CHAPTER XXXIV.
HOPE.
From Edie Le Breton's lodgings, Hilda Tregellis drove straight,
without stopping all the way, to Arthur Berkeley's house at Chelsea;
for Arthur had long since risen to the dignity of an enfranchised
householder, and had bought himself a pretty cottage near the
Embankment, with room enough for himself and the Progenitor, and
even for any possible future domestic contingency in the way of
wife and children. It was a very unconventional thing for her to
do, no doubt; but Lady Hilda was certainly not the person to be
deterred from doing anything she contemplated on the bare ground
of its extreme unconventionally; and so far was she from objecting
personally to her visit on this score, that before she rang the
Berkeleys' bell she looked quietly at her little bijou watch, and
said with a bland smile to the suspicious Mr. Jenkins, 'Let me see,
Jenkins; it's one o'clock. I shall lunch with my friends here this
morning; so you may take the carriage home now for my lady, and I
shall cab it back, or come round by Metropolitan.' Jenkins was too
much accustcmed to Lady Hilda's unaccountable vagaries to express
any surprise at her wildest resolutions, even if she had proposed
to go home on a costermonger's barrow; so he only touched his hat
respectfully, in his marionette fashion, and drove away at once
without further colloquy.
'Is Mr. Berkeley at home?' Hilda asked of the pretty servant girl
who opened the door to her, mentally taking note at the same time
that Arthur's aesthetic tendencies evidently extended even to his
human surroundings.
'Which Mr. Berkeley?' the girl asked in reply. 'Mr. Berkeley
senerer, 'e's at 'ome, but Mr. Arthur, 'e's gone up this mornin'
to 'Olloway.'
Hilda seized with avidity upon this unexpected and almost providential
opening. 'No, is he?' she said, delighted. 'Then I'll go in and see
Mr. Berkeley senior. No card, thank you: no name: tell him merely
a lady would like to see him. I dare say Mr. Arthur'll be back
before long from Holloway.'
The girl hesitated a moment as if in doubt, and surveyed Lady Hilda
from head to foot. Hilda, whose eyes were still red from crying,
couldn't help laughing outright at the obvious cause of the girl's
hesitation. 'Do as I tell you,' she said in her imperious way. 'Who
on earth do you take me for, my good girl? That's my card, see: but
you needn't give it to Mr. Berkeley senior. Now go and tell him at
once that a lady is waiting to see him.'
The innate respect of the English working classes for the kind of
nobility that is supposed to be represented by the British peerage
made the girl drop an instinctive curtsey as she looked at the card,
and answer in a voice of hushed surprise, 'Yes, my lady.' She had
heard Lady Hilda Tregellis spoken of more than once at her master's
table, and she knew, of course, that so great a personage as that
could do no wrong. So she merely ushered her visitor at once into
Arthur Berkeley's beautiful little study, with its delicate grey
pomegranate wall paper and its exquisite unpolished oak fittings,
and said simply, in an overawed manner, 'A lady wishes to speak to
you, sir.'
The old shoemaker looked up from the English translation of Ribot's
'Psychologie Anglaise Contemporaine,' with whose intricacies he
was manfully struggling, and rose with native politeness to welcome
Hilda.
'Good morning,' Hilda said, extending her hand to him with one of
her beaming disarming smiles, and annihilating all that was most
obtrusively democratic in him at once by her pleasant manner. 'I'm
a friend of your son's, Mr. Berkeley, and I've come here to see
him about very particular private business--in short, on an errand
of charity. Will he be long gone, do you know?'
'Not very,' the Progenitor answered, in a somewhat embarrassed
manner, surveying her curiously. 'At least, I should think not.
He's gone to Holloway for an hour or two, but I fancy he'll be back
for two o'clock luncheon, Miss----ur, I don't think I caught your
name, did I?'
'To Holloway,' Hilda echoed, taking no notice of his suggested
query. 'Oh, then he's gone to see the poor dear Le Bretons, of
course. Why, that's just what I wanted to see him about. If you'll
allow me then, I'll just stop and have lunch with you.'
