ATTACK AND REPULSE
I
The entering guests were Edwin's younger sister Clara with her husband
Albert Benbow, his elder sister Maggie, Auntie Hamps, and Mr. Peartree.
They had arrived together, and rather unfashionably soon after the hour
named in the invitation, because the Benbows had called at Auntie
Hamps's on the way up, and the Benbows were always early, both in
arriving and in departing, "on account of the children." They called
themselves "early birds." Whenever they were out of the nest in the
evening they called themselves early birds. They used the comparison
hundreds, thousands, of times, and never tired of it; indeed each time
they were convinced that they had invented it freshly for the occasion.
Said Auntie Hamps, magnificent in jetty black, handsome, and above all
imposing:
"I knew you would be delighted to meet Mr. Peartree again, Edwin. He is
staying the night at my house--I can be so much more hospitable now
Maggie is with me--and I insisted he should come up with us. But it
needed no insisting."
The old erect lady looked from Mr. Peartree with pride towards her
nephew.
Mr. Peartree was a medium-sized man of fifty, with greying sandy hair.
Twenty years before, he had been second minister in the Bursley Circuit
of the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion. He was now Superintendent Minister
in a Cheshire circuit. The unchangeable canons of Wesleyanism permit
its ministers to marry, and celibacy is even discouraged, for the reason
that wives and daughters are expected to toil in the cause, and their
labour costs the circuit not a halfpenny. But the canons forbid
ministers to take root and found a home. Eleven times in thirty years
Mr. Peartree had been forced to migrate to a strange circuit and to
adapt his much-travelled furniture and family to a house which he had
not chosen, and which his wife generally did not like. During part of
the period he had secretly resented the autocracy of Superintendent
Ministers, and during the remainder he had learnt that Superintendent
Ministers are not absolute autocrats.
He was neither overworked nor underpaid. He belonged to the small
tradesman class, and, keeping a shop in St. Luke's Square, he might well
have worked harder for less money than he now earned. His vocation,
however, in addition to its desolating nomadic quality, had other grave
drawbacks. It gave him contact with a vast number of human beings, but
the abnormal proportion among them of visionaries, bigots, hypocrites,
and petty office-seekers falsified his general estimate of humanity.
Again, the canons rigorously forbade him to think freely for himself on
the subjects which in theory most interested him; with the result that
he had remained extremely ignorant through the very fear of knowledge,
that he was a warm enemy of freedom, and that he habitually carried
intellectual dishonesty to the verge of cynicism. Thirdly, he was
obliged always to be diplomatic (except of course with his family), and
nature had not meant him for the diplomatic career. He was so sick of
being all things to all men that he even dreamed diplomatic dreams as a
galley-slave will dream of the oar; and so little gifted for the role
that he wore insignificant tight turned-down collars, never having
perceived the immense moral advantage conferred on the diplomatist by a
high, loose, wide-rolling collar. Also he was sick of captivity, and
this in no wise lessened his objection to freedom. He had lost all
youthful enthusiasm, and was in fact equally bored with earth and with
heaven.
Nevertheless, he had authority and security. He was accustomed to the
public gaze and to the forms of deference. He knew that he was as
secure as a judge,--and far more secure than a cabinet-minister.
Nothing but the inconceivable collapse of a powerful and wealthy sect
could affect his position or his livelihood to the very end of life.
Hence, beneath his weariness and his professional attitudinarianism
there was a hint of the devil-may-care that had its piquancy. He could
foresee with indifference even the distant but approaching day when he
would have to rise in the pulpit and assert that the literal inspiration
of the Scriptures was not and never had been an essential article of
Wesleyan faith.
Edwin blenched at the apparition of Mr. Peartree. That even Auntie Hamps
should dare uninvited to bring a Wesleyan Minister to the party was
startling; but that the minister should be Mr. Peartree staggered him.
