Hilda by Sara Jeannette Duncan (best books to read in your 20s txt) 📖

common, Mr. Lindsay, but to me it is marching on a great and holy crusade, and I march with it. You would not ask me to give up my life-work?"

"Only to take it into another sphere," Duff said, unreflectively. He was checked but not discouraged, impatient, but in no wise cast down. She had not flown, she walked beside him placidly. She had no intention of flight. He tried to resign himself to the task of beating down her trivial objections, curbing his athletic impulse to leap over them.

"Another sphere"--he caught a subtle pleasure in her enunciation. "I suppose you mean high society; but it would never be the same."

"Not quite the same. You would have to drive to see your sinners in a carriage and pair, and you might be obliged to dine with them in--what do ladies generally dine in?--white satin and diamonds, or pearls. I think I would rather see you in pearls." He was aware of the inexcusableness of the points he made, but he only stopped to laugh inwardly at their impression, watching the absorbed turn of her head.

"We might think it well to be a little select in our sinners--most of them would be on Government House list, just as most of your present ones are on the lists of the charitable societies or the district magistrates. But you would find just as much to do for them."

"I should not even know how to act in such company."

"You can go home for a year, if you like, to be taught, to some people I know; delightful people, who will understand. A year! You will learn in three months--what odds and ends there are to know. I couldn't spare you for a year."

Lindsay stopped. He had to. Captain Filbert was murmuring the cadences of a hymn. She went through two stanzas, and--covered her eyes for a moment with her hand. When she spoke it was in a quiet, level, almost mechanical way. "Yes," she said. "The Cross and the Crown, the Crown and the Cross. Father in Heaven, I do not forget Thy will and Thy purpose, that I should bring the word of Thy love to the poor and the lowly, the outcast and those despised. And what I say to this man, who offers me the gifts and the gladness of a world that had none for Thee, is the answer Thou hast put in my heart--that the work is Thine and that I am Thine, and he has no part or lot in me, nor can ever have. Here is Crooked lane. Good-night, Mr. Lindsay."

She had slipped into the devious darkness of the place before he could find any reply, before he quite realised, indeed, that they had reached her lodging. He could only utter a vague "Good-night" after her, formulating more definite statements to himself a few minutes later in Bentinck street.


CHAPTER XI.

Miss Howe was walking in the business quarter of Calcutta. It was the business quarter, and yet the air was gay with the dimpling of piano notes, and looking up one saw the bright sunlight fall on yellow stuccoed flats above the shops and the offices. There the pleasant north wind blew banners of muslin curtains out of wide windows, and little gardens of palms in pots showed behind the balustrades of the flat roofs whenever a story ran short. Everywhere was a subtle contagion of momentary well-being, a sense of lifted burden. The stucco streets were too slovenly to be purely joyous, but a warm satisfaction brooded in them, the pariahs blinked at one genially, there was a note of cheer even in the cheeling of the kites where they sat huddled on the roof-cornices or circled against the high blue sky. It was enjoyable to be abroad, in the brushing fellowship of the pavements, in touch with brown humility, half-clad and going afoot, since even brown humility seemed well affected toward the world, alert and content. The air was full of the comfortable flavour of food-stuffs and spiced luxuries and the incense of wayside trees; it was as if the sun laid a bland compelling hand upon the city, bidding strange flowers bloom and strange fruits increase. Brokers' gharries rattled past, each holding a pale young man preoccupied with a note-book; where the bullock-carts gathered themselves together and blocked the road the pale young men put excited heads out of the gharry windows and used remarkable imprecations. One of them, as Hilda turned into the compound of the _Calcutta Chronicle_, leaned out to take off his hat, and sent her up to the office of that journal in the pleasant reflection of his infinite interest in life. "Upon my word," she said to herself, as she ascended the stairs behind the lean legs of a Mussulman servant in a dirty shirt and an embroidered cap, "he's so light-hearted, so general, that one doubts the very tremendous effect even of a failure like the one he contemplates."

She sent her card in to the manager-sahib by the lean Mussulman, and followed it past the desks of two or three Bengali clerks, who hardly lifted their well-oiled heads from their account-books to look at her--so many memsahibs to whose enterprises the _Chronicle_ gave prominence came to see the manager-sahib and they were so much alike. At all events they carried a passport to indifference in the fact that they all wanted something, and it was clear to the meanest intelligence that they appeared to be more magnificent than they were, visions in dazzling complexions and long kid gloves, rattling up in third-class ticca-gharries, with a wisp of fodder clinging to their skirts. It was less interesting still when they belonged to the other class, the shabby ladies, nearly always in black, with husbands in the Small Cause Court, or sons before the police magistrate, who came to get it, if possible, "kept out of the paper." Successful or not, these always wept on their way out, and nothing could be more depressing. The only gleam of entertainment to be got out of a lady visitor to the manager-sahib occurred when the female form enshrined the majestic personality of a boarding-house madam, whose asylum for respectable young men in leading Calcutta firms had been maliciously traduced in the local columns of the _Chronicle_--a lady who had never known what a bailiff looked like in the lifetime of her first husband, or her second either. Then at the sound of a pudgy blow upon a table or high abusive accents in the rapid, elaborate cadences of the domiciled East Indian tongue, Hari Babu would glance at Gobind Babu with a careful smile, for the manager-sahib who dispensed so much _galli_[6] was now receiving the same, and defenceless.