'The dickens you will,' the Progenitor thought to himself in speechless
astonishment. 'That's really awfully cool of you. However, I dare
say it's usual to invite oneself in the state of life that that boy
Artie has gone and hoisted himself into, most unnaturally. A fine
lady, no doubt, of their modern pattern; but in my day, up in
Paddington, we should have called her a brazen hussey.--Certainly,
if you will,' he added aloud. 'If you've come on any errand that
will do any good to the Le Bretons, I'm sure my son'll be delighted
to see you. He's greatly grieved at their unhappy condition.'
'I'm afraid I've nothing much to suggest of any very practical
sort,' Hilda answered, with a slight sigh; 'but at least I should
like to talk with him about the matter. Something must be done
for these two poor young people, you know, Mr. Berkeley. Something
must really be done to help them.'
'Then you're interested in them, Miss--ur--ur--ah, yes--are you?'
'Look at my eyes,' Hilda said plumply. 'Are they very red, Mr.
Berkeley?'
'Well....ur...yes, if I may venture to say so to a lady,' the old
shoemaker answered hesitatingly, with unwonted gallantry. 'I should
say they were a trifle, ur, just a trifle roseate, you know.'
'Quite so,' Hilda went on, seriously. 'That's it. They're red with
crying. I've been crying like a baby all the morning with that
poor, dear, sweet little angel of a Mrs. Le Breton.'
'Then you're a great friend of hers, I suppose,' the Progenitor
suggested mildly.
'Never set eyes on her in my life before this morning, on the
contrary,' Hilda continued in her garrulous fashion. 'But, oh, Mr.
Berkeley, if you'd only seen that dear little woman, crying as if
her heart would break, and telling me that dear Ernest was dying,
actually dying; why--there--excuse me--I can't help it, you know;
we women are always crying about something or other, aren't we?'
The old man laid his hand on hers quietly. 'Don't mind ME, my
dear,' he said with genuine tenderness. 'Don't mind me a bit; I'm
only an old shoemaker, as I dare say you've heard before now; but
I know you'll be the better for crying--women always are--and tears
shed on somebody else's account are never thrown away, my dear,
are they?'
Hilda took his hand between hers, and wiping her eyes once more
whispered softly, 'No, Mr. Berkeley, no; perhaps they're not; but
oh, they're so useless; so very, very, very useless. Do you know,
I never felt my own powerlessness and helplessness in all my life
so much as I did at that dear, patient little Mrs. Le Breton's
this very morning. There I sat, knowing she was in dire need of
money for her poor husband, and wanting sufficient food and drink,
perhaps, for herself, and him, and the dear darling baby; and in
my hand in my muff I had my purse there with five tenners--Bank of
England ten-pound uotes, you know--fifty pounds altogether, rolled
up inside it; and I would have given anything if only I could have
pulled them out and made them a present to her then and there; and
I couldn't, you see: and, oh, Mr. Berkeley, isn't it terrible to
look at them? And then, before I left, poor Mr. Le Breton himself
came in, and I was quite shocked to see him. I used to know him a
few years ago, and even then he wasn't what you'd call robust by
any means; but now, oh, dear me, he does look so awfully ill and
haggard and miserable that it quite made me break down again, and I
cried about him before his very face; and the moment I got away, I
said to the coachman, "Jenkins, drive straight off to the Embankment
at Chelsea;" and here I am, you see, waiting to talk with your
clever son about it; for, really, Mr. Berkeley, the poor Le Bretons
haven't got a single friend anywhere like your son Arthur.'
And then Lady Hilda went on to praise Arthur's music to the
Progenitor, and to speak of how much admired he was everywhere,
and to hint that so much genius and musical power must of course be
largely hereditary. Whereat the old man, not unmoved by her gentle
insinuating flattery, at last confessed to his own lifelong musical
tastes, and even casually acknowledged that the motive for one or
two of the minor songs in the famous operas was not entirely of
Arthur's own unaided invention. And so, from one subject to another,
they passed on so quickly, and hit it off with one another so exactly
(for Hilda had a wonderful knack of leading up to everybody's strong
points), that long before lunch was ready, the Progenitor had been
quite won over by the fascinations of the brazen hussey, and was
prepared to admit that she was really a very nice, kind, tender-hearted,
intelligent, appreciative, and discriminating young lady. True,
she had not read Mill or Fawcett, and was ignorant of the very name
of Herbert Spencer; but she had a vast admiration for his dear boy
Artie, and she saw that he himself knew a thing or two in his own
modest way, though he was only what the grand world she moved in
would doubtless call an old superannuated journeyman shoemaker.
