Ici bas tous les hommes pleurent
Leurs amitiés et leurs amours.
--BOURGET.
Many sarcastic but true words have been said by man, and in no jealous
spirit, concerning woman's friendship for woman. The passing judgment of
the majority of men on such devotion might be summed up in the words,
"Occupy till I come." It does occupy till they do come. And if they
don't come the hastily improvised friendship may hold together for
years, like an unseaworthy boat in a harbor, which looks like a boat but
never goes out to sea.
But, nevertheless, here and there among its numberless counterfeits a
friendship rises up between two women which sustains the life of both,
which is still young when life is waning, which man's love and
motherhood cannot displace nor death annihilate; a friendship which is
not the solitary affection of an empty heart, nor the deepest affection
of a full one, but which nevertheless lightens the burdens of this world
and lays its pure hand upon the next.
Such a friendship, very deep, very tender, existed between Rachel West
and Hester Gresley. It dated back from the nursery days, when Hester and
Rachel solemnly eyed each other, and then made acquaintance in the dark
gardens of Portman Square, into which Hester introduced a fortified
castle with a captive princess in it, and a rescuing prince and a
dragon, and several other ingredients of romance to the awed amazement
of Rachel--stolid, solid, silent Rachel--who loved all two and four
legged creatures, but who never made them talk to each other as Hester
did. And Hester, in blue serge, told Rachel, in crimson velvet, as they
walked hand in hand in front of their nursery-maids, what the London
sparrows said to each other in the gutters, and how they considered the
gravel path in the square was a deep river suitable to bathe in. And
when the spring was coming, and the prince had rescued the princess so
often from the dungeon in the laurel-bushes that Hester was tired of it,
she told Rachel how the elms were always sighing because they were shut
up in town, and how they went out every night with their roots into the
green country to see their friends, and came back, oh! so early in the
morning, before any one was awake to miss them. And Rachel's heart
yearned after Hester, and she gave her her red horse and the tin duck
and magnet, and Hester made stories about them all.
At last the day came when Rachel's mother, who had long viewed the
intimacy with complacency, presented her compliments, in a note-sheet
with two immense gilt crests on it, to Hester's aunt, and requested that
her little niece might be allowed to come to tea with her little
daughter. And Lady Susan Gresley, who had never met the rich
iron-master's wife in this world, and would probably be equally
exclusive in the next, was about to refuse, when Hester, who up to that
moment had apparently taken no interest in the matter, suddenly cast
herself on the floor in a paroxysm of despair and beat her head against
the carpet. The tearful entreaties of her aunt gradually elicited the
explanation, riddled by sobs, that Hester could never take an interest
in life again, could never raise herself even to a sitting position, nor
dry her eyes on her aunt's handkerchief, unless she were allowed to go
to tea with Rachel and see her dormouse.
Lady Susan, much upset herself, and convinced that these outbursts were
prejudicial to Hester's health, gave way at once, and a few days later
Hester, pale, shy, in a white muffler, escorted by mademoiselle, went to
tea in the magnificent house on the other side of the square, and saw
Rachel's round head without a feathered hat on it, and both children
were consumed by shyness until the two mademoiselles withdrew into
another room, and Rachel showed Hester the dormouse which she had found
in the woods in the country, and which ate out of her hand. And Hester
made a little poem on it, beginning,
"There was a mouse in Portman Square";
and so, with many breaks, the friendship attained a surer footing, and
the intimacy grew with their growth, in spite of the fact that Lady
Susan had felt unable (notwithstanding the marked advances of Mrs. West,
possibly because of them) to enlarge her visiting-list, in spite of many
other difficulties which were only in the end surmounted by the
simplicity of character which Rachel had not inherited from her parents.
And then, after both girls had danced through one London season in
different ball-rooms, Rachel's parents died, her mother first, and
then--by accident--her father, leaving behind him an avalanche of
unsuspected money difficulties, in which even his vast fortune was
engulfed.
Hard years followed for Rachel. She ate the bread of carefulness in the
houses of poor relations not of high degree, with whom her parents had
quarrelled when they had made their money and began to entertain social
ambitions. She learned what it was to be the person of least importance
in families of no importance. She essayed to teach, and failed. She had
no real education. She made desperate struggles for independence, and
learned how others failed besides herself. She left her relations and
their bitter bread and came to London, and struggled with those who
struggled, and saw how Temptation spreads her net for bleeding feet.
