The Quaint Companions

Her name was cried before he spoke again.

"Hilda! where are you?"

"Hark! my sister's calling," she said; "I expect dinner's ready."

She moved towards the house, David beside her, and met Bee coming down the path.

"Mr. Tremlett has been saving my life, Bee! I've been attacked while you were out."

"Mr. Tremlett was very kind," answered Bee, smiling. "How did he do it?"

The three loitered in the doorway, talking, and she thanked him seriously when she understood what had happened. He noted that her tones were grave and sweet, and pitied her; and his gaze kept straying to the beautiful face. After a minute he turned away, and the sisters went inside.

"He's quite a gentleman," said the girl; "and I'm sure he must have been stung, though he pretended he wasn't. It would have been quite romantic if he had been another colour."

"She loved me for the dangers I had – averted," murmured Bee.

"What's that – a quotation?" asked Hilda,

CHAPTER XIX

The rest of the day was barren, and in the knowledge that their visit was so near its end, David chafed at each empty hour. He had seen Hilda for a moment only since the morning. Standing aside as she came down the stairs, he had asked her if she was going to the field again, and she shook her head, saying that she had a letter to write. He thrilled with the fancy that it might be a letter to himself.

How queer to think that she might even give it to him to post! Still queerer to reflect that the thoughts which had so often held him captive, and the blithesome chatter that had rung so false were coin from the same mint. If they had been the strangers to each other that she believed, he would never have divined the gold beneath the small change. For that matter he too had been commonplace; the soul wasn't a jack-in-the-box to jump to order. "Oh, Mr. Thackeray, don't!" breathed Charlotte Brontë disillusioned, when he helped himself again to potatoes; and probably he had said nothing to justify her homage by the time the cheese came. He, David Lee, had talked potatoes. More than likely the girl whom he had found trivial had found him trite.

Ever recurring, and overthrowing his reverie, was a gust of sensation – in part a perfume, in part a sickness, in which it seemed to him that the scent of her hair was in his throat.

Before he left town he had scribbled a few lines expressing his gratitude for the photograph, and now it occurred to him that an answer might be lying at his lodging already. He wished he could read it; he wished he could re-read all the letters here while he was seeing her. He felt that to do so would help him. Without defining his need he felt that the letters, tangible, familiar, would lessen the vague sense of unreality that blew across his mind. During a few seconds he craved more to re-read the letters than to find himself alone with her.

Not so in the morning. He rose eagerly. While he dressed, it seemed to him that he had been unreasonable yesterday; he accused himself of having resented circumstances, of having all unconsciously expected her to accord to Tremlett the confidences she made to Lee. That was absurd. Ostensibly a stranger, a mulatto thrown in her path by chance, how could he hope for her to lift her veil? But let her keep it down – it couldn't hide her from him. Let her yield a finger-tip, after she had bared her heart – he knew her even as she knew herself. He smiled to think that by a word he could transfigure her. It was too soon, he was afraid to speak it; the complexity of the emotion that he foresaw in her warned him back; but the idea of power was sweet to him. He could tear the veil aside and call the real woman breathless to his view, he the stranger! There was a throb of triumph in his delusion.

The day was Sunday, and when he joined her, he found the sisters together. He regretted that the elder had remained at home, although he knew that he had had nothing to hope from a tête-à-tête.

"You don't paint to-day, Miss Sorrenford?"

"No," she said, "I don't paint on Sunday."

"Good gracious!" exclaimed Hilda, "I should think she didn't. What do you suppose the Kemps would say to her? We should be turned out, shouldn't we, Bee?"

"Oh yes, I forgot the Kemps," he said; "it would shock them, of course." – "Bee," he assumed, was a diminutive of "Beatrice." "I've only spent one Sunday here. It was rather depressing; everybody looked so out of place – all the villagers seemed to have gone. Why do they dress up and spoil themselves on Sunday? It was as if a lot of supers in a play had come on in the wrong scene."

Hilda smiled. "They'd think you had very bad taste if they heard you say so. You might as well try to persuade a servant that she looks smarter in a frilled cap and a muslin apron than when she goes out to meet her young man. Poor people always make frights of themselves on Sunday – and they pride themselves on their boots creaking."

