instant, and the young girl in her was
about to revolt. But she kissed him--an act which combined the sweetness
of submission with the glory of triumph! She looked at him steadily,
confident in herself and in him. She felt that he knew how to love. His
emotion filled her with superb pride. She seemed to be saying to him in
a doomed rapture: "Do you think I don't know what I am doing? I know! I
know!"
The current of the river was tremendous. She foresaw the probability of
disaster. She was aware that she had definitely challenged the hazard of
fate. But she was not terrified in the dark, swirling night of her
destiny. She straightened her shoulders. With all her innocence and
ignorance and impulsiveness and weakness, she had behind her the unique
and priceless force of her youth. She was young, and she put her trust
in life.
CHAPTER III
FLORRIE AGAIN
I
As they were walking home along the King's Road, Hilda suddenly stopped
in front of a chemist's shop. "I've got something to buy here," she said
diffidently, and then added: "I'll follow you."
"And what have you got to buy?" he asked, facing her, with his
benevolent, ironical expression.
"Never mind!" she gently laughed. "I shan't be many minutes after you."
She pretended to make a mystery. But her |
