Some Secret History
i

Without a word, Sarah had left the bedroom. Hilda waited, sitting on the bed, for George to come back from his haunts in the town. She both intensely desired and intensely feared his return. A phrase or two of an angry and vicious servant had almost destroyed her faith in her husband. It seemed very strange, even to her, that this should be so; and she wondered whether she had ever had a real faith in him, whether—passion apart—her feeling for him had ever been aught but admiration of his impressive adroitness. Was it possible that he had another wife alive? No, it was not possible! That is to say, it was not possible that such a catastrophe should have happened to just her, to Hilda Lessways, sitting there on the bed with her hands pressing on the rough surface of the damask counterpane. And yet—how could Louisa or Florrie have invented the story?... Wicked, shocking, incredible, that Florrie, with her soft voice and timid, affectionate manner, should have been chattering in secret so scandalously during all these weeks! She remembered the look on Florrie’s blushing face when the child had received the letter on the morning of their departure from the house in Lessways Street. Even then the attractively innocent and capable Florrie must have had her naughty secrets!... An odious world. And Hilda, married, had seriously thought that she knew all about the world! She had to admit, bewildered: “I’m only a girl after all, and a very simple one.” She compared her own heart in its simplicity with that of Louisa. Louisa horrified and frightened her.... Louisa and Florrie were mischievous liars. Florrie had seized some fragment of silly gossip—Turnhill was notorious for its silly gossip—and the two of them had embroidered it in the nastiness of their souls. She laughed shortly, disdainfully, to wither up silly gossip.... Preposterous!

And yet—when George had shown her the licence, in the name of Cannon, and she had ventured to say apologetically and caressingly: “I always understood your real name was Canonges,”—how queerly he had looked as he answered: “I changed it long ago—legally!” Yes, and she had persuaded herself that the queerness of his look was only in her fancy! But it was not only in her fancy. Suspicions, sinister trifling souvenirs, crowded into her mind. Had she not always doubted him? Had she not always said to herself that she was doing wrong in her marriage and that she would thereby suffer? Had she not abandoned the pursuit of religious truth in favour of light enjoyments?... Foolish of course, old-fashioned of course, to put two and two together in this way! But she could not refrain.

“I am ruined!” she decided, in awe.

And the next instant she was saying: “How absurd of me to be like this, merely because Louisa...”

She thought she heard a noise below. Her heart leapt again into violent activity. Trembling, she crept to the door, and gently unlatched it. No slightest sound in the whole house! Dusk was coming on swiftly. Then she could hear all the noises, accentuated beyond custom, of Louisa setting tea in the dining-room for the Watchetts, and then the tea-bell rang. Despite her fury, apparent in the noises, Louisa had not found courage to neglect the sacred boarders. She made a defiant fuss, but she had to yield, intimidated, to the force of habit and tradition. The Watchetts descended the staircase from the drawing-room, practising as usual elaborate small-talk among themselves. They had heard every infamous word of Louisa’s tirade; which had engendered in them a truly dreadful and still delicious emotion; but they descended the staircase in good order, discussing the project for a new pier.... They reached the dining-room and shut the door on themselves.

Silence again! Louisa ought now to have set the tea in the basement parlour. But Louisa did not. Louisa was hidden in the kitchen, doubtless talking fourteen to the dozen with the cook. She had done all she meant to do. She knew that she would be compelled to leave at once, and not another stroke would she do of any kind! The master and the mistresses must manage as best they could. Louisa was already wondering where she would sleep that night, for she was alone on earth and owned one small trunk and a Post Office Savings Bank book.... All this trouble on account of Florrie’s sheets!

Sarah Gailey was in her bedroom, and did not dare to came out of it even to accuse Louisa of neglecting the basement tea. And Hilda continued to stand for ages at the bedroom door, while the dusk grew deeper and deeper. At last the front door opened, and George’s step was in the hall. Hilda recognized it with a thrill of terror, turning pale. George ran down into the basement and stumbled. “Hello!” she heard him call out, “what about tea? Where are you all? Sarah!” No answer, no sound in response! He ran up the basement steps. Would he call in at the dining-room, or would he come to the bedroom in search of her? He did not stop at the dining-room. Hilda wanted to shut the bedroom door, but dared not because she could not do it noiselessly. Now he was on the first floor! She rushed to the bed, and sat on it, as she had been sitting previously, and waited in the most painful and irrational agony. She was astonished at the darkness of the room. Turning her head, she saw only a whitish blur instead of a face in the dressing-table mirror.
ii

“What’s up?” he demanded, bursting somewhat urgently into the bedroom with his hat on. “What price the husband coming home to his tea? No tea! No light! I nearly broke my neck down the basement stairs.”

He put his hands against her elbows and kissed her, rather clumsily, owing to the gloom, between her nose and her mouth. She did not shrink back, but accepted the embrace quite insensibly. The contact of his moustache and of his lips, and his slight, pleasant masculine odour, produced no effect on her whatever.

“Why are you sitting here? Look here, I’ve signed the transfer of those Continental shares, and paid the cheque! So it’s domino, now!”

Between the engagement and the marriage there had been an opportunity of purchasing three thousand pounds’ worth of preference shares in the Brighton Hotel Continental Limited, which hotel was the latest and largest in the King’s Road, a vast affair of eight storeys and bathrooms on every floor. The chance of such an investment had fascinated George. It helped his dreams and pointed to the time when he would be manager and part proprietor of a palace like the Continental. Hilda being very willing, he had sold her railways shares and purchased the hotel shares, and he knew that he had done a good thing. Now he possessed an interest in three different establishments, he who had scarcely been in Brighton a year. The rapid progress, he felt, was characteristic of him.

