Red Pottage. Mary Cholmondeley
of her fortunes. He had paid her considerable attention, and she had thought once or twice, with momentary bitterness, that, like the rest, he had not cared to find out what had become of her. She greeted him with shy but evident pleasure. She took for granted he had come to see her, and he allowed her to remain under that delusion. In reality he had been hunting up an old model whom he wanted for his next picture, and who had silently left Museum Buildings some months before without leaving his address. He had genuinely admired her, though he had forgotten her, and he was unaffectedly delighted to see her again.
That one chance meeting was the first of many. Flowers came to Rachel's little room, and romance came with them. Rachel's proud, tender heart struggled, and then gave way before this radiant first love blossoming in the midst of her loneliness. At last, on a March afternoon, when the low sun caught the daffodils he had brought her, he told her he loved her.
Days followed, exquisite days, which have none like them in later life whatever later life may bring. That year the spring came early, and they went often together into the country. And that year when all the world was white with blossom the snow came and laid upon earth's bridal veil a white shroud. Every cup of May blossom, every petal of hawthorn, bent beneath its burden of snow. And so it was in the full spring-tide of Rachel's heart. The snow came down upon it. She discovered at last that though he loved her he did not wish to marry her; that even from the time of that first meeting he had never intended to marry her. That discovery was a shroud. She wrapped her dead love in it, and would fain have buried it out of her sight.
But only after a year of conflict was she suffered to bury it—after a year during which the ghost of her dead ever came back, and came back to importune her vainly with its love. Rachel's poor neighbors grew accustomed to see the tall, handsome, waiting figure which always returned and returned, but which at last, after one dreadful day, was seen no more in Museum Buildings. Rachel had laid the ghost at last. But the conflict remained graven in her face.
On a certain cold winter morning Hester darted across the wet pavement from the brougham to the untidy entrance of Museum Buildings where Rachel still lived. It was a miserable day. The streets and bare trees looked as if they had been drawn in in ink, and the whole carelessly blotted before it was dry. All the outlines were confused, blurred. The cold penetrated to the very bones of the shivering city.
Rachel had just come in, wet and tired, bringing with her a roll of manuscript to be transcribed. A woman waiting for her on the endless stone stairs had cursed her for taking the bread out of her mouth.
"He always employed me till you came," she shrieked, shaking her fist at her, "and now he gives it all to you because you're younger and better-looking."
She gave the woman as much as she dared spare, the calculation did not take long, and went on climbing the stairs.
Something in the poor creature's words, something vague but repulsive in her remembrance of the man who paid her for the work by which she could barely live, fell like lead into Rachel's heart. She looked out dumbly over the wilderness of roofs. The suffering of the world was eating into her soul; the suffering of this vast travailing East London, where people trod each other down to live.
"If any one had told me," she said to herself, "when I was rich, that I lived on the flesh and blood of my fellow-creatures, that my virtue and ease and pleasure were bought by their degradation and toil and pain, I should not have believed it, and I should have been angry. If I had been told that the clothes I wore, the food I ate, the pen I wrote with, the ink I used, the paper I wrote on—all these, and everything I touched, from my soap to my match-box, especially my match-box, was the result of sweated labor, I should not have believed it, I should have laughed. But yet it is so. If I had not been rich once myself I should think as all these people do, that the rich are devils incarnate to let such things go on. They have the power to help us. We have none to help ourselves. But they never use it. The rich grind the poor for their luxuries with their eyes shut, and we grind each other for our daily bread with our eyes open. I have got that woman's work. I have struggled hard enough to get it, but, though I did not realize it, I might have known that I had only got on to the raft by pushing some one else off it."
Rachel looked out across the miles of roofs which lay below her garret window. The sound was in her ears of that great whirlpool wherein youth and beauty and innocence go down quick day by day. The wilderness of leaden roofs turned suddenly before her eyes into a sullen furrowed sea of shame and crime which, awaiting no future day of judgment, daily gave up its awful dead.
Presently Hester came in, panting a little after the long ascent of worn stairs, and dragging with her a large parcel. It was a fur-lined cloak. Hester spread it mutely before her friend, and looked beseechingly at her. Then she kissed her, and the two girls clung together for a moment in silence.
"Dearest," said Rachel, "don't give me new things. It isn't that—you know I did take it when I was in need. But, oh, Hester, I know you can't afford it. I should not mind if you were rich, at least, I would try not, but—if you would only give me some of your old clothes instead. I should like them all the better because you had worn them." And Rachel kissed the lapel of Hester's coat.
"I can't," whispered Hester into Rachel's hair. "The best is only just good enough."
"Wouldn't it be kinder to me?"
Hester trembled, and then burst into tears.
"I will wear it, I will wear it," said Rachel, hurriedly. "Look, Hester! I have got it on. How deliciously warm! and—do look!—it has two little pockets in the fur lining."
But Hester wept passionately, and Rachel sat down by her on the floor in the new cloak till the paroxysm was over.
How does a subtle affinity find a foothold between natures which present an obvious, a violent contrast to each other? Why do the obvious and the subtle forget their life-long feud at intervals and suddenly appear for a moment in each other's society?
Rachel was physically strong. Hester was weak. The one was calm, patient, practical, equable, the other imaginative, unbalanced, excitable.
Life had not spoiled Rachel. Lady Susan Gresley had done her best to spoil Hester. The one had lived the unprotected life, and showed it in her bearing. The other had lived the sheltered life, and bore its mark upon her pure forehead and youthful face.
"I cannot bear it," said Hester at last. "I think and think, and I can't think of anything. I would give my life for you, and you will hardly let me give you £3 10s. 6d. That is all it cost. It is only frieze, that common red frieze, and the lining is only rabbit." A last tear fell at the word rabbit. "I wanted to get you a velvet one, just the same as my new one, lined with chinchilla, but I knew it would only make you miserable. I wish," looking vindictively at the cloak—"I wish rabbits had never been born."
Rachel laughed. Hester was evidently recovering.
"Mr. Scarlett was saying last night that no one can help any one," continued Hester, turning her white, exhausted face to her friend. "He said that we are always so placed that we can only look on. And I told him that could not be true, but, oh, in my heart, Rachel, I have felt it was true all these long, long five years since you have lived here."
Rachel came and stood beside her at the little window. There was just room for them between the type-writer and the bed.
Far below, Hester's brougham was pacing up and down.
"Then are love and sympathy nothing?" she said. "Those are the real gifts. If I were rich to-morrow I should look to you just as I do now for the things which money can't buy. And those are the things"—Rachel's voice shook—"which you have always given me, and which I can't do without. You feel my poverty more than I do myself. It crushed me at first when I could not support myself. Now that I can—and in everything except money I am very rich—I am comparatively happy."
There was a long silence.
"Perhaps," said Rachel at last, with difficulty, "if I had remained an heiress Mr. Tristram might have married me. I feel nearly sure he would have married me. In that case I lost my money only just in time to prevent a much greater