The Complete Project Gutenberg Works of Galsworthy

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They reached home without another word.

At the door of Hilary's study sat Miranda. The little person answered
his caress by a shiver of her sleek skin, then curled herself down again
on the spot she had already warmed.

"Aren't you coming in with me?" he said.

Miranda did not move.

The reason for her refusal was apparent when Hilary had entered. Close to
the long bookcase, behind the bust of Socrates, stood the little model.
Very still, as if fearing to betray itself by sound or movement, was her
figure in its blue-green frock, and a brimless toque of brown straw, with
two purplish roses squashed together into a band of darker velvet.
Beside those roses a tiny peacock's feather had been slipped in--unholy
little visitor, slanting backward, trying, as it were, to draw all eyes,
yet to escape notice. And, wedged between the grim white bust and the
dark bookcase, the girl herself was like some unlawful spirit which had
slid in there, and stood trembling and vibrating, ready to be shuttered
out.

Before this apparition Hilary recoiled towards the door, hesitated, and
returned.

"You should not have come here," he muttered, "after what we said to you
yesterday."

The little model answered quickly: "But I've seen Hughs, Mr. Dallison.
He's found out where I live. Oh, he does look dreadful; he frightens me.
I can't ever stay there now."

She had come a little out of her hiding-place, and stood fidgeting her
hands and looking down.

'She's not speaking the truth,' thought Hilary.

The little model gave him a furtive glance. "I did see him," she said.
"I must go right away now; it wouldn't be safe, would it?" Again she gave
him that swift look.

Hilary thought suddenly: 'She is using my own weapon against me. If she
has seen the man, he didn't frighten her. It serves me right!' With a
dry laugh, he turned his back.

There was a rustling round. The little model had moved out of her
retreat, and stood between him and the door. At this stealthy action,
Hilary felt once more the tremor which had come over him when he sat
beside her in the Broad Walk after the baby's funeral. Outside in the
garden a pigeon was pouring forth a continuous love song; Hilary heard
nothing of it, conscious only of the figure of the girl behind him--that
young figure which had twined itself about his senses.

"Well, what is it you want?" he said at last.

The little model answered by another question.

'Are you really going away, Mr. Dallison?"

"I am."

She raised her hands to the level of her breast, as though she meant to
clasp them together; without doing so, however, she dropped them to her
sides. They were cased in very worn suede gloves, and in this dire
moment of embarrassment Hilary's eyes fastened themselves on those slim
hands moving against her skirt.

The little model tried at once to slip them away behind her. Suddenly she
said in her matter-of-fact voice: "I only wanted to ask--Can't I come
too?"

At this question, whose simplicity might have made an angel smile, Hilary
experienced a sensation as if his bones had been turned to water. It was
strange--delicious--as though he had been suddenly offered all that he
wanted of her, without all those things that he did not want. He stood
regarding her silently. Her cheeks and neck were red; there was a red
tinge, too, in her eyelids, deepening the "chicory-flower" colour of her
eyes. She began to speak, repeating a lesson evidently learned by heart.

"I wouldn't be in your way. I wouldn't cost much. I could do everything
you wanted. I could learn typewriting. I needn't live too near, or
that; if you didn't want me, because of people talking; I'm used to being
alone. Oh, Mr. Dallison, I could do everything for you. I wouldn't mind
anything, and I'm not like some girls; I do know what I'm talking about."

"Do you?"

The little model put her hands up, and, covering her face, said:

"If you'd try and see!"

Hilary's sensuous feeling almost vanished; a lump rose in his throat
instead.

"My child," he said, "you are too generous!"

The little model seemed to know instinctively that by touching his spirit
she had lost ground. Uncovering her face, she spoke breathlessly,
growing very pale:

"Oh no, I'm not. I want to be let come; I don't want to stay here. I
know I'll get into mischief if you don't take me--oh, I know I will!"

"If I were to let you come with me," said Hilary, "what then? What sort
of companion should I be to you, or you to me? You know very well. Only
one sort. It's no use pretending, child, that we've any interests in
common."

The little model came closer.

"I know what I am," she said, "and I don't want to be anything else. I
can do what you tell me to, and I shan't ever complain. I'm not worth
any more!"

"You're worth more," muttered Hilary, "than I can ever give you, and I'm
worth more than you can ever give me."

