 CHAPTER XII. She walketh veiled in sleeping, for she knoweth not her power. She obeyeth but the pleading of her heart and the high leading of her soul unto this hour. Slow advancing, limping, creeping comes the woman to the hour. She walketh veiled in sleeping, for she knoweth not her power. Anonymous. If it is not good for man to live alone, it is hardly more so for woman. Magda knew this from the vein of shrewd common sense that leavened the artistry of her nature, and took her friend Deb into partnership. Alma knew it also, and when she was on tour, would share with another girl, both from motives of economy and sociability, unless the crowd were of equality which Beatrice had sampled at the stage door. Frank had her mother, and Winnie had lived in boarding houses. But Flair and Beatrice, the most morbid minded of the group, indulged in solitude, and degenerated in their manners. Flair always forgot to pass the butter at meals, and slipped easily into the habit of reaching across the table for anything she wanted. It's red while she ate, and spoiled her digestion, while her tendency to unpunctuality made terrible strides because there was no one to consider but herself. And if she were at school at the appointed time, her home obligations were nil. But it is to be doubted whether the drawback of being by oneself were in any wise bettered by the alternative of such a household as Hilda Romaine's. Hilda's life had a break in it, to her own imagination, so that she saw it in two parts, the first which was all white, bridged over to the second, which was all black, by the day when she came home from school to find that her father had married again while she remained in ignorance. Her own mother she had never known, but it was hardly wonderful that Mr. Romaine had concealed his second marriage from Hilda until it was an accomplished fact, for he was a weak man and could as little face the beautiful set mask of his tall young daughter as he could resist the vulgar, passionate woman who had married him. She had been one of the showroom young ladies in a large, west-end house, and retained a certain taste in dress that she called stylish, and that intensified the stamp of ill-breeding upon her. Hilda did not go back to school again. She remained at home to watch her father go slowly downhill, and to learn to keep a terrible silence through her stepmother's pits of ungovernable temper. The remainder of the household, including the quickly recurring children who seemed to Hilda to punctuate her teens, were cowed by Mrs. Romaine as the worst-tempered person in a family will to some extent always wear down the more peace-loving. Hilda was never cowed, though as a rule she kept silence. Sometimes at rare intervals her own passion flared up in a flame that transcended Mrs. Romaine's more noisy methods, and left that lady with a virtuous sense of her own meekness compared with the threatening face which Hilda carried in her furies. Well, I'm glad at least that I have some control. I should be frightened to have a temper like Hilda's, she declared proudly. If one of my daughters showed signs of such an other, I don't know what I should do, the house wouldn't hold us all. On an average, however, Hilda's curled lips were only a little closer pressed together during her stepmother's outpourings, and there was more of scornful irony in her blue eyes than an equal rancor. She did not openly quarrel with the woman for her weak-minded father's sake. She never had, from that first awful return when she found her installed as mistress of the house, and she was on easy terms with her stepsisters who, however, were too far removed from her in age to be either companions or confidants. It was not only in social status that Mr. Romaine appeared to deteriorate after his second marriage. His means always moderate became involved through her love of display, or what she termed, keeping a good showy house, and before she was twenty, Hilda saw things become so desperate that she looked about for work in the little leisure left her from trying to supplement the inefficient service of the slobberly household. She had a fair knowledge of the violin, and at first she tried for pupils with the usual disheartening result, and then she thought of the concert stage, but the agents flatly told her that she might wait for years before she got engagements, and her need was pressing. Hilda was by no means a genius. She had a reasonable amount of practical knowledge, and a love for music that was perhaps a talent in itself. At any rate it gave her the perseverance to try to play well whatever she attempted, and the long patience of her work for eight or nine years was its own reward in a gradual mastery of her instrument. She was at least a great deal too good a player for the work she found, though she might be no soloist. The same agents who had refused her concert work offered her the position of second violin in a ladies' orchestra, and Hilda took it thankfully and earned her first guinea by no means with ease, for her companions were as little to her taste as her home circle. She had played in many ladies' orchestras since then, and had seen as many ups and downs as the rest of Nuzotra, the most awful period in her memory being a bitter three months when ill luck forced her to join a quartet who were engaged during the season in a tea shop. The other girls were jealous of Hilda because of her face and the attention she unwellingly received from the young men who thronged the tables and stared at her through clouds of foul tobacco. Nuzotra used to rally round her in those days to mitigate her discomfort, and had teased so often at the shop that they became known as Hibitsue, more than the clerks and shop girls of the neighborhood. It was a period that did not bear thinking over, even when it was thankfully passed, and was not rendered sweeter by her stepmother's railing taunts and unvarnished criticism. Mrs. Romaine quite agreed in Hilda's working for her right to exist in an uncomfortable home, but she never lost an opportunity to sully the pride that she suspected by comments on the means to that end. Hilda struggled free of the tea shop after a while, with two proposals to add to her education. One was from the manager of the place, the other from a boy in an office counting-house nearby whose wooing was conducted through the giggles of the other girls, they being privy to his suit and assisting it by nudges and innuendos to the best of their power. Fortunately for herself, Hilda was so tall that her storm-flushed face was easily lifted over his head, but the grave Greek beauty grew shadowed with a look as of tragedy while the years passed on, each with its burden making the likeness to the castes in the British Museum more defined. The second trial of Hilda's professional career was another series of bad chances that landed her at last at an exhibition with a self-styled troop of Italians whose cockney accents and watery eyes betrayed a native right to Billingsgate rather than Venice. Hilda wore a red scarf over her bright hair and looked divine, but even the agent who got her the engagement was apologetic, and the very first good thing he heard of he honestly placed in Hilda's way. This was the lady's cat-gut band, in which she had played for ten months, and whose conductor vented his hurt vanity upon her on the evening of Beatrice Burial. His fancy was really taken with Hilda's face, and his heart peaked by her indifference. But he was one of a long series of worrisome aspirants to her favor, from whom the girl turned with disillusioned eyes. Hilda had always received attention, if merely of the turning of heads as she passed, and the succession of men who had gone a step beyond and contrived to express their admiration in words. She regarded as very little less than actual drawbacks in existence. I am very strong, she had once said, and so she was, tenacious both of life and of some better fate for herself than what she had been offered. For she must long since have grown disheartened and drifted into a married life on as low a plane as her father's. She never met men with whom she cared to associate, those visiting the house being naturally her stepmother's friends, and her companions of her own sex were Nuzotra. The only occasions on which she saw a better or more educated class were those when the lady's cat-gut band was engaged to play for some soiree, or a big party at a private house. The position was not exactly desirable, because the guests, with questionable manners, would come and stare at the performers quite as rudely as the customers in the tea-shop had done, but they interested Hilda from an impersonal point of view nevertheless. When even the other girls grew indignant, she could afford to laugh, something ludicrous in the position striking her irresistibly. Hilda's grim sense of humor had made life tolerable when a duller nature would have been goaded past bearing. They behave as if we were wild beasts. I saw one woman look at you, put up her eyeglasses and say, quite pretty, as though you were a doll and could not hear, said the leader of the first violins to Hilda, red with wrath as they compared notes during the interval which divided the program in two halves. If they think we are waxworks, they ought to pay, quoted Hilda, but perhaps she really meant it. Well, I should think she did. The first violin was a partisan of Hilda's, but you do take it coolly. I should be furious if I were you. The idea of their daring to tell you you are quite pretty to your face, and it comes to that. My dear, I care so little what they say that even their bad manners do not shock me, said Hilda with a little sigh. Are we going to play the Julian Thorson tonight? I don't understand you, Miss Romaine, said the other girls, staring with round eyes and speaking quite honestly. I have seen you go suddenly red when the conductor was cheeky to you, as if you would like to kill him. Perhaps I should, but think how foolish that would be. We should all lose our engagements, and he would never understand what he had done. No, not even when he was dead. And after all, when he is tapping round the music stand with his baton, he is all right. And yet you don't mind these strangers in the least went on the girl, not heeding Hilda's nonsense. But in either case you are quite consoled if we play that cavatina of Thorson's. Thorson happens to be my favorite English composer, said Hilda gently. I love his harmonies so much that I can even afford to be angelic to the rest of the world when listening to them. I always fancy that we should be friends if we met. You'd be awfully disappointed, said the first violin, screwing the D string to a dangerous sharpness. I hear he is quite elderly, and not at all English really. His father was Swedish, I think. Lend me your rosin, will you? This bow won't bite. Hilda leaned across the empty seat, dividing the first and second violins, and handed the girl her rosin. The conductor had already fled to refresh himself, and he congratulated on the performance of the girls whom he had left with selfish indifference, hungry and tired and waiting for their release. Sometimes it had happened that owing to an ill-managed concert or some muddle of the arrangements in private houses, the ladies' band never left the