"Poor people!" he answered. "And the little children – that was worse still. It made me wretched to see the children; my heart ached for them whenever I went to the door."

"Oh, you noticed them," said Bee, "did you? Yes, it's painful. Their hushed voices, and their sad eyes! They mustn't play; they're forbidden to be happy. They sit in solemn groups, talking in whispers – cursing Sunday I often think. If one of them forgets and laughs, its mother comes out and shakes it – to teach it to love God."

"Bee, don't get on the platform, or we might as well have gone to church. We do go to church, Mr. Tremlett; don't think we never do any better than this, please! But one doesn't feel so religious in the country on Sunday as one does in a town. It must be something in the air."

"Perhaps it's because in the country one feels so much more religious every other day of the week," said David. Bee had frowned, discomfited; she sat silent. In her silence David was sorry for the Beauty – her banter had been so innocent; the frown, the tightened lips seemed to him an undeserved reproach.

Then he talked to the wrong woman while the right woman listened, and he was even a little piqued that his earnestness couldn't rouse the wrong woman to permit him a glimpse of the poetry that was not in her. But once, when her skirt fluttered against his hand, it was not the thought of the poetry in her that sent a shiver up his arm; and it was not the thought of her sensibility that made his heart gallop, as imagination gave him back the tingle of her hair. That was herself, her pretty flesh-and-blood, the potent pink-and-white reality of her.

Something he said, some chance remark, brought a line of "A Celibate's Love Songs" to Bee's mind. Her thoughts darted again to the photograph, and for the thousandth time she wished she could recall her stupid act; for the thousandth time she sought the courage to acknowledge it. The confession from which she had shrunk at the beginning looked by comparison easy: "I am deformed." Well, at least, no one could laugh at that. But "I sent my sister's likeness instead of my own." That was ridiculous, contemptible. And how could she explain the impulse? Wouldn't the man put his own construction on it? Wouldn't he think – wouldn't it be tacitly to admit – that she was in love with him?

Still, did the folly she had committed matter very much? He would never see her, never see her or Hilda either. If he had meant to come, surely he would have come already? Sooner or later the correspondence would die, and she would be alone again. Was it necessary to degrade herself in his sight?

He would think she was in love with him! Once more the question that she was always trying to evade flared through her brain. Did it really mean that – in love with a man she had not met? She said the thing was impossible, and felt it was indecent, and knew it was true. The man had needed an appeal to the senses before he repudiated the term of "friendship"; the woman had no such need. She knew that she loved him, although she refused to own it. She loved him for his mind, for all that was herself in him, for all that was kin to her, but beyond her reach. And now, while her reverie might have borne her far from the conversation at her side, she was forced to listen to him, though she had no suspicion that it was he who talked. The mind that she loved compelled her to listen – for David was striving to make the dainty Hilda lift a corner of the veil.

And there being no veil, she could not lift it; but the woman, whose presence he had half forgotten, felt her sympathies stirred within her strongly, and could have given him thought for thought, and note for note, while she sat there silent and unheeded. There was no veil. He was straining to clutch a phantasm, surrendering to the temptations of his fancied power. And, whilst the poet, pluming himself on power, put forth his intellect to master the girl that there was not, the indolent pink-and-white girl that there was, was mastering him.

"He talks too much, now he has got over his shyness," she murmured, as he moved away. "I'm glad he has gone."

"Are you?" said Bee. "Why? I'm not; he interested me."

"Really? Well, I wish you had joined in, then, instead of sitting there mum. Why didn't you?"

"I don't think he would have been very grateful; he didn't want to talk to me."

Hilda's admirable eyebrows rose just a shade higher than they would have risen if she had been surprised. Because she knew what was meant, she said, "What do you mean?"

"I could see he wanted to talk to you. He always does. I think it's rather a good thing we're going home to-morrow."

"Good heavens! don't be so idiotic. Do you suppose for a single moment I could – "

"No; I was thinking of him, poor fellow!" said Bee. "I daresay he is unhappy enough without any other trouble."

It was not unpleasant to hear that she was esteemed so dangerous. The girl essayed the languid tone of her favourite heroines.

"What an imagination you have!" she drawled. "Now, he only struck me as a dull person who didn't know when to get up. When a man looks like that, he ought to be very careful what he talks about; so few subjects go with his complexion."