For twenty years and more Edwin had secretly, and sometimes in public,
borne a tremendous grudge against Mr. Peartree. He had execrated,
anathematised, and utterly excommunicated Mr. Peartree, and had extended
the fearful curse to his family, all his ancestors, and all his
descendants. When Mr. Peartree was young and fervent in the service of
heaven he had had the monstrous idea of instituting a Saturday Afternoon
Bible Class for schoolboys. Abetted by parents weak-minded and cruel,
he had caught and horribly tortured some score of miserable victims, of
whom Edwin was one. The bitter memory of those weekly half-holidays
thieved from him and made desolate by a sanctimonious crank had never
softened, nor had Edwin ever forgiven Mr. Peartree.
It was at the sessions of the Bible Class that Edwin, while silently
perfecting himself in the art of profanity and blasphemy, had in secret
fury envenomed his instinctive mild objection to the dogma, the ritual,
and the spirit of conventional Christianity, especially as exemplified
in Wesleyan Methodism. He had left Mr. Peartree's Bible Class a
convinced anti-religionist, a hater and despiser of all that the
Wesleyan Chapel and Mr. Peartree stood for. He deliberately was not
impartial, and he took a horrid pleasure in being unfair. He knew well
that Methodism had produced many fine characters, and played a part in
the moral development of the race; but he would not listen to his own
knowledge. Nothing could extenuate, for him, the noxiousness of
Methodism. On the other hand he was full of glee if he could add
anything to the indictment against it and Christianity. Huxley's
controversial victories over Gladstone were then occurring in the
monthly press, and he acclaimed them with enormous gusto. When he first
read that the Virgin Birth was a feature of sundry creeds more ancient
than Christianity, his private satisfaction was intense and lasted
acutely for days. When he heard that Methodism had difficulty in
maintaining its supply of adequately equipped ministers, he rejoiced
with virulence. His hostility was the more significant in that it was
concealed--embedded like a foreign substance in the rather suave
gentleness of his nature. At intervals--increasingly frequent, it is
true--he would carry it into the chapel itself; for through mingled
cowardice and sharp prudence, he had not formally left the Connexion.
To compensate himself for such bowings-down he would now and then
assert, judicially to a reliable male friend, or with ferocious contempt
to a scandalised defenceless sister, that, despite all parsons, religion
was not a necessity of the human soul, and that he personally had never
felt the need of it and never would. In which assertion he was
profoundly sincere.
And yet throughout he had always thought of himself as a rebel against
authority; and--such is the mysterious intimidating prestige of the
past--he was outwardly an apologetic rebel. Neither his intellectual
pride nor his cold sustained resentment, nor his axiomatic conviction of
the crude and total falseness of Christian theology, nor all three
together, had ever sufficed to rid him of the self-excusing air. When
Auntie Hamps spoke with careful reverence of "the Super" (short for
"superintendent minister"), the word had never in thirty years quite
failed to inspire in him some of the awe with which he had heard it as
an infant. Just as a policeman was not an employee but a _policeman_,
so a minister was not a person of the trading-class who happened to have
been through a certain educational establishment, subscribed to certain
beliefs, submitted to certain ceremonies and adopted a certain
costume,--but a _minister_, a being inexplicably endowed with
authority,--in fact a sort of arch-policeman. And thus, while detesting
and despising him, Edwin had never thought of Abel Peartree as merely a
man.
Now, in the gas-lit bustle of the hall, after an interval of about
twenty years, he beheld again his enemy, his bugbear, his loathed
oppressor, the living symbol of all that his soul condemned.
Said Mrs. Hamps:
"I reminded Mr. Peartree that you used to attend his Bible-class, Edwin.
Do you remember? I hope you do."
"Oh, yes!" said Edwin, with a slight nervous laugh, blushing. His eye
caught Clara's, but there was no sign whatever of the old malicious grin
on her maternal face. Nor did Maggie's show a tremor. And, of course,
the majestic duplicity of Auntie Hamps did not quiver under the strain.