Because she loved Hester she accepted from her half her slender
pin-money. Hester had said, "If I were poor, Rachel, how would you bear
it if I would not let you help me?" And Rachel had wept slow, difficult
tears, and had given Hester the comfort of helping her. The greater
generosity was with Rachel, and Hester knew it.
And as Rachel's fortunes sank, Hester's rose. Lady Susan Gresley had one
talent, and she did not lay it up in a napkin. She had the art of
attracting people to her house, that house to which Mrs. West had never
forced an entrance. Hester was thrown from the first into a society
which her clergyman brother, who had never seen it, pronounced to be
frivolous, worldly, profane, but which no one has called dull. There
were many facets in Hester's character, and Lady Susan had managed to
place her where they caught the light. Was she witty? Was she
attractive? Who shall say? Man is wisely averse to "cleverness" in a
woman, but if he possesses any armor wherewith to steel himself against
wit it is certain that he seldom puts it on. She refused several offers,
one so brilliant that no woman ever believed that it was really made.
Lady Susan saw that her niece, without a fortune, with little beauty
save that of high breeding, with weak health, was becoming a personage.
"What will she become?" people said. And in the meanwhile Hester did
nothing beyond dressing extremely well. And everything she saw and every
person she met added fuel to an unlit fire in her soul.
At last Rachel was able to earn a meagre living by type-writing, and for
four years, happy by contrast with those when despair and failure had
confronted her, she lived by the work of her hands among those poor as
herself. Gradually she had lost sight of all her acquaintances. She had
been out of the school-room for too short a time to make friends. And,
alas! in the set in which she had been launched poverty was a crime; no,
perhaps not quite that, but as much a bar to intercourse as in another
class a want of the letter _h_ is found to be.
It was while Rachel was still struggling for a livelihood that the event
happened which changed the bias of her character, as a geranium
transplanted from the garden changes its attitude in a cottage window.
On one of the early days of her despair she met on the dreary stairs of
the great rabbit-warren in which she had a room, a man with whom she
had been acquainted in the short year of her social life before the
collapse of her fortunes. He had paid her considerable attention, and
she had thought once or twice, with momentary bitterness, that, like the
rest, he had not cared to find out what had become of her. She greeted
him with shy but evident pleasure. She took for granted he had come to
see her, and he allowed her to remain under that delusion. In reality he
had been hunting up an old model whom he wanted for his next picture,
and who had silently left Museum Buildings some months before without
leaving his address. He had genuinely admired her, though he had
forgotten her, and he was unaffectedly delighted to see her again.
That one chance meeting was the first of many. Flowers came to Rachel's
little room, and romance came with them. Rachel's proud, tender heart
struggled, and then gave way before this radiant first love blossoming
in the midst of her loneliness. At last, on a March afternoon, when the
low sun caught the daffodils he had brought her, he told her he loved
her.
Days followed, exquisite days, which have none like them in later life
whatever later life may bring. That year the spring came early, and they
went often together into the country. And that year when all the world
was white with blossom the snow came and laid upon earth's bridal veil a
white shroud. Every cup of May blossom, every petal of hawthorn, bent
beneath its burden of snow. And so it was in the full spring-tide of
Rachel's heart. The snow came down upon it. She discovered at last that
though he loved her he did not wish to marry her; that even from the
time of that first meeting he had never intended to marry her. That
discovery was a shroud. She wrapped her dead love in it, and would fain
have buried it out of her sight.
But only after a year of conflict was she suffered to bury it--after a
year during which the ghost of her dead ever came back, and came back to
importune her vainly with its love. Rachel's poor neighbors grew
accustomed to see the tall, handsome, waiting figure which always
returned and returned, but which at last, after one dreadful day, was
seen no more in Museum Buildings. Rachel had laid the ghost at last. But
the conflict remained graven in her face.
* * * * *
On a certain cold winter morning Hester darted across the wet pavement
from the brougham to the untidy entrance of Museum Buildings where
Rachel still lived. It was a miserable day. The streets and bare trees
looked as if they had been drawn in in ink, and the whole carelessly
blotted before it was dry. All the outlines were confused, blurred. The
cold penetrated to the very bones of the shivering city.
