Chapter XXIII

It reached her early the next afternoon. She was sitting before the dining-room fire, with a shilling manicure set in her lap, polishing her finger-nails. There was no one else in the room; Bee had gone back to the studio, and the Professor was at Great Hunby. The handwriting was unfamiliar, and she opened the envelope with as much interest as was natural in a girl whose letters were few. Astonishment laid hold of her at the first lines. She glanced instinctively at the address again, and then found the last page, and looked at the signature. Her lovely eyes dilated, her brows climbed high; truth to tell, she had a rather stupid air as she sat deciphering David's declaration, with her mouth ajar, and the file, and the rubber, and the little powder-box lying in her lap. Only two points were intelligible to her: the "Mr. Tremlett" she had met was David Lee, and he adored her. It can never be unpleasant to be adored; she by no means shared the opinion that his adoration was an insult, though she did not regard it seriously; but she was too bewildered even to simper. "Her photograph, their correspondence?" At every reference to these things she felt more dazed. By what extraordinary mistake could a man from whom she had never heard till now imagine that he had been corresponding with her?

After she had stared at the fire, and smiled at herself in the glass, she mounted to the studio, her eyes still wide, a glimmer of amusement in them.

"Just look at this! Read it through!" she exclaimed, holding the letter out.

Bee was writing, and rose confused.

"What is it?"

"A proposal!" She giggled. "I mean it From David Lee! It's a mystery."

Bee started. Her gaze wandered from the letter in Hilda's hand to the letter on the table. She did not speak.

"Read it," repeated Hilda.

"I'd rather not," she answered painfully; "it's written to _you_."

"What rubbish! Well, listen, then. You'd better sit down again, my dear--he worships me at great length."

She dropped into a chair herself, and began to declaim the pages with zest. In moments she looked up, with a comment or grimace. The woman sat passive, never meeting her glance. She listened to David's avowal of devotion to her sister dumbly--line after line, to the end--her hands hanging at her sides, her chin sunk. Only her meagre bosom showed that she was listening. For the first time it heaved to love words that were not ordered for the ears of all--for the first time in her life she heard a man's passion crying out to flesh and blood. When she raised her head at last, she was white to the lips.

"What's the matter?"

Contrition, love and pity surged in her. In the distorted body all the forces of womanhood beat at his appeal. She yearned over the story of his childish years like a mother, she trembled to his passion like a wife. The thin hands strained across the lifting bosom; she found her voice.

"There's something I must tell you. I--I ought to have told you before.... It's _I_ who have been writing to him," she said.

"You?... It's you who have been What do you mean? Why does he write to _me_ then?"

"He doesn't know. I always signed myself 'H,' of course, and one day he asked for my photograph. I----" She hesitated. She drooped before the girl abjectly.

"You sent him mine?" cried Hilda.

Bee nodded, her eyes to the ground.... The pause was broken by Hilda's giggle.

"Whatever did you do that for?" she said.

The deformed woman spoke by a gesture. "Then he came to Godstone, and fell in love with you," she went on huskily. "I didn't know it was he when we were there; I only guessed when I heard he was--when I heard what his brother had told you about him. I was writing to him when you came in, to say that I had deceived him. It's too late, the harm is done, but I was writing!"

"It was an awful shame," exclaimed Hilda with sudden heat. "Supposing he has talked to Vivian--I mean 'Mr. Harris'--about it? I expect he has--he seems to know his brother's here. Why, what a liar I shall look! It was a beastly thing to do, Bee. What will his brother think of me?"

"You're fond of Mr. Harris, aren't you?" inquired Bee humbly.

"Perhaps. Anyhow, I don't want him to imagine I'm such a hateful liar as to pretend I don't know a fellow I've been corresponding with for months."

"That can soon be put right; I wish I'd done no worse harm than that."

"What else have you done, for goodness' sake?"

Bee's lips tightened. She pointed to David's letter, which had fallen to the floor.

"Have you forgotten he loves you?" she asked.

"Oh!" Hilda was relieved. "Well, you'll have to own up to everybody, that's all," she said; "I hope you'll like it. But carrying on a correspondence with a man you've never seen--you! That's what gets over me. What on earth did you find to say to him?"

"I wrote about his work."

