by Grant Allen
Once started on that fertile theme of female conversation, Edie and Hilda got on well enough in all conscience to satisfy the most exacting mind. Dot was duly brought in and exhibited by Mrs. Halliss; and was pronounced to be the very sweetest, dearest, darlingest little duck ever seen on earth since the beginning of all things. Her various points of likeness to all her relations were duly discussed; and Hilda took particular pains to observe that she didn’t in the very faintest degree resemble that old horror, Lady Le Breton. Then her whole past history was fully related, she had been fed on, and what illnesses she had had, and how many teeth she had got, and all the other delightful nothings so perennially interesting to the maternal heart. Hilda listened to the whole account with unfeigned attention, and begged leave to be allowed to dance Dot in her own strong arms, and tickled her fat cheek with her slender forefinger, and laughed with genuine delight when the baby smiled again at her and turned her face to be tickled a second time. Gradually Hilda brought the conversation round to Ernest’s journalistic experiences, and at last she said very quietly, ‘I’m sorry to learn from Mr. Berkeley, dear, that your husband doesn’t get quite as much work to do as he would like to have.’
Edie’s tender eyes filled at once with swimming tears. That one word ‘dear,’ said so naturally and simply, touched her heart at once with its genuine half unspoken sympathy. ‘Oh, Lady Hilda,’ she answered falteringly, ‘please don’t make me talk about that. We are so very, very, very poor. I can’t bear to talk about it to you. Please, please don’t make me.’
Hilda looked at her with the moisture welling up in her own eyes too, and said softly, ‘I’m SO sorry: dear, dear little Mrs. Le Breton, I’m so very, very, very sorry for you! from the bottom of my heart I’m sorry for you.’
‘It isn’t for myself, you know,’ Edie answered quickly: ‘for myself, of course, I could stand anything; but it’s the trouble and privations for darling Ernest. Oh, Lady Hilda, I can’t bear to say it, but he’s dying, he’s dying.’
Hilda took the pretty small hand affectionately in hers. ‘Don’t, dear, don’t,’ she said, brushing away a tear from her own eyes at the same time. ‘He isn’t, believe me, he isn’t. And don’t call me by that horrid stiff name, dear, please don’t. Call me Hilda. I should be so pleased and flattered if you would call me Hilda. And may I call you Edie? I know your husband calls you Edie, because Mr. Ronald Le Breton told me so. I want to be a friend of yours; and I feel sure, if only you will let me, that we might be very good and helpful friends indeed together.’
Edie pressed her hand softly. How very different from the imaginary Lady Hilda she had pictured to herself in her timid, girlish fancy! How much even dear Ernest had been mistaken as to what there was of womanly really in her. ‘Oh, don’t speak so kindly to me,’ she said imploringly; ‘don’t speak so kindly, or else you’ll make me cry. I can’t bear to hear you speak so kindly.’
‘Cry, dear,’ Lady Hilda whispered in a gentle tone, kissing her forehead delicately as she spoke: ‘cry and relieve yourself. There’s nothing gives one so much comfort when one’s heart is bursting as a regular good downright cry.’ And, suiting the action to the word, forthwith Lady Hilda laid her own statuesque head down beside Edie’s, and so those two weeping women, rivals once in a vague way, and now bound to one another by a new-found tie, mingled their tears silently together for ten minutes in unuttered sympathy.
As they sat there, both tearful and speechless, with Lady Hilda soothing Edie’s wan hand tenderly in hers, and leaning above her, and stroking her hair softly with a sister’s fondness, the door opened very quietly, and Arthur Berkeley stood for a moment pausing in the passage, and looking in without a word upon the unexpected sight that greeted his wondering vision. He had come to call upon Ernest about some possible opening for a new writer on a paper lately started; and hearing the sound of sobs within had opened the door quietly and tentatively. He could hardly believe his own eyes when he actually saw Lady Hilda Tregellis sitting there side by side with Edie Le Breton, kissing her pale forehead a dozen times in a minute, and crying over her like a child with unwonted tears of unmistakable sympathy. For ten seconds Arthur held the door ajar in his hands, and gazed silently with the awe of chivalrous respect upon the tearful, beautiful picture. Then he shut the door again noiselessly and unperceived, and stole softly out into the street to wait alone for Ernest’s return. It was not for him to intrude his unbidden presence upon the sacred sorrow of those two weeping sister-women.
