George Cannon, in a light and elegant summer suit, passed slowly in

front of the window, and, looking for Hilda in her accustomed place, saw

her and nodded. Surprised by the unusual gesture, she moved uneasily and

blushed; and as she did so, she asked herself resentfully: "Why do I

behave like this? I'm only his clerk, and I shall never be anything else

but his clerk; and yet I do believe I'm getting worse instead of

better." George Cannon skipped easily up to the porch; he had a

latchkey, but before he could put it into the keyhole Louisa had flown

down the stairs and opened the door to him; she must have been on the

watch from an upper floor. George Cannon would have been well served,

whatever his situation in the house, for he was one of those genial

bullies who are adored by the menials whom they alternately cajole and

terrorize. But his situation in the house was that of a god, and like a

god he was attended. He was the very creator of the house; all its life

flowed from him. Without him the organism would have ceased to exist,

and everybody in it was quite aware of this. He had fully learnt his

business. He had learnt it in the fishmarket on the beach at seven

o'clock in the morning, and in the vegetable market at eight, and in the

shops; he had learnt it in the kitchen and on the stairs while the

servants were cleaning; and he had learnt it at the dinner-table

surrounded by his customers. There was nothing that he did not know and,

except actual cooking and mending, little that he could not do. He

always impressed his customers by the statement that he had slept in

every room in the house in order to understand personally its qualities

and defects; and he could and did in fact talk to each boarder about his

room with the intimate geographical knowledge of a native. The boarders

were further flattered by the mien and appearance of this practical

housekeeper, who did not in the least resemble his kind, but had rather

the style of a slightly doggish stockbroker. To be strolling on the

King's Road in converse with George Cannon was a matter, of pride to

boarders male and female. And there was none with whom he could not talk

fluently, on any subject from cigars to ozone, according to the needs of

the particular case. Nor did he ever seem to be bored by conversations.

But sometimes, after benignantly speeding, for instance, one of the

Watchetts on her morning constitutional, he would slip down into the

basement and ejaculate, 'Cursed hag!' with a calm and natural

earnestness, which frightened Hilda, indicating as it did that he must

be capable of astounding duplicities.

He came, now, directly to the underground parlour, hat on head and ebony

stick in hand. Hilda did not even look up, but self-consciously bent a

little lower over her volume. Her relation to George Cannon in the

successful enterprise was anomalous, and yet the habit of ten months had

in practice defined it. Neither paying board nor receiving wages, she

had remained in the house apparently as Sarah Gailey's companion and

moral support; she had remained because Sarah Gailey had never been in a

condition to be left--and the months had passed very quickly. But her

lack of occupation and her knowledge of shorthand, and George Cannon's

obvious need of clerical aid, had made it inevitable that they should

resume their former rôles of principal and clerk. Hilda worked daily at

letters, circularizing, advertisements, and--to a less extent--accounts

and bills; the second finger of her right hand had nearly always an

agreeable stain of ink at the base of the nail; and she often dreamed

about letter-filing. In this prosperous month of August she had, on the

whole, less work than usual, for both circulating and advertisements

were stopped.

George Cannon went to the desk in the dark corner between the window and

the door, where all business papers were kept, but where neither he nor

she actually wrote. When his back was turned she surreptitiously glanced

at him without moving her head, and perceived that his hand was only

moving idly about among the papers while he stared at the wall. She

thought, half in alarm: "What is the matter now?" Then he came over to

the table and hesitated by her shoulder. Still, she would not look up.

She could no longer decipher a single word on the page. Her being was

somehow monopolized by the consciousness of his nearness.

"Interesting?" he inquired.

She turned her head at last and glanced at him with a friendly smile of

affirmation, fingering the leaves of the book nervously. It was

Cranswick's _History of Printing_. One day, a fortnight earlier, while

George Cannon, in company with her, was bargaining for an old London

Directory outside a bookseller's shop in East Street, she had seen

Cranswick's _History of Printing_ (labelled "published at _£1_ 1s., our

price 6s. 6d.") and had opened it curiously. George Cannon, who always

kept an eye on her, had said teasingly: "I suppose it's your

journalistic past that makes you interested in that?" "I suppose it is,"

she answered. Which statement was an untruth, for the sole thought in

her mind had been that Edwin Clayhanger was a printer. A strange, idle

thought! She had laid the book down. The next day, however, George

Cannon had brought it home, saying carelessly: "I bought that book--five

and six; the man seemed anxious to do business, and it's a book to

have." He had not touched it since.

"Page 473!" he murmured, looking at the number of the page. "If you keep

on at this rate, you'll soon know more about printing than young

Clayhanger himself!"

She was thunderstruck. Never before had the name of Clayhanger been

mentioned between them! Could he, then, penetrate her thoughts? Could he

guess that in truth she was reading Cranswick solely because Edwin

Clayhanger happened to be a printer? No! It was impossible! The reason

of her interest in Cranswick, inexplicable even to herself, was too

fantastic to be divined. And yet was not his tone peculiar? Or was it

only in her fancy that his tone was peculiar? She blushed scarlet, and

her muscles grew rigid.

"I say," George Cannon continued, in a tone that now was unmistakably

peculiar, "I want you to come out with me. I want to show you something

on the front. Can you come?"

"At once?" she muttered glumly and painfully. What could be the mystery

beneath this most singular behaviour?

"Yes."

"Florrie will be arriving at five," said Hilda, after artificially

coughing. "I ought to be here then, oughtn't I?"

"Oh!" he cried. "We shall be back long before five."

"Very well," she agreed.

"I'll be ready in three minutes," he said, going gaily towards the door.

From the door he gave her a glance. She met it, courageously exposing

her troubled features and nodded.

III

Hilda went into the bedroom behind the parlour, to get her hat and

gloves. A consequence of the success of the boarding-house was that she

was temporarily sharing this chamber with Sarah Gailey. She had insisted

on making the sacrifice, and she enjoyed the personal discomfort which

it involved. When she cautiously lay down on the narrow and lumpy

truckle-bed that had been insinuated against an unoccupied wall, and

when she turned over restlessly in the night and the rickety ironwork

creaked and Sarah Gailey moaned, and when she searched vainly for a

particular garment lost among garments that were hung pell-mell on

insecure hooks and jutting corners of furniture,--she was proud and glad

because her own comfortable room was steadily adding thirty shillings or

more per week to the gross receipts of the enterprise. The benefit was

in no way hers, and yet she gloated on it, thinking pleasurably of

George Cannon's great japanned cash-box, which seemed to be an

exhaustless store of gold sovereigns and large silver, and of his

mysterious--almost furtive--visits to the Bank. Her own capital,

invested by George Cannon in railway stock, was bringing in four times

as much as she disbursed; and she gloated also on her savings. The more

money she amassed, the less willing was she to spend. This nascent

avarice amused her, as a new trait in his character always amuses the

individual. She said to herself: "I am getting quite a miser," with the

assured reservation: "Of course I can stop being a miser whenever I feel

like stopping."

Sarah Gailey was lulling herself in a rocking-chair when Hilda entered,

and she neither regarded Hilda nor intermitted her see-saw. Her features

were drawn into a preoccupied expression of martyrdom, and in fact she

constantly suffered physical torture. She had three genuine

complaints--rheumatism, sciatica, and neuritis; they were all painful.

The latest and worst was the neuritis, which had attacked her in the

wrist, producing swollen joints that had to be fomented with hot water.

Sarah Gailey's life had indeed latterly developed into a continual

fomentation and a continual rocking. She was so taken up with the

elemental business of fomenting and of keeping warm, that she had no

energy left for other remedial treatments, such as distraction in the

open air. She sat for ever shawled, generally with heavy mittens on her

arms and wrists, and either fomenting or rocking, in the eternal

twilight of the basement bedroom. She eschewed aid--she could manage for

herself--and she did not encourage company, apparently preferring to be

alone with fate. In her easier hours, one hand resting on another and

both hugged close to her breast, rocking to and fro with an astounding

monotonous perseverance, she was like a mysterious Indian god in a

subterranean temple. Above her, unseen by her, floor beyond floor, the

life of the boarding-house functioned in the great holiday month of

August.

"I quite forgot about the make-up bed for Florrie," said Sarah Gailey

plaintively as she rocked. "Would you have time to see to it? Of course

she will have to be with Louisa."

"Very well," said Hilda curtly, and not quite hiding exasperation.

There were three reasons for her exasperation. In the first place, the

constant spectacle of Sarah Gailey's pain, and the effect of the pain on

Sarah's character, was exasperating--to Hilda as well as to George

Cannon. Both well knew that the watery-eyed, fretful spinster was a

victim, utterly innocent and utterly helpless, of destiny, and that she

merited nothing but patient sympathy; yet often the strain of

relationship with Sarah produced in them such a profound feeling of

annoyance that they positively resented Sarah's sufferings, and with a

sad absence of logic blamed her in her misfortune, just as though she

had wilfully brought the maladies upon herself in order to vex them.

Then, further, it was necessary always to minister to Sarah's illusion

that Sarah was the mainstay of the house, that she attended to

everything and was responsible for everything, and that without her

governance the machine would come to a disastrous standstill: the fact

being that she had grown feeble and superfluous. Sarah had taught all

she knew to two highly intelligent pupils, and had survived her

usefulness. She had no right place on earth. But in her morose

inefficiency she had developed into an unconscious tyrant--a tyrant

whose power lay in the loyalty of her subjects and not at all in her own

soul. She was indeed like a deity, immanent, brooding, and unaware of

itself!... Thus, the question of Florrie's bed had been discussed and

settled long before Sarah Gailey had even thought of it; but Hilda might

not tell her so. Lastly, this very question of Florrie's bed was

exasperating to Hilda. Already Louisa's kennel was inadequate for

Louisa, and now another couch had been crowded into it. Hilda was

ashamed of the shift; but there was no alternative. Here, for Hilda, was

the secret canker of George Cannon's brilliant success. The servants

were kindly ill-treated. In the commercial triumph she lost the sense of

the tragic forlornness of boarding-house existence, as it had struck her

on the day of her arrival. But the image of the Indian god in the

basement and of the prone forms of the servants in stifling black

cupboards under the roof and under the stairs--these images embittered

at intervals the instinctive and reflecting exultation of her moods.

She adjusted her small, close-fitting flowered hat, dropped her parasol

across the bed, and began to draw on her cotton gloves.

"Where are you going, dear?" asked Sarah Gailey.

"Out with Mr. Cannon."

"But where?"

"I don't know." In spite of herself there was a certain unnecessary

defiance in Hilda's voice.

"You don't know, dear?" Sarah Gailey suddenly ceased rocking, and

glanced at Hilda with the mournful expression of acute worry that was so

terribly familiar on her features. Although it was notorious that

baseless apprehensions were a part of Sarah's disease, nevertheless

Hilda could never succeed in treating any given apprehension as quite

baseless. And now Sarah's mere tone begot in Hilda's self-consciousness

a vague alarm.

She continued busy with her gloves, silent.

"And on Saturday afternoon too, when everybody's abroad!" Sarah Gailey

added gloomily, with her involuntary small movements of the head.

"He asked me if I could go out with him for a minute or two at once,"

said Hilda, and picked up the parasol with a decisive gesture.