So that the Rev. Mr. Peartree, protesting honestly that he should have
recognised his old pupil Mr. Clayhanger anywhere, never suspected the
terrific drama of the moment.
And the next moment there was no drama.... Teacher and pupil shook
hands. The recognition was mutual. To Edwin, Mr. Peartree, save for
the greying of his hair, had not changed. His voice, his form, his
gestures, were absolutely the same. Only, instead of being Mr.
Peartree, he was a man like another man--a commonplace, hard-featured,
weary man; a spare little man, with a greenish-black coat and
bluish-white low collar; a perfunctory, listless man with an unpleasant
voice; a man with the social code of the Benbows and Auntie Hamps; a man
the lines of whose face disclosed a narrow and self-satisfied ignorance;
a man whose destiny had forbidden him ever to be natural; the usual
snobbish man, who had heard of the importance and the success and the
wealth of Edwin Clayhanger and who kowtowed thereto and was naively
impressed thereby, and proud that Edwin Clayhanger had once been his
pupil; and withal an average decent fellow.
Edwin rather liked the casual look in Mr. Peartree's eyes that said: "My
being here is part of my job. I'm indifferent. I do what I have to do,
and I really don't care. I have paid tens of thousands of calls and I
shall pay tens of thousands more. If I am bored I am paid to be bored,
and I repeat I really don't care." This was the human side of Mr.
Peartree showing itself. It endeared him to Edwin.
"Not a bad sort of cuss, after all!" thought Edwin.
All the carefully tended rage and animosity of twenty years evaporated
out of his heart and was gone. He did not forgive Mr. Peartree, because
there was no Mr. Peartree--there was only this man. And there was no
Wesleyan chapel either, but only an ugly forlorn three-quarters-empty
building at the top of Duck Bank. And Edwin was no longer an apologetic
rebel, nor even any kind of a rebel. It occurred to nobody, not even to
the mighty Edwin, that in those few seconds the history of dogmatic
religion had passed definitely out of one stage into another.
Abel Peartree nonchalantly, and with a practised aplomb which was not
disturbed even by the vision of George's heroic stallion, said the
proper things to Edwin and Hilda; and it became known, somehow, that the
parson was re-visiting Bursley in order to deliver his well-known
lecture entitled "The Mantle and Mission of Elijah,"--the sole lecture
of his repertoire, but it had served to raise him ever so slightly out
of the ruck of 'Supers.' Hilda patronised him. Against the rich
background of her home, she assumed the pose of the grand lady. Abel
Peartree seemed to like the pose, and grew momentarily vivacious in
knightly response. "And why not?" said Edwin to himself, justifying his
wife after being a little critical of her curtness.
Then, when the conversation fell, Auntie Hamps discreetly suggested that
she and the girls should "go upstairs." The negligent Hilda had
inexcusably forgotten in her nervous excitement that on these occasions
arriving ladies should be at once escorted to the specially-titivated
best bedroom, there to lay their things on the best counterpane. She
perhaps ought to have atoned for her negligence by herself leading
Auntie Hamps to the bedroom. But instead she deputed Ada. "And why
not?" said Edwin to himself again. As the ladies mounted Mr. Peartree
laughed genuinely at one of Albert Benbow's characteristic pleasantries,
which always engloomed Edwin. "Kindred spirits, those two!" thought the
superior sardonic Edwin, and privately raised his eyebrows to his wife,
who answered the signal.
II
Somewhat later, various other guests having come and distributed
themselves over the reception-rooms, the chandeliers glinted down their
rays upon light summer frocks and some jewellery and coats of black and
dark grey and blue; and the best counterpanes in the best bedroom were
completely hidden by mantles and cloaks, and the hatstand in the hall
heavily clustered with hats and caps. The reception was in being, and
the interior full of animation. Edwin, watchful and hospitably anxious,
wandered out of the drawing-room into the hall. The door of the
breakfast-room was ajar, and he could hear Clara's voice behind it. He
knew that the Benbows and Maggie and Auntie Hamps were all in the
breakfast-room, and he blamed chiefly Clara for this provincial
clannishness, which was so characteristic of her. Surely Auntie Hamps
at any rate ought to have realised that the duty of members of the
family was to spread themselves among the other guests!
