Book: Hilda

S >> Sarah Jeanette Duncan >> Hilda




The play proceeded and Stephen did not move--did not wince. When Mrs.
Halliday, whose mate was exacting, exclaimed, "The greatest apostle of
expediency was St. Paul. He preached 'wives, love your husbands,'" he
even permitted himself the ghost of a smile. At one point he wished
himself familiar with the plot; it was when Hamilton Bradley came
jauntily on as Lord Ingleton, assuring Mrs. Halliday that immorality was
really only shortsightedness. Lady Dolly, in front, repeated Lord
Ingleton's phrase with ingenuous wonder. "I know it's clever," she
insisted, "but what does it mean? Now that other thing--what was
it?--'Subtract vice, and virtue is what is left'--that's an easy one.
Write it down on your cuff for me, will you, Colonel Cummins? I _shall_
be so sick if I forget it."

Stephen was perhaps the only person in the box quite oblivious of Lady
Dolly. He looked steadily over her animated shoulders at the play,
wholly involved in an effort which the author would doubtless have
resented, to keep its current and direction through the floating debris
of constrained sayings with which it was encumbered, to know in advance
whither it was carrying its Mrs. Halliday, and how far Lord Ingleton
would accompany. When Lord Ingleton paused, as it were, to beg four
people to "have nothing to do with sentiment--it so often leads to
conviction," and the house murmured its amusement, Arnold shifted his
shoulders impatiently. "How inconsistent," Lord Ingleton reproached Mrs.
Halliday a moment later, "to wear gloves on your hands and let your
thoughts go candid." Arnold turned to Duff. "There's no excuse for
that," he said, but Lindsay was hanging upon Hilda's rejoinder and did
not hear him.

At the end of the first act, where, after introducing Mrs. Halliday to
her husband's divorced first wife, Lord Ingleton is left rubbing his
hands with gratification at having made two such clever women "aware of
each other," Stephen found himself absolutely unwilling to discuss the
piece with the rest of the party. As he left the box to walk up and down
the corridor outside where it was cooler, he heard the voice of Colonel
Cummins lifted in further quotation: "'To be good _and_ charming--what a
sinful superfluity!' I'm sure nobody ever called you superfluous, Lady
Dolly," and was vividly aware of the advisability of taking himself and
his Order out of the theatre. He had not been gratified, or even from
any point appealed to. Hilda's production of Mrs. Halliday was so
perfect that it failed absolutely to touch him, almost to interest him.
He had no means of measuring or of valuing that kind of woman, the
restless brilliant type that lives upon its emotions and tilts at the
problems of its sex with a curious comfort in the joust. He was too far
from the circle of her modern influence to consider her with anything
but impatience if he had met her original person, and her reflection,
her reproduction, seemed to him frivolous and meaningless. If he went
then, however, he would go as he came, in so far as the play was
concerned; the first act, relying altogether upon the jugglery of its
dialogue, gave no clue to anything. He owed it to Hilda, after all, to
see the piece out. It was only fair to give her a chance to make the
best of it. He decided that it was worth a personal sacrifice to give it
her and went back.

He was sufficiently indignant with the leading idea of the play, and
sufficiently absorbed in its progress, at the end of the second act, to
permit Lady Dolly to capture him before it occurred to him that he had
the use of his legs. Her enthusiasm was so great that it reduced him to
something like equivocation. She wanted to know if anything could be
more splendid than Mr. Bradley as Lord Ingleton; she confided to Stephen
that that was what she called _real_ wickedness, the kind that did the
most harm, and invited him, by inference, to a liberal judgment of
stupid sinners. He sat emitting short unsmiling sentences with eyes
nervously fugitive from Lady Dolly's too proximate opulence until the
third act began. Then he gave place with embarrassed alacrity to Colonel
Cummins, and folded his arms again at the back of the box.

Before it was finished he had the gratification of recognising at least
one Hilda that he knew. The newspapers found in her interpretation the
development of a soul, and one remembered, reading them, that a _cliche_
is a valuable thing in a hurry. A phrase which spoke of a soul bruised
out of life and rushing to annihilation would have been more precise.
The demand upon her increased steadily as the act went on, and as she
met it, there slipped into her acting some of her own potentialities of
motive and of passion. She offered to the shaping circumstance rich
material and abundant plasticity, and when the persecution of her
destiny required her to throw herself irretrievably away, she did it
with a splendid appreciation of large and definite movements that was
essentially of herself.

