Hilda Part 17

Across the open window a couple of bars of sunset glowed red and gold, and a tall palm of the garden cut all its fronds sharply against the light.

"Well?" said Alicia, when the door was shut.

Captain Filbert put out a deprecating hand.

"I intended to ask if you had any objection, miss, but you had gone out.

And the nurse was in the room; I couldn't get to her. There was n.o.body but the servants about."

"Objection to what?"

"To my being there. I came to pray for Mr. Lindsay."

"Did you make any noise?"

Miss Filbert looked professionally touched. "It was silent prayer, of course," she said.

Alicia, standing with one hand upon the toilet table, had an air of eagerness, of successful capture. The yellow sky in the window behind her made filmy lights round her hair and outlined her tall figure in the gracefulness of which there was a curious crisped effect, like a conventional pose taken easily, from habit. Laura Filbert thought she looked like a princess.

"I seem to hear of nothing but pet.i.tions," she said. "Isn't somebody praying for you?"

The blood of any saint would have risen in false testimony at such a suggestion. Laura blushed so violently that for an instant the s.p.a.ce between them seemed full of the sound of her protest.

"I hope so, miss," she said, and looked as if for calming over Alicia's shoulder away into the after-sunset bars along the sky. The colour sank back out of her face, and the light from the window rested on it ethereally. The beautiful mystery drew her eyes to seek, and their blue seemed to deepen and dilate, as if the old splendour of the uplifted golden gates rewarded them.

"Why do you use that odious word?" Alicia explained. "You are not my maid! Don't do it again--don't dream of doing it again!"

"I--I don't know." The girl was still plainly covered with confusion at being found in the house uninvited. "I suppose I forget. Well, good evening," and she turned to the door.

"Don't go," Alicia commanded. "Don't. You never come to see me now. Sit down." She dragged a chair forward and almost pushed Laura into it. "I will sit down, too--what am I thinking of?"

Laura reflected for a moment, looking at her folded hands. "I might as well tell you," she said, "that I have not been praying that Mr. Lindsay should get better. Only that he should be given time to find salvation and die in Jesus."

"Don't--don't say those things to me. How light you are--it's wicked!"

Alicia returned with vehemence, and then, as Captain Filbert stared, half comprehending, "Don't you care?" she added curiously.

It was so casual that it was cruel. The girl's eyes grew wider still during the instant she fixed them upon Alicia in the effort of complete understanding. Then her lip trembled.

"How can I care?" she cried, "how can I?" and burst into weeping. She drew her _sari_ over her face and rocked to and fro. Her dusty bare foot protruded from her cotton skirt. She sat huddled together, her head in its coverings sunk between weak, shaking shoulders. Alicia considered her for an instant as a pitiable and degraded spectacle. Then she went over and touched her.

"You are completely worn out," she said, "and it is almost dinner time.

The ayah will bring you a hot bath, and then you will come down and have some food quietly with me. My brother is dining out somewhere. I will go away for a little while and then I know you will feel better. And after dinner," she added gently, "you may come up if you like and pray again for Mr. Lindsay. I am sure he would----"

The faintest break in her own voice warned her, and she hurried out of the room.

It was a foolish thing and the Livingstones' old Karim Bux much deplored it, but the Miss-sahib had forgotten to give information that the dinner of eight commanded a fortnight ago would not take place--hence everything was ready in its sequence for this event, with a new fashion of stuffing quails and the first strawberries of the season from Dinapore. The feelings of Karim Bux in presenting these things to a woman in the dress of a coolie are not important; but Alicia, for some reason, seemed to find the trivial incident gratifying.

CHAPTER XV.

Under the Greek porch of No. 10, Middleton street, in the white sunlight between the shadows of the stucco pillars, stood a flagrant ticca-gharry. The driver lay extended on the top of it, asleep, the syce squatted beneath the horse's nose and fed it perfunctorily with hay from a bundle tied under the vehicle behind. A fringe of palms and ferns in pots ran between the pillars, and orchids hung from above, shutting out the garden, where heavy scents stood in the sun and mynas chattered on the drive. The air was full of ease, warm, _fretillante_, abandoned to the lavish energy of growing things; beyond the discoloured wall of the compound rose the tender cloud of a leafing tamarisk against the blue. A long time already the driver had slept immovably, and the horse, uncomplaining but uninterested, had dragged at the wisps of hay.

