MISS GAILEY IN DECLENSION
I
Knowing whom she was to meet, Hilda came home to tea, on the next day
but one, with a demeanour whose characteristics were heightened by
nervousness. The weather was still colder, and she had tied the broad
ribbons of her small bonnet rather closely under her chin, the double
bow a little to the left. A knitted bodice over the dress and under the
jacket made the latter tighter than usual, so that the fur edges of it
curved away somewhat between the buttons, and all the upper part of the
figure seemed to be too strictly confined, while the petticoats surged
out freely beneath. A muff, brightly coloured to match the skirt and the
bonnet and her cheeks, completed the costume. She went into the house
through the garden and delicately stamped her feet on the lobby tiles,
partly to warm them and shake off a few bits of snow, and partly to
announce clearly her arrival. Then, just as she was, hands in muff, she
entered the parlour. She was tingling with keen, rosy life, and with the
sense of youthful power. She had the deep, unconscious conviction of the
superiority of youth to age. And there were the two older women, waiting
for her, as it were on the defensive, and as nervous as she!
"Good afternoon, Miss Gailey," she said, with a kind and even very
cordial smile, and heartily shook the flaccid, rheumatic hand that was
primly held out to her. And yet in spite of herself, perhaps unknown to
herself, there was in her tone and her smile and her vigorous clasp
something which meant, "Poor old thing!" pityingly, indulgently,
scornfully.
She had not spoken to Miss Gailey, and she had scarcely seen her, since
the days of the dancing-class. A woman who is in process of losing
everything but her pride can disappear from view as easily in a small
town as in a great city; her acquaintances will say to each other, "I
haven't met So-and-so lately. I wonder..." And curiosity will go no
further. And in a short time her invisibility will cease to excite any
remark, except, "She keeps herself to herself nowadays." To Hilda Miss
Gailey appeared no older; her brown hair had very little grey in it, and
her skin was fairly smooth and well-preserved. But she seemed curiously
smaller, and less significant, this woman who, with a certain pedagogic
air, used to instruct girls in grace and boys in gallantry, this woman
who was regarded by all her pupils as the authoritative source of
correctness and ease in deportment. "Now, Master Charles," Hilda could
remember her saying, "will you ask me for the next polka all over again,
and try not to look as if you were doing me a favour and were rather
ashamed of yourself?" She had a tongue for the sneaping of too casual
boys, and girls also.
And she spoke so correctly, as correctly as she performed the figures of
a dance! Hilda, who also spoke without the local peculiarities, had been
deprived of her Five Towns accent at Chetwynd's School, where the purest
Kensingtonian was inculcated; but Miss Gailey had lost hers in
Kensington itself--so rumour said--many years before. And now, in her
declension, she was still perfect of speech. But the authority and the
importance were gone in substance: only the shadow of them remained. She
had now, indeed, a manner half apologetic and half defiant, but
timorously and weakly defiant. Her head was restless with little nervous
movements; her watery eyes seemed to say: "Do not suppose that I am not
as proud and independent as ever I was, because I _am_. Look at my silk
dress, and my polished boots, and my smooth hair, and my hands! Can
anyone find any trace of shabbiness in _me_?" But beneath all this
desperate bravery was the wistful acknowledgment, continually-peeping
out, that she had after all come down in the world, albeit with a
special personal dignity that none save she could have kept.
II
The two women were seated at a splendid fire. Hilda, whose nervousness
was quickly vanishing, came between them to warm her hands that were
shining with cold, despite muff and gloves. "Here, mother!" she said
teasingly, putting the muff and gloves in her mother's lap.
Sarah Gailey rose with slow stiffness from her chair.
"Now don't let this child disturb you, Sarah!" Mrs. Lessways protested.
"Oh no, Caroline!" said Miss Gailey composedly. "I was only getting my
apron."