platform at all, though they had twenty minutes' rest halfway through the evening. But it had never happened, in the memory of any player, that the conductor had been in like case. Hilda heard the second violins grumbling behind her, but she was not personally so keen upon the weak lemonade and flabby sandwiches which she knew would be her portion in the cloakroom, or a drafty passage behind the scenes. She sat on the conductor's immediate right as leader, and could talk to her vis-à-vis the first violin while he was out of the way. Furthermore, she was thinking of the music they were to play more than of her own appetite. For she loved her work, and all the desirable things of life to her were best expressed in her violin. One of the attractions to her of the cavatina was that it was played with the mutes, as if a far off, and suggested all sorts of beautiful images to her mind. Hilda was in warm-colored silks, playing at ball in a marble court, the exquisite rich architecture of an eastern palace lifting the blue sky-tent-like on its pinnacles, liquid sunset backing a tropical sea, all the ornaments of this hard, brown earth that mean visual beauty. For the witch her soul longed, she would really have liked to ask the composer what he had thought about as he drew the refrain from the grieving strings. Hilda enjoyed the semi-artistic evenings most, where the lady's band had something amusing to look at, as well as being looked at in their turn. Nothing is more motley than a representative gathering of talented people, and Hilda's easily tickled mirth made her shake with silent laughter over some of the men and women who were pointed out to her as lions. They dressed it seemed to her in anything or everything inappropriate and mostly soiled, and they gaveled to each other like parrots or monkeys. Now and then one saw a beautiful face or an exquisite gown, but how rarely the notoriety seemed on the whole, content to clothe themselves in fame. If Flair or Magda or Alma ever succeeds, we must be very careful with them at once, and crush any tendency in them to dirty draperies, said Hilda firmly to herself. There's a woman with a gilt laurel wreath, and her gown wrongly laced at the back. I hope Flair will not try to wear a laurel wreath, even in her coffin. It was at one of these gatherings that Hilda realized her desire, and saw her favorite composer in the flesh. Julian Thorson was really a great man in his profession, and the principal guest at the evening function, to which the lady's cat-cut band were contributing sweet harmony, from a jungle of palms and greenery, exceedingly trying to the performers, for Hilda's bow hand was in danger of becoming entangled in a trail of smile-axe with every scherzo passage, while on the other side of the conductor's seat, the leader of the first violins, set in a bower of greenery, out of which her poor little face struggled vainly to see what she was playing. But the effect was very picturesque, and the hostess, a lady of some musical taste, was perfectly satisfied, so long as Mr. Julian Thorson did not draw his brows together with the expression of anguish that made conductors tremble when he audiencesed one of his own compositions. The whole affair put Hilda in mind of a ludicrous incident in Nicholas Nickleby, for the entire company in a provincial theatre recognized a London manager in the stage-box, and immediately began to direct all their energies at him. The hero made love at him, the heroine played her whole part at him, all the company neglected the exigencies of their positions, and spoke simply to him, in the midst of which it was discovered that the London manager was fast asleep. Hilda wondered whether Mr. Thorson would reward their efforts in the same way, for she was conscious that the entertainment was being run on something the same lines as Dickens' provincial theatre. The pieces chosen were those whose composers were known to be favourites of the great man, and the programme was abruptly altered in order that the cavatina might be introduced, while he was still within hearing. With the corners of her mouth twitching, Hilda pushed aside a rampant fern in order that she might see what effect the last item, Sullivan's graceful dance, had had upon him. He was standing in profile to her, being talked to by his hostess, to whom he appeared to be gravely assenting at intervals, but hardly contributing to the conversation himself. There was rather a contemplative air about him, and she thought that perhaps he really had been listening to the Sullivan before his hostess began to speak. In spite of the first violin's warning, Hilda was not disappointed in her hero, for which rarest benefit of the gods she ought to have offered a special thanksgiving. Julian Thorson was a very tall man with square shoulders. His hair was gray and thick, and was long enough to wave without being unkempt. A great improvement on most of the male lions prowling around him. He wore an eyeglass on a black ribbon, with which he played as if the nervous trick were habitual to him, and for the rest he had a broad, generous forehead and deeply set eyes which held the loving-kindness peculiar to short-sighted people. When he slowly turned towards the band, following some remark of his hostess, Hilda saw and liked the rather massive jaw and clean-shaven mouth. There was none of the sensuality, usually to be discerned in the face of genius, but a great sensitiveness perhaps took its place, and made his contemplative regard of humanity somewhat paternal in its very gentleness. She judged him as a man nearer sixty than fifty, and was quite satisfied to have it so. A minute later the conductor rather impressively placed the cavatina on the stand, and began tapping round with the baton, as Hilda had too faithfully described his method of conducting. He frowned at the ladies of his band, who were still talking to each other under breath, wrapped the music, and with an exaggerated gesture started the first soft notes of Mr. Thorson's melody. Hilda could not see how the composer received the compliment, for her severely perfect profile was turned to the audience while she drew her bow clear of the palms, and as she bent above her violin her whole soul became absorbed in the music, to the exclusion of any external distraction. Owing to the necessity of the band being seated, it was impossible for her to look down and distinguish any one in particular among the muddle of faces and gowns and black coats grouped irregularly in front of the platform. Yet through it all she had a certain strange feeling that she was playing solely for Mr. Thorson, and a little thrill of excitement made her young body tingle. The cavatina's principal air was arranged, with an unusual preference for the second violins, and Hilda at least threw her whole soul into it, playing her best for the quickening interest which possessed her. She was singularly unconscious for a beautiful woman, or rather she had grown so used to the impression she created that she seldom thought about it unless it was forced upon her notice. During the playing of the cavatina, certainly she never remembered that she was more evident to Julian Thorson than he was to her, nor did it strike her that as he stood facing the whole band it was most likely that his eyes would be attracted to her face amongst all the others, as mankind always does search for and dwell upon the most pleasing object within sight, though by a partially mechanical impulse. The last few bars of a really creditable performance were making the conductors well with pride before Hilda Romaine turned her head and met the full kind gaze of the composer. Experiencing a little shock of pleasure and surprise, for it was like meeting the eyes of a friend. Could you tell me who is leading the second violins? said Mr. Thorson quietly to his hostess. I really don't know. She turned her program to the list of names. Ms. Romaine, Ms. Lyle, and Ms. Thornton, second violins. There, Mr. Thorson, you are as wise as I am. A very fair rendering, was it not? I hope the second violins did not spoil something to your finer ears. To me it sounded quite lovely, but I have no doubt it was full of faults to the composer. Not at all, thank you. He said in the same quiet tone. I have seldom heard it better rendered. I should like to thank the conductor. Oh, certainly. But not only the conductor was called up, swelling with a satisfaction that might have suggested the cavatina to be his own rather than Mr. Thorson's, but the composer managed to speak a few words of courteous thanks to the ladies of the orchestra also, and in consequence they somehow felt themselves obliged to step down from the platform and receive his congratulation. He addressed them generally it is true, but then he made a remark, more particularly to the first violin, and left her forever converted to his worship. Whether he were of Swedish birth or no, for he had a very charming manner, and then, then somehow he was standing next to the tall girl, whose name he had inquired, and turned quite naturally to speak to her also. I am afraid you must be very tired by the end of the entertainment, he said gently. Not more than other orchestras, I fancy. Hilda returned with a little low laugh that was half cynical. We usually arrive with the ices and go away with the red cloth, but I am thankful to say that I have never actually seen the red cloth laid, so there is something for which to be thankful. He looked at her with an intentness that she would have resented in nine men out of ten. And may I not get you some refreshment now, he said easily, if you have been playing for three or four hours. Oh, no, thank you, she said hurriedly, shocked that her dry little speech should have resulted in this. We shall go out and have some lemonade some time, I expect. There is generally one interval longer than the rest, during which the orchestra refreshes. He did not press the matter, but stood talking to the first violin, and to Hilda herself in a desultory fashion, swinging his eyeglass on its black ribbon. And perhaps his notice had this much effect, that the hostess remembered the existence of the orchestra as human beings, and not mere machines, for soon after they were trooped off and regaled by themselves, as if they were in some sort social lepers, who might not mix with the rest of the guests. Hilda caught sight of Mr. Thorson at intervals throughout the night, now the center of a group, now chatting to a single person who was important enough to engross his whole attention, and she always found his manner charming, even viewed at a distance, once also towards the end of the performance. She met his eyes again, and they looked at each other, with a kind of impersonal sympathy, that made her feel as if she had gained a friend, though she never expected to do more than pass him in a crowd on some future occasion. Perhaps not even that. Their second meeting was as unexpected as Magda's experience of her editor. Hilda was walking fast along Oxford Street a week or so later, on her way home after a wearisome rehearsal, when she suddenly found herself in the center of a street accident. There was a horse down, and the hope that someone was hurt had gathered the spectators so quickly and so fast, that before she could push her way through, the