Hagar of Homerton

Chapter I

" I can't go on like this," Mrs. Swithybark was saying desperately. " I must have some one to love and care for, some one to hate and quarrel with — though I've had that — something, somebody to give life a fillip. I almost wish the bank would break, so that I had to earn my own living, or that the house would burn down, or burglars break in, or — or — anything." She stood at her window, looking out at the streaming Park. Usually she avoided windows, object ing to this act of looking aimlessly into the street, because it was a vulgar sort of thing to do and characteristic of a certain sort of feeble-minded person. It was the last use to which one should put a window. However, she had wearied to sickness of studying the interior of her drawing-room. No one passed ; no one was in the mist-laden Park.

She was as much out of the world as if she had been on Exmoor ; yet Cheltenham Terrace claimed to be central. At her back windows, had she cared to look out, was a view of Albany Street, where the barracks were, and up and down which the omnibuses ran. But she had small sympathy with vitality of that sort. She associated Albany Street with tradesmen's orders and the prompt paying of Saturday's bills. She sat thinking, very bitterly, that she was a lonely woman. There was not a soul in the world for whom she cared twopence, or who bestowed regard, to the same value, on her. Servants didn't count ; she paid them well for devotion. She hadn't even an old family servant on whose affection she could reckon, and against whose tyranny she could rebel. She hadn't even those refuges of the lonely woman — a lap-dog or a cat.

She disliked cats and distrusted dogs. Birds were foolish, noisy things, and no one but an idiot could pretend to take an interest in gold-fish. Flowers never lived with her, and children — ah, children ! Whenever she saw a slatternly woman with a grubby-nosed baby staring out from her shawl, she envied that woman, although the baby rather dis gusted her by its want of daintiness. Yet she had never remotely dreamed of adopting a child, and as for wishing that she had one of her own — well, her marriage had not been such a delirious success that she wished to perpetuate the memory of it. She had always been lonely because she was rich. At school the girls toadied to her face and said spiteful things behind her back. When she " came out " she was harried by fortune-hunters masquerading as lovers.

When she was thirty-five she married, out of sheer weariness, a man some years her junior. All her friends said she was a fool, and no doubt she was ; but even then the sense of horrible, un bearable loneliness was stirring in her. Of course it turned out badly, as every one had prophesied it would do. Before the honeymoon was two days old he told her that he had married her for her money. She had known that all along. Her experience of men had been unfavourable, and the reflection of her own face in the looking-glass was unfavourable too. Still, truth is unpalatable ; the others had wrapped it up in pretty phrases, and when they could not wisely — for she was an astonishingly plain woman — pay compliments to her looks, they paid it to her intellect, which, after all, is a much more lasting sort of advantage.

Young Mr. Swithybark, having established his claim to candour, proceeded, before the marriage was six months old, to treat his wife with downright cruelty. He was recklessly extravagant too, and this touched her more than anything else. She was rather seriously deliberating on a deed of separation, with a view to saving the remnant of her fortune, when he opportunely got knocked down by a hansom in Piccadilly — after an enjoyable night at his club — ■ and she found herself a free woman again. Just for the first few months she revelled in it. As for fretting over the loss of Mr. Swithybark — as she always called him, even in her thoughts — that simply never occurred to her. A mawkish woman might have snivelled over the shattering of an ideal ; a religious one over a wasted life and a terribly sudden death.

Mrs. Swithybark was neither mawkish nor religious. She was an eminently practical soul — with unexpected streaks of sentiment. She had suffered too much real misery in those eighteen months of matri mony not to be unfeignedly thankful to Providence. She made rather a feature of her weeds and kept out of society the orthodox time — that was all. At the end of a year she began to go about again, and then, when the novelty and horrid excitement of her ex perience was over, the old loneliness and sense of emptiness seized her. She used to reflect sometimes — usually in the night, for she was a bad sleeper — that even if she died it would matter very little to anybody. The servants would mourn a good place, her landlord a good tenant, and Loanna Dilley a good friend — if it were in her to mourn for any one but Loanna Dilley.

An umbrella came along the sloppy pavement. The girl who held it was so slim that Mrs. Swithybark's whimsical fancy of a mushroom and its stalk was not so very far-fetched. She watched the girl out of sight and sighed, and wondered if she were lonely too, or if she had a superlative zest in life. Most girls had, or looked forward to one. The accursed money had made her different when she was a girl. Then a young man came by without an umbrella. As he passed he happened to glance up at the houses in the terrace. She saw his face ; it was rather reminiscent of the fatal comeliness of Mr. Swithybark's. How awful it was to be alone in the world ! And really, London was worse than any other place on the civilised globe for being alone. Suppose she gave up Cheltenham Terrace and took a snug little place in the country.

