HIDDEN SPRINGS
She stood still, dismayed, her hand still on the doorknob, obviously
distressed at the unexpected company in which she found herself.
"Miss Grey ... do please come in ... is there anything I can do ...?"
mumbled Carminow in great agitation, pushing a chair forward and then
pulling it back again indeterminedly.
"I'm so sorry--" began the low full voice, richer in speech than in
song. "I'd no idea--I only wondered whether you could--but it's
nothing."
"Anything," Carminow assured her distractedly; "but please permit me to
introduce my friends ... Mr. Killigrew, Mr. Ruan--Miss Grey."
Everyone bowed, and then Miss Grey said simply: "It was only that my
lamp has gone out; you know there isn't any gas on my floor, and I
remembered you had paraffin for your reading lamp.... I'm so afraid of
the dark. I know it's very silly...."
"Not at all, very natural, I'm sure. You can have the whole lamp, Miss
Grey, but you must let me clean it. It might smell. Yes, please, I
insist. You must sit down here in the light while I do it. I'm afraid
it's dweadfully smoky. Killigrew, do open the window--"
So he fussed, while Miss Grey, with a murmured thanks, sank into the
chair Ishmael shyly offered her and waited very simply, her hands folded
on her lap. There was a simplicity, a lack of any self-consciousness, in
her whole manner, so Ishmael, used to Phoebe and Vassie--neither of
whom was the same in men's company that she was out of it--told
himself. This girl seemed divinely unaware even of any strangeness in
the position in which she now found herself--the unawareness of an
angel.... When Killigrew talked to her she answered frankly and freely,
almost with the confidence of a child. She could not be more than
twenty, Ishmael decided, and with all her maturity of build had a
childish air. The fashions of the day were not conducive to youthfulness
of appearance; but not even the long full skirts trimmed with bands of
black velvet or the close-fitting bodice could make her seem other than
a schoolgirl, while the hair worn brushed loosely back from the forehead
instead of brought down in sleek waves gave her a look that reminded him
of someone, though he could not remember whom. Then with a sudden flash
he remembered it was Hilaria, little Hilaria Eliot--she too had that
look which, being in the middle of the period himself, he did not
recognise as alien to its stamp, but which was so conspicuously so that
women might have called it dowdy and men individual. But this girl was
feminine, that was obvious in the timid shyness even of her trusting
attitude.
Oddly enough--or oddly as if seemed to Ishmael, who was wont to be in
the background when out with Killigrew--it was to him that she chiefly
addressed herself. Killigrew sat watching as from general remarks of
great propriety about the weather and Ishmael's opinions of London as a
place to visit they passed to her views on it as a place in which to
live. These were, apparently, not over favourable.
"One always feels a stranger, in a way, if one was born and brought up
in the country, doesn't one? I feel that every day. I've never got over
expecting to see the big elm outside my window when I wake, and instead
I see the chimney-pots. And then I may just be getting used to it when
there arrives a letter from Papa telling me how it all looks at
home--all the silly little things about the flowers and the chickens and
the old people in the parish, and then I have to start all over again."
There was a strain of wistfulness in her full voice, but her eyes were
limpidly unconscious of it, with their candid glance that suggested
courage and even a certain gaiety. If it had not been for that look in
her eyes she would have seemed doll-like; even as it was in the purely
physical aspect of her there was a waxen dollishness which was at once
disconcerting and attractive. It was obvious that Carminow, who
presumably knew her, was passionately convinced that she was what he
would have called "all right"; that he was considerably more fond of her
than he would have admitted was equally obvious. To him that odd
dollishness of aspect was just the sweet pink and white of a naïve young
girl, but to Killigrew it gave, by its very completeness, a hint as of
something oddly inhuman, or at least unawakened, as though she had been
a puppet, a pretty puppet that walked and spoke and said the right
things. It was not so much any lack of intelligence in what she said as
in her slow speech and her whole look. Her skin was so white--and
Killigrew thought he knew if Ishmael did not how that whiteness was
attained--except for a slight pink flush below extravagantly calm eyes
of a clear pale grey; the modelling of the face was wide across brow and
cheekbones and across the jaw on the level of the too-small mouth; then
came a dimpled chin, short and childish, as was the tip-tilted nose. It
was the type of face which, in its broad modelling of planes and
petal-fineness of edges, suggests a pansy. The blondness of
her--ashen-dead fairness of hair and pale skin with those pellucid eyes
beneath dust-brown brows--all united in an effort of innocence that
surpassed itself and became the blandness of a doll. She was curiously
immobile, sat very quietly, and moved slowly, graceful in the way that
a heavily-built puma is graceful, because of the thoroughly sound
construction of her bones and muscles. Killigrew, as he watched her, was
vastly intrigued by what he phrased to himself as the "innocent sweet
corruption of her look." For with all that dollish look, perhaps because
of it, it was possible, so Killigrew thought, to imagine her being very
bad with the help of that protective mask. It was also compatible with
an Undine-like soullessness, a cold clearness of outlook, or a slightly
heavy if sweet stupidity. He thought it quite likely she might have all
the virtues except a naturally good complexion, but he wondered about
her, seeing her charm without feeling it.