"There's a great deal too much talk about you and George as it is," said

Sarah with an acrid firmness.

"Talk about me and--!" Hilda cried, absolutely astounded.

She had no feeling of guilt, but she knew that she was looking guilty,

and this knowledge induced in her the actual sensations of a criminal.

"I'm sure I don't want--" Sarah Gailey began, and was interrupted by a

quiet tap at the door.

George Cannon entered.

"Ready, miss?" he demanded, smiling, before he had caught sight of her

face.

For the second time that afternoon he saw her scarlet, and now there

were tears in her eyes, too.

She hesitated an instant.

"Yes," she answered with a painful gulp, and moved towards the door.

CHAPTER II

THE UNKNOWN ADVENTURE

I

When they were fairly out in the street Hilda felt like a mariner who

has escaped from a lee shore, but who is beset by the vaguer and even

more formidable perils of the open sea. She was in a state of extreme

agitation, and much too self-conscious to be properly cognisant of her

surroundings; she did not feel the pavement with her feet; she had no

recollection of having passed out of the house. There she was walking

along on nothing, by the side of a man who might or might not be George

Cannon, amid tall objects that resembled houses! Her situation was in a

high degree painful, but she could not have avoided it. She could not,

in Sarah's bedroom, have fallen into sobs, or into a rage, or into the

sulks, and told George Cannon that she would not go with him; she could

not have dashed hysterically away and hidden herself on an upper floor,

in the manner of a startled fawn. Her spirit was too high for such

tricks. On the other hand, she was by no means sufficiently mistress of

herself to be able to hide from him her shame. Hence she faced him and

followed him, and let him see it. Their long familiarity had made this

surrender somewhat easier for her. After all, in the countless daily

contacts, they had grown accustomed to minor self-exposures--and Hilda

more so than George Cannon; Hilda was too impatient and impulsive not to

tear, at increasingly frequent intervals, the veil of conventional

formality.

Her mood now, as she accompanied George Cannon on the unknown adventure,

was one of abashed but still fierce resentment. She of course believed

Sarah Gailey's statement that there had been "talk" about herself and

the landlord, and yet it was so utterly monstrous as to be almost

incredible. She was absolutely sure that she had never by her behaviour

furnished the slightest excuse for such "talk." No eavesdropper could

ever have caught the least word or gesture to justify it. Could a

malicious eavesdropper have assisted at the secret operations of her

inmost mind, even then he could scarcely have seen aught to justify it.

Existence at Brighton had been too strenuous and strange--and, with

Sarah Gailey in the house, too full of responsibilities--to favour

dalliance. Hilda, examining herself, could not say that she had not once

thought of George Cannon as a husband; because just as a young solitary

man will imagine himself the spouse of a dozen different girls in a

week, so will an unmated girl picture herself united to every eligible

and passably sympathetic male that crosses her path. It is the everyday

diversion of the fancy. But she could say that she had not once thought

seriously of George Cannon as a husband. Why, he was not of her

generation! Although she did not know his age, she guessed that he must

be nearer forty than thirty. He was of the generation of Sarah Gailey,

and Sarah Gailey was the contemporary of her dead mother! And he had

never shown for her any sentiment but that of a benevolently teasing

kindliness. Moreover, she was afraid of him, beyond question. And

withal, he patently lacked certain qualities which were to be found in

her image of a perfect man. No! She had more often thought of Edwin

Clayhanger as a husband. Indeed she had married Edwin Clayhanger several

times. The haunting youth would not leave her alone. And she said to

herself, hot and indignant: "I shall have to leave Brighton! I can see

that! Sarah Gailey's brought it on herself!" Yes, she was actually angry

with Sarah Gailey, who however had only informed her of a fact which she

would have been sorry not to know! And in leaving Brighton, that fancy

of hers took her straight to Bursley, to stay with Janet Orgreave in the

house next to the new house of the Clayhangers!

Whither was George Cannon leading her? He had not yet said a word in

explanation of the errand, nor shown in any way that he had observed her

extraordinary condition. He was silent, swinging his stick. She also was

silent. She could not have spoken, not even to murmur: "Where are you

taking me to?" They went forward as in an enchantment.

II

They were on the King's Road; and to the left were the high hotels and

houses, stretching east and west under the glare of the sun into

invisibility, and to the right was the shore, and the sea so bright that

the eye could scarcely rest on it. Both the upper and the lower

promenades were crowded with gay people surging in different directions.

The dusty roadway was full of carriages, and of the glint of the sun on

wheelspokes and horses' flanks, and of rolling, clear-cut shadows. The

shore was bordered with flags and masts and white and brown sails; and

in the white-and-green of billows harmlessly breaking could be seen the

yellow bodies of the bathers. A dozen bare-legged men got hold of a

yacht under sail with as many passengers on board, and pushed it

forcibly right down into the sea, and then up sprang its nose and it

heeled over and shot suddenly off, careering on the waves into the

offing where other yachts were sliding to and fro between the piers,

dominating errant fleets of rowboats. And the piers also were loaded

with excited humanity and radiant colour. And all the windows of all the

houses and hotels were open, and blowing with curtains and flowers and

hats. The whole town was enfevered.

Hilda thought, her heart still beating, but less noisily, "I scarcely

ever come here. I don't come here often enough." And she saw Sarah

Gailey rocking and sighing and rocking and shaking her head in the

mournful twilight of the basement in Preston Street. The contrasts of

existence struck her as magnificent, as superb. The very misery and

hopelessness of Sarah's isolation seemed romantic, splendid, touchingly

beautiful. And she thought, inexplicably: "Why am I here? Why am I not

at home in Turnhill? Why am I so different from what mother was? What am

I going to be and to do? This that I now am can't continue for ever."

She saw thousands of women with thousands of men. And, quite forgetting

that to the view of the multitude she was just as much as any of them

with a man (and a rather fine man, too!), she began to pity herself

because she was not with a man! She dreamed, in her extreme excitation,

of belonging absolutely to some man. And despite all her pride and

independence, she dwelt with pleasure and longing on the vision of being

his, of being at his disposal, of being under his might, of being

helpless before him. She thought, desolated: "I am nobody's. And so

there is 'talk'!" She scorned herself for being nobody's. To belong

utterly to some male seemed to be the one tolerable fate for her in the

world. And it was a glorious fate, whether it brought good or evil. Any

other was ignobly futile, was despicable. And then she thought,

savagely: "And just see my clothes! Why don't I take the trouble to look

nice?"

Suddenly George Cannon stopped on the edge of the pavement, and turned

towards the houses across the street.

"You see that?" he said, pointing with his stick.

"What?"

"The Chichester."

She saw, in gold letters over the front of a tall corner house: "The

Chichester Private Hotel."

"Well?"

"I've taken it--from Christmas. I signed about an hour ago. I just had

to tell someone."

"Well I never!" Hilda exclaimed.

He was beyond question an extraordinary and an impressive man. He had

said that, after experimenting in Preston Street, he should take a

larger place, and lo! in less than a year, he had fulfilled his word. He

had experimented in Preston Street, with immense success and now he was

coming out into the King's Road! (Only those who have lived in a side

street can pronounce the fine words 'King's Road' with the proper accent

of deference.) And every house in the King's Road, Hilda now newly

perceived, was a house of price and distinction. Nothing could be common

in the King's Road: the address and the view were incomparably precious.

Being established there, George Cannon might, and no doubt would,

ultimately acquire one of the largest public hotels; indeed, dominate

the promenade! It would be just like him to do so! A year ago he was a

solicitor in Turnhill. To-day he was so perfectly and entirely a

landlord that no one could ever guess his first career. He was not

merely extraordinary: he was astounding. There could not be many of his

calibre in the whole world.

"How does it strike you?" he asked, with an eagerness that touched her.

"Oh! It's splendid!" she answered, trying to put more natural enthusiasm

into her voice. But the fact was that the Chichester had not yet struck

her at all. It was only the idea of being in the King's Road that had

struck her--and with such an effect that her attention was happily

diverted from her trouble, and her vexatious self-consciousness

disappeared. She had from time to time remarked the Chichester, but

never with any particularity; it had been for her just an establishment

among innumerable others, and not one of the best,--the reverse of

imposing. It stood at the angle of King's Road and Ship Street, and a

chemist's shop occupied the whole of the frontage, the hotel-entrance

being in Ship Street; its architecture was fiat and plain, and the place

seemed neglected, perhaps unprosperous.

"Twenty bow-windows!" murmured George Cannon, and then smiled at

himself, as if ashamed of his own naïveté.

And Hilda counted the windows. Yes, there were eight on King's Road and

twelve at the side. The building was high, and it was deep, stretching

far down Ship Street. In a moment it began to put on, for Hilda, quite

special qualities. How high it was! How deep it was! And in what a

situation! It possessed mysterious and fine characteristics which set it

apart. Strange that hitherto she had been so blind to it! She and George

Cannon were divided from the house by the confused and noisy traffic of

the roadway, and by the streaming throngs on the opposite pavement. And

none of these people riding or driving or walking, and none of the

people pushing past them on the pavement behind, guessed that here on

the kerb was the future master of the Chichester, an amazing man, and

that she, Hilda Lessways, by his side, was the woman to whom he had

chosen first to relate his triumph! This unrecognised secrecy in the

great animated street was piquant and agreeable to Hilda, a source of

pride.

"I suppose you've bought it?" she ventured. She had no notion of his

financial resources, but her instinct was to consider them infinite.

"No! I've not exactly bought it," he laughed. "Not quite! I've got the

lease, from Christmas. How much d'ye think the rent is?" He seemed to

challenge her.

"Oh! Don't ask me!"

"Five hundred a year," he said, and raised his chin. "Five hundred a

year! Ten pounds a week! Nearly thirty shillings a day! You've got to

pay that before you can even begin to think of your own profits."

"But it's enormous!" Hilda was staggered. All her mother's houses put

together had brought in scarcely a third of the rental of that single

house, which was nevertheless only a modest unit in several miles of

houses. "But can you make it pay?"

"I fancy so! Else I shouldn't have taken it. The present man can't. But

then he's paying £550 for one thing, and he's old. And he doesn't know

his business.... Oh yes! I think I can see my money back.... Wait till

Christmas is turned and I make a start!"

She knew that the future would justify his self-confidence. How he

succeeded she could not define. Why should he succeed where another was

failing? He could not go out and drag boarders by physical force into

his private hotel! Yet he would succeed. In every gesture he was the

successful man. She looked timidly up at his eyes under the strong black

eyelashes. His glance caught hers. He smiled conqueringly.

"Haven't said a word to Sarah yet!" he almost whispered, so low was his

voice; and he put on a mock-rueful smile. Hilda smiled in response.

"Shall you keep Preston Street?" she asked.

"Of course!" he said with pride--"I shall run the two, naturally." He

put his shoulders back. "One will help the other, don't you see?"

She thought she saw, and nodded appreciatively. He meant to run two

establishments! At the same moment a young and stylish man drove rather

slowly by in a high dog-cart. He nodded carelessly to George Cannon, and

then, perceiving that George Cannon was with a lady, raised his hat in

haste. George Cannon responded. The young man gazed for an instant hard

at Hilda, with a peculiar expression, and passed on. She did not know

who he was. Of George Cannon's relationships in the town she was

entirely ignorant, but that he had relationships was always obvious.