girl felt herself jostled into the thick of it, and jammed against other foot- passengers without being able to help herself. The gentleman next to her, pressed with her shoulder to shoulder, might be as anxious to proceed as herself, but for the moment neither could help the other, and looking round to apologize, Hilda found her eyes caught by a familiar face and a big gray head, somewhere above her own. It was Julian Thorson, but she thought he was less likely to recognize her than she him. I am so sorry that I can't move, but the stout lady behind me is butting me towards you, I think, she said gravely. It is really not my fault that I am in your way, he began in the same breath, but waited for her sentence, and then laughed. As their eyes met, Hilda hesitated and said, I think it is Mr. Thorson, and I know it is the second violin in the lady's band who rendered my cavatina so perfectly, he said easily. I was quicker at recognizing you than you were me, you see, though I never learned your name. Hilda smiled her wise little smile holding her head back from its proximity to his shoulder, while the stout woman behind her prodded her way vigorously and forced them into each other's arms with embarrassing success. What is your name? said Mr. Thorson a little desperately at last, as she did not seem inclined to enlighten him. Are you Miss Romaine, or Miss Lyle, or Miss Thornton? I am Hilda Romaine, said Hilda, and feeling the crowd loosen set her shoulder to an opening and sidled through while he followed as quickly as his bigger bulk would allow. I want you to come into a tea shop and have tea with me, he said at once, as they mechanically fell in to step along the pavement. I cannot talk to you so well in the street, and I am very anxious to ask you some questions. It struck me that you had such complete mastery of your instrument the other night, that your talents are a little obscured in a lady's band. Isn't that so? I am obliged to accept whatever position I can that will earn me my living, you see, said Hilda plainly. She was hesitating over the tea shop, but only from habit. Here was a man nearly as old as her father, a gentleman, one whose influence in musical circles must be enormous, and who could help her if he would. She looked at the deeply set dark eyes and spoke quietly. If you are really interested, I will tell you anything I can about the position and remuneration in a lady's band. Of course there are many grades, though I really believe that I have tried them all now, but I warn you that it will not be an exciting or exhilarating account. They're depressing, I should think, by all I know and saw the other night. He amended, holding back the swing-glass door of a tea shop for her to pass in. This will do, won't it? There is a nice red-plush corner for you, and all sorts of stale cakes. If I had only foreseen that I should meet you, I would have arranged for something better. He screwed the eyeglass into his eye, and regarded the entertainment offered with a silent distrust that said it was certainly not good enough for his guest. Hilda laughed her little satirical laugh as she took up the fair bill. Her eyes were lowered, but he saw the warmly tinted Greek face and the bright, well-groomed hair against the sordid red plush and gilding of the place. Behind Hilda a long mirror duplicated her and offered another view of her bent head and sloping shoulders. Mr. Thorson was probably very short-sighted, indeed, in spite of the eyeglass, to cause him to look at her so intently. It was a somewhat expurgated account of herself that Hilda gave him, because a certain decent reserve in her demanded that she should omit other people's agency in her circumstances. Whether or no he could silently supply the missing links, she did not ask herself. She only knew she was easing the bitter strain that had been running through her life for many years by this recounting of them to a sympathetic personality which simply existed for her in two misty dark eyes. She talked to the eyes, the rest of the man being but a blurred outline to her, too vague to frighten her into reserve. For the time, indeed, he seemed to her sexless, but with a healing power in his voice to make her feel less of an outlaw against mere existence. Other customers came and went in the shop, and the waitress grew tired of commenting on the couple who lingered, talking so earnestly and almost forgot them. It was long past six when Hilda rose to go home, having written her address for him in his pocketbook, and with no thought save that he might perhaps help her through it. They shook hands at the shop door, and the man stood bareheaded, with the glare of the electric light on his gray hair. While the girl sprang on to the step of a passing omnibus with the facility of a Londoner, Nuzotra rather pried themselves as a rule on being able to jump on and off without stopping the vehicle. Flair, for instance, would run and jump like a monkey, until told by her doctor that she positively must not. To her intense disgust, she had an unsound heart and weak muscles, but long training had taught her to calculate to a nicety how to dodge a passing cab, trot by the side of her omnibus, outpace the horses for an instant and then spring for it. It saved time in the long run and made her feel the equal of scornful man. Hilda's easy swing up on to the step of her conveyance, and the little backward curve of her body as she turned to smile at her late companion in the doorway, made her appear suddenly younger than while she talked of bitter things with a shadowed face. Her qualities of health and strength as well as beauty were starklingly apparent. Mr. Thorson looked as if someone had reminded him quite as suddenly that he was an elderly man, as he stood for an instant, swinging the eyeglass on its black ribbon. They met in a desultory fashion two or three times after that and talked over what might be done to improve her position before he began to write to her. It was then that she began to know and love a real man, for letters are the most dangerous attraction that can be offered a woman. The mere fact of his setting down his thoughts for her in black and white has a certain confidence and sacredness in it, and then a woman is nearly always an idealist, and would prefer to eliminate the flesh. There is no shock of physical awakening in a letter, and no sweet dread of touch. Even a lover's letters are suggestive of a man's mind rather than his body, and Thorson did not write as a lover. He was a charming correspondent, and far more accomplished in letter writing than Hilda. For alas, he had the drawback of his age to experience him. But he seemed quite satisfied with her replies, and no cloud darkened the serenity of their companionship for the first three months of the acquaintance. Then on a day in spring came a bolt from the blue, in the shape of a kindly, courteous letter, suggesting that he should call and see her in her home circle, and be made known to her father. Whatever the expurgations in her accounts of herself had really deceived him she could not tell. But it was the natural outcome of their growing intimacy, that as a gentleman he should legitimize his pretensions to her friendship before her own people, instead of leaving it on the more unconventional footing on which it had hitherto stood, Hilda recognized the inevitable in Thorson's letter, and acknowledged that had he done otherwise he would have been a different man to the friend of whom she was growing really fond. But she knew also, as he could not, the household to which he asked so simply to be introduced. Mr. Romain had a small house in the neighborhood of Westbourne Park, where he lived a shabby life on a pension derived from having been in the civil service. He had retired early, under a scare of heart disease, and had become the shambling figure of Hilda's knowledge of him, brow beaten by his wife and slowly sinking lower and lower in the social scale. At one time, soon after his second marriage, they had launched into manifold expenses and hampered themselves with debts against which they still struggled. And as Hilda always saw the family in her mind's eye, it was a harassed, under-servanted life, with the long-legged stepsisters growing more and more common in manners and appearance, and taking the tone of the cheap schools to which they went in the neighborhood. The mere look of the house was so impressed upon her that, to her dying day, she shuddered at its facsimiles in suburban districts. And they are many in London. It was a semi-detached villa whose stucco front looked all the dirtier for the fact that its neighbor was rather rich in paint and hearthstone. Perhaps the tenant was more successful in bullying his landlord, for though Mr. Romain also held his house on a repairing lease, he never seemed able to get anything done. There was a narrow flight of steps leading to the narrow front door, and before the house a neglected square of garden, which to Hilda suggested dilapidation and poverty, far more than if it had not been so pretentious, and had looked sheer upon the street. The internal economy of the place matched the outside. For many years now they had had a succession of general servants who were first overworked and then dismissed in a passion by their mistress, who being of much the same class as themselves had all the arrogance of the beggar on horseback when set in authority over them. During the periods between the departure of one servant and the installation of another, Hilda did most of the housework, with set lips and the danger signal of her warm, red blood rising to her face. Mrs. Romain undertook the cooking, which she did to an accompaniment of loud grumbling, usually spoiling the food and proclaiming herself as too exhausted to attempt such labor again. So the family lived on cold scraps and bread and cheese until the advent of a new domestic, to go through the same dreary curriculum of quarrels and dismissal, etc. But always, whether they had a servant or no, Hilda laid the meals and made the beds, and risked spoiling her hands with washing up. It sounds perhaps a small price to pay for food and shelter, but after ten years of such service, with endless bickering, the most patient Braselda is liable to her moments of desperation, and the feelings that to clean her own boots and brush her own gowns is the one burden too much laid on her by fate. And it was to this household that Mr. Julian Thorson proposed being introduced, through his very usage, to the customs of the finer social world. Hilda thought of the great composer's gray head and the delightful charm of his manner, in the hideous rooms where her stepmothers taste raged triumphantly in furniture and coloring. She thought of her father's nervous shrinking efforts to talk, which had replaced his former natural ease, and of her stepsisters giggling and whispering in corners, above all of her stepmothers strident tones and the chance of her being in an ill temper, in which case she would certainly be rude, just to show Hilda that it's no good being stuck up. I'm not going to cotton to her friends that she picks up in the street. Mrs. Romaine, having made her husband's acquaintance on an omnibus, had always been uneasily conscious of its irregularity, until she hit upon the plan of