He lighted a cigar outside, and walked up and down a neighbouring street feverishly till he thought it likely the call would be finished. ‘Dear little Mrs. Le Breton,’ he said to himself softly, ‘dear little Miss Butterfly of the days that are dead; softened and sweetened still more by suffering, with the beauty of holiness glowing in your face, how I wish some good for you could unexpectedly come out of this curious visit. Though I don’t see how it’s possible: I don’t see how it’s possible. The stream carries us all down unresistingly before its senseless flood, and sweeps us at last, sooner or later, like helpless logs, into the unknown sea. Poor Ernest is drifting fast thitherwards before the current, and nothing on earth, it seems to me, can conceivably stop him!’
He paced up and down a little, with a quick, unsteady tread, and took a puff or two again at his cigar abstractedly. Then he held it thoughtfully between his fingers for a while and began to hum a few bars from his own new opera then in course of composition — a stately long-drawn air, it was something like the rustle of Hilda Tregellis’s satin train as she swept queenlike down the broad marble staircase of some great Elizabethan country palace. ‘And dear Lady Hilda too,’ he went on, musingly: ‘dear, kind, sympathising Lady Hilda. Who on earth would ever have thought she had it in her to comfort that poor, weeping, sorrowing girl as I just now saw her doing? Dear Lady Hilda! Kind Lady Hilda! I have undervalued you and overlooked you, because of the mere accident of your titled birth, but I could have kissed you myself, for pure gratitude, that very minute, Hilda Tregellis, when I saw you stooping down and kissing that dear white forehead that looked so pale and womanly and beautiful. Yes, Hilda, I could have kissed you. I could have kissed your own grand, smooth, white marble forehead. And no very great trial of endurance, either, Arthur Berkeley, if it comes to that; for say what you will of her, she’s a beautiful, stately, queenlike woman indeed; and it somehow strikes me she’s a truer and better woman, too, than you have ever yet in your shallow superficiality imagined. Not like little Miss Butterfly! Oh, no, not like little Miss Butterfly! But still, there are keys and keys in music; and if every tune was pitched to the self-same key, even the tenderest, what a monotonous, dreary world it would be to live and sing in after all. Perhaps a man might make himself a little shrine not wholly without sweet savour of pure incense for beautiful, stately, queenlike Hilda Tregellis too! But no; I mustn’t think of it. I have no other duty or prospect in life possible as yet while dear little Miss Butterfly still remains practically unprovided for!’
CHAPTER XXXIV.
HOPE.
From Edie Le Breton’s lodgings, Hilda Tregellis drove straight, without stopping all the way, to Arthur Berkeley’s house at Chelsea; for Arthur had long since risen to the dignity of an enfranchised householder, and had bought himself a pretty cottage near the Embankment, with room enough for himself and the Progenitor, and even for any possible future domestic contingency in the way of wife and children. It was a very unconventional thing for her to do, no doubt; but Lady Hilda was certainly not the person to be deterred from doing anything she contemplated on the bare ground of its extreme unconventionally; and so far was she from objecting personally to her visit on this score, that before she rang the Berkeleys’ bell she looked quietly at her little bijou watch, and said with a bland smile to the suspicious Mr. Jenkins, ‘Let me see, Jenkins; it’s one o’clock. I shall lunch with my friends here this morning; so you may take the carriage home now for my lady, and I shall cab it back, or come round by Metropolitan.’
Jenkins was too much accustomed to Lady Hilda’s unaccountable vagaries to express any surprise at her wildest resolutions, even if she had proposed to go home on a costermonger’s barrow; so he only touched his hat respectfully, in his marionette fashion, and drove away at once without further colloquy.
‘Is Mr. Berkeley at home?’ Hilda asked of the pretty servant girl who opened the door to her, mentally taking note at the same time that Arthur’s aesthetic tendencies evidently extended even to his human surroundings.
‘Which Mr. Berkeley?’ the girl asked in reply. ‘Mr. Berkeley senerer, ‘e’s at ‘ome, but Mr. Arthur, ‘e’s gone up this mornin’ to ‘Olloway.’
Hilda seized with avidity upon this unexpected and almost providential opening. ‘No, is he?’ she said, delighted. ‘Then I’ll go in and see Mr. Berkeley senior. No card, thank you: no name: tell him merely a lady would like to see him. I dare say Mr. Arthur’ll be back before long from Holloway.’