The lamp was ready all too soon, and the lucky Carminow had the best
right to carry it upstairs for her. She shook hands with both his
friends as she said good-night, and Ishmael noticed how straightly she
looked from her equal height into his eyes as her hand lay in his. Then
the door swung to, but without closing, and in a moment there came the
low sound of her voice from the landing above.
"Mr. Carminow...." she was saying--and the words, excepting just now and
again, were audible to the two in the sitting-room--"I hope--I don't
know what your friends must think. Do tell them, will you, that I'm not
in the habit of running down to your room like that? Mr. Ruan looks so
good. I wouldn't like him to think--"
"No one thinks anything like that; they couldn't, I assure you. Do
believe me, Miss Grey. You won't sleep if you worry, you know. Promise
me to believe me. I'll say something to them if it'll make you any
happier."
"Will you? Then I'll promise too. I can take the lamp now. And--thank
you, Mr. Carminow."
Down in the sitting-room when Carminow entered it again there was a
moment or two of silence.
"Look here, you two fellows!" said Carminow; then, "You see for
yourselves that Miss Grey is a perfect lady...."
"Exactly how I should have described her," interjected Killigrew.
"What I mean to say is that of course Miss Grey would not have dweamt of
coming down if she had known you two were here...."
"Should have thought we made enough noise coming in. But I suppose what
you're driving at is that she only comes when you're alone; is that it?"
asked Killigrew wickedly.
"Damn it all! you know it's not what I mean at all, only you twist
everything a fellow says so. Anyway, I'd hate anyone to go and make a
mistake about her."
"I won't," said Killigrew.
"It wouldn't be possible, I think," said Ishmael; "she's got that sort
of clear look, you couldn't."
"Yes, that's just it," agreed Carminow gratefully. "Sometimes she even
does things that might seem a little odd or rash, and it's all because
she is such a child of nature she doesn't understand. A sort of
Miwanda."
"What is her name, by the way?" asked Killigrew idly.
"Blanche, I believe."
"Blanche Grey ... a rather humorous combination. Well, we must go or we
shall be keeping you from your beastly legalised murder at eight. Come
on, Ishmael!"
"I'll come up to the Strand with you," said Carminow. "I have to be
early at the prison, or one doesn't get through the crowd, not with a
single valuable left on you anyway, and lucky to keep your shirt and
trousers. You're sure you won't come? I could manage something for you."
Neither felt disposed--Ishmael not only because he knew it would make
him deadly sick, but because the mere though of it had somehow become
horrible, and Killigrew because he was rather glad to make Ishmael an
excuse for not going himself. They all strode along the dim, quiet
street, empty except for a dweller of the night who slunk into deeper
shadows on seeing that there were three of them.
"She's an interesting-looking girl, that Miss Grey," observed Killigrew,
more to try and draw Carminow than because he was really interested in
the subject himself.
"She reminded me of someone, and at first I couldn't think who," said
Ishmael, feeling a queer little pleasure at talking of her thus
casually; "and then I remembered Hilaria--you remember little Hilaria
Eliot, who used to be so jolly to us all at St. Renny?"
"She is the last person I should have compared with Miss Grey," said
Killigrew decidedly. "I should say they were as different as it is
possible for two persons of the same sex to be. Hilaria was like a boy;
Miss Grey is most feminine."
"Yes, she is," said Ishmael eagerly; "but there's the same frankness,
that way of meeting you that other girls don't have."
"I know what you mean," agreed Carminow, "though I don't think one
notices it when one sees more of Miss Grey. As Killigrew says, she is so
essentially feminine--she is always gwateful for support in a way that
is really very sad in one who has to battle with the world. It is a hard
life for a refined gentlewoman, I fear."
"Dear old chap, with his 'battling with the world' and all the rest of
his really highly moral conventional views!" exclaimed Killigrew. "He's
a fraud, isn't he, Ishmael, who pretends to love to wallow in blug just
to hide his lamblike disposition."
"You always did talk wot," remarked Carminow placidly. "You're weally
not a bit changed, Killigrew, in spite of Paris. By the way, I suppose
you heard about Polkinghorne?"
"Yes, from Old Tring. I went to St. Renny a little while ago."
"Ah! then you heard about Hilaria? I thought from Ruan's mention of her
you had neither of you heard."