Bee thought – "Oh, the arrogance of beauty! It would even deny to the others the right to have beautiful minds."

In the afternoon a thunderstorm broke over Godstone, and rain fell with more or less violence all the evening. It saved Hilda from being bored by him again, for their train next day was an early one, and after breakfast she was upstairs a good deal, watching the trunks being packed. Once or twice as she tripped to Bee from the sitting-room with a book, or a work-basket, or a packet of labels, he met her in the passage, and she threw him the brave smile of one who was sunny in fatigue; but there was no opportunity for conversation.

To David the shadow of her departure had fallen across Daisymead already. Already he felt desolate in anticipating its emptiness when she had gone. It seemed to him quite a month ago that he had arrived here, and the few scenes of their brief association, now that the end had come, were as dear to his regret as close companionship. Even the period of his bashfulness and despondence had a tender charm in looking back at it. He was eager to flee with his memories to town, instinctively conscious that in no place would he be so forlorn as in the place where she had been; but there would be heavy hours before he was able to go, poignant hours in which to miss her first.

It had been in his mind to walk to the station with them both, but she did not seem to wish it, so he bade them good-bye in the front garden while the porter was making the luggage fast on the truck. The landlady and her daughter had come out too, and at the last minute Mr. Kemp appeared. He had a dead bird in his hand; Hilda uttered an exclamation of pity as she saw it, and Bee was mute.

"Oh, the dear! What bird is it, Mr. Kemp?"

"A green linnet, Miss," he said. "Mischeevious things!"

"A linnet? I thought linnets were always brown; I'd no idea they were ever so pretty as this. Why, it's perfectly lovely! What a shame they aren't all made green."

"Yes, it's a showy thing," admitted Mr. Kemp; "the brown 'un ain't much to look at alongside it, that's a fact." He rubbed his hand on his coat, and put it out to her in farewell. "But the green linnet has got no song."

The sisters went slowly up the road; and David followed the "showy" figure with his eyes until the road swerved.

CHAPTER XX

"Well, my dears," said the Professor, "and how are you, eh? Got nice and sunburnt, and done yourselves good, have you? Bee, my dear, you might just touch the bell – I told the girl not to make the tea until we rang. Let me have a look at you both now!" He looked at Hilda. "Come, come, that's first rate! And what's the news?"

"Oh, we're splendid," she replied. "I don't think there's any news; we just did nothing. That is, I did nothing, and Bee worked. You might have come down to us, Dad, if only for a day! We were always expecting a wire to tell us you were coming."

"Yes, I know, my dear," he said, "I know; you wrote me. When I read your letter I thought I really would go down; I made up my mind to. 'Now I know what I'll do,' I thought; 'I won't answer her – I'll say nothing about it – and on Saturday I'll pack my bag, and take her by surprise.' But God bless my soul! when Saturday came I couldn't get away, my dear, I couldn't get away." His glance wandered to his other daughter, and rested on her doubtfully. "Or perhaps it was you who wrote, Bee? One of you did, I know; it's all the same."

"Just the same, father," she said, "all the same; we both wanted you."

The teapot was brought in presently, and half a dozen words were uttered which did more to make her feel at home again than anything that had happened yet. The servant knocked a cup over, put a forefinger inside it, in setting it right, and said in a hoarse whisper, "Can I speak to you, Miss?"

When the conference with the servant was over, Bee carried her father's cup to the armchair, and took Hilda's to the sofa; and the Professor murmured in the tone that belongs to after-thoughts:

"And did you make your studies, Bee?"

"Yes, thanks, father."

"That's right. Many?"

"Oh, just as many as I hoped to do. I'm rather pleased with one of them."

"That's right."

"Anything new here, father?"

"In a way, my dear, in a way; the new man has taken over the Theatre Royal. Mobsby has left the town; I hear he has gone to Nottingham. You might give me another piece of sugar, a very small piece – or break a lump in halves."

"The new man taken over the theatre?" said Hilda. "Have you written to him about the opera?"

"Have you, father?" asked Bee, searching the sugar-basin.

"Yes," he said, "yes, I did write to him. I'm afraid he's not a gentleman. I dropped him a line, explaining matters, and offering to call on him one day when he had an hour to spare, if he would suggest an appointment, and he – er – I got no answer."