"And why should you have minded his knowing about your accident--what difference did that make? Really"--her vexation melted into amusement--"it may have been all about poetry and the fine arts, but it was going rather far, wasn't it? If _I_ had done such a thing---A secret correspondence with a strange man! I'd never have believed it of you. I'm appalled. I shouldn't like to call you 'fast,' but----And he turns out to be a nigger!" Her laughter pealed. "Oh, it's funny! it is, it is, it's screaming!"

"He loves you," said the woman again, flushing to the temples; "try to remember it."

The ridicule in the girl's stare shamed her through and through. She picked the scattered pages up, and folded them. Hilda took them negligently, and stood struggling to control her mouth. Smiles still played hide-and-seek with the dimple in her cheek.

"Which likeness has he got of me?" she said after a minute.

"It was the one I took at Godstone."

"You might as well have sent the one you took of me in the tucked chiffon, while you were about it. That thing at Godstone didn't show the best side of my face."

"He loves you," cried Bee passionately. "Are you made of wood? You're the world to him, he thinks you understand him, he's coming to you to-day, praying for your answer! Have you got no feeling in you; can't you pity him?"

"Good Lord!" said Hilda, "don't go on at me like that. Of course I pity him; I'm very sorry for him indeed, I'm sure. I think I shall write him a very nice note after he has got over the shock," she added complacently, "hoping he'll soon forget me, and 'find comfort in his work.' I might do that, mightn't I? Something very kind."

"And when he comes to-day?"

"What, when he comes? You don't expect _me_ to explain matters to him, do you?"

"No, _I_ must do that, I know; it serves me right for not having told him before. But he'll ask to see you afterwards--to say good-bye to you. You'll go down and speak to him?"

"I shan't do anything of the sort, it isn't likely. To say 'good-bye' to me? Why, the man's a stranger to me, it would be most horribly embarrassing--I should feel a perfect idiot. You can tell him I had to go out--or that I'm not well. Besides, I shouldn't think he _would_ ask to see me when he hears he has been taken in; why should he?"

"'Why should he'? Because he loves you, because he's hungry for you, mad for you. Because you're pretty and soft, and made for men to admire, and he'll want to look at your face, and touch your hand, and hold it for a second longer than he ought to. And if you let him, would it kill you? Would it be so much to give him? Can you read that letter--can you hear his life--and smirk and talk of your 'embarrassment'? To him it'll be worse than embarrassment, it'll be despair."

"You're very rude," said Hilda, paling. "I think you're in love with him yourself, upon my word I do!"

"Do you? It would be very strange, wouldn't it? I'm not pretty like you, and I've got a crooked spine--so I'm not a woman. You can hardly believe that _I_ could be in love, can you?"

"I really don't know what to believe," stammered Hilda, "when you talk like that. I should have thought you'd have respected yourself more than to fall in love with a ni--with a mulatto, at any rate."

"I respect myself because I do love him--I love him better than it's in you to love anybody. You fool, you doll, you'll write him something very 'kind,' and think you're condescending? If that letter had been written to me, I'd have thanked God for it on my knees--God knows it's true! Yes, I love him--with all my body and all my soul, and if he had wanted me, instead of you, and I had looked no further than my own joy, I'd have given myself to him body and soul, and been proud."

"Ah, ssh!" the girl faltered, "you don't know what you're saying."

"And been proud!" she sobbed. "Yes, I do know, I mean it!... Without fear--it would have been my honour. Body and soul--his and mine--one mind, one life, one flesh!... I'd have gloried. That's love, that's human!" She shrank against the wall, and bowed her head there under the failures of her art. "Go away from me, don't stare at me! I'm a cripple, no one ever cared for me--I wish I were dead!"

In the hush of the next instant a bell rang. Their gaze met, startled. Neither spoke. Both listened intently.

The servant came up the stairs with slow, heavy feet. She said: "Mr. Lee to see Miss Hilda."

"Where is he?" murmured the girl.

"In the drawing-room, Miss."

The attic was still again after the servant went. Her footsteps struck the oilcloth of the top stairs harshly, and fell duller on the carpet, and subsided in the hall. In the silence the sisters sat looking away from each other, as strangers look.

"One of us must go down to him!" said Hilda at last in a nervous gasp.

"I'll go down as soon as I can," Bee answered.