Pourvu que vous soyez belle,Sera charmé.
Mon coeur, dans l'ombre amoureuse,
Où l'énivrent deux beaux yeux,
Pourvu que tu sois heureuse,
Sera joyeux.
That was all. But she shook as though a miracle had been enacted. Hilda, owing partly to the fondness of an otherwise stern grandfather and partly to the vanity of her unimportant father, had finally been sent to a school attended by girls who on the average were a little above herself in station--Chetwynd's, in the valley between Turnhill and Bursley. (It was still called Chetwynd's though it had changed hands.) Among the staff was a mistress who was known as Miss Miranda--she seemed to have no surname. One of Miss Miranda's duties had been to teach optional French, and one of Miss Miranda's delights had been to dictate this very poem of Victor Hugo's to her pupils for learning by heart. It was Miss Miranda's sole French poem, and she imposed it with unfading delight on the successive generations whom she 'grounded' in French. Hilda had apparently forgotten most of her French, but as she now read the poem (for the first time in print), it re-established itself in her memory as the most lovely verse that she had ever known, and the recitations of it in Miss Miranda's small classroom came back to her with an effect beautiful and tragic. And also there was the name of Victor Hugo, which Miss Miranda's insistent enthusiasm had rendered sublime and legendary to a sensitive child! Hilda now saw the sacred name stamped in gold on a whole set of elegant volumes! It was marvellous that she should have turned the page containing just that poem! It was equally marvellous that she should have discovered the works of Victor Hugo in the matter-of-fact office of Mr. Cannon! But was it? Was he not half-French, and were not these books precisely a corroboration of what her mother had told her? Mr. Cannon's origin at once assumed for her the strange seductive hues of romance; he shared the glory of Victor Hugo. Then the voices in the corridor ceased, and with a decisive movement he unlatched the door. She relinquished the book and calmly sat down as he entered.
III
"Of course, your mother's told you?"
"Yes."
"I had no difficulty at all. I just asked her what she was going to do about the rent-collecting."
Standing up in front of Hilda, but on his own side of the desk, Mr. Cannon smiled as a conqueror who can recount a triumph with pride, but without conceit. She looked at him with naïve admiration. To admire him was agreeable to her; and she liked also to feel unimportant in his presence. But she fought, unsuccessfully, against the humiliating idea that his personal smartness convicted her of being shabby--of being even inefficient in one department of her existence; and she could have wished to be magnificently dressed.
"Mrs. Lessways is a very shrewd lady--very shrewd indeed!" said Mr. Cannon, with a smile, this time, to indicate humorously that Mrs. Lessways was not so easy to handle as might be imagined, and that even the cleverest must mind their p's and q's with such a lady.
"Oh yes, she is!" Hilda agreed, with an exaggerated emphasis that showed a lack of conviction. Indeed, she had never thought of her mother as a very shrewd lady.
Mr. Cannon continued to smile in silence upon the shrewdness of Mrs. Lessways, giving little appreciative movements of the diaphragm, drawing in his lips and by consequence pushing out his cheeks like a child's; and his eyes were all the time saying lightly: "Still, I managed her!" And while this pleasant intimate silence persisted, the noises of the market-place made themselves prominent, quite agreeably--in particular the hard metallic stamping and slipping, on the bricked pavement under the window, of a team of cart-horses that were being turned in a space too small for their grand, free movements, and the good-humoured cracking of a whip. Again Hilda was impressed, mystically, by the strangeness of the secret relation between herself and this splendid effective man. There they were, safe within the room, almost on a footing of familiar friendship! The atmosphere was different from that of the first interview. And none knew! And she alone had brought it all about by a simple caprice!
"I was fine and startled when I saw you at our door, Mr. Cannon!" she said.
He might have said, "Were you? You didn't show it." She was half expecting him to say some such thing. But he became reflective, and began: "Well, you see--" and then hesitated.
"You didn't tell me you thought of calling."
"Well," he proceeded at last--and she could not be sure whether he was replying to her or not--"I was pretty nearly ready to buy that Calder Street property. And I thought I'd talk that over with your mother first! It just happened to make a good beginning, you see." He spoke with all the flattering charm of the confidential.
Hilda flushed. Under her mother's suggestion, she had been misjudging him. He had not been guilty of mere scheming. She was profoundly glad. The act of apology to him, performed in her own mind, gave her a curious delight.
"I wish she would sell," said Hilda, to whom the ownership of a slum was obnoxious.
"Very soon your consent would be necessary to any sale."
"Really!" she exclaimed, agreeably flattered, but scarcely surprised by this information. "I should consent quick enough! I can't bear to walk down the street!"
He laughed condescendingly. "Well, I don't think your mother would care to sell, if you ask me." He sat down.
Hilda frowned, regretting her confession and resenting his laughter.
"What will your charges be, please, Mr. Cannon?" she demanded abruptly, and yet girlishly timid. And at the same moment she drew forth her purse, which she had been holding ready in her hand.
For a second he thought she was referring to the price of rent-collecting, but the appearance of the purse explained her meaning. "Oh! There's no charge!" he said, in a low voice, seizing a penholder.
"But I must pay you something! I can't--"
"No, you mustn't!"
Their glances met in conflict across the table. She had known that he would say exactly that. And she had been determined to insist on paying a fee--utterly determined! But she could not, now, withstand the force of his will. Her glance failed her. She was disconcerted by the sudden demonstration of her inferiority. She was distressed. And then a feeling of faintness, and the gathering of a mist in the air, positively frightened her. The mist cleared. His glance seemed to say, with kindness: "You see how much stronger I am than you! But you can trust me!" The sense of adventure grew even more acute in her. She marvelled at what life was, and hid the purse like a shame.
"It's very kind of you," she murmured.
"Not a bit!" he said. "I've got a job through this. Don't forget that. We don't collect rents for nothing, you know--especially Calder Street sort of rents!"
She picked up her basket and rose. He also rose.
"So you've been looking at my Victor Hugo," he remarked, putting his right hand negligently into his pocket instead of holding it forth in adieu.
IV