She blushed, thinking of what Sarah Gailey had said about 'talk'

concerning herself and George Cannon. In the young man's glance there

had been something to annoy and shame her.

"Come across and have a look at the place," said George Cannon, suddenly

stepping down into the gutter, with a look first in one direction and

then in the other for threatening traffic.

"I don't think I'll come now," she replied.

"But why not? Are you in a hurry? You've plenty of time before five

o'clock--heaps!"

"I'd prefer not to come," she insisted, in an abashed and diffident

voice.

"But what's up?" he demanded, stepping back to the pavement, and

glancing directly into her eyes.

She blushed more and more, dropping her eyelids.

"I don't want to be talked about _too_ much!" she muttered, mortified.

Her inference was unmistakable. The whole of her mind seemed now to be

occupied with an enormous grievance which she somehow had against the

world in general. Her very soul, too, was bursting with this grievance.

"Talked about? But who--"

"Never mind! I know! I've been told!" she interrupted him.

"Oh! I see!" He was now understanding the cause of her trouble in Sarah

Gailey's bedroom.

"Now look here!" He went on. "I've just got to have a few words with

you. You come across the road, please." He was imperious.

She raised her glance for a timid moment to his face, and saw to her

intense astonishment that he also was blushing. Never before had she

seen him blush.

"Come along!" he urged.

She followed him obediently across the dangerous road. He waited for her

at the opposite kerb, and then they went up Ship Street. He turned into

the entrance of the Chichester, which was grandiose, with a flight of

shallow steps, and then a porch with two basket chairs, and then another

flight of shallow steps ending in double doors which were noticeably

higher than the street level. She still followed.

"Nobody in here, I expect," said George Cannon, indicating a door on the

right, to an old waiter who stood in the dark hall.

"No, sir."

George Cannon opened the door as a master, ushered Hilda into a tiny

room furnished with a desk and two chairs, and shut the door.

III

The small window was of ground glass and gave no prospect of the outer

world, from which it seemed to Hilda that she was as completely cut off

as in a prison. She was alone with George Cannon, and beyond the narrow

walls which caged them together, and close together, there was nothing!

All Brighton, save this room, had ceased to exist. Hilda was now more

than ever affrighted, shamed, perturbed, agonised. Yet at the same time

she had the desperate calm of the captain of a ship about to founder

with all hands. And she saw glimpses, beautiful and compensatory, of the

romantic quality of common life. She was in a little office of a

perfectly ordinary boarding-house--(she could even detect the stale

odours of cooking)--with a realistic man of business, and they were

about to discuss a perfectly ordinary piece of scandal; and surely they

might be called two common-sense people! And withal, the ordinariness

and the midland gumption of the scene were shot through with the bright

exotic rays of romance! She thought: "It is painful and humiliating to

be caught and fixed as I am. But it is wonderful too!"

"The fact is," said George Cannon, in an easy reassuring tone, "we never

get the chance of a bit of quiet chat. Upon my soul we don't! Now I

suppose it's Sarah who's been worrying you?"

"Yes."

"What did she say?... You'd better sit down, don't you think?" He swung

round the pivoted arm-chair in front of the closed desk and pointed her

to it.

"Oh!" Hilda hesitated, and then sank on to the chair without looking at

it. "She simply said there was a lot of talk about you and me. Has she

been saying anything to you?"

He shook his head, staring down at her. Hilda put her arms on the arms

of the chair, and, shirking the man's gaze, stared down at the worn

carpet and at his boots thereon. One instinct in her desired that he

should move away or that the room should be larger, but another instinct

wanted him to remain close, lest the savour of life should lose its

sharpness.

"It passes me how people can say such things!" she went on, in a low,

thrilled, meditative voice. "I can't understand it!" She was quite

sincere in her astonished indignation. Nevertheless, she experienced a

positive pride at being brought into a scandal with George Cannon; she

derived from it a certain feeling of importance; it proved that she was

no longer a mere girlish miss.

George Cannon kept silence.

"I shall leave Brighton," Hilda continued. "That I've quite decided! I

don't like leaving your sister, as ill as she is! But really--" And she

thought how prudent she was, and how capable of taking care of

herself--she all alone in the world!

"Where should you go to? Bursley? The Orgreaves?" George Cannon asked

absently and carelessly.

"I don't know," said Hilda, with curtness.

He stepped aside, in the direction of the window, and examined curiously

the surface of the glass, as though in search of a concealed message

which it might contain. In a new and much more animated voice he said to

the window:

"Of course I know it's all my fault!"

Hilda glanced up at his back; he was still not more than three feet away

from her.

"How is it your fault?" she asked, after a pause.

He made another pause.

"The way I look at you," he said.

These apparently simple words made Hilda tremble, and deprived her of

speech. They shifted the conversation to another plane. 'The way I look

at you! The way I look at you!' What did he mean? How did he look at

her? She could not imagine what he was driving at! Yes, she could! She

knew quite well. All the time, while pretending to herself not to

understand, she understood. It was staggering, but she perfectly

understood. He had looked at her 'like that' on the very first day of

their acquaintance, in his office at Turnhill, and again at the house in

Lessways Street, and again in the newspaper office, and on other

occasions, and again on the night of their arrival at Brighton. But

surely not lately! Or did he look at her 'like that' behind her back?

Was it possible that people noticed it?... Absurd! His explanation of

the origin of the gossip did not convince her. She had, however,

suddenly lost interest in the origin of the gossip. She was entirely

occupied with George Cannon's tone, and his calm, audacious reference to

a phenomenon which had hitherto seemed to her to be far beyond the

region of words.

She was frightened. She was like some one walking secure in the night,

who is stopped by the sound of rushing water and stands with all his

senses astrain, afraid to move a step farther, too absorbed and

intimidated to be aware of astonishment. The point was not whether or

not she had known or guessed the existence of this unseen and formidable

river; the point was that she was thrillingly on its brink, in the dark.

Every instant she heard its swelling current plainer and plainer. She

thought: "Am I lost? How strange that this awful and exquisite thing

should happen to just me!" She was quite fatalistic.

He turned his head suddenly and caught her guilty eyes for an instant

before she could lower them.

"You don't mean to say you don't know what I mean?" he said.

She still could not speak. Her trouble was acute, her self-consciousness

far keener than it had ever been before. She thought: "But it's

impossible that this awful and exquisite thing should happen in this

fashion!" George Cannon moved a step towards her. She could not see his

face, but she knew that he was looking at her with his expression at

once tyrannic and benevolent. She could feel, beating upon her, the

emanating waves of his personality. And she was as confused as though

she had been sitting naked in front of him.... And he had brought all

this about by simply putting something into words--by saying: "It's the

way I look at you!"

He went on:

"I can't help it, you know.... The very first minute I ever set eyes on

you.... Of course I'm thirty-six. But there it is!... I've never seen

any one like you; and I've seen a few! The fact is, Hilda, I do believe

you don't know how fine you are." He spoke more quickly and with boyish

enthusiasm; his voice became wonderfully persuasive. "You are fine, you

know! And you're beautiful! I didn't think so at first, but you are!

You're being wasted. Why, a woman like you...! You've no idea. You're so

proud and stiff, when you want to be... I'd trust you with anything.

You're absolutely the only woman I ever met that I'd trust like a man!

And that's a fact.... Now, nobody could ever think as much of you as I

do. I'm quite certain of it. It couldn't be done. I _know_ you, you see!

I understand everything you do, and whatever you do, it's just fine for

me. You couldn't be as happy with any one else! You couldn't! I feel

that in my bones.... Now--now, I must tell you something--"

The praise, the sympathy, the passion were astounding, marvellous, and

delicious to her. Was it conceivable that this experienced and worldly

man had been captivated by such a mere girl as herself? She had never

guessed it! Or had she always guessed it? An intense pride warmed her

blood like a powerful cordial. Life was even grander than she had

thought!... She drooped into an intoxication. Among all that he had

said, he had not said that he was not stronger than she. He had not

relinquished his authority. She felt it, sitting almost beneath him in

the slippery chair. She knew that she would yield to him. She desired to

yield to him. Her mind was full of sensuous images based on the

abdication of her will in favour of his.

"Now, look here, Hilda. I want to tell you--"

He perhaps did not intend that she should look up; but she looked up.

And she was surprised to see that his face was full of troubled

hesitations, showing almost dismay. He made the motion of swallowing.

She smiled; and set her shoulders back--the very gesture that she had

learned from him.

"What?" she questioned, in a whisper.

Her brief mood of courage was over. She sank before him again, and

waited with bowed head.

Profoundly disturbed, he stood quite still for a few seconds, with shut

lips, and then he made another step to approach.

"Your name's got to be Cannon," she heard him say.

She thought, still waiting: "If this goes on a moment longer I shall die

of anticipation, in bliss." And when she felt his hand on her shoulder,

and the great shadow of him on part of her face, her body seemed to

sigh, acquiescent and for the moment assuaged: "This is a miracle, and

life is miraculous!" She acknowledged that she had lacked faith in life.

She was now on the river, whirling. But at the same time she was in the

small, hot room, and both George Cannon's hands were on her unresisting

shoulders; and then they were round her, and she felt his physical

nearness, the texture of his coat and of his skin; she could see in a

mist the separate hairs of his tremendous moustache and the colours

swimming in his eyes; her nostrils expanded in transient alarm to a

faint, exciting masculine odour. She was disconcerted, if not

panic-struck, by the violence of his first kiss; but her consternation

was delectable to her.

And amid her fright and her joy, and the wonder of her extreme surprise,

and the preoccupation of being whirled down the river, she calmly

reflected, somewhere in her brain: "The door is not locked. Supposing

some one were to come in and see us!" And she reflected also, in an

ecstasy of relief: "My life will be quite simple, now. I shall have

nothing to worry about. And I can help him." For during a year past she

had never ceased to ask herself what she must do to arrange her life;

her conscience had never ceased to tell her that she ought not to be

content to remain in the narrow ideas of her mother, and that though she

preferred marriage she ought to act independently of the hope of it.

Throughout her long stay in Preston Street she had continually said:

"After this--what? This cannot last for ever. When it comes to an end

what am I to do to satisfy my conscience?" And she had thought vaguely

of magnificent activities and purposes--she knew not what.... The

problem existed no more. Her life was arranged. And now, far more

sincerely than in the King's Road twenty minutes earlier, she regarded

the career of a spinster with horror and with scorn. At best, she

suddenly perceived with blinding clearness, it would have been

pitiful--pitiful! Twenty minutes earlier, in the King's Road, she had

dreamt of belonging absolutely to some man, of being at his disposal, of

being under his might, of being helpless before him. And now!... Miracle

thrice miraculous! Miracle unconceived, inconceivable!... No more 'talk'

now!...

She told herself how admirable was the man. She assured herself that he

was entirely admirable. She reminded herself that she had always deemed

him admirable, that only twenty minutes earlier, in the King's Road,

when there was in her mind no dimmest, wildest notion of the real

future, she had genuinely admired him. How clever, how tactful, how

indomitable, how conquering, how generous, how kind he was! How kind to

his half-sister! How forbearing with her! Indeed, she could not recall

his faults. And he was inevitably destined to brilliant success. She

would be the wife of a great and a wealthy man. And in her own secret

ways she could influence him, and thus be greater than the great.