The moment of it had a bold gruesomeness that caught the breath--a
disinterment on the stage in search of letters that would prove the
charge against the second year of Mrs. Halliday's married life, her
letters buried with the poet. It was an advantage which only the husband
of Mrs. Halliday would have claimed to bring so helpless a respondent
before even the informal court at the graveyard; but it gave Hilda a
magnificent opportunity of wild, mad apostrophe to the skull, holding it
tenderly with both hands, while Lord Ingleton smiled appreciatively in
advance of the practical benevolence which was to sustain the lady
through the divorce court and in the final scene offer to her and to the
prejudices of the British public the respectability of his name.

It was over with a rush at the end, leaving the audience uncertain
whether, after all, enough attention had been paid to that tradition of
the footlights which insists on so nice a sense of opprobrium and
compensation, but convinced of its desire to applaud. Duff Lindsay
turned, as the wave of clapping spent itself, to say to Stephen that he
had never respected Hamilton Bradley's acting so much. He said it to
Herbert Livingstone instead; the priest had disappeared.

The outgoers looked at Arnold curiously as he made his way among them in
a direction which was not that of the exit. He went with hurried
purpose, in the face of them all, toward the region, badly lighted and
imperfectly closed, which led to the rear of the stage. He opened doors
into dark closets, and one which gave upon the road, retraced his
unfamiliar steps and asked a question, to which--it was so unusual from
one in his habit--he received a hesitating but correct reply. A moment
later he passed Mr. Llewellyn Stanhope, who stood in his path with a
hostile stare and got out of it with a deferential bow, and knocked at a
door upon which was pasted the name, in large red letters cut from a
poster, of Miss Hilda Howe. It was a little ajar, so he entered, when
she cried, "Come in!" with the less hesitation. Hilda sat on the single
chair the place contained in the dress and make-up of the last scene. A
Mohammedan servant, who looked up incuriously, was unlacing her shoes.
Various garments hung about on nails driven into the unpainted walls,
others overflowed from a packing-box in one corner. A common teak-wood
dressing-table held make-up saucers and powder-puffs and some remnants
of cold fowl which had not been partaken of, apparently, with the
assistance of a knife, and fork. A candle stood in an empty soda-water
bottle on each side of the looking-glass, and there was no other light.
On the floor a pair of stays, old and soiled, sprawled with unconcern.
The place looked sordid and miserable, and Hilda, sitting in the middle
of it, still in the yellow wig and painted face of Mrs. Halliday, all
wrong at that range, gave it a note of false artifice, violent and
grievous. Stephen stood in the doorway grasping the handle, saying
nothing, and an instant passed before she knew with certainty, in the
wretched light, that it was he. Then she sprang up and made a step
toward him as if toward victory and reward, but checked herself in time.
"Is it possible?" she exclaimed. "I did not know you were in the
theatre."

"Yes," he said, with moderation, "I have seen this--this damnable play."

"Damnable? Oh!----"

"It has caused me," he went on, "to regret the substance of my letter
this morning. I failed to realise that this was the kind of work you
devote your life to. I now see that you could not escape its malign
influence--that no woman could. I now think that the alternative that
has been revealed to you, of remaining in Calcutta, is a chance of
escape offered you by God himself. Take it. I withdraw my foolish,
ignorant opposition."

"Oh," she cried, "do you really think----"

"Take it," he repeated and closed the door.

Hilda sat still for some time after the servant had finished unlacing
her shoes. A little tender smile played oddly about her carmined lips.
"Dear heart," she said aloud, "I was going to."




CHAPTER XXIII.


"I would simply give anything to be there," Miss Livingstone said, with
a look of sincere desire.

"I should love to have you, but it isn't possible. You might meet men
you knew who had been invited by particular lady friends among the
company."

"Oh, well, that of course would be odious."

"Very, I should think," Hilda agreed. "You must be satisfied with a
faithful report of it. I promise you that."

"You have asked Mr. Lindsay," Alicia complained.

"That's quite a different thing--and if I hadn't Llewellyn Stanhope
would. Stanhope cherishes Duff as he cherishes the critic of the
_Chronicle_. He refers to him as a pillar of the legitimate. Whenever he
begs me to turn the Norwegian crank, he says, 'I'm sure Mr. Lindsay
would come.'"