The girl hesitated a moment as if in doubt, and surveyed Lady Hilda from head to foot. Hilda, whose eyes were still red from crying, couldn’t help laughing outright at the obvious cause of the girl’s hesitation. ‘Do as I tell you,’ she said in her imperious way. ‘Who on earth do you take me for, my good girl? That’s my card, see: but you needn’t give it to Mr. Berkeley senior. Now go and tell him at once that a lady is waiting to see him.’
The innate respect of the English working classes for the kind of nobility that is supposed to be represented by the British peerage made the girl drop an instinctive curtsey as she looked at the card, and answer in a voice of hushed surprise, ‘Yes, my lady.’ She had heard Lady Hilda Tregellis spoken of more than once at her master’s table, and she knew, of course, that so great a personage as that could do no wrong. So she merely ushered her visitor at once into Arthur Berkeley’s beautiful little study, with its delicate grey pomegranate wall paper and its exquisite unpolished oak fittings, and said simply, in an overawed manner, ‘A lady wishes to speak to you, sir.’
The old shoemaker looked up from the English translation of Ribot’s ‘Psychologie Anglaise Contemporaine,’ with whose intricacies he was manfully struggling, and rose with native politeness to welcome Hilda.
‘Good morning,’ Hilda said, extending her hand to him with one of her beaming disarming smiles, and annihilating all that was most obtrusively democratic in him at once by her pleasant manner. ‘I’m a friend of your son’s, Mr. Berkeley, and I’ve come here to see him about very particular private business — in short, on an errand of charity. Will he be long gone, do you know?’
‘Not very,’ the Progenitor answered, in a somewhat embarrassed manner, surveying her curiously. ‘At least, I should think not. He’s gone to Holloway for an hour or two, but I fancy he’ll be back for two o’clock luncheon, Miss —— ur, I don’t think I caught your name, did I?’
‘To Holloway,’ Hilda echoed, taking no notice of his suggested query. ‘Oh, then he’s gone to see the poor dear Le Bretons, of course. Why, that’s just what I wanted to see him about. If you’ll allow me then, I’ll just stop and have lunch with you.’
‘The dickens you will,’ the Progenitor thought to himself in speechless astonishment. ‘That’s really awfully cool of you. However, I dare say it’s usual to invite oneself in the state of life that that boy Artie has gone and hoisted himself into, most unnaturally. A fine lady, no doubt, of their modern pattern; but in my day, up in Paddington, we should have called her a brazen hussey. — Certainly, if you will,’ he added aloud. ‘If you’ve come on any errand that will do any good to the Le Bretons, I’m sure my son’ll be delighted to see you. He’s greatly grieved at their unhappy condition.’
‘I’m afraid I’ve nothing much to suggest of any very practical sort,’ Hilda answered, with a slight sigh; ‘but at least I should like to talk with him about the matter. Something must be done for these two poor young people, you know, Mr. Berkeley. Something must really be done to help them.’
‘Then you’re interested in them, Miss — ur — ur — ah, yes — are you?’
‘Look at my eyes,’ Hilda said plumply. ‘Are they very red, Mr. Berkeley?’
‘Well….ur…yes, if I may venture to say so to a lady,’ the old shoemaker answered hesitatingly, with unwonted gallantry. ‘I should say they were a trifle, ur, just a trifle roseate, you know.’
‘Quite so,’ Hilda went on, seriously. ‘That’s it. They’re red with crying. I’ve been crying like a baby all the morning with that poor, dear, sweet little angel of a Mrs. Le Breton.’
‘Then you’re a great friend of hers, I suppose,’ the Progenitor suggested mildly.
‘Never set eyes on her in my life before this morning, on the contrary,’ Hilda continued in her garrulous fashion. ‘But, oh, Mr. Berkeley, if you’d only seen that dear little woman, crying as if her heart would break, and telling me that dear Ernest was dying, actually dying; why — there — excuse me — I can’t help it, you know; we women are always crying about something or other, aren’t we?’
The old man laid his hand on hers quietly. ‘Don’t mind ME, my dear,’ he said with genuine tenderness. ‘Don’t mind me a bit; I’m only an old shoemaker, as I dare say you’ve heard before now; but I know you’ll be the better for crying — women always are — and tears shed on somebody else’s account are never thrown away, my dear, are they?’
