HILDA ON THE STAIRS
I
Ada descended the stairs, young, slim, very neat. Ada was one of Hilda's
two new servants. Before taking charge of the house Hilda had ordained
the operation called "a clean sweep," and Edwin had approved. The elder
of Maggie's two servants had been a good one, but Hilda had shown no
interest in the catalogue of her excellences. She wanted fresh
servants. Maggie, like Edwin, approved, but only as a general principle.
In the particular case she had hinted that her prospective sister-in-law
was perhaps unwise to let slip a tested servant. Hilda wanted not
merely fresh servants, but young servants agreeable to behold. "I will
not have a lot of middle-aged scowling women about my house," Hilda had
said. Maggie was reserved, but her glance was meant to remind Hilda
that in those end-of-the-century days mistresses had to be content with
what they could get. Young and comely servants were all very well--if
you could drop on them, but supposing you couldn't? The fact was that
Maggie could not understand Hilda's insistence on youth and comeliness
in a servant, and she foresaw trouble for Hilda. Hilda, however,
obtained her desire. She was outspoken with her servants. If Edwin
after his manner implied that she was dangerously ignoring the
touchiness of the modern servant, she would say indifferently: "It's
always open to them to go if they don't like it." They did not go. It
is notorious that foolhardy mistresses are often very lucky.
As soon as Ada caught sight of her master in the hall she became
self-conscious; all the joints of her body seemed to be hung on very
resilient springs, and,--reddening slightly,--she lowered her gaze and
looked at her tripping toes. Edwin seldom spoke to her more than once a
day, and not always that. He had one day visited the large attic into
which, with her colleague, she disappeared late at night and from which
she emerged early in the morning, and he had seen two small tin trunks
and some clothes behind the door, and an alarm-clock and a portrait of a
fireman on the mantelpiece. (The fireman, he seemed to recollect, was
her brother.) But she was a stranger in his house, and he had no
sustained curiosity about her. The days were gone when he used to be
the intimate of servants--of Mrs. Nixon, for example, sole prop of the
Clayhanger family for many years, and an entirely human being to Edwin.
Mrs. Nixon had never been either young, slim, or neat. She was dead.
The last servant whom he could be said to have known was a pert niece of
Mrs. Nixon's--now somebody's prolific wife and much changed. And he was
now somebody's husband, and bearded, and perhaps occasionally pompous,
and much changed in other ways. So that enigmatic Adas bridled at sight
of him and became intensely aware of themselves. Still, this Ada in her
smartness was a pretty sight for his eyes as like an aspen she trembled
down the stairs, though the coarseness of her big red hands, and the
vulgarity of her accent were a surprising contrast to her waist and her
fine carriage.
He knew she had been hooking her mistress's dress, and that therefore
the hooking must be finished. He liked to think of Hilda being attired
thus in the bedroom by a natty deferential wench. The process gave to
Hilda a luxurious, even an oriental quality, which charmed him. He
liked the suddenly impressive tone in which the haughty Hilda would say
to Ada, "Your master," as if mentioning a sultan. He was more and more
anxious lest Hilda should be late, and he wanted to ask Ada: "Is Mrs.
Clayhanger coming down?"
But he discreetly forbore. He might have run up to the bedroom and
burst in on the toilette--Hilda would have welcomed him. But he
preferred to remain with his anxiety where he was, and meditate upon
Hilda bedecking herself up there in the bedroom--to please him; to
please not the guests, but him.
Ada disappeared down the narrow passage leading to the kitchen, and a
moment later he heard a crude giggle, almost a scream, and some echo of
the rough tones in which the servants spoke to each other when they were
alone in the kitchen. There were in fact two Adas; one was as timid as
a fawn with a voice like a delicate invalid's; the other a loud-mouthed
hoity-toity girl such as rushed out of potbanks in flannel apron at one
o'clock. The Clayhanger servants were satisfactory, more than
satisfactory, the subject of favourable comment for their neatness among
the mistresses of other servants. He liked them to be about; their
presence and their official demeanour flattered him; they perfected the
complex superiority of his house,--that island. But when he overheard
them alone together, or when he set himself to imagine what their soul's
life was, he was more than ever amazed at the unnoticed profound
differences between modes of thought that in apparently the most natural
manner could exist so close together without producing a cataclysm.
Auntie Hamps's theory was that they were all--he, she, the
servants--equal in the sight of God!
II
Hilda's son, George Edwin, sidled surprisingly into the hall. He was
wearing a sailor suit, very new, and he had probably been invisible
somewhere against the blue curtains of the drawing-room window--an
example of nature's protective mimicry. George was rather small for his
ten years. Dark, like his mother, he had her eyes and her thick
eyebrows that almost met in the middle, and her pale skin. As for his
mind, he seemed to be sometimes alarmingly precocious and sometimes a
case of arrested development. In this and many other respects he
greatly resembled other boys. The son of a bigamist can have no name,
unless it be his mother's maiden name, but George knew nothing of that.
