"Well I never!" Hilda exclaimed.
He was beyond question an extraordinary and an impressive man. He had said that, after experimenting in Preston Street, he should take a larger place, and lo! in less than a year, he had fulfilled his word. He had experimented in Preston Street, with immense success and now he was coming out into the King"s Road! (Only those who have lived in a side street can p.r.o.nounce the fine words "King"s Road" with the proper accent of deference.) And every house in the King"s Road, Hilda now newly perceived, was a house of price and distinction. Nothing could be common in the King"s Road: the address and the view were incomparably precious.
Being established there, George Cannon might, and no doubt would, ultimately acquire one of the largest public hotels; indeed, dominate the promenade! It would be just like him to do so! A year ago he was a solicitor in Turnhill. To-day he was so perfectly and entirely a landlord that no one could ever guess his first career. He was not merely extraordinary: he was astounding. There could not be many of his calibre in the whole world.
"How does it strike you?" he asked, with an eagerness that touched her.
"Oh! It"s splendid!" she answered, trying to put more natural enthusiasm into her voice. But the fact was that the Chichester had not yet struck her at all. It was only the idea of being in the King"s Road that had struck her--and with such an effect that her attention was happily diverted from her trouble, and her vexatious self-consciousness disappeared. She had from time to time remarked the Chichester, but never with any particularity; it had been for her just an establishment among innumerable others, and not one of the best,--the reverse of imposing. It stood at the angle of King"s Road and Ship Street, and a chemist"s shop occupied the whole of the frontage, the hotel-entrance being in Ship Street; its architecture was fiat and plain, and the place seemed neglected, perhaps unprosperous.
"Twenty bow-windows!" murmured George Cannon, and then smiled at himself, as if ashamed of his own navete.
And Hilda counted the windows. Yes, there were eight on King"s Road and twelve at the side. The building was high, and it was deep, stretching far down Ship Street. In a moment it began to put on, for Hilda, quite special qualities. How high it was! How deep it was! And in what a situation! It possessed mysterious and fine characteristics which set it apart. Strange that hitherto she had been so blind to it! She and George Cannon were divided from the house by the confused and noisy traffic of the roadway, and by the streaming throngs on the opposite pavement. And none of these people riding or driving or walking, and none of the people pushing past them on the pavement behind, guessed that here on the kerb was the future master of the Chichester, an amazing man, and that she, Hilda Lessways, by his side, was the woman to whom he had chosen first to relate his triumph! This unrecognised secrecy in the great animated street was piquant and agreeable to Hilda, a source of pride.
"I suppose you"ve bought it?" she ventured. She had no notion of his financial resources, but her instinct was to consider them infinite.
"No! I"ve not exactly bought it," he laughed. "Not quite! I"ve got the lease, from Christmas. How much d"ye think the rent is?" He seemed to challenge her.
"Oh! Don"t ask me!"
"Five hundred a year," he said, and raised his chin. "Five hundred a year! Ten pounds a week! Nearly thirty shillings a day! You"ve got to pay that before you can even begin to think of your own profits."
"But it"s enormous!" Hilda was staggered. All her mother"s houses put together had brought in scarcely a third of the rental of that single house, which was nevertheless only a modest unit in several miles of houses. "But can you make it pay?"
"I fancy so! Else I shouldn"t have taken it. The present man can"t. But then he"s paying 550 for one thing, and he"s old. And he doesn"t know his business.... Oh yes! I think I can see my money back.... Wait till Christmas is turned and I make a start!"
She knew that the future would justify his self-confidence. How he succeeded she could not define. Why should he succeed where another was failing? He could not go out and drag boarders by physical force into his private hotel! Yet he would succeed. In every gesture he was the successful man. She looked timidly up at his eyes under the strong black eyelashes. His glance caught hers. He smiled conqueringly.
"Haven"t said a word to Sarah yet!" he almost whispered, so low was his voice; and he put on a mock-rueful smile. Hilda smiled in response.
"Shall you keep Preston Street?" she asked.
"Of course!" he said with pride--"I shall run the two, naturally." He put his shoulders back. "One will help the other, don"t you see?"
She thought she saw, and nodded appreciatively. He meant to run two establishments! At the same moment a young and stylish man drove rather slowly by in a high dog-cart. He nodded carelessly to George Cannon, and then, perceiving that George Cannon was with a lady, raised his hat in haste. George Cannon responded. The young man gazed for an instant hard at Hilda, with a peculiar expression, and pa.s.sed on. She did not know who he was. Of George Cannon"s relationships in the town she was entirely ignorant, but that he had relationships was always obvious.
