The old man laid his hand on hers quietly. ‘Don’t mind ME, my dear,’ he said with genuine tenderness. ‘Don’t mind me a bit; I’m only an old shoemaker, as I dare say you’ve heard before now; but I know you’ll be the better for crying—women always are—and tears shed on somebody else’s account are never thrown away, my dear, are they?’
Hilda took his hand between hers, and wiping her eyes once more whispered softly, ‘No, Mr. Berkeley, no; perhaps they’re not; but oh, they’re so useless; so very, very, very useless. Do you know, I never felt my own powerlessness and helplessness in all my life so much as I did at that dear, patient little Mrs. Le Breton’s this very morning. There I sat, knowing she was in dire need of money for her poor husband, and wanting sufficient food and drink, perhaps, for herself, and him, and the dear darling baby; and in my hand in my muff I had my purse there with five tenners—Bank of England ten-pound notes, you know—fifty pounds altogether, rolled up inside it; and I would have given anything if only I could have pulled them out and made them a present to her then and there; and I couldn’t, you see: and, oh, Mr. Berkeley, isn’t it terrible to look at them? And then, before I left, poor Mr. Le Breton himself came in, and I was quite shocked to see him. I used to know him a few years ago, and even then he wasn’t what you’d call robust by any means; but now, oh, dear me, he does look so awfully ill and haggard and miserable that it quite made me break down again, and I cried about him before his very face; and the moment I got away, I said to the coachman, “Jenkins, drive straight off to the Embankment at Chelsea;” and here I am, you see, waiting to talk with your clever son about it; for, really, Mr. Berkeley, the poor Le Bretons haven’t got a single friend anywhere like your son Arthur.’
And then Lady Hilda went on to praise Arthur’s music to the Progenitor, and to speak of how much admired he was everywhere, and to hint that so much genius and musical power must of course be largely hereditary. Whereat the old man, not unmoved by her gentle insinuating flattery, at last confessed to his own lifelong musical tastes, and even casually acknowledged that the motive for one or two of the minor songs in the famous operas was not entirely of Arthur’s own unaided invention. And so, from one subject to another, they passed on so quickly, and hit it off with one another so exactly (for Hilda had a wonderful knack of leading up to everybody’s strong points), that long before lunch was ready, the Progenitor had been quite won over by the fascinations of the brazen hussey, and was prepared to admit that she was really a very nice, kind, tender-hearted, intelligent, appreciative, and discriminating young lady. True, she had not read Mill or Fawcett, and was ignorant of the very name of Herbert Spencer; but she had a vast admiration for his dear boy Artie, and she saw that he himself knew a thing or two in his own modest way, though he was only what the grand world she moved in would doubtless call an old superannuated journeyman shoemaker.
‘Ah, yes, a shoemaker! so I’ve heard somewhere, I fancy,’ Lady Hilda remarked brightly, when for the third time in the course of their conversation he informed her with great dignity of the interesting fact; ‘how very delightful and charming that is, really, now isn’t it? So original, you know, to make shoes instead of going into some useless profession, especially when you’re such a great reader and student and thinker as you are—for I see you’re a philosopher and a psychologist already, Mr. Berkeley’—Hilda considered it rather a bold effort on her part to pronounce the word ‘psychologist’ at the very first trial without stumbling; but though she was a little doubtful about the exact pronunciation of that fearful vocable, she felt quite at her ease about the fact at least, because she carefully noticed him lay down Ribot on the table beside him, name upward; ‘one can’t help finding that much out on a very short acquaintance, can one? Though, indeed, now I come to think of it, I believe I’ve heard often that men of your calling generally ARE very fond of reading, and are very philosophical, and clever, and political, and all that sort of thing; and they say that’s the reason, of course, why Northampton’s such an exceptionally intelligent constituency, and always returns such thoroughgoing able logical Radicals.’
The old man’s eyes beamed, as she spoke, with inexpressible pride and pleasure. ‘I’m very glad indeed to hear you say so,’ he answered promptly with a complacent self-satisfied smile, ‘and I believe you’re right too, Miss, ur—ur—ur—quite so. The practice of shoemaking undoubtedly tends to develop a very high and exceptional level of general intelligence and logical power.’
‘I’m sure of it,’ Hilda answered demurely, in a tone of the deepest and sincerest conviction; ‘and when I heard somebody say somewhere, that your son was...—well, WAS your son, I said to myself at once, “Ah, well, there now, that quite accounts, of course, for young Mr. Berkeley’s very extraordinary and unusual abilities!”’
‘She’s really a most sensible, well-informed young woman, whoever she is,’ the Progenitor thought to himself silently; ‘and it’s certainly a pity that dear Artie couldn’t take a fancy to some nice, appreciative, kind-hearted, practical girl like that now, instead of wearing away all the best days of his life in useless regret for that poor slender, unsubstantial nonentity of a watery little Mrs. Le Breton.’
By two o’clock lunch was ready, and just as it had been announced, Arthur Berkeley ran up the front steps, and let himself in with his proprietory latch-key. Turning straight into the dining-room, he was just in time to see his own father walking into lunch arm in arm with Lady Hilda Tregellis. As Mrs. Hallis had graphically expressed it, he felt as if you might have knocked him down with a feather! Was she absolutely ubiquitous, then, this pervasive Lady Hilda? and was he destined wherever he went to come upon her suddenly in the most unexpected and incomprehensible situations?
‘Will you sit down here, my dear,’ the Progenitor was saying to Hilda at the exact moment he entered, ‘or would you prefer your back to the fire?’
Arthur Berkeley opened his eyes wide with unspeakable amazement. ‘What, YOU here,’ he exclaimed, coming forward suddenly to shake hands with Hilda; ‘why, I saw you only a couple of hours since at the Le Bretons’ at Holloway.’