From a reticule on the table she drew forth a small black satin apron on
which was embroidered in filoselle a spray of moss-roses. It was
extremely elegant--much more so than Mrs. Lessways'--though not in quite
the latest style of fashionable aprons; not being edible, it had
probably been long preserved in a wardrobe, on the chance of just such
an occasion as this. She adjusted the elastic round her thin waist, and
sat down again. The apron was a sign that she had come definitely to
spend the whole evening. It was a proof of the completeness of the
reconciliation between the former friends.
As the conversation shifted from the immediate topic of the weather to
the great general question of cures for chilblains, Hilda wondered what
had passed between her mother and Miss Gailey, and whether her mother
had overcome by mere breezy force or by guile: which details she never
learnt, for Mrs. Lessways was very loyal to her former crony, and
moreover she had necessarily to support the honour of the older
generation against the younger. It seemed incredible to Hilda that this
woman who sat with such dignity and such gentility by her mother's fire
was she who the day before yesterday had been starving in the
pride-imposed prison of her own house. Could Miss Gailey have known that
Hilda knew!... But Hilda knew that Miss Gailey knew that she knew--and
that others guessed! Such, however, was the sublime force of convention
that the universal pretence of ignorance securely triumphed.
Then Florrie--changed, grown, budded, practised in the technicalities of
parlours, but timid because of "company"--came in to set the tea. And
Miss Gailey inspected her with the calm and omniscient detachment of a
deity, and said to Caroline when she was gone that Florrie seemed a
promising little thing--with the 'makings of a good servant' in her.
Afterwards the mistress recounted this judgment to Florrie, who was
thereby apparently much impressed and encouraged in well-doing.
III
"And so you're thinking of going to London, Miss Gailey?" said Hilda,
during tea. The meal was progressing satisfactorily, though Caroline
could not persuade Sarah to eat enough.
Miss Gailey flushed slightly, with the characteristic nervous movement
of the head. Evidently her sensitiveness was extreme.
"And what do you know about it, you inquisitive little puss?" Mrs.
Lessways intervened hastily, though it was she who had informed Hilda of
the vague project. Somehow, in presence of her old friend, Mrs. Lessways
seemed to feel herself under an obligation to play the assertive and
crushing mother.
"Has Mr. Cannon mentioned it?" said Miss Gailey politely. Miss Gailey,
at any rate, recognized in the most scrupulous way that Hilda was an
adult, and no longer a foal-legged pupil for dancing. "Well, he seems so
set on it. He came round to see me about it yesterday morning, without
any warning. And he was full of it! I told you how full he was of it,
didn't I, Caroline? You know how he is when anything takes him."
"Do I know how he is?" murmured Caroline, arching her eyebrows. She
spoke much more broadly than either of the others.
Miss Gailey continued to Hilda, with seriousness: "It's a boarding-house
that he's got control of up there. Something about a bill of sale on the
furniture, I think. But perhaps you know?"
"No, I don't," said Hilda.
"Oh!" said Miss Gailey, relieved. "Well, anyhow he's bent on me taking
charge of this boarding-house. He will have it it's just the thing for
me. But--but I don't know!" She finished weakly.
"Everyone knows you're a splendid housekeeper," said Mrs. Lessways.
"Always were."
"I remember the refreshments at your annual dances," said Hilda,
politely enthusiastic.
"I always attended to those myself," Miss Gailey judicially observed.
"I don't know anything about refreshments at dances," said Mrs.
Lessways, "but I do know what your housekeeping is, Sarah!"
"Well, that's what George says!" Sarah simpered. "He says he never had
such meals and such attention as that year he lived with me."
"I'm sure he's been sorry many a time he ever left you!" exclaimed
Caroline. "Many and many a time!"
"Oh, well.... Relatives, you know...." Sarah murmured vaguely. This was
the only reference to the estrangement. She went on with more vivacity.
"And then Mr. Cannon has always had ideas about boarding-houses and
furnished rooms and so on. He always did say there was lots of money to
be made out of them if only they were managed properly; only they never
are.... He ought to know; he's been a bachelor long enough, and he's
tried enough of them! He says he isn't at all comfortable where he is,"
she added, as it were aside to Caroline. "It's some people who used to
let lodgings to theatre people at Hanbridge."