'Ah, yes, a shoemaker! so I've heard somewhere, I fancy,' Lady
Hilda remarked brightly, when for the third time in the course of
their conversation he informed her with great dignity of the interesting
fact; 'how very delightful and charming that is, really, now isn't
it? So original, you know, to make shoes instead of going into some
useless profession, especially when you're such a great reader
and student and thinker as you are--for I see you're a philosopher
and a psychologist already, Mr. Berkeley'--Hilda considered it rather
a bold effort on her part to pronounce the word 'psychologist' at
the very first trial without stumbling; but though she was a little
doubtful about the exact pronunciation of that fearful vocable,
she felt quite at her ease about the fact at least, because
she carefully noticed him lay down Ribot on the table beside him,
name upward; 'one can't help finding that much out on a very short
acquaintance, can one? Though, indeed, now I come to think of it,
I believe I've heard often that men of your calling generally ARE
very fond of reading, and are very philosophical, and clever, and
political, and all that sort of thing; and they say that's the
reason, of course, why Northampton's such an exceptionally intelligent
constituency, and always returns such thoroughgoing able logical
Radicals.'
The old man's eyes beamed, as she spoke, with inexpressible pride
and pleasure. 'I'm very glad indeed to hear you say so,' he answered
promptly with a complacent self-satisfied smile, 'and I believe
you're right too, Miss, ur--ur--ur--quite so. The practice of
shoemaking undoubtedly tends to develop a very high and exceptional
level of general intelligence and logical power.'
'I'm sure of it,' Hilda answered demurely, in a tone of the deepest
and sincerest conviction; 'and when I heard somebody say somewhere,
that your son was...--well, WAS your son, I said to myself at once,
"Ah, well, there now, that quite accounts, of course, for young
Mr. Berkeley's very extraordinary and unusual abilities!"'
'She's really a most sensible, well-informed young woman, whoever
she is,' the Progenitor thought to himself silently; 'and it's
certainly a pity that dear Artie couldn't take a fancy to some nice,
appreciative, kind-hearted, practical girl like that now, instead
of wearing away all the best days of his life in useless regret
for that poor slender, unsubstantial nonentity of a watery little
Mrs. Le Breton.'
By two o'clock lunch was ready, and just as it had been announced,
Arthur Berkeley ran up the front steps, and let himself in with
his proprietory latch-key. Turning straight into the dining-room,
he was just in time to see his own father walking into lunch arm
in arm with Lady Hilda Tregellis. As Mrs. Hallis had graphically
expressed it, he felt as if you might have knocked him down with
a feather! Was she absolutely ubiquitous, then, this pervasive
Lady Hilda? and was he destined wherever he went to come upon her
suddenly in the most unexpected and incomprehensible situations?
'Will you sit down here, my dear,' the Progenitor was saying to
Hilda at the exact moment he entered, 'or would you prefer your
back to the fire?'
Arthur Berkeley opened his eyes wide with unspeakable amazement.
'What, YOU here,' he exclaimed, coming forward suddenly to shake
hands with Hilda; 'why, I saw you only a couple of hours since at
the Le Bretons' at Holloway.'
'You did!' Hilda cried with almost equal astonishment, 'Why, how
was that? I never saw YOU.'
Arthur sighed quietly. 'No,' he answered, with a curious look at
the Progenitor; 'you were engaged when I opened the door, and I
didn't like to disturb you. You were--you were speaking with poor
little Mrs. Le Breton. But I'm so much obliged to you for your
kindness to them, Lady Hilda; so very much obliged to you for your
great kindness to them.'
It was the Progenitor's turn now to start in surprise. 'What! Lady
Hilda!' he cried with a bewildered look. 'Lady Hilda! Did I hear
you say "Lady Hilda"? Is this Lady Hilda Tregellis, then, that I've
heard you talk about so often, Artie?'
'Why, of course, Father. You didn't know who it was, then, didn't
you? Lady Hilda, I'm afraid you've been stealing a march upon the
poor unsuspecting hostile Progenitor.'
