For two whole weeks--strange cataclysm in the Archinard household--Hilda
stayed in bed really ill. Taylor waited on her with an indignant
devotion that implied, by contrast, worlds of repressed antagonism; for
Taylor had highly disapproved of her trip with Katherine, and when she
announced to Hilda on the day after the great catastrophe that Katherine
had returned to England, she added with emphasis--
"But I don't go this time, Miss Hilda. It's your turn to have a maid
now."
The news took a weight of dread from Hilda's heart. She shrank from
again seeing her own guilt looking at her from Katherine's tragic eyes.
She did not need Katherine to impress it; during long days and dim, half
delirious nights it haunted her, the awful sense of irremediable wrong,
of everlasting responsibility for her sister's misery. With all the
capability for self-torture, only possessed by the most finely tempered
natures, she scourged her memory again and again through that blighting
hour when she had appealed for and confessed a love that had dishonored
her. She dwelt with sickening on the moment when she had said: "I love
you, too!" Her conscience, fanatically unbalanced, distorted it with
cruellest self-injustice. Indeed, such moments in life are difficult of
analysis; the unconsciously spoken words followed by a consciousness so
swift that in perspective they merge. In periods of clearer moral
visions she could place her barrier, but only for mere flashes of
relief, turned from with agony, as the dreadful fact of Katherine's
ruined love surged over all and made of day and night one blackness.
Hilda's love for Odd now told her that for months past it had been
growing from the child's devotion, and, with the new torture of a
hopeless longing upon her--for which she despised herself--she saw in
the whole scene with him the base self-betrayal of a lovesick heart.
Only a few days after Katherine's departure, the Captain returned.
Hilda felt, as he would come in and look at her lying there with that
weird sense of distance upon her, that her father was changed. He walked
carefully in and out on the tips of the Archinard toes, and, outside the
door, she could hear him talking in tones of fretful anxiety on her
behalf.
He hardly mentioned Katherine's broken engagement, and, for once in her
life, Hilda was an object of consideration for her family. Even Mrs.
Archinard rose from her sofa on more than one occasion to sit
plaintively beside her daughter's bed; and it was from her that Hilda
learned that they were going back to Allersley.
Her father, then, must have enough money to pay mortgages and debts, and
Hilda lay with closed eyes while her forebodings leaped to possibilities
and to probabilities. The Captain's good fortune showed to her in a
dismal light of material dependence, and she could guess miserably at
its source. She could guess who encompassed her feeble life with care,
and who it was that shielded her from even a feather's weight of
gratitude--for the Captain made no mention of his good luck.
"Yes, we are going back to the Priory," Mrs. Archinard said, her
melancholy eyes resting almost reproachfully upon her daughter's wasted
face. "It would be pleasant were it not that fate takes care to
compensate for any sweet by an engulfing bitter. Katherine to jilt Mr.
Odd, and you so dangerously ill, Hilda. I do not wonder at it, I
predicted it rather. You have killed yourself _tout simplement_; I
consider it a simple case of suicide. Ah, yes, indeed! The doctor thinks
it very, very serious. No vitality, complete exhaustion. I said to him,
'_Docteur, elle s'est tuée._' I said it frankly."
Mrs. Archinard found another invalid rather confusing. She had for so
long contemplated one only, that, insensibly, she adopted the same tones
of pathos and pity on Hilda's behalf, hardly realizing their objective
nature.
By the beginning of May they were once more in Allersley. It was like
returning to a prior state of existence, and Hilda, lying in a wicker
chair on the lawn, looked at the strange familiarity of the trees, the
meadows, the river between its sloping banks of smooth green turf, and
felt like a ghost among the unchanged scenes of her childhood.
Mrs. Archinard found out, bit by bit, that it was tiresome to keep her
sofa now that there was an opposition faction on the lawn; she realized,
too, to a certain extent, what it was that Hilda had been to that sofa
existence; without the background of Hilda's quiet servitude, it became
flat and flavorless, and Mrs. Archinard arose and actually walked, and
for longer periods every day, drifting about the house and garden in
pensive contemplation of tenants' havoc. She sighed over the Priory and
said it had changed very much, but, characteristically, she did not
think of asking how the Priory had come to them again. The Captain
vouchsafed no hint. He went rather sulkily through his day, fished a
little--the Captain had no taste for a pleasure as inexpensive as
fishing--and read the newspapers with ejaculations of disgust at
political follies.
When Hilda sat in the sunshine near the river, her father often walked
aimlessly in her neighborhood, eyeing her with almost embarrassed
glances, always averted hastily if her eyes met his. Hilda had submitted
passively to all the material changes of her life; she saw them only
vaguely, concentrated on that restless inner torture. But one day, as
her father lingered indeterminately around her, switching his
fishing-rod, looking hastily into his fishing-basket, and showing
evident signs of perplexity and indecision very clumsily concealed, a
sudden thought of her own egotistic self-absorption struck her, and a
sudden sense of method underlying the Captain's manoeuvres.
"Papa, come and sit down by me a little while. I am sure the fish will
be glad of a respite. Isn't it a little sunny to-day for first-class
fishing?" Hilda pointed to the chair near hers, and the Captain came up
to her with shy alacrity.
"Even first-class fishing is a bore, _I_ think," he observed, not
taking the chair, but laying his rod upon it, and looking at his
daughter and then at the river.
"Feeling better to-day, aren't you? You might take a stroll with me,
perhaps; but no, you're not strong enough for that, are you? Fine day,
isn't it?"