The little model tried to answer, but her words would not pass her
throat; she threw her head back trying to free them, and stood, swaying.
Seeing her like this before him, white as a sheet, with her eyes closed
and her lips parted, as though about to faint, Hilary seized her by the
shoulders. At the touch of those soft shoulders, his face became
suffused with blood, his lips trembled. Suddenly her eyes opened ever so
little between their lids, and looked at him. And the perception that she
was not really going to faint, that it was a little desperate wile of
this child Delilah, made him wrench away his hands. The moment she felt
that grasp relax she sank down and clasped his knees, pressing them to
her bosom so that he could not stir. Closer and closer she pressed them
to her, till it seemed as though she must be bruising her flesh. Her
breath came in sobs; her eyes were closed; her lips quivered upwards. In
the clutch of her clinging body there seemed suddenly the whole of
woman's power of self-abandonment. It was just that, which, at this
moment, so horribly painful to him, prevented Hilary from seizing her in
his arms just that queer seeming self-effacement, as though she were lost
to knowledge of what she did. It seemed too brutal, too like taking
advantage of a child.

From calm is born the wind, the ripple from the still pool, self out of
nothingness--so all passes imperceptibly, no man knows how. The little
model's moment of self-oblivion passed, and into her wet eyes her plain,
twisting spirit suddenly writhed up again, for all the world as if she
had said: 'I won't let you go; I'll keep you--I'll keep you.'

Hilary broke away from her, and she fell forward on her face.

"Get up, child," he said--"get up; for God's sake, don't lie there!"

She rose obediently, choking down her sobs, mopping her face with a
small, dirty handkerchief. Suddenly, taking a step towards him, she
clenched both her hands and struck them downwards.

"I'll go to the bad," she said---"I will--if you don't take me!" And, her
breast heaving, her hair all loose, she stared straight into his face
with her red-rimmed eyes. Hilary turned suddenly, took a book up from
the writing-table, and opened it. His face was again suffused with
blood; his hands and lips trembled; his eyes had a queer fixed stare.

"Not now, not now," he muttered; "go away now. I'll come to you
to-morrow."

The little model gave him the look a dog gives you when it asks if you
are deceiving him. She made a sign on her breast, as a Catholic might
make the sign of his religion, drawing her fingers together, and
clutching at herself with them, then passed her little dirty handkerchief
once more over her eyes, and, turning round, went out.

Hilary remained standing where he was, reading the open book without
apprehending what it was.

There was a wistful sound, as of breath escaping hurriedly. Mr. Stone
was standing in the open doorway.

"She has been here," he said. "I saw her go away."

Hilary dropped the book; his nerves were utterly unstrung. Then,
pointing to a chair, he said: "Won't you sit down, sir?"

Mr. Stone came close up to his son-in-law.

"Is she in trouble?"

"Yes," murmured Hilary.

"She is too young to be in trouble. Did you tell her that?"

Hilary shook his head.

"Has the man hurt her?"

Again Hilary shook his head.

"What is her trouble, then?" said Mr. Stone. The closeness of this
catechism, the intent stare of the old man's eyes, were more than Hilary
could bear. He turned away.

"You ask me something that I cannot answer.

"Why?"

"It is a private matter."

With the blood still beating in his temples, his lips still quivering,
and the feeling of the girl's clasp round his knees, he almost hated this
old man who stood there putting such blind questions.

Then suddenly in Mr. Stone's eyes he saw a startling change, as in the
face of a man who regains consciousness after days of vacancy. His whole
countenance had become alive with a sort of jealous understanding. The
warmth which the little model brought to his old spirit had licked up the
fog of his Idea, and made him see what was going on before his eyes.

At that look Hilary braced himself against the wall.

A flush spread slowly over Mr. Stone's face. He spoke with rare
hesitation. In this sudden coming back to the world of men and things he
seemed astray.

"I am not going," he stammered, "to ask you any more. I could not pry
into a private matter. That would not be---" His voice failed; he
looked down.

Hilary bowed, touched to the quick by the return to life of this old man,
so long lost to facts, and by the delicacy in that old face.

"I will not intrude further on your trouble," said Mr. Stone, "whatever
it may be. I am sorry that you are unhappy, too."

Very slowly, and without again looking up at his son-in-law, he went out.

Hilary remained standing where he had been left against the wall.




CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE HOME-COMING OF HUGHS

Hilary had evidently been right in thinking the little model was not
speaking the truth when she said she had seen Hughs, for it was not until
early on the following morning that three persons traversed the long
winding road leading from Wormwood Scrubs to Kensington. They preserved
silence, not because there was nothing in their hearts to be expressed,
but because there was too much; and they walked in the giraffe-like
formation peculiar to the lower classes--Hughs in front; Mrs. Hughs to
the left, a foot or two behind; and a yard behind her, to the left again,
her son Stanley. They made no sign of noticing anyone in the road
besides themselves, and no one in the road gave sign of noticing that
they were there; but in their three minds, so differently fashioned, a
verb was dumbly, and with varying emotion, being conjugated:

"I've been in prison." "You've been in prison. He's been in prison."

Beneath the seeming acquiescence of a man subject to domination from his
birth up, those four words covered in Hughs such a whirlpool of surging
sensation, such ferocity of bitterness, and madness, and defiance, that
no outpouring could have appreciably relieved its course. The same four
words summed up in Mrs. Hughs so strange a mingling of fear,
commiseration, loyalty, shame, and trembling curiosity at the new factor
which had come into the life of all this little family walking
giraffe-like back to Kensington that to have gone beyond them would have
been like plunging into a wintry river. To their son the four words were
as a legend of romance, conjuring up no definite image, lighting merely
the glow of wonder.

"Don't lag, Stanley. Keep up with your father."

The little boy took three steps at an increased pace, then fell behind
again. His black eyes seemed to answer: 'You say that because you don't
know what else to say.' And without alteration in their giraffe-like
formation, but again in silence, the three proceeded.

In the heart of the seamstress doubt and fear were being slowly knit into
dread of the first sound to pass her husband's lips. What would he ask?
How should she answer? Would he talk wild, or would he talk sensible?
Would he have forgotten that young girl, or had he nursed and nourished
his wicked fancy in the house of grief and silence? Would he ask where
the baby was? Would he speak a kind word to her? But alongside her dread
there was guttering within her the undying resolution not to 'let him go
from her, if it were ever so, to that young girl'

"Don't lag, Stanley!"

At the reiteration of those words Hughs spoke.

"Let the boy alone! You'll be nagging at the baby next!"

Hoarse and grating, like sounds issuing from a damp vault, was this first
speech.

The seamstress's eyes brimmed over.

"I won't get the chance," she stammered out. "He's gone!"

Hughs' teeth gleamed like those of a dog at bay.

"Who's taken him? You let me know the name."

Tears rolled down the seamstress's cheeks; she could not answer. Her
little son's thin voice rose instead:

"Baby's dead. We buried him in the ground. I saw it. Mr. Creed came in
the cab with me."

White flecks appeared suddenly at the corners of Hughs' lips. He wiped
the back of his hand across his mouth, and once more, giraffe-like, the
little family marched on....

"Westminister," in his threadbare summer jacket--for the day was
warm--had been standing for some little time in Mrs. Budgen's doorway on
the ground floor at Hound Street. Knowing that Hughs was to be released
that morning early, he had, with the circumspection and foresight of his
character, reasoned thus: 'I shan't lie easy in my bed, I shan't hev no
peace until I know that low feller's not a-goin' to misdemean himself
with me. It's no good to go a-puttin' of it off. I don't want him
comin' to my room attackin' of old men. I'll be previous with him in the
passage. The lame woman 'll let me. I shan't trouble her. She'll be
palliable between me and him, in case he goes for to attack me. I ain't
afraid of him.'

But, as the minutes of waiting went by, his old tongue, like that of a
dog expecting chastisement, appeared ever more frequently to moisten his
twisted, discoloured lips. 'This comes of mixin' up with soldiers,' he
thought, 'and a lowclass o' man like that. I ought to ha' changed my
lodgin's. He'll be askin' me where that young girl is, I shouldn't
wonder, an' him lost his character and his job, and everything, and all
because o' women!'

He watched the broad-faced woman, Mrs. Budgen, in whose grey eyes the
fighting light so fortunately never died, painfully doing out her rooms,
and propping herself against the chest of drawers whereon clustered china
cups and dogs as thick as toadstools on a bank.

"I've told my Charlie," she said, "to keep clear of Hughs a bit. They
comes out as prickly as hedgehogs. Pick a quarrel as soon as look at
you, they will."

'Oh dear,' thought Creed, 'she's full o' cold comfort.' But, careful of
his dignity, he answered, "I'm a-waitin' here to engage the situation.
You don't think he'll attack of me with definition at this time in the
mornin'?"

