Secret Bread Part 20

He sorrowed not only for Hilaria, but for life. The news had given him his first pang of dread about it; his trust in it was never to be quite the same again. That was all, for him, that Hilaria had existed for, simply to teach him so much of knowledge. It seemed odd, even to the egoism of his youth, that she should have had so great a share in the pattern of his life at one time only to go out of it so inevitably. He was not to realise for many years how important the lesson was of which she, by the mere news of her state, had taught him the beginnings. If her contact with him formerly had been less, so would the shock of the news have been. People have impinged more deeply upon others' lives and both by their entry and their leaving of them stood for less.

CHAPTER X

BLIND STEPS

From that evening Ishmael entered upon a new phase of his London visit.

He told himself, when seriously considering the situation now and then, that he was certainly not in love. He was deeply interested in Blanche Grey, but if this were being in love, then was that emotion very different from anything the books always led one to expect. For instance, had the question been posed him by some wizard potent to arrange the lives of humans, whether he would sooner let Cloom or Miss Grey slip away from him, he would not have hesitated. His values were not in the least upset. He felt certain things in spite of them, that was all. There was an uncomfortable emptiness about a day on which he did not see her, and when at night he waited for her outside the shabby stage door of the Strand Theatre his heart would go thump-thump in a manner over which he had no control, but which seemed so very remotely connected with himself as he understood the term that he made no account of it. Killigrew said very little to him on the subject once he had found that he really did not like being chaffed about the fair Blanche, but it at once lowered Killigrew in Ishmael's estimation, and yet made him less certain about his own feelings, that he knew Killigrew did not share his enthusiasm.

Blanche had one of those definite personalities there is no overlooking, that people, especially men, either adore or actively dislike. Killigrew had never said he did not like her, but Ishmael felt the fact none the less certainly. And, as a matter of fact, Killigrew himself was puzzled by Miss Grey. He was certain enough that she was technically "good"--what Carminow called "all right"--and he admitted her charm, but to him the over-emphasis she laid on everything, as on that action of hers in coming down for the lamp, made the charm of no avail. He went to the house in Cecil Street a few times with Ishmael and then washed his hands of the affair.

When Ishmael was not allowed in the presence, then Killigrew still took him round the town and was not unamused to notice that his tastes had begun to alter. He was more interested in the personal note, less in things. Horticultural shows no longer lured him, polytechnics flaunted in vain.

He went once to the House of Commons and heard a debate on Russell's abortive Reform Bill, which was to sound the knell of that Minister's career. Ishmael heard Gladstone in the Bill's defence defying an attack by Lowe, whilst Mr. Disraeli leant back with a slight smile on his face, which was a blot of pallor beneath his dark, oiled ringlets. Ishmael was stirred, yet in him something felt amazement and disappointment. These were only men after all, not demiG.o.ds, and some of them were peevish, some rude, some bored and inattentive. The whole thing seemed somehow childish; it was difficult to believe, except later when Bright's golden tongue was speaking, that in this place the nation was governed....

Afterwards he was with the crowd, borne helplessly along, that wrecked the Hyde Park railings in their anger that the hastily constructed Ministry of Derby should still let Reform hang in air. Yet all these affairs of the nation only affected Ishmael from the outside, for he was beginning to be at his most personal.

Turns of singing and dancing interested him less than plays where there was a definite and necessarily keenly personal story. The characters were all occupied with their feelings for each other, never with theories or conditions. There was one exception to this rule, though Ishmael kept that to himself--he went often to see a little dancer whose turn only lasted ten minutes, while the particular moment of it for which he went was over in a flash, the moment when, whirling round and round very quickly, her short filmy skirts stood out and were nothing but a misty circlet about her, so that she gave the illusion of having nothing to break the slim straight lines of her. She seemed nude with an elfin nudity that charmed him while it did not inflame, or if it did, only with the subtle inflammation of the mind, which can withstand such onslaughts for many years before a sudden reaction of the body shows the connection between the two. Ishmael, who took no interest in damsels in tights or in the exuberant proportions of the "frail" ladies that amused Killigrew, found himself waiting for that moment every evening, and his satisfaction when he caught it was rather that of a person who is pleased at verifying something he has had the ac.u.men to discover than any more poignant emotion. He went far oftener to see this than he did to watch Blanche in her small part as one of the innocuous and well-bred company performing at the little old Strand Theatre, which was then still a phalanx of the respectable Swanborough family.