Now that the moment looked forward to, yet dreaded, might be coming, the
Captain vaguely tried to avert it after the procrastinating manner of
weak people. Hilda did not seem to have anything particular to say, and
the absent-minded smile on her face reassured him as to immediate
issues.
"How are _you_ feeling?" she asked; "I have been looking at the trees
and grass for so long that I had almost forgotten that there are human
beings in the world."
"Oh, I'm very well; very well indeed." The Captain was again feeling
uncomfortable. An inner coercion seemed to be forcing him to speak just
because speaking was not really imperative at the moment. A little glow
of self-approbation suddenly prompted him to add: "You know, I know
about it now. That is to say, I wasn't exactly to speak of it, if it
might pain you; but I don't see why it should do _that_. Upon my word,"
said the Captain, feeling warmly self-righteous now that the ice was
broken, "it's more likely to pain me, isn't it? Rather to my discredit,
you know; though, intrinsically, I was as innocent as a babe unborn. Of
course you helped me over a tight place now and then, but I thought the
money came to you with a mere turn of the hand, so to speak; and, as for
your teaching--wearing yourself out--well, I don't know which I was
angrier with first, you or myself. I never dreamed of it, it never
entered into my head. And then, _my_ daughter and low French cads! Well,
_he_ saw to that, and so did I. I saw the fellow too; thought it best,
you know; for, naturally, Odd couldn't have my weight and authority. I
was simply stupefied, you know. It quite knocked me over when he told
me. Odd told me--"
The Captain took up his rod, examined the reel, and then switched its
limber length tentatively through the air. It was embarrassing, after
all, this recognition of his daughter's life.
"Now your mother doesn't know," he pursued; "Odd seemed rather anxious
that she should; rather unfeeling of him too, I thought it. There was no
necessity for that, was there? It would have quite killed her, wouldn't
it? Quite."
"You need neither of you have known." All she was wondering about,
trying to grasp, made Hilda pale. "It came about most naturally; and, if
mamma's illness and that other unpleasant episode had not broken me
down, my modest business might have come to an end--no one the wiser for
it. Mr. Odd exaggerated the whole thing no doubt."
"Well, I don't know." The Captain now sat down on the chair with a sigh
of some relief. "It's off my mind at all events. I wanted to express
my--pain, you know, and my gratitude--and to say what a jolly trump I
thought you; that kind of thing."
"Dear papa, I don't deserve it."
"Ah, well, Odd isn't the man to make misstatements, you know. A bit of
dreamer, unpractical, no doubt. But he sees facts as clearly as any one,
you know. He showed it all clearly. Rather cutting, to tell you the
truth. Of course he's very fond of you; that's natural. This sad affair
of Katherine's; if it hadn't been for that, you and he would be brother
and sister by this time."
It was Hilda's turn now to draw in a little breath of relief. At all
events her father was no ally. No other secret had been told, and she
saw, now that the dread had gone, that any cause for it would have
involved an indelicacy towards Katherine of which she knew Odd to be
incapable.
"Where is he--Mr. Odd?" she asked, steeling herself to the question.
The look of gloom which touched the Captain's face anew, confirmed Hilda
in her certainty of infinite pecuniary obligation.
"Not at home. Travelling again, I believe. A man can't sit down quietly
under a blow like that."
A flush came over Hilda's face. Part of her punishment was evident. She
must hear Katherine spoken of as the fickle, shallow-hearted, while she,
guilt-stained, answerable for all, went undiscovered and crowned with
praises. Yet Katherine herself--any woman--would choose the part Odd had
given her--the part of jilt rather than jilted; and she, Hilda, was
helpless.
"Papa," she asked, driving in the dagger up to the hilt--she could at
least punish herself, if no one else could punish her--"where is
Katherine? Is she not coming to stay with us?" The Captain swung one leg
over the other with impatience.
"I've hardly heard from her; she is with the Leonards in London. Odd
spoke very highly of her; seemed to think she had acted honorably; but,
naturally, Katherine must feel that she has behaved badly."
"I am sure she has not done that, papa. She found that she would not be
happy with him."
"Pshaw! That's all feminine folly, you know. She probably saw some one
she liked better, some bigger match. Katherine isn't the girl to throw
over a man like Odd for a whim."
Hilda's flush was now as much for her father as for herself. She felt
her cheeks burning as she said, her voice trembling--
"Papa, papa! How can you say such a thing of Katherine! How can you! I
know it is not true. I know it!"
"Oh, very well, if you are in her secrets. I know Katherine pretty well
though, and it's not unimaginable. I don't imply anything vulgar." The
Captain rose as he spoke and swung his basket into place; "that's not
conceivable in my daughter. But Katherine's ambitious, very ambitious.
As for you, Hilda--and all that, you know--I am awfully sorry, you
understand." The Captain walked away briskly, satisfied at having eased
his conscience. Odd had made it feel uncomfortably swollen and unwieldy,
and the Captain's conscience was, by nature, slim and flexible.
Hilda lay in her chair, and looked at the river running brightly beyond
the branches of the lime-tree under which she sat. The flush of misery
that her father's cool suppositions on Katherine's conduct had seemed
to strike into her face, only died slowly. She had to turn from that
shame resolutely, contemplation would only deepen its helplessness. She
looked at the river, and thought of the time when she had stood beside
it with Odd and recited Chaucer to him. She thought of the humorous
droop of his eyelids, the kind, comprehensive clasp of his hand on hers;
the look of the hand too, long, brown, delicate, the finger-tips too
dainty for a man, and the dark green seal on his finger. Hilda turned
her head away from the river and closed her eyes.
"Allone, withouten any companye," that was the fated motto of her life.