She could queen it there : in town she was a nobody. She could garden and keep poultry and do district visiting. Faugh ! It would kill her in a month. She fancied she had an intimate knowledge of country life. Mr. Swithybark's people had lived in a southern village and she had visited them there once. She retained a lively recollection of local society — the horrible pall of silence apt to drop over a dinner party ; the after noon calls — generally by appointment — with the heavy-minded women in their stiff drawing-rooms ; the pert, unpleasant children marshalled before one. She said to Mr. Swithybark, when she was safe in town again, — " Where on earth do they grow such people ? They actually take one's remarks literally— as if one were a new gospel." He had never forgiven her for scorning them and making fun of their simple, rather stodgy hospitality.

If he had a worthy, emotion at all, it was one of respect and affection for his people and their ways. Almost immediately afterwards he told her brutally that the other woman It had been the last drop in her cup. He did not die for nearly a year afterwards, and she shrank from the ordeal of a divorce. But it was old and shameful, this story of her marriage, and even in her clean widowhood she turned from its details with a hot flush. She walked from the window with a sigh ; the sight of the slim, unknown girl had increased her melancholy ; youth always did. There was a Sunday newspaper on the chair ; to-day was Monday. She invariably indulged in a Sunday newspaper — with plenty of pictures. All the crime and sensationalism of the week was massed there. She was a very particular woman in most things, but, like many more respectable people, there were shady sides to her.

She had confessed one night to Loanna that the supreme wish of her girlhood had been to do some thing wicked. The desire tamed down as she grew older, and Mr. Swithybark undoubtedly influenced the reaction ; but the desire found its small, harmless vent still in the taking of the sensational news sheet. She would probably never do anything outrageous or compromising now ; she was set fast in the mould of convention ; but it pleased her to read — genteelly secluded in Cheltenham Terrace — about the people who did. She picked it up listlessly and began to look at the pictures. There was a prize-fighter, all muscle, and a benevolent-looking man with a sweeping beard, who was under sentence of death. She confused him for a moment with the man on the other side, who had gained a medal for saving sixteen lives, and who looked hopelessly brutal and desperate.

There was a burlesque actress, and a woman who was on the point of being divorced. There was the house where the last thrilling murder had taken place, and the kitchen poker which had played a prominent part, and a dreadful head of the victim. She rather gloated over it all and said, looking at the house, which was in the neighbourhood of the docks, — " I don't wonder at any one committing murder in a house like that. Houses have a moral influence, and that is the most melancholy erection of brick and slate I have ever seen." Then all at once she stopped, with a short gasp, at the face of a very lovely young woman. Some thing in it seemed to seize her strangely. The girl was lovely ; even the villainous process of the cut could not mar her beauty entirely. But it was the attitude that struck Mrs. Swithybark.

The young woman's head was flung back with a gesture of arrogant carelessness. The delightful round chin was propped on a little and apparently delicate hand. There was a swan-like stretch of throat, and the half shut eyes looked out from the paper mockingly. Her hair was marvellous, tossed up in some way supremely careless, and bunching out like foam above her brow. " What a lovely girl ! " murmured Mrs. Swithybark enthusiastically. She had such a reverence for beauty. Then she began to read. The girl's story was told in the usual bald way ; there was the reporter's usual tribute to good looks : " Hagar Pipon, a young wo man of attractive appearance." She was a young dressmaker who had been pilfering. She had been remanded for inquiries — and so the case stood. Mrs. Swithybark stared into the half-veiled eyes as if they drew her magnetically from the flimsy paper.

" Now a girl like that," she said dreamily at last, and folding her large, jewelled hands over the tanta lising eyes, " would be " The sentence was never finished. There was a ring at the door-bell, and a minute or so later she heard the soft feet of Hopper, her immaculate parlour maid, on the stairs. There were other feet behind Hopper's ; feet that came up softly too, and yet with a steady stump, as if to emphasise the fact that they belonged to a person of character. Mrs. Swithybark stuffed the Sunday paper under the sofa cushion and composed her countenance.

