By the end of June, returning physical strength gave Hilda the wish to
seek self-forgetful effort of some kind. She tried to busy herself with
something--with anything--and experienced the odd sensation of a person
upon whom duty has always pressed and crowded, in a futile search for
duty. The stern, sweet helper eluded her, the unreality of manufactured,
unnecessary activity appalled her. She regretted the strenuous days of
labor that meant something. Taking herself to task for a weak submission
to circumstance, she fitted up a large room at the top of the house with
artistic apparatus; nice models were easily lured from the village; she
told herself that art at least remained, and tried to absorb herself in
her painting; but the savor of keen interest was gone; the pink cheeks
and staring eyes of her village girl were annoying. Hilda felt more like
crying than trying to select from and modify her buxom charms.
Mrs. Archinard had suddenly assumed an active _rôle_ in life most
confusing to her daughter. Even mamma did not need her. Mrs. Archinard
drove out in the pony-cart to see people; she held quite a little
_côterie_ of callers every afternoon. Mrs. Archinard's little _Causeries
de Mardi_, her society for little weekly dinners--only six chosen
members--_les Élites_--stirred Allersley to the quick with æsthetic
thrills and heart-burnings. Mrs. Archinard laughed prettily and lightly
at her own feats, but Allersley was awestricken, and got down its
Sainte-Beuve trembling, resolved on firm foundations.
Hilda was not one of _les Élites_. "Just for us old people, trying to
amuse ourselves," Mrs. Archinard said, and at the _Causeries_ Hilda was
an anomalous and silent onlooker; indeed the _Causeries_ were quite
Sainte-Beuvian in their monologic form, Mrs. Archinard _causant_ and
Allersley attentive, but discreetly reticent, no one caring to risk a
revelation of ignorance. The Captain carefully avoided both the _élites_
and the _mardis_, and devoted himself to more commonplace
individualities whose dinners were good, and then one wasn't required to
strain one's temper by listening to fine talk.
Mary Apswith spent a week at the Manor, and one fresh sunny morning she
came to see Hilda. She found her in the garden standing between the rows
of sweet-peas, and filling with their fragrant loveliness the basket on
her arm. Mary's mind had been given over to a commotion of conjecture
since Peter's flying visit to her in London. He had told her much and
yet not enough; though what he had told insured sympathy for Hilda. Mary
was generous, and the sight of Hilda's white sunlit face completed
Peter's work. She found that she had kissed Hilda--she, so
undemonstrative--and standing with her arms around the girl's slight
shoulders, she said, looking at her with a grave smile, in which the
slight touch of playfulness reminded poor Hilda of Peter--
"You will see _me_, won't you?"
Hilda still held in her hands the last long sprays she had cut--palest
pink and palest purple, "on tiptoe for a flight."
"How kind of you to come," she said.
"Kind of you to say so, since I come from the enemy's camp. That
reckless brother of mine!"
"Did he send you?" Hilda asked, fright in her eyes.
"Send me? Oh no, he didn't send me; but after what he has told me, I
came naturally of my own free will." Hilda smiled faintly in reply to
Mary's smile.
"What has he told you?"
"Why, simply that he had been in love with you almost from the day he
proposed to Katherine; indeed he implied an even remoter origin. Really
Peter ought to be whipped! He almost deserves the sacking you are giving
him!"
Hilda winced at the humorous tone.
"That he had made love to you most cruelly; that Katherine had come in
upon the love scene; that she, too, was cruel--natural, though, wasn't
it? Peter is rather hard on Katherine. And, to sum up, that you had been
badly treated by the world in general, by himself in particular, and
that he was very desperate and you painfully perfect, and--oh, a great
many things."
"Did he tell you that I loved him?" Hilda asked, looking down at her
sweet-peas with, if that were possible, an added pallor. She wondered if
it was demanded of her that she should humiliate herself before Peter's
sister--tell her that she had made love to him.
"My dear child," Mary's voice dropped to a graver key, "Peter trusts me,
you know, and he ought to trust me. He told me that when he made love to
you, you and he together found out that fact."
Even Hilda's morbid self-doubt could not deny the essential truth of
this point of view.
"And now you won't marry him," Mary added, but in a matter-of-fact
manner, and as if the subject were folded up and put away by that
conclusive statement.
"Let us walk along the path, my dear Hilda. What a delightful garden
this is. I must have a pansy border like that in mine. Tell me, Hilda,
why have you always so persistently and doggedly effaced yourself? Why
did you never let anybody know you, and subside passively into the
background _rôle_? I never knew you, I am sure, and if it hadn't been
for Peter I shouldn't have known you now. He made me see things very
clearly. The poor little caryatid cowering in a dark corner, and holding
up a whole edifice on its shoulders."
"How could he! Why will he always see things so? It makes me miserable."
"Well, well; perhaps Peter's point of view would seem to you
exaggerated. But, as I say, why did you never let me get a glimpse of
you?"
"I never tried to hide. Circumstances kept me apart. I loved my work."
"Yes; it must have been charming work, in all its branches." Mary gave
her a gravely gay glance. "When you did emerge from your shadows, why
did you never talk--make an effect, like Katherine?"
"Katherine makes effects without trying. She is effective, and people
like her for herself. I was fitted for the dark corner. That is why I
stayed there."
"No, my dear, one can't explain the injustices of fortune by that
comfortably, or uncomfortably, fatalistic philosophy. Noble natures get
oddly jumped on in this world," Mary added reflectively. "The tragedy,
of course, lies in being too noble for one's milieu, for then, not only
does one renounce, but one is expected to, as a matter of course.
Forgive me, Hilda, if I am a little coarsely frank. I am speaking, for
the moment, with gloves off; I know the truth, and you may as well face
it. It's a pity to be too noble; one should have just a spice of
egotistic rebellion, else one is squashed flat to one's corner."
"Peter found me," said Hilda, with a sad smile that evaded the "coarse"
frankness.
They walked silently along the little path under the sunlit shade of the
fruit-trees. Mary stopped at a turning.
"Yes; that is encouraging. Reminds one of Emerson and optimism. Peter
did find you." Her large clear eyes looked an exhortation into Hilda's.
"Peter found you, my dear child; let Peter keep you, then."
"He always will keep--what he found," said Hilda, trembling. "I love
him. I shall always love him."
"My dear Hilda!"
"But I cannot marry him. I cannot."
"You are a foolish little Hilda."
"We made Katherine miserable."
"And therefore all three must be miserable. For Peter to have kept faith
with Katherine--loving you--might have called down a far worse tragedy."
Hilda gazed widely at her--
"Yes; I deserve that suspicion."
"Oh, you foolish, foolish child!" cried Mary, laughing; and she kissed
her. "Come, come; say that you will be good to my poor brother?"
"I love him, but I cannot ground my happiness on a wrong."
"Your happiness would be grounded on a right; the wrong was a mere
incidental. Peter must wait, I see. Perhaps you will own some day that
that was ample expiation."