He had borne his father's name, and when at the exciting and puzzling
period of his mother's marriage he had learnt that his surname would in
future be Clayhanger he had a little resented the affront to his egoism.
Edwin's explanation, however, that the change was for the convenience of
people in general had caused him to shrug his shoulders in concession
and to murmur casually: "Oh, well then--!" He seemed to be assenting
with loftiness: "If it's any particular use to the whole world, I don't
really mind."
"I say, uncle," he began.
Edwin had chosen this form of address. "Stepfather" was preposterous,
and "father" somehow offended him; so he constituted himself an uncle.
"Hello, kid!" said he. "Can you find room to keep anything else in your
pockets besides your hands?"
George snatched his hands out of his pockets. Then he smiled
confidently up. These two were friends. Edwin was as proud as the boy
of the friendship, and perhaps more flattered. At first he had not
cared for George, being repelled by George's loud, positive tones, his
brusque and often violent gestures, and his intense absorption in
himself. But gradually he had been won by the boy's boyishness, his
smile, his little, soft body, his unspoken invocations, his resentment
of injustice (except when strict justice appeared to clash with his own
interests), his absolute impotence against adult decrees, his touching
fatalism, his recondite personal distinction that flashed and was gone,
and his occasional cleverness and wit. He admitted that George charmed
him. But he well knew that he also charmed George. He had a way of
treating George as an equal that few children (save possibly Clara's)
could have resisted. True, he would quiz the child, but he did not
forbid the child to quiz. The mother was profoundly relieved and
rejoiced by this friendship. She luxuriated in it. Edwin might well
have been inimical to the child; he might through the child have shown a
jealousy of the child's father. But, somewhat to the astonishment of
even Edwin himself, he never saw the father in the child, nor thought of
the father, nor resented the parenthood that was not his. For him the
child was an individual. And in spite of his stern determination not to
fall into the delusions of conceited parents, he could not help thinking
that George was a remarkable child.
"Have you seen my horse?" asked George.
"Have I seen your horse? ... Oh! ... I've seen that you've left it lying
about on the hall-table."
"I put it there so that you'd see it," George persuasively excused
himself for the untidiness.
"Well, let's inspect it," Edwin forgave him, and picked up from the
table a piece of cartridge-paper on which was a drawing of a great
cart-horse with shaggy feet. It was a vivacious sketch.
"You're improving," said Edwin, judicially, but in fact much impressed.
Surely few boys of ten could draw as well as that! The design was
strangely more mature than certain quite infantile watercolours that
Edwin had seen scarcely a year earlier.
"It's rather good, isn't it?" George suggested, lifting up his head so
that he could just see over the edge of the paper which Edwin held at
the level of his watch-chain.
"I've met worse. Where did you see this particular animal?"
"I saw him down near the Brewery this morning. But when I'm doing a
horse, I see him on the paper before I begin to draw, and I just draw
round him."
Edwin thought:
"This kid is no ordinary kid."
He said:
"Well, we'll pin it up here. We'll have a Royal Academy and hear what
the public has to say." He took a pin from under his waistcoat.
"That's not level," said George.
And when Edwin had readjusted the pin, George persisted boldly:
"That's not level either."
"It's as level as it's going to be. I expect you've been drawing horses
instead of practising your piano."
He looked down at the mysterious little boy, who lived always so much
nearer to the earth's surface than himself.
George nodded simply, and then scratched his head.
"I suppose if I don't practise while I'm young I shall regret it in
after life, shan't I?"
"Who told you that?"
"It's what Auntie Hamps said to me, I think... I say, uncle."
"What's up?"
"Is Mr. John coming to-night?"
"I suppose so. Why?"
"Oh, nothing.... I say, uncle."
"That's twice you've said it."
The boy smiled.
"You know that piece in the Bible about if two of you shall agree on
earth--?"
"What of it?" Edwin asked rather curtly, anticipating difficulties.
"I don't think two _boys_ would be enough, would they? Two grown-ups
might. But I'm not so sure about two boys. You see in the very next
verse it says two _or three_, gathered together."
"Three might be more effective. It's always as well to be on the safe
side."
"Could you pray for anything? A penknife, for instance?"
"Why not?"
"But could you?" George was a little impatient.
"Better ask your mother," said Edwin, who was becoming self-conscious
under the strain.
George exploded coarsely:
"Poh! It's no good asking mother."
Said Edwin:
"The great thing in these affairs is to know what you want, and to
_want_ it. Concentrate as hard as you can, a long time in advance. No
use half wanting!"
"Well, there's one thing that's poz [positive]. I couldn't begin to
concentrate to-night."
"Why not?"
"Who could?" George protested. "We're all so nervous to-night, aren't
we, with this At Home business. And I know I never could concentrate in
my best clothes."