Chapter II

The visitor was Loanna Dilley. She came into the room with her accustomed smooth air of sweetness and tender concern — -head a little on one side and arms apart, ready for a full embrace. Mrs. Swithybark had bitterly reflected that no one cared twopence for her. Any one looking at Loanna, and noting the fervour of her kiss, would have said that Mrs. Swithybark was wrong, and that here, within her very doors, was a woman who would have died for her. But Mrs. Swithybark had not known Loanna all her life for nothing. She took the ex pansive hug for what it was worth, and shook herself free of the fat, clinging arms as soon as she decently could. There was a yielding, cushiony plumpness about Loanna, as if she were stuffed loosely with bran. When the hug was over she drew off a woolly shawl that was rolled about her throat, and took the comfortable chair by the fire, beaming gratefully round at her hostess as she did so.

She was an unusual, a perplexing, but a decidedly nice-looking woman ; she gave strangers a strong impression of almost painful sweetness. Her smile — she was always smiling — was so oppressively lan guishing, and her voice so invariably sugary, that, after a while, if you were a person of imagination, you wondered what it could all mean, and what particular devilry she was veiling. s She suggested a cat ; the resemblance would assert itself. It was ludicrous or sinister — according to her mood or the temperament of the observer. Her low brow, her big, brooding eyes set remarkably far apart, the cruel lines of her nose and mouth, her sinuous movements and purring voice, were all feline. " You are not looking well, dear," she said to her friend, her calm eyes winking in the glow of the fire.

"I'm lonely," responded the other shortly; "and I suppose that is not good for any woman." " Of course it isn't, you poor dear thing. And I am lonely too. It seems so ridiculous." Loanna gave a fat little laugh that was half a purr. " Here are two women — dear friends — for we are dear friends, aren't we, darling ? " " I suppose we are — as women go," admitted the other ungratefully. " As women go ! How cruel of you, Laura ! " Loanna shot a look of concentrated sweetness across the hearth. " Well, as I was saying, here we are, two lonely women — dear friends, too, as you say ; why can't we combine forces ? Let me give up my poor lonely lodging and make a home with you. I'm a pauper and you are rich, but I have enough to be independent. I would even pay for my board — I should prefer to. I would keep out of your way when you did not want me, and be always in it when you did.

Think it over, and " " No, thank you," Mrs. Swithybark broke in impatiently. " We've discussed that before. 1 don't doubt your friendly intention, Loanna,"— there might have been a sarcastic inflection in her voice, — " but I'd rather have my home to myself." She had hardly made this ungracious declaration of independence when Hopper came in and began to set the tray and various plates of cakes, sweet biscuits, bread-and-butter, and sandwiches on the ledges of a bamboo tea-table. Loanna, like a discreet and sweet-natured woman, dropped the subject. She did not even relieve her outraged feelings by a shrug of the shoulders. " I don't want old friends," said Mrs. Swithybark, when they were alone again. She proffered a plate of macaroons affectionately ; she seemed to feel that she had been a little sharp.

" I want," she went on, " something new, some one new ; a fresh face, a fresh life ; some one quite young in whose development I could take an interest." Loanna held out her tea-cup. There were strange, perplexed gleams in her large eyes as they winked sedately at the fire. " More milk, please, dear," she said plaintively. " You know my foolish weakness for milk." " A girl ! — youth ! " Mrs. Swithybark went on, as she tipped the silver cream-jug. " A youth, dear ! " Loanna raised her almost im perceptible eyebrows. " What a fool you are ! " Mrs. Swithybark always bullied her old friend — as an antidote to the old friend's provoking meekness. " As if a woman of my age and with my looks — or lack of them — couldn't do anything in the world I wanted to without people talking." " Your looks — yes."

Loanna tipped her head a little to one side and pursed her thin mouth. " But age, dear ! You are only five years older than I." " Three," corrected the other. " But when we come to that, why, you could do anything too." " Perhaps I could," assented Loanna, with a wistful sigh over lost youth. She did not admit the loss, but rich women must be indulged. Although her voice was meek enough, she shot a thoroughly tigerish look at her dearest Laura. Then she said, with that unctuous little laugh of hers, — " I don't know what you could do with a youth, dear — except make yourself responsible for his education — and his debts." " Pooh ! I didn't mean that. You stick to the letter of one's words so. I only meant youth in an abstract way. I hate boys. When they are small they invariably smell, because their pockets are stuffed with abomination.

