‘I beg your pardon,’ Ronald said hastily, ‘for even suggesting it but you see, I often have to meet a great many people who’ve been unhappy through a great many different causes, and that leads one occasionally for a time into mistaken inferences. Let me hear all your history, please, and I firmly believe, through the aid that never forsakes us, I shall be able to do something or other to help you in your difficulties.’
Thus adjured, Selah began and told her whole unhappy history through, without pause or break, into Ronald’s quietly sympathetic ear. She told him quite frankly and fully how she had picked up the acquaintance of a young Mr. Walters from Oxford at Hastings: how this Mr. Walters had led her to believe he would marry her: how she had left her home hurriedly, under the belief that he would be induced to keep his promise: how he had thrown her over to her own devices: and how she had ever since been trying to pick up a precarious livelihood for herself in stray ways as a sempstress, work for which she wag naturally very ill-fitted, and for which she had no introductions. She slurred over nothing on either side of the story; and especially she did not forget to describe the full measure of her troubles and trials from her Methodist friends at Hastings. Ronald shook his head sympathetically at this stage of the story. ‘Ah, I know, I know,’ he muttered, half under his breath; ‘nasty pious people! Very well meaning, very devout, very earnest, one may be sure of it—but oh! what terrible soul-killing people to live among! I can understand all about it, for I’ve met them often—Sabbath-keeping folks; preaching and praying folks; worrying, bothering, fussy-religious folks: formalists, Pharisees, mint-anise and-cummin Christians: awfully anxious about your soul, and so forth, and doing their very best to make you as miserable all the time as a slave at the torture! I don’t wonder you ran away from them.’
‘And I wasn’t really going to drown myself, you know, when you spoke to me.’ Selah said, quite apologetically. ‘I was only just looking over into the beautiful brown water, and thinking how delicious it would be to fling oneself in there, and be carried off down to the sea, and rolled about for ever into pebbles on the shingle, and there would be an end of one altogether—oh, how lovely!’
‘Very natural,’ Ronald answered calmly. ‘Very natural. Of course it would. I’ve often thought the same thing myself. Still, one oughtn’t, if possible, to give way to these impulses: one ought to do all that’s in one’s power to prevent such a miserable termination to one’s divinely allotted existence. After all, it is His will, you see, that we should be happy.’
When Selah had quite finished all her story, Ronald began drawing circles in the road with the end of his stick, and perpending within himself what had better be done about it, now that all was told him. ‘No work,’ he said, half to himself; ‘no money; no food. Why, why, I suppose you must be hungry.’
Selah nodded assent.
‘Will you allow me to offer you a little lunch?’ he asked, hesitatingly, with something of Herbert’s stately politeness. Even in this last extremity, Ronald felt instinctively what was due to Selah Briggs’s natural sentiments of pride and delicacy. He must speak to her deferentially as if she were a lady, not give her alms as if she were a beggar.
Then for the first time that day Selah burst suddenly into tears. ‘Oh, sir,’ she said, sobbing, ‘you are very kind to me.’
Ronald waited a moment or two till her eyes were dry, and then took her across the gardens and into Gatti’s. Any other man might have chosen some other place of entertainment under the circumstances, but Ronald, in his perfect simplicity of heart, looked only for the first shop where he could get Selah the food she needed. He ordered something hot hastily, and, when it came, though he had had his own lunch already, he played a little with a knife and fork himself for show’s sake, in order not to seem as if he were merely looking on while Selah was eating. These little touches of feeling were not lost upon Selah: she noticed them at once, and recognised in what Ernest would have called her aboriginal unregenerate vocabulary that she was dealing with a true gentleman.
‘Walters,’ Ronald said, pausing a second with a bit of chop poised lightly on the end of his fork; ‘let me see—Walters. I don’t know any man of that name, myself, but I’ve had two brothers at Oxford, and perhaps one of them could tell me who he is. Walters—Walters. You said your own name was Miss Briggs, I think, didn’t you? My name’s Ronald Le Breton.’