Part 31 (1/2)
Odd could trust his voice now; her courage, strung as he felt it to be over depths of dreadful suffering, nerved him to a greater self-control.
”If I had known I would have come sooner,” he said; ”you would have let me help you, wouldn't you?”
”I am afraid you couldn't have _helped_ me. That is the worst of illness, one can only wait; but you would have cheered me up.”
”My poor child!” Odd inwardly cursed himself. ”If I had known! What have you been doing to yourself, Hilda? You look--”
”f.a.gged, don't I? It is the anxiety; I have given up half my work since you left; my pictures are accepted at the Champs de Mars. We'll all go to the _vernissage_ together. And, as they were done, I let Miss Latimer have the studio for the whole day. That left me my mornings free for mamma.”
”Taylor helped you, I suppose?”
”Taylor is with Katherine. She went before mamma was at all ill, and indeed mamma insisted that Katherine must have her maid. I was glad that she should go, for she has worked hard without a rest for so long, and, of course, travelling about as she has been doing, Katherine needed her.” There was an explanatory note in Hilda's voice; indeed Odd's silence, big with comment, gave it a touch of defiance. ”It made double duty for Rosalie, but she is a good, willing creature, and has not minded.”
”And Wilson?”
”He went with papa. I don't think papa could live without Wilson.”
”Oh, indeed. I begin to solve the problem of your ghastly little face.
You have been housemaid, _garde-malade_, and bread-winner. Had you no money at all?” Hilda flushed--the quick flush of physical weakness.
”Yes, at first,” she replied; ”papa gave me quite a lot before going, and that has paid part of the doctor's bills, and my lessons brought in the usual amount.”
”Could you not have given up the lessons for the time being?”
”I know you think it dreadful in me to have left mamma for all those afternoons.” Her acceptation of a blame infinitely removed from his thoughts stupefied Odd. ”And mamma has thought it heartless, most naturally. But Rosalie is trustworthy and kind. The doctor came three times a day and I can explain to _you_”--Hilda hesitated--”the money papa gave me went almost immediately--some unpaid bills.”
”What bills?” Odd spoke sternly.
”Why, we owe bills right and left!” said Hilda.
”But what bills were these?”
”There was the rent of the apartment for one thing; we should have had to go had that not been paid; and then, some tailors, a dressmaker; they threatened to seize the furniture.”
”Katherine's dressmaker?”
”Yes; Katherine, I know, never dreamed that she would be so impatient; but I suppose, on hearing that Katherine had gone to England, the woman became frightened.” Peter controlled himself to silence. The very fulness of Hilda's confidence showed the strain that had been put upon her. ”And then,” she went on, as he did not speak, ”some of the money had to go to Katherine in England. Poor Kathy! To be pinched like that!
She wrote, that at one place it took her last s.h.i.+lling to tip the servants and get her railway ticket to Surrey.”
”Why did she not write to me? Considering all things--”
”Oh!” said Hilda--her tone needed no comment--”we have not quite come to that.” She added presently and gently, ”I had money for her.”
Odd took her hand and kissed it; the glove was loose upon it.
”And now,” said Hilda, leaning forward and smiling at him, ”you have heard me _filer mon chapelet_. Tell me what you have been doing.”
”My lazy wanderings in the sun would sound too grossly egotistic after your story.”
”Has my story sounded so dismal? _I_ have been egotistic, then. I had hoped that perhaps you would write to me,” she added, and a delicately malicious little smile lit her face. Odd looked hard at her, with a half-dreamy stare.
”I thought of you,” he said; ”I should have liked to write.”
”Well, in the future do, please, when you feel like it.”