Hilda kept silence, for the sole reason that she could think of no words to say. As for the matter of the investment, it appeared to her to be inexpressibly uninteresting. From under the lashes of lowered eyes she saw his form shadowily in front of her.

“You don’t mean to say Sarah’s been making herself disagreeable already!” he said. And his tone was affectionate and diplomatic, yet faintly ironical. He had perceived that something unusual had occurred, perhaps something serious, and he was anxious to soothe and to justify his wife. Hilda perfectly understood his mood and intention, and she was reassured.

“Hasn’t Sarah told you?” she asked in a harsh, uncontrolled voice, though she knew that he had not seen Sarah.

“No; where is she?” he inquired patiently.

“It’s Louisa,” Hilda went on, with the sick fright of a child compelled by intimidation to affront a danger. Her mouth was very dry.

“Oh!”

“She lost her temper and made a fearful scene with Sarah, on the stairs; she said the most awful things.”

George laughed low, and lightly. He guessed Louisa’s gift for foul insolence and invective.

“For instance?” George encouraged. He was divining from Hilda’s singular tone that tact would be needed.

“Well, she said you’d got a wife living in Devonshire.”

There was a pause.

“And who’d told her that?”

“Florrie.”

“Indeed!” muttered George. Hilda could not decide whether his voice was natural or forced.

Then he stepped across to the door, and opened it.

“What are you going to do to her?” Hilda questioned, as it were despairingly.

He left the room and banged the door.

“It’s not true,” Hilda was beginning to say to herself, but she seemed to derive no pleasure from the dawning hope of George’s innocence.

Then George came into the room again, hesitated, and shut the door carefully.

“I suppose it’s no good shilly-shallying about,” he said, in such a tone as he might have used had he been vexed and disgusted with Hilda. “I have got a wife living, and she’s in Devonshire! I expect she’s been inquiring in Turnhill if I’m still in the land of the living. Probably wants to get married again herself.”

Hilda glanced at his form, and suddenly it was the form of a stranger, but a stranger who had loved her. And she thought: “Why did I let this stranger love me?” It was scarce believable that she had ever seriously regarded him as a husband. And she found that tears were running down her cheeks; and she felt all her girlishness and fragility. “Didn’t I always know,” she asked herself with weak resignation, “that it was unreal? What am I to do now?” The catastrophe had indeed happened to her, and she could not deal with it! She did not even feel tragic. She did not feel particularly resentful against George. She had read of such catastrophes in the newspapers, but the reality of experience nonplussed her. “I ought to do something,” she reflected. “But what?”

“What’s the use of me saying I’m sorry?” he asked savagely. “I acted for the best. The chances were ten thousand to one against me being spotted. But there you are! You never know your luck.” He spoke meditatively, in a rather hoarse, indistinct voice. “All owing to Florrie, of course! When it was suggested we should have that girl, I knew there was a danger. But I pooh-poohed it! I said nothing could possibly happen.... And just look at it now!... I wanted to cut myself clear of the Five Towns, absolutely—absolutely! And then like a damnation fool I let Florrie come here! If she hadn’t come, that woman might have inquired about me in Turnhill till all was blue, without you hearing about her! But there it is!” He snapped his fingers. “It’s my fault for being found out! That’s the only thing I’m guilty of.... And look at it! Look at it!”

Hilda could tell from the movements of the vague form in the corner by the door, and by the quality of his voice, that George Cannon was in a state of extreme emotion. She had never known him half so moved. His emotion excited her and flattered her. She thought how wonderful it was that she, the shaking little girl who yesterday had run off with fourpence to buy a meal at a tripe-shop, should be the cause of this emotion in such a man. She thought: “My life is marvellous.” She was dizzied by the conception of the capacity of her own body and soul for experience. No factors save her own body and soul and his had been necessary to the bringing about of the situation. It was essential only that the man and the woman should be together, and their companionship would produce miracles of experience! She ceased crying. Astounding that she had never, in George’s eyes, suspected his past! It was as if he had swiftly opened a concealed door in the house of their passion and disclosed a vista of which she had not dreamed.

“But surely that must have been a long time ago!” she said in an ordinary tone.

“Considering that I was twenty-two—yes!”

“Why did you leave her?”

“Why did I leave her? Because I had to! I’d gone as a clerk in a solicitor’s office in Torquay, and she was a client. She went mad about me. I’m only telling you. She was a spinster. Had one of those big houses high up on the hill behind the town!” He stopped; and then his voice began to come again out of the deep shadow in the corner. “She wanted me, and she got me. And she didn’t care who knew! The wedding was in the Torquay Directory. I told her I’d got no relations, and she was jolly glad.”

“But how old was she? Young?”

George sneered. “She’d never see thirty-six again, the day she was married. Good-looking. Well-dressed. Very stylish and all that! Carried me off my feet. Of course there was the money.... I may as well out with it all while I’m about it! She made me an absolute present of four thousand pounds. Insisted on doing it. I never asked. Of course I know I married for money. It happens to youths sometimes just as it does to girls. It may be disgusting, but not more disgusting for one than for the other. Besides, I didn’t realize it was a sale and purchase, at the time!... Oh! And it lasted about ten days. I couldn&r............