Rachel had just come in, wet and tired, bringing with her a roll of
manuscript to be transcribed. A woman waiting for her on the endless
stone stairs had cursed her for taking the bread out of her mouth.
"He always employed me till you came," she shrieked, shaking her fist at
her, "and now he gives it all to you because you're younger and
better-looking."
She gave the woman as much as she dared spare, the calculation did not
take long, and went on climbing the stairs.
Something in the poor creature's words, something vague but repulsive in
her remembrance of the man who paid her for the work by which she could
barely live, fell like lead into Rachel's heart. She looked out dumbly
over the wilderness of roofs. The suffering of the world was eating into
her soul; the suffering of this vast travailing East London, where
people trod each other down to live.
"If any one had told me," she said to herself, "when I was rich, that I
lived on the flesh and blood of my fellow-creatures, that my virtue and
ease and pleasure were bought by their degradation and toil and pain, I
should not have believed it, and I should have been angry. If I had
been told that the clothes I wore, the food I ate, the pen I wrote with,
the ink I used, the paper I wrote on--all these, and everything I
touched, from my soap to my match-box, especially my match-box, was the
result of sweated labor, I should not have believed it, I should have
laughed. But yet it is so. If I had not been rich once myself I should
think as all these people do, that the rich are devils incarnate to let
such things go on. They have the power to help us. We have none to help
ourselves. But they never use it. The rich grind the poor for their
luxuries with their eyes shut, and we grind each other for our daily
bread with our eyes open. I have got that woman's work. I have struggled
hard enough to get it, but, though I did not realize it, I might have
known that I had only got on to the raft by pushing some one else off
it."
Rachel looked out across the miles of roofs which lay below her garret
window. The sound was in her ears of that great whirlpool wherein youth
and beauty and innocence go down quick day by day. The wilderness of
leaden roofs turned suddenly before her eyes into a sullen furrowed sea
of shame and crime which, awaiting no future day of judgment, daily gave
up its awful dead.
Presently Hester came in, panting a little after the long ascent of worn
stairs, and dragging with her a large parcel. It was a fur-lined cloak.
Hester spread it mutely before her friend, and looked beseechingly at
her. Then she kissed her, and the two girls clung together for a moment
in silence.
"Dearest," said Rachel, "don't give me new things. It isn't that--you
know I did take it when I was in need. But, oh, Hester, I know you can't
afford it. I should not mind if you were rich, at least, I would try
not, but--if you would only give me some of your old clothes instead. I
should like them all the better because you had worn them." And Rachel
kissed the lapel of Hester's coat.
"I can't," whispered Hester into Rachel's hair. "The best is only just
good enough."
"Wouldn't it be kinder to me?"
Hester trembled, and then burst into tears.
"I will wear it, I will wear it," said Rachel, hurriedly. "Look, Hester!
I have got it on. How deliciously warm! and--do look!--it has two little
pockets in the fur lining."
But Hester wept passionately, and Rachel sat down by her on the floor in
the new cloak till the paroxysm was over.
How does a subtle affinity find a foothold between natures which present
an obvious, a violent contrast to each other? Why do the obvious and the
subtle forget their life-long feud at intervals and suddenly appear for
a moment in each other's society?
Rachel was physically strong. Hester was weak. The one was calm,
patient, practical, equable, the other imaginative, unbalanced,
excitable.
Life had not spoiled Rachel. Lady Susan Gresley had done her best to
spoil Hester. The one had lived the unprotected life, and showed it in
her bearing. The other had lived the sheltered life, and bore its mark
upon her pure forehead and youthful face.
"I cannot bear it," said Hester at last. "I think and think, and I can't
think of anything. I would give my life for you, and you will hardly let
me give you £3 10_s._ 6_d._ That is all it cost. It is only frieze, that
common red frieze, and the lining is only rabbit." A last tear fell at
the word rabbit. "I wanted to get you a velvet one, just the same as my
new one, lined with chinchilla, but I knew it would only make you
miserable. I wish," looking vindictively at the cloak--"I wish rabbits
had never been born."
Rachel laughed. Hester was evidently recovering.