Miss Howe was at the top of the staircase in Middleton street, on the
point of departure. It was to be the night of her last appearance for
the season and her benefit, followed by a supper in her honour, at which
Mr. Stanhope and his company would take leave of those whose
acquaintance, as he expressed it, business and pleasure had given them
during the months that were past. It was this function that Alicia, at
the top of the staircase, so ardently desired to attend.

"No, I won't kiss you," Hilda said, as the other put her cool cheek
forward; "I'm so divinely happy--some of it might escape."

Alicia's voice pursued her as she ran down stairs. "Remember," she said,
"I don't approve. I don't at all agree either with my reverend cousin or
with you. I think you ought to find some other way or let it go. Go home
instead; go straight to London and insist on your chance. After six
weeks you will have forgotten the name of his Order."

Hilda looked back with a smile. Her face was splendid with the dawn and
promise of success. "Don't blaspheme," she cried. Alicia, leaning down,
was visited by a flash of quotation. "Well," she said, "'nothing in this
life becomes you like the leaving of it,'" and went back to her room to
write to Laura Filbert in Plymouth. She wrote often to Miss Filbert, at
Duff's request. It gratified her that she was able, without a pang, to
address four pages of pleasantly colourless communication to Mr.
Lindsay's _fiancee_. Her letters stood for a medicine surprisingly easy
to take, aimed at the convalescence which she already anticipated in the
future immediately beyond Duff's miserable marriage. If that event had
promised fortuitously she would have faced it, one fancies, with less
sanguine anticipations for herself; but the black disaster that rode on
with it brought her certain aids to the spirit, certain hopes of
herself. Laura's prompt replies, with their terrible margins and
painstaking solecisms, came to be things Miss Livingstone looked forward
to. She read them with a beating heart in the unconscious apprehension
of some revelation of improvement. She was quite unaware of it, but she
entertained toward the Simpsons an attitude of misgiving in this regard.

Hilda went on about her business. As usual, her business was important
and imperative; nothing was lightened for her this last day. She drove
about from place to place in the hot, slatternly city, putting more than
her usual vigour and directness into all she did. It seemed to her that
the sunlight burning on the tiles, pouring through the crowded streets,
had more than ever a vivid note; and so much spoke to her, came to her,
from the profuse and ingenuous life which streamed about her, that she
leaned a little forward to meet it with happy eyes and tender lips that
said, "I know. I see." She was living for the moment which should exhale
itself somewhere about midnight, after the lights had gone out on her
last appearance, living for it as a Carmelite might live for the climax
of her veil and her vows if it were conceivable that beyond the cell and
the grating she saw the movement and the colour and the passion of a
wider life. All Hilda's splendid vitality went into her intention, of
which she was altogether mistress, riding it and reining it in a
straight course through the encumbered hours. It keyed her to a finer
and more eager susceptibility; and the things she saw stayed with her,
passing into a composite day which the years were hardly to dim for her.

She could live like that, for the purposes of a period, wrought up to
immense keenness of sense and brilliancy of energy, making steadily for
some point of feeling or achievement flashing gloriously on the horizon.
It is already plain, perhaps, that she rejoiced in such strokes, and
that life as she found it worth living was marked by a succession of
them.