"Oh! _Them_!" cried Caroline.
The talk meandered into a maze of reminiscences, and Hilda had to
realize her youthfulness and the very inferior range of her experience:
Sarah and Caroline recalled to each other dozens of persons and events,
opening up historical vistas in a manner that filled the young girl with
envious respect, in spite of herself.
"Do you remember Hanbridge Theatre being built, Sarah?" questioned
Caroline. "My grandfather--Hilda's great-grandfather--tendered for
it--not that he got the job--but he was very old."
"Did he now? No, I don't. But I dare say I was in London then."
"I dare say that would be it."
"Yes," said Sarah, turning to Hilda once more, "that's just what Mr.
Cannon says. He says it isn't as if I didn't know what London is.... But
it's such a long time ago!" She glanced at Caroline as if for sympathy.
"Come, come, Sarah!" Caroline protested stoutly, and yet with a care for
Sarah's sensitiveness. "It isn't so long ago as all that!"
"It seems so long," said Sarah, reflective; and her mouth worked
uneasily. Then, after a pause: "He's so set on it!"
"Set on what? On your going to London?"
"Yes."
"And why not?"
"Well, I don't know whether I could--"
"Paw!" scoffed Caroline lightly and flatteringly. "You're younger than I
am, and I'm not going to have anyone making out that I'm getting old.
Now do finish that bit of cake."
"No, thank you, Caroline. I really couldn't."
"Not but what I should be sorry enough to lose you," Caroline concluded.
"There's no friends like the old friends."
"Ah! No!" Sarah thickly muttered, gazing with her watery eyes at a spot
on the white diaper.
"Hilda, do turn down that there gas a bit," said Mrs. Lessways sharply
and self-consciously. "It's fizzing." And she changed the subject.
IV
With a nervous exaggeration of solicitude Hilda sprang to the gas-jet.
Suddenly she was drenched in the most desolating sadness. She could not
bear to look at Miss Gailey; and further, Miss Gailey seemed unreal to
her, not an actual woman, but an abstract figure of sorrow that fancy
had created. A few minutes previously Hilda had been taking pride in the
tact and the enterprise of George Cannon, who possessed a mysterious
gift of finding an opportunity for everybody who needed it. He had set
Hilda on her feet; and he was doing the same for his half-sister, and
with such skilful diplomacy that Miss Gailey was able to pretend to
herself and to others that George Cannon, and not Sarah Gailey, was the
obliged person. But now Hilda saw Sarah Gailey afraid to go to London,
and George Cannon pushing her forward with all the ruthless strength of
his enterprising spirit. And the sight was extraordinarily,
incomprehensibly tragic. Sarah Gailey's timorous glance seemed to be
saying: "I am terrified to go. It isn't beyond my strength--it's beyond
my spirit. But I shall have to go, and I shall have to seem glad to go.
And nobody can save me!"
And Miss Gailey's excellent silk dress, and her fine apron, and her
primness and dignified manners, and her superb pretence of being
undamaged struck Hilda as intolerably pathetic--so that she was obliged
to look away lest she might weep at the sight of that pathos. Yes, it
was a fact that she could not bear to look! Nor could she bear to let
her imagination roam into Miss Gailey's immediate past! She said to
herself: "Only yesterday morning perhaps she didn't know where her next
meal was coming from. He must have managed somehow to give her some
money. Only yesterday morning perhaps she didn't know where her next
meal--If I say that to myself once more I shall burst out crying!" She
balanced her spoon on her teacup and let it fall.
"Now, Miss Fidgety!" her mother commented, with good humour. And then
they all heard a knock at the front door.
"Will Florrie have heard it?" Mrs. Lessways asked nervously. What she
meant was: "Who on earth can this be?" But such questions cannot be put
in the presence of a newly reconciled old friend. It was necessary to
behave as though knocks at the front door were a regular accompaniment
of tea.