Hilda Lessways by Arnold Bennett (reading fiction txt) 📖

sense of the tragedy, and of the responsibility for it, and especially her responsibility, the sense of an imposed burden to be grimly borne and of an unknown destiny to be worked out, the sense of pity, the sense of youth and force,--these things gradually exalted her and ennobled her desolation.

"Why did you keep it from me?" she asked in a very clear and precise tone, not aggrieved, but fatalistic and melancholy.

"Keep what from you?" At length he met her eyes, darkly.

"All this about your being married."

"Why did I keep it from you?" he repeated harshly, and then his tone changed from defiance to a softened regret: "I'll tell you why I kept it from you! Because I knew if I told you I should have no chance with a girl like you. I knew it'd be all up--if I so much as breathed a hint of it! I don't suppose you've the slightest idea how stand-offish you are!"

"Me stand-offish!" she protested.

"Look here!" he said persuasively. "Supposing I'd told you I wanted you, and then that I'd got a wife living--what would you have said?"

"I don't know."

"No! But _I_ know! And suppose I'd told you I'd got a wife living and then told you I wanted you--what then? No, Hilda! Nobody could fool about with you!"

She was flattered, but she thought secretly: "He could have won me on any terms he liked!... I wonder whether he _could_ have won me on any terms!... That first night in this house, when we were in the front attic--suppose he'd told me then--I wonder! What should I have said?" But the severity of her countenance was a perfect mask for such weak and uncertain ideas, and confirmed him deeply in his estimate of her.

He continued:

"Now that first night in this house, upstairs!" He jerked his head towards the ceiling. She blushed, not from any shame, but because his thought had surprised hers. "I was as near as dammit to letting out the whole thing and chancing it with you. But I didn't--I saw it'd be no use. And that's not the only time either!"

She stood silent by the dressing-table, calmly looking at him, and she asked herself, eagerly curious: "When were the other times?"

"Of course it's all my fault!" he said.

"What is?"

"This!... All my fault! I don't want to excuse myself. I've nothing to say for myself."

In her mind she secretly interrupted him: "Yes, you have. You couldn't do without me--isn't that enough?"

"I'm ashamed!" he said, without reserve, abasing himself. "I'm utterly ashamed. I'd give anything to be able to undo it."

She was startled and offended. She had not expected that he would kiss the dust. She hated to see him thus. She thought: "It isn't all your fault. It's just as much mine as yours. But even if I was ashamed I'd never confess it. Never would I grovel! And never would I want to undo anything! After all you took the chances. You did what you thought best. Why be ashamed when things go wrong? You wouldn't have been ashamed if things had gone right."

"Of course," he said, after a pause, "I'm completely done for!"

He spoke so solemnly, and with such intense conviction, that she was awed and appalled. She felt as one who, having alone escaped destruction in an earthquake, stands afar off and contemplates the silent, corpse- strewn ruin of a vast city.

And the thought ran through her mind like a squirrel through a tree: "How _could_ he refuse her four thousand pounds? And if she wouldn't have it back,--well, what was he to do? She must be a horrible woman!"


IV


Both of them heard a heavy step pass up the staircase. It was Louisa's; she paused to strike a match and light the gas on the landing; and went on. But Sarah Gailey had given no sign, and the Watchetts were still shut in the dining-room. All these middle-aged women were preoccupied by the affair of George Cannon. All of them guessed now that Louisa's charge was not unfounded--otherwise, why the mysterious and interminable interview between George Cannon and Hilda in the bedroom? Hilda pictured them all. And she thought: "But it is _I_ who am in the bedroom with him! It is I who am living through it and facing it out! They are all far older than me, but they are outsiders. They don't know what life is!"

George rose, picked up a portmanteau, and threw it open on the bed.

"And what is to be done?" Hilda asked, trembling.

He turned and looked at her.

"I suppose I mustn't stay here?"

She shook her head, with lips pressed tight.

His voice was thick and obscure when he asked: "You won't come with me?"

She shook her head again. She could not have spoken. She was in acute torture.

"Well," he said, "I suppose I can count on you not to give me up to the police?"

"The police?" she exclaimed. "Why?"

"Well, you know,--it's a three years' job--at least. Ever heard the word 'bigamy'?" His voice was slightly ironical.

"Oh dear!" she breathed, already disconcerted. It had positively not occurred to her to consider the legal aspect of George's conduct.

"But what can you do?" she asked, with the innocent, ignorant helplessness of a girl.

"I can disappear," he replied. "That's all I can do! I don't see myself in prison. I went over Stafford Prison once. The Governor showed several of us over. And I don't see myself in prison."

