TERTIUS INGPEN
I
Tertius Ingpen was the new District Factory Inspector, a man of about
thirty-five, neither fair nor dark, neither tall nor short. He was a
native of the district, having been born somewhere in the aristocratic
regions between Knype and the lordly village of Sneyd, but what first
struck the local observer in him was that his speech had none of the
local accent. In the pursuit of his vocation he had lived in other
places than the Five Towns. For example, in London, where he had become
acquainted with Edwin's friend, Charlie Orgreave, the doctor. When
Ingpen received a goodish appointment amid the industrial horrors of his
birth, Charlie Orgreave recommended him to Edwin, and Edwin and Ingpen
had met once, under arrangement made by Johnnie Orgreave. It was
Johnnie who had impulsively suggested in Ingpen's presence that Ingpen
should be invited to the At Home. Edwin, rather intimidated by Ingpen's
other-worldliness, had said: "You'll run up against a mixed lot." But
Ingpen, though sternly critical of local phenomena, seemed to be ready
to meet social adventures in a broad and even eager spirit of curiosity
concerning mankind. He was not uncomely, and he possessed a short silky
beard of which secretly he was not less proud than of his striking name.
He wore a neat blue suit, with the trousers fastened tightly round the
ankles for bicycle-riding, and thick kid gloves. He took off one glove
to shake hands, and then, having leisurely removed the other, and
talking all the time, he bent down with care and loosed his trousers and
shook them into shape.
"Now what about this jigger?" he asked, while still bending. "I don't
care to leave it anywhere. It's a good jigger."
As it leaned on one pedal against the kerb of Hulton Street, the
strange-looking jigger appeared to be at any rate a very dirty jigger.
Fastened under the saddle were a roll of paper and a mackintosh.
"There are one or two ordinaries knocking about the place," said Edwin,
"but we haven't got a proper bicycle-house. I'll find a place for it
somewhere in the garden." He lifted the front wheel.
"Don't trouble, please. I'll take it," said Ingpen, and before picking
up the machine blew out the lamp, whose extinction left a great darkness
down the slope of Hulton Street.
"You've got a very nice place here. Too central for me, of course!"
Ingpen began, after they had insinuated the bicycle through narrow paths
to the back of the house.
Edwin was leading him along the side of the lawn furthest away from
Trafalgar Road. Certainly the property had the air of being a very nice
place. The garden with its screen of high rustling trees seemed
spacious and mysterious in the gloom, and the lighted windows of the
house produced an effect of much richness--especially the half-open
window of the drawing-room. Fearns and Cheswardine were standing in
front of it chatting (doubtless of affairs) with that important adult
air which Edwin himself could never successfully imitate. Behind them
were bright women, and the brilliant chandelier. The piano faintly
sounded. Edwin was proud of his very nice place. "How strange!" he
thought. "This is all mine! These are my guests! And my wife is
mine!"
"Well, you see," he answered Ingpen's criticism with false humility.
"I've no choice. I've got to be central."
Ingpen answered pleasantly.
"I take your word for it; but I don't see."
The bicycle was carefully bestowed by its groping owner in a small
rustic arbour which, situated almost under the wall that divided the
Clayhanger property from the first cottage in Hulton Street, was hidden
from the house by a clump of bushes.
In the dark privacy of this shelter Tertius Ingpen said in a reflective
tone:
"I understand that you haven't been married long, and that this is a
sort of function to inform the world officially that you're no longer
what you were?"
"It's something like that?" Edwin admitted with a laugh.
He liked the quiet intimacy of Ingpen's voice, whose delicate
inflections indicated highly cultivated sensibilities. And he thought:
"I believe I shall be friends with this chap." And was glad, and faith
in Ingpen was planted in his heart.
"Well," Ingpen continued, "I wish you happiness. It may seem a strange
thing to say to a man in your position, but my opinion is that the
proper place for women is--behind the veil. Only my personal opinion,
of course! But I'm entitled to hold it, and therefore to express it."
