That same Sunday, Alicia had been able to say to Lindsay about Hilda
Howe, “We have not stood still--we know each other well now,” and when
he commented with some reserve upon this to follow it up. “But these
things have so little to do with mere length of time or number of
opportunities,” she declared. “One springs at some people.”
A Major-General, interrupting, said he wished he had the chance; and
they talked about something else. But perhaps this is enough to explain
a note which went by messenger from the Livingstones' pillared palace in
Middleton Street to Number Three, Lal Behari's Lane, on Monday morning.
It was a short note, making a definite demand with an absence of
colour and softness and emotion which was almost elaborate. Hilda, at
breakfast, tore off the blank half sheet, and wrote in pencil--
“I think I can arrange to get her here about five this afternoon. No
rehearsal--they're doing something to the gas-pipes at the theatre, so
you will find me, anyway. And I'll be delighted to see you.”
She twisted it up and addressed it, reconsidered that, and made the
scrap more secure in a yellow envelope. It had an embossed post-office
stamp, which she sacrificed with resignation. Then she went back to an
extremely uninteresting vegetable curry, with the reflection--“Can she
possibly imagine that one doesn't see it yet?”
Alicia came before five. She brought a novel of Gissing's, in order
apparently that they might without fail talk about Gissing. Hilda was
agreeable; she would talk about Gissing, or about anything, tipped on
the edge of her bed--Alicia had surmounted that degree of intimacy at
a bound by the declaration that she could no longer endure the blue
umbrellas--and clasping one knee, with an uncertain tenure of a chipped
bronze slipper deprived of its heel. Wonderful silk draperies fell about
her, with ink-spots on the sleeves; her hair was magnificent.
“It's so curious to me,” she was saying of the novel, “that anyone
should learn all that life as you do, at a distance, in a book. It's
like looking at it through the little end of an opera-glass.”
“I fancy that the most desirable way,” said Alicia, glancing at the
door.
“Don't you believe it. The best way is to come out of it, to grow out
of it. Then all the rest has the charm of novelty and the value of
contrast, and the distinction of being the best. You, poor dear, were
born an artificial flower in a cardboard box. But you couldn't help it.”
“Everybody doesn't grow out of it.” The concentration in Alicia's eyes
returned again with vacillating wings.
“She can't be here for a quarter of an hour yet.” The slipper dropped at
this point, and Hilda stooped to put it on again. She kept her foot in
her hands, and regarded it pensively.
“Shoes are the one thing one shouldn't buy in the native quarter,” she
continued; “at all events, ready-made.”
“You have an audacity--” Alicia ended abruptly in a wan smile.
“Haven't I? Are you quite sure he wants to marry her?”
“I know it.”
“From him?”
“From him.”
“Oh!”--Hilda deliberated a moment nursing her slipper--“Really? Well, we
can't let that happen.”
“Why not?”
“You have a hardihood! Is no reason plain to you? Don't you see
anything?”
Alicia smiled again painfully, as if against a tension of her lips. “I
see only one thing that matters--he wants it,” she said.
“And won't be happy till he gets it! Rubbish, my dear! We are an
intolerably self-sacrificing sex.” Hilda felt about for pillows, and
stretched her length along the bed. “They've taught us well, the men;
it's a blood disease now, running everywhere in the female line. You may
be sure it was a barbarian princess that hesitated between the lady and
the tiger. A civilised one would have introduced the lady and given her
a dot, and retired to the nearest convent. Bah! It's a deformity, like
the dachshund's legs.”
Alicia looked as if this would be a little troublesome, and not quite
worth while, to follow.
“The happiness of his whole life is involved,” she said simply.
“Oh dear yes--the old story! And what about the happiness of yours? Do
you imagine it's laudable, admirable, this attitude? Do you see yourself
in it with pleasure? Have you got a sacred satisfaction of self-praise?”
Contempt accumulated in Miss Howe's voice, and sat in her eyes. To mark
her climax she kicked her slippers over the end of the bed.
“It is idiotic--it's disgusting,” she said.
Alicia caught a flash from her. “My attitude!” she cried. “What in the
world do you mean? Do you always think in poses? I take no attitude. I
care for him, and in that proportion I intend that he shall have what
he wants--so far as I can help him to it. You have never cared for
anybody--what do you know about it?”
Hilda took a calm, unprejudiced view of the ceiling. “I assure you I'm
not an angel,” she cried. “Haven't I cared! Several times.”