He listened.
"No," Clara was saying, "we don't know what's happened to him since he
came out of prison. He got two years." She was speaking in what Edwin
called her 'scandal' tones, low, clipped, intimate, eager, blissful.
And then Albert Benbow's voice:
"He's had the good sense not to bother us."
Edwin, while resenting the conversation, and the Benbows' use of "we"
and "us" in a matter which did not concern them, was grimly comforted by
the thought of their ignorance of a detail which would have interested
them passionately. None but Hilda and himself knew that the bigamist
was at that moment in prison again for another and a later offence.
Everything had been told but that.
"Of course," said Clara, "they needn't have said anything about the
bigamy at all, and nobody outside the family need have known that poor
Hilda was not just an ordinary widow. But we all thought--"
"I don't know so much about that, Clary," Albert Benbow interrupted his
wife; "you mustn't forget his real wife came to Turnhill to make
enquiries. That started a hare."
"Well, you know what I mean," said Clara vaguely.
Mr. Peartree's voice came in:
"But surely the case was in the papers?"
"I expect it was in the Sussex papers," Albert replied. "You see, they
went through the ceremony of marriage at Lewes. But it never got into
the local rag, because he got married in his real name--Cannon wasn't
his real name; and he'd no address in the Five Towns, then. He was just
a boarding-house keeper at Brighton. It was a miracle it didn't get
into the _Signal_, if you ask me; but it didn't. I happen to know"--his
voice grew important--"that the _Signal_ people have an arrangement with
the Press Association for a full report of all matrimonial cases that
'ud be likely to interest the district. However, the Press Association
weren't quite on the spot that time. And it's not surprising they
weren't, either."
Clara resumed:
"No. It never came out. Still, as I say, we all thought it best not to
conceal anything. Albert strongly advised Edwin not to attempt any such
thing." ("What awful rot!" thought Edwin.) "So we just mentioned it
quietly like to a few friends. After all, poor Hilda was perfectly
innocent. Of course she felt her position keenly when she came to live
here after the wedding." ("Did she indeed!" thought Edwin.) "Edwin
would have the wedding in London. We did so feel for her." ("Did you
indeed!" thought Edwin.) "She wouldn't have an At Home. I knew it was
a mistake not to. We all knew. But no, _she would not_. Folks began to
talk. They thought it strange she didn't have an At Home like other
folks. Many young married women have two At Homes nowadays. So in the
end she was persuaded. She fixed it for August because she thought so
many people would be away at the seaside. But they aren't--at least not
so many as you'd think. Albert says it's owing to the General Election
upset. And she wouldn't have it in the afternoon like other folks.
Mrs. Edwin isn't like other folks, and you can't alter her."
"What's the matter with the evening for an At Home, anyhow?" asked
Benbow the breezy and consciously broad-minded.
"Oh, of course, _I_ quite agree. I like it. But folks are so funny."
After a momentary pause, Mr. Peartree said uncertainly:
"And there's a little boy?"
Said Clara:
"Yes, the one you've seen."
Said Auntie Hamps:
"Poor little thing! I do feel so sorry for him--when he grows up--"
"You needn't, Auntie," said Maggie curtly, expressing her attitude to
George in that mild curtness.
"Of course," said Clara quickly. "We never let it make any difference.
In fact our Bert and he are rather friends, aren't they, Albert?"
At this moment George himself opened the door of the dining-room,
letting out a faint buzz of talk and clink of vessels. His mouth was
not empty.
Precipitately Edwin plunged into the breakfast-room.
"Hello! You people!" he murmured. "Well, Mr. Peartree."