The lame woman shrugged her shoulders. "He'll have had a drop of
something," she said, "before he comes home. They gets a cold feelin' in
the stomach in them places, poor creatures!"

The old butler's heart quavered up into his mouth. He lifted his shaking
hand, and put it to his lips, as though to readjust himself.

"Oh yes," he said; "I ought to ha' given notice, and took my things away;
but there, poor woman, it seemed a-hittin' of her when she was down. And
I don't want to make no move. I ain't got no one else that's interested
in me. This woman's very good about mendin' of my clothes. Oh dear, yes;
she don't grudge a little thing like that!"

The lame woman hobbled from her post of rest, and began to make the bed
with the frown that always accompanied a task which strained the
contracted muscles of her leg. "If you don't help your neighbour, your
neighbour don't help you," she said sententiously.

Creed fixed his iron-rimmed gaze on her in silence. He was considering
perhaps how he stood with regard to Hughs in the light of that remark.

"I attended of his baby's funeral," he said. "Oh dear, he's here
a'ready!"

The family of Hughs, indeed, stood in the doorway. The spiritual process
by which "Westminister" had gone through life was displayed completely in
the next few seconds. 'It's so important for me to keep alive and well,'
his eyes seemed saying. 'I know the class of man you are, but now you're
here it's not a bit o' use my bein' frightened. I'm bound to get
up-sides with you. Ho! yes; keep yourself to yourself, and don't you let
me hev any o' your nonsense, 'cause I won't stand it. Oh dear, no!'

Beads of perspiration stood thick on his patchily coloured forehead; with
lips stiffening, and intently staring eyes, he waited for what the
released prisoner would say.

Hughs, whose face had blanched in the prison to a sallow grey-white hue,
and whose black eyes seemed to have sunk back into his head, slowly
looked the old man up and down. At last he took his cap off, showing his
cropped hair.

"You got me that, daddy," he said, "but I don't bear you malice. Come up
and have a cup o' tea with us."

And, turning on his heel, he began to mount the stairs, followed by his
wife and child. Breathing hard, the old butler mounted too.

In the room on the second floor, where the baby no longer lived, a
haddock on the table was endeavouring to be fresh; round it were slices
of bread on plates, a piece of butter in a pie-dish, a teapot, brown
sugar in a basin, and, side by side a little jug of cold blue milk and a
half-empty bottle of red vinegar. Close to one plate a bunch of stocks
and gilly flowers reposed on the dirty tablecloth, as though dropped and
forgotten by the God of Love. Their faint perfume stole through the
other odours. The old butler fixed his eyes on it.

'The poor woman bought that,' he thought, 'hopin' for to remind him of
old days. "She had them flowers on her weddin'-day, I shouldn't wonder!"
This poetical conception surprising him, he turned towards the little
boy, and said "This 'll be a memorial to you, as you gets older." And
without another word all sat down. They ate in silence, and the old
butler thought 'That 'addick ain't what it was; but a beautiful cup o'
tea. He don't eat nothing; he's more ameniable to reason than I
expected. There's no one won't be too pleased to see him now!'

His eyes, travelling to the spot from which the bayonet had been removed,
rested on the print of the Nativity. "'Suffer little children to come
unto Me,'" he thought, "'and forbid them not." He'll be glad to hear
there was two carriages followed him home.'

And, taking his time, he cleared his throat in preparation for speech.
But before the singular muteness of this family sounds would not come.
Finishing his tea, he tremblingly arose. Things that he might have said
jostled in his mind. 'Very pleased to 'a seen you. Hope you're in good
health at the present time of speaking. Don't let me intrude on you.
We've all a-got to die some time or other!' They remained unuttered.
Making a vague movement of his skinny hand, he walked feebly but quickly
to the door. When he stood but half-way within the room, he made his
final effort.

"I'm not a-goin' to say nothing," he said; "that'd be superlative! I
wish you a good-morning."

Outside he waited a second, then grasped the banister.

'For all he sets so quiet, they've done him no good in that place,' he
thought. 'Them eyes of his!' And slowly he descended, full of a sort of
very deep surprise. 'I misjudged of him,' he was thinking; 'he never was
nothing but a 'armless human being. We all has our predijuices--I
misjudged of him. They've broke his 'eart between 'em--that they have.'

