DISILLUSION
I
The entrance of George Cannon into the parlour produced a tumult greatly
stimulating the vitality and the self-consciousness of all three women.
Sarah Gailey's excitement was expressed in flushing, and in
characteristic small futile movements of the head and hands, and in
monosyllables that conveyed naught except a vague but keen apprehension.
Mrs. Lessways was perturbed and somewhat apprehensive also; but she was
flattered and pleased. Hilda was frankly suspicious during the first
moments. She guessed that Mr. Cannon was aware of his sister's visit,
and that he had come to further his own purposes. He confirmed her idea
by greeting his sister without apparent surprise; but as, in response to
Mrs. Lessways' insistence, he took off his great overcoat, with those
large, powerful gestures which impress susceptible women and give
pleasure even to the indifferent, he said casually to Sarah Gailey, "I
didn't expect to meet you here, Sally. I've come to have a private word
with Mrs. Lessways about putting one of her Calder Street tenants on to
the pavement." Sarah laughed nervously and said that she would retire,
and Mrs. Lessways said that Sarah would do no such thing, and that she
was very welcome to hear all that Mr. Cannon might have to say
concerning the Calder Street property.
In a minute Mr. Cannon was resplendently sitting down to the table with
them, and rubbing his friendly hands, and admitting that he should not
refuse a cup of tea if pressed. And Hilda received her mother's sharp
instructions to get a cup and saucer from the sideboard and a spoon from
the drawer. She bore these to the table like a handmaid, but like a
delicate and superior handmaid, and it pleased her to constitute herself
a delicate and superior handmaid. Mr. Cannon sat next to her mother, and
Hilda put down the tinkling cup and saucer on the white cloth between
them; and as she did so Mr. Cannon turned and thanked her with a
confidential smile, to which she responded. They were not now employer
and employee, but exclusively in the social world; nevertheless, their
business relations made an intimacy which it was piquant to feel in the
home. Moreover, Sarah Gailey was opposite to them, and Hilda could not
keep out of her dark eyes the intelligence: "If she is here, if you are
all amicable together, it is due to me." Delicious and somehow perilous
secret!... Going back to her seat, she arranged more safely the vast
overcoat which he had thrown carelessly down on her mother's rocking-
chair. It was inordinately heavy, and would have outweighed a dozen of
her skimpy little jackets; she, who would have been lost in it like a
cat in a rug, enjoyed the thought of the force of the creature capable
of wearing it lightly for a garment. Withal the rough, soft surface of
it was agreeable to the hand. Out of one of the immense pockets hung the
end of a coloured silk muffler, filmy as anything that she herself wore.
Then they were all definitely seated, and Mr. Cannon accepted his tea
from the hand of Mrs. Lessways. The whiteness of his linen, the new
smartness of his suit, the elegance and gallantry of his gestures--these
phenomena incited the women to a responsive emulation; they were
something which it was a feminine duty to live up to. Archness reigned,
especially between the hostess and the caller. Hilda answered to the
mood. And Sarah Gailey, though she said little and never finished a
sentence, did her best to answer to it by noddings and nervous
appreciative smiles, and swift turnings of the head from one to another.
When Mr. Cannon and Mrs. Lessways, in half a dozen serious words
interjected among the archness, had adversely settled the fate of a
whole family in Calder Street, there remained scarcely a trace, in the
company's demeanour, of the shamed consciousness that only two days
before its members had been divided by disastrous enmities and that one
of them had lacked the means of life.
II
"Oh no! my dear girl! You're too modest--that's what's the matter with
you," said George Cannon eagerly to his half-sister. The epithet
flattered but did not allay her timidity. To Hilda it seemed
mysteriously romantic.
The supreme topic had worked its way into the conversation. Uppermost in
the minds of all, it seemed to have forced itself out by its own
intrinsic energy, against the will of the company. Impossible to decide
who first had let it forth! But George Cannon had now fairly seized it
and run off with it. He was almost boyishly excited over it. The Latin
strain in him animated his features and his speech. He was a poet as he
talked of the boarding-house that awaited a mistress. He had pulled out
of his pocket the cutting of an advertisement of it from the London
_Daily Telegraph_, a paper that was never seen in Turnhill. And this bit
of paper, describing in four lines the advantages of the boarding-house,
had the effect of giving the actual house a symbolic reality. "There it
is!" he exclaimed, slapping down the paper. And there it appeared really
to be. The bit of paper was extraordinarily persuasive. It compelled
everybody to realize, now for the first time, that the house did in fact
exist. George Cannon had an overwhelming answer to all timorous
objections. The boarding-house was remunerative; boarders were at that
very moment in it. The nominal proprietor was not leaving it because he
was losing money on the boarding-house, but because he had lost money in
another enterprise quite foreign to it, and had pledged all the contents
of the boarding-house as security. The occasion was one in a thousand,
one in a million. He, George Cannon, through a client, had the entire
marvellous affair between his finger and thumb, and most obviously Sarah
Gailey was the woman of all women for the vacant post at his
disposition. Chance was waiting on her. She had nothing whatever to do
but walk into the house as a regent into a kingdom, and rule. Only,
delay was impossible. All was possible except delay. She would
inevitably succeed; she could not fail. And it would be a family
affair....