“Not really--not lastingly.”
“I don't know about really; certainly not lastingly. I've never thought
the men should have a monopoly of nomadic susceptibilities. They entail
the prettiest experiences.”
“Of course, in your profession--”
“Don't be nasty, sweet lady. My affections have never taken the
opportunities of our profession. They haven't even carried me into
matrimony, though I remember once, at Sydney, they brought me to the
brink! We must contrive an escape for Duff Lindsay.”
“You assume too much--a great deal too much. She must be beautiful--and
good.”
“Give me a figure. She's a lily, and she draws the kind of beauty that
lilies have from her personal chastity and her religious enthusiasm.
Touch those things and bruise them, as--as marriage would touch and
bruise them--and she would be a mere fragment of stale vegetation. You
want him to clasp that to his bosom for the rest of his life?”
“I won't believe you. You're coarse and you're cruel.”
Tears flashed into Miss Livingstone's eyes with this. Hilda, still
regarding the ceiling, was aware of them, and turned an impatient
shoulder while they should be brushed undetected away.
“I'm sorry, dear,” she said. “I forgot. You are usually so intelligent,
one can be coarse and cruel with comfort, talking to you. Go into the
bathroom and get my salts--they're on the washhand-stand--will you? I'm
quite faint with all I'm about to undergo.”
Laura Filbert came in as Alicia emerged with the salts. Ignoring the
third person with the bottle, she went directly to the bedside and laid
her hand on Hilda's head.
“Oh Miss Howe, I am so sorry you are sick--so sorry,” she said. It was a
cooing of professional concern, true to an ideal, to a necessity.
“I am not very bad,” Hilda improvised. “Hardly more than a headache.”
“She makes light of everything,” Miss Filbert said, smiling toward
Alicia, who stood silent, the prey of her impression. Discovering the
blue salts bottle, Laura walked over to her and took it from her hands.
“And what,” said the barefooted Salvation Army girl to Miss Livingstone,
“might your name be?”
There was an infinite calm interest in it--it was like a conventionality
of the other world, and before its assurance Alicia stood helpless.
“Her name is Livingstone,” called Hilda from the bed, “and she is as
good as she is beautiful. You needn't be troubled about HER soul--she
takes Communion every Sunday morning at the Cathedral.”
“Hallelujah!” said Captain Filbert, in a tone of dubious congratulation.
“Much better,” said Hilda cheerfully, “to take it at the Cathedral, you
know, than nowhere.”
Miss Filbert said nothing to this, but sat down upon the edge of the
bed, looking serious, and stroked Hilda's hair.
“You don't seem to have much fever,” she said. “There was a poor fellow
in the Military Hospital this morning with a temperature of one hundred
and seven. I could hardly bear to touch him.”
“What was the matter?” asked Hilda idly, occupied with hypotheses about
the third person in the room.
“Oh, I don't know exactly. Some complication, I suppose, of Satan's
tribute--”
“Divinest Laura!” Hilda interposed quickly, drawing her head back. “Do
take a chair. It will be even more soothing to see you comfortable.”
Captain Filbert spoke again to Alicia, as she obeyed. “Miss Howe is more
thoughtful for others than some of our converted ones,” she said, with
vast kindness. “I have often told her so. I have had a long day.”
“It may improve me in that character,” Hilda said, “to suggest that if
you will go about such people, a little carbolic disinfectant is a good
thing, or a crystal or two of permanganate of potash in your bath. Do
you use those things?”
Laura shook her head. “Faith is better than disinfectants. I never get
any harm. My Master protects me.”
“My goodness!” Hilda said. And in the silence that occurred, Captain
Filbert remarked that the only thing she used carbolic acid for was a
decayed tooth. Presently Alicia made a great effort. She laid hands on
Hilda's previous reference as a tangibility that remained with her.
“Do you ever go to the Cathedral?” she said.
The faintest shade of dogmatism crossed Captain Filbert's features, as
when on a day of cloud fleeces the sun withdraws for an instant from a
flower. Since her sect is proclaimed beyond the boundaries of dogma it
may have been some other obscurity, but that was the effect.
“No. I never go there. We raise our own Ebenezer; we are a tabernacle to
ourselves.”
“Isn't it exquisite--her way of speaking!” cried Hilda from the bed, and
Laura glanced at her with a deprecating, reproachful smile, in reproof
of an offence admittedly incorrigible. But she went on as if she were
conscious of a stimulus.
“Wherever the morning sky bends or the stars cluster is sanctuary
enough,” she said; “a slum at noonday is as holy for us as daisied
fields; the Name of the Lord walks with us. The Army is His Army, He is
Lord of our hosts.”
“A kind of chant,” murmured Hilda, and Miss Livingstone became aware
that she might if she liked play with the beginnings of magnetism. Then
that impression was carried away as it were on a puff of air, and it is
hardly likely that she thought of it again.
“I suppose all the elite go to the Cathedral?” Laura said. The sanctity
of her face was hardly disturbed, but a curiosity rested upon it, and
behind the curiosity a far-off little, leaping tongue of some other
thing. Hilda on the bed named it the constant feminine, and narrowed her
eyes.
“Dear me, yes,” she said for Alicia. “His Excellency the Viceroy and all
his beautiful A.D.C.'s, no end of military and their ladies, Secretaries
to the Government of India in rows, fully choral, Under-Secretaries so
thick they're kept in the vestibule till the bells stop. 'And make Thy
chosen people joyful'!” she intoned. “Not forgetting Surgeon-Major and
Miss Alicia Livingstone, who occupy the fourth pew to the right of the
main aisle, advantageously near the pulpit.”
“You know already what a humbug she is,” Alicia said, but Captain
Filbert's inner eye seemed retained by that imaginary congregation.
“Well, it wouldn't be any attraction for me,” she said, rising to go
through the little accustomed function of her departure. “I'll be going
now, I think. Ensign Sand has fever again, and I have to take her place
at the Believers' Meeting.” She took Hilda's hand in hers and held it
for an instant. “Good-bye, and God bless you--in the way you most need,”
she said, and turned to Alicia, “Good-bye. I am glad to know that we
will be one in the glad hereafter though our paths may diverge”--her eye
rested with acknowledgment upon Alicia's embroidered sleeves--“in this
world. To look at you I should have thought you were of the bowed down
ones, not yet fully assured, but perhaps you only want a little
more oxygen in the blood of your religion. Remember the word of the
Lord--'Rejoice! again I say unto you, rejoice!' Goodbye.”
She drew her head-covering farther forward, and moved to the door. It
sloped to her shoulders and made them droop; her native clothes clung
about her breast and her hips in the cringing Oriental way. Miss Howe
looked after her guest with a curl of the lip as uncontrollable as it
was unreasonable. “A saved soul, perhaps. A woman--oh, assuredly,” she
said in the depths of her hair.
The door had almost closed upon Captain Filbert when Alicia made
something like a dash at an object about to elude her. “Oh,” she
exclaimed, “wait a minute. Will you come and see me? I think--I think
you might do me good. I live at Number Ten, Middleton Street. Will you
come?”
Laura came back into the room. There was a little stiffness in her air,
as if she repressed something.
“I have no objection,” she said.
“To-morrow afternoon--at five? Or--my brother is dining at the
club--would you rather come to dinner?”
“Whichever is agreeable to you will suit me.” She spoke carefully, after
an instant's hesitation.
“Then do come and dine--at eight,” Alicia said; and it was agreed.
She stood staring at the door when Laura finally closed it, and only
turned when Hilda spoke.
“You are going to have him to meet her,” she said. “May I come too?”
“Certainly not.” Alicia's grasp was also by this time on the door
handle.
“Are you going too? You daren't talk about her!” Hilda cried.
“I'm going too. I've got the brougham. I'll drive her home,” said
Alicia, and went out swiftly.
“My goodness!” Hilda remarked again. Then she got up and found her
slippers and wrote a note, which she addressed to the Reverend Stephen
Arnold, Clarke Mission House, College Street. “Thanks immensely,” it
ran, “for your delightful offer to introduce me to Father Jordan and
persuade him to show me the astronomical wonders he keeps in his tower
at St. Simeon's. An hour with a Jesuit is an hour of milk and honey, and
belonging to that charming Order, he won't mind my coming on a Sunday
evening--the first clear one.”
Miss Howe signed her note and bit consideringly at the end of her pen.
Then she added: “If you have any influence with Duff Lindsay, it may
be news to you that you can exert it with advantage to keep him from
marrying a cheap ethereal little religieuse of the Salvation Army named
Filbert. It may seem more fitting that you should expostulate with her,
but I don't advise that.”