[Footnote 6: Abuse.]

The manager sat at his desk when Hilda went in. He did not rise--he was one of those highly sagacious little Scotchmen that Dundee exports in such large numbers to fill small posts in the East, and she had come on business. He gave her a nod, however, and an affectionate smile, and indicated with his blue pencil a chair on the other side of the table. He had once made three hundred rupees in tea shares, and that gave him the air of a capitalist and speculator gamely shrewd. Tapping the table with his blue pencil, he asked Miss Howe how the world was using _her_.

"Let me see," said Hilda, a trifle absent-mindedly, "were you here last cold weather--I rather imagine you were, weren't you?"

"I was; I had the pleasure of--"

"To be sure. You got the place in December, when that poor fellow Baker died. Baker was a country-bred, I know, but he always kept his contracts, while you got your polish in Glesca, and your name is Macphairson--isn't it?"

"I was never in Glasscow in my life, and my name is Macandrew," said the manager, putting with some aggressiveness a paper-weight on a pile of bills.

"Never mind," said Hilda, again wrapped in thought, "don't apologise--it's near enough. Well, Mr. Macandrew"--her tone came to a point--"what is the Stanhope Company's advertisement worth a month to the _Chronicle_?"

"A hundred rupees, maybe--there or thereabouts," and Mr. Macandrew, with a vast show of indifference, picked up a letter and began to tear at the end of it.

"One hundred and fifty-five, I think, to be precise. That communication will wait, won't it? What is it--Kally Nath Mitter's paper and stores bill? You won't be able to pay it any quicker if we withdraw our advertisement."

"Why should ye withdraw it?"

"It was given to you on the understanding that notices should appear of every Wednesday and Saturday's performance. For two Wednesdays there has been no notice, and last Saturday night you sent a fool."

"So Muster Stanhope thinks o' withdrawin' his advertisement?"

"He is very much of that mind."

The manager put his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, leaned back in his chair, and demonstrated the principle that had given him a gold watch chain--"Never be bluffed."

"Ye can withdraw it," he said, with a warily experimental eye upon her.

"How reasonable of you not to make a fuss! We'll have the order to discontinue in writing, please. If you give me a pen and paper--thanks--and I'll keep a copy."

"Stanhope has wanted to transfer it to the _Market Gazette_ for some time," she went on as she wrote.

"That's not a newspaper. You'll get no notices there."

"Cheaper on that account, probably."

"They charge like the very deevil. D'ye know the rates of them?"

"I can't say I do."

"There's a man on our staff that doesn't like your show. We'll be able to send him every night now."

"When we withdraw our advertisement?"

"Just then."

"All right," said Hilda. "It will be interesting to point out in the _Indian Empire_ the remarkable growth of independent criticism in the _Chronicle_ since Mr. Stanhope no longer uses the space at his disposal. I hope your man will be very nasty indeed. You might as well hand over the permanent passes--the gentleman will expect, I suppose, to pay."

"They'll be in the yeditorial department," said Mr. Macandrew, but he did not summon a messenger to go for them. Instead he raised his eyebrows in a manner that expressed the necessity of making the best of it, and humourously scratched his head.

"We have four hundred pounds of new type coming out in the _Almora_--she's due on Thursday," he said. "Entirely for the advertisements. We'll have a fine display next week. It's grand type--none of your Calcutta-made stuff."

"Pays to bring it out, does it?" asked Hilda, inattentively, copying her letter.

"Pays the advertisers." There were ingratiating qualities in the managerial smile. Hilda inspected them coldly.

"There's your notice of withdrawal," she said. "Good-morning."

"Think of that new type, and how lovely Jimmy Finnigan's ad. will look in it."

"That's all right. Good-morning." Miss Howe approached the door, the blue glance of Macandrew pursuant.

"No notices for two Wednesdays, eh? We'll have to see about that. I was thinkin' of transferrin' your space to the third page; it's a more advantageous position--and no extra charge--but ye'll not mention it to Jimmy."

Miss Howe lifted an arrogant chin. "Do I understand you'll do that, and guarantee regular notices, if we leave the advertisement with you?"

Mr. Macandrew looked at her expressively and tore, with a gesture of moderated recklessness, the notice of withdrawal in two.

"Rest easy," he said, "I'll see about it. I'd go the len'th of attendin' myself to-night, if ye could spare three extra places."

"Moderate Macandrew!"