carrying the war into the enemy's country, and by constant assertion had really come to believe herself that Hilda's friends were never made, but in the same way. Nevertheless the girl knew that he must come, and with her lips set in an ugly line, she sat down and answered his letter, thanking him for the suggestion and naming Sunday as the only day on which they were all sure to be at home. She hoped in her heart that her stepmother might go to church and leave her father and herself to talk to the guest who, thank heaven, was at least not young enough to interest or attract Mrs. Romaine. The latter lady went to church for various reasons, as when she had a new gown to display to the shopkeepers in the neighborhood who knew her, or when the girls had nice clothes, or when she was so hipped with staying at home that any change was better than none. She never, however, went without some such motive power to impel her there. Fate did not favor Hilda, or, if it did, it was by backhanded methods. Mr. Julian Thorson called on a day when every drawback was painfully in evidence, and when Hilda's surroundings were certainly at their worst, at least they formed a background to a very beautiful picture where the girl sat with her hands resting one and the other on her knee, her face colorless and fine with suffering, and something rather grand in her quiescence throughout most of his visit. She introduced him to her father, stepmother, and stepsisters with a kind of grim amusement that had passed beyond humiliation, and Mr. Thorson had the full shock of his host's obvious uneasiness as a servant in the presence of his employer, of Mrs. Romaine's coarse flushed assurance, and of daisies and violets startling resemblance to a young lady in a tobacconist shop from whom he had chance to buy some Lucifer matches on his way. There were oleographs on the walls, and jingling bead curtains wherever they could be hung, and many photos of Mrs. Romaine's relations smirking at him out of guilt frames, and in the midst of it all sat Hilda with her tortured Greek face and the warm natural colors of her face and eyes, a triumphant contrast to Mrs. Romaine's examples of artistic furnishing. Mr. Thorson looked at her desperate young beauty once, and drew a breath like a deep sigh. End of Chapter 12 Part 1 Chapter 12 Part 2 of The Pathway of the Pioneer He had arrived at the house about four o'clock. After twenty minutes of discomfort Mrs. Romaine turned to Hilda and suggested her getting tea in the tone of a bullying master to a dog. He guessed that she was showing off on his account and winced for the first time, for Hilda could not assert herself now and must accept the bragging order. She rose with perfect self-possession in her leisurely manner and left the room, Mrs. Romaine adding in an offhand tone, the girls out and we keep only one servant, Mr. Thorson. I suppose you think that a great hardship, but Mr. Romaine says he can't afford more. So as I tell him his daughter will have to play the slavey when the real one has a holiday. Hilda lays aside her fine heirs when she's at home, I assure you. She has to if she wants her bed made and her boots blacked. She laughed loudly with a sense of triumph in destroying an impression of living at her ease, which she did not doubt that Hilda had tried to give. Why should she think otherwise, when she would most certainly have done so herself? Nor was there anything in the attentive face that Mr. Thorson turned on her to tell her what he thought of the revelation, unless the little tricky head of swinging an eyeglass on a black ribbon which he wore could be said to betray irritation. Mrs. Romaine put it down to affectation, however, and made a mock of what she called molly-calls, or days afterwards. Only as Hilda entered the room again, with the tea tray in her hands, he quietly swept some cheaply-bound books from a small table and made room for her to set it down. She smiled a little as she thanked him, the only time he thought throughout his whole visit. During the thirty-five minutes he spent in the vulgar little drawing-room, he learned many things. Amongst others that Mrs. Romaine did not believe in people giving themselves heirs, when half the world had never heard of them, by which she obviously meant that her knowledge of music did not include his work, being as a fact strictly limited to Dan Godfrey and Harry Hunter, and also that his acquaintance with Hilda was not favored by the household because they had not known him first, nor was he a young man of the very lower middle class behind a counter in the immediate neighborhood. His gray hair and obvious middle age indeed made him somewhat of an anomaly to Mrs. Romaine, who felt herself balked of a good joke at least at Hilda's expense, to be increased by Daisy's vilest, facetious illusions to her young man. It was a little impossible to regard Mr. Thorson as a suitor, when he obviously made no pretensions to that physician at all, and only referred to Hilda personally once when, speaking directly to her father, he said that he considered Mrs. Romaine's talent worth something more than her present position, and hoped to help her to improve it, that he had not done so already was due to the fact that the man he most wished to see on the subject was in Germany, and he would not ask her to give up her band unless he could actually offer her a better engagement, with a prospect of its continuation. All this might be strictly satisfactory, but it was galling to a jealous, spiteful woman, who would rather have been able to pick holes in her stepdaughter than have to acknowledge her possible good fortune. Mrs. Romaine was no adept at keeping her annoyance to herself, and so by the time that Mr. Thorson left, she would barely shake with him, and was talking loudly and rather facetiously with her own daughters. Her man are changing to offhand curtness as he made his adieu. It would hardly have improved her temper had she known that he did not notice her ill-breeding, because he held his hand as it lay in his, for a moment, had been stone cold, and her face was beginning to look drawn under the strain she was enduring. You poor child, you poor beautiful thing, dropped like a rose in the gutter, he said to himself as he walked fast away from the dreadful house, all day and every day, and nothing but that to come home to after hard work. He thought of his own ample means of his luxurious house where every fastidious whim was studied, and in his kindly humble heart he felt ashamed. God preaches us round about sermons, he said with a sigh, slacking his pace after a while, and trying to calm his unusual excitement. That child's face was one. I wonder why he grinds the youth and beauty so out of his own creations. Such a life, dear heaven, a boy would have become vicious and gone to the deuce to console himself. The girl is enduring, as women do, and only growing dull and heart-sick and embittered. Perhaps it seemed worse than it was, even, to his sensitive over-refined nature, for he loved beauty passionately, and there was no beauty in Hilda's life unless she made it for herself by her violin. Anyhow he did not repeat the experiment of going to see her, but he asked her instead if he might introduce her to a lady, an old friend of his, and took her to a flat in Albert Gate, where this good angel lived. She proved to be an elderly woman, a widow, but with forty years of married sweetness in her tired old face, and manners as ingratiating as Mr. Thorson's. Hilda wondered a little why she looked at her so long, and almost wistfully when they were introduced to each other, she forgot to wonder, in the pleasure given her by her hostess, and the atmosphere which surrounded her. Everything in this environment appealed to Hilda's taste, a refinement, the hint at luxury, perhaps, which, after all, was only expressed by the girl's pitiful little desire to have things nice, and the society of a woman not only well educated, it would have been difficult to rival the soundness of the atrocious actual education, or magda's quick intelligence, but used to the daintiness of social life as well. Her name was Mrs. Mornington, and she seemed attracted by Hilda, whom she invited to come and see her whenever she liked. What Mr. Thorson had told her of her history, or how he had described her home-circle from what he had seen of it, Hilda hardly dared to think, but once Mrs. Mornington said, My dear, you are very, very pretty. It must be all the harder for you to face the world in earning your own living, and Hilda answered, Yes, Mrs. Mornington, it is hard. And that was all, except that, when they parted on that occasion, the older woman put her hands on the girl's shoulders and kissed her. Very, very pretty, she murmured to herself after Hilda had gone, and quite a young woman, and then she took off her spectacles and wiped them, for they were dim. It is perhaps significant that Hilda never told Nuzotra of the extent of her intimacy with Mr. Thorson, or Mrs. Mornington. They heard in the first instance of her meeting with him, and hoped that it might be of value to her, from a purely material point of view. It was always useful in their experience to know influential people, but Hilda must have contrived perhaps unintentionally to mislead them into an impersonal view of Julian Thorson, nor did they know of her constant visits to the flat in the Albert Hall mansions, where Mrs. Mornington lived. From that bridge in her life, represented by her father's second marriage, the girl had gained a complete control of herself, with an unspeakable bitterness, whose only betrayal was the shadowed Greek face. But with the control, a little of the iron had inevitably entered into her soul, until she was as reserved, though in a stronger way, as Beatrice. Life was always teaching Hilda, and she learned hardly. Even the education of association with Mrs. Mornington and her flat was not all pleasure. It had it sore side in the feeling of being at a disadvantage, which beset her in the contrast between herself and other women whom she encountered there at times. Hilda made most of her own clothes with the same skillful fingers that managed her violin, but the most conscientious amateur's work is heart-rending in comparison to the paid professionals. She knew the value of her face and figure, but even in the evening, when toilet deficiency seemed to her less noticeable in herself, she did not feel the clothed equal of the guests who listened to her violin playing, with cordial pleasure, and rendered her the delicate homage of thanking her like a friend. What her audience saw for themselves on these occasions was a tall woman in a soft black gown whose cut past comment while it lent itself as an inoffensive frame for an attitude and face that made more than one sigh for faint envy. With her body swayed a little backwards as her firm, strong hand swept the bow to and fro, to and fro. Hilda was a thing of curves and coloring, of splendid pure lines and the vital beauty of flesh and blood. Mrs. Mournington's room was a long one, overlooking the park, which lay like a map many stories below, and it was upholstered in a dull crimson that had the warmth of roses and seemed to keep some eastern scent faintly hanging in the draperies. Against this kindly setting, Hilda's bright