Love? It is an absolute fact that the name of 'love' did not in the

first eternal moments even occur to her. And when it did she gave it but

little importance. She had to admit that she had not consciously thought

of George Cannon with love--at any rate with love as she had imagined

love to be. Indeed, her immediate experience would not fit any theory

that she could formulate. But with the inexorable realism of her sex she

easily dismissed inconvenient names and theories, and accommodated

herself to the fact. And the fact was that she overwhelmingly wanted

George Cannon, and, as she now recognized, had wanted him ever since she

first saw him. The recognition afforded her intense pleasure. She

abandoned herself candidly to this luxury of an unknown desire. It was

incomparably the most splendid and dangerous experience that she had

ever had. She did not reason and she had no wish to reason. She was set

above reason. Happy to the point of delicious pain, she yet yearned

forward to a happiness far more excruciating. She was perfectly aware

that her bliss would be torment until George Cannon had married her,

until she had wholly surrendered to him.

Yet at intervals a voice said very clearly within her: "All this is

wrong. This is base and shameful. This is something to blush for,

really!" She did blush. But her blushes were a part of the delight. And

the voice was not persistent. She could silence it with scarcely an

effort, despite its clarity.

"Kiss me!" George Cannon demanded of her, with eager masterfulness.

The request shocked her for an instant, and the young girl in her was

about to revolt. But she kissed him--an act which combined the sweetness

of submission with the glory of triumph! She looked at him steadily,

confident in herself and in him. She felt that he knew how to love. His

emotion filled her with superb pride. She seemed to be saying to him in

a doomed rapture: "Do you think I don't know what I am doing? I know! I

know!"

The current of the river was tremendous. She foresaw the probability of

disaster. She was aware that she had definitely challenged the hazard of

fate. But she was not terrified in the dark, swirling night of her

destiny. She straightened her shoulders. With all her innocence and

ignorance and impulsiveness and weakness, she had behind her the unique

and priceless force of her youth. She was young, and she put her trust

in life.

CHAPTER III

FLORRIE AGAIN

I

As they were walking home along the King's Road, Hilda suddenly stopped

in front of a chemist's shop. "I've got something to buy here," she said

diffidently, and then added: "I'll follow you."

"And what have you got to buy?" he asked, facing her, with his

benevolent, ironical expression.

"Never mind!" she gently laughed. "I shan't be many minutes after you."

She pretended to make a mystery. But her sole purpose was to avoid

re-entering the house in his company; and she knew that he had divined

this. Nevertheless, she found pleasure in the perfectly futile pretence

of a mysterious purchase.

She was very self-conscious as they stood there on the dusty footpath

amid the promenaders gay and gloomy, chattering and silent, who were

taking the sun and the salt breeze. Despite her reason, she had a fear

that numbers of people would perceive her to be newly affianced and

remark upon the contrast between her girlishness and his maturity. But

George Cannon was not in the slightest degree self-conscious. He played

the lover with ease and said quite simply and convincingly just the

things which she would have expected a lover to say. Indeed, the

conversation, as carried on by him, between the moment of betrothal and

the arrival at the chemist's shop, was the one phenomenon of the

engagement which corresponded with her preconceived ideas concerning

such an affair. It convinced her that she really was affianced.

"Well?" he murmured fondly and yet quizzically, as they remained

wordless, deliciously hesitating to part. "What are you thinking about?"

She replied with brave candour, appealing to him by a soft glance:

"I was only thinking how queer it is I should be engaged in a room I'd

never seen before in my life--going into it like that!"

He looked at her uncomprehending; for an instant his features were

blank; then he smiled kindly.

"It's so strange!" she encouraged him.

"Yes. Isn't it?" he agreed, with charming, tranquil politeness.

"He doesn't see it!" she thought, as she watched the play of his face.

"He doesn't see how wonderful it is that I should go into a room that

was absolutely unknown to me and then this should happen at once. Why! I

never knew there was such a room!" She could not define how she was

affected by this fact, but she regarded the fact as tremendously

romantic, and its effect on her was profound. And George saw in it no

significance! She was disconcerted. She felt a tremor; it was as though

the entire King's Road had quivered for a fraction of a second and then,

feigning nonchalance, resumed its moveless solidity.

Inside the chemist's she demanded the first thing she set eyes on--a

tooth-brush. All the while she was examining various shapes of

toothbrushes, she had a vision of George raising his hat to take leave

of her, and she could see not only the curve of his hand and the

whiteness of his cuff, but also the millions of tiny marks and creases

on the coarse skin of his face, extraordinarily different from her own

smooth, pure, delicate, silky complexion. And she remembered that less

than three years ago she had regarded him as of another generation, as

indefinitely older and infinitely more experienced than her childish and

simple self. This reflection produced in her a consternation which was

curiously blissful.

"No, madam," the white-aproned chemist was saying. "It's this size that

we usually sell to ladies."

She put on the serious judicial air of an authentic adult woman, and

frowned at the chemist.

II

When, in Preston Street, she was reluctantly approaching the house, she

saw a cab, coming downwards in the opposite direction, stop at No. 59.

"That must be Florrie!" she said, half-aloud.

The boarding-house being in need of another servant, young, strong, and

reliable, Hilda had suggested that Miss Florence Bagster might be

invited to accept the situation. Sarah Gailey had agreed that it would

be wise to have a servant from Turnhill; she mistrusted southern

servants, and appeared to believe that there was no real honesty south

of the Trent. Florence Bagster had accepted the situation with

enthusiasm, writing that she longed to be again with her former

mistress; she did not write that the mysterious and magnetic name of

Brighton called her more loudly than the name of her former mistress.

And now Florence was due.

But it was not Florence who emerged from the cab. It was a tall and

full-bosomed young lady in a gay multi-coloured costume, and gloves and

a sunshade and a striking hat. This young lady stood by the cab

expectant and smiling while the cabman pulled a tin trunk off the roof

of the vehicle, and then, when the cabman had climbed down and was

dragging the trunk after him, she put out an arm and seized one handle

of the trunk to help him, which act, so strange on the part of a young

lady, made Hilda, coming nearer and nearer, look more carefully. She was

astounded as she realized that the unknown young lady was not a young

lady after all, but the familiar Florrie at the advanced age of sixteen.

The aged cabman had made no mistake. He left the tin trunk on the

pavement and took timid Florrie's money without touching his hat for it.

Florrie was laying her sunshade rather forlornly on the top of the tin

trunk and preparing to lift the trunk unaided, when Mr. Boutwood, stout

and all in black, came gallantly forth from the house to assist her.

Sarah Gailey's opposition had not been persistent enough to keep the

jovial Mr. Boutwood out of No. 59. Shortly after Christmas his wife had

died suddenly, and Mr. Boutwood, with plenty of time and plenty of money

on his hands, had found himself desolated. In his desolation he had

sought his old acquaintance George Cannon, and the result had somehow

been that bygones had become bygones and a new boarder had increased the

prosperity of No. 59. Sarah Gailey could not object. Indeed, she had

actually wept for the death of one enemy and the affliction of another.

Moreover, she seldom had contact with the boarders now.

The rather peculiar circumstances of Florrie's arrival almost cured

Hilda's self-consciousness, and she entered the house, in the wake of

the trunk, with a certain forgetful ease. There was Mr. Boutwood, still

dallying with Florrie and the trunk, in the narrow hall! The shocking

phenomenon of a boarder helping a domestic servant with her luggage had

been rendered possible only by a series of accidents. The front door

being left open on account of the weather, Mr. Boutwood had had a direct

view of the maiden, and the maiden had not been obliged to announce her

arrival officially by ringing a bell. Hence the other servants had not

had notice. And of the overseers of the house one was imprisoned in the

basement and the other two had been out betrothing themselves! In the

ordinary way the slightest unusualness in the hall would instantly

attract the attention of somebody in authority.

Mr. Boutwood was not immediately aware of Hilda. His attitude towards

Florrie was shocking to Hilda in a double sense; it shocked her as an

overseer, but it shocked her quite as much as a young woman newly

jealous for the pride of all her sex. Florrie was beyond question

exceedingly pretty; in particular the chin pouted more deliriously than

ever. Her complexion was even finer than Hilda's own. She had a simple,

good-natured glance, a quick and extraordinarily seductive smile, and

the unique bodily grace of her years. Her costume, though vulgar and

very ill-made, was effective at a little distance; her form and

movements gave it a fictitious worth. Indeed, she was an amazing blossom

to have come off the dunghill of Calder Street. Domestic drudgery had

not yet dehumanized nor disfigured her--it is true that her hands were

concealed in gloves, and her feet beneath a flowing skirt. Now, Mr.

Boutwood's attitude showed very plainly that the girlish charms of

Florrie had produced in him a definite and familiar effect. He would

have been ready to commit follies for the young woman, and to deny that

she was a drudge or anything but a beautiful creature.

Hilda objected. She objected because Mr. Boutwood was a widower, holding

that he had no right to joy, and that he ought to mourn practically for

ever in solitude. She would make no allowance for his human instincts,

his needs of intimate companionship, his enormous unoccupied leisure.

She would have condemned him utterly on the score of his widowhood

alone. But she objected far more strongly to his attitude because he was

fat and looked somewhat coarse. She counted his obesity to him for a

sin. And it was naught to her that he had been a martyr to idleness and

wealth, which combination had prematurely aged him. Mr. Boutwood was

really younger than George Cannon, and Florence Bagster certainly seemed

as old as Hilda. Yet the juxtaposition of the young, slim, and virginal

Florrie and the large, earth-worn Mr. Boutwood profoundly offended her.

It was Mr. Boutwood who first discovered that Hilda was in the doorway.

He was immediately abashed, and presented the most foolish appearance.

Whereupon Hilda added scorn to her disgust. Florrie, however, easily

kept her countenance, and with a pert smile took the hand which her

former mistress graciously extended. By universal custom a servant

retains some of the privileges of humanity for several minutes after

entering upon a new servitude. Mr. Boutwood vanished.

"Louisa will help you upstairs with the trunk," said Hilda, when she had

made inquiries about the wonderful journey which Florrie had

accomplished alone, and about the health of Florrie's aunt and of her

family. "Louisa!" she called loudly up the stairs and down into the

basement.

III

She followed the procession of the trunk upstairs, and, Louisa having

descended again, showed Florrie into the kennel. This tiny apartment had

in it two truckle-beds, and a wash-bowl on a chair, and little else. A

very small square trap-window in the low ceiling procured a dusky light

in the middle hours of the day. Florence seemed delighted with the room;

she might have had to sleep under the stairs.

"Put on your afternoon apron, and then you can go down and see Miss

Gailey," said Hilda, and shut the door upon Florrie in her new home.

When she turned, there was George Cannon on the half-landing beneath the

skylight! She knew not how he had come there, nor whether he had entered

the house before or after herself.