He began to cast things into the portmanteau, and as he did so he proceeded, without a single glance at Hilda:

"You'll be all right for money and so on. But I should advise you to leave here and not to come back any sooner than you can help. That's the best thing you can do. And be Hilda Lessways again!... Sarah will have to manage this place as best she can. Fortunately, her health's improved. She can make it pay very well if she likes. It's a handsome living for her. My deposit on the Chichester and so on will have to be forfeited."

"And you?" she murmured.

His back was towards her. He turned his head, looked at her enigmatically for an instant, and resumed his packing.

She desired to help him with the packing, she desired to show him some tenderness; her heart was cleft in two with pity; but she could not move; some harshness of pride or vanity prevented her from moving.

When he had carelessly finished the portmanteau, he strode to the door, opened it wide, and called out in a loud, firm voice:

"Louisa!"

A reply came weakly from the top floor:

"Yes, sir."

"I want you." He had a short way with Louisa.

After a brief delay, she came to the bedroom door.

"Run down to the King's Road and get me a cab," he said to her at the door, as it were confidentially.

"Yes, sir." The woman was like a Christian slave.

"Here! Take the portmanteau down with you to the front door." He gave her the portmanteau.

"Yes, sir."

She disappeared; and then there was the noise of the front door opening.

George picked up his hat and abruptly left the room. Hilda moved to and fro nervously, stiff with having stood still so long. She wondered how he, and how she, would comport themselves in the ordeal of adieu. In a few moments a cab drove up--Louisa had probably encountered it on the way. Hilda waited, tense. Then she heard the cab driving off again. She rushed aghast to the window. She saw the roof of the disappearing cab, and the unwieldy portmanteau on it.... He had gone! He had gone without saying good-bye! That was his device for simplifying the situation. It was drastic, but it was magnificent. He had gone out of the house and out of her life. As she gazed at the dim swaying roof of the cab, magically the roof was taken off, and she could see the ravaged and stricken figure within, sitting grimly in the dark between the wheels that rolled him away from her. The vision was intolerable. She moved aside and wept passionately. How could he help doing all he had done? She had possessed him--the memories of his embrace told her how utterly! All that he had said was true; and this being so, who could blame his conduct? He had only risked and lost.

Sarah Gailey suddenly appeared in the room, and shut the door like a conspirator.

"Then--" she began, terror-struck.

And Hilda nodded, ceasing to cry.

"Oh! My poor dear!" Sarah Gailey moaned feebly, her head bobbing with its unconscious nervous movements. The sight of her worn, saddened features sharpened Hilda's appreciation of her own girlishness and inexperience.

But despite the shock, despite her extreme misery, despite the anguish and fear in her heart and the immense difficulty of the new situation into which she was thus violently thrust, Hilda was not without consolation. She felt none of the shame conventionally proper to a girl deceived. On the contrary, deep within herself, she knew that the catastrophe was a deliverance. She knew that fate had favoured her by absolving her from the consequences of a tragic weakness and error. These thoughts inflamed and rendered more beautiful the apprehensive pity for the real victim--now affronted by a new danger, the menace of the law.

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BOOK VI
HER PUNISHMENT


CHAPTER I EVENING AT BLEAKRIDGE

I


When Hilda's cab turned, perilously swaying, through the gate into the dark garden of the Orgreaves, Hilda saw another cab already at the open house door, and in the lighted porch stood figures distinguishable as Janet and Alicia, all enwrapped for a journey, and Martha holding more wraps. The long facade of the house was black, save for one window on the first floor, which threw a faint radiance on the leafless branches of elms, and thus intensified the upper mysteries of the nocturnal garden. The arrival of the second cab caused excitement in the porch; and Hilda, leaning out of the window into the November mist, shook with apprehension, as her vehicle came to a halt behind the other one. She was now to meet friends for the first time after her secret and unhappy adventure. She feared that Janet, by some magic insight of affection, would read at once in her face the whole history of the past year.

Janet had written to her, giving and asking for news, and urging a visit, on the very day after the scene in which George Cannon admitted his turpitude. Had the letter been sent a day or two sooner, reaching Hilda on her honeymoon, she would certainly have replied to it with the tremendous news of her marriage, and, her marriage, having been made public in the Five Towns, her shame also would necessarily be public. But chance had saved her from this humiliation. Nobody in the district was aware of the marriage. By a characteristic instinct, she had been determined not to announce it in any way until the honeymoon was over. In answer to Janet, she had written very briefly, as was usual with her,