hair and blue eyes and flushed face were always set like a mosaic in Thorson's memory. They had known each other for six months of an intimate friendship before he fulfilled his promise of offering her a better position than the one she held in the Lady's Cat Gut Band. It was so natural to trust him, however, that the delay had hardly occurred to her as a fret at all. She knew that the great music publisher to whom he meant to speak about her was in Berlin. In the meantime she learned to play Julian Thorson's music to his own accompaniments and to be happy without the cynical threat that had made even her laughter of a rather keen quality. Happiness had a developing effect upon Hilda, whereas the hard miseries of her life had threatened to condense her nature to a mere resisting force. There was something new in her face that made her beauty really noble, a hint of the maternal, a brooding glow that seemed to guard a secret too feminine for definition. It was with her on the day of Beatrice breaking up party, and was the key to the feeling the younger girl tried to express when she said that she did not care to look at anyone else when Hilda was in the room. Something most tender was acting like a revelation in Hilda Romain. She could afford to be gentle and not to armor herself against the buffets which she had learned to expect from humanity. A subtle sympathy had made her understand Beatrice in her pain and had left her with a quickened comprehension and anxiety when they parted that haunted her all the next day like a premonition. It chanced that she was going to the Albert Hall flat by Mrs. Mornington's invitation that evening in spite of the increasing difficulties placed in her way at home, for Mrs. Romain belonged to a class whose sense of authority consists in opposition. She did not really care whether Hilda had her own friends to visit or stayed at home, so long as her own diversions were not hindered. And Hilda became more scrupulous in discharging her barren duties in the household the less love went with them, arranging matters carefully and with rigid justice so that she should be spared without inconvenience. Mrs. Romain had nothing to complain of, therefore she grumbled in the hope of at least fretting her stepdaughter's temper to the destroying of any pleasure she might have had in going out. For she regarded Hilda's anger as her one vulnerable point, and since she knew in her undeveloped brain that she could not influence her in one least degree, she retaliated on the girl's impassivity by the petty revenges of studied ill nature. It was one of Hilda's worst afflictions that she had not even her bedroom to herself. More often than not it was shared by one of her stepsisters, whose upbringing and inherited instincts made personal niceties a minor consideration. So long as Daisy's frocks were sufficiently new and smart, she was not particular as to what lay underneath. Hilda's influence and example might have over-weighted her stepmother's in this particular, if Mrs. Romain had not regarded it as a point to be contested for the sake of victory. As it was, the torture of such close association was one which only a gentlewoman could appreciate, herded with a like companion. Hilda changed her gown to go to the mansions in a room made more intolerable by contrast to Mrs. Mournington's surroundings, because Daisy's personal belongings were littered about it, and by her mother's advice she had closed the windows to keep out the dust of the street. To do the child justice, she remembered the state in which she had left the room, and when her stepsister came in, tired after an afternoon performance of the lady's band, she apologized hurriedly and offered to run up and clear away some of my things. But Mrs. Romain heard her, and promptly found a reason for her staying downstairs, through an almost mechanical habit of ill nature. Hilda came down again, ready to go out, with her lips set in the old line that meant unbroken silence, and left the house pelted by Mrs. Romain's comments and taunts, which seemed to affect her as little as if she were one of her marble likenesses in the British Museum. But there was a red color in her face that was not reflected by the sunset, and she swung along the road to the nearest station and booked herself for Kensington High Street with the same strained compression of her lips. This was the day, remember, a Beatrice resignation, and was intensely hot even for July. Hilda got into a third class carriage and threw her head up as if gasping for air, for the mental and physical sense of thunder in her atmosphere were almost more than she could bear. At Queen's Road a gentleman came along the platform, evidently in search of a first class carriage. He was a well-dressed man with a face that Hilda did not observe, for she was thinking of very different things. But her own seat was next to the window, and her unconscious head turned towards the platform. The gentleman paused with his hand upon the door of the first class carriage joining, looked at her, came back, and deliberately entered the third class. If she had been alive to her surroundings, Hilda would have been on her guard at once. But she did not even notice that anyone had sat down opposite to her. There was another woman at the further end of the carriage on the same side as herself, otherwise she and her Visa-V were alone. He sat well round in his corner, his legs elaborately crossed, his eyes fixed on the girl opposite, with a glare, like a beast of praise. When the train had started he began to shift his position, bringing his knees slowly round until they touched hers. With a sudden sensation of physical sickness, Hilda became aware of his proximity, aware also that he belonged to a species of human animal that she had learned to know only too well alas, and whose advances were always begun in this way in a public conveyance. Nuzotra early learned that this, their adversary, the bestial man, walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. They warn each other after some unusually revolting episode, but they can afford to laugh scornfully at the insult cautiously offered to them. Hilda sat back and drew her knees away. She did not look at the man, in the hope that her action was sufficient rebuff. He moved his feet and touched her again, pressing her until she drew her knees back against the door of the carriage. Then he jammed his own against them, his eyes never moving from their scorching stare. Hilda waited, drawing her breath, all the anger that her stepmother had roused, and she had held in check, flared up now at his augmentation of her passion, as the spark applied to a train of gunpowder. The blood surged over her beautiful face, making it the mask of an angry goddess, and her eyes were two gems of living sapphire, as she turned them on him at last and, leaning forward, spoke so distinctly that the other woman heard and turned her head, gaping with surprise. Will you be good enough to move your knees from against mine? It is not often that Lothario hears his methods clearly stated in words, for he counts on the fact that womanly decency shrinks from acknowledging any knowledge of them. The gentleman stared still for a moment. As it petrified, then he stammered something, raised his hat, and as the train drew into the next station he stumbled out onto the platform, almost before it was safe. Hilda leaned back in her seat serenely. Only the stormy rise and fall of her breast betrayed the boundless rage which was out of her control for the minute. She was so passionately angry that it shook her, even as the incident itself had not done, and her heart was still beating unevenly when, after taking off her hat under the auspices of Mrs. Mournington's maid, she was shown into the long familiar room in the mansions with its red draperies and faint smell of eastern spices. Mrs. Mournington was not present, and the servant asked Hilda to excuse her for a few minutes. She was writing letters. Rather glad to have time to compose herself, Hilda replied that Mrs. Mournington was not to hurry on her account and took up an illustrated paper to distract herself rather than with any idea of amusement. A quiet, luxurious piece of the room and its subtle scent acted like balm on her wounded mind, and she drew a long sigh of pleasure and relaxation as one who rests after long pain. After a few minutes she dropped the paper and moved leisurely to the looking-glass. Mrs. Mournington had not appeared yet, and she stood still before the glass, studying herself and mechanically touching her gown into still more conventional order. No woman could have been quite without satisfaction in the reflection that a mirror gave to Hilda, however lamentable the garments she might be wearing. But Hilda was really not thinking of the mere coloring of her splendid young flesh and blood, or appraising the old black gown that at least had the merit of being soft and not obtruding its material upon her already complete beauty. To dress Hilda in a costume that drew attention from herself to itself would have been as bad as to bundle up the Venus de Milo in a kimono. The girl's eyes were turned inward, however, trying to see herself as the gentleman of the train had seen her, and her fine brown eyebrows came together with the ugly effort. To this man who might be typical of a score of others, she had been but a pretty face and finely developed figure, traveling third class, for which reason she was certainly approachable and possibly obtainable, whence followed the natural advances of the male animal to the female. It was all so sordid and repulsive, even to remember that her face became set like an avenging Juno, and she felt herself somehow defiled by the possibility of such things shaping themselves in men's brains, brought there perhaps by her own innocent existence. She was still standing facing her reflection, a girl with a mask of outraged deity, who was putting herself conventionally to rights before a French mirror. When the door opened and Mr. Thorson came into the room, she turned at once to shake hands with him, but her smile was a little less candid and a little more suspicious than usual, for the stain of Nuzotra was upon her, and she had been reminded back into her watch upon mankind. It was not a generous mood in which to greet anybody, not a fair one in which to judge a friend. Mrs. Mornington has asked me to come and talk to you while she finishes her letters, he said, as simply as usual. She noticed that he was in evening dress and wondered a little. He did not always dress when he dropped in to see his old friend in the evenings, a velvet coat being allowable unless there were other guests. It had made these less important evenings more sociable, and Hilda had liked it. Now, however, there seemed a certain convention added by his very correctness of costume. He looked almost handsome, certainly picturesque, and with a sudden revulsion of feeling, she recognized him as a masculine personality, desirable to women for something else than his genius. Even the eye glass on its black ribbon was more noticeable against his white shirt front, and seemed characteristic of a leisure class set apart from the workers to whom she belonged. I am glad to be able to have a little talk with you, he went on, not with