"I'm glad he isn't fat!" she thought. And it was as though she had

thought: "If he were fat everything would be different." Her features

did not relax as she went down the five steps to the half-landing where

he waited, smiling faintly. She thought: "We must be very serious and

circumspect in the house. There must never be the slightest--" But while

she was yet on the last step, he firmly put his hands on her ears and,

drawing her head towards him, kissed her full on the mouth, and she saw

again, through her eyelashes, all the details of his face. She yielded.

All her ideas of circumspection melted magically away in an abandoned

tenderness of which she was ashamed, but for which she would have

unreflectingly made any sacrifice. The embrace was over in an instant.

Besides being guiltless of obesity, George Cannon was free from the

unpardonable fault of clumsiness. He was audacious, but he was not

foolhardy, and he would never be abashed. True, she had seen dismay on

his face at the moment of his declaration, but that moment was unique,

and his dismay had ineffably flattered her. Now, on the half-landing,

she was drenched in bliss. And she felt dissolute; she felt even base.

But she did not care. She thought, as it were, startled: "This is love.

This must be what love is. I must have been in love without knowing it.

And as for a girl always knowing when a man's in love with her, and

foreseeing the proposal, and all that sort of thing...." Her practical

contempt for all that sort of thing could not be stated in words.

"Florrie's just come," she whispered, and by a movement of the head

indicated that Florrie was in the kennel.

They went together to the drawing-room on the first floor. It was,

empty, the entire population of the boarding-houses being still on the

seashore. Hilda stood near the door, which she left open, and gave

detailed news of Florrie in a tone very matter-of-fact. There was no

reference to love, or to the new situation created, or to the vast

enterprise of the Chichester. The topic was Florrie, and somehow it held

the field despite efforts to dislodge it.

Then the stairs creaked. Already Florrie was coming down. In a trice she

had made herself ready for work. She came down timidly, not daring to

look to right nor left, but concentrating her attention on the stairs.

She passed along the landing outside the drawing-room door, and Hilda,

opening the door a little wider, had a full surreptitious view of her

back; and George Cannon, farther within the room, also saw her. They

watched her disappear on her way to find the basement and the formidable

Sarah Gailey. Hilda was touched by the spectacle of this child disguised

as a strapping woman, far removed from her family and her companions and

her familiar haunts, and driven or drawn into exile at Brighton, where

she would only see the sea once a week, except through windows, and

where she would have to work from fourteen to sixteen hours a day for a

living, and sleep in a kennel. The prettiness, the pertness, and the

naïve contentedness of the child thus realizing an ambition touched her

deeply.

"It does seem a shame, doesn't it?" she said.

"What?"

"Bringing her all the way up here, like this! She doesn't know a soul in

Brighton. She's bound to be frightfully home-sick--"

"What about you?" George Cannon interrupted politely. "Doesn't she know

you?" He smiled with all his kindness.

"Yes--but--"

Hilda did not finish. It was not worth while. George Cannon had not

understood. He did not feel as she felt, and her emotion was

incommunicable to him. A tremendous misgiving seized her, and she had a

physical feeling of emptiness in the stomach. It passed, swiftly as a

hallucination. Just such a misgiving as visits nearly every normal

person immediately before or immediately after marriage! She ignored it.

She was engaged--that was the paramount fact! She was engaged, and

joyously determined to prosecute the grand adventure to the end. The

immensity of the risks forced her to accept them.

IV

That evening Sarah Gailey was in torment from the pain in her wrists.

There was nothing to be done. She had had the doctor, and no article of

the prescribed treatment had been neglected. With unaccustomed aid from

Hilda she had accomplished the business of undressing and getting into

bed, and now she sat up in bed, supported by her own pillows and one

from Hilda's bed, and nursed her wrists, while Hilda poured drops of a

narcotic for her into a glass of water. Apart from the serious local

symptoms, her health was fairly good. She could eat, she could talk, she

could walk, and her brain was clear. Hilda held the glass for her to

drink, for it was prudent to keep her hands as much as possible in

repose.

"There!" said Hilda, as if to a young child who had been querulous. "I'm

sure you'll sleep now!"

"I don't think I shall," the sufferer whined.

"Oh yes, you will!" Hilda insisted firmly, although she was by no means

sure. "Let me take this extra pillow away, and then you can lie down

properly." She was thinking reproachfully: "What a pity it is for all of

us that the poor thing can't bear her pain with a little less fuss!" It

was not Sarah alone who was embittered and fatigued by Sarah's pain.

"Where's George?" asked the invalid, when she was laid down.

"In the parlour. Why?"

"Oh, nothing!"

"By the way," said Hilda, seized by a sudden impulse, which had its

origin in Sarah's tone at once martyrized and accusing,--"by the way,

who _is_ it that's been talking scandal about me and George?"

"Scandal?" Sarah Gailey seemed weakly to protest against the word.

"Because, if you want to know," Hilda continued, "we're engaged to be

married!" She reflected, contrite: "This won't help her to sleep!" And

then added, in a new, endearing accent, awaiting an outburst of some

kind from Sarah: "Of course it's a secret, dear. I'm telling no one but

you."

After a moment's silence, Sarah remarked casually, with shut eyes:

"It'll be much the best not to tell anyone. And the shorter the

engagement the better! Don't let anybody in the house know till you're

married." She sighed, put her cheek into the pillow, and moved her bound

wrists for a few seconds, restlessly. "If you turn the gas down," she

finished very wearily, "I dare say I may get off. If only they'd stop

that piano upstairs!"

She had displayed no surprise at the tremendous event, no sentimental

interest in it. The fact was that Sarah Gailey's wrists were infinitely

more interesting to her than any conceivable project of marriage.

Continuous and acute pain had withdrawn her from worldly affairs, making

her more than ever like a god.

Hilda was startled. But she was relieved. Now for the first time she had

the authentic sensation of being engaged. And it appeared to her that

she had been engaged for a very long period, and that the engagement was

a quite ordinary affair. She was relieved; yet she was also grievously

saddened. She lowered the gas, and in the gloom gazed for a few seconds

at the vague, huddled, sheeted, faintly moaning figure on the bed; the

untidy grey hair against the pillow struck her as intolerably pathetic.

"Good night," she said softly.

And the feeble, plaintive voice responded: "Good night."

She went out, leaving the door slightly ajar.

V

In the parlour adjoining George Cannon was seated at the table. When

Hilda saw him and their eyes met, she was comforted; a wave of

tenderness seemed to agitate her. She realized that this man was hers,

and the realization was marvellously reassuring. The sound of the piano

descended delicately from the drawing-room as from a great distance.

From the kitchen came the muffled clatter of earthenware and

occasionally a harsh, loud voice; it was the hour of relaxed discipline

in the kitchen, where amid the final washing-up and much free discussion

and banter, Florrie was recommencing her career on a grander basis.

Hilda closed the door very quietly. When she had closed it and was shut

in with George Cannon her emotion grew intenser.

"I think she'll get off now," she whispered, standing near the door.

"Have you told her?"

Hilda nodded.

"What does she say?"

Hilda raised her eyebrows: "Oh!... Well, she says we'd better keep it

quiet, and make the engagement as short as possible." She blushed.

"Look here," said George. "Let's go out, eh?"

"But--what will people say?"

"What the devil does it matter what they say? I want you to come out

with me."

The whispered oath, and his defiant smile, enchanted her.

"We can go out by the area steps," he continued. "There's two of 'em

sitting in the hall, but the front door's shut. Do go and get your hat."

She left the room with an obedient smile. Pushing open Sarah's door very

gently, she groped on the hooks behind it for her hat. "It won't matter

about gloves--in the dark," she thought. "Besides, I mustn't disturb

her." Before drawing-to the door she looked again at the bed. There was

neither sound nor movement. Probably Sarah Gailey slept. The dim vision

of the form on the bed and the blue spark of gas in the corner produced

in Hilda a mood of poignant and yet delicious sorrow.

"Why, what's the matter?" George Cannon asked when she had returned to

the parlour.

She knew that her eyes were humid with tears. Both her arms were raised

above her head as she fixed the hat. This act of fixing the hat in

George's presence gave her a new pleasure. She smiled at him.

"Nothing!" she said, whispering mysteriously. "I think she's gone off.

I'm so glad. You know she really does suffer dreadfully."

His look was uncomprehending; but she did not care. The anticipation of

going out with him was now utterly absorbing her.

He waited with his hand on the gas-tap till she was ready, and then he

lowered the gas.

"Wait a moment," she whispered at the door, and with a gesture called

him back into the room from the flagged passage leading to the area

steps.

On the desk was his evening glass of milk, which he drank cold in

summer. She offered it to him in the twilit room like an enraptured

handmaid. He had forgotten it. The fact that he had forgotten it and she

had remembered it yet further increased her strange, mournful, ecstatic

bliss.

"Have some," he whispered, when he had drunk.

She finished the glass, trembling. They went forth, climbing the area

steps with proper precautions and escaping as thieves escape, down the

street. For an instant she glimpsed the wide-open windows of the

drawing-room, and the dining-room, from behind whose illuminated blinds

came floating, as it were wistfully, the sound of song and chatter. She

thought of Sarah Gailey prone and unconscious in the basement. And she

felt the moisture of the milk on her lips. "Am I happy or unhappy?" she

questioned herself, and could not reply. She knew only that she was

thrillingly, smartingly alive.

At the corner of Preston Street and King's Road a landau waited.

"This is ours," said George casually.

"Ours?"

What a splendid masculine idea! How it proved that he too had been

absorbed in the adventure! She admired him humbly, like a girl, like a

little girl. With the most formal deference he helped her into the

carriage.

"Drive towards Shoreham," he commandingly directed the driver, and took

his place by her side.

Yes! He was mature. He was a man of the world. He had had every

experience. He knew how to love. That such a being was hers, that she

without any effort had captured such a being, flattered her to an

extreme degree. She was glorious with pride. She leaned back in the

carriage negligently, affecting an absolute calm. She armed herself in

her virginity. Not George Cannon himself could have guessed that only by

a miracle of self-control did she prevent her hand from seeking his

beneath the light rug that covered their knees! She intimidated George

Cannon in that hour, and the while her heart burned with shame at the

secret violence of her feelings. She thought: "This must be love. This

is love!" And yet her conscience inarticulately accused her of

obliquity. But she did not care, and she would not reflect. She thought

that she wilfully, perversely, refused to reflect; but in reality she

was quite helpless.

Under the still and feverish night the landau rolled slowly along

between the invisible murmuring sea and the lighted facades of Hove.

Occasionally other carriages, containing other couples, approached, were

plain for a moment, and dissolved away.

"So she thinks the engagement ought to be short?" said George Cannon.

"Yes."

"So do I!" he pronounced with emphasis.

Hilda desired to ask him: "How short?" But she could not. She could not

bring herself to put the question. She was too proud. By a short

engagement, did he mean six months, three months, a month? Dared she

hope that he meant... a month? This was a thought buried in the deepest

fastness of her soul, a thought that she would have perished in order

not to expose; but it existed.

"I think I should like to go back now," she breathed timidly, before

they were beyond Hove. It was not a request to be ignored. The carriage

turned. She felt relief. The sensation of being alive had been too acute

to be borne, and it was now a little eased. She knew that her destiny

was irrevocable, that nothing could prevent her from being George

Cannon's. Whether the destiny was evil or good did not paramountly

interest her. But she wanted to rush forward into the arms of fate and

know her fate. She dreamed only of the union.