Blanche kept her work as a thing apart from her life--that is to say, she did not join the rest of the company at supper at the pothouse opposite, nor acknowledge the attentions of the mashers from the front row who waited at the shabby little stage door of a night. She was very charming to the other members of the company, especially the women, and the fact that she had enemies there was easily explained on the ground of her aloofness. She told Ishmael very little with all her frankness of address, but one night as he was seeing her home she asked him to come and have tea with her next day, which happened to be a Sunday, and Ishmael accepted eagerly; it was the first time she had actually asked him to the house.

When he arrived, clasping a bouquet he had bought overnight and nursed in his bedroom water-jug, he found that she had begged the loan of the ground-floor sitting-room, which was unlet, from her landlady, and was awaiting him there, wearing her grey dress and a rose pinned by the little white muslin collar that spanned the base of her throat. She was not looking her best, but somehow that made her all the more appealing to Ishmael; the sudden heat had made dark shadows under her eyes, and her movements were more languid even than usual.

It was an ugly room, like all its kind; but Blanche had the triumphant quality of rising superior to her background, which is one of the most valuable a woman can possess. Against the hot, hideous red of the wall-paper and the ma.s.s of tawdry ornaments she seemed to gain in simplicity, and that peculiar clearness of hers was intensified. She was grave, and only gave Ishmael the ghost of a little wan smile on his entry over his tendered bouquet. She dispensed tea with her firm, rather square hands, hands with short, blunt-tipped fingers that yet were not without the beauty of fitting in with her puma-like solidity of frame; while the way in which she used them was grace itself. They were the typical hands of a courtesan, but neither she nor Ishmael knew that, though Carminow had marvelled to himself at the fact.

Ishmael was silent, falling in with her mood, and suddenly she fixed her limpid eyes upon him and asked with disconcerting directness:

"What are you thinking of!"

"I was thinking about you," he was startled into saying; "I was wondering if it's true you're insincere...."

"Who says so ...? Mr. Killigrew? He doesn't like me; I knew it from the first. I'm sorry; I think he's rather fine, though I'm not sure I think he's good for you. He guesses that, and that's why he doesn't like me."

"Oh, I'm sure he couldn't be such an a.s.s as to think that," protested Ishmael. "Besides, surely I am capable of looking after myself!"

"You're capable of a good deal, I believe. You could look after yourself and other people too. You're strong, you know. I suppose you don't know, or you wouldn't be you. But I'm sorry you think like that about me."

"I don't. I mean--I do sometimes wonder. You're so charming to everyone and--"

"But I'm not insincere because of that, am I? I wish you hadn't thought that. Of course, one meets people, at the theatre and so on, and one doesn't really know them and can't get at them, and so one just tries to be very nice to them, but I don't call that insincere...."

"No. I didn't mean to people like that. But to your friends--to old Carminow, for instance, and myself.... I sometimes wonder. And to yourself--"

"Ah! I'm not insincere to myself."

"I sometimes wonder if you know what your real self is."

"Don't I? I do. Why do you say that, Mr. Ruan?"

"Because you asked me, and because I can't help saying what I think when I'm asked like that and I think the person's worth it."

Blanche had pushed away her cup, and now she folded her arms on the table and bent to him over them. Her face was very earnest.