any more stiffness, but in a subtly confidential tone that made what he had to say more serious. I want to talk to you about your future. Yes, said Hilda. The man I told you about, my publisher, is back, and I saw him yesterday. He thought we both thought that it was no use to ask you to give up the certainty of what you are doing unless we could offer you an equal certainty, but with better prospects. No, Hilda spoke as earnestly as he had, and her manner was the honest one of a person who sees a necessity and vows to it. I cannot take anything uncertain however advantageous it might look in the future. I feel bound to help my father as long as I live at home, and I should like to be able to help him even if I lived away. For a moment she paused, looking at that possible life, a life free from the hideousness of her present one, which she could yet feel to be her right, and her eyes deepened in color as they always did, with pleasure, fancied or real. She was standing with her hands resting on the mantle shelf, her figure bending a little without stooping, her head drooped in the old graceful way from the neck. Thorson had seen her in innumerable attitudes, but he never remembered her ungraceful, nor did he ever feel tired of that inevitable poise of the head. And so he went on, as if taking up her words while he still stood and looked at her. We talked you over and came to the conclusion that you ought to get plenty of concert engagements after a while, with his and my influence to back you, but concert work, being even at its best uncertain, we thought that at the same time you should try teaching, for which it seems to me that you are far more fitted than most, because you are very painstaking and absolutely thorough. She flushed a little, whether at the praise or for some other cause, could not be guessed. Hilda flushed when she was resentful as much as when she was touched. I should have tried pupils, but I could not get any, she said with a touch of the old mockery at herself. I do not mean private teaching. Our view was that you should pass certain examinations and hold certificates from some conservatoire. I assure you you would not find it the impossible thing you imagine, and then become a supplementary teacher there. Of course, in all these places there are certain men who have made their names and who command their fixed amount of guineas for a lesson, according to scale. But to my mind some of the best work, all the grounding which I think so important, is often done by those whose names merely appear on the prospectus and are hardly noticed, except by those who know. There are some schools of music where both my man and I have influence, and where the teachers do not all have to hold certificates for playing scales at Vienna. At least I would guarantee that it should be a post on which you could depend for a living without killing yourself with work, and whereby you could help your people without living at home. What do you say? I should be only too thankful, said Hilda a little breathlessly. Very well. Now the only thing is that at present we have not exactly the post we want falling due, but we think we shall have in a short time. In the meanwhile he looked a little curiously at her. She thought, as if he considered her a fresh almost from a stranger's point of view, I have another alternative to suggest to you. She did not foresee what was coming, and yet by some subconscious intuition she moved away from him, her face losing its glow of grateful color, and her blue eyes seeing not him but the man in the train. It is not the sort of alternative one offers to a woman without some hesitation, he went on, in a tone that had suddenly become hurried and lowered. A man of my age must be much tempted before he would make such a proposal, tempted beyond his power to resist and past his own judgment too, perhaps. Hilda, can't you see what I am offering you? I pose oddly as a lover, dear little girl. I suppose you have grown so used to think of me as the composer, the person with influence to help you, that as a man you have not thought of me at all. It seems nearly as odd to me as to you, to ask you, who are not much more than half my age, if that, to let me love you and protect you. It is not a very tempting offer, is it? A gray head and a bachelor flat. All this time she had not spoken, but she had gradually turned to face him, the horror of the whole thing forcing itself upon her shuddering, reluctant mind. It required a real effort to prevent herself from putting her hands up to her ears to shut out the sound of his familiar musical voice, which had only spoken honestly and kindly to her until now, when he used it to degrade her ideal of him. In one vivid flash of intuition it seemed to her that the whole world was corrupted for her, turned from a friendly humanity into universal devilish enmity. Her suspicions reigned in on her mind like frozen hail. Why had Mrs. Mournington stayed out of the room and left her to this? Why if she were not in the plot? Why was there no one else to be present tonight? Had they all stood aloof, these pleasant smiling men and women, who had spoken to her softly and seemed to wish her well, while, no doubt, they had everyone foreseen this end, perhaps thought that it had come already, no doubt, no doubt. She was one of Nuzotra, an outsider, debarred from men's honesty or woman's equality. The red tide rose to the armpits, and the struggle to live was death. With the red tide risen in her heart, Hilda faced him, her hand against every man's from henceforth, every man's hand against hers. She was frantic with her delayed passion, the passion roused by her stepmother, and the man in the train, and with the disappointment of the moment. With newly crimson cheeks and eyes made beautiful by her scorn, she turned upon him like a warrior woman, her words fighting for her sex, her voice pitched two notes lower than usual in her excitement. How dare you, she said savagely, how dare you even offer me such a position as that you hint to me. You are ashamed to speak out with good cause. What have I ever done that you should think me worthy of an insult you would not dare to offer to a woman of your own standing? What, in your experience of me, has justified you in rating me so low? I thank you for your offer. It has degraded you, as it could not do me. You can take your answer from that. I am the stuff of which men's wives are made, Mr. Thorson, not their mistresses. For a minute he remained looking at her blankly, as if the storm of her words bewildered him into not understanding them. Then suddenly he made a deliberate step towards her instead of drawing back as she expected, and took and held her in his arms with a strengthened tenacity that even her fury could not resist. Hilda, said the kindly voice she knew, with patient tenderness, my poor child, how you must have suffered not to know even when a man is honest. My dear, my dear, do you think I could love you and wish to make you anything less than my wife? It was my fault for putting it so stupidly. The voice went on whispering, soothing her quivering nerves as skillfully as a great physician might a patient. See how a man blunders over his first proposal. I'm too old, too. Am I too old, Hilda? She did not answer in words, but she shook the tears out of her blue eyes and left them more than ever, like wet violets, to look up at him. There was no apology for her. Her life had been excuse enough in its exposure to men's license. Let him be ashamed of his sex if he would, before he cried shame on the woman. He stood holding her more tenderly than with passion, as if she were something that had been very badly hurt, and which maybe only the angels could really heal. And below the concern of his grave man's face, her brown head lay on his breast in an abandonment of grief and rest that told of a reaction more utter than he could realize, while her hands clung to his shoulders in the attitude of one drowning who holds to a last hope of succor. A room smelt more of eastern spices than ever tonight and of fresh English roses. Perhaps Mrs. Mornington, who lingered still over her letters, had placed the great bowls of flowers purposely about the place to make it always sweet to the memory of those two friends of hers, whom she had been wisely watching and helping for months. Hilda sat down on the broad Persian divan, where all the cushions were collected, and Thorson sat beside her with her hands in his, and looked in her face as if he found an inspiration there, such as set his own music singing. It was so quiet that Hilda heard the rustle of her gown as she turned a little towards him, and there was a silence upon them as if their happiness were so new and delicate that they might almost scare it away with words. And when will you marry me, dear? he said under his breath at last, and the mixture of anxiety and reverence in the tone made her a queen bestowing favors. There is nothing to wait for, is there? And I am not so young I can afford to squander my time with you. You are trying to frighten me with a bogey of old age, she half whispered back. I know of nothing to wait for except the wedding cake. The irresistible laughter came back to her eyes, and the shadow of bitter experience seemed lifted from her face, at least for the moment. A month. Yes, surely a month is long enough for all the necessary paraphernalia. Will you come to Italy with me, my beauty? I have never been abroad, said Hilda slowly. Visions of Venice, of far-off snows, of all the wonder of the world came to her, and she had a breathless sense of what all this meant. Yet even in that moment, following hard upon the delirious prospect of sharing in the joys of this earth, which has seemed set far beyond her horizon, there came the half whimsical relief that petty worries would be amongst the things that were past, and her actual thought was, I shall not have to clean my own shoes, or lay my meals when I am tired any more. The education of her life had taught her the drawbacks of such small pinpricks, but it had taught her also the value of the best things he had lain at her feet, and she turned to him with a gracious, instinctive movement, and laid her cool bare arm across his shoulders. I am by nature a hard woman, I think, Julian, she said simply, and perhaps if I had been happier, I should have been so wrapped up in myself that I should have grown selfish. You see, I have almost perfect health, and when one's body does not prick one with reminders of the fact that there is pain to bear in the world, one's brain is apt to forget it. I have gone through a great deal of life education, more than I shall ever tell you, I hope, but it has at last made me realize the full value of what you have offered me. Please love me, the rest may go past. We have proved that much, even with regard to each other. For the minute the pressure of his arms round her was his only assurance. But as he looked into the blue eyes that were almost stern with remembered knowledge, he said, I want to know your friends, dear, you will let me want you, Alma and Magda, whose sketches I know already under her initials, and Frank and the others of whom you have told me. I will introduce you to them with pleasure, but you must not expect them to accept you as one of themselves, she