* * * * *

BOOK V

HER DELIVERANCE

CHAPTER I

LOUISA UNCONTROLLED

I

Hilda, after a long railway journey, was bathing her face, arms, and

neck at the large double washstand in the large double bedroom on the

second floor of No. 59 Preston Street. At the back of the washstand was

an unused door which gave into a small bedroom occupied by the youngest

Miss Watchett. George Cannon came up quietly behind her. She pretended

not to hear him. He put his hands lightly on her wet arms. Smiling with

condescending indulgence, half to herself, she still pretended to ignore

him, and continued her toilet.

The return from the honeymoon, which she had feared, had accomplished

itself quite simply and easily. She had feared the return, because only

upon the return was the marriage to be formally acknowledged and

published. It had been obviously impossible to announce, during the

strenuous summer season, the engagement of the landlord to a young woman

who lived under the same roof with him. The consequences of such an

indiscretion would have been in various ways embarrassing. Hence not a

word was said. Nor were definite plans for the wedding made until George

remarked one evening that he would like to be married at Chichester,

Chichester being the name of his new private hotel. Which exhibition of

sentimentality had both startled and touched Hilda. Chichester, however,

had to be renounced, owing to the difficulty of residence. The subject

having been thus fairly broached, George had pursued it, and one day

somewhat casually stated that he had taken a room in Lewes and meant to

sleep there every night for the term imposed by the law. Less than three

weeks later, Hilda had inobtrusively departed from No. 59, the official

account being that she was to take a holiday with friends after the

fatigues of August and early September. She left the train at Lewes, and

there, in the presence of strangers, was married to George Cannon, who

had quitted Brighton two days earlier and was supposed to be in London

on business. Even Sarah Gailey, though her health had improved, did not

assist at the wedding. Sarah, sole depositary of the secret, had to

remain in charge of No. 59.

A strange wedding! Not a single wedding present, except those

interchanged by the principals! Nor had any of the problems raised by

the marriage been solved, or attacked. The future of Sarah Gailey, for

example! Was Sarah to go on living with them? It was inconceivable, and

yet the converse was also inconceivable. Sarah had said nothing, and

nothing had been said to Sarah. Matters were to settle themselves. It

had not even been decided which room Mr. and Mrs. Cannon should inhabit

as man and wife. It was almost certain that, in the dead period between

the popular summer season and the fashionable autumn season, there would

be several bedrooms empty. Hilda, like George, did not want to bother

with a lot of tedious details, important or unimportant. The attitude of

each was: "Let me get married first, and then I'll see to all that."

Thus had the return been formidable to Hilda. All the way from Ireland

she had been saying to herself: "I shall have to go up the steps, and

into the house, and be spoken to as Mrs. Cannon! And then there'll be

Sarah...!" But the entry into the house had produced no terror.

Everywhere George's adroitness had been wonderful, extraordinarily

comforting and reassuring, and nowhere more so than in the vestibule of

No. 59. The tone in which he had said to Louisa, "Take Mrs. Cannon's

handbag, Louisa," had been a marvel of ease. Louisa had incontestably

blenched, for the bizarre Sarah, who conserved in Brighton the inmost

spirit of the Five Towns, had thought fit to tell the servants nothing

whatever. But the trained veteran in Louisa had instantly recovered, and

she had replied "Yes, sir," with a simplicity which proved her to be the

equal of George Cannon.... The worst was over for Hilda. And the next

moments were made smooth by reason of a great piece of news which,

forcing Sarah Gailey to communicate it at once, monopolized attention,

and so entirely relieved the bride's self-consciousness.

Florence Bagster, having insolently quarrelled with her mistress, had

left her service without notice. Mr. Boutwood had also gone, and the

connection between the two departures was only too apparent, not merely

to Sarah, but also to the three Miss Watchetts, who had recently

arrived. Florence, who could but whisper, had shouted at her mistress.

Little, flushing, modest Florrie, who yesterday in the Five Towns was an

infant, had compromised herself with a fat widower certainly old enough

to be her father. And the widower, the friend of the house, had had so

little regard for the feelings of the house that he had not hesitated to

flaunt with Florrie in the town. It was known that they were more or

less together, and that he stood between Florrie and the world.

II

"I suppose I'd better write at once to her mother--or perhaps her aunt;

her aunt's got more sense," said Hilda, as she dropped the sponge and

groped for a towel, her eyes half blinded.

In moving she had escaped from his hands.

"What do you say?" she asked, having heard a vague murmur through the

towel.

"I say you can write if you like." George spoke with a careless smile.

Now, facing her, he put his hands on her damp shoulders. She looked up

at him over the towel, leaning her head forward, and suspending action.

Her nose was about a foot from his. She saw, as she had seen a hundred

times, every detail of his large, handsome and yet time-worn face, every

hair of his impressive moustache, all the melting shades of colour in

his dark eyes. His charm was coarse and crude, but he was very skilful,

and there was something about his experienced, weather-beaten, slightly

depraved air, which excited her. She liked to feel young and girlish

before him; she liked to feel that with him, alone of all men, her

modesty availed nothing. She was beginning to realize her power over

him, and the extent of it. It was a power miraculous and mysterious,

never claimed by her, and never admitted by him save in glance and

gesture. This power lay in the fact that she was indispensable to him.

He was not her slave--she might indeed have been considered the human

chattel--but he was the slave of his need of her. He loved her. In him

she saw what love was; she had seen it more and more clearly ever since

the day of their engagement. She was both proud and ashamed of her

power. He did not possess a similar power over herself. She was fond of

him, perhaps getting fonder; but his domination of her senses was

already nearly at an end. She had passed through painful, shattering

ecstasies of bliss, hours unforgettable, hours which she knew could

never recur. And she was left sated and unsatisfied. So that by virtue

of this not yet quite bitter disillusion, she was coming to regard

herself as his superior, as being less naïve than he, as being even

essentially older than he. And in speaking to him sometimes she would

put on a grave and precociously sapient mien, as if to indicate that she

had access to sources of wisdom for ever closed to him.

"But don't you think we _ought_ to write?" she frowned.

"Certainly if you like! It won't do any good. You don't suppose her aunt

will come down here, do you? And even if she did.... There it is, and

there you are!"

"Just let me wipe my shoulders, will you?" she said.

He lifted his hands obediently, and as they were damp he rubbed them on

the loose corner of the towel.

"Well," he said, "I must be off, I reckon."

"Shall you see Mr. Boutwood?"

"I might.... I know where to catch him, I fancy."

She seemed to have a glimpse of her husband's separate life in the

town--masculine haunts and habits of which she knew nothing and would

always know nothing. And the large existence of the male made her

envious.

"Going to see him now?"

"Well, yes." George smiled roguishly.

"What shall you say to him?"

"What can I say to him? No business of mine, you know, except that we've

lost a decent servant. But I expect that's Sarah's fault. She's no use

whatever with servants, now, Sarah isn't."

"_I_ shall never speak to Mr. Boutwood again!" Hilda exclaimed almost

passionately.

"Oh, but--"

"His behaviour is simply scandalous. It's really wicked. A man like

him!"

George put his lips out deprecatingly. "You may depend she asked for

it," he said.

"What?"

"She asked for it," he repeated with convinced firmness, and looked at

her steadily.

A flush slowly spread over her face and neck, and she lowered her gaze.

In her breast pride and shame were again mingled.

"You keep your hair on, littl'un," said George soothingly, and kissed

her. Then he took his hat and stick, which were with a lot of other

things on the broad white counterpane, and went off stylishly.

"You don't understand," she threw at him with a delicious side-glance of

reproof as he opened the door. She reproached herself for the deceiving

coquetry of the glance.

"Don't I?" he returned airily.

He was quite sure that nothing escaped his intelligence. To Hilda,

shocked by the coarseness and the obtuseness which evidently

characterized his attitude, now as on other occasions, this

self-confidence was desolating; it was ominously sinister.

III

She was alone with her image in the mirror, and the image was precisely

the same that she had always seen; she could detect no change in it

whatever. She liked the sensation of being alone and at home in this

room which before she had only entered as an overseer and which she had

never expected to occupy. She savoured the intimacy of the room--the

necessaries on the washstand, the superb tortoiseshell brushes, bought

by George in Dublin, on the dressing-table, the open trunks, George's

clothes on a chair, and her own flimsy trifles on the bed. Through the

glass she saw, behind her image, the image of the closed door; and then

she turned round to look at the real door and to assure herself that it

was closed. Childish! And yet...! George had shut the door. She

remembered the noise of its shutting. And that noise, in her memory,

seemed to have transformed itself into the sound of fate's deep bell.

She could hear the clang, sharp, definite. She realized suddenly and

with awe that her destiny was fixed hereafter. She had come to the end

of her adventures and her vague dreams. For she had always dreamt

vaguely of an enlarged liberty, of wide interests, and of original

activities--such as no woman to her knowledge had ever had. She had

always compared the life of men with the life of women, and admitted and

resented the inferiority of the latter. She had had glimpses, once, of

the male world; she had made herself the only woman shorthand-writer in

the Five Towns, and one of the earliest in England--dizzy thought! But

the glimpses had been vain and tantalizing. She had been in the male

world, but not of it, as though encircled in a glass ball which neither

she nor the males could shatter. She had had money, freedom, and

ambition, and somehow, through ignorance or through lack of imagination

or opportunity, had been unable to employ them. She had never known what

she wanted. The vision had never been clear. And she reflected: "I

wonder if my daughter, supposing I had one, would be as different from

me as I am from my mother!"

She could recall with intense vividness the moment when she had first

really contemplated marriage. It was in the steam-tram after having seen

Edwin Clayhanger at the door of Clayhanger's shop. And she could recall

the sense of relief with which she had envisaged a union with some man

stronger and more experienced than herself. In the relief was a certain

secret shame, as though it implied cowardice, a shrinking away from the

challenge of life and from the call of a proud instinct. In the

steam-tram she had foreseen the time when she would belong utterly to

some man, surrendering to him without reserve, the time when she would

be a woman. And the thing had come about! Only yesterday she had been a

little girl entering George Cannon's office with timid audacity to

consult him. Only yesterday George Cannon had been a strange, formidable

man, indefinitely older and infinitely cleverer than she. And now they

were man and wife! Now she was his! Now she profoundly knew him, and he

was no longer formidable, in spite of his force. She had a recondite

dominion over him. She guessed herself to be his superior in certain

qualities. He was revealed to her; she felt that she was not revealed to

him, and that in spite of her wholehearted surrender she had not given

all because of his blindness to what she offered. She could not

completely respect him. But she was his. She was naught apart from him.

She was the wife. His existence went on mainly as before; hers was

diverted, narrowed--fundamentally altered. Never now could she be

enfranchised into the male world!