"Perhaps the letter didn't reach him, dear."

"I fancied that might be the reason," said the Professor; "the same idea occurred to me. So I wrote to him again, but – No, I'm afraid both letters reached him. Now Mobsby used to answer – I'll give him credit for that. He wasn't enterprising, but he was civil, at all events; he made excuses for declining my work. This Mr. Jordan seems to have no enterprise, and no politeness either. We don't go to the Royal any more, my dears! I put my foot down about that. For the future when we take tickets for a theatre, they shall be for the Grand."

"The Royal always has the best companies, though," pouted Hilda; "and the audience at the Grand is so dirty."

"For all that we shall go to the Grand," repeated the Professor; "it's the only dignified protest I can make. While the Royal remains under this fellow's management it will see no money of mine. I am quite firm on that point – unless of course diplomacy effects anything," he added, "unless diplomacy effects anything."

"Diplomacy can't effect much with a man who doesn't answer your letters," said Hilda. Her voice was tart.

"What more do you think of doing, then, father?" inquired Bee. "Have you a plan?"

"I never let the grass grow under my feet, you know; when there is an opportunity, I make the most of it. A friend at court may do a great deal, and the other afternoon – " He sipped slowly, and spread his handkerchief across his knee. "It seemed almost providential; I don't do such a thing once in two months, but it was a very hot day, and I was tired and thirsty; it was on my way home from Great Hunby. I turned into the 'George' for something to drink, my dear, and I made the acquaintance of Mr. Jordan's business manager. The thin edge of the wedge, perhaps! though I am never sanguine. Of course I did no more than mention the opera – the merest word – but he seemed interested. The next time we meet I shall refer to it again. It may lead to something. He was intelligent. He may pull the strings. I'm never sanguine, but it stands to reason that the business manager of a theatre has a lot to say in the conduct of affairs. If I cultivate him – " He looked about him impatiently. "You might pass me the tobacco-jar, my dear."

She got up, and took it from the mantelpiece, and gave it to him.

"Here it is, father. If you cultivate him, you think he might use his influence with Mr. Jordan?"

"Just so. But festina lente, my dear – hasten slowly. Don't look too far ahead. It's because people look too far ahead that they trip in reading aloud. The same principle, exactly! The eye travels too fast, and the tongue stumbles. Half the mistakes that the pupils make in reading blank verse are due to the fact that they look too far ahead. In life, as in reading, we should clearly enunciate one word at a time. What was I going to say?.. Yes, having made his acquaintance, there's no telling what it may lead to if I show the young man a little hospitality. It's quite on the cards that Mr. Jordan may sing a different tune and ask me to let him hear the opera. If he should do that, I – I am not vindictive – if he should do that, and give the work his honest consideration, we would certainly go to the Royal as usual."

The prospect of his showing a new young man a little hospitality smoothed the frown from Hilda's brow. The young men of Beckenhampton were mercenary, and girls who had been her schoolfellows and knew her age – girls who had no other attraction than their fathers' incomes – had married in their teens. She was not without a lurking fear of being "left on the shelf," as she phrased it; in which misgiving she resembled a multitude of girls who look equally superior to the fear and the phrase. It is, indeed, an unpleasant comment on our method of bringing up the maiden that in the minds of even the most modest girls, the eagerness to marry should precede the wish to marry any man in particular. To the blunter and less refined sensibilities of the male there seems something a little indelicate in this impartial eagerness.

The Professor's intention commended itself to Hilda so warmly, that during the next few days she introduced the subject of the opera more than once. It was not until she had been back from Godstone a week, however, that the growth of the grass to which he had made reference was in any way checked. And then chance was the mower. She had gone but with him, ostensibly to help him to choose a hat, and of a truth to prevent his choosing one, for the years during which man is free to exercise his own judgment about his own clothes are few. As they turned into Market Street, he gave her a nudge, so hard that it hurt her, and waving his hand to a stranger, slackened his pace. The stranger, who had been hurrying past, saw that the elderly bore was accompanied by a bewilderingly pretty girl, and came promptly to a standstill – in his bearing all the deference which a young man can yield to old age under the eyes of beauty.

"Oh, how do you do, Professor Sorrenford?"