The silence in the room continued after his departure. But when the
little boy had gone to school, Hughs rose and lay down on the bed. He
rested there, unmoving, with his face towards the wall, his arms clasped
round his head to comfort it. The seamstress, stealing about her
avocations, paused now and then to look at him. If he had raged at her,
if he had raged at everything, it would not have been so terrifying as
this utter silence, which passed her comprehension--this silence as of a
man flung by the sea against a rock, and pinned there with the life
crushed out of him. All her inarticulate longing, now that her baby was
gone, to be close to something in her grey life, to pass the
unfranchisable barrier dividing her from the world, seemed to well up, to
flow against this wall of silence and to recoil.

Twice or three times she addressed him timidly by name, or made some
trivial remark. He did not answer, as though in very truth he had been
the shadow of a man lying there. And the injustice of this silence
seemed to her so terrible. Was she not his wife? Had she not borne him
five, and toiled to keep him from that girl? Was it her fault if she had
made his life a hell with her jealousy, as he had cried out that morning
before he went for her, and was "put away"? He was her "man." It had
been her right--nay, more, her duty!

And still he lay there silent. From the narrow street where no traffic
passed, the cries of a coster and distant whistlings mounted through the
unwholesome air. Some sparrows in the eave were chirruping incessantly.
The little sandy house-cat had stolen in, and, crouched against the
doorpost, was fastening her eyes on the plate which, held the remnants of
the fish. The seamstress bowed her forehead to the flowers on the table;
unable any longer to bear the mystery of this silence, she wept. But the
dark figure on the bed only pressed his arms closer round his head, as
though there were within him a living death passing the speech of men.

The little sandy cat, creeping across the floor, fixed its claws in the
backbone of the fish, and drew it beneath the bed.




CHAPTER XXXIX

THE DUEL

Bianca did not see her husband after their return together from the Round
Pond. She dined out that evening, and in the morning avoided any
interview. When Hilary's luggage was brought down and the cab summoned,
she slipped up to take shelter in her room. Presently the sound of his
footsteps coming along the passage stopped outside her door. He tapped.
She did not answer.

Good-bye would be a mockery! Let him go with the words unsaid! And as
though the thought had found its way through the closed door, she heard
his footsteps recede again. She saw him presently go out to the cab with
his head bent down, saw him stoop and pat Miranda. Hot tears sprang into
her eyes. She heard the cab-wheels roll away.

The heart is like the face of an Eastern woman--warm and glowing, behind
swathe on swathe of fabric. At each fresh touch from the fingers of
Life, some new corner, some hidden curve or angle, comes into view, to be
seen last of all perhaps never to be seen by the one who owns them.

When the cab had driven away there came into Bianca's heart a sense of
the irreparable, and, mysteriously entwined with that arid ache, a sort
of bitter pity: What would happen to this wretched girl now that he was
gone? Would she go completely to the bad--till she became one of those
poor creatures like the figure in "The Shadow," who stood beneath
lampposts in the streets? Out of this speculation, which was bitter as
the taste of aloes, there came to her a craving for some palliative, some
sweetness, some expression of that instinct of fellow-feeling deep in
each human breast, however disharmonic. But even with that craving was
mingled the itch to justify herself, and prove that she could rise above
jealousy.

She made her way to the little model's lodging.

A child admitted her into the bleak passage that served for hall. The
strange medley of emotions passing through Bianca's breast while she
stood outside the girl's door did not show in her face, which wore its
customary restrained, half-mocking look.

The little model's voice faintly said: "Come in."

The room was in disorder, as though soon to be deserted. A closed and
corded trunk stood in the centre of the floor; the bed, stripped of
clothing, lay disclosed in all the barrenness of discoloured ticking.
The china utensils of the washstand were turned head downwards. Beside
that washstand the little model, with her hat on--the hat with the
purplish-pink roses and the little peacock's feather-stood in the struck,
shrinking attitude of one who, coming forward in the expectation of a
kiss, has received a blow.

"You are leaving here, then?" Bianca said quietly.

"Yes," the girl murmured.

"Don't you like this part? Is it too far from your work?"

Again the little model whispered: "Yes."

Bianca's eyes travelled slowly over the blue beflowered walls and
rust-red doors; through the dusty closeness of this dismantled room a
rank scent of musk and violets rose, as though a cheap essence had been
scattered as libation. A small empty scent-bottle stood on the shabby
looking-glass.

"Have you found new lodgings?"

The little model edged closer to the window. A stealthy watchfulness was
creeping into her shrinking, dazed face.