HILDA'S WORLD
I
The conversation in the inner room promised to be interminable. Hilda
could not decide what to do. She felt no real alarm on her mother's
account. Mrs. Lessways, often slightly indisposed, was never seriously
ill; she possessed one of those constitutions which do not go to
extremes of disease; if a malady overtook her, she invariably 'had' it
in a mild form. Doubtless Sarah Gailey, preoccupied and worried by new
responsibilities, desired to avoid the added care of nursing the sick.
Hence the telegram. Moreover, if the case had been grave, she would not
have put the telegram in the interrogative; she would have written,
'Please come at once.' No, Hilda was not unduly disturbed. Nevertheless,
she had an odd idea that she ought to rush to the station and catch the
next train, which left Knype at five minutes to four; this idea did not
spring from her own conscience, but rather from the old-fashioned
collective family conscience. But at a quarter to four, when it was
already too late to catch the local train at Turnhill, the men had not
emerged from the inner room; nor had Hilda come to any decision. As the
departure of her mother and Miss Gailey had involved much solemn poring
over time-tables, it happened that she knew the times of all the trains
to London; to catch the next and last she would have to leave Turnhill
at _5.55_. She said that she would wait and see. Her work for the first
number of the paper was practically done, but there was this mysterious
conclave which fretted her curiosity and threatened exciting
development; also the Majuba disaster would mean trouble for somebody.
And in any event she hated the very thought of quitting Turnhill before
the _Chronicle_ was definitely out. She had lived for the moment of its
publication, and she could not bear to miss it. She was almost angry
with her mother; she was certainly angry with Miss Gailey. All the
egotism of the devotee in her was aroused and irate.
Then the men came forth from the inner room, with a rather unexpected
suddenness. Mr. Cannon appeared first; and after him Mr. Enville; lastly
Arthur Dayson, papers in hand. Intimidated by the presence of the
stranger, Hilda affected to be busy at her table. Mr. Enville shook
hands very amicably with George Cannon, and instantly departed. As he
passed down the stairs she caught sight of him; he was a grizzled man of
fifty, lean and shabby, despite his reputation for riches. She knew that
he was a candidate for the supreme position of Chief Bailiff at the end
of the year, and he did not accord with her spectacular ideal of a Chief
Bailiff; the actual Chief Bailiff was a beautiful and picturesque old
man, with perfectly tended white whiskers, and always a flower in his
coat. Further, she could not reconcile this nearly effusive friendliness
between Mr. Enville and Mr. Cannon with the animadversions of the
leading article which Arthur Dayson had composed, and Mr. Cannon had
approved, only twenty-four hours earlier.
As Mr. Cannon shut the door at the head of the stairs, she saw him give
a discreet, disdainful wink to Dayson. Then he turned sharply to Hilda,
and said, thoughtful and stern:
"Your notebook, please."
Bracing herself, and still full of pride in her ability to write this
mysterious shorthand, she opened her notebook, and waited with poised
pencil. The mien of the two men had communicated to her an excitement
far surpassing their own, in degree and in felicity. The whole of her
vital force was concentrated at the point of her pencil, and she seemed
to be saying to herself: "I'm very sorry, mother, but see how important
this is! I shall consider what I can do for you the very moment I am
free."
Arthur Dayson coughed and plumped heavily on a chair.
II
It was in such moments as this that Dayson really lived, with all the
force of his mediocrity. George Cannon was not a journalist; he could
compose a letter, but he had not the trick of composing an article. He
felt, indeed, a negligent disdain for the people who possessed this
trick, as for performers in a circus; he certainly did not envy them,
for he knew that he could buy them, as a carpenter buys tools. His
attitude was that of the genuine bourgeois towards the artist:
possessive, incurious, and contemptuous. Dayson, however, ignored George
Cannon's attitude, perhaps did not even perceive what it was. He gloried
in his performance. Accustomed to dictate extempore speeches on any
subject whatever to his shorthand pupils, he was quite at his ease,
quite master of his faculties, and self-satisfaction seemed to stand out
on his brow like genial sweat while the banal phrases poured glibly from
the cavern behind his jagged teeth; and each phrase was a perfect model
of provincial journalese. George Cannon had to sit and listen,--to
approve, or at worst to make tentative suggestions.
The first phrase which penetrated through the outer brain of the
shorthand writer to the secret fastness where Hilda sat in judgment on
the world was this:
"The campaign of vulgar vilification inaugurated yesterday by our
contemporary _The Staffordshire Signal_ against our esteemed
fellow-townsman Mr. Richard Enville..."