'Not quite that, Mr. Berkeley,' Hilda replied, laughing; 'only
after the very truculent character I had heard of your father as
a regular red-hot militant Radical, I thought I'd better not send
in my name to him at once for fear it might prejudice him against
me before first acquaintance.'
The Progenitor looked at her steadfastly from head to foot, standing
before him there in her queenly beauty, as if she were some strange
wild beast that he had been requested to inspect and report upon
for a scientific purpose. 'Lady Hilda Tregellis!' he said slowly
and deliberately; 'Lady Hilda Tregellis! So this is Lady Hilda
Tregellis, is it? Well, all I can say is this, then, that as far as
I can judge her, Lady Hilda Tregellis is a very sensible, modest,
intelligent, well-conducted young woman, which is more than I
could possibly have expected from a person of her unfortunate and
distressing hereditary antecedents. But you know, my dear, it was
a very mean trick of you to go and take an old man's heart by guile
and stratagem in that way!'
Hilda laughed a little uneasily. The Progenitor's manner was perhaps
a trifle too open and unconventional even for her. 'It wasn't for
that I came, Mr. Berkeley,' she said again with one of her sunny
smiles, which brought the Progenitor metaphorically to her feet
again, 'but to talk over this matter of the poor Le Bretons with
your son. Oh, Mr. Arthur, something must really be done to help
them. I know you say there's nothing to be done; but there must be;
we must find it out; we must invent it; we must compel it. When
I sat there this morning with that dear little woman and saw
her breaking her full heart over her husband's trouble, I said to
myself, somehow, Hilda Tregellis, if you can't find a way out of
this, you're not worth your salt in this world, and you'd better
make haste and take a rapid through-ticket at once to the next, if
there is one.'
'Which is more than doubtful, really,' the Progenitor muttered
softly half under his breath; 'which, as Strauss has conclusively
shown, is certainly a good deal more than doubtful.'
Arthur took no notice of the interruption, but merely answered
imploringly, with a despairing gesture of his hands, 'What are we
to do, Lady Hilda? What can we possibly do?'
'Why, sit down and have some lunch first,' Hilda rejoined with
practical common-sense, 'and then talk it over rationally afterwards,
instead of wringing our hands helplessly like a pair of Frenchmen
in a street difficulty.' (Hilda had a fine old crusted English
contempt, by the way, for those vastly inferior and foolish creatures
known as foreigners.)
Thus adjured, Berkeley sat down promptly, and they proceeded to take
counsel together in this hard matter over the cutlets and claret
provided before them. 'Ernest and Mrs. Le Breton told me all about
your visit,' Arthur went on, soon after; 'and they're so much obliged
to you for having taken the trouble to look them up in their sore
distress. Do you know, Lady Hilda, I think you've quite made a
conquest of our dear little friend, Mrs. Le Breton.'
'I don't know about that,' Hilda responded with a smile, 'but I'm
sure, at any rate, that the sweet little woman quite made a conquest
of me, Mr. Berkeley. In fact, I can't say what you think, but for
my part I'm determined an effort must be made one way or another
to save them.'
'It's no use,' Arthur answered, shaking his head sadly; 'it can't
be done. There's nothing for it but to let them float down helplessly
with the tide, wherever it may bear them.'
'Stuff and nonsense,' Hilda replied energetically. 'All rubbish,
utter rubbish, and if I were a man as you are, Mr. Berkeley, I
should be ashamed to take such a desponding view of the situation.
If we say it's got to be done, it will be done, and that's an end
of it. Work must and can be found for him somehow or somewhere.'
'But the man's dying,' Arthur interrupted with a vehement gesture.
'There's no more work left in him. The only thing that's any use
is to send him off to Madeira, or Egypt, or Catania, or somewhere
of that sort, and let him die quietly among the palms and cactuses
and aloes. That's Sir Antony Wraxall's opinion, and surely nobody
in London can know half as well as he does about the matter.'
'Sir Antony's a fool,' Hilda responded with refreshing bluntness.