"Ah, pleased to meet you again," exclaimed the Professor. "Let me – er – my daughter; Mr. Harris – my daughter."

Vivian made another bow – one far different from the shamefaced bob of the local swains, Hilda thought. It was, indeed, modelled on the obeisance he saw the lovers make to the heroines when he was counting the house in the dress-circle.

"Mr. Harris is a new-comer to the town," said the Professor blandly.

"I am afraid Mr. Harris must find it very dull?" murmured the girl.

The jeune premier was his exemplar still: "It reveals new attractions every day!" he declared. He looked at her significantly. Her eyelids drooped. The father saw nothing but the opera in his desk. —

"Yes, I think, myself, there are many attractions to be found in the place," he said; "though, as an old resident – one of the very oldest residents, in fact – I may be too partial, perhaps. I have been in Beckenhampton now – how many years? I begin to lose count. People will tell you that the name of 'Sorrenford' is as well known here as the name of – ha, ha – the name of the Theatre Royal, itself. Mr. Harris is interested in the Theatre Royal, my dear – the scene of so many of our pleasant evenings."

"Oh, indeed?" She was gently surprised. "You're at the theatre, Mr. Harris?"

"In the front," he said. "I hope we shall give you some pleasanter evenings still under the new régime, Miss Sorrenford. We mean to make the house one of the most go-ahead theatres in the provinces." His tone was bright, inspiriting. He struck her as likely to succeed in anything that he undertook.

"We shall not fail to sample the – er – the bill of fare," said the Professor; "ha, ha, the bill of fare! We shall pay you an early visit. I hope you'll return it. A composer's time is not his own, but we are always glad to see our friends on Sunday nights. If you have nothing better to do one Sunday – "

"I shall be charmed."

"Mr. Harris is busy on week nights like yourself," put in Hilda with a smile.

"To be sure! – like myself. Sunday is really the only day a professional man has a chance to be sociable, isn't it? We have a bond in common. Take us as we are, Mr. Harris. Drop in. Pot luck, and a little music, and a hearty welcome. Now don't forget. Let us be among the first in Beckenhampton to – to make you feel at home in it."

"I shall be charmed," repeated Vivian, gazing undisguised admiration at Hilda. She gave him her hand. He crossed the road victoriously; the father and daughter continued their way to the hatter's.

For some seconds the old man was silent, wrapt in ecstatic reverie. Then he broke out:

"Well? Eh? Not bad – what do you think? Did you notice how glad he was I invited him? He's been asking about me since I saw him; he's been turning the opera over in his mind. That's the plain English of it. Very cordial, but he can't take me in! There's the pounds, shillings, and pence interest underneath, my dear! I saw through him." He chuckled. "He's nibbling – the business manager is nibbling! It won't be long before he comes, you'll see!.. We'd better have a Perrin's for supper next Sunday, my dear, on the chance of his turning up."

Vivian was much pleased to have somewhere to go, and he made no longer delay in presenting himself than he considered that appearances required. Sunday had been dismal enough while he was with a company on tour; here in his new post, without even a game of napoleon on a railway journey to mitigate the tedium, he had found it drearier still. The opportunity for talking to a girl who wasn't a barmaid would have tempted him had the girl been plain; when she was admitted to be the prettiest girl in Beckenhampton – or, as the landlord of the "George" had it, "the belle of our town" – he felt that it was really a matter for rejoicing.

And his host's greeting was as warm as his invitation. Certainly his performance on the 'cello after supper was rather a nuisance, but "the belle" made a delightful picture as an accompanist; and when she sang an entirely new ballad about Dead Days and a Garden, with a tune that a fellow could catch, to take away the taste of the classics commanded by her papa, the visitor felt quite a stir of sentiment.

And he was given another whisky-and-soda, and another of the six cigars which the Professor had arranged in a cigar-box that had lain empty for years. Even when "Father" had been persuaded to let Mr. Harris hear "something from the opera" and Mr. Harris began to realise that the garrulous old gentleman wanted more from him than compliments, the evening was not a disappointment; the younger girl was so enchanting, and the atmosphere of a home was such a novelty. It was impossible for Vivian to be sorry he had come, though he perceived that it would be unwise to define the boundaries of his position in the theatre if he wished to come often.