IV

She slipped her arms into a new bodice purchased in London on the second

day of the marriage. Blushing, she had tried on that bodice in a great

shop in Oxford Street; then it was that she had first said 'my husband'

in public. All that day she had felt so weak and shy and light and

helpless and guilty that she had positively not known what she was

doing; she had moved in a phantom world. Only, she had perceived quite

steadily and practically that she must give more attention to her

clothes. Her old contempt for finery expired in the glory of her new

condition. And now, as she settled the elegant bodice on her shoulders,

and fastened it, and patted her hair, and picked up the skirt and poised

it over her head, she had a stern, preoccupied look, as of one who said:

"This that I am doing is important. I must not be hurried in doing it.

It is vital that I should look well and that no detail of my appearance

should jar." Already she could see herself standing before George when

he returned for the meal--the first meal which they would take together

in the home. She could feel his eyes on her: she could anticipate her

own mood--in which would be mingled pride, misgiving, pleasure,

helplessness, abandonment--and the secret condescension towards him of

her inmost soul.

All alone in the room she could feel his hands again on her shoulders: a

mysterious excitation.... She was a married woman. She had the right to

discuss Florrie's case with aloof disdain, if she chose. Her

respectability was unassailable. None might penetrate beyond the fact of

her marriage. And yet, far within her, she was ashamed. She dimly

admitted once more, as on several occasions previous to her marriage,

that she had dishonoured an ideal. Her conscience would not chime with

the conscience of society. She thought, as she prepared with pleasurable

expectancy for her husband: "This is not right. This cannot lead to

good. It must lead to evil. I am bound to suffer for it. The whole thing

is wrong. I know it and I have always known it."

Already she was disappointed with her marriage. Amid the fevers of

bodily appetite she could clearly distinguish the beginning of

lassitude; she no longer saw her husband as a romantic and baffling

figure; she had explored and chartered his soul, and not all his

excellences could atone for his earthliness. She wondered grimly where

and under what circumstances he had acquired the adroitness which had

charmed and still did charm her. She saw in front of her a vista of days

and years in which ennui would probably increase and joy diminish. And

she put her shoulders back defiantly, and thought: "Well, here I am

anyhow! I wanted him and I've got him. What I have to go through I shall

go through!"

And all the time, floating like vapour over these depths was a sheeny

mood of bright expectation and immediate naïve content. And she said

gaily that she must write at once to Janet Orgreave to announce the

marriage, and that her mother's uncle up in the north must also be

informed.

V

Unusual phenomena made themselves apparent on the top staircase: raised

voices which Hilda could hear more and more plainly, even through the

shut door. At No. 59, in the off-seasons, nobody ever spoke in a loud

tone, particularly on the staircase, except perhaps Florrie when, in

conversation with Louisa, she thought she was out of all other hearing.

Hilda's voice was very clear and penetrating, but not loud. George

Cannon's voice in public places such as the staircase had an almost

caressing softness. The Watchetts cooed like faint doves, thereby

expressing the delicate refinement of their virginal natures. The cook's

voice was unknown beyond the kitchen. And nobody was more grimly

self-controlled in speech than Sarah Gailey and Louisa. These two--and

especially Louisa--seemed generally to be restraining with ease

tremendous secret forces of bitterness and contempt. And now it was just

these two who were noisy, and becoming noisier, to the dismay of a

scandalized house. Owing to some accident or negligence the secret

forces had got loose.

Hilda shook her head. It was clear that the problem of Sarah Gailey

would have to be tackled and settled very soon. The poor woman's

physical sufferings had without doubt reacted detrimentally on her

temperament and temper. She used to be quite extraordinarily adroit in

the directing of servants, though her manner to them never approached

geniality. But she had quarrelled with Florrie, and now she was breaking

the peace with Louisa! It was preposterous and annoying, and it could

not be allowed to continue. Hilda was not seriously alarmed, because she

had the most perfect confidence in George's skill to restore order and

calm, and to conquer every difficulty of management; and she also put a

certain trust in herself; but the menacing and vicious accents of Louisa

startled her, and she sympathized with Sarah Gailey, for whom

humiliation was assuredly in store--if not immediately at the tongue of

Louisa, then later when George would have to hint the truth to her about

her decadence.

The dispute on the attic landing appeared to be concerning linen which

Louisa had omitted to remove from Florrie's abandoned couch in her

kennel.

"I ain't going to touch her sheets, not for nobody!" Louisa proclaimed

savagely. And by that single phrase, with its implications, she laid

unconsciously bare the sordid baseness of her ageing heart; she exposed

by her mere intonation of the word 'sheets' all the foulness of jealousy

and thwarted salacity that was usually concealed beneath her tight dress

and neat apron, and beneath her prim gestures and deferential tones. Her

undisciplined voice rang spinsterishly down the staircase, outraging it,

defiling the whole interior.

Hilda as silently as possible unlatched the door of the bedroom, and

stood with ear cocked. Should she issue forth and interfere, or should

she remain discreetly where she was? Almost in the same instant she

heard the cautious unlatching of the drawing-room door; two of the

Watchetts were there listening also. And there came up from the ground

floor a faint giggle. The cook, at the kitchen door, was enjoying

herself and giggling moral support to her colleague. The giggle proved

that the master was out, that the young mistress had not yet established

a definite position, and that during recent weeks the old mistress must

have been steadily dissipating her own authority. Hilda peered along the

landing from her lair, and upstairs and downstairs; she could see

nothing but senseless carpets and brass rods and steps and banisters;

but she knew that the entire household--she had the sensation that the

very house itself--was alert and eavesdropping.

There was a hesitating movement on the unseen stairs above, and then

Hilda could see Sarah Gailey's felt slippers and the valance of her

skirt. And she could hear Sarah's emotional breathing.

"Very well, Louisa, I've done!" Sarah's voice was quieter now. She was

trying to control it, and to a limited extent was controlling its

volume. It shook in spite of her. She spoke true. She had indeed done.

She was at the end of her resources.

"I've been in houses," Louisa conqueringly sneered, "that I have! But I

never been in a house afore where one as ought to have been scullery-

girl went off with a boarder, and nothing said, and him the friend of

the master! And it isn't as if that was all!... Sheets, indeed!"

"I've nothing further to say," Sarah returned unnecessarily, and

descended the stair. "I shall simply report to Mr. Cannon. We shall

see."

"And what's this about _Mrs_. Cannon?" Louisa shouted, beside herself.

The peculiarity of her tone arrested Sarah Gailey. Hilda flushed. The

Watchetts were listening. The Watchetts had not yet been told of the

marriage. The announcement was to be made to them formally, a little

later. And now it was Louisa who was making the announcement, brutally,

coarsely. The outrage of the episode was a hundredfold intensified; it

grew into an inconceivable ghastly horror. Hilda's self-respect seemed

to have a physical body and Louisa to be hacking at it with a jagged

knife.

"Mr. Cannon has brought his wife home," said Sarah Gailey shortly, with

a dignity and courage that increased as her distance from the appalling,

the incredible Louisa. Hilda could see her pale face now. The eyebrows

and chin were lifted in scorn of the vile menial, but the poor head was

trembling.

"And what about his other wife?"

"Louisa!"--Sarah Gailey looked again up the stairs--"I know you're in a

temper and not responsible for what you say. But you'd better be

careful." She spoke with elaborate haughty negligence.

"Had I?" Louisa shrilled. "What I say is, what about his other wife?

What about the old woman he married in Devonshire? Why, God bless me,

Florrie was full of it--couldn't talk about anything else in bed of a

night! Didn't you know the old woman'd been inquiring for her beautiful

'usband down your way?" She laughed loudly. "Turnhill--what's-its-name?...

And all of you lying low, and then making out all of a sudden as he's

brought his wife home! A nice house! And I've been in a few, too!"

Hilda could feel her heart beating with terrific force against her

bodice, but she was conscious of no other sensation. She heard a loud

snort of shattering contempt from Louisa; and then a strange and

terrific silence fell on the stairs. There was no sound even of a

movement. The Watchetts did not stir; the cook did not stir; Sarah

Gailey did not stir; Louisa's fury was sated. The empty landing lay, as

it were, expectant at Hilda's door.

Then Sarah Gailey perceived Hilda half hidden in the doorway, and

staggeringly rushed towards her. In an instant they were both in the

bedroom and the door shut.

"When will George be back so that he can put her out of the house?"

Sarah whispered frantically.

"Soon, I expect," said Hilda, and felt intensely self-conscious.

They said no more. And it was as though the house were besieged and

invested, and only in that room were they safe, and even in that room

only for a few moments.

CHAPTER II

SOME SECRET HISTORY

I

Without a word, Sarah had left the bedroom. Hilda waited, sitting on the

bed, for George to come back from his haunts in the town. She both

intensely desired and intensely feared his return. A phrase or two of an

angry and vicious servant had almost destroyed her faith in her husband.

It seemed very strange, even to her, that this should be so; and she

wondered whether she had ever had a real faith in him, whether--passion

apart--her feeling for him had ever been aught but admiration of his

impressive adroitness. Was it possible that he had another wife alive?

No, it was not possible! That is to say, it was not possible that such a

catastrophe should have happened to just her, to Hilda Lessways, sitting

there on the bed with her hands pressing on the rough surface of the

damask counterpane. And yet--how could Louisa or Florrie have invented

the story?... Wicked, shocking, incredible, that Florrie, with her soft

voice and timid, affectionate manner, should have been chattering in

secret so scandalously during all these weeks! She remembered the look

on Florrie's blushing face when the child had received the letter on the

morning of their departure from the house in Lessways Street. Even then

the attractively innocent and capable Florrie must have had her naughty

secrets!... An odious world. And Hilda, married, had seriously thought

that she knew all about the world! She had to admit, bewildered: "I'm

only a girl after all, and a very simple one." She compared her own

heart in its simplicity with that of Louisa. Louisa horrified and

frightened her.... Louisa and Florrie were mischievous liars. Florrie

had seized some fragment of silly gossip--Turnhill was notorious for its

silly gossip--and the two of them had embroidered it in the nastiness of

their souls. She laughed shortly, disdainfully, to wither up silly

gossip.... Preposterous!

And yet--when George had shown her the licence, in the name of Cannon,

and she had ventured to say apologetically and caressingly: "I always

understood your real name was Canonges,"--how queerly he had looked as

he answered: "I changed it long ago--legally!" Yes, and she had

persuaded herself that the queerness of his look was only in her fancy!

But it was not only in her fancy. Suspicions, sinister trifling

souvenirs, crowded into her mind. Had she not always doubted him? Had

she not always said to herself that she was doing wrong in her marriage

and that she would thereby suffer? Had she not abandoned the pursuit of

religious truth in favour of light enjoyments?... Foolish of course,

old-fashioned of course, to put two and two together in this way! But

she could not refrain.

"I am ruined!" she decided, in awe.

And the next instant she was saying: "How absurd of me to be like this,

merely because Louisa..."

She thought she heard a noise below. Her heart leapt again into violent

activity. Trembling, she crept to the door, and gently unlatched it. No

slightest sound in the whole house! Dusk was coming on swiftly. Then she

could hear all the noises, accentuated beyond custom, of Louisa setting

tea in the dining-room for the Watchetts, and then the tea-bell rang.