There they were--all of them, including the parson--grouped together,
lusciously bathing in the fluid of scandal.
Clara turned, and without the least constraint said sweetly:
"Oh, Edwin! There you are! I was just telling Mr. Peartree about you
and Hilda, you know. We thought it would be better."
"You see," said Auntie Hamps impressively, "Mr. Peartree will be about
the town to-morrow, and a word from him--"
Mr. Peartree tried unsuccessfully to look as if he was nobody in
particular.
"That's all right," said Edwin. "Perhaps the door might as well be
shut." He thought, as many a man has thought: "My relations take the
cake!"
Clara occupied the only easy chair in the room. Mrs. Hamps and the
parson were seated. Maggie stood. Albert Benbow, ever uxorious, was
perched sideways on the arm of his wife's chair. Clara, centre of the
conclave and of all conclaves in which she took part, was the mother of
five children,--and nearing thirty-five years of age. Maternity had
ruined her once slim figure, but neither she nor Albert seemed to mind
that,--they seemed rather to be proud of her unshapeliness. Her face was
unspoiled. She was pretty and had a marvellously fair complexion. In
her face Edwin could still always plainly see the pert, charming,
malicious girl of fourteen who loathed Auntie Hamps and was rude to her
behind her back. But Clara and Auntie Hamps were fast friends nowadays.
Clara's brood had united them. They thought alike on all topics. Clara
had accepted Auntie Hamps's code practically entire; but on the other
hand she had dominated Auntie Hamps. The respect which Auntie Hamps
showed for Clara and for Edwin, and in a slightly less degree for
Maggie, was a strange phenomenon in the old age of that grandiose and
vivacious pillar of Wesleyanism and the conventions.
Edwin did not like Clara; he objected to her domesticity, her
motherliness, her luxuriant fruitfulness, the intonations of her voice,
her intense self-satisfaction and her remarkable duplicity; and perhaps
more than anything to her smug provinciality. He did not positively
dislike his brother-in-law, but he objected to him for his uxoriousness,
his cheerful assurance of Clara's perfection, his contented and
conceited ignorance of all intellectual matters, his incorrigible
vulgarity of a small manufacturer who displays everywhere the stigmata
of petty commerce, and his ingenuous love of office. As for Maggie, the
plump spinster of forty, Edwin respected her when he thought of her, but
reproached her for social gawkiness and taciturnity. As for Auntie
Hamps, he could not respect, but he was forced to admire, her gorgeous
and sustained hypocrisy, in which no flaw had ever been found, and which
victimised even herself; he was always invigorated by her ageless energy
and the sight of her handsome, erect, valiant figure.
Edwin's absence had stopped the natural free course of conversation.
But there were at least three people in the room whom nothing could
abash: Mrs. Hamps, Clara, and Mr. Peartree.
Mr. Peartree, sitting up with his hands on his baggy knees, said:
"Everything seems to have turned out very well in the end, Mr.
Clayhanger--very well, indeed." His features showed less of the tedium
of life.
"Eh, yes! Eh, yes!" breathed Auntie Hamps in ecstasy.
Edwin, diffident and ill-pleased, was about to suggest that the family
might advantageously separate, when George came after him into the room.
"Oh!" cried George.
"Well, little jockey!" Clara began instantly to him with an exaggerated
sweetness that Edwin thought must nauseate the child, "would you like
Bert to come up and play with you one of these afternoons?"
George stared at her, and slowly flushed.
"Yes," said George. "Only--"
"Only what?"
"Supposing I was doing something else when he came?"
Without waiting for possible developments George turned to leave the
room again.
"You're a caution, you are!" said Albert Benbow; and to the adults:
"Hates to be disturbed, I suppose."
"That's it," said Edwin responsively, as brother-in-law to
brother-in-law. But he felt that he, with a few months' experience of
another's child, appreciated the exquisite strange sensibility of
children infinitely better than Albert were he fifty times a father.
