Hilda Lessways by Arnold Bennett (reading fiction txt) 📖

gloves, and her feet beneath a flowing skirt. Now, Mr. Boutwood's attitude showed very plainly that the girlish charms of Florrie had produced in him a definite and familiar effect. He would have been ready to commit follies for the young woman, and to deny that she was a drudge or anything but a beautiful creature.

Hilda objected. She objected because Mr. Boutwood was a widower, holding that he had no right to joy, and that he ought to mourn practically for ever in solitude. She would make no allowance for his human instincts, his needs of intimate companionship, his enormous unoccupied leisure. She would have condemned him utterly on the score of his widowhood alone. But she objected far more strongly to his attitude because he was fat and looked somewhat coarse. She counted his obesity to him for a sin. And it was naught to her that he had been a martyr to idleness and wealth, which combination had prematurely aged him. Mr. Boutwood was really younger than George Cannon, and Florence Bagster certainly seemed as old as Hilda. Yet the juxtaposition of the young, slim, and virginal Florrie and the large, earth-worn Mr. Boutwood profoundly offended her.

It was Mr. Boutwood who first discovered that Hilda was in the doorway. He was immediately abashed, and presented the most foolish appearance. Whereupon Hilda added scorn to her disgust. Florrie, however, easily kept her countenance, and with a pert smile took the hand which her former mistress graciously extended. By universal custom a servant retains some of the privileges of humanity for several minutes after entering upon a new servitude. Mr. Boutwood vanished.

"Louisa will help you upstairs with the trunk," said Hilda, when she had made inquiries about the wonderful journey which Florrie had accomplished alone, and about the health of Florrie's aunt and of her family. "Louisa!" she called loudly up the stairs and down into the basement.


III


She followed the procession of the trunk upstairs, and, Louisa having descended again, showed Florrie into the kennel. This tiny apartment had in it two truckle-beds, and a wash-bowl on a chair, and little else. A very small square trap-window in the low ceiling procured a dusky light in the middle hours of the day. Florence seemed delighted with the room; she might have had to sleep under the stairs.

"Put on your afternoon apron, and then you can go down and see Miss Gailey," said Hilda, and shut the door upon Florrie in her new home.

When she turned, there was George Cannon on the half-landing beneath the skylight! She knew not how he had come there, nor whether he had entered the house before or after herself.

"I'm glad he isn't fat!" she thought. And it was as though she had thought: "If he were fat everything would be different." Her features did not relax as she went down the five steps to the half-landing where he waited, smiling faintly. She thought: "We must be very serious and circumspect in the house. There must never be the slightest--" But while she was yet on the last step, he firmly put his hands on her ears and, drawing her head towards him, kissed her full on the mouth, and she saw again, through her eyelashes, all the details of his face. She yielded. All her ideas of circumspection melted magically away in an abandoned tenderness of which she was ashamed, but for which she would have unreflectingly made any sacrifice. The embrace was over in an instant. Besides being guiltless of obesity, George Cannon was free from the unpardonable fault of clumsiness. He was audacious, but he was not foolhardy, and he would never be abashed. True, she had seen dismay on his face at the moment of his declaration, but that moment was unique, and his dismay had ineffably flattered her. Now, on the half-landing, she was drenched in bliss. And she felt dissolute; she felt even base. But she did not care. She thought, as it were, startled: "This is love. This must be what love is. I must have been in love without knowing it. And as for a girl always knowing when a man's in love with her, and foreseeing the proposal, and all that sort of thing...." Her practical contempt for all that sort of thing could not be stated in words.

"Florrie's just come," she whispered, and by a movement of the head indicated that Florrie was in the kennel.

They went together to the drawing-room on the first floor. It was, empty, the entire population of the boarding-houses being still on the seashore. Hilda stood near the door, which she left open, and gave detailed news of Florrie in a tone very matter-of-fact. There was no reference to love, or to the new situation created, or to the vast enterprise of the Chichester. The topic was Florrie, and somehow it held the field despite efforts to dislodge it.

Then the stairs creaked. Already Florrie was coming down. In a trice she had made herself ready for work. She came down timidly, not daring to look to right nor left, but concentrating her attention on the stairs. She passed along the landing outside the drawing-room door, and Hilda, opening the door a little wider, had a full surreptitious view of her back; and George Cannon, farther within the room, also saw her. They watched her disappear on her way to find the basement and the formidable Sarah Gailey. Hilda was touched by the spectacle of this child disguised as a strapping woman, far removed from her family and her companions and her familiar haunts, and driven or drawn into exile at Brighton, where she would only see the sea once a week, except through windows, and where she would have to work from fourteen to sixteen hours a day for a living, and sleep in a kennel. The prettiness, the pertness, and the naive contentedness of the child thus realizing an ambition touched her deeply.