When they are big they are bumptious — blotchy-faced in nine cases out of ten — and all arms and legs. I think all males should be brought up in strict seclusion until they are five and-twenty. I certainly have thought, however, of adopting a ■" " Baby!" Loanna lifted two doughy hands. "Think of the worry and the doctor's bills and the bad nights and " " Bah ! " snapped Mrs. Swithybark. " As if I should saddle myself with one of the creatures ! I mean a girl, a marriageable young woman. I should like to have love-making going on in my own house, disinterested courting of the good old-fashioned sort — ■ the courting that I always dreamed of and never got because of my horrible money. A girl who would be like a daughter to me, and who would yet be a pauper. I would not injure the poor thing in the eyes of men by promising her a penny ; besides, I have as good as promised to leave everything to you.

Ah, the men ! I should prove them ; I should find out if there is really a young fellow left who can be caught by bright eyes and satisfied with them alone." " There are heaps, darling," Loanna told her sweetly, and bridling a little, as if to suggest that she had proved the existence of such paragons in her own person. " But you were unfortunate, apart from your fortune." The thick brownish-red, which served her for a blush, mantled in poor Mrs. Swithybark's cheeks. " I was plain," she said bluntly, " if that is what you mean." " Dearest Laura ! " Loanna's voice sounded pained. " How abrupt you are ! " " Only when you are spiteful, my dear. But never mind. I gave up longing for good looks years ago " — she lied glibly and flung a look in the glass. " What do you think of my plan ? I should like to have your opinion, although, as you know very well, I should not be influenced by it."

" Nobody ever is influenced by opinion," purred Loanna, with something of philosophy. " But as you ask for it, dear, you shall have it. Everything I have in the world, all my poor experience of life — not nearly so ripe as your own, of course — is at your service." " Well ? " Mrs. Swithybark rapped her flat foot — gorgeous in a velvet slipper — on the carpet. " So far as I understand the idea, it is quixotic — and even dangerous. You would take a young woman from the lower classes, of course — no decently brought up girl would consent to the experiment. You would know very little, and that little possibly lies," pursued Miss Dilley, getting rather mixed in her zeal, " of her past or her parentage or her health. However careful you were, let your inquiries be ever so strict — and if I can help you in any way, you know my poor services are at command " " I know, Loanna," interposed her hostess.

" It would be a job after your own heart. Do let me give you another cup of tea, with lots of milk." The other held out her cup. " It would be a fiasco" she said warmly. " I strongly urge you to drop the idea." Mrs. Swithybark smiled ; a self-contained, dangerous smile. " It would not make any difference to you," she said, with the thoughtless insolence of a rich woman to a poor one. It suited Loanna to ignore the insolence and to presume that her dear Laura's remark referred not to half-worn gowns and theatre stalls, but to the more delicate advantages of friendship. Still, not being a fool by any means, she stored the remark up with others. " I do not for one moment fear that it would," she said tenderly. "An affection like ours is proof against any passing whim." " It won't be a whim if I go on with it," Mrs. Swithybark told her sturdily.

" It will be the very backbone of my life — the zest I have been looking for. I shall take this girl, I shall clothe her and have her taught to put those clothes on properly and to do her hair nicely and to keep her finger-nails clean and never to sniff, or toss her head, or mince her words. I shall teach her not to wait until she is spoken to, but to have settled opinions on every subject under the sun and to be afraid of nobody. I shall tell her to eat her dinner directly it is given to her and not to let it get cold while other people are being served. In fact, I shall take pains to knock out of her all the ideas of politeness which were knocked into her at school. When we have reached that stage she will be pretty nearly perfect." " But her education ? " suggested Miss Dilley, with a wide, indulgent smile, as if to say that she was always complaisant and did not object to humour a craze, however foolish.

" Education ! My dear, what a fossil you are ! Things have changed since we were young. Do you suppose that, with Board Schools and Technical Classes for this, that, and the other, and penny classics and public libraries and tuition by correspondence, that she will need educating ? Any intelligent up-to date sort of girl could beat you or me, when it comes to education. Bearing and appearance are very different things. She will be lovely, too, and that covers a multitude of sins. Why, she'd be forgiven for fighting shy of a finger-glass or thanking the servant who handed her potatoes at dinner." " She will be lovely ! So you have settled on that," remarked Loanna, in a curiously repressed voice. " I've settled everything in my own mind. I've got the very girl in my eye." She had settled nothing at the moment when she flipped the Sunday paper and Hagar Pipon's alluring face under the cushion.

