Secret Bread Part 19

"One always feels a stranger, in a way, if one was born and brought up in the country, doesn't one? I feel that every day. I've never got over expecting to see the big elm outside my window when I wake, and instead I see the chimney-pots. And then I may just be getting used to it when there arrives a letter from Papa telling me how it all looks at home--all the silly little things about the flowers and the chickens and the old people in the parish, and then I have to start all over again."

There was a strain of wistfulness in her full voice, but her eyes were limpidly unconscious of it, with their candid glance that suggested courage and even a certain gaiety. If it had not been for that look in her eyes she would have seemed doll-like; even as it was in the purely physical aspect of her there was a waxen dollishness which was at once disconcerting and attractive. It was obvious that Carminow, who presumably knew her, was pa.s.sionately convinced that she was what he would have called "all right"; that he was considerably more fond of her than he would have admitted was equally obvious. To him that odd dollishness of aspect was just the sweet pink and white of a nave young girl, but to Killigrew it gave, by its very completeness, a hint as of something oddly inhuman, or at least unawakened, as though she had been a puppet, a pretty puppet that walked and spoke and said the right things. It was not so much any lack of intelligence in what she said as in her slow speech and her whole look. Her skin was so white--and Killigrew thought he knew if Ishmael did not how that whiteness was attained--except for a slight pink flush below extravagantly calm eyes of a clear pale grey; the modelling of the face was wide across brow and cheekbones and across the jaw on the level of the too-small mouth; then came a dimpled chin, short and childish, as was the tip-tilted nose. It was the type of face which, in its broad modelling of planes and petal-fineness of edges, suggests a pansy. The blondness of her--ashen-dead fairness of hair and pale skin with those pellucid eyes beneath dust-brown brows--all united in an effort of innocence that surpa.s.sed itself and became the blandness of a doll. She was curiously immobile, sat very quietly, and moved slowly, graceful in the way that a heavily-built puma is graceful, because of the thoroughly sound construction of her bones and muscles. Killigrew, as he watched her, was vastly intrigued by what he phrased to himself as the "innocent sweet corruption of her look." For with all that dollish look, perhaps because of it, it was possible, so Killigrew thought, to imagine her being very bad with the help of that protective mask. It was also compatible with an Undine-like soullessness, a cold clearness of outlook, or a slightly heavy if sweet stupidity. He thought it quite likely she might have all the virtues except a naturally good complexion, but he wondered about her, seeing her charm without feeling it.

The lamp was ready all too soon, and the lucky Carminow had the best right to carry it upstairs for her. She shook hands with both his friends as she said good-night, and Ishmael noticed how straightly she looked from her equal height into his eyes as her hand lay in his. Then the door swung to, but without closing, and in a moment there came the low sound of her voice from the landing above.

"Mr. Carminow...." she was saying--and the words, excepting just now and again, were audible to the two in the sitting-room--"I hope--I don't know what your friends must think. Do tell them, will you, that I'm not in the habit of running down to your room like that? Mr. Ruan looks so good. I wouldn't like him to think--"

"No one thinks anything like that; they couldn't, I a.s.sure you. Do believe me, Miss Grey. You won't sleep if you worry, you know. Promise me to believe me. I'll say something to them if it'll make you any happier."

"Will you? Then I'll promise too. I can take the lamp now. And--thank you, Mr. Carminow."

Down in the sitting-room when Carminow entered it again there was a moment or two of silence.

"Look here, you two fellows!" said Carminow; then, "You see for yourselves that Miss Grey is a perfect lady...."

"Exactly how I should have described her," interjected Killigrew.

"What I mean to say is that of course Miss Grey would not have dweamt of coming down if she had known you two were here...."

"Should have thought we made enough noise coming in. But I suppose what you're driving at is that she only comes when you're alone; is that it?"

asked Killigrew wickedly.

"d.a.m.n it all! you know it's not what I mean at all, only you twist everything a fellow says so. Anyway, I'd hate anyone to go and make a mistake about her."

"I won't," said Killigrew.

"It wouldn't be possible, I think," said Ishmael; "she's got that sort of clear look, you couldn't."

"Yes, that's just it," agreed Carminow gratefully. "Sometimes she even does things that might seem a little odd or rash, and it's all because she is such a child of nature she doesn't understand. A sort of Miwanda."

"What is her name, by the way?" asked Killigrew idly.

"Blanche, I believe."

"Blanche Grey ... a rather humorous combination. Well, we must go or we shall be keeping you from your beastly legalised murder at eight. Come on, Ishmael!"

"I'll come up to the Strand with you," said Carminow. "I have to be early at the prison, or one doesn't get through the crowd, not with a single valuable left on you anyway, and lucky to keep your shirt and trousers. You're sure you won't come? I could manage something for you."

Neither felt disposed--Ishmael not only because he knew it would make him deadly sick, but because the mere though of it had somehow become horrible, and Killigrew because he was rather glad to make Ishmael an excuse for not going himself. They all strode along the dim, quiet street, empty except for a dweller of the night who slunk into deeper shadows on seeing that there were three of them.

"She's an interesting-looking girl, that Miss Grey," observed Killigrew, more to try and draw Carminow than because he was really interested in the subject himself.

