"Why, Hilda----!"
All this time I had been sitting and talking over my shoulder, but now I got quickly out of my chair, and drew her hands away from her face.
"Oh, Hilda, I _am_ so sorry. What _can_ I do? I"m so sorry, Hilda, and so proud, too."
She looked up at that.
"You poor child! I feel like a dog, a miserable dog!"
"You couldn"t help it, Mr. Archie. You can"t help being you. Can you?"
She tried to smile.
"How long," I asked, "has it been like this?"
"Ever since the day I came--three years and two hundred and twenty-one days ago--and I heard you say to Mrs. Mannering--to your mother--"Mother," you said, "that new maid is as pretty as a picture."
And that did it!"
"Hilda," I said as quietly as I could, "I"m more touched and flattered than I can express. I"ll be a good friend to you as long as I live.
But--I think I ought to say it, even if it"s a cold rough thing to say.
I don"t believe I"m ever going to feel the same way about you, and so----"
"Oh, I know that, but---- Oh, do you still think I"m pretty?"
"_Indeed_ I do. I"ve always thought that. Always known that."
"Well," she said, speaking very bravely but with a mouth that quivered, "that"s something. I don"t lead a very full life, but that"s something."
XX
"Mother, are you very busy with those letters?"
"Yes, dear, very."
"I thought so; so put them down and come into the garden. There is a bench where the thyme and eglantine----"
"My dear, you frighten me. What has happened?"
My mother rose, one hand on her bosom.
"Nothing to be frightened about. It"s only a little tragedy in a life that isn"t very full. Come and talk it over."
I gave her my arm and we strolled into the garden like a pair of lovers.
"Do you remember when Hilda came to us?"
"Perfectly."
"I said to you on that day, "Mother, the new maid is as pretty as a picture." Do you remember?"
"No."
"Well, I said it, and Hilda heard me say it, and please don"t laugh, it seems that my saying it made the poor child--Oh, care about me. She"s cared ever since, and I"m afraid she cares a whole lot."
"How did you get to know?"
"She told me, this morning, practically out of a clear sky. One thing I want to make clear is that it"s just as little my fault as it possibly can be. I feel like the devil about it, but I can"t for the life of me find one little hook to hang a shred of self-reproach on.
My morals aren"t what they should be. But I am a fastidious man, and the roof under which my mother lives is to me as the roof of a temple.
But you know all this. Now what"s to be done? One thing is clear, I can"t and won"t be amorously waited on. I think the poor child will have to be sent away."
"Oh, dear!" cried my mother, "and just when she"s getting to be a perfect servant, and your father so used to her now--says he never knows when she"s in the room and when she isn"t."
We returned to the house.
"I"ll talk it over with her," announced my mother, "and try to decide what"s best--best for her, the poor, pretty little thing."
You may be sure that that meeting in the little room where my mother wrote her letters was no meeting between a mistress and a servant, but between two honest women who in different ways loved the same man.
I was with Lucy while it took place, but certain gists of what was said and done have come to me, some from my mother, and some from Hilda.
My mother, it seemed, waived at once all those degrees of the social scale which separated them, took Hilda in her arms, kissed her, and held her while Hilda had what women call a "good cry." My mother is too proud and brave to cry, but she was unhappy without affectation.
After the embrace and the cry they sat side by side on a little brocaded sofa and talked. My mother fortunately did not have to point out the social obstacles in the way of a match between Hilda and me, as there was never any question of such a match. Indeed, in the talk between them I was not at first mentioned. My mother took the position that Hilda was just a sweet, nice-minded girl who was very unhappy and needed comforting, and advice. First she made Hilda tell the story of her life. To be permitted to do this in the presence of a sincere listener and well-wisher is one of the greatest comforts to anyone.
"The poor child," said my mother, "has had such a drab, colorless, unhappy life that it made her almost happy to tell about it."
It seemed that Hilda wasn"t "anybody" even for a servant. Her earliest recollections were of life in an English orphanage--one of those orphanages where the mothers of the orphans are still alive and there never were any fathers.
"But she"s made herself think," my mother told me, "that her father was a gentleman--G.o.d save the mark!"
Well, she went into service when she was a "great" girl of fourteen or fifteen, and after various drab adventures in servitude came to this country and was presently sent to my mother on approval. She had left her last place in England because of a horrible butler. He was bowlegged and very old. He drank and made the poor frightened girls in the house listen to horrible stories. One found notes, printed notes, pinned on one"s pincushion. "Have a heart. Don"t lock your door tonight," and such like. Or a piece of plate would be missed and one would find it in one"s bureau drawer, where the horrible old man had put it, and one dared not complain to the master lest upon carefully planned circ.u.mstantial evidence one be made out to be a thief.
It had been so wonderful coming to live in my mother"s house. The servants were so different, so kind, so worthy. The servants" rooms were so clean and neat and well-furnished as the master"s rooms. So much was done to make the servants comfortable and happy. n.o.body had ever spoken crossly to one in my mother"s house----"And, Oh, Mrs.
Mannering, I feel so low and ashamed to have made so much trouble for you and Mr. Archie."
That was the first mention of my name.
"My dear Hilda, you mustn"t feel ashamed because you"ve had a romance."
"Oh, it has been a sort of romance, hasn"t it, Mrs. Mannering? But I never--never should have let it all come out. Because now I"ll have to go away, and never even see him ever any more. I never should have let it come out, but I couldn"t help it. And him always so kind and polite, and never once guessing all these years!"
Now my mother had not gone into that interview without a definite plan.
She had heard that the Fultons--of all the people in this world whom it might have been!--were being abandoned by their waitress, and already by a brisk use of the telephone my mother had secured the place for Hilda.
It"s a wonder that Hilda did not burst out laughing or screaming when she heard into whose service she was to go. I don"t think she hated Lucy--yet. But for a woman who loved a man to take a place with the woman the man loved must have struck her as the most grotesque of propositions. But what could she do? Loyal to me, and to my secret, she wasn"t going to give me away to my mother.
"But," she protested, "Mr. Archie goes so much to that house!"