Chapter 9

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 a messenger from the Livingstones' pillared palace in Middleton street to No. 3, La 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 tusser 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 any one 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 said; "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 around 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 slipper 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. Quelle escape! We must contrive one like it 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 bath-room 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, "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."