Hilda Lessways by Arnold Bennett (reading fiction txt) 📖

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,