"What is a caution, Uncle Albert?" asked George, peeping back from the
door.
Auntie Hamps good-humouredly warned the child of the danger of being
impertinent to his elders:
"George! George!"
"A caution is a caution to snakes," said Albert. "Shoo!" Making a noise
like a rocket, he feinted to pursue the boy with violence.
Mr. Peartree laughed rather loudly, and rather like a human being, at
the word "snakes." Albert Benbow's flashes of humour, indeed, seemed to
surprise him, if only for an instant, out of his attitudinarianism.
Clara smiled, flattered by the power of her husband to reveal the
humanity of the parson.
"Albert's so good with children," she said. "He always knows
exactly..." She stopped, leaving what he knew exactly to the listeners'
imagination.
Uncle Albert and George could be heard scuffling in the hall.
Auntie Hamps rose with a gentle sigh, saying:
"I suppose we ought to join the others."
Her social sense, which was pretty well developed, had at last
prevailed.
The sisters Maggie and Clara, one in light and the other in dark green,
walked out of the room. Maggie's face had already stiffened into mute
constraint, and Clara's into self-importance, at the prospect of meeting
the general company.
III
Auntie Hamps held back, and Edwin at once perceived from the
conspiratorial glance in her splendid eyes that in suggesting a move she
had intended to deceive her fellow-conspirator in life, Clara. But
Auntie Hamps could not live without chicane. And she was happiest when
she had superimposed chicane upon chicane in complex folds.
She put a ringed hand softly but arrestingly upon Edwin's arm, and
pushed the door to. Alone with her and the parson, Edwin felt himself
to be at bay, and he drew back before an unknown menace.
"Edwin, dear," said she, "Mr. Peartree has something to suggest to you.
I was going to say 'a favour to ask,' but I won't put it like that. I'm
sure my nephew will look upon it as a privilege. You know how much Mr.
Peartree has at heart the District Additional Chapels Fund--"
Edwin did not know how much; but he had heard of the Macclesfield
District Additional Chapels Fund, Bursley being one of the circuits in
the Macclesfield District. Wesleyanism finding itself confronted with
lessening congregations and with a shortage of ministers, the
Macclesfield District had determined to prove that Wesleyanism was
nevertheless spiritually vigorous by the odd method of building more
chapels. Mr. Peartree, inventor of Saturday afternoon Bible-Classes for
schoolboys, was one of the originators of the bricky scheme, and in fact
his lecture upon the "Mantle and Mission of Elijah" was to be in aid of
it. The next instant Mr. Peartree had invited Edwin to act as District
Treasurer of the Fund, the previous treasurer having died.
More chicane! The parson's visit, then, was not a mere friendly call,
inspired by the moment. It was part of a scheme. It had been planned
against him. Did they (he seemed to be asking himself) think him so
ingenuous, so simple, as not to see through their dodge? If not, then
why the preliminary pretences? He did not really ask himself these
questions, for the reason that he knew the answers to them. When a
piece of chicane had succeeded Auntie Hamps forgot it, and expected
others to forget it,--or at any rate she dared, by her magnificent
front, anybody on earth to remind her of it. She was quite indifferent
whether Edwin saw through her dodge or not.
"You're so good at business," said she.
Ah! She would insist on the business side of the matter, affecting to
ignore the immense moral significance which would be attached to Edwin's
acceptance of the office! Were he to yield, the triumph for Methodism
would ring through the town. He read all her thoughts. Nothing could
break down her magnificent front. She had cornered him by a device; she
had him at bay; and she counted on his weak good-nature, on his
easy-going cowardice, for a victory.
Mr. Peartree talked. Mr. Peartree expressed his certitude that Edwin
was "with them at heart," and his absolute reliance upon Edwin's sense
of the responsibilities of a man in his, Edwin's, position. Auntie
Hamps recalled with fervour Edwin's early activities in Methodism--the
Young Men's Debating Society, for example, which met at six o'clock on
frosty winter mornings for the proving of the faith by dialectics.