'He knows nothing on earth at all about it. He's accustomed to
prescribing for a lot of us idle good-for-nothing rich people'--('Very
true,' the Progenitor assented parenthetically;) 'and he's got
into a fixed habit of prescribing a Nile voyage, just as he's got
into a fixed habit of prescribing old wine, and carriage exercise,
and ten thousand a year to all his patients. What Mr. Le Breton
really wants is not Egypt, or old wine, or Sir Antony, or anything
of the sort, but relief from this pressing load of anxiety and
responsibility. Put him in my hands for six months, and I'll back
myself at a hundred to six against Sir Antony to cure him for a
monkey.'
'For a what!' the Progenitor asked with a puzzled expression of
countenance.
'Back myself for a monkey, you know,' Hilda answered, without
perceiving the cause of the old man's innocent confusion.
The Progenitor was evidently none the wiser still for Hilda's
answer, though he forbore to pursue the subject any farther, lest
he should betray his obvious ignorance of aristocratic manners and
dialect.
But Arthur looked up at Lady Hilda with something like the gleam of
a new-born hope on his distressed features. 'Lady Hilda,' he said
almost cheerfully, 'you really speak as if you had some practicable
plan actually in prospect. It seems to me, if anybody can pull
them through, you can, because you've got such a grand reserve of
faith and energy. What is it, now, you think of doing?'
'Well,' Hilda answered, taken a little aback at this practical
question, 'I've hardly got my plan matured yet; but I've got a
plan; and I thought it all out as far as it went as I came along
here just now in the carriage. The great thing is, we must inspire
Mr. Le Breton with a new confidence; we must begin by showing him
we believe in him, and letting him see that he may still manage
in some way or other to retrieve himself. He has lost all hope: we
must begin with him over again. I've got an idea, but it'll take
money. Now, I can give up half my allowance for the next year--the
Le Bretons need never know anything about it--that'll be something:
you're a rich man now, I believe, Mr. Berkeley; will you make up
as much as I do, if my plan seems a feasible one to you for retrieving
the position?'
The Progenitor answered quickly for him: 'Miss Tregellis,' he
said, with a little tremor in his voice, '--you'll excuse me, my
dear, but it's against my principles to call anybody my lady:--he
will, I know he will; and if he wouldn't, why, my dear, I'd go
back to my cobbling and earn it myself rather than that you or your
friends should go without it for a single minute.'
Arthur said nothing, but he bowed his head silently. What a lot of
good there was really in that splendid woman, and what a commanding,
energetic, masterful way she had about her! To a feckless, undecided,
faltering man like Arthur Berkeley there was something wonderfully
attractive and magnificent, after all, in such an imperious resolute
woman as Lady Hilda.
'Then this is my plan,' Hilda went on hastily. 'We must do
something that'll take Mr. Le Breton out of himself for a short
time entirely--that'll give him occupation of a kind he thinks
right, and at the same time put money in his pocket. Now, he's
always talking about this socialistic business of his; but why
doesn't he tell us what he has actually seen about the life and
habits of the really poor? Mrs. Le Breton tells me he knows the
East End well: why doesn't he sit down and give us a good rattling,
rousing, frightening description of all that's in it? Of course,
I don't care twopence about the poor myself--not in the lump, I
mean--I beg your pardon, Mr. Berkeley,'--for the Progenitor gave
a start of surprise and astonishment--'you know we women are nothing
if not concrete; we never care for anything in the abstract, Mr. Le
Breton used to tell me; we want the particular case brought home
to our sympathies before we can interest ourselves about it. After
all, even YOU who are men don't feel very much for all the miserable
wretched people there are in China, you know; they're too far away
for even you to bother your heads about. But I DO care about the
Le Bretons, and it strikes me we might help them a little in this
way. I know a lot of artists, Mr. Berkeley; and I know one who
I think would just do for the very work I want to set him. (He's
poor, too, by the way, and I don't mind giving him a lift at the
same time and killing two birds with one stone.) Very well, then;
I go to him, and say, "Mr. Verney," I say,--there now, I didn't mean
to tell you his name, but no matter; "Mr. Verney," I shall say, "a
friend of mine in the writing line is going to pay some visits to
the very poor quarters in the East End, and write about it, which
will make a great noise in the world as sure as midday."'
'But how do you know it will?' asked the Progenitor, simply.