said rather slowly, as if she has some difficulty in explaining her meaning. You must remember that their very lack of success makes them fence themselves round with a barrier. You will find that they receive you with what seems to you perfect frankness, and in that very frankness lies the reserve. I belong to a class that is no class, whom we call Nuzotra, because there is no accepted position or status for them yet, and they are the most difficult of all people to help. Because they need help most? Because how can I put it? They are outlawed by their own independence, or perhaps because they are merely a passing phase making the way for a younger generation, who will have the fair dealing and the acknowledgment for which Nuzotra have fought. I sometimes think that no one can help Nuzotra except Nuzotra. It makes one feel very impotent for oneself, Hilda. I am afraid you are, and yet I don't know. I will do my best, and perhaps Alma and Frank will be honest with you. Her thoughts went back rapidly to the discussion of the night before, the going out of one spear, which they had nearly all condemned. Magda Burke will like to know you, I think, but Flair, the writer whom the press calls Flair Caldecott, will drop me when I marry you, said Hilda with conviction, not for any personal reason, but because she drifts with her circumstances. The one of them all whom I think you could help is Beatrice. Is that the girl whose voice you said might be cultivated? Yes. She is in uncongenial surroundings, doing work that is too hard for her. And I don't know. I think there is a private trouble that might be more bearable if there were something better in her life. We will certainly help Beatrice, said Julian Thorson cordially, but they neither of them knew that by that hour Beatrice had already helped herself. In her newfound happiness Hilda glowed and was glad. She was always grateful to her providence that her romance came graciously with nothing sordid to spoil it, but only the memory of rose-red rooms and a great tenderness. Had Thorson been a younger man even, she felt that it would have been less perfect, for the very strength and vitality of youth makes cruder demands, and the years behind her had taken something from her of the capacity to meet young love on equal ground. She had above all things a sense of rest in the marriage offered her, and dimly realized that, with all her unusual health and splendid physique, she had grown tired. They were friends and companions before they became lovers. She looked into the quiet promise of his eyes and accepted protection, with a relief that was like grateful prayer. What is she thinking of, said Thorson at last, as her eyes came back from their long gaze past the red glow of a room into other scenes where he could not follow, even in memory? I was thinking of how glad I am that I was strong enough to wait, she said. Some of us grew too tired, and some of us despaired. She thought of Winnie's laughter that had seemed tragic later on, and some of us waited in vain, perhaps. But I have been so fortunate. I feel almost superstitious about it, and afraid to say it is real, lest I should wake up and find it as a dream. For after all, I am one of Nuzotra, and this belongs to the real girls. When a man falls in love, it is always with the real girl, he answered. It makes her a real girl, to him at least. Don't you see? I fear, said Hilda, with her quick, low laugh, extricating herself from his arms to meet the leisurely rustle of an approaching gown. Hush, here is Mrs. Mornington at last. We must behave ourselves. But she knew, even as she went forward to meet her hostess, warm, silent kiss of congratulation, that by that very acknowledgment she passed into her kingdom and was no more of Nuzotra. CHAPTER XIII FRIENDS, OLD FRIENDS, AND WHAT IF IT ENDS? Shall we dare to shirk what we live to learn? It has done its work. It has served its turn. And forgive or forget, or hanker and fret. We can be no more as we were before. If it ends, it ends, with friends. We dwindling numbers, said Flair, but the tide is surely turning, said Frank cheerfully. For some of us, added Magda quietly. Her friend Deb had come down to Phil Beatrice's place, and B.A. was there to take Alma's. But Winnie was gone also, and Hilda had announced her engagement. And through their sincere congratulations fell the shadow of good-bye. There was not one of them that wished it otherwise. But there was not one who did not know that Hilda must take up her new life and drift apart from them. They had lost their god of the sun, the Apollo Belvedere, and the grave beauty of the Greek face would look from another setting, a better one, they knew. They were not on the whole a legubrious community. But when one is always disheartened and generally disappointed, it comes hard to be cheerful, even over another's gain which means one's own loss. It is possible to be content with very little. Nuzotra are proving it every day. But the theory of divine patience supposes an inevitable crown as a reward. Show me the religion that says, Be good for the love of good, and does not throw in heaven as a bribe. Christ himself, Buddha himself, may have said it. But perhaps because the priests have narrowed the wide ground plan of religion to rules and dogmas, they have always been forced to hold out an ultimate gain to get their flock into the fold. Nuzotra do not as a rule believe in dogma. They are not as has been seen very religious. They generally do their needlework on Sunday, a shameful thing to all good church women, who would rather be slovenly and dirty than use the needle and thread on the Sabbath, because they had not time during the six days that God might have decreed them work. And they do not think that by saying long prayers they will attain heaven. Their experience of earth rather leading them to doubt the existence of such a place. Nevertheless they do believe in its essential essence, and they go straight for the blind faith that is in them, and that finds expression in some ideal, such as Hilda found in her traditions, Frank in her mother, Alma because being of God she loved God, the real one not the exclusive property of sex, Beatrice in her self-respect, Flair because as she said, she couldn't be a cad. There is no hope of reward in this world or the next to urge them. Sometimes they slip and fall. Sometimes like Winnie they are driven mad and reckless, or like Beatrice they tender their resignation. But in the main they fight a good fight, and when they finish their course they have kept the faith. When one of them touches the hope of happiness as Hilda had done, they rejoice the more in that they have known none such themselves. But it is hard to lose a comrade, and their feeling found expression in Magda's voice as she answered Frank. The tide is turning for some of us. I had a letter from Alma today, said Flair, and perhaps she introduced the subject with intention. She is really in luck at last. She was understudying a character part, and the woman who had it fell ill, and Alma played it. The original actress has had to go home, and Alma is not only to play it through the tour, but is to be in their next London production. Flair never embroidered news on fiction lines. She gave it succinctly as a journalist, but it made its effect. Hurrah! Frank exclaimed. Dear old girl, I am glad. B.A., give me a glass of neat claret on the strength of that. We'll all drink her health, standing up. Get up, Hilda. Yours will come next. Here don't dig me in the ribs, Frank, or send me on to the floor in your enthusiasm, Hilda retorted, beginning to laugh at nearly choking over her glass in consequence. Propose the toast, somebody. I am going to start, for she's a jolly good fellow. Here's Alma Craig, and her continued success, said Frank. Somehow it seemed Frank's lot in life to start the cheering for those who were luckier than herself, for as she herself said, she was born to play accompaniments. Just as she had given the note for the national anthem in the extension, so now she began the hip hip hurrah, with such good effect that R.L. looked as if he wanted to put his paws over his ears or stuff them with his tail. Hip hip hurrah rang the voices to the accompaniment of clinked glasses, and then, for she's a jolly good fellow, sang Frank. They could all sing except B.A., and she refilled the glasses. For she's a jolly good fellow, for she's a jolly good fellow, and so say all of us. And now, ladies, another toast, said Frank, before they subsided. I call upon you to drink the health of Hilda Romain, one of ourselves, Nuzotra, and to wish her health, wealth, and happiness. We think, don't we, that she is fortunate in marrying a man like Julian Thorson, not only because he is a successful man, but because everyone knows that he is a gentleman, and a good one. But we think also, don't we, girls, and Frank's voice rang, that Julian Thorson is more to be congratulated on marrying our Hilda, and we speak from what we know and have proved of her. Salute, Nuzotra. Hip hip. The last echo of the final shout made several people in Duncan and Street pause, under the impression that a school treat must be going on, in the unlikely precincts of the little side turning, and they would have been quite incredulous had they been informed that the noise was due to six girls. Then Frank started the chorus again, and they sang it standing until they were hoarse, and dropped exhausted into their seats, whereupon Hilda padded Frank on the head, by mean advantage of her inches, and R.L. still suspicious of their sanity, jumped for Flair's knee and prodded her. Nobody but B.A. and Magda, as it chanced, were smoking tonight. The rest of the society had been forced to bring some work with them, as occasionally happened when the hours had been long in office or theatre, and the woman's day had got pushed on one side, for they keep the Sabbath to rest in when they can. Flair was trimming a hat and doing it very badly. She usually left this sort of thing to Alma, who was a born milliner, but Alma being away, Flair's appearance suffered. Hilda was mending gloves, and not remembering for a minute that she would not have to do it in the future. Deb was tatting embroidery to trim under linen, and Frank was darning stockings with great industry. If I don't get a pair done tonight, I shall have to go to the office with a hole in my heel tomorrow, she said with a chuckle. Go on, Flair. Tell us more of Alma's letter. She was rather funny about her landlady. You know what theatrical landlady's are. It appears that the company arrived at this last place at six in the morning, and Alma was so fagged when she had found her digs that she just lay down on the sofa while her breakfast was prepared and smoked a cigarette. She noticed that the landlady was casting suspicious glances at her, so at last she spoke. Well, Mrs. Jones, she said. You look very surprised. Haven't you ever seen an actress smoke before? You have had plenty here. No, Miss, said the landlady gloomily. No, they didn't smoke, but they did everything else, she added. Alma said she never heard anything so suggestively inclusive. Everyone laughed, perhaps because they were determined to be in good spirits. Perhaps because Flair told her tale with a certain dry humor. She was frowning and