Despite her fury, apparent in the noises, Louisa had not found courage

to neglect the sacred boarders. She made a defiant fuss, but she had to

yield, intimidated, to the force of habit and tradition. The Watchetts

descended the staircase from the drawing-room, practising as usual

elaborate small-talk among themselves. They had heard every infamous

word of Louisa's tirade; which had engendered in them a truly dreadful

and still delicious emotion; but they descended the staircase in good

order, discussing the project for a new pier.... They reached the

dining-room and shut the door on themselves.

Silence again! Louisa ought now to have set the tea in the basement

parlour. But Louisa did not. Louisa was hidden in the kitchen, doubtless

talking fourteen to the dozen with the cook. She had done all she meant

to do. She knew that she would be compelled to leave at once, and not

another stroke would she do of any kind! The master and the mistresses

must manage as best they could. Louisa was already wondering where she

would sleep that night, for she was alone on earth and owned one small

trunk and a Post Office Savings Bank book.... All this trouble on

account of Florrie's sheets!

Sarah Gailey was in her bedroom, and did not dare to came out of it even

to accuse Louisa of neglecting the basement tea. And Hilda continued to

stand for ages at the bedroom door, while the dusk grew deeper and

deeper. At last the front door opened, and George's step was in the

hall. Hilda recognized it with a thrill of terror, turning pale. George

ran down into the basement and stumbled. "Hello!" she heard him call

out, "what about tea? Where are you all? Sarah!" No answer, no sound in

response! He ran up the basement steps. Would he call in at the

dining-room, or would he come to the bedroom in search of her? He did

not stop at the dining-room. Hilda wanted to shut the bedroom door, but

dared not because she could not do it noiselessly. Now he was on the

first floor! She rushed to the bed, and sat on it, as she had been

sitting previously, and waited in the most painful and irrational agony.

She was astonished at the darkness of the room. Turning her head, she

saw only a whitish blur instead of a face in the dressing-table mirror.

II

"What's up?" he demanded, bursting somewhat urgently into the bedroom

with his hat on. "What price the husband coming home to his tea? No tea!

No light! I nearly broke my neck down the basement stairs."

He put his hands against her elbows and kissed her, rather clumsily,

owing to the gloom, between her nose and her mouth. She did not shrink

back, but accepted the embrace quite insensibly. The contact of his

moustache and of his lips, and his slight, pleasant masculine odour,

produced no effect on her whatever.

"Why are you sitting here? Look here, I've signed the transfer of those

Continental shares, and paid the cheque! So it's domino, now!"

Between the engagement and the marriage there had been an opportunity of

purchasing three thousand pounds' worth of preference shares in the

Brighton Hotel Continental Limited, which hotel was the latest and

largest in the King's Road, a vast affair of eight storeys and bathrooms

on every floor. The chance of such an investment had fascinated George.

It helped his dreams and pointed to the time when he would be manager

and part proprietor of a palace like the Continental. Hilda being very

willing, he had sold her railways shares and purchased the hotel shares,

and he knew that he had done a good thing. Now he possessed an interest

in three different establishments, he who had scarcely been in Brighton

a year. The rapid progress, he felt, was characteristic of him.

Hilda kept silence, for the sole reason that she could think of no words

to say. As for the matter of the investment, it appeared to her to be

inexpressibly uninteresting. From under the lashes of lowered eyes she

saw his form shadowily in front of her.

"You don't mean to say Sarah's been making herself disagreeable

already!" he said. And his tone was affectionate and diplomatic, yet

faintly ironical. He had perceived that something unusual had occurred,

perhaps something serious, and he was anxious to soothe and to justify

his wife. Hilda perfectly understood his mood and intention, and she was

reassured.

"Hasn't Sarah told you?" she asked in a harsh, uncontrolled voice,

though she knew that he had not seen Sarah.

"No; where is she?" he inquired patiently.

"It's Louisa," Hilda went on, with the sick fright of a child compelled

by intimidation to affront a danger. Her mouth was very dry.

"Oh!"

"She lost her temper and made a fearful scene with Sarah, on the stairs;

she said the most awful things."

George laughed low, and lightly. He guessed Louisa's gift for foul

insolence and invective.

"For instance?" George encouraged. He was divining from Hilda's singular

tone that tact would be needed.

"Well, she said you'd got a wife living in Devonshire."

There was a pause.

"And who'd told her that?"

"Florrie."

"_In_deed!" muttered George. Hilda could not decide whether his voice

was natural or forced.

Then he stepped across to the door, and opened it.

"What are you going to do to her?" Hilda questioned, as it were

despairingly.

He left the room and banged the door.

"It's not true," Hilda was beginning to say to herself, but she seemed

to derive no pleasure from the dawning hope of George's innocence.

Then George came into the room again, hesitated, and shut the door

carefully.

"I suppose it's no good shilly-shallying about," he said, in such a tone

as he might have used had he been vexed and disgusted with Hilda. "I

have got a wife living, and she's in Devonshire! I expect she's been

inquiring in Turnhill if I'm still in the land of the living. Probably

wants to get married again herself."

Hilda glanced at his form, and suddenly it was the form of a stranger,

but a stranger who had loved her. And she thought: "Why did I let this

stranger love me?" It was scarce believable that she had ever seriously

regarded him as a husband. And she found that tears were running down

her cheeks; and she felt all her girlishness and fragility. "Didn't I

always know," she asked herself with weak resignation, "that it was

unreal? What am I to do now?" The catastrophe had indeed happened to

her, and she could not deal with it! She did not even feel tragic. She

did not feel particularly resentful against George. She had read of such

catastrophes in the newspapers, but the reality of experience nonplussed

her. "I ought to do something," she reflected. "But what?"

"What's the use of me saying I'm sorry?" he asked savagely. "I acted for

the best. The chances were ten thousand to one against me being spotted.

But there you are! You never know your luck." He spoke meditatively, in

a rather hoarse, indistinct voice. "All owing to Florrie, of course!

When it was suggested we should have that girl, I knew there was a

danger. But I pooh-poohed it! I said nothing could possibly happen....

And just look at it now!... I wanted to cut myself clear of the Five

Towns, absolutely--absolutely! And then like a damnation fool I let

Florrie come here! If she hadn't come, that woman might have inquired

about me in Turnhill till all was blue, without you hearing about her!

But there it is!" He snapped his fingers. "It's my fault for being found

out! That's the only thing I'm guilty of.... And look at it! Look at

it!"

Hilda could tell from the movements of the vague form in the corner by

the door, and by the quality of his voice, that George Cannon was in a

state of extreme emotion. She had never known him half so moved. His

emotion excited her and flattered her. She thought how wonderful it was

that she, the shaking little girl who yesterday had run off with

fourpence to buy a meal at a tripe-shop, should be the cause of this

emotion in such a man. She thought: "My life is marvellous." She was

dizzied by the conception of the capacity of her own body and soul for

experience. No factors save her own body and soul and his had been

necessary to the bringing about of the situation. It was essential only

that the man and the woman should be together, and their companionship

would produce miracles of experience! She ceased crying. Astounding that

she had never, in George's eyes, suspected his past! It was as if he had

swiftly opened a concealed door in the house of their passion and

disclosed a vista of which she had not dreamed.

"But surely that must have been a long time ago!" she said in an

ordinary tone.

"Considering that I was twenty-two--yes!"

"Why did you leave her?"

"Why did I leave her? Because I had to! I'd gone as a clerk in a

solicitor's office in Torquay, and she was a client. She went mad about

me. I'm only telling you. She was a spinster. Had one of those big

houses high up on the hill behind the town!" He stopped; and then his

voice began to come again out of the deep shadow in the corner. "She

wanted me, and she got me. And she didn't care who knew! The wedding was

in the _Torquay Directory_. I told her I'd got no relations, and she was

jolly glad."

"But how old was she? Young?"

George sneered. "She'd never see thirty-six again, the day she was

married. Good-looking. Well-dressed. Very stylish and all that! Carried

me off my feet. Of course there was the money.... I may as well out with

it all while I'm about it! She made me an absolute present of four

thousand pounds. Insisted on doing it. I never asked. Of course I know I

married for money. It happens to youths sometimes just as it does to

girls. It may be disgusting, but not more disgusting for one than for

the other. Besides, I didn't realize it was a sale and purchase, at the

time!... Oh! And it lasted about ten days. I couldn't stand it, so I

told her so and chucked it. She began an action for restitution of

conjugal rights, but she soon tired of that. She wouldn't have her four

thousand back. Simply wouldn't! She was a terror, but I'll say that for

her. Well, I kept it. Four thousand pounds is a lot of brass. That's how

I started business in Turnhill, if you want to know!" He spoke

defiantly. "You may depend I never let on in the Five Towns about my

beautiful marriage.... That's the tale. You've got to remember I was

twenty-two!"

She thought of Edwin Clayhanger and Charlie Orgreave as being about

twenty-two, and tried in her imagination to endow the mature George

Cannon with their youth and their simplicity and their freshness. She

was saddened and overawed; not wrathful, not obsessed by a sense of

injury.

Then she heard a sob in the corner, and then another. The moment was

terrible for her. She could only distinguish in the room the blur of a

man's shape against the light-coloured wall-paper, and the whiteness of

the counterpane, and the dark square of the window broken by the black

silhouette of the mirror. She slipped off the bed, and going in the

direction of the dressing-table groped for a match-box and lit the gas.

Dazzled by the glare of the gas, she turned to look at the corner where

stood George Cannon.

III

The whole aspect of the room was now altered. The window was blacker

than anything else; light shone on the carved frame of the mirror and on

the vessels of the washstand; the trunks each threw a sharply defined

shadow; the bed was half in the shadow of its mahogany foot, and half a

glittering white; all the array of requisites on the dressing-table lay

stark under the close scrutiny of the gas; and high above the bed,

partly on the wall and partly on the ceiling, was a bright oblong

reflection from the upturned mirror.

Hilda turned to George with a straightening of the shoulders, as if to

say: "It is I who have the courage to light the gas and face the

situation!" But when she saw him her challenging pride seemed to die

slowly away. Though there was no sign of a tear on his features, and

though it was difficult to believe that it was he who had just sobbed,

nevertheless, his figure was dismayingly tragic. Every feature was

distorted by agitation. He was absorbed in himself, shameless and

careless of appearances. He was no more concerned about appearances and

manly shame than a sufferer dying in torment. He was beyond all that--in

truth a new George Cannon! He left the corner, and sat down on the bed

in the hollow made by Hilda, and stared at the wall, his hands in the

pockets of his gay suit. His gestures as he moved, and his posture as he

sat, made their unconscious appeal to her in their abandonment. He was

caught; he was vanquished; he was despairing; but he instinctively, and

without any wish to do so, kept his dignity. He was still, in his

complete overthrow, the mature man of the world, the man to whom it was

impossible to be ridiculous.

Hilda in a curious way grew proud of him. With an extraordinary

inconsequence she dwelt upon the fact that, always grand--even as a

caterer, he had caused to be printed at the foot of the menu forms which

he had instituted, the words: "A second helping of all or any of the

above dishes will willingly be served if so desired." And in the general

havoc of the shock she began to be proud also of herself, because it was

the mysterious power of her individuality that had originated the

disaster. The sense of their intimate withdrawn seclusion in the room,

disordered and littered by arrival, utterly alone save for the living

flame of the gas, the 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: