"Do you remember when Hilda came to us?"
"Perfectly."
"I said to you on that day, 'Mother, the new maid is as pretty as a
picture.' Do you remember?"
"No."
"Well, I said it, and Hilda heard me say it, and please don't laugh, it
seems that my saying it made the poor child--Oh, care about me. She's
cared ever since, and I'm afraid she cares a whole lot."
"How did you get to know?"
"She told me, this morning, practically out of a clear sky. One thing
I want to make clear is that it's just as little my fault as it
possibly can be. I feel like the devil about it, but I can't for the
life of me find one little hook to hang a shred of self-reproach on.
My morals aren't what they should be. But I am a fastidious man, and
the roof under which my mother lives is to me as the roof of a temple.
But you know all this. Now what's to be done? One thing is clear, I
can't and won't be amorously waited on. I think the poor child will
have to be sent away."
"Oh, dear!" cried my mother, "and just when she's getting to be a
perfect servant, and your father so used to her now--says he never
knows when she's in the room and when she isn't."
We returned to the house.
"I'll talk it over with her," announced my mother, "and try to decide
what's best--best for her, the poor, pretty little thing."
You may be sure that that meeting in the little room where my mother
wrote her letters was no meeting between a mistress and a servant, but
between two honest women who in different ways loved the same man.
I was with Lucy while it took place, but certain gists of what was said
and done have come to me, some from my mother, and some from Hilda.
My mother, it seemed, waived at once all those degrees of the social
scale which separated them, took Hilda in her arms, kissed her, and
held her while Hilda had what women call a "good cry." My mother is
too proud and brave to cry, but she was unhappy without affectation.
After the embrace and the cry they sat side by side on a little
brocaded sofa and talked. My mother fortunately did not have to point
out the social obstacles in the way of a match between Hilda and me, as
there was never any question of such a match. Indeed, in the talk
between them I was not at first mentioned. My mother took the position
that Hilda was just a sweet, nice-minded girl who was very unhappy and
needed comforting, and advice. First she made Hilda tell the story of
her life. To be permitted to do this in the presence of a sincere
listener and well-wisher is one of the greatest comforts to anyone.
"The poor child," said my mother, "has had such a drab, colorless,
unhappy life that it made her almost happy to tell about it."
It seemed that Hilda wasn't "anybody" even for a servant. Her earliest
recollections were of life in an English orphanage--one of those
orphanages where the mothers of the orphans are still alive and there
never were any fathers.
"But she's made herself think," my mother told me, "that her father was
a gentleman--God save the mark!"
Well, she went into service when she was a "great" girl of fourteen or
fifteen, and after various drab adventures in servitude came to this
country and was presently sent to my mother on approval. She had left
her last place in England because of a horrible butler. He was
bowlegged and very old. He drank and made the poor frightened girls in
the house listen to horrible stories. One found notes, printed notes,
pinned on one's pincushion. "Have a heart. Don't lock your door
tonight," and such like. Or a piece of plate would be missed and one
would find it in one's bureau drawer, where the horrible old man had
put it, and one dared not complain to the master lest upon carefully
planned circumstantial evidence one be made out to be a thief.
It had been so wonderful coming to live in my mother's house. The
servants were so different, so kind, so worthy. The servants' rooms
were so clean and neat and well-furnished as the master's rooms. So
much was done to make the servants comfortable and happy. Nobody had
ever spoken crossly to one in my mother's house----"And, Oh, Mrs.
Mannering, I feel so low and ashamed to have made so much trouble for
you and Mr. Archie."
That was the first mention of my name.
"My dear Hilda, you mustn't feel ashamed because you've had a romance."
"Oh, it has been a sort of romance, hasn't it, Mrs. Mannering? But I
never--never should have let it all come out. Because now I'll have to
go away, and never even see him ever any more. I never should have let
it come out, but I couldn't help it. And him always so kind and
polite, and never once guessing all these years!"
Now my mother had not gone into that interview without a definite plan.
She had heard that the Fultons--of all the people in this world whom it
might have been!--were being abandoned by their waitress, and already
by a brisk use of the telephone my mother had secured the place for
Hilda.
It's a wonder that Hilda did not burst out laughing or screaming when
she heard into whose service she was to go. I don't think she hated
Lucy--yet. But for a woman who loved a man to take a place with the
woman the man loved must have struck her as the most grotesque of
propositions. But what could she do? Loyal to me, and to my secret,
she wasn't going to give me away to my mother.
"But," she protested, "Mr. Archie goes so much to that house!"
"But now," said my mother, "don't you see, he won't go so much."
Indeed the dear manager felt that she had killed two birds with one
stone. Lucy had a good place, and from now on there would be in the
Fultons' house a living reason why a man of tact (like her beloved
son!) should keep away. Alas, mother, there were other living reasons
in that house which should have served to keep me away, and didn't.
I heard from my mother of the arrangement and was troubled. For once
in her life of smoothing out other people's lives she had blundered
seriously. Her measures had in them only this of success: that I found
many excuses for not taking meals in the Fultons' house, and from that
time forward saw Hilda very seldom. My mother gave her a lot of
clothes, and quite a lot of money, I suppose, and the poor child for a
while dropped out of sight. But not out of mind, I can tell you; for
it worried me sick to feel that she was always in Lucy's house,
watching and listening when she could.
I had not at this time had any great experience with the passion of
jealousy. But a man who reads the newspapers, or has done his turn at
jury duty in Criminal Sessions, cannot be ignorant of the desperate
acts to which now and again it drives men and women.
Hilda, according to the slight knowledge I had of her character, was
gentle and patient; she would be treated by Lucy as all Lucy's servants
were, with the greatest tact and friendliness, and still the mere fact
of her presence in that house filled me with forebodings. She would be
in a position to make so much trouble, if ever anything should happen
to start her on the war path. She had proved already that her moral
nature was not superior to eavesdropping; already she had my secret by
the ears, and one-sided and innocent though that secret may have
appeared to her, it was not really a one-sided secret, and when she had
got her clutch upon the other side, she could be almost as dangerous
and mischievous as you please.
At best, Hilda was one more difficulty with which Lucy and I would have
to contend.
It would have been wisest to tell Lucy all that I knew about Hilda.
But you may have noticed with butterflies that they do not fly the
straight line between two points; rather they fly in circles, with
back-tracking, excursions, and gyrations, so that unless you have seen
them start you cannot guess where they have started from, nor until the
wings close and the insects come to a definite rest, are you in a
position to know what their objective was.
In the face of our recently declared love for each other, any mention
of Hilda's below-stairs passion for the "young master" seemed to me a
blatant indelicacy. Almost it might have a quality of pluming and
boasting, a gross acceptance of man's polygamous potentialities.
There would be time later for conversations in which future
practicalities should take precedence over romantic fancies and
protestations. Just now the Butterfly did not care a rap what should
happen when winter came; for the present the world was filled with
flowers--all his, and all containing honey.