Hilda turned round upon him with an unfeigned look of startled
astonishment. 'How do I know it will?' she said confidently. 'Why,
because I mean it to, Mr. Berkeley. Because I say it shall. Because
I choose to make it. Two Cabinet ministers shall quote it in the
House, and a duke shall write letters to the "Times" denouncing it
as an intensely wicked and revolutionary publication. If I choose
to float it, I WILL float it.--Well, "Mr. Verney," I say for example,
"will you undertake to accompany him and make sketches? It'll be
unpleasant work, I know, because I've been there myself to see,
and the places don't smell nice at all--worse than Genoa or the
old town at Nice even, I can tell you: but it'll make you a name;
and in any case the publisher who's getting it up'll pay you well
for it." Of course, Mr. Verney says "Yes." Then we go on to Mr.
Le Breton and say, "A young artist of my acquaintance is making a
pilgrimage into the East End to see for himself how the people live,
and to make pictures of them to stir up the sluggish consciences of
the lazy aristocrats"--that's me and my people, of course: that'll
be the way to work it. Play upon Mr. Le Breton's tenderest feelings.
Make him feel he's fighting for the Cause; and he'll be ready to
throw himself, heart and soul, into the spirit of the project. I
don't care twopence about the Cause myself, of course, so that's
flat, and I don't pretend to, either, Mr. Berkeley; but I care a
great deal for the misery of that poor, dear, pale little woman,
sitting there with me this morning and regularly sobbing her heart
out; and if I can do anything to help her, why, I shall be only
too delighted.'
'Le Breton's a well-meaning young fellow, certainly,' the Progenitor
murmured gently in a voice of graceful concession; 'and I believe
his heart's really in the Cause, as you call it; but you know, my
dear, he's very far from being sound in his economical views as to
the relations of capital and labour. Far from sound, as John Stuart
Mill would have judged the question, I can solemnly assure you.'
'Very well,' Hilda went on, almost without noticing the interruption.
'We shall say to him, or rather we shall get our publisher to say
to him, that as he's interested in the matter, and knows the East
End well, he has been selected--shall we put it on somebody's
recommendation?--to accompany the artist, and to supply the reading
matter, the letter-press I think you call it; in fact, to write up
to our illustrator's pictures; and that he is to be decently paid
for his trouble. He must do something graphic, something stirring,
something to wake up lazy people in the West End to a passing
sense of what he calls their responsibilities. That'll seem like
real work to Mr. Le Breton. It'll put new heart into him; he'll take
up the matter vigorously; he'll do it well; he'll write a splendid
book; and I shall guarantee its making a stir in the world this
very dull season. What's the use of knowing half the odiously
commonplace bores and prigs in all London if you can't float a
single little heterodox pamphlet for a particular purpose? What do
you think of it, Mr. Berkeley?'
Arthur sighed again. 'It seems to me, Lady Hilda,' he said, regretfully,
'a very slender straw indeed to hang Ernest Le Breton's life on:
but any straw is better than nothing to a drowning man. And you
have so much faith yourself, and mean to fling yourself into it so
earnestly, that I shouldn't be wholly surprised if you were somehow
to pull it through. If you do, Lady Hilda--if you manage to save
these two poor young people from the verge of starvation--you'll
have done a very great good work in your day, and you'll have made
me personally eternally your debtor.'
Was it mere fancy, the Progenitor wondered, or did Hilda cast her
eyes down a little and half blush as she answered in a lower and
more tremulous tone than usual, 'I hope I shall, Mr. Berkeley;
for their sakes, I hope I shall.' The Progenitor didn't feel quite
certain about it, but somehow, more than once that evening, as he
sat reading Spencer's 'Data of Ethics' in his easy-chair, a curious
vision of Lady Hilda as a future daughter-in-law floated vaguely
with singular persistence before the old shoemaker's bewildered
eyes. 'It'd be a shocking falling away on Artie's part from his
father's principles,' he muttered inarticulately to himself several
times over; 'and yet, on the other hand, I can't deny that this bit
of a Tregellis girl is really a very tidy, good-looking, respectable,
well-meaning, intelligent, and appreciative sort of a young woman,
who'd, maybe, make Artie as good a wife as anybody else he'd be
likely to pitch on.'