Tea was finished and forgotten.
"For your own sake!" he wound up a peroration. "It really doesn't matter
to me.... Don't you agree with me, Mrs. Lessways?" His glance was a
homage.
"Oh, you!" exclaimed Mrs. Lessways, smiling happily. "You've only got to
open your mouth, and you'd talk anybody into the middle of next week."
"Mother!" Hilda mildly reproved. She was convinced now that Mr. Cannon
had come on purpose to clinch the affair.
He laughed appreciatively.
"But really! Seriously!" he insisted.
And Mrs. Lessways, straightening her face, said, with slight
self-consciousness: "Oh, _I_ think it's worth while considering!"
"There you are!" cried Mr. Cannon to Miss Gailey.
"I shall be all alone up there!" said Miss Gailey, as cheerfully as she
could.
"I'll go up with you and see you into the place. I should have to come
back the same night--I'm so tremendously busy just now--what with the
paper and so on."
"Yes, but--I quite admit all you say, George--but--"
"Here's another idea," he broke out. "Why don't you ask Mrs. Lessways to
go up with you and stay a week or two? It would be a rare change for
her, and company for you."
Miss Gailey looked quickly at her old friend.
"Oh! Bless you!" said Mrs. Lessways. "I've only been to London once, and
that was only for two days--before Hilda was born. I should be no use in
London, at my time of life. I'm one of your home-stayers." Nevertheless
it was plain that the notion appealed to her fancy, and that she would
enjoy flirting with it.
"Nonsense, Mrs. Lessways!" said George Cannon. "It would do you a world
of good, and it would make all the difference to Sally."
"That it would!" Sarah agreed, still questioning Caroline with her
watery, appealing eyes. In Caroline, Sarah saw her salvation, and
snatched at it. Caroline could do nothing well; she had no excellence;
all that Caroline could do Sarah could do better. And yet Caroline, by
the mysterious virtue of her dry and yet genial shrewdness, and of the
unstable but reliable equilibrium of her temperament, was the skilled
Sarah's superior. They both knew it and felt it. The lofty Hilda
admitted it. Caroline herself negligently admitted it by a peculiar,
brusque, unaffected geniality of condescension towards Sarah.
"Do go, mother!" said Hilda. To herself she had been saying: "Another of
his wonderful ideas!" The prospect of being alone in the house with
Florrie, of being free for a space to live her own life untrammelled and
throw all her ardour into her work, was inexpressibly attractive to
Hilda. It promised the most delicious experience that she had ever had.
"Yes," retorted Mrs. Lessways. "And leave you here by yourself! A nice
thing!"
"I shall be all right," said Hilda confidently and joyously. She was
sure that the excursion to London had appealed to her mother's latent
love of the unexpected, and that her faculty for accepting placidly
whatever fate offered would prevent her from resisting the pressure that
Sarah Gailey and Mr. Cannon would obviously exert.
"Shall you!" Mrs. Lessways muttered.
"Why not take your daughter with you, too?" Mr. Cannon suggested.
"Oh!" cried Hilda, shocked. "I couldn't possibly leave my work just
now.... The paper just coming out.... You couldn't spare me." She spoke
with pride, using phrases similar to those which he had used to explain
to Sarah Gailey why he could not remain with her in London even for a
night.
"Oh yes, I could," he answered kindly, lightly, carelessly,
shattering--in his preoccupation with one idea--all her fine, loyal
pretensions. "We should manage all right."
III
She was hurt. She was mortally pierced. The blow was too cruel. She
lowered her glance before his, and fixed it on the table-cloth. Her brow
darkened. Her lower lip bulged out. She was the child again. He had with
atrocious inhumanity reduced her to the unimportance of a child. She had
bestowed on him and his interests the gift of her whole soul, and he had
said that it was negligible. And the worst was that he was perfectly
unaware of what he had done. He had not even observed the symptoms of
her face. He had turned at once to the older women and was continuing
the conversation. He had ridden over her, and ridden on without a look
behind. The conversation moved, after a pause, back to the plausible
excuse for his call. He desired to see some old rent-book which would
show how the doomed tenant in Calder Street had originally fallen into
arrears.
"Where is that old book of Mr. Skellorn's, Hilda?" her mother asked.
She could not speak. The sob was at her throat. If she had spoken it
would have burst through, and she would have been not merely the child,
but the disgraced child.
"Hilda!" repeated her mother.
Her singular silence drew the attention of all. She blushed a sombre
scarlet. No! She could not speak. She cursed herself. "What a little
fool I am! Surely I can..." Useless! She could not speak. She took the
one desperate course open to her, and ran out of the room, to the
astonishment of three puzzled and rather frightened adults. Her shame
was now notorious. "Baby! Great baby!" she gnashed at her own
inconceivable silliness. Had she no pride?... And now she was in the
gloom of the lobby, and she could hear Florrie in the kitchen softly
whistling.... She was out in the dark lobby exactly like a foolish,
passionate child.... She knew all the time that she could easily
persuade her mother to leave her alone with Florrie in the house; she
had levers to move her mother.... But of what use, now, to do that?