sighing over the tortured hat on her knee the next moment, and ended by trying it on R.L., who twitched a vexed ear and turned round the other way. Hang the brute, the hat, not R.L. It won't come right, said Flair. Besides, I can't see. Frank, just light the gas a minute. There's a good fellow. Frank did as she was requested, and saw something besides the mangled hat. Flair, you are looking very seedy, she said decidedly. When are you going for a holiday? Oh, next month. Any time, said Flair absently, tying a nasty tight bow of ribbon, and putting it at a most unbecoming angle. When I've got this hat finished, perhaps. Besides, I've had my holiday, really. Before I went away with Alma in May. It's only the heat that makes me limp. Ninety in the shade this week. The underground has been like Hades. What a pity you have to go on it. Frank looked a trifle anxiously at Flair. Sometimes it seems to me wicked that women should be born delicate when they have to work. We ought all to have been made of cast iron. Yes, but our parents very seldom realized the duty that they owed to the next generation, said Deb shrewdly. We are all pledged to the future, and ought to be taught to acknowledge the debt from the first. Every woman who marries should have to pass a medical examination, if I had my way. And if she put on false heirs of shame, more shame to her. Deb was almost as tall as Hilda, and made on a much larger scale. She impressed her hearers with a sense of one having authority, and she looked big enough to take all news ultra into her capacious heart. There was indeed something maternal about her that made Flair snuggle up to her at times, and Magda rest her head against her knee when she came home tired. Flair depended on VA for strength when she needed support, Alma for sympathy, and Deb to mother her on the rarest of occasions. She admired Magda, had sympathized with Beatrice, and loved Winnie, while Hilda and Frank stood to her for all the virtues. Her point of view is valuable as somewhat sampling that of the other girls. That is Ruskin's view, said Magda. I always thought it very sane, and not at all impossible. It asked a scaring anyone off marriage. It couldn't do that more than most women are scared by the little they know. That seems to me taking an exaggerated view of a small detail, said Flair with brutal plainness. The real gravity of marriage consists in the little things of everyday life, and whether one can be satisfied oneself, and make one's companion satisfied, much more than in the bogey which women make out of certain functions of nature. They are a shock, I admit, when you first learn of them, but they are such a very, very small detail compared with ordering the dinner, and knowing a little about the money article. Just enough to listen intelligently. Magda's mouth was mutinous, but she did not follow a dangerous subject. She had her own opinions, and Flair was shamelessly outspoken, impressed. Instead of risking anything more outrageous, she coolly seized on Flair's notebook a dear possession, and never far from its owner, and turning the pages took her fountain pen out of its leather case. What are you doing, or going to do, demanded Flair, making a feeble grab at her property, and failing signally in her effort to regain it. I am not going to read the poetry, with which I see that this is filled in horrible, disjointed lines, said Magda, as she laid her half-smoked cigarette on the ashtray with thrifty care. But the spirit moves me to draw Hilda at this particular crisis in her existence, and I have too much respect for my own gowns to carry a notebook wantonly. When I must have a bulging pocket I must, but I don't live in expectation of being taken ill with an inspiration, as you apparently do. Well, I don't carry letters from the last man who has asked me to tea or luncheon as you have to do daily, lest you forget, retorted Flair. Half a dozen love letters must ruin the set of your gowns quite as much as my innocent notebook. However, I forgive you if you will make us a good likeness of Hilda. Get to work, April. Hilda obligingly turned her face in the position that Magda wanted, and B.A. offered the artist a pencil. But Magda declined and began to sketch with her fountain pen on a sheet of Flair's scribbled book, where burdens or ballads were hopelessly mixed with faint imitations of rosetti and Lindsay Garten, and half a line would mean as much as a shorthand note to Flair, and get worked up some time into topical verses. Like all true artists, Magda thought in her own medium, and the most natural expression of her art, for her, was in line. She drew with a sure and certain touch for some silent minutes and then handed the result to Flair. It was as successful a sketch as any she had ever made, pure and bold in outline, characteristic of Hilda, a simple expression of Magda's thought of her friend. Ah, how good! Flair exclaimed in honest delight, and you have kept the look of the Apollo Belvedere. Hilda, you must certainly have a son, and he must be just like the statue. And do please arrange for him to be six feet high put in debcomically. I see so many undersized things in the city that I begin to wonder if there are any men left in existence. Magda looked at Hilda with raised brows as her sketch was passed round and admired. I hope you are taking all this in, Apollo, she said dryly. We are giving you due notice of our wishes beforehand, you see. Indeed, our whole, very questionable conversation tonight is solely for your benefit, and inspired by your startling news which has demoralized us. Yes, Hilda, and for goodness sake, don't let any mistaken ideas of modesty stop you from knowing what to do for your children, said Frank earnestly. Our mothers thought it womanly to ignore the question, so that they ran risks of which we are the shining examples and results. We may be immodest in course in our generation, but at least let us have nothing to answer for in the way of feeble constitutions and the germs of disease. She glanced instinctively at Flair's flaccid white face bent over the hat of all Nuzotra. You are the most fit to be a mother. Pay the debt owed to us to the next generation, and if it should happen, which God forbid, that a daughter of yours should be one of Nuzotra. Let her come to the struggle at least well equipped with a sound body and a healthy mind. Here, here, said Magda, you are not offended, are you, Hilda? Not at all, though I think you need not be so previous with my nursery, said Hilda, with a little irrepressible laugh. I know what you mean, Frank, and I have more theories, if anything, than you have. Marriage is, after all, a woman's most natural and greatest work, not the accomplishing of the mere marriage ceremony, but all that comes afterwards in daily life. It means the giving of one's whole energies to it, to make a success. I am with you, Vera, said Flair, without raising her eyes from her work. If I married, I should give up trying to write. I don't believe in serving two masters. I wish you were happily married, Flair, though it would mean good-bye to literature for you. They say no really happy woman writes a book, or, for that matter, does anything else to absorb and distract her mind. But it would, I am sure, be an immense gain in some ways to you. It is a more correct lens through which to focus things in the world generally than the one by which you see. Flair laughed shortly. You wish I were married, she said slowly. I? How about health and heredity, Hilda, the next generation? No, we suffer for the faults of someone behind us. But at least we need not let our children have to say the same thing. There is only one honest course for the victims of heredity to take, and that is not to aid in the wrong from which they have themselves suffered. We condemn our parents, then let us be consistent, and not repeat the mistakes we have discovered. There is not much that we can do in this world, perhaps. But at least we can abstain from doing. Hilda was rather blankly silent. Her troubled eyes rested on Flair's rumpled head, and the curious blue shade round her mouth and eyes. And she was too honest to say that she thought Flair had anything desirable to bequeath to another generation. Even her brains were a thought morbid and ill-balanced. The natural outcome of an ailing body, perhaps. She was no darling of nature, but she was the implacable example of many an outraged law, and served the living sermon, preached without intention, by poor humanity. The result of Hilda's scrutiny was that she spoke rather irrelevantly, and certainly abruptly. Flair, I wish you would go and see your doctor. You can't afford to play tricks. All right, said Flair, with an easy little laugh. I knew that was coming. The poor man will tell me to avoid stares, and to do my writing lying down on my back. He always does. Is there anything really the matter with you, Flair? B.A. asked kindly. She was shrewdly accustomed to calculate the strain of minds upon bodies, and to judge just how much the mechanism would stand, and did not overgear her pupils any more than she did her bicycle. Nothing new, said Flair, composedly. I have a weak constitution, and in consequence, a weak circulation, and a weakened heart. It would be affectation to say I was sound anywhere, but I have no cause for alarm. I don't suffer any pain unless I do silly things. And then I have a sharp attack that teaches me wisdom. Attack of what? said Magda, resentfully. She had the energy to combat definite ills, and she hated an unseen adversary. I am sure I don't know, said Flair, yawning. It's about as sharp as cramp, and it comes on pretty quick. If it went on long, I expect you'd die of sheer pain. But it never does go on. Talk of something else, please. The future of the nation seems laid on its women, first and last, remarked Frank, scrambling out of her chair. Who goes home? Don't get up, Flair. R.L. looks so comfortable. You can let yourselves out tonight, said Flair. I am posing as an invalid on Hilda's suggestion. We do not want any more gaps in the circle, said Hilda quietly. It was the only direct reference made to Beatrice that night. Nuzotra are not given to whaling, and they had said directly to each other as they chanced to meet. All that was to be said. The tide is turning, said Frank, hopefully. We have done with all the saddest parts, Hilda. And now we shall begin to look forward. You are our beacon star. Your wedding is to be our new starting point. Hilda smiled her grave smile. There was little alteration as yet in the noble beauty of her face, unless it were for a softer color in her eyes. In a gentler setting of her lips. But she would always be rather grave than gay. I want to bring Mr. Thorson to introduce to you all, she said. Or if you like it better, you can come and meet him somewhere. But you must all know him. All that were left of them, left of six hundred, hummed B.A. Don't croak, said Frank, pounding her on the back with an excellent intention of improving her spirits. I want Alma here to back me up and uphold my theory that the tide is turning. You have said that before, said Magda teasingly. Repetition of a phrase is one of the first things to eliminate in composition. And if you insist on being so optimistic, I shall back Flair's pessimism. We dwindle in numbers.