Inside there was no longer a hint of Mrs. Barberry, even a dropped handkerchief agreeably scented. The night nurse had realised herself equally superfluous and had gone, the other, a person of practical views, could hardly retain her indignation at being kept from day to day to see her patient fed and hand him books and writing materials. She had not even the duty of debarring visitors, but sat most of the time in the dressing-room, where echoes fell about her of the stories with which riotous young men, in tea and wheat and jute, hastened Mr. Lindsay's convalescence. There she tapped her energetic fat foot on the floor in vain, to express her views upon such waste of scientific training. She had Surgeon-Major Livingstone's orders, and he on this occasion had his sister's.

There was an air of relief, of tension relaxed, between the two women in the drawing-room; it was plain that Alicia had communicated these things to her visitor, in their main import. Hilda was already half-disengaged from the subject, her eye wandered as if in search for the avenue to another. By a sudden inclination Alicia began the story of Laura Filbert on her knees at Lindsay's door. She told it in a quiet, steady, colourless way, pursuing it to the end--it came with the ease of frequent private rehearsals--and then with her elbows on her knees and her chin in her palms she stopped and gazed meditatively in front of her. There was something in the gaze to which Hilda yielded an attention unexpectedly serious, something of the absolute in character and life impervious to her inquiry. Yet to a.n.a.lysis it was only the grey look of eyes habited to regard the future with penetration and to find nothing there.

"Have you told him?" Hilda asked after an instant's pause, during which she conceded something, she hardly knew what; she meant to find out later.

"I haven't seen him. But I will tell him, I promise you."

"I have no doubt you will! But don't promise _me_. I won't even witness the vow!" Hilda cried.

"What does it matter? I shall certainly tell him." The words fell definitely like pebbles. Hilda thoughtfully picked them up.

"On the whole," she said, "perhaps it would be as well. Yes, it is my advice. It is quite likely that he will be revolted. It may be curative."

Alicia turned away her head to hide the faint frown that nevertheless crept into her voice. "I don't think so," she said. "How you do juggle with things! I don't know why I talk to you about this--this matter. I am sure I ought not."

"I was going to say," pursued Hilda, indifferent to her scruple, "that I shouldn't be at all surprised if his illness leaves him quite emotionally sane. The poison has worked itself out of his blood--perhaps the pa.s.sion and the poison were the same. In such a case it's all so physical. It must be."

"I wonder!" Alicia said. She said it mechanically, as the easiest comment.

"When I knew you first your speculation would have been more active, my dear. You would have looked into the possibility and disputed it. What has become of your modernity?"

It was the tenderest malice, but it obtained no concessive sign. Alicia seemed to weigh it. "I think I like theories better than ill.u.s.trations,"

she said in defence.

"One can look at theories as one looks at the sky, but an ill.u.s.tration wants a careful point of view. For this one perhaps you are a little near."

"Perhaps," Alicia a.s.sented, "I am a little near." She glanced quickly down as she spoke, but when she raised her eyes they were dry and clear.

"I can see it better," Hilda went on, with immense audacity, "much better."

"Isn't it safer to feel?"

"_Jamais de la vie!_ The nerves lie always."

They were on the edge of the vortex of the old dispute. Alicia leaned back among the cushions and regarded the other with an undecided eye.

"You are not sure," said Hilda, "that you won't ask me, at this point, to look at the pictures in that old copy of the Persian cla.s.sic--I forget its lovely name--or inquire what sort of house we had last night.

Well, don't be afraid of hurting my feelings. Only, you know, between us, as between more doubtful people, the door must be either open or shut. I fancy you take cold easily; perhaps you had better shut the door."

"Not for worlds," Alicia said, with prompt.i.tude. Then she added rather cleverly, "That would be my spoiling my one view of life."

Hilda smiled. "Isn't there any life where you live?" She glanced round her, at the tapestried elegance of the room, with sudden indifference.

"After all," she said, "I don't know what I am doing here, in your affairs. As the world swings no one could be more remote from them or you. I belong to its winds and its highways--how have you brought me here, a tramp-actress, to your drawing-room?"