nerves. She threw open Hilary’s study-door, saying sharply: “Go in and find your master!”
Miranda did not move, but Hilary came out instead. He had been correcting proofs to catch the post, and wore the look of a man abstracted, faintly contemptuous of other forms of life.
Cecilia, once more saved from the necessity of approaching her sister, the mistress of the house, so fugitive, haunting, and unseen, yet so much the centre of this situation, said:
“Can I speak to you a minute, Hilary?”
They went into his study, and Miranda came creeping in behind.
To Cecilia her brother-in-law always seemed an amiable and more or less pathetic figure. In his literary preoccupations he allowed people to impose on him. He looked unsubstantial beside the bust of Socrates, which moved Cecilia strangely – it was so very massive and so very ugly! She decided not to beat about the bush.
“I’ve been hearing some odd things from Mrs. Hughs about that little model, Hilary.”
Hilary’s smile faded from his eyes, but remained clinging to his lips.
“Indeed!”
Cecilia went on nervously: “Mrs. Hughs says it’s because of her that Hughs behaves so badly. I don’t want to say anything against the girl, but she seems – she seems to have – ”
“Yes?” said Hilary.
“To have cast a spell on Hughs, as the woman puts it.”
“On Hughs!” repeated Hilary.
Cecilia found her eyes resting on the bust of Socrates, and hastily proceeded:
“She says he follows her about, and comes down here to lie in wait for her. It’s a most strange business altogether. You went to see them, didn’t you?”
Hilary nodded.
“I’ve been speaking to Father,” Cecilia murmured; “but he’s hopeless – I, couldn’t get him to pay the least attention.”
Hilary seemed thinking deeply.
“I wanted him,” she went on, “to get some other girl instead to come and copy for him.”
“Why?”
Under the seeming impossibility of ever getting any farther, without saying what she had come to say, Cecilia blurted out:
“Mrs. Hughs says that Hughs has threatened you.”
Hilary’s face became ironical.
“Really!” he said. “That’s good of him! What for?”
The frightful indelicacy of her situation at this moment, the feeling of unfairness that she should be placed in it, almost overwhelmed Cecilia. “Goodness knows I don’t want to meddle. I never meddle in anything-it’s horrible!”
Hilary took her hand.
“My dear Cis,” he said, “of course! But we’d better have this out!”
Grateful for the pressure of his hand, she gave it a convulsive squeeze.
“It’s so sordid, Hilary!”
“Sordid! H’m! Let’s get it over, then.”
Cecilia had grown crimson. “Do you want me to tell you everything?”
“Certainly.”
“Well, Hughs evidently thinks you’re interested in the girl. You can’t keep anything from servants and people who work about your house; they always think the worst of everything – and, of course, they know that you and B. don’t – aren’t – ”
Hilary nodded.
“Mrs. Hughs actually said the man meant to go to B.!”
Again the vision of her sister seemed to float into the room, and she went on desperately: “And, Hilary, I can see Mrs. Hughs really thinks you are interested. Of course, she wants to, for if you were, it would mean that a man like her husband could have no chance.”
Astonished at this flash of cynical inspiration, and ashamed of such plain speaking, she checked herself. Hilary had turned away.
Cecilia touched his arm. “Hilary, dear,” she said, “isn’t there any chance of you and B – ”
Hilary’s lips twitched. “I should say not.”
Cecilia looked sadly at the floor. Not since Stephen was bad with pleurisy had she felt so worried. The sight of Hilary’s face brought back her doubts with all their force. It might, of course, be only anger at the man’s impudence, but it might be – she hardly liked to frame her thought – a more personal feeling.
“Don’t you think,” she said, “that, anyway, she had better not come here again?”
Hilary paced the room.
“It’s her only safe and certain piece of work; it keeps her independent. It’s much more satisfactory than this sitting. I can’t have any hand in taking it away from her.”
Cecilia had never seen him moved like this. Was it possible that he was not incorrigibly gentle, but had in him some of that animality which she, in a sense, admired? This uncertainty terribly increased the difficulties of the situation.
“But, Hilary,” she said at last, “are you satisfied about the girl – I mean, are you satisfied that she really is worth helping?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I mean,” murmured Cecilia, “that we don’t know anything about her past.” And, seeing from the movement of his eyebrows that she was touching on what had evidently been a doubt with him, she went on with great courage: “Where are her friends and relations? I mean, she may have had a – adventures.”
Hilary withdrew into himself.
“You can hardly expect me,” he said, “to go into that with her.”
His reply made Cecilia feel ridiculous.
“Well,” she said in a hard little voice, “if this is what comes of helping the poor, I don’t see the use of it.”
The outburst evoked no reply from Hilary; she felt more tremulous than ever. The whole thing was so confused, so unnatural. What with the dark, malignant Hughs and that haunting vision of Bianca, the matter seemed almost Italian. That a man of Hughs’ class might be affected by the passion of love had somehow never come into her head. She thought of the back streets she had looked out on from her bedroom window. Could anything like passion spring up in those dismal alleys? The people who lived there, poor downtrodden things, had enough to do to keep themselves alive. She knew all about them; they were in the air; their condition was deplorable! Could a person whose condition was deplorable find time or strength for any sort of lurid exhibition such as this? It was incredible.
She became aware that Hilary was speaking.
“I daresay the man is dangerous!”
Hearing her fears confirmed, and in accordance with the secret vein of hardness which kept her living, amid all her sympathies and hesitations, Cecilia felt suddenly that she had gone as far as it was in her to go.
“I shall have no more to do with them,” she said; “I’ve tried my best for Mrs. Hughs. I know quite as good a needlewoman, who’ll be only too glad to come instead. Any other girl will do as well to copy father’s book. If you take my advice, Hilary, you’ll give up trying to help them too.”
Hilary’s smile puzzled and annoyed her. If she had known, this was the smile that stood between him and her sister.
“You may be right,” he said, and shrugged his shoulders:
“Very well,” said Cecilia, “I’ve done all I can. I must go now. Good-bye.”
During her progress to the door she gave one look behind. Hilary was standing by the bust of Socrates. Her heart smote her to leave him thus embarrassed. But again the vision of Bianca – fugitive in her own house, and with something tragic in her