"It does seem a shame, doesn't it?" she said.

"What?"

"Bringing her all the way up here, like this! She doesn't know a soul in Brighton. She's bound to be frightfully home-sick--"

"What about you?" George Cannon interrupted politely. "Doesn't she know you?" He smiled with all his kindness.

"Yes--but--"

Hilda did not finish. It was not worth while. George Cannon had not understood. He did not feel as she felt, and her emotion was incommunicable to him. A tremendous misgiving seized her, and she had a physical feeling of emptiness in the stomach. It passed, swiftly as a hallucination. Just such a misgiving as visits nearly every normal person immediately before or immediately after marriage! She ignored it. She was engaged--that was the paramount fact! She was engaged, and joyously determined to prosecute the grand adventure to the end. The immensity of the risks forced her to accept them.


IV


That evening Sarah Gailey was in torment from the pain in her wrists. There was nothing to be done. She had had the doctor, and no article of the prescribed treatment had been neglected. With unaccustomed aid from Hilda she had accomplished the business of undressing and getting into bed, and now she sat up in bed, supported by her own pillows and one from Hilda's bed, and nursed her wrists, while Hilda poured drops of a narcotic for her into a glass of water. Apart from the serious local symptoms, her health was fairly good. She could eat, she could talk, she could walk, and her brain was clear. Hilda held the glass for her to drink, for it was prudent to keep her hands as much as possible in repose.

"There!" said Hilda, as if to a young child who had been querulous. "I'm sure you'll sleep now!"

"I don't think I shall," the sufferer whined.

"Oh yes, you will!" Hilda insisted firmly, although she was by no means sure. "Let me take this extra pillow away, and then you can lie down properly." She was thinking reproachfully: "What a pity it is for all of us that the poor thing can't bear her pain with a little less fuss!" It was not Sarah alone who was embittered and fatigued by Sarah's pain.

"Where's George?" asked the invalid, when she was laid down.

"In the parlour. Why?"

"Oh, nothing!"

"By the way," said Hilda, seized by a sudden impulse, which had its origin in Sarah's tone at once martyrized and accusing,--"by the way, who _is_ it that's been talking scandal about me and George?"

"Scandal?" Sarah Gailey seemed weakly to protest against the word.

"Because, if you want to know," Hilda continued, "we're engaged to be married!" She reflected, contrite: "This won't help her to sleep!" And then added, in a new, endearing accent, awaiting an outburst of some kind from Sarah: "Of course it's a secret, dear. I'm telling no one but you."

After a moment's silence, Sarah remarked casually, with shut eyes: "It'll be much the best not to tell anyone. And the shorter the engagement the better! Don't let anybody in the house know till you're married." She sighed, put her cheek into the pillow, and moved her bound wrists for a few seconds, restlessly. "If you turn the gas down," she finished very wearily, "I dare say I may get off. If only they'd stop that piano upstairs!"

She had displayed no surprise at the tremendous event, no sentimental interest in it. The fact was that Sarah Gailey's wrists were infinitely more interesting to her than any conceivable project of marriage. Continuous and acute pain had withdrawn her from worldly affairs, making her more than ever like a god.

Hilda was startled. But she was relieved. Now for the first time she had the authentic sensation of being engaged. And it appeared to her that she had been engaged for a very long period, and that the engagement was a quite ordinary affair. She was relieved; yet she was also grievously saddened. She lowered the gas, and in the gloom gazed for a few seconds at the vague, huddled, sheeted, faintly moaning figure on the bed; the untidy grey hair against the pillow struck her as intolerably pathetic.

"Good night," she said softly.

And the feeble, plaintive voice responded: "Good night."

She went out, leaving the door slightly ajar.


V


In the parlour adjoining George Cannon was seated at the table. When Hilda saw him and their eyes met, she was comforted; a wave of tenderness seemed to agitate her. She realized that this man was hers, and the realization was marvellously reassuring. The sound of the piano descended delicately from the drawing-room as from a great distance. From the kitchen came the muffled clatter of earthenware and occasionally a harsh, loud voice; it was the hour of relaxed discipline in the kitchen, where amid the final washing-up and much free discussion and banter, Florrie was recommencing her career on a grander basis. Hilda closed the door very quietly. When she had closed it and was shut in with George Cannon her emotion grew intenser.

"I think she'll get off now," she whispered, standing near the door.

"Have you told her?"

Hilda nodded.

"What does she say?"

Hilda raised her eyebrows: "Oh!... Well, she says we'd better keep it quiet, and make the engagement as short as possible." She blushed.

"Look here," said George. "Let's go out, eh?"

"But--what will people say?"

"What the devil does it matter what they say? I want you to come out with me."

The whispered oath, and his defiant smile, enchanted her.

"We can go out by the area steps," he