For Edwin the boy with his shocking candour had suddenly precipitated
out of the atmosphere, as it were, the collective nervousness of the
household, made it into a phenomenon visible, tangible, oppressive. And
the household was no longer a collection of units, but an entity. A
bell rang faintly in the kitchen, and the sound abraded his nerves. The
first guests were on the threshold, and Hilda was late. He looked at
the clock. Yes, she was late. The hour named in the invitations was
already past. All day he had feared lest she should be late, and she
was late. He looked at the glass of the front-door; but night had come,
and it was opaque. Ada tripped into view and ran upstairs.
"Don't you hear the front-door?" he stopped her flight.
"It was missis's bell, sir."
"Ah!" Respite!
Ada disappeared.
Then another ring! And no parlour-maid to answer the bell! Naturally!
Naturally Hilda, forgetting something at the last moment, had taken the
parlour-maid away precisely when the girl was needed! Oh! He had
foreseen it! He could hear shuffling outside and could even distinguish
forms through the glass--many forms. All the people converging from
various streets upon the waiting nervousness of the household seemed to
have arrived at once.
George moved impulsively towards the front-door.
"Where are you going?" Edwin asked roughly. "Come here. It's not your
place to open the door. Come with me in the drawing-room."
It was no affair of Edwin's, thought Edwin crossly and uncompromisingly,
if guests were kept waiting at the front-door. It was Hilda's affair;
she was the mistress of the house, and the blame was hers.
At high speed Ada swept with streamers down the stairs, like a squirrel
down the branch of a tree. And then came Hilda.
III
She stood at the turn of the stairs, waiting while the front-door was
opened. He and George could see her over and through the banisters.
And at sight of her triumphant and happy air, all Edwin's annoyance
melted. He did not desire that it should melt, but it melted. She was
late. He could not rely on her not to be late. In summoning the
parlourmaid to her bedroom when the parlourmaid ought to have been on
duty downstairs she had acted indefensibly and without thought. No
harm, as it happened, was done. Sheer chance often thus saved her, but
logically her double fault was not thereby mitigated. He felt that if
he forgave her, if he dismissed the charge and wiped the slate, he was
being false to the great male principles of logic and justice. The
godlike judge in him resented the miscarriage of justice. Nevertheless
justice miscarried. And the weak husband said like a woman: "What does
it matter?" Such was her shameful power over him, of which the
unscrupulous creature was quite aware.
As he looked at her he asked himself: "Is she magnificent? Or is she
just ordinary and am I deluded? Does she seem her age? Is she a mature
woman getting past the prime, or has she miraculously kept herself a
young girl for me?"
In years she was thirty-five. She had large bones, and her robust body,
neither plump nor slim, showed the firm, assured carriage of its age.
It said: "I have stood before the world, and I cannot be intimidated."
Still, marriage had rejuvenated her. She was marvellously young at
times, and experience would drop from her and leave the girl that he had
first known and kissed ten years earlier; but a less harsh, less
uncompromising girl. At their first acquaintance she had repelled him
with her truculent seriousness. Nowadays she would laugh for no
apparent reason, and even pirouette. Her complexion was good; he could
nearly persuade himself that that olive skin had not suffered in a
decade of distress and disasters.
Previous to her marriage she had shown little interest in dress. But
now she would spasmodically worry about her clothes, and she would make
Edwin worry. He had to decide, though he had no qualifications as an
arbiter. She would scowl at a dressmaker as if to say: "For God's sake
do realise that upon you is laid the sacred responsibility of helping me
to please my husband!" To-night she was wearing a striped blue dress,
imperceptibly decolletee, with the leg-of-mutton sleeves of the period.
The colours, two shades of blue, did not suit her. But she imagined
that they suited her, and so did he; and the frock was elaborate, was
the result of terrific labour and produced a rich effect, meet for a
hostess of position.
The mere fact that this woman with no talent for coquetry should after
years of narrow insufficiency scowl at dressmakers and pout at senseless
refractory silks in the yearning for elegance was utterly delicious to
Edwin. Her presence there on the landing of the stairs was in the
nature of a miracle. He had wanted her, and he had got her. In the end
he had got her, and nothing had been able to stop him--not even the
obstacle of her tragic adventure with a rascal and a bigamist. The
strong magic of his passion had forced destiny to render her up to him
mysteriously intact, after all. The impossible had occurred, and
society had accepted it, beaten. There she was, dramatically, with her
thick eyebrows, and the fine wide nostrils and the delicate lobe of the
ear, and that mouth that would startlingly fasten on him and kiss the
life out of him.
"There is dear Hilda!" said someone at the door amid the arriving group.
None but Auntie Hamps would have said 'dear' Hilda. Maggie, Clara, and
even Janet Orgreave never used sentimental adjectives on occasions of
ceremony.
And in her clear, precise, dominating voice Hilda with gay ease greeted
the company from above:
"Good evening, all!"
"What the deuce was I so upset about just now?" thought Edwin, in
sudden, instinctive, exulting felicity: "Everything is absolutely all
right."