She had kept, even from Lindsay, what she meant to do. When she stepped
from his brougham, flushed after the indubitable triumph of the evening,
with her arms full of real bouquets from Chatterjee's--no eight-anna
bazaar confections edged with silver tinsel--it occurred to her that
this reticence was not altogether fair to so constant a friend. He was
there, keen and eager as ever in all that concerned her, foremost with
his congratulations on the smiling fringe of the party assembled to do
her honour. It was a party of some brilliance in its way, though its way
was diverse; there was no steady glow. Fillimore said of the company
that it comprised all the talent, and Fillimore, editor of the _Indian
Sportsman and Racing Gazette_, was a judge. He said it to Hagge, of the
Bank of Hindustan, who could hardly have been an owner on three hundred
rupees a month without conspicuous ability disconnected with his
ledgers; and Hagge looked gratified. Though so promising, he was young.
Lord Bobby was there from Government House. Lord Bobby always
accompanied the talent, who were very kind to him. He was talking, when
Hilda arrived, to the editor of the _Indian Empire_, who wanted to find
out the date of Her Excellency's fancy-dress party for children, in
order that he might make a leaderette of it; but Lord Bobby couldn't
remember--had to promise to drop him a line. Gianacchi was there, trying
to treat Fillimore with coldness because the _Sportsman_ had discovered
too many virtues in his _Gadfly_, exalted her, indeed, into a favourite
for Saturday's hurdle race, a notability for which Gianacchi felt
himself too modest. "They say," Fillimore had written, "that the
_Gadfly_ has been seen jumping by moonlight"--the sort of the thing to
spoil any book. Fillimore was an acute and weary-looking little man with
a peculiarly sweet smile and an air of cynicism which gave to his
lightest word a dangerous and suspicious air. It was rumoured in
official circles that he had narrowly escaped beheading, for pointing
out too ironically the disabilities of a Viceroy who insisted on
reviewing the troops from a cushioned carriage with the horses taken
out. Fillimore seemed to think that if nature had not made such a
nobleman a horseman, the Queen-Empress should not have made him
Governor-General of India. Fillimore was full of prejudices. Gianacchi,
however, found it impossible to treat him coldly. His smoothness of
temperament stood in the way. Instead, he imparted the melodious
information that the _Gadfly_ had pecked badly twice at Tollygunge that
morning, and smiled with pathetic philosophy. "Always let 'em use their
noses," said Fillimore, and there seemed to be satire in it. Fillimore
certainly had a flair, and when Beryl Stace presently demanded of him,
"What's the dead bird going to be on Saturday, Filly?" he put it
generously at her service. Among the friends of Mr. Stanhope and his
company were also several gentlemen, content, for their personal effect,
with the lustre they shed upon the Stock Exchange--gentlemen of high
finance, who wrote their names at the end of directors' reports, but
never in the visitors' book at Government House, who were little more to
the Calcutta world than published receipts for so many lakhs, except
when they were seen now and then driving in fleet dog-carts across the
Maidan toward comfortable suburban residences where ladies were not
entertained. They were extremely, curiously devoted to business; but if
they allowed themselves any amusement other than company promoting it
was the theatre, of which their appreciation had sometimes an odd
relation to the merits of performance. This supper, on the part of Miss
Beryl Stace and one or two other of Mr. Stanhope's artistes, might have
been considered a return of hospitality to these gentlemen, since the
suburban residences stood lavishly open to the profession.

Altogether, perhaps, there were fifty people, and an eye that looked for
the sentiment, the pity of things, would have distinguished at once on
about half the faces, especially those of the women, the used underlined
look that spoke of the continual play of muscle and forcing of feeling.
It gave them a shabbily complicated air, contrasting in a strained and
sorry way even with the countenances of the brokers and bankers, where
nature had laid on a smooth wash and experience had not interfered. They
were all gay and enthusiastic as Miss Howe entered; they loafed forward,
broad shirt-fronts lustrous, fat hands in financial pockets, with their
admiration, and Fillimore put out his cigarette. Hilda came down among
them from the summit of her achievement, clasping their various hands.
They were all personally responsible for her success, she made them feel
that, and they expanded in the conviction. She moved in a kind of tide
of infectious vitality, subtly drawing from every human flavour in the
room the power to hold and show something akin to it in herself, a
fugitive assimilation floating in the lamplight with the odour of the
flowers and the soup, to be extinguished with the occasion. They looked
at her up and down the table with an odd smiling attraction; they told
each other that she was in great form. Mr. Fillimore was of the opinion
that she couldn't be outclassed at the Lyceum, and Mr. Hagge responded
with vivacity that there were few places where she wouldn't stretch the
winner's neck. The feast was not, after all, one of great bounty, Mr.
Stanhope justly holding that the opportunity, the little gathering, was
the thing, and it was not long before the moment of celebration arrived
for which the gentlemen of the Stock Exchange, to judge from their
undrained glasses, seemed to be reserving themselves. There certainly
had been one tin of pate, and it circulated at that end; on the other
hand, the ladies had all the fondants. So that when Mr. Llewellyn
Stanhope rose with the sentiment of the evening, he found satisfaction,
if not repletion, in the regards turned upon him.