This phrase came soon after such phrases as "Our first bow to the
public"... "Our solemn and bounden duty to the district which it is our
highest ambition to serve..." etc. Phrases which had already occurred in
the leading article dictated on the previous day.
Hilda soon comprehended that in twenty-four hours Mr. Enville, from
being an unscrupulous speculator who had used his official position to
make illicit profits out of the sale of land to the town for town
improvements, had become the very mirror of honesty and high fidelity to
the noblest traditions of local government. Without understanding the
situation, and before even she had formulated to herself any criticism
of the persons concerned, she felt suddenly sick. She dared not look at
George Cannon, but once when she raised her head to await the flow of a
period that had been arrested at a laudatory superlative, she caught
Dayson winking coarsely at him. She hated Dayson for that; George Cannon
might wink at Dayson (though she regretted the condescending
familiarity), but Dayson had no right to presume to wink at George
Cannon. She hoped that Mr. Cannon had silently snubbed him.
As the article proceeded there arose a crying from the Square below. A
_Signal_ boy, one of the earliest to break the silent habit of the
Square, was bawling a fresh edition of Arthur Dayson's contemporary, and
across the web of the dictator's verbiage she could hear the words:
"South Africa--Details--" Mr. Cannon glanced at his watch impatiently.
Hilda could see, under her bent and frowning brow, his white hand moving
on the dark expanse of his waistcoat.
Immediately afterwards Mr. Cannon, interrupting, said:
"That'll be all right. Finish it. I must be off."
"Right you are!" said Dayson grandly. "I'll run down with it to the
printer's myself--soon as it's copied."
Mr. Cannon nodded. "And tell him we've got to be on the railway
bookstalls first thing to-morrow morning."
"He'll never do it."
"He must do it. I don't care if he works all night."
"But--"
"There hasn't got to be any 'buts,' Dayson. There's been a damned sight
too much delay as it is."
"All right! All right!" Dayson placated him hastily.
Mr. Cannon departed.
It seemed to Hilda that she shivered, but whether with pain or pleasure
she knew not. Never before had Mr. Cannon sworn in her presence. All day
his manner had been peculiar, as though the strain of mysterious
anxieties was changing his spirit. And now he was gone, and she had said
naught to him about the telegram from Miss Gailey!
Arthur Dayson rolled oratorically on in defence of the man whom
yesterday he had attacked.
And then Sowter, the old clerk, entered.
"What is it? Don't interrupt me!" snapped Dayson.
"There's the _Signal_.... Latest details.... This here Majuba business!"
"What do I care about your Majuba?" Dayson retorted. "I've got something
more important than your Majuba."
"It was the governor as told me to give it you," said Sowter, restive.
"Well, give it me, then; and don't waste my time!" Dayson held out an
imperial hand for the sheet. He looked at Hilda as if for moral support
and added, to her, in a martyred tone: "I suppose I shall have to dash
off a few lines about Sowter's Majuba while you're copying out my
article."
"And the governor said to remind you that Mr. Enville wants a proof of
his advertisement," Sowter called out sulkily as he was disappearing
down the stairs.
Hilda blushed, as she had blushed in writing George Cannon's first lie
about the printing of the first issue. She had accustomed herself to
lies, and really without any difficulty or hesitation. Yes! She had even
reached the level of being religiously proud of them! But now her
bullied and crushed conscience leaped up again, and in the swift alarm
of the shock her heart was once more violently beating. Yet amid the
wild confusion of her feelings, a mechanical intelligence guided her
hand to follow Arthur Dayson's final sentences. And there shone out from
her soul a contempt for the miserable hack, so dazzling that it would
have blinded him--had he not been already blind.
III
That evening she sat alone in the office. The first number of _The Five
Towns Chronicle_, after the most astounding adventures, had miraculously
gone to press. Dayson and Sowter had departed. There was no reason why
Hilda should remain,--burning gas to no purpose. She had telegraphed, by
favour of a Karkeek office-boy, to Miss Gailey, saying that she would
come by the first train on the morrow--Saturday, and she had therefore
much to do at home. Nevertheless, she sat idle in the office, unable to
leave. Her whole life was in that office, and it was just when she was
most weary of the environment that she would vacillate longest before
quitting it. She was unhappy and apprehensive, much less about her
mother than about the attitude of her conscience towards the morals of
this new world of hers. The dramatic Enville incident had spoiled the
pleasure which she had felt in sacrificing her formal duty as a daughter
to her duty as a clerk. She had been disillusioned. She foresaw the
future with alarm.