"She reminded me of someone, and at first I couldn't think who," said Ishmael, feeling a queer little pleasure at talking of her thus casually; "and then I remembered Hilaria--you remember little Hilaria Eliot, who used to be so jolly to us all at St. Renny?"

"She is the last person I should have compared with Miss Grey," said Killigrew decidedly. "I should say they were as different as it is possible for two persons of the same s.e.x to be. Hilaria was like a boy; Miss Grey is most feminine."

"Yes, she is," said Ishmael eagerly; "but there's the same frankness, that way of meeting you that other girls don't have."

"I know what you mean," agreed Carminow, "though I don't think one notices it when one sees more of Miss Grey. As Killigrew says, she is so essentially feminine--she is always gwateful for support in a way that is really very sad in one who has to battle with the world. It is a hard life for a refined gentlewoman, I fear."

"Dear old chap, with his 'battling with the world' and all the rest of his really highly moral conventional views!" exclaimed Killigrew. "He's a fraud, isn't he, Ishmael, who pretends to love to wallow in blug just to hide his lamblike disposition."

"You always did talk wot," remarked Carminow placidly. "You're weally not a bit changed, Killigrew, in spite of Paris. By the way, I suppose you heard about Polkinghorne?"

"Yes, from Old Tring. I went to St. Renny a little while ago."

"Ah! then you heard about Hilaria? I thought from Ruan's mention of her you had neither of you heard."

"Heard what?"

"Why," said Carminow in rather a shocked voice, "about her illness."

"No!..." exclaimed Ishmael and Killigrew in a breath; and Killigrew went on: "What illness? I can't imagine the Hilaria we used to know ill."

"She's not the Hilaria we used to know, I'm afraid. You would hardly recognize her. She's got a disease--you wouldn't know it if I were to tell you its name--that is one of the most obscure known to science, if you can call a thing known when no cure can be discovered to it. Yes, she's hopelessly paralysed, is poor Hilaria." A certain impersonal note as he spoke of the illness had crept through all the genuine feeling in Carminow's voice.

"But it's impossible!" cried Ishmael, profoundly shocked, not so much at any personal feeling for Hilaria, as an instinctive protest that such things could be. "Hilaria--why she was never still, and the things she did--why, you remember her walks and her fencing and everything--"

"Old Dr. Harvey at St. Renny puts it down very largely to those excessive walks she used to take," said Carminow.

Ishmael said nothing; he was struck by a greater horror that it should have been those walks, which had so seemed to set Hilaria apart from her s.e.x, on which he had so often accompanied her, of which even now he could recall the delight though he had not thought of them since....

Carminow went on:

"But of course I don't agree with him; he only says that because he always disapproved of the way poor old Eliot brought her up. Personally I think it was a very healthy way, and I believe it will be for the good of the race when women are made to exercise more. But Hilaria had the seeds of this sclerosis in her then, and nothing can stop it; over-exertion may have made it worse, as it does any illness, but it couldn't have caused it. It's being mercifully rapid, that's one comfort."

"It's ghastly," said Killigrew in a low voice. "Where is she, Carminow?

Have you seen her?"

"Well, yes, as a matter of fact I go when I can. I think it gives her pleasure to see anyone from the old days. She's in a home for such things in London. Her father lodges round the corner to be near her.

It's awful to see him. You know how he was about her.... She would be brought back from France when they found out how bad it was. D'you remember how her eyes used to give out sometimes when she was reading to us? That was all part of the same thing, always in her, beginning to come out."

A little silence. Both Ishmael and Killigrew were wondering if they ought to go and see her or not, both fighting a repulsion of which Killigrew's was more purely aesthetic and Ishmael's rather a pa.s.sionate wish to keep thought of such a thing away from life....

They had come to the parting of their way from Carminow's, and all three were standing at the street corner under a flickering gas lamp.

"Well," said Carminow a little awkwardly, "I suppose now we've met I shall be seeing you fellows again? I'm genewally in in the evenings when I don't have to be on duty at the hospital."

It was Ishmael who replied:

"I shall probably be round some time soon," he said. "I shall want to hear how the new drop worked, you know. By the way, what theatre is Miss Grey appearing at? It might be interesting to go and see the performance, mightn't it, Joe?"

"Oh, d.a.m.n it all! I can only think for the moment of poor little Hilaria," exclaimed Killigrew. "I used to be very fond of her.... I wonder--"

"I'll find out if she'd like to see you and Ruan when next I go if you like, but it's painful, because she can only get her words out in jerks," said Carminow. "It's the Strand that Miss Grey's appearing at.

Quite a small part; but at least it's a lady-like one, and her stage name is Miss Blanche Nevill. Good-night, you fellows!"

They echoed his farewell, and then, finding no belated growler, set out to walk all the way back to Tavistock Square. They mentioned neither Hilaria nor Blanche Grey again that night, but as Ishmael lay for a long time awake staring into the darkness he could not keep his mind from reverting with a sense of deep fear to what he had heard about Hilaria.

That such things could lie in wait in life, around the path of people one knew--people like oneself.... To others these exotic misfortunes, not to oneself or those near one. He had the sensation of incredulity with which one hears of some intimate friend involved in a train accident or attacked by some freakish fate such as may be read of in the newspapers daily but is never realised as being an actual and possible happening. Polkinghorne's death had made him believe there was such a thing as death, but it was so remote. This was different. If these things could come into life, ordinary every-day life....