"Heard what?"
"Why," said Carminow in rather a shocked voice, "about her illness."
"No!..." exclaimed Ishmael and Killigrew in a breath; and Killigrew went
on: "What illness? I can't imagine the Hilaria we used to know ill."
"She's not the Hilaria we used to know, I'm afraid. You would hardly
recognize her. She's got a disease--you wouldn't know it if I were to
tell you its name--that is one of the most obscure known to science, if
you can call a thing known when no cure can be discovered to it. Yes,
she's hopelessly paralysed, is poor Hilaria." A certain impersonal note
as he spoke of the illness had crept through all the genuine feeling in
Carminow's voice.
"But it's impossible!" cried Ishmael, profoundly shocked, not so much at
any personal feeling for Hilaria, as an instinctive protest that such
things could be. "Hilaria--why she was never still, and the things she
did--why, you remember her walks and her fencing and everything--"
"Old Dr. Harvey at St. Renny puts it down very largely to those
excessive walks she used to take," said Carminow.
Ishmael said nothing; he was struck by a greater horror that it should
have been those walks, which had so seemed to set Hilaria apart from her
sex, on which he had so often accompanied her, of which even now he
could recall the delight though he had not thought of them since....
Carminow went on:
"But of course I don't agree with him; he only says that because he
always disapproved of the way poor old Eliot brought her up. Personally
I think it was a very healthy way, and I believe it will be for the good
of the race when women are made to exercise more. But Hilaria had the
seeds of this sclerosis in her then, and nothing can stop it;
over-exertion may have made it worse, as it does any illness, but it
couldn't have caused it. It's being mercifully rapid, that's one
comfort."
"It's ghastly," said Killigrew in a low voice. "Where is she, Carminow?
Have you seen her?"
"Well, yes, as a matter of fact I go when I can. I think it gives her
pleasure to see anyone from the old days. She's in a home for such
things in London. Her father lodges round the corner to be near her.
It's awful to see him. You know how he was about her.... She would be
brought back from France when they found out how bad it was. D'you
remember how her eyes used to give out sometimes when she was reading to
us? That was all part of the same thing, always in her, beginning to
come out."
A little silence. Both Ishmael and Killigrew were wondering if they
ought to go and see her or not, both fighting a repulsion of which
Killigrew's was more purely æsthetic and Ishmael's rather a passionate
wish to keep thought of such a thing away from life....
They had come to the parting of their way from Carminow's, and all three
were standing at the street corner under a flickering gas lamp.
"Well," said Carminow a little awkwardly, "I suppose now we've met I
shall be seeing you fellows again? I'm genewally in in the evenings when
I don't have to be on duty at the hospital."
It was Ishmael who replied:
"I shall probably be round some time soon," he said. "I shall want to
hear how the new drop worked, you know. By the way, what theatre is
Miss Grey appearing at? It might be interesting to go and see the
performance, mightn't it, Joe?"
"Oh, damn it all! I can only think for the moment of poor little
Hilaria," exclaimed Killigrew. "I used to be very fond of her.... I
wonder--"
"I'll find out if she'd like to see you and Ruan when next I go if you
like, but it's painful, because she can only get her words out in
jerks," said Carminow. "It's the Strand that Miss Grey's appearing at.
Quite a small part; but at least it's a lady-like one, and her stage
name is Miss Blanche Nevill. Good-night, you fellows!"
They echoed his farewell, and then, finding no belated growler, set out
to walk all the way back to Tavistock Square. They mentioned neither
Hilaria nor Blanche Grey again that night, but as Ishmael lay for a long
time awake staring into the darkness he could not keep his mind from
reverting with a sense of deep fear to what he had heard about Hilaria.
That such things could lie in wait in life, around the path of people
one knew--people like oneself.... To others these exotic misfortunes,
not to oneself or those near one. He had the sensation of incredulity
with which one hears of some intimate friend involved in a train
accident or attacked by some freakish fate such as may be read of in the
newspapers daily but is never realised as being an actual and possible
happening. Polkinghorne's death had made him believe there was such a
thing as death, but it was so remote. This was different. If these
things could come into life, ordinary every-day life....
He sorrowed not only for Hilaria, but for life. The news had given him
his first pang of dread about it; his trust in it was never to be quite
the same again. That was all, for him, that Hilaria had existed for,
simply to teach him so much of knowledge. It seemed odd, even to the
egoism of his youth, that she should have had so great a share in the
pattern of his life at one time only to go out of it so inevitably. He
was not to realise for many years how important the lesson was of which
she, by the mere news of her state, had taught him the beginnings. If
her contact with him formerly had been less, so would the shock of the
news have been. People have impinged more deeply upon others' lives and
both by their entry and their leaving of them stood for less.