And yet, strangely, the disillusion and the fear were a source of
pleasure. She savoured them with her loyalty, that loyalty which had
survived even the frightful blow of George Cannon's casual disdain at
her mother's tea-table! Whatever this new world might be, it was hers,
it was precious. She would no more think of abandoning it than a young
mother would think of abandoning a baby obviously imperfect.... Nay, she
would cling to it the tighter!
George Cannon came up the stairs with his decisive and rapid step. She
rose from her chair at the table as he entered. He was wearing a new
overcoat, that she had never seen before, with a fine velvet collar.
"You're going?" he asked, a little breathless.
"I _was_ going," she replied in her clear, timid voice, implying that
she was ready to stay.
"Everything all right?"
"Mr. Dayson said so."
"He's gone?"
"Yes. Mr. Sowter's gone too."
"Good!" he murmured. And he straightened his shoulders, and, putting his
hands in the pockets of his trousers, began to walk about the room.
Hilda moved to get her bonnet and jacket. She moved very quietly and
delicately, and, because he was there, she put on her bonnet and jacket
with gestures of an almost apologetic modesty. He seemed to ignore her,
so that she was able to glance surreptitiously at his face. He was now
apparently less worried. Still, it was an enigmatic face. She had no
notion of what he had been doing since his hurried exit in the
afternoon. He might have been attending to his legal practice, or he
might have been abroad on mysterious errands.
"Funny business, this newspaper business is, isn't it?" he remarked,
after a moment. "Just imagine Enville, now! Upon my soul I didn't think
he had it in him!... Of course,"--he threw his head up with a careless
laugh,--"of course, it would have been madness for us to miss such a
chance! He's one of the men of the future, in this town."
"Yes," she agreed, in an eager whisper.
In an instant George Cannon had completely changed the attitude of her
conscience,--by less than a phrase, by a mere intonation. In an instant
he had reassured her into perfect security. It was plain, from every
accent of his voice, that he had done nothing of which he thought he
ought to be ashamed. Business was business, and newspapers were
newspapers; and the simple truth was that her absurd conscience had been
in the wrong. Her duty was to accept the standards of her new world. Who
was she? Nobody! She did accept the standards of her new world, with
fervour. She was proud of them, actually proud of their apparent
wickedness. She had accomplished an act of faith. Her joy became
intense, and shot glinting from her eyes as she put on her gloves. Her
life became grand to her. She knew she was known in the town as 'the
girl who could write shorthand.' Her situation was not ordinary; it was
unique. Again, the irregularity of the hours, and the fact that the work
never commenced till the afternoon, seemed to her romantic and
beautiful. Here she was, at nine o'clock, alone with George Cannon on
the second floor of the house! And who, gazing from the Square at the
lighted window, would guess that she and he were there alone?
All the activities of newspaper production were poetized by her fervour.
The _Chronicle_ was not a poor little weekly sheet, struggling into
existence anyhow, at haphazard, dependent on other newspapers for all
except purely local items of news. It was an organ! It was the
courageous rival of the ineffable _Signal_, its natural enemy! One day
it would trample on the _Signal_! And though her rôle was humble, though
she understood scarcely anything of the enterprise beyond her own
duties, yet she was very proud of her rôle too. And she was glad that
the men were seemingly so careless, so disorderly, so forgetful of
details, so--in a word--childish! For it was part of her rôle to remind
them, to set them right, to watch over their carelessness, to restore
order where they had left disorder. In so far as her rôle affected them,
she condescended to them.
She informed George Cannon of her mother's indisposition, and that she
meant to go to London the next morning, and to return most probably in a
few days. He stopped in his walk, near her. Like herself, he was not
seriously concerned about Mrs. Lessways, but he showed a courteous
sympathy.
"It's a good thing you didn't go to London when your mother went," he
said, after a little conversation.
He did not add: "You've been indispensable." He had no air of
apologizing for his insult at the tea-table. But he looked firmly at
her, with a peculiar expression.
Suddenly she felt all her slimness and fragility; she felt all the girl
in herself and all the dominant man in him, and all the empty space
around them. She went hot. Her sight became dim. She was ecstatically
blissful; she was deeply ashamed. She desired the experience to last for
ever, and him and herself to be eternally moveless; and at the same time
she desired to fly. Or rather, she had no desire to fly, but her voice
and limbs acted of themselves, against her volition.
"Good-night, then."
"But I say! Your wages. Shall I pay you now?"
"No, no! It doesn't matter in the least, thanks."
He shook hands with a careless, good-natured smile, which seemed to be
saying: "Foolish creature! You can't defend yourself, and these airs are
amusing. But I am benevolent." And she was ashamed of her shame, and
furious against the childishness that made her frown, and lower her
eyes, and escape out of the room like a mouse.