Hilda took his hand between hers, and wiping her eyes once more whispered softly, ‘No, Mr. Berkeley, no; perhaps they’re not; but oh, they’re so useless; so very, very, very useless. Do you know, I never felt my own powerlessness and helplessness in all my life so much as I did at that dear, patient little Mrs. Le Breton’s this very morning. There I sat, knowing she was in dire need of money for her poor husband, and wanting sufficient food and drink, perhaps, for herself, and him, and the dear darling baby; and in my hand in my muff I had my purse there with five tenners — Bank of England ten-pound notes, you know — fifty pounds altogether, rolled up inside it; and I would have given anything if only I could have pulled them out and made them a present to her then and there; and I couldn’t, you see: and, oh, Mr. Berkeley, isn’t it terrible to look at them? And then, before I left, poor Mr. Le Breton himself came in, and I was quite shocked to see him. I used to know him a few years ago, and even then he wasn’t what you’d call robust by any means; but now, oh, dear me, he does look so awfully ill and haggard and miserable that it quite made me break down again, and I cried about him before his very face; and the moment I got away, I said to the coachman, “Jenkins, drive straight off to the Embankment at Chelsea;” and here I am, you see, waiting to talk with your clever son about it; for, really, Mr. Berkeley, the poor Le Bretons haven’t got a single friend anywhere like your son Arthur.’
And then Lady Hilda went on to praise Arthur’s music to the Progenitor, and to speak of how much admired he was everywhere, and to hint that so much genius and musical power must of course be largely hereditary. Whereat the old man, not unmoved by her gentle insinuating flattery, at last confessed to his own lifelong musical tastes, and even casually acknowledged that the motive for one or two of the minor songs in the famous operas was not entirely of Arthur’s own unaided invention. And so, from one subject to another, they passed on so quickly, and hit it off with one another so exactly (for Hilda had a wonderful knack of leading up to everybody’s strong points), that long before lunch was ready, the Progenitor had been quite won over by the fascinations of the brazen hussey, and was prepared to admit that she was really a very nice, kind, tender-hearted, intelligent, appreciative, and discriminating young lady. True, she had not read Mill or Fawcett, and was ignorant of the very name of Herbert Spencer; but she had a vast admiration for his dear boy Artie, and she saw that he himself knew a thing or two in his own modest way, though he was only what the grand world she moved in would doubtless call an old superannuated journeyman shoemaker.
‘Ah, yes, a shoemaker! so I’ve heard somewhere, I fancy,’ Lady Hilda remarked brightly, when for the thi
rd time in the course of their conversation he informed her with great dignity of the interesting fact; ‘how very delightful and charming that is, really, now isn’t it? So original, you know, to make shoes instead of going into some useless profession, especially when you’re such a great reader and student and thinker as you are — for I see you’re a philosopher and a psychologist already, Mr. Berkeley’ — Hilda considered it rather a bold effort on her part to pronounce the word ‘psychologist’ at the very first trial without stumbling; but though she was a little doubtful about the exact pronunciation of that fearful vocable, she felt quite at her ease about the fact at least, because she carefully noticed him lay down Ribot on the table beside him, name upward; ‘one can’t help finding that much out on a very short acquaintance, can one? Though, indeed, now I come to think of it, I believe I’ve heard often that men of your calling generally ARE very fond of reading, and are very philosophical, and clever, and political, and all that sort of thing; and they say that’s the reason, of course, why Northampton’s such an exceptionally intelligent constituency, and always returns such thoroughgoing able logical Radicals.’
The old man’s eyes beamed, as she spoke, with inexpressible pride and pleasure. ‘I’m very glad indeed to hear you say so,’ he answered promptly with a complacent self-satisfied smile, ‘and I believe you’re right too, Miss, ur — ur — ur — quite so. The practice of shoemaking undoubtedly tends to develop a very high and exceptional level of general intelligence and logical power.’
‘I’m sure of it,’ Hilda answered demurely, in a tone of the deepest and sincerest conviction; ‘and when I heard somebody say somewhere, that your son was… — well, WAS your son, I said to myself at once, “Ah, well, there now, that quite accounts, of course, for young Mr. Berkeley’s very extraordinary and unusual abilities!”’
