‘Well,’ Hilda answered, taken a little aback at this practical question, ‘I’ve hardly got my plan matured yet; but I’ve got a plan; and I thought it all out as far as it went as I came along here just now in the carriage. The great thing is, we must inspire Mr. Le Breton with a new confidence; we must begin by showing him we believe in him, and letting him see that he may still manage in some way or other to retrieve himself. He has lost all hope: we must begin with him over again. I’ve got an idea, but it’ll take money. Now, I can give up half my allowance for the next year—the Le Bretons need never know anything about it—that’ll be something: you’re a rich man now, I believe, Mr. Berkeley; will you make up as much as I do, if my plan seems a feasible one to you for retrieving the position?’
The Progenitor answered quickly for him: ‘Miss Tregellis,’ he said, with a little tremor in his voice, ‘—you’ll excuse me, my dear, but it’s against my principles to call anybody my lady:—he will, I know he will; and if he wouldn’t, why, my dear, I’d go back to my cobbling and earn it myself rather than that you or your friends should go without it for a single minute.’
Arthur said nothing, but he bowed his head silently. What a lot of good there was really in that splendid woman, and what a commanding, energetic, masterful way she had about her! To a feckless, undecided, faltering man like Arthur Berkeley there was something wonderfully attractive and magnificent, after all, in such an imperious resolute woman as Lady Hilda.
‘Then this is my plan,’ Hilda went on hastily. ‘We must do something that’ll take Mr. Le Breton out of himself for a short time entirely—that’ll give him occupation of a kind he thinks right, and at the same time put money in his pocket. Now, he’s always talking about this socialistic business of his; but why doesn’t he tell us what he has actually seen about the life and habits of the really poor? Mrs. Le Breton tells me he knows the East End well: why doesn’t he sit down and give us a good rattling, rousing, frightening description of all that’s in it? Of course, I don’t care twopence about the poor myself—not in the lump, I mean—I beg your pardon, Mr. Berkeley,’—for the Progenitor gave a start of surprise and astonishment—‘you know we women are nothing if not concrete; we never care for anything in the abstract, Mr. Le Breton used to tell me; we want the particular case brought home to our sympathies before we can interest ourselves about it. After all, even YOU who are men don’t feel very much for all the miserable wretched people there are in China, you know; they’re too far away for even you to bother your heads about. But I DO care about the Le Bretons, and it strikes me we might help them a little in this way. I know a lot of artists, Mr. Berkeley; and I know one who I think would just do for the very work I want to set him. (He’s poor, too, by the way, and I don’t mind giving him a lift at the same time and killing two birds with one stone.) Very well, then; I go to him, and say, “Mr. Verney,” I say,—there now, I didn’t mean to tell you his name, but no matter; “Mr. Verney,” I shall say, “a friend of mine in the writing line is going to pay some visits to the very poor quarters in the East End, and write about it, which will make a great noise in the world as sure as midday.”’
‘But how do you know it will?’ asked the Progenitor, simply.
Hilda turned round upon him with an unfeigned look of startled astonishment. ‘How do I know it will?’ she said confidently. ‘Why, because I mean it to, Mr. Berkeley. Because I say it shall. Because I choose to make it. Two Cabinet ministers shall quote it in the House, and a duke shall write letters to the “Times” denouncing it as an intensely wicked and revolutionary publication. If I choose to float it, I WILL float it.—Well, “Mr. Verney,” I say for example, “will you undertake to accompany him and make sketches? It’ll be unpleasant work, I know, because I’ve been there myself to see, and the places don’t smell nice at all—worse than Genoa or the old town at Nice even, I can tell you: but it’ll make you a name; and in any case the publisher who’s getting it up’ll pay you well for it.” Of course, Mr. Verney says “Yes.” Then we go on to Mr. Le Breton and say, “A young artist of my acquaintance is making a pilgrimage into the East End to see for himself how the people live, and to make pictures of them to stir up the sluggish consciences of the lazy aristocrats”—that’s me and my people, of course: that’ll be the way to work it. Play upon Mr. Le Breton’s tenderest feelings. Make him feel he’s fighting for the Cause; and he’ll be ready to throw himself, heart and soul, into the spirit of the project. I don’t care twopence about the Cause myself, of course, so that’s flat, and I don’t pretend to, either, Mr. Berkeley; but I care a great deal for the misery of that poor, dear, pale little woman, sitting there with me this morning and regularly sobbing her heart out; and if I can do anything to help her, why, I shall be only too delighted.’
‘Le Breton’s a well-meaning young fellow, certainly,’ the Progenitor murmured gently in a voice of graceful concession; ‘and I believe his heart’s really in the Cause, as you call it; but you know, my dear, he’s very far from being sound in his economical views as to the relations of capital and labour. Far from sound, as John Stuart Mill would have judged the question, I can solemnly assure you.’
‘Very well,’ Hilda went on, almost without noticing the interruption. ‘We shall say to him, or rather we shall get our publisher to say to him, that as he’s interested in the matter, and knows the East End well, he has been selected—shall we put it on somebody’s recommendation?—to accompany the artist, and to supply the reading matter, the letter-press I think you call it; in fact, to write up to our illustrator’s pictures; and that he is to be decently paid for his trouble. He must do something graphic, something stirring, something to wake up lazy people in the West End to a passing sense of what he calls their responsibilities. That’ll seem like real work to Mr. Le Breton. It’ll put new heart into him; he’ll take up the matter vigorously; he’ll do it well; he’ll write a splendid book; and I shall guarantee its making a stir in the world this very dull season. What’s the use of knowing half the odiously commonplace bores and prigs in all London if you can’t float a single little heterodox pamphlet for a particular purpose? What do you think of it, Mr. Berkeley?’
Arthur sighed again. ‘It seems to me, Lady Hilda,’ he said, regretfully, ‘a very slender straw indeed to hang Ernest Le Breton’s life on: but any straw is better than nothing to a drowning man. And you have so much faith yourself, and mean to fling yourself into it so earnestly, that I shouldn’t be wholly surprised if you were somehow to pull it through. If you do, Lady Hilda—if you manage to save these two poor young people from the verge of starvation—you’ll have done a very great good work in your day, and you’ll have made me personally eternally your debtor.’
Was it mere fancy, the Progenitor wondered, or did Hilda cast her eyes down a little and half blush as she answered in a lower and more tremulous tone than usual, ‘I hope I shall, Mr. Berkeley; for their sakes, I hope I shall.’ The Progenitor didn’t feel quite certain about it, but somehow, more than once that evening, as he sat reading Spencer’s ‘Data of Ethics’ in his easy-chair, a curious vision of Lady Hilda as a future daughter-in-law floated vaguely with singular persistence before the old shoemaker’s bewildered eyes. ‘It’d be a shocking falling away on Artie’s part from his father’s principles,’ he muttered inarticulately to himself several times over; ‘and yet, on the other hand, I can’t deny that this bit of a Tregellis girl is really a very tidy, good-looking, respectable, well-meaning, intelligent, and appreciative sort of a young woman, who’d, maybe, make Artie as good a wife as anybody else he’d be likely to pitch on.’