And Edwin faltered in his speech.
"You ought to get Albert," he feebly suggested.
"Oh, no!" said Auntie. "Albert is grand in his own line. But for this,
_we want a man like you_."
It was a master-stroke. Edwin had the illusion of trembling, and yet he
knew that he did not tremble, even inwardly. He seemed to see the
forces of evolution and the forces of reaction ranged against each other
in a supreme crisis. He seemed to see the alternative of two futures
for himself--and in one he would be a humiliated and bored slave, and in
the other a fine, reckless ensign of freedom. He seemed to be doubtful
of his own courage. But at the bottom of his soul he was not doubtful.
He remembered all the frightful and degrading ennui which when he was
young he had suffered as a martyr to Wesleyanism and dogma, all the
sinister deceptions which he had had to practise and which had been
practised upon him. He remembered his almost life-long intense hatred
of Mr. Peartree. And he might have clenched his hands bitterly and said
with homicidal animosity: "_Now_ I will pay you out! And I will tell
you the truth! And I will wither you up and incinerate you, and be
revenged for everything in one single sentence!" But he felt no
bitterness, and his animosity was dead. At the bottom of his soul there
was nothing but a bland indifference that did not even scorn.
"No," he said quietly. "I shan't be your treasurer. You must ask
somebody else."
A vast satisfaction filled him. The refusal was so easy, the opposing
forces so negligible.
Auntie Hamps and Mr. Peartree knew nothing of the peculiar phenomena
induced in Edwin's mind by the first sight of the legendary Abel
Peartree after twenty years. But Auntie Hamps, though puzzled for an
explanation, comprehended that she was decisively beaten. The blow was
hard. Nevertheless she did not wince. The superb pretence must be kept
up, and she kept it up. She smiled and, tossing her curls, checked
Edwin with cheerful, indomitable rapidity.
"Now, now! Don't decide at once. Think it over very carefully, and we
shall ask you again. Mr. Peartree will write to you. I feel sure..."
Appearances were preserved.
The colloquy was interrupted by Hilda, who came in excited, gay, with
sparkling eyes, humming an air. She had protested vehemently against an
At Home. She had said again and again that the idea of an At Home was
abhorrent to her, and that she hated all such wholesale formal
hospitalities and could not bear "people." And yet now she was
enchanted with her situation as hostess--delighted with herself and her
rich dress, almost ecstatically aware of her own attractiveness and
domination. The sight of her gave pleasure and communicated zest.
Mature, she was yet only beginning life. And as she glanced with secret
condescension at the listless Mr. Peartree she seemed to say: "What is
all this talk of heaven and hell? I am in love with life and the
senses, and everything is lawful to me, and I am above you." And even
Auntie Hamps, though one of the most self-sufficient creatures that ever
lived, envied in her glorious decay the young maturity of sensuous
Hilda.
"Well," said Hilda. "What's going on _here_? They're all gone mad about
missing words in the drawing-room."
She smiled splendidly at Edwin, whose pride in her thrilled him. Her
superiority to other women was patent. She made other women seem
negative. In fact, she was a tingling woman before she was anything
else--that was it! He compared her with Clara, who was now nothing but
a mother, and to Maggie, who had never been anything at all.
Mr. Peartree made the mistake of telling her the subject of the
conversation. She did not wait to hear what Edwin's answer had been.
She said curtly, and with finality:
"Oh, no! I won't have it."
Edwin did not quite like this. The matter concerned him alone, and he
was an absolutely free agent. She ought to have phrased her objection
differently. For example, she might have said: "I hope he has refused."
Still, his annoyance was infinitesimal.
"The poor boy works quite hard enough as it is," she added, with
delicious caressing intonation of the first words.
He liked that. But she was confusing the issue. She always would
confuse the issue. It was not because the office would involve extra
work for him that he had declined the invitation, as she well knew.