"Mr. Scarlett was saying last night that no one can help any one,"
continued Hester, turning her white, exhausted face to her friend. "He
said that we are always so placed that we can only look on. And I told
him that could not be true, but, oh, in my heart, Rachel, I have felt it
was true all these long, long five years since you have lived here."
Rachel came and stood beside her at the little window. There was just
room for them between the type-writer and the bed.
Far below, Hester's brougham was pacing up and down.
"Then are love and sympathy nothing?" she said. "Those are the real
gifts. If I were rich to-morrow I should look to you just as I do now
for the things which money can't buy. And those are the
things"--Rachel's voice shook--"which you have always given me, and
which I can't do without. You feel my poverty more than I do myself. It
crushed me at first when I could not support myself. Now that I can--and
in everything except money I am very rich--I am comparatively happy."
There was a long silence.
"Perhaps," said Rachel at last, with difficulty, "if I had remained an
heiress Mr. Tristram might have married me. I feel nearly sure he would
have married me. In that case I lost my money only just in time to
prevent a much greater misfortune, and I am glad I am as I am."
Rachel remembered that conversation often in after-years with a sense of
thankfulness that for once she, who was so reticent, had let Hester see
how dear she was to her.
The two girls stood long together cheek against cheek.
And as Hester leaned against Rachel the yearning of her soul towards her
suddenly lit up something which had long lain colossal, but
inapprehended, in the depths of her mind. Her paroxysm of despair at her
own powerlessness was followed by a lightning flash of self-revelation.
She saw, as in a dream, terrible, beautiful, inaccessible, but distinct,
where her power lay, of which restless bewildering hints had so often
mocked her. She had but to touch the houses and they would fall down.
She held her hands tightly together lest she should do it. The strength
as of an infinite ocean swept in beneath her weakness, and bore it upon
its surface like a leaf.
"You must go home," said Rachel gently, remembering Lady Susan's
punctual habits.
Hester kissed her absently and went out into the new world which had
been pressing upon her all her life, the gate of which Love had opened
for her. For Love has many keys besides that of her own dwelling. Some
who know her slightly affirm that she can only open her own cheap patent
padlock with a secret word on it that everybody knows. But some who know
her better hold that hers is the master-key which will one day turn all
the locks in all the world.
* * * * *
A year later Hester's first book, _An Idyll of East London_, was reaping
its harvest of astonished indignation and admiration, and her
acquaintances--not her friends--were still wondering how she came to
know so much of a life of which they decided she could know nothing,
when suddenly Lady Susan Gresley died, and Hester went to live in the
country with her clergyman brother.
A few months later still, and on a mild April day, when the poor London
trees had black buds on them, Rachel brushed and folded away in the
little painted chest of drawers her few threadbare clothes, and put the
boots--which the cobbler, whose wife she had nursed, had patched for
her--under the shelf which held her few cups and plates and the faithful
tin kettle, which had always been a cheerful boiler. And she washed her
seven coarse handkerchiefs, and put them in the washhandstand drawer.
And then she raked out the fire and cleaned the grate, and set the room
in order. It was quickly done. She took up her hat, which lay beside a
bundle on the bed. Her hands trembled as she put it on. She looked
wistfully round her, and her face worked. The little room which had
looked so alien when she came to it six years ago had become a home. She
went to the window and kissed the pane through which she had learned to
see so much. Then she seized up the bundle and went quickly out, locking
the door behind her, and taking the key with her.
"I am going away for a time, but I shall come back," she said to the
cobbler's wife on the same landing.
"No one comes back as once goes," said the woman, without raising her
eyes from the cheap blouse which she was finishing, which kept so well
the grim secret of how it came into being that no one was afraid of
buying it.
"I am keeping on the room."
The woman smiled incredulously, giving one sharp glance at the bundle.
She had seen many flittings. She should buy the kettle when Rachel's
"sticks" were sold by the landlord in default of the rent.
"Well, you was a good neighbor," she said. "There's a-many as 'ull miss
you. Good-bye, and good luck to ye. I sha'n't say as you've left."
"I shall come back," said Rachel, hoarsely, and she slipped down-stairs
like a thief. She felt like a thief. For she was rich. The man who had
led her father into the speculations which had ruined him had died
childless, and had bequeathed to her a colossal fortune.