But Loanna, who was always a powerful irritant, had decided her. Loanna obviously did not like the idea ; Loanna was afraid of it — afraid that she would lose her pickings. Therefore Mrs. Swithybark was resolved. It had been only a wild-cat scheme half an hour before : it was a certainty now — as far as it could be. Of course there was Hagar Pipon herself to reckon with. Mrs. Swithybark did a foolish thing — she was the most impulsive woman in the world — she showed Loanna the paper and the beautiful face. Miss Dilley gazed at it for a long time and then she said, — " My dear, what a wanton-looking creature ! " Mrs. Swithybark winced ; the same thought had occurred to her. " Go on," she said shortly. " Read all about her." Loanna read, looked up blankly with her soft, greenish eyes, and said with her prize air of inno cence, — " What a painfully vulgar story, dear !

" " Isn't it ? Yet that is the girl I am going to adopt." Mrs. Swithybark waited for an outburst : she was hoping for one. It would be great sport to stir Loanna out of her chronic placidity and sleekness, to see her, just for once, without sheathed claws. But she was disappointed. Loanna was too staggered to say much — and much too wise a woman in the bargain. She wound the woolly thing about her throat, and rose to go. All she said, as she kissed her old friend with even more effusion than usual, was, — " I feel convinced, dearest Laura, that you'll live to regret it." But directly she got outside she went quickly round the corner to Albany Street, and walked with an exaggerated air of decision into the first stationer's shop she came to, and bought a copy of the Sunday paper, seizing it tigerishly and putting down her penny with a spiteful chink.

When she reached her lodgings and had taken off her out-door things, she spread the thin, badly printed news sheet on the table and stared at the beautiful, rather sensuous face of the petty pilferer with an expression that was very far from pleasant. It was a peculiar expression ; peculiar, that is, in its intense and deadly venom. Her smooth, placid face had changed so darkly that her " dearest Laura " would hardly have known her.

Chapter III

Mrs. Swithybark, always a woman to strike while the iron was hot, went off to her lawyer next morning. She had passed a sleepless night, through which she had argued with herself feverishly in a one-sided way. She would certainly adopt that girl ; it would be perpetual employment to dress her and initiate her into the ways of civilised life. It did not occur to her — or rather, she would not allow it to occur — that the legal mind might find even more flaws in her wild scheme than the lay mind of Loanna had done. She had never taken an important step in her life without consulting Mr. Nash, so that even had she been quite sure of his disapproval and quite determined to defy him she would have gone to him. She was fond of him for the one reason that he had known her as a child and still treated her as one.

This pleasant trick of his flattered her. She was still anxious to be considered young, although she tried to persuade herself that she had grown out of her fierce longing for beauty. She was hope lessly plain and clumsy, yet she pathetically craved for comeliness. She envied the very flower girls on the curbs because they were fresh and had skins that were not afraid of the searching light of the sun. Mr. Nash had his office in Cheapside. Mrs. Swithybark never felt so fairly satisfied with her own lot as she did on the days that she went into the City. n. It seemed to her a terribly melancholy place ; she used to look at the people that thronged the pavements with the profoundest pity. She felt so sorry for the men, with their sleek silk hats, restless eyes, and faces haggard with seeking, seeking— always seeking.

The most prosperous-looking were worn — in her eyes. Yet none of them seemed to know it. She felt sorry for the women — she did not meet many — who mostly carried bundles of cloth rolled in black linen, which they had just fetched from the tailors' shops. There were other women, too, of quite a different class, looking in at the drapers' windows in St. Paul's Churchyard. She felt just as sorry for them, although they did not need her pity — indeed, would have resented it in round terms. They were the flourishing wives and daughters of City men, and they came shopping from suburbs east of the City boundary. They looked so vulgar ; her heart ached for them. Surely the mere possession of garments such as they wore must be a calamity. She was rather narrow in her ideas and always got her " things " from Bond Street — an extravagance in which she was supported by Loanna, who reaped the ultimate harvest.

She reached the lawyer's office at last and climbed the dingy stairs. When she was shown into his private room he jumped up to greet her quite pre cipitately — if he had not been a middle-aged and extremely dignified man one might have imagined that he blushed when he saw who his visitor was. Mr. Nash was a typical family lawyer ; he was all that this individual is popularly supposed to be and so seldom is. He had a head of pure silver, slightly bald, a pompous and measured speech, delicate hands, which he tended with abnormal nicety, a little dry cough, and a charming, obsolete air of courtliness. He greeted Mrs. Swithybark in the refreshing paternal style, and she sat down in the chair he placed for her, feeling quite like a schoolgirl again, instead of a woman perilously near forty. " I want your advice," she began haltingly.