Of course Auntie Hamps said in a flash:
"If it means overwork for him I shouldn't dream--" She was putting the
safety of appearances beyond doubt.
"By the way, Auntie," Hilda continued. "What's the trouble about the
pew down at chapel? Both Clara and Maggie have mentioned it."
"Trouble, my dear?" exclaimed Auntie Hamps, justifiably shocked that
Hilda should employ such a word in the presence of Mr. Peartree. But
Hilda was apt to be headlong.
To the pew originally taken by Edwin's father, and since his death
standing in Edwin's name, Clara had brought her husband; and although it
was a long pew, the fruits of the marriage had gradually filled it, so
that if Edwin chanced to go to chapel there was not too much room for
him in the pew, which presented the appearance of a second-class railway
carriage crowded with season-ticket holders. Albert Benbow had
suggested that Edwin should yield up the pew to the Benbows, and take a
smaller pew for himself and Hilda and George. But the women had
expressed fear lest Edwin "might not like" this break in a historic
tradition, and Albert Benbow had been forbidden to put forward the
suggestion until the diplomatic sex had examined the ground.
"We shall be only too pleased for Albert to take over the pew," said
Hilda.
"But have you chosen another pew?" Mrs. Hamps looked at Edwin.
"Oh, no!" said Hilda lightly.
"But--"
"Now, Auntie," the tingling woman warned Auntie Hamps as one powerful
individuality may warn another, "don't worry about us. You know we're
not great chapel-goers."
She spoke the astounding words gaily, but firmly. She could be firm, and
even harsh, in her triumphant happiness. Edwin knew that she detested
Auntie Hamps. Auntie Hamps no doubt also knew it. In their mutual
smilings, so affable, so hearty, so appreciative, apparently so
impulsive, the hostility between them gleamed mysteriously like
lightning in sunlight.
"Mrs. Edwin's family were Church of England," said Auntie Hamps, in the
direction of Mr. Peartree.
"Nor great church-goers, either," Hilda finished cheerfully.
No woman had ever made such outrageous remarks in the Five Towns before.
A quarter of a century ago a man might have said as much, without
suffering in esteem--might indeed have earned a certain intellectual
prestige by the declaration; but it was otherwise with a woman. Both
Mrs. Hamps and the minister thought that Hilda was not going the right
way to live down her dubious past. Even Edwin in his pride was
flurried. Great matters, however, had been accomplished. Not only had
the attack of Auntie Hamps and Mr. Peartree been defeated, but the
defence had become an onslaught. Not only was he not the treasurer of
the District Additional Chapels Fund, but he had practically ceased to
be a member of the congregation. He was free with a freedom which he
had never had the audacity to hope for. It was incredible! Yet there
it was! A word said, bravely, in a particular tone,--and a new epoch
was begun. The pity was that he had not done it all himself. Hilda's
courage had surpassed his own. Women were astounding. They were
disconcerting too. His manly independence was ever so little wounded by
Hilda's boldness in initiative on their joint behalf.
"Do come and take something, Auntie," said Hilda, with the most winning,
the most loving inflection.
Auntie Hamps passed out.
Hilda turned back into the room: "Do go with Auntie, Mr. Peartree. I
must just--" She affected to search for something on the mantelpiece.
Mr. Peartree passed out. He was unmoved. He did not care in his heart.
And as Edwin caught his indifferent eye, with that "it's-all-one-to-me"
glint in it, his soul warmed again slightly to Mr. Peartree. And
further, Mr. Peartree's aloof unworldliness, his personal practical
unconcern with money, feasting, ambition, and all the grosser forms of
self-satisfaction, made Edwin feel somewhat a sensual average man and
accordingly humiliated him.
As soon as, almost before, Mr. Peartree was beyond the door, Hilda
leaped at Edwin, and kissed him violently. The door was not closed. He
could hear the varied hum of the party.
"I had to kiss you while it's all going on," she whispered. Ardent
vitality shimmered in her eyes.