"I do know what you mean," she admitted; "I think I know it better than you do. And I suppose it's partly because I've no mother and I've had to protect myself. A woman is very like some kinds of animals I've heard of--she has to a.s.sume protective colouring. If I seem to like people that have nothing in common with me it's because I find it's the simplest way. You are different; I don't have to pretend anything with you. I think if my real self were beginning to be overlaid you could help me revive her."

"Your real self ... haven't I seen that?"

"I thought so till you said what you did," she answered in a low voice, looking away from him; then she went on hurriedly: "You know, when Mamma died I was only thirteen, and though I loved my father very dearly it's never quite the same, is it? It was dreadful leaving Papa, but I had to earn money somehow; you see, he wants all sorts of little things, extra delicacies he can't get on his small means, and I do manage most times to send him them. He didn't like my choosing the stage; but I'm not really well enough educated for a governess--besides, I did try that once...."

"What happened?" asked Ishmael as she paused.

"She--the lady--had a grown-up son as well as the children, and he fell in love with me. I couldn't help that, but she was very angry. And I was so unhappy I couldn't bear to go anywhere else. I wanted a new life. You see--I cared rather."

"But if you both cared--"

"I wouldn't let him defy his mother. It would have made it all dreadful, somehow. And he wasn't a strong character, not like you. You wouldn't mind who was against you if you were in love."

Ishmael did not reply and she went on:

"I've been trying to make a fine thing out of acting now for three years, ever since I was little more than a child--a real child in the little I knew. And if I had not minded certain things of course by now I could have been a leading lady and driven in my brougham, or left the stage for good--or for bad. But one cannot alter the way one is made, or drop the ideas one was brought up to have ... at least I can't; and so I'm still in the attic in Cecil Street, with a small part and no prospects. And how I hate it all sometimes; you can't imagine how I hate it! London is like an awful monster that draws one in inch by inch--a monster that breathes soot instead of fire."

Ishmael had been turning over a wonderful plan in his mind while she was speaking, an idea that had flashed on him before, but that had seemed too splendid to be possible of realization. Now, emboldened by her words, he ventured on the great question.

"I say," he began, "why not, when you want a holiday, when this piece you're playing in is over, come and stay at Cloom? I don't know whether you've heard--whether Carminow has told you about me--I hope he has; I dropped him a hint, because I hate to think I'm sailing under false colours with you--" He paused, his courageous words dying in hot embarra.s.sment. Blanche met him perfectly.

"I know all about it. Mr. Carminow told me. What difference does it make, except to make your friends care all the more for you?"

"Then you would come? My sister Va.s.sie--you'd like her. And I think even my mother would love you. It would be so good for you after all this."

She did not reply at once and Ishmael's heart sank.

"Your father...." he murmured; "I suppose you feel--"

She interrupted with a sudden radiance: "Oh, no, it's not that. My father is married again, you know.... I don't often talk of it; it was a grief to me. We were so everything to each other. But I don't go home very often, because of that. I would love to come, Mr. Ruan. I wonder if I can; I wonder...."

"But why should you wonder?" he urged more boldly; "one advantage of your lonely situation is that you are free to decide for yourself. Do promise me!"

She turned her head away as though to hide eyes suddenly dewy, then met his look with her wonted level candour.

"I'll come," she said; "I'll come. Oh, it will he heavenly!... You don't know what the mere thought of it means.... To get away, even for a little while, from all this...." She swept her hands expressively around on the lodging-house surroundings.

"It must be rotten," said Ishmael in heartfelt accents. "I know how I felt in the parlour at home after my sister Va.s.sie had done it up for my return. I felt as though the woolly mats were choking me. And I couldn't say anything for fear of hurting her feelings."

"And have you got used to it? That's what I'm always so afraid of--getting used to ugliness."

"Va.s.sie has altered. She is the cleverest girl at picking up ideas I've ever known, and somehow when Killigrew was down with us she soon found out, though I don't think he actually said anything. And we have beautiful old furniture hidden away in the attics, so we simply pulled it all out, and Va.s.sie and Phoebe are making new needlework seats for the chairs."