Llewellyn got up with modest importance, and ran a hand through his
yellow hair, not dramatically, but with the effect of collecting his
ideas. He leaned a little forward; he was extremely, happily
conspicuous. The attention of the two lines of faces seemed to overcome
him, for an instant, with dizzy pleasure; Hilda's beside him was bent a
little, waiting.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Stanhope, looking with precision up and
down the table to be still more inclusive, "we have met together
to-night in honour of a lady who has given this city more pleasure in
the exercise of her profession than can be said of any single performer
during the last twenty years. Cast your eye back over the theatrical
record of Calcutta for that space of time, and you yourselves will admit
that there has been nobody that could be said to have come within a mile
of her shadow, if I may use the language of metaphor. [Applause, led by
Mr. Fillimore.] I would ask you to remember, at the same time, that this
pleasure has been of a superior class. I freely admit that this is a
great satisfaction to me personally. Far be it from me to put myself
forward on this auspicious occasion, but, ladies and gentlemen, if I
have one ambition more than another, it is to promote the noble cause of
the unfettered drama. To this I may say I have been vowed from the
cradle, by a sire who was well known in the early days of the metropolis
of Sydney as a pioneer in the great movement which has made the dramatic
talent of Australia what it is. To-day a magnificent theatre rises on
the site forever consecrated to me by those paternal labours, but--but I
can never forget it. In Miss Hilda Howe I have found a great coadjutor,
and one who is willing to consecrate her royal abilities in the same
line as myself, so that we have been able to maintain a high standard of
production among you, prices remaining as usual. I have to thank you, as
representing the public of the Indian capital, for the kind support
which has been so encouraging to Miss Howe, the company, and myself
personally, during the past season. Many a time ladies and gentlemen of
my profession have said to me, 'Mr. Stanhope, why do you go to Calcutta?
That city is a death-trap for professionals,' and now the past season
proves that I was right and they were wrong; and the magnificent houses,
the enthusiasm, and the appreciation that have greeted our efforts,
especially on the Saturday evening performances, show plain enough that
when a good thing is available, the citizens of Calcutta won't be happy
till they get it. Ladies and gentlemen, I invite you to join me in
drinking the health, happiness, and prosperity of Miss Hilda Howe."

"Miss Howe!" "Miss Howe!" "Miss Hilda Howe!" In the midst of a pushing
back of chairs and a movement of feet, the response was quick and
universal. Hilda accepted their nods and becks and waving glasses with a
slow movement of her beautiful eyes and a quiet smile. In the subsidence
of sound Mr. Stanhope's voice was heard again: "We can hardly expect a
speech from Miss Howe, but perhaps Mr. Hamilton Bradley, whose
international reputation need hardly be referred to, will kindly say a
few words on her behalf."

Then, with deliberate grace, Hilda rose from her chair, a tall figure
among them, looking down with a hint of compassionateness on the little
man at her left. She stood for an instant without speaking, as if the
flushed silence, the expectation, the warm magnetism that drew all their
eyes to her were enough. Then out of something like reverie she came to
the matter. She threw up her beautiful face with one of the supreme
gestures which belonged to her. "I think," she said, with a little
smiling bow in his direction, "that I will not trouble my friend Mr.
Bradley. He has rendered me so many kind services already that I am sure
I might count upon him again, but this is a thing I should like to do
for myself. I would not have my thanks chilled by even the passage from
my heart to his." There was something like bravado in the glance that
rested lightly on Bradley with this. One would have said that parley of
hearts between them was not a thing that as a rule she courted. "I can
only offer you my thanks, poor things to which we can give neither life
nor substance, yet I beg that you will somehow take them and remember
them. It is to me, and will always be, a kind of crowning satisfaction
that you were pleased to come together to-night to tell me I had done
well. You know yourselves, and I know, how much too flattering your
kindness is, but perhaps it will hurt nobody if to-night I take it as it
is generously offered, and let it make me as happy as you intend me to
be. At all events, no one could disturb me in believing that in
obtaining your praise and your good wishes I have done well enough."

For a few seconds she stopped speaking, but she held them with her eyes
from the mistake of supposing she had done. Lindsay, who was watching
her closely and hanging with keen pleasure on the sweetness and
precision of what she found to say, noted a swift constriction pass upon
her face, and was ready to swear to himself in astonishment that tears
were in her eyes. There was a half-tone of difference, too, in her voice
when she raised it again, a firmer vibration, as if she passed,
deliberate and aware, out of one phase into another.

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