"But I say! Your wages. Shall I pay you now?"
"No, no! It doesn't matter in the least, thanks."
He shook hands with a careless, good-natured smile, which seemed to be saying: "Foolish creature! You can't defend yourself, and these airs are amusing. But I am benevolent." And she was ashamed of her shame, and furious against the childishness that made her frown, and lower her eyes, and escape out of the room like a mouse.
[CHAPTER XIV]
TO LONDON
I
In the middle of the night Hilda woke up, and within a few seconds she convinced herself that her attitude to Miss Gailey's telegram had been simply monstrous. She saw it, in the darkness, as an enormity. She ought to have responded to the telegram at once; she ought to have gone to London by the afternoon train. What had there been to prevent her from knocking at the door of the inner room, and saying to Mr. Cannon, in the presence of no matter whom: "I am very sorry, Mr. Cannon, but I've just had a telegram that mother is ill in London, and I must leave by the next train"? There had been nothing to prevent her! At latest she should have caught the evening train. Business was of no account in such a crisis. Her mother might be very ill, might be dying, might be dead. It was not for trifles that people sent such telegrams. The astounding thing was that she should have been so blind to her obvious duty.... And she said to herself, thinking with a mysterious and beautiful remorse of the last minute of her talk with Mr. Cannon: "If I had done as I ought to have done, I should have been in London, or on my way to London, instead of in the room with him there; and that would not have occurred!" But what 'that' was, she could not have explained. Nevertheless, Mr. Cannon's phrase, "It's a good thing you didn't go to London," still gave her a pleasure, though the pleasure was dulled.
Then she tried to reassure herself. Sarah Gailey was nervous and easily frightened. Her mother had an excellent constitution. The notion of her mother being seriously ill was silly. In a few hours she would be with her mother, and would be laughing at these absurd night-fears. In any case there would assuredly be a letter from Sarah Gailey by the first post, so that before starting she would have exact information. She succeeded, partially, in reassuring herself for a brief space; but soon she was more unhappy than ever in the clear conviction of her wrongdoing. Again and again she formulated, in her fancy, scenes of the immediate future, as for example at her mother's dying bed, and she imagined conversations and repeated the actual words used by herself and others, interminably. And then she returned to the previous day, and hundreds of times she went into the inner room and said to Mr. Cannon: "I'm very sorry, Mr. Cannon, but I've just had a telegram--" etc. Why had she not said it?... Thus worked the shuttles of her mind, with ruthless, insane insistence, until she knew not whether she was awake or asleep, and the very tissues of her physical brain seemed raw.
She thought feebly: "If I got up and lighted the candle and walked about, I should end this." But she could not rise. She was netted down to the bed. And when she tried to soothe herself with other images--images of delight--she found that they had lost their power. Undressing, a few hours earlier, she had lived again, in exquisite and delicious alarm, through the last minute of her talk with Mr. Cannon; she had gone to sleep while reconstituting those instants. But now their memory left her indifferent, even inspired repugnance. And her remorse little by little lost its mysterious beauty.
She clung to the idea of the reassuring letter which she would receive. That was her sole glint of consolation.