Whatever his matter, his manner was faultless.
"Yes?" Edwin murmured awkwardly. What on earth did Ingpen expect by way
of reply to such a proposition? Surely Ingpen should have known that he
was putting his host in a disagreeable difficulty. His new-born faith
in Ingpen felt the harsh wind of experience and shivered. Nevertheless,
there was a part of Edwin that responded to Ingpen's attitude. "Behind
the veil." Yes, something could be said for the proposition.
They left the arbour in silence. They had not gone more than a few
steps when a boy's shrill voice made itself heard over the wall of the
cottage yard.
"Oh Lord, thou 'ast said 'If two on ye sh'll agray on earth as touching
onything that they sh'll ask it sh'll be done for them of my Father
which is in 'eaven. For where two or three are gathered together i' my
name theer am I in th' midst of 'em. Oh Lord, George Edwin Clay'anger
wants a two-bladed penknife. We all three on us want ye to send George
Edwin Clay'anger a two-bladed penknife."
The words fell with impressive effect on the men in the garden.
"What the--" Edwin exclaimed.
"Hsh!" Ingpen stopped him in an excited whisper. "Don't disturb them for
anything in the world!"
Silence followed.
Edwin crept away like a scout towards a swing which he had arranged for
his friend George before he became the husband of George's mother. He
climbed into it and over the wall could just see three boys' heads in
the yard illuminated by a lamp in the back-window of the cottage.
Tertius Ingpen joined him, but immediately climbed higher on to the
horizontal beam of the swing.
"Who are they?" Ingpen asked, restraining his joy in the adventure.
"The one on the right's my stepson. The other big one is my sister
Clara's child, Bert. I expect the little one's old Clowes', the
gravedigger's kid. They say he's a regular little parson--probably to
make up for his parents. I expect they're out somewhere having a
jollification."
"Well," Ingpen breathed. "I wouldn't have missed this for a good deal."
He gave a deep, almost soundless giggle.
Edwin was startled--as much as anything by the extraordinary
deceitfulness of George. Who could possibly have guessed from the boy's
demeanour when his Aunt Clara mentioned Bert to him, that he had made an
outrageous rendezvous with Bert that very night? Certainly he had
blushed, but then he often blushed. Of course, the Benbows would assert
that George had seduced the guileless Bert. Fancy them hunting the town
for Bert at that instant! As regards Peter Clowes, George, though not
positively forbidden to do so, had been warned against associating with
him--chiefly because of the bad influence which Peter's accent would
have on George's accent. His mother had said that she could not
understand how George could wish to be friendly with a rough little boy
like Peter. Edwin, however, inexperienced as he was, had already
comprehended that children, like Eastern women, have no natural class
bias; and he could not persuade himself to be the first to inculcate
into George ideas which could only be called snobbish. He was a
democrat. Nevertheless he did not like George to play with Peter Clowes.
The small Peter, with uplifted face and clasped hands, repeated
urgently, passionately:
"O God! We all three on us want ye to send George Edwin Clay'anger a
two-bladed penknife. Now lads, kneel, and all three on us together!"
He stood between the taller and better-dressed boys unashamed, fervent,
a born religionist. He was not even praying for himself. He was
praying out of his profound impersonal interest in the efficacy of
prayer.
The three boys, kneeling, and so disappearing from sight behind the
wall, repeated together:
"O God! Please send George Edwin Clayhanger a two-bladed penknife."
Then George and Bert stood up again, shuffling about. Peter Clowes did
not reappear.
"I can't help it," whispered Ingpen in a strange, moved voice, "I've got
to be God. Here goes! And it's practically new, too!"
Edwin in the darkness could see him feeling in his waistcoat pocket, and
then raise his arm, and, taking careful aim, throw in the direction of
the dimly lighted yard.
"Oh!" came the cry of George, in sudden pain.
The descending penknife had hit him in the face.
There was a scramble on the pavement of the yard, and some muttered
talk. The group went to the back window where the lamp was and examined
the heavenly penknife. They were more frightened than delighted by the
miracle. The unseen watchers in the swing were also rather frightened,
as though they had interfered irremediably in a solemn and delicate
crisis beyond their competence. In a curious way they were ashamed.
"Yes, and what about me?" said the voice of fat Bert Benbow, sulkily.
"This is all very well. But what about me? Ye tried without me and ye
couldn't do anything. Now I've come and ye've done it. What am I going
to get? Ye've got to give me something instead of a half-share in that
penknife, George."
George said:
"Let's pray for something for you now. What d'you want?"
"I want a bicycle. Ye know what I want."
"Oh, no, you don't, Bert Benbow!" said George. "You've got to want
something safer than a bike. Suppose it comes tumbling down like the
penknife did! We shall be dam well killed."
Tertius Ingpen could not suppress a snorting giggle.
"I want a bike," Bert insisted. "And I don't want nothin' else."
The two bigger boys moved vaguely away from the window, and the little
religionist followed them in silence, ready to supplicate for whatever
they should decide.
"All right," George agreed. "We'll pray for a bicycle. But we'd better
all stand as close as we can to the wall, under the spouting, in case."
The ceremonial was recommenced.
"No," Ingpen murmured. "I'm not being God this time. It won't run to
it."
Footsteps were heard on the lawn behind the swing. Ingpen slid down and
Edwin jumped down. Johnnie Orgreave was approaching.
"Hsh!" Ingpen warned him.
"What are you chaps--"
"Hsh!" Ingpen was more imperative.
All three men walked away out of earshot of the yard, towards the window
of the drawing-room--Johnnie Orgreave mystified, the other two smiling
but with spirits disturbed. Johnnie heard the story in brief; it was
told to him in confidence, as Tertius Ingpen held firmly that
eavesdroppers, if they had any honour left, should at least hold their
tongues.
II
When Tertius Ingpen was introduced to Hilda in the drawing-room, the
three men having entered by the French window, Edwin was startled and
relieved by the deportment of the orientalist who thought that the
proper place for women was behind the veil. In his simplicity he had
assumed that the orientalist would indicate his attitude by a dignified
reserve. Not at all! As soon as Ingpen reached Hilda's hospitable gaze
his whole bearing altered. He bowed, with a deferential bending that to
an untravelled native must have seemed exaggerated; his face was
transformed by a sweet smile; his voice became the voice of a courtier;
he shook hands with chivalrous solicitude for the fragile hand shaken.
Hilda was pleased by him, perceiving that this man was more experienced
in the world than any of the other worldly guests. She liked that.
Ingpen's new symptoms were modified after a few moments, but when he was
presented to Mrs. Fearns he reproduced them in their original intensity,
and again when he was introduced to Vera Cheswardine.
"Been out without your cap?" Hilda questioned Edwin, lifting her
eyebrows. She said it in order to say something, for the entry of this
ceremonious personage, who held all the advantages of the native and of
the stranger, had a little overpowered the company.
"Only just to see after Mr. Ingpen's machine. Give me your cap, Mr.
Ingpen. I'll hang it up."
When he returned to the drawing-room from the hatstand Ingpen was
talking with Janet Orgreave, whom he already knew.
"Have you seen George, Edwin?" Hilda called across the drawing-room.
"Hasn't he gone to bed?"
"That's what I want to know. I haven't seen him lately."
Everyone, except Johnnie Orgreave and a Swetnam or so, was preoccupied
by the thought of children, by the thought of this incalculable and
disturbing race that with different standards and ideals lived so
mysteriously in and among their adult selves. Nothing was said about
the strange disappearance of Bert Benbow, but each woman had it in mind,
and coupled it with Hilda's sudden apprehension concerning George, and
imagined weird connections between the one and the other, and felt
forebodings about children nearer to her own heart. Children dominated
the assemblage and, made restless, the assemblage collectively felt that
the moment for separation approached. The At Home was practically over.
Hilda rang the bell, and as she did so Johnnie Orgreave winked
dangerously at Edwin, who with sternness responded. He wondered why he
should thus deceive his wife, with whom he was so deliciously intimate.
He thought also that women were capricious in their anxieties, and yet
now and then their moods--once more by the favour of hazard--displayed a
marvellous appositeness. Hilda had no reason whatever for worrying more
about George on this night than on any other night. Nevertheless this
night happened to be the night on which anxiety would be justified.
"Ada," said Hilda to the entering servant. "Have you seen Master
George?"
"No'm," Ada replied, almost defiantly.
"When did you see him last?"
"I don't remember, m'm."
"Is he in bed?"
"I don't know, m'm."
"Just go and see, will you?"
"Yes'm."
The company waited with gentle, concealed excitement for the returning
Ada, who announced:
"His bedroom door's locked, m'm."
"He will lock it sometimes, although I've positively forbidden him to.
But what are you to do?" said Hilda, smilingly to the other mothers.
"Take the key away, obviously," Tertius Ingpen answered the question,
turning quickly and interrupting his chat with Janet Orgreave.
"That ought not to be necessary," said Fearns, as an expert father.
Ada departed, thankful to be finished with the ordeal of
cross-examination in a full drawing-room.
"Don't you know anything about him?" Hilda addressed Johnnie Orgreave
suddenly.
"Me? About your precious? No. Why should I know?"
"Because you're getting such friends, you two."
"Oh! Are we?" Johnnie said carelessly. Nevertheless he was flattered
by a certain nascent admiration on the part of George, which was then
beginning to be noticeable.
A quarter of an hour later, when several guests had gone, Hilda murmured
to Edwin:
"I'm not easy about that boy. I'll just run upstairs."
"I shouldn't," said Edwin.
But she did. And the distant sound of knocking, and "George, George,"
could be heard even down in the hall.
"I can't wake him," said Hilda, back in the drawing-room.
"What do you want to wake him for, foolish girl?" Edwin demanded.
She enjoyed being called "foolish girl," but she was not to be
tranquillised.
"Do you think he is in bed?" she questioned, before the whole remaining
company, and the dread suspicion was out!
After more journeys upstairs, and more bangings, and essays with keys,
and even attempts at lock-picking, Hilda announced that George's room
must be besieged from its window. A ladder was found, and interested
visitors went into the back-entry, by the kitchen, to see it reared and
hear the result. Edwin thought that the cook in the kitchen looked as
guilty as he himself felt, though she more than once asseverated her
belief that Master George was safely in bed. The ladder was too short.
Edwin mounted it, and tried to prise himself on to the window-sill, but
could not.
"Here, let me try!" said Ingpen, joyous.
Ingpen easily succeeded. He glanced through the open window into
George's bedroom, and then looked down at the upturned faces, and Ada's
apron, whitely visible in the gloom.
"He's here all right."
"Oh, good!" said Hilda. "Is he asleep?"
"Yes."
"He deserves to be wakened," she laughed.
"You see what a foolish girl you've been," said Edwin affectionately.
"Never mind!" she retorted. "_You_ couldn't get on the window. And you
were just as upset as anybody. Do you think I don't know? Thank you,
Mr. Ingpen."
"Is he really there?" Edwin whispered to Ingpen as soon as he could.
"Yes. And asleep, too!"
"I wonder how the deuce he slipped in. I'll bet anything those servants
have been telling a lot of lies for him. He pulls their hair down and
simply does what he likes with them."
Edwin was now greatly reassured, but he could not quite recover from the
glimpse he had had of George's capacity for leading a double life.
Sardonically he speculated whether the heavenly penknife would be
brought to his notice by its owner, and if so by what ingenious method.
III
The final sensation was caused by the arrival, in a nearly empty
drawing-room, of plump Maggie, nervous, constrained, and somewhat
breathless.
"Bert has turned up," she said. "Clara thought I'd better come along
and tell you. She felt sure you'd like to know."
"Well, that's all right then," Hilda replied perfunctorily, indicating
that Clara's conceited assumption of a universal interest in her dull
children was ridiculous.
Edwin asked:
"Did the kid say where he'd been?"
"Been running about the streets. They don't know what's come over
him--because, you see, he'd actually gone to bed once. Albert is quite
puzzled; but he says he'll have it out of him before he's done."
"When he does get it out of him," thought Edwin again, "there will be a
family row and George will be indicted as the corrupter of innocence."
Maggie would not stay a single moment. Hilda attentively accompanied
her to the hall. The former and the present mistress of the house
kissed with the conventional signs of affection. But the fact that one
had succeeded the other seemed to divide them. Hilda was always lying
in wait for criticism from Maggie, ready to resent it; Maggie divined
this and said never a word. The silence piqued Hilda as much as
outspoken criticism would have annoyed her. She could not bear it.
"How do you like my new stair-carpet?" she demanded defiantly.
"Very nice! Very nice, I'm sure!" Maggie replied without conviction.
And added, just as she stepped outside the front-door, "You've made a
lot of changes." This was the mild, good-natured girl's sole thrust,
and it was as effective as she could have wished.
Everybody had gone except the two Orgreaves and Tertius Ingpen.
"I don't know about you, Johnnie, but I must go," said Janet Orgreave
when Hilda came back.
"Hold on, Jan!" Johnnie protested. "You're forgetting those duets you
are to try with Ingpen."
"Really?"
"Duets!" cried Hilda, instantly uplifted and enthusiastic. "Oh, do
let's have some music!"
Ingpen by arrangement with the Orgreaves had brought some pianoforte
duets. They were tied to his bicycle. He was known as an amateur of
music. Edwin, bidding Ingpen not to move, ran out into the garden to get
the music from the bicycle. Johnnie ran after him through the French
window.
"I say!" Johnnie called in a low voice.
"What's up?" Edwin stopped for him.
"I've a piece of news for you. About that land you've set your heart
on, down at Shawport! ... It can be bought cheap--at least the old man
says it's cheap--whatever his opinion may be worth. I was telling him
about your scheme for having a new printing works altogether.
Astonishing how keen he is! If I'd had a plan of the land, I believe
he'd have sat down and made sketches at once."
Johnnie (with his brother Jimmie) was in partnership with old Orgreave
as an architect.
"'Set my heart on?'" Edwin mumbled, intimidated as usual by a nearer
view of an enterprise which he had himself conceived and which had
enchanted him from afar. "'Set my heart on?'"
"Well, had you, or hadn't you?"
"I suppose I had," Edwin admitted. "Look here, I'll drop in and see you
to-morrow morning."
"Right!"
Together they detached the music from the bicycle, and, as Edwin
unrolled it and rolled it the other side out to flatten it, they
returned silently through the dark wind-stirred garden into the
drawing-room.
There were now the two Orgreaves, Tertius Ingpen, and Hilda and Edwin in
the drawing-room.
"We will now begin the evening," said Ingpen, as he glanced at the
music.
All five were conscious of the pleasant feeling of freedom, intimacy,
and mutual comprehension which animates a small company that by
self-selection has survived out of a larger one. The lateness of the
hour aided their zest. Even the more staid among them perceived as by a
revelation that it did not in fact matter, once in a way, if they were
tired and inefficient on the morrow, and that too much regularity of
habit was bad for the soul. Edwin had brought in a tray from the
dining-room, and rearranged the chairs according to Hilda's caprice, and
was providing cushions to raise the bodies of the duet-players to the
proper height. Janet began to excuse herself, asserting that if there
was one member of her family who could not play duets, she was that
member, that she had never seen this Dvorak music before, and that if
they had got her brother Tom, or her elder sister Marion, or even
Alicia,--etc., etc.
"We are quite accustomed to these formal preliminaries from
duet-players, Miss Orgreave," said Ingpen. "I never do them
myself,--not because I can play well, but because I am hardened. Now
shall we start? Will you take the treble or the bass?"
Janet answered with eager modesty that she would take the bass.
"It's all one to me," said Ingpen, putting on spectacles; "I play either
equally badly. You'll soon regret leaving the most important part to
me. However...! Clayhanger, will you turn over?"
"Er--yes," said Edwin boldly. "But you'd better give me the tip."
He knew a little about printed music, from his experiences as a boy when
his sisters used to sing two-part songs. That is to say, he had a vague
idea "where a player was" on a page. But the enterprise of turning over
Dvorak's "Legends" seemed to him critically adventurous. Dvorak was
nothing but a name to him; beyond the correct English method of
pronouncing that name, he had no knowledge whatever of the subject in
hand.
Then the performance of the "Legends" began. Despite halts, hesitations,
occasional loud insistent chanting of the time, explanations between the
players, many wrong notes by Ingpen, and a few wrong notes by Janet, and
one or two enormous misapprehensions by Edwin, the performance was a
success, in that it put a spell on its public, and permitted the loose
and tender genius of Dvorak to dominate the room.
"Play that again, will you?" said Hilda, in a low dramatic voice, at the
third "Legend."
"We will," Ingpen answered. "And we'll play it better."
Edwin had the exquisite sensation of partially comprehending music whose
total beauty was beyond the limitations of his power to enjoy--power,
nevertheless, which seemed to grow each moment. Passages entirely
intelligible and lovely would break at intervals through the veils of
general sound and ravish him. All his attention was intensely
concentrated on the page. He could hear Ingpen breathing hard. Out of
the corner of his eye he was aware of Johnnie Orgreave on the sofa
making signs to Hilda about drinks, and pouring out something for her,
and something for himself, without the faintest noise. And he was aware
of Ada coming to the open door and being waved away to bed by her
mistress.
"Well," he said, when the last "Legend" was played. "That's a bit of the
right sort--no mistake." He was obliged to be banal and colloquial.
Hilda said nothing at all. Johnnie, who had waited for the end in order
to strike a match, showed by two words that he was an expert listener to
duets. Tertius Ingpen was very excited and pleased. "More tricky than
difficult, isn't it--to read?" he said privately to his
fellow-performer, who concurred. Janet also was excited in her fashion.
But even amid the general excitement Ingpen had to be judicious.
"Delightful stuff, of course," he said, pulling his beard. "But he's
not a great composer you know, all the same."
"He'll do to be going on with," Johnnie murmured.
"Oh, yes! Delightful! Delightful!" Ingpen repeated warmly, removing
his spectacles. "What a pity we can't have musical evenings regularly!"
"But we can!" said Hilda positively. "Let's have them here. Every
week!"
"A great scheme!" Edwin agreed with enthusiasm, admiring his wife's
initiative. He had been a little afraid that the episode of George had
upset her for the night, but he now saw that she had perfectly recovered
from it.
"Oh!" Ingpen paused. "I doubt if I could come every week. I could come
once a fortnight."
"Well, once a fortnight then!" said Hilda.
"I suppose Sunday wouldn't suit you?"
Edwin challenged him almost fiercely:
"Why won't it suit us? It will suit us first-class."
Ingpen merely said, with quiet delicacy:
"So much the better.... We might go all through the Mozart fiddle
sonatas."
"And who's your violinist?" asked Johnnie.
"I am, if you don't mind." Ingpen smiled. "If your sister will take
the piano part."
Hilda exclaimed admiringly:
"Do you play the violin, too, Mr. Ingpen?"
"I scrape it. Also the tenor. But my real instrument is the clarinet."
He laughed. "It seems odd," he went on with genuine scientific
unegotistic interest in himself. "But d'you know I thoroughly enjoy
playing the clarinet in a bad orchestra whenever I get the chance. When
I happen to have a free evening I often wish I could drop in at a
theatre and play rotten music in the band. It's better than nothing.
Some of us are born mad."
"But Mr. Ingpen," said Janet Orgreave anxiously, after this speech had
been appreciated. "I have never played those Mozart sonatas."
"I am glad to hear it," he replied with admirable tranquillity.
"Neither have I. I've often meant to. It'll be quite a sporting event.
But of course we can have a rehearsal if you like."
The project of the musical evenings was discussed and discussed until
Janet, having vanished silently upstairs, reappeared with her hat and
cloak on.
"I can go alone if you aren't ready, Johnnie," said she.
Johnnie yawned.
"No. I'm coming."
"I also must go--I suppose," said Ingpen.
They all went into the hall. Through the open door of the dining-room,
where one gas-jet burned, could be seen the rich remains of what had
been "light refreshments" in the most generous interpretation of the
term.
Ingpen stopped to regard the spectacle, fingering his beard.
"I was just wondering," he remarked, with that strange eternal curiosity
about himself, "whether I'd had enough to eat. I've got to ride home."
"Well, what have you had?" Johnnie quizzed him.
"I haven't had anything," said Ingpen, "except drink."
Hilda cried.
"Oh! You poor sufferer! I am ashamed!" And led him familiarly to the
table.
IV
Edwin was kept at the front-door some time by Johnnie Orgreave, who
resumed as he was departing the subject of the proposed new works, and
maintained it at such length that Janet, tired of waiting on the
pavement, said that she would walk on. When he returned to the
dining-room, Ingpen and Hilda were sitting side by side at the littered
table, and the first words that Edwin heard were from Ingpen:
"It cost me a penknife. But it was dirt cheap at the price. You can't
expect to be the Almighty for much less than a penknife." Seeing Edwin,
he added with a nonchalant smile: "I've told Mrs. Clayhanger all about
the answer to prayer. I thought she ought to know."
Edwin laughed awkwardly, saying to himself:
"Ingpen, my boy, you ought to have thought of my position first. You've
been putting your finger into a rather delicate piece of mechanism.
Supposing she cuts up rough with me afterwards for hiding it from her
all this time! ... I'm living with her. You aren't."
"Of course," Ingpen added. "I've sworn the lady to secrecy."
Hilda said:
"I knew all the time there was something wrong."
And Edwin thought:
"No, you didn't. And if he hadn't happened to tell you about the thing,
you'd have been convinced that you'd been alarming yourself for
nothing."
But he only said, not certain of Hilda's humour, and anxious to placate
her:
"There's no doubt George ought to be punished."
"Nothing of the kind! Nothing of the kind!" Ingpen vivaciously
protested. "Why, bless my soul! The kids were engaged in a religious
work. They were busy with someone far more important than any parents."
And after a pause, reflectively: "Curious thing, the mentality of a
child! I doubt if we understand anything about it."
Hilda smiled, but said naught.
"May I enquire what there is in that bottle?" Ingpen asked.
"Benedictine."
"Have some, Mr. Ingpen."
"I will if you will, Mrs. Clayhanger."
Edwin raised his eyebrows at his wife.
"You needn't look at me!" said Hilda. "I'm going to have some."
Ingpen smacked his lips over the liqueur.
"It's a very bad thing late at night, of course. But I believe in
giving your stomach something to think about. I never allow my
digestive apparatus to boss me."
"Quite right, Mr. Ingpen."
They touched glasses, without a word, almost instinctively.
"Well," thought Edwin, "for a chap who thinks women ought to be behind
the veil...!"
"Be a man, Clayhanger, and have some."
Edwin shook his head.
With a scarcely perceptible movement of her glass, Hilda greeted her
husband, peeping out at him as it were for a fraction of a second in a
glint of affection. He was quite happy. They were all seated close
together, Edwin opposite the other two at the large table. The single
gas-jet, by the very inadequacy with which it lighted the scene of
disorder, produced an effect of informal homeliness and fellowship that
warmed the heart. Each of the three realised with pleasure that a new
and promising friendship was in the making. They talked at length about
the Musical Evenings, and Edwin said that he should buy some music, and
Hilda asked him to obtain a history of music that Ingpen described with
some enthusiasm, and the date of the first evening was settled,--Sunday
week. And after uncounted minutes Ingpen remarked that he presumed he
had better go.
"I have to cycle home," he announced once more.
"To-night?" Hilda exclaimed.
"No. This morning."
"All the way to Axe?"
"Oh, no! I'm three miles this side of Axe. It's only six and a half
miles."
"But all those hills!"
"Pooh! Excellent for the muscles of the calf."
"Do you live alone, Mr. Ingpen?"
"I have a sort of housekeeper."
"In a cottage?"
"In a cottage."
"But what do you _do_--all alone?"
"I cultivate myself."
And Hilda, in a changed tone, said:
"How wise you are!"
"Rather inconvenient, being out there, isn't it?" Edwin suggested.
"It may be inconvenient sometimes for my job. But I can't help that. I
give the State what I consider fair value for the money it pays me, and
not a grain more. I've got myself to think about. There are some things
I won't do, and one of them is to live all the time in a vile hole like
the Five Towns. I won't do it. I'd sooner be a blooming peasant on the
land."
As he was a native he had the right to criticise the district without
protest from other natives.
"You're quite right as to the vile hole," said Hilda with conviction.
"I don't know----" Edwin muttered. "I think old Bosley isn't so bad."
"Yes. But you're an old stick-in-the-mud, dearest," said Hilda. "Mr.
Ingpen has lived away from the district, and so have I. You haven't.
You're no judge. We know, don't we, Mr. Ingpen?"
When, Ingpen having at last accumulated sufficient resolution to move
and get his cap, they went through the drawing-room to the garden, they
found that rain was falling.
"Never mind!" said Ingpen, lifting his head sardonically in a mute
indictment of the heavens. "I have my mack."
Edwin searched out the bicycle and brought it to the window, and Hilda
stuck a hat on his head. Leisurely Ingpen clipped his trousers at the
ankle, and unstrapped a mackintosh cape from the machine, and folded the
strap. Leisurely he put on the cape, and gazed at the impenetrable
heavens again.
"I can make you up a bed, Mr. Ingpen."
"No, thanks. Oh, no, thanks! The fact is, I rather like rain."
Leisurely he took a box of fusees from his pocket, and lighted his lamp,
examining it as though it contained some hidden and perilous defect.
Then he pressed the tyres.
"The back tyre'll do with a little more air," he said thoughtfully. "I
don't know if my pump will work."
It did work, but slowly. After which, gloves had to be assumed.
"I suppose I can get out this way. Oh! My music! Never mind, I'll
leave it."
Then with a sudden access of ceremoniousness he bade adieu to Hilda; no
detail of punctilio was omitted from the formality.
"Good-bye. Many thanks."
"Good-bye. Thank _you_!"
Edwin preceded the bicyclist and the bicycle round the side of the house
to the front-gate at the corner of Hulton Street and Trafalgar Road.
In the solemn and chill nocturnal solitude of rain-swept Hulton Street,
Ingpen straddled the bicycle, with his left foot on one raised pedal and
the other on the pavement; and then held out a gloved hand to Edwin.
"Good-bye, old chap. See you soon."
Much good-will and appreciation and hope was implicit in that rather
casual handshake.
He sheered off strongly down the dark slope of Hulton Street in the
rain, using his ankles with skill in the pedal-stroke. The man's calves
seemed to be enormously developed. The cape ballooned out behind his
swiftness, and in a moment he had swerved round the flickering mournful
gas-lamp at the bottom of the mean new street and was gone.