She blushed, thinking of what Sarah Gailey had said about "talk"
concerning herself and George Cannon. In the young man"s glance there had been something to annoy and shame her.
"Come across and have a look at the place," said George Cannon, suddenly stepping down into the gutter, with a look first in one direction and then in the other for threatening traffic.
"I don"t think I"ll come now," she replied.
"But why not? Are you in a hurry? You"ve plenty of time before five o"clock--heaps!"
"I"d prefer not to come," she insisted, in an abashed and diffident voice.
"But what"s up?" he demanded, stepping back to the pavement, and glancing directly into her eyes.
She blushed more and more, dropping her eyelids.
"I don"t want to be talked about _too_ much!" she muttered, mortified.
Her inference was unmistakable. The whole of her mind seemed now to be occupied with an enormous grievance which she somehow had against the world in general. Her very soul, too, was bursting with this grievance.
"Talked about? But who--"
"Never mind! I know! I"ve been told!" she interrupted him.
"Oh! I see!" He was now understanding the cause of her trouble in Sarah Gailey"s bedroom.
"Now look here!" He went on. "I"ve just got to have a few words with you. You come across the road, please." He was imperious.
She raised her glance for a timid moment to his face, and saw to her intense astonishment that he also was blushing. Never before had she seen him blush.
"Come along!" he urged.
She followed him obediently across the dangerous road. He waited for her at the opposite kerb, and then they went up Ship Street. He turned into the entrance of the Chichester, which was grandiose, with a flight of shallow steps, and then a porch with two basket chairs, and then another flight of shallow steps ending in double doors which were noticeably higher than the street level. She still followed.
"n.o.body in here, I expect," said George Cannon, indicating a door on the right, to an old waiter who stood in the dark hall.
"No, sir."
George Cannon opened the door as a master, ushered Hilda into a tiny room furnished with a desk and two chairs, and shut the door.
III
The small window was of ground gla.s.s and gave no prospect of the outer world, from which it seemed to Hilda that she was as completely cut off as in a prison. She was alone with George Cannon, and beyond the narrow walls which caged them together, and close together, there was nothing!
All Brighton, save this room, had ceased to exist. Hilda was now more than ever affrighted, shamed, perturbed, agonised. Yet at the same time she had the desperate calm of the captain of a ship about to founder with all hands. And she saw glimpses, beautiful and compensatory, of the romantic quality of common life. She was in a little office of a perfectly ordinary boarding-house--(she could even detect the stale odours of cooking)--with a realistic man of business, and they were about to discuss a perfectly ordinary piece of scandal; and surely they might be called two common-sense people! And withal, the ordinariness and the midland gumption of the scene were shot through with the bright exotic rays of romance! She thought: "It is painful and humiliating to be caught and fixed as I am. But it is wonderful too!"
"The fact is," said George Cannon, in an easy rea.s.suring tone, "we never get the chance of a bit of quiet chat. Upon my soul we don"t! Now I suppose it"s Sarah who"s been worrying you?"
"Yes."
"What did she say?... You"d better sit down, don"t you think?" He swung round the pivoted arm-chair in front of the closed desk and pointed her to it.
"Oh!" Hilda hesitated, and then sank on to the chair without looking at it. "She simply said there was a lot of talk about you and me. Has she been saying anything to you?"
He shook his head, staring down at her. Hilda put her arms on the arms of the chair, and, shirking the man"s gaze, stared down at the worn carpet and at his boots thereon. One instinct in her desired that he should move away or that the room should be larger, but another instinct wanted him to remain close, lest the savour of life should lose its sharpness.
"It pa.s.ses me how people can say such things!" she went on, in a low, thrilled, meditative voice. "I can"t understand it!" She was quite sincere in her astonished indignation. Nevertheless, she experienced a positive pride at being brought into a scandal with George Cannon; she derived from it a certain feeling of importance; it proved that she was no longer a mere girlish miss.
George Cannon kept silence.
"I shall leave Brighton," Hilda continued. "That I"ve quite decided! I don"t like leaving your sister, as ill as she is! But really--" And she thought how prudent she was, and how capable of taking care of herself--she all alone in the world!
"Where should you go to? Bursley? The Orgreaves?" George Cannon asked absently and carelessly.
"I don"t know," said Hilda, with curtness.
He stepped aside, in the direction of the window, and examined curiously the surface of the gla.s.s, as though in search of a concealed message which it might contain. In a new and much more animated voice he said to the window: