THE WEEK-END
I
The events of the portentous week-end which included the musical evening
began early on the Saturday, and the first one was a chance word uttered
by George.
Breakfast was nearly over in the Clayhanger dining-room. Hilda sat
opposite to Edwin, and George between them. They had all eaten with
appetite, and the disillusion which usually accompanies the satisfaction
of desire was upon them. They had looked forward to breakfast, scenting
with zest its pleasing odours, and breakfast was over, save perhaps for
a final unnecessary piece of toast or half a cup of chilled coffee.
Hilda did not want to move, because she did not care for the Saturday
morning task of shopping and re-victualling and being bland with
fellow-shoppers in the emporiums. The house-doors were too frequently
open on Saturday mornings, and errand-boys thereat, and a wind blowing
through the house, and it was the morning for specially cleaning the
hall--detestable and damp operation--and servants seemed loose on
Saturday morning, and dinner was apt to be late. But Hilda knew she
would have to move. To postpone was only to aggravate. Destiny grasped
her firm. George was not keen about moving, because he had no plan of
campaign; the desolating prospect of resuming school on Monday had
withered his energy; he was in a mood to be either a martyr or a
villain. Edwin was lazily sardonic, partly because the leisure of
breakfast was at an end, partly because he hated the wage-paying
slackness of Saturday morning at the shop, and partly because his
relations with Hilda had remained indefinite and disquieting, despite a
thousand mutual urbanities and thoughtful refinements, and even some
caresses. A sense of aimlessness dejected him; and in the central caves
of his brain the question was mysteriously stirring: What is the use of
all these things,--success, dignity, importance, luxury, love,
sensuality, order, moral superiority? He foresaw thirty years of
breakfasts, with plenty of the finest home-cured bacon and fresh eggs,
but no romance.
Before his marriage he used to read the paper honestly and rudely at
breakfast. That is to say, he would prop it up squarely in front of
him, hiding his sister Maggie, and anyhow ignoring her; and Maggie had
to "like it or lump it"; she probably lumped it. But upon marriage he
had become a chevalier; he had nobly decided that it was not correct to
put a newspaper between yourself and a woman who had denied you nothing.
Nevertheless, his appetite for newspapers being almost equal to his
appetite for bacon, he would still take nips at the newspaper during
breakfast, hold it in one hand, glance at it, drop it, pick it up, talk
amiably while glancing at it, drop it, pick it up again. So long as the
newspaper was held aside and did not touch the table, so long as he did
not read more than ten lines at a time, he considered that punctilio was
satisfied, and that he was not in fact reading the newspaper at all.
But towards the end of breakfast, when the last food was disappearing,
and he had lapped the cream off the news, he would hold the newspaper in
both hands--and brazenly and conscientiously read. His chief interest,
just then, was political. Like most members of his party, he was
endeavouring to decipher the party programme and not succeeding, and he
feared for his party and was a little ashamed for it. Grave events had
occurred. The substructure of the state was rocking. A newly elected
supporter of the Government, unaware that he was being admitted to the
best club in London, had gone to the House of Commons in a tweed cap and
preceded by a brass-band. Serious pillars of society knew that the time
had come to invest their savings abroad. Edwin, with many another
ardent liberal, was seeking to persuade himself that everything was all
right after all. The domestic atmosphere--Hilda's baffling face, the
emptied table, the shadow of business, repletion, early symptoms of
indigestion, the sound of a slop-pail in the hall--did not aid him to
optimism. In brief the morning was a fair specimen of a kind of morning
that seemed likely to be for him an average morning.
"Can't I leave the table, mother?" asked George discontentedly.
Hilda nodded.
George gave a coarse sound of glee.
"George! ... That's so unlike you!" his mother frowned.
Instead of going directly towards the door, he must needs pass right
round the table, behind the chair of his occupied uncle. As he did so,
he scanned the newspaper and read out loudly in passing for the benefit
of the room:
"'Local Divorce Case. Etches v. Etches. Painful details.'"
The words meant nothing to George. They had happened to catch his eye.
He read them as he might have read an extract from the books of Euclid,
and noisily and ostentatiously departed, not without a further protest
from Hilda.
And Edwin and Hilda, left alone together, were self-conscious.
"Lively kid!" murmured Edwin self-consciously.
And Hilda, self-consciously:
"You never told me that case was on."
"I didn't know till I saw it here."
"What's the result?"
"Not finished.... Here you are, if you want to read it."
He handed the sheet across the table. Despite his serious interest in
politics he had read the report before anything else. Etches v. Etches,
indeed, surpassed Gladstonian politics as an aid to the dubious
prosperity of the very young morning newspaper, which represented the
latest and most original attempt to challenge the journalistic monopoly
of the afternoon _Staffordshire Signal_. It lived scarcely longer than
the divorce case, for the proprietors, though Non-conformists and
therefore astute, had failed to foresee that the Five Towns public would
not wait for racing results until the next morning.
"Thanks," Hilda amiably and negligently murmured.
Edwin hummed.
Useless for Hilda to take that casual tone! Useless for Edwin to hum!
The unconcealable thought in both their minds was--and each could divine
the other's thought and almost hear its vibration:
"We might end in the divorce court, too."
Hence their self-consciousness.
The thought was absurd, irrational, indefensible, shocking, it had no
father and no mother, it sprang out of naught; but it existed, and it
had force enough to make them uncomfortable.
The Etches couple, belonging to the great, numerous, wealthy, and
respectable family of Etches, had been married barely a year.
Edwin rose and glanced at his well-tended fingernails. The pleasant
animation of his skin caused by the bath was still perceptible. He
could feel it in his back, and it helped his conviction of virtue. He
chose a cigarette out of his silver case,--a good cigarette, a good
case--and lit it, and waved the match into extinction, and puffed out
much smoke, and regarded the correctness of the crease in his trousers
(the vertical trouser-crease having recently been introduced into the
district and insisted on by that tailor and artist and seeker after
perfection, Shillitoe), and walked firmly to the door. But the
self-consciousness remained.
Just as he reached the door, his wife, gazing at the newspaper, stopped
him:
"Edwin."
"What's up?"
He did not move from the door, and she did not look up from the
newspaper.
"Seen your friend Big James this morning?"
Edwin usually went down to business before breakfast, so that his
conscience might be free for a leisurely meal at nine o'clock. Big
James was the oldest employee in the business. Originally he had been
foreman compositor, and was still technically so described, but in fact
he was general manager and Edwin's majestic vicegerent in all the
printing-shops. "Ask Big James," was the watchword of the whole
organism.
"No," said Edwin. "Why?"
"Oh, nothing! It doesn't matter."
Edwin had made certain resolutions about his temper, but it seemed to
him that such a reply justified annoyance, and he therefore permitted
himself to be annoyed, failing to see that serenity is a positive virtue
only when there is justification for annoyance. The nincompoop had not
even begun to perceive that what is called "right-living" means the
acceptance of injustice and the excusing of the inexcusable.
"Now then," he said, brusquely. "Out with it." But there was still a
trace of rough tolerance in his voice.
"No. It's all right. I was wrong to mention it."
Her admission of sin did not in the least placate him.
He advanced towards the table.
"You haven't mentioned it," he said stiffly.
Their eyes met, as Hilda's quitted the newspaper. He could not read
hers. She seemed very calm. He thought as he looked at her: "How
strange it is that I should be living with this woman! What is she to
me? What do I know of her?"
She said with tranquillity:
"If you do see Big James you might tell him not to trouble himself about
that programme."
"Programme? What programme?" he asked, startled.
"Oh! Edwin!" She gave a little laugh. "The musical evening programme,
of course. Aren't we having a musical evening to-morrow night?"
More justification for annoyance! Why should she confuse the situation
by pretending that he had forgotten the musical evening? The pretence
was idiotic, deceiving no one. The musical evening was constantly being
mentioned.
Reports of assiduous practising had reached them; and on the previous
night they had had quite a subdued altercation over a proposal of
Hilda's for altering the furniture in the drawing-room.
"This is the first I've heard of any programme," said Edwin. "Do you
mean a printed programme?"
Of course she could mean nothing else. He was absolutely staggered at
the idea that she had been down to his works, without a word to him, and
given orders to Big James, or even talked to Big James, about a
programme. She had no remorse. She had no sense of danger. Had she
the slightest conception of what business was? Imagine Maggie
attempting such a thing! It was simply not conceivable. A wife going to
her husband's works, and behind his back giving orders----! It was as
though a natural law had suspended its force.
"Why, Edwin," she said in extremely clear, somewhat surprised, and
gently benevolent accents. "What ever's the matter with you? There
_is_ a programme of music, I suppose?" (There she was, ridiculously
changing the meaning of the word programme! What infantile tactics!)
"It occurred to me all of a sudden yesterday afternoon how nice it would
be to have it printed on gilt-edged cards, so I ran down to the shop,
but you weren't there. So I saw Big James."
"You never said anything to me about it last night. Nor this morning."
"Didn't I? ... Well, I forgot."
Grotesque creature!
"Well, what did Big James say?"
"Oh! Don't ask me. But if he treats all your customers as he treated
me ... However, it doesn't matter now. I shall write the programme out
myself."
"What did he say?"
"It wasn't what he said.... But he's very rude, you know. Other people
think so too."
"What other people?"
"Oh! Never mind who! Of course, _I_ know how to take it. And I know
you believe in him blindly. But his airs are preposterous. And he's a
dirty old man. And I say, Edwin, seeing how very particular you are
about things at home, you really ought to see that the front shop is
kept cleaner. It's no affair of mine, and I never interfere,--but
really...!"
Not a phrase of this speech but what was highly and deliberately
provocative. Assuredly no other person had ever said that Big James was
rude. (But _had_ someone else said so, after all? Suppose, challenged,
she gave a name!) Big James's airs were not preposterous; he was merely
old and dignified. His apron and hands were dirty, naturally.... And
then the implication that Big James was a fraud, and that he, Edwin, was
simpleton enough to be victimised by the fraud, while the great
all-seeing Hilda exposed it at a single glance! And the implication
that he, Edwin, was fussy at home, and negligent at the shop! And the
astounding assertion that she never interfered!
He smothered up all his feelings, with difficulty, as a sailor smothers
up a lowered sail in a high wind, and merely demanded, for the third
time:
"What did Big James say?"
"I was given to understand," said Hilda roguishly, "that it was quite,
quite, quite impossible. But his majesty would see! ... Well, he
needn't 'see.' I see how wrong I was to suggest it at all."
Edwin moved away in silence.
"Are you going, Edwin?" she asked innocently.
"Yes," glumly.
"You haven't kissed me."
She did not put him to the shame of returning to her. No, she jumped up
blithely, radiant. Her make-believe that nothing had happened was
maddening. She kissed him lovingly, with a smile, more than once. He
did not kiss; he was kissed. Nevertheless somehow the kissing modified
his mental position and he felt better after it.
"Don't work yourself up, darling," she counselled him, with kindness and
concern, as he went out of the room. "You know how sensitive you are."
It was a calculated insult, but an insult which had to be ignored. To
notice it would have been a grave tactical error.
II
When he reached the shop, he sat down at his old desk in the
black-stained cubicle, and spied forth and around for the alleged dust
which he would tolerate in business but would not tolerate at home. It
was there. He could see places that had obviously not been touched for
weeks, withdrawn places where the undisturbed mounds of stock and litter
had the eternal character of Roman remains or vestiges of creation. The
senior errand-boy was in the shop, snuffling over a blue-paper parcel.
"Boy," said Edwin. "What time do you come here in the morning?"
"'A' past seven, sir."
"Well, on Monday morning you'll be here at seven and you'll move
everything--there and there and there--and sweep and dust properly.
This shop's like a pigstye. I believe you never dust anything but the
counters."
He was mild but firm. He knew himself for a just man; yet the fact that
he was robbing this boy of half-an-hour's sleep and probably the boy's
mother also, and upsetting the ancient order of the boy's household, did
not trouble him, did not even occur to him. For him the boy had no
mother and no household, but was a patent self-causing boy that came
miraculously into existence on the shop doorstep every morning and
achieved annihilation thereon every night.
The boy was a fatalist, but his fatalism had limits, because he well
knew that the demand for errand-boys was greater than the supply.
Though the limits of his fatalism had not yet been reached, he was
scarcely pleased.
"If I come at seven who'll gi' me th' kays, sir?" he demanded rather
surlily, wiping his nose on his sleeve.
"I'll see that you have the keys," said Edwin, with divine assurance,
though he had not thought of the difficulty of the keys.
The boy left the shop, his body thrown out of the perpendicular by the
weight of the blue-paper parcel.
"You ought to keep an eye on this place," said Edwin quietly to the
young man who combined the function of clerk with that of salesman to
the rare retail customers. "I can't see to everything. Here, check
these wages for me." He indicated small piles of money.
"Yes, sir," said the clerk with self-respect, but admitting the justice
of the animadversion.
Edwin seldom had difficulty with his employees. Serious friction was
unknown in the establishment.
He went out by the back-entrance, thinking:
"It's no affair whatever of hers. Moreover the shop's as clean as shops
are, and a damned sight cleaner than most. A shop isn't a
drawing-room.... And now there's the infernal programme."
He would have liked to bury and forget the matter of the programme. But
he could not. His conscience, or her fussiness, would force him to
examine into it. There was no doubt that Big James was getting an old
man, with peculiar pompous mannerisms and a disposition towards
impossibilism. Big James ought to have remembered, in speaking to
Hilda, that he was speaking to the wife of his employer. That Hilda
should give an order, or even make a request, direct was perhaps
unusual, but--dash it!--you knew what women were, and if that old josser
of a bachelor, Big James, didn't know what women were, so much the worse
for him. He should just give Big James a hint. He could not have Big
James making mischief between himself and Hilda.
But the coward would not go straight to Big James. He went first up to
what had come to be called "the litho room," partly in order to postpone
Big James, but partly also because he had quite an affectionate proud
interest in the litho room. In Edwin's childhood this room, now
stripped and soiled into a workshop, had been the drawing-room of the
Clayhanger family; and it still showed the defect which it had always
shown; the window was too small and too near the corner of the room. No
transformation could render it satisfactory save a change in the window.
Old Darius Clayhanger had vaguely talked of altering the window. Edwin
had thought seriously of it. But nothing had been done. Edwin was
continuing the very policy of his father which had so roused his disdain
when he was young: the policy of "making things do." Instead of
entering upon lithography in a manner bold, logical, and decisive, he
had nervously and half-heartedly slithered into it. Thus at the back of
the yard was a second-hand "Newsom" machine in quarters too small for
it, and the apparatus for the preliminary polishing of the stones; while
up here in the ex-drawing-room were grotesquely mingled the final
polishing process and the artistic department.
The artist who drew the designs on the stone was a German, with short
fair hair and moustache, a thick neck and a changeless expression.
Edwin had surprisingly found him in Hanbridge. He was very skilled in
judging the amount of "work" necessary on the stone to produce a desired
result on the paper, and very laborious. Without him the nascent
lithographic trade could not have prospered. His wages were extremely
moderate, but they were what he had asked, and in exchange for them he
gave his existence. Edwin liked to watch him drawing, slavishly,
meticulously, endlessly. He was absolutely without imagination,
artistic feeling, charm, urbanity, or elasticity of any sort,--a miracle
of sheer gruff positiveness. He lived somewhere in Hanbridge, and had
once been seen by Edwin on a Sunday afternoon, wheeling a perambulator
and smiling at a young enceinte woman who held his free arm. An
astounding sight, which forced Edwin to adjust his estimates! He grimly
called himself an Englishman, and was legally entitled to do so. On
this morning he was drawing a ewer and basin, for the illustrated
catalogue of an earthenware manufacturer.
"Not a very good light to-day," murmured Edwin.
"Eh?"
"Not a very good light."
"No," said Karl sourly and indifferently, bent over the stone, and
breathing with calm regularity. "My eyesight is being de-stroit."
Behind, a young man in a smock was industriously polishing a stone.
Edwin beheld with pleasure. It was a joy to think that here was the
sole lithography in Bursley, and that his own enterprise had started it.
Nevertheless he was ashamed too,--ashamed of his hesitations, his
half-measures, his timidity, and of Karl's impaired eyesight. There was
no reason why he should not build a proper works, and every reason why
he should; the operation would be remunerative; it would set an example;
it would increase his prestige. He grew resolute. On the day of the
party at the Benbows' he had been and carefully inspected the plot of
land at Shawport, and yesterday he had made a very low offer for it. If
the offer was refused, he would raise it. He swore to himself he would
have his works.
Then Big James came into the litho room.
"I was seeking ye, sir," said Big James majestically, with a mysterious
expression.
Edwin tried to look at him anew, as it were with Hilda's eyes.
Certainly his bigness amounted now to an enormity, for proportionately
his girth more than matched his excessive height. His apron descended
from the semicircle of his paunch like a vast grey wall. The apron was
dirty, this being Saturday, but it was at any rate intact; in old days
Big James and others at critical moments of machining used to tear
strips off their aprons for machine-rags.... Yes, he was conceivably a
grotesque figure, with his spectacles, which did not suit him, his heavy
breathing, his mannerisms, and his grandiose air of Atlas supporting the
moral world. A woman might be excused for seeing the comic side of him.
But surely he was honest and loyal. Surely he was not the adder that
Hilda with an intonation had suggested!
"I'm coming," said Edwin, rather curtly.
He felt just in the humour for putting Big James "straight." Still his
reply had not been too curt, for to his staff he was the opposite of a
bully; he always scorned to take a facile advantage of his power, often
tried even to conceal his power in the fiction that the employee was one
man and himself merely another. He would be far more devastating to his
wife and his sister than to any employee. But at intervals a bad or
careless workman had to meet the blaze of his eye and accept the lash of
his speech.
"It's about that little job for the mistress, sir," said Big James in a
soft voice, when they were out on the landing.
Edwin gave a start. The ageing man's tones were so eager, so anxiously
loyal! His emphasis on the word 'mistress' conveyed so clearly that the
mistress was a high and glorious personage to serve whom was an honour
and a fearful honour! The ageing man had almost whispered, like a boy,
glancing with jealous distrust at the shut door of the room that
contained the German.
"Oh!" muttered Edwin, taken aback.
"I set it up myself," said Big James, and holding his head very high
looked down at Edwin under his spectacles.
"Why!" said Edwin cautiously. "I thought you'd given Mrs. Clayhanger
the idea it couldn't be done in time."
"Bless ye, sir! Not if I know it! I intimated to her the situation in
which we were placed, with urgent jobs on hand, as in duty bound, sir,
she being the mistress. Ye know how slow I am to give a promise, sir.
But not to do it--such was not my intention. And as I have said
already, sir, I've set it up myself, and here's a rough pull."
He produced a piece of paper.
Edwin's ancient affection for Big James grew indignant. The old fellow
was the very mirror of loyalty. He might be somewhat grotesque and
mannered upon occasion, but he was the soul of the Clayhanger business.
He had taught Edwin most of what he knew about both typesetting and
machining. It seemed not long since that he used to call Edwin "young
sir," and to enter into tacit leagues with him against the dangerous
obstinacies of his decaying father. Big James had genuinely admired
Darius Clayhanger. Assuredly he admired Darius's son not less. His
fidelity to the dynasty was touching; it was wistful. The order from
the mistress had tremendously excited and flattered him in his secret
heart.... And yet Hilda must call him names, must insinuate against his
superb integrity, must grossly misrepresent his attitude to herself.
Whatever in his pompous old way he might have said, she could not
possibly have mistaken his anxiety to please her. No, she had given a
false account of their interview,--and Edwin had believed it! Edwin now
swerved violently back to his own original view. He firmly believed Big
James against his wife. He reflected: "How simple I was to swallow all
Hilda said without confirmation! I might have known!" And that he
should think such a thought shocked him tremendously.
The programme was not satisfactorily set up. Apart from several
mistakes in the spelling of proper names, the thing with its fancy
types, curious centring, and superabundance of full-stops, resembled
more the libretto of a Primitive Methodist Tea-meeting than a programme
of classical music offered to refined dilettanti on a Sunday night.
Though Edwin had endeavoured to modernise Big James, he had failed. It
was perhaps well that he had failed. For the majority of customers
preferred Big James's taste in printing to Edwin's. He corrected the
misspellings and removed a few full-stops, and then said:
"It's all right. But I doubt if Mrs. Clayhanger'll care for all these
fancy founts," implying that it was a pity, of course, that Big James's
fancy founts would not be appreciated at their true value, but women
were women. "I should almost be inclined to set it all again in
old-face. I'm sure she'd prefer it. Do you mind?"
"With the greatest of pleasure, sir," Big James heartily concurred,
looking at his watch. "But I must be lively."
He conveyed his immense bulk neatly and importantly down the narrow
stairs.
III
Edwin sat in his cubicle again, his affection for Big James very active.
How simple and agreeable it was to be a man among men only! The
printing-business was an organism fifty times as large as the home, and
it worked fifty times more smoothly. No misunderstandings, no secrecies
(at any rate among the chief persons concerned), and a general
recognition of the principles of justice! Even the errand-boy had
understood. And the shop-clerk by his tone had admitted that he too was
worthy of blame. The blame was not overdone, and common-sense had
closed the episode in a moment. And see with what splendid good-will
Big James, despite the intense conservatism of old age, had accepted the
wholesale condemnation of his idea of a programme! The relations of men
were truly wonderful, when you come to think about it. And to be at
business was a relief and even a pleasure. Edwin could not remember
having ever before regarded the business as a source of pleasure. A
youth, he had gone into it greatly against his will, and by tradition he
had supposed himself still to hate it.
Why had Hilda misled him as to Big James? For she had misled him. Yes,
she had misled him. What was her motive? What did she think she could
gain by it? He was still profoundly disturbed by this deception.
"Why!" he thought, "I can't trust her! I shall have to be on my guard!
I've been in the habit of opening my mouth and swallowing practically
everything she says!" His sense of justice very sharply resented her
perfidy to Big James. His heart warmed to the defence of the excellent
old man. What had she got against Big James? Since the day when the
enormous man had first shown her over the printing shops, before their
original betrothal, a decade and more ago, he had never treated her with
anything but an elaborate and sincere respect. Was she jealous of him,
because of his, Edwin's, expressed confidence in and ancient regard for
him, and because Edwin and he had always been good companions? Or had
she merely taken a dislike to him,--a physical dislike? Edwin had
noticed that some women had a malicious detestation for some old men,
especially when the old men had any touch of the grotesque or the
pompous.... Well, he should defend Big James against her. She should
keep her hands off Big James. His sense of justice was so powerful in
that moment that if he had had to choose between his wife and Big James
he would have chosen Big James.
He came out of the cubicle into the shop, and arranged his countenance
so that the clerk should suppose him to be thinking in tremendous
concentration upon some complex problem of the business. And
simultaneously Hilda passed up Duck Bank on the way to market. She
passed so close to the shop that she seemed to brush it like a
delicious, exciting, and exasperating menace. If she turned her head
she could scarcely fail to see Edwin near the door of the shop. But she
did not turn her head. She glided up the slope steadily and implacably.
And even in the distance of the street her individuality showed itself
mysterious and strong. He could never decide whether she was beautiful
or not; he felt that she was impressive, and not to be scorned or
ignored. Perhaps she was not beautiful. Certainly she was not young.
She had not the insipidity of the young girl unfulfilled. Nor did she
inspire melancholy like the woman just beyond her prime. The one was
going to be; the other had been. Hilda was. And she had lived. There
was in her none of the detestable ignorance and innocence that, for
Edwin, spoilt the majority of women. She knew. She was an equal, and a
dangerous equal. Simultaneously he felt that he could crush and kill
the little thing, and that he must beware of the powerful, unscrupulous,
inscrutable individuality.... And she receded still higher up Duck Bank
and then turned round the corner to the Market Place and vanished. And
there was a void.
She would return. As she had receded gradually, so she would gradually
approach the shop again with her delicious, exciting, exasperating
menace. And he had a scheme for running out to her and with candour
inviting her in and explaining to her in just the right tone of
good-will that loyalty to herself simply hummed and buzzed in the shop
and the printing-works, and that Big James worshipped her, and that
though she was perfect in sagacity she had really been mistaken about
Big James. And he had a vision of her smiling kindly and frankly upon
Big James, and Big James twisting upon his own axis in joyous pride.
Nothing but good-will and candour was required to produce this bliss.
But he knew that he would never run out to her and invite her to enter.
The enterprise was perilous to the point of being foolhardy. With a
tone, with a hesitation, with an undecipherable pout, she might, she
would, render it absurd.... And then, his pride! ... At that moment
young Alec Batchgrew, perhaps then the town's chief mooncalf, came down
Duck Bank in dazzling breeches on a superb grey horse. And Edwin went
abruptly back to work lest the noodle should rein in at the shop door
and talk to him.
IV
When he returned home, a few minutes before the official hour of one
o'clock, he heard women's voices and laughter in the drawing-room. And
as he stood in the hall, fingering the thin little parcel of six
programmes which he had brought with him, the laughter overcame the
voices and then expended itself in shrieks of quite uncontrolled mirth.
The drawing-room door was half open. He stepped quietly to it.
The weather, after being thunderous, had cleared, and the part of the
drawing-room near the open window was shot with rays of sunshine.
Janet Orgreave, all dressed in white, lay back in an easy chair; she was
laughing and wiping the tears from her eyes. At the piano sat very
upright a seemingly rather pert young woman, not laughing, but smiling,
with arch sparkling eyes fixed on the others; this was Daisy Marrion, a
cousin of Mrs. Tom Orgreave, and the next to the last unmarried daughter
of a large family up at Hillport. Standing by the piano was a young
timid girl of about sixteen, whom Edwin, who had not seen her before,
guessed to be Janet's niece, Elaine, eldest daughter of Janet's elder
sister in London; Elaine's approaching visit had been announced. These
other two, like Janet, were in white. Lastly there was Hilda, in grey,
with a black hat, laughing like a child. "They are all children," he
thought as, unnoticed, he watched them in their bright fragile frocks
and hats, and in their excessive gaiety, and in the strange abandon of
their gestures. "They are a foreign race encamped among us men. Fancy
women of nearly forty giggling with these girls as Janet and Hilda are
giggling!" He felt much pleasure in the sight. It could not have
happened in poor old Maggie's reign. It was delicious. It was one of
the rewards of existence, for the grace of these creatures was
surpassing. But at the same time it was hysterical and infantile. He
thought: "I've been taking women too seriously." And his heart
lightened somewhat.
Elaine saw him first. A flush flowed from her cheeks to her neck. Her
body stiffened. She became intensely self-conscious. She could not
speak, but she leaned forward and gazed with a passion of apprehension
at Janet, as if murmuring: "Look! The enemy! Take care!" The
imploring silent movement was delightful in its gawky ingenuousness.
"Do tell us some more, Daisy," Hilda implored weakly.
"There is no more," said Daisy, and then started: "Oh, Mr. Clayhanger!
How long have you been there?"
He entered the room, yielding himself, proud, masculine, acutely aware
of his sudden effect on these girls. For even Hilda was naught but a
girl at the moment; and Janet was really a girl, though the presence of
that shy niece, just awaking to her own body and to the world, made
Janet seem old in spite of her slimness and of that smoothness of skin
that was due to a tranquil, kind temperament. The shy niece was
enchantingly constrained upon being introduced to Edwin, whom she was
enjoined to call uncle. Only yesterday she must have been a child. Her
marvellously clear complexion could not have been imitated by any aunt
or elder sister.
"And now perhaps you'll tell me what it's all about," said Edwin.
Hilda replied:
"Janet's called about tennis. It seems they're sick of the new Hillport
Club. I knew they would be. And so next year Janet's having a private
club on her lawn----"
"Bad as it is," said Janet.
"Where the entire conversation won't be remarks by girls about other
girls' frocks and remarks by men about the rotten inferiority of other
men."
"This is all very sound," said Edwin, rather struck by Hilda's
epigrammatic quality. "But what I ask is--what were you laughing at?"
"Oh, nothing!" said Daisy Marrion.
"Very well then," said Edwin, going to the door and shutting it.
"Nobody leaves this room till I know.... Now, niece Elaine!"
Elaine went crimson and squirmed on her only recently hidden legs, but
she did not speak.
"Tell him, Daisy," said Janet.
Daisy sat still straighter.
"It was only about Alec Batchgrew, Mr. Clayhanger; I suppose you know
him."
Alec was the youngest scion of the great and detested plutocratic family
of Batchgrew,--enormously important in his nineteen years.
"Yes, I know him," said Edwin. "I saw him on his new grey horse this
morning."
"His 'orse," Janet corrected. They all began to laugh again loudly.
"He's taken a terrific fancy to Maud, my kiddie sister," said Daisy.
"She's sixteen. Yesterday afternoon at the tennis club he said to Maud:
'Look 'ere. I shall ride through the town to-morrow morning on my 'orse,
while you're all marketing. I shan't take any notice of any of the
other girls, but if you bow to me I'll take my 'at off to you.'" She
imitated the Batchgrew intonation.
"That's a good tale," said Edwin calmly. "What a cuckoo! He ought to
be put in a museum."
Daisy, made rather nervous by the success of her tale, bent over the
piano, and skimmed pianissimo and rapidly through the "Clytie" waltz.
Elaine moved her shoulders to the rhythm.
Janet said they must go.
"Here! Hold on a bit!" said Edwin, through the light film of music, and
undoing the little parcel he handed one specimen of the programme to
Hilda and another to Janet, simultaneously.
"Oh, so my ideas are listened to, sometimes!" murmured Hilda, who was,
however, pleased.
A malicious and unjust remark, he thought. But the next instant Hilda
said in a quite friendly natural tone:
"Janet's going to bring Elaine. And she says Tom says she is to tell
you that he's coming whether he's wanted or not. Daisy won't come."
"Why?" asked Edwin, but quite perfunctorily; he knew that the Marrions
were not interested in interesting music, and his design had been to
limit the audience to enthusiasts.
"Church," answered Daisy succinctly.
"Come after church."
She shook her head.
"And how's the practising?" Edwin enquired from Janet.
"Pretty fair," said she. "But not so good as this programme. What
swells we are, my word!"
"Hilda's idea," said Edwin generously. "Your mother coming?"
"Oh, yes, I think so."
As the visitors were leaving, Hilda stopped Janet.
"Don't you think it'll be better if we have the piano put over there,
and all the chairs together round here, Janet?"
"It might be," said Janet uncertainly.
Hilda turned sharply to Edwin:
"There! What did I tell you?"
"Well," he protested good-humouredly, "what on earth do you expect her
to say, when you ask her like that? Anyhow I may announce definitely
that I'm not going to have the piano moved. We'll try things as they
are, for a start, and then see. Why, if you put all the chairs together
over there, the place'll look like a blooming boarding-house."
The comparison was a failure in tact, which he at once recognised but
could not retrieve. Hilda faintly reddened, and the memory of her
struggles as manageress of a boarding-house was harshly revived in her.
"Some day I shall try the piano over there," she said, low.
And Edwin concurred, amiably:
"All right. Some day we'll try it together, just to see what it is
like."
The girls, the younger ones still giggling, slipped elegantly out of the
house, one after another.
Dinner passed without incident.
V
The next day, Sunday, Edwin had a headache; and it was a bilious
headache. Hence he insisted to himself and to everyone that it was not
a bilious headache, but just one of those plain headaches which
sometimes visit the righteous without cause or excuse; for he would
never accept the theory that he had inherited his father's digestive
weakness. A liability to colds he would admit, but not on any account a
feeble stomach. Hence, further, he was obliged to pretend to eat as
usual. George was rather gnat-like that morning, and Hilda was in a
susceptible condition, doubtless due to nervousness occasioned by the
novel responsibilities of the musical evening--and a Sabbath musical
evening at that! After the one o'clock dinner, Edwin lay down on the
sofa in the dining-room and read and slept; and when he woke up he felt
better, and was sincerely almost persuaded that his headache had not
been and was not a bilious headache. He said to himself that a short
walk might disperse the headache entirely. He made one or two trifling
adjustments in the disposition of the drawing-room furniture--his own
disposition of it, and immensely and indubitably superior to that so
pertinaciously advocated by Hilda--and then he went out. Neither Hilda
nor George was visible. Possibly during his rest they had gone for a
walk; they had fits of intimacy.
He walked in the faint September sunshine down Trafalgar Road into the
town. Except for a few girls in dowdy finery and a few heavy youths
with their black or dark-blue trousers turned up round the ankles far
enough to show the white cotton lining, the street was empty. The
devout at that hour were either dozing at home or engaged in Sunday
school work; thousands of children were concentrated in the hot Sunday
schools. As he passed the Bethesda Chapel and School he heard the
voices of children addressing the Lord of the Universe in laudatory and
intercessory song. Near the Bethesda chapel, by the Duke of Cambridge
Vaults, two men stood waiting, their faces firm in the sure knowledge
that within three hours the public-houses would again be open. Thick
smoke rose from the chimneys of several manufactories and thin smoke
from the chimneys of many others. The scheme of a Sunday musical
evening in that land presented itself to Edwin as something rash,
fantastic, and hopeless,--and yet solacing. Were it known it could
excite only hostility, horror, contempt, or an intense bovine
indifference; chiefly the last.... Breathe the name of Chopin in that
land!...
As he climbed Duck Bank he fumbled in his pocket for his private key of
the shop, which he had brought with him; for, not the desire for fresh
air, but an acute curiosity as to the answer to his letter to the
solicitor to the Hall trustees making an offer for the land at Shawport,
had sent him out of the house. Would the offer be accepted or declined,
or would a somewhat higher sum be suggested? The reply would have been
put into the post on Saturday, and was doubtless then lying in the
letter-box within the shop. The whole future seemed to be lying
unopened in that letter-box.
He penetrated into his own shop like a thief, for it was not meet for an
important tradesman to be seen dallying with business of a Sunday
afternoon. As he went into the shutter-darkened interior he thought of
Hilda, whom many years earlier he had kissed in that very same
shutter-darkened interior one Thursday afternoon. Life appeared
incredible to him, and in his wife he could see almost no trace of the
girl he had kissed there in the obscure shop. There was a fair quantity
of letters in the box. The first one he opened was from a solicitor;
not the solicitor to the Hall trustees, but Tom Orgreave, who announced
to Edwin Clayhanger, Esquire, dear sir, that his clients, the Palace
Porcelain Company of Longshaw, felt compelled to call their creditors
together. The Palace Porcelain Company, who had believed in the
efficacy of printed advertising matter and expensive catalogues, owed
Edwin a hundred and eighty pounds. It was a blow, and the more so in
that it was unexpected. "Did I come messing down here on a Sunday
afternoon to receive this sort of news?" he bitterly asked. A moment
earlier he had not doubted the solvency of the Palace Porcelain Company;
but now he felt that the Company wouldn't pay two shillings in the
pound,--perhaps not even that, as there were debenture-holders. The
next letter was an acceptance of his offer for the Shawport land. The
die was cast, then. The new works would have to be created; lithography
would increase; in the vast new enterprise he would be hampered by the
purchase of Maggie's house; he had just made a bad debt; and he would
have Hilda's capricious opposition to deal with. He quitted the shop
abruptly, locked the door, and went back home, his mind very active but
undirected.
VI
Something unfamiliar in the aspect of the breakfast-room as glimpsed
through the open door from the hall, drew him within. Hilda had at last
begun to make it into "her" room. She had brought an old writing-desk
from upstairs and put it between the fireplace and the window. Edwin
thought: "Doesn't she even know the light ought to fall over the left
shoulder, not over the right?" Letter paper and envelopes and even
stamps were visible; and a miscellaneous mass of letters and bills had
been pushed into the space between the flat of the desk and the small
drawers about it. There was also an easy-chair, with a freshly-covered
cushion on it; a new hearthrug that Edwin neither recognised nor
approved of; several framed prints, and other oddments. His own
portrait still dominated the mantelpiece, but it was now flanked by two
brass candle-sticks. He thought: "If she'd ask me, I could have
arranged it for her much better than that." Nevertheless the idea of
her being absolute monarch of the little room, and expressing her
individuality in it and by it, both pleased and touched him. Nor did he
at all resent the fact that she had executed her plan in secret. She
must have been anxious to get the room finished for the musical evening.
Thence he passed into the drawing-room,--and was thunderstruck. The
arrangement of the furniture was utterly changed, and the resemblance to
a boarding-house parlour after all achieved. The piano had crossed the
room; the chairs were massed together in the most ridiculous way; the
sofa was so placed as to be almost useless. His anger was furious but
cold. The woman had considerable taste in certain directions, but she
simply did not understand the art of fixing up a room. Whereas he did.
Each room in the house (save her poor little amateurish breakfast-room
or "boudoir") had been arranged by himself, even to small details,--and
well arranged. Everyone admitted that he had a talent for interiors.
The house was complete before she ever saw it, and he had been
responsible for it. He was not the ordinary inexperienced ignorant
husband who "leaves all that sort of thing to the missis." Interiors
mattered to him; they influenced his daily happiness. The woman had
clearly failed to appreciate the sacredness of the _status quo_. He
appreciated it himself, and never altered anything without consulting
her and definitely announcing his intention to alter. She probably
didn't care a fig for the _status quo_. Her conduct was inexcusable.
It was an attack on vital principles. It was an outrage. Doubtless, in
her scorn for the _status quo_, she imagined that he would accept the
_fait accompli_. She was mistaken. With astounding energy he set to
work to restore the _status quo ante_. The vigour with which he dragged
and pushed an innocent elephantine piano was marvellous. In less than
five minutes not a trace remained of the _fait accompli_. He thought:
"This is a queer start for a musical evening!" But he was triumphant,
resolute, and remorseless. He would show her a thing or two. In
particular he would show that fair play had to be practised in his
house. Then, perceiving that his hands were dirty, and one finger
bleeding, he went majestically, if somewhat breathless, upstairs to the
bathroom, and washed with care. In the glass he saw that, despite his
exertions, he was pale. At length he descended, wondering where she
was, where she had hidden herself, who had helped her to move the
furniture, and what exactly the upshot would be. There could be no
doubt that he was in a state of high emotion, in which unflinching
obstinacy was shot through with qualms about disaster.
He revisited the drawing-room to survey his labours. She was there.
Whence she had sprung, he knew not. But she was there. He caught sight
of her standing by the window before entering the room.
When he got into the room he saw that her emotional excitement far
surpassed his own. Her lips and her hands were twitching; her nostrils
dilated and contracted; tears were in her eyes.
"Edwin," she exclaimed very passionately, in a thick voice, quite unlike
her usual clear tones, as she surveyed the furniture, "this is really
too much!"
Evidently she thought of nothing but her resentment. No consideration
other than her outraged dignity would have affected her demeanour. If a
whole regiment of their friends had been watching at the door, her
demeanour would not have altered. The bedrock of her nature had been
reached.
"It's war, this is!" thought Edwin.
He was afraid; he was even intimidated by her anger; but he did not lose
his courage. The determination to fight for himself, and to see the
thing through no matter what happened, was not a bit weakened. An
inwardly feverish but outwardly calm vindictive desperation possessed
him. He and she would soon know who was the stronger.
At the same time he said to himself:
"I was hasty. I ought not to have acted in such a hurry. Before doing
anything I ought to have told her quietly that I intended to have the
last word as regards furniture in this house. I was within my rights in
acting at once, but it wasn't very clever of me, clumsy fool!"
Aloud he said, with a kind of self-conscious snigger:
"What's too much?"
Hilda went on:
"You simply make me look a fool in my own house, before my own son and
the servants."
"You've brought it on yourself," said he fiercely. "If you will do these
idiotic things you must take the consequences. I told you I didn't want
the furniture moved, and immediately my back's turned you go and move
it. I won't have it, and so I tell you straight."
"You're a brute," she continued, not heeding him, obsessed by her own
wound. "You're a brute!" She said it with terrifying conviction.
"Everybody knows it. Didn't Maggie warn me? You're a brute and a
bully. And you do all you can to shame me in my own house. Who'd think
I was supposed to be the mistress here? Even in front of my friends you
insult me."
"Don't act like a baby. How do I insult you?"
"Talking about boarding-houses. Do you think Janet and all of them
didn't notice it?"
"Well," he said. "Let this be a lesson to you."
She hid her face in her hands and sobbed, moving towards the door.
He thought:
"She's beaten. She knows she's got to take it."
Then he said:
"Do _I_ go altering furniture without consulting you? Do _I_ do things
behind your back? Never!"
"That's no reason why you should try to make me look a fool in my own
house. I told Ada how I wanted the furniture, and George and I helped
her. And then a moment afterwards you give them contrary orders. What
will they think of me? Naturally they'll think I'm not your wife, but
your slave. You're a brute." Her voice rose.
"I didn't give any orders. I haven't seen the damned servants and I
haven't seen George."
She looked up suddenly:
"Then who moved the furniture?"
"I did."
"Who helped you?"
"Nobody helped me."
"But I was here only a minute or two since."
"Well, do you suppose it takes me half a day to move a few sticks of
furniture?"
She was impressed by his strength and his swiftness, and apparently
silenced; she had thought that the servants had been brought into the
affair.
"You ought to know perfectly well," he proceeded, "I should never dream
of insulting you before the servants. Nobody's more careful of your
dignity than I am. I should like to see anybody do anything against
your dignity while I'm here."
She was still sobbing.
"I think you ought to apologise to me," she blubbered. "Yes, I really
do."
"Why should I apologise to you? You moved the furniture against my
wish. I moved it against yours. That's all. You began. I didn't
begin. You want everything your own way. Well, you won't have it."
She blubbered once more:
"You ought to apologise to me."
And then she wept hysterically.
He meditated sourly, harshly. He had conquered. The furniture was as he
wished, and it would remain so. The enemy was in tears, shamed,
humiliated. He had a desire to restore her dignity, partly because she
was his wife and partly because he hated to see any human being beaten.
Moreover, at the bottom of his heart he had a tremendous regard for
appearances, and he felt fears for the musical evening. He could not
contemplate the possibility of visitors perceiving that the host and
hostess had violently quarrelled. He would have sacrificed almost
anything to the social proprieties. And he knew that Hilda would not
think of them, or at any rate would not think of them effectively. He
did not mind apologising to her, if an apology would give her
satisfaction. He was her superior in moral force, and naught else
mattered.
"I don't think I ought to apologise," he said, with a slight laugh.
"But if you think so I don't mind apologising. I apologise. There!"
He dropped into an easy-chair.
To him it was as if he had said:
"You see what a magnanimous chap I am."
She tried to conceal her feelings, but she was pleased, flattered,
astonished. Her self-respect returned to her rapidly.
"Thank you," she murmured, and added: "It was the least you could do."
At her last words he thought:
"Women are incapable of being magnanimous."
She moved towards the door.
"Hilda," he said.
She stopped.
"Come here," he commanded with gentle bluffness.
She wavered towards him.
"Come here, I tell you," he said again.
He drew her down to him, all fluttering and sobbing and wet, and kissed
her, kissed her several times; and then, sitting on his knees, she
kissed him. But, though she mysteriously signified forgiveness, she
could not smile; she was still far too agitated and out of control to be
able to smile.
The scene was over. The proprieties of the musical evening were saved.
Her broken body and soul huddled against him were agreeably wistful to
his triumphant manliness.
But he had had a terrible fright. And even now there was a certain mere
bravado in his attitude. In his heart he was thinking:
"By Jove! Has it come to this?"
The responsibilities of the future seemed too complicated, wearisome and
overwhelming. The earthly career of a bachelor seemed almost heavenly
in its wondrous freedom.... Etches v. Etches.... The unexampled
creature, so recently the source of ineffable romance, still sat on his
knees, weighing them down. Suddenly he noticed that his head ached very
badly--worse than it had ached all day.
VII
The Sunday musical evening, beyond its artistic thrills and emotional
quality, proved to be exciting as a social manifestation. Those present
at it felt as must feel Russian conspirators in a back room of some big
grey house of a Petrograd suburb when the secret printing-press begins
to function before their eyes. This concert of profane harmonies,
deliberately planned and pouring out through open windows to affront the
ears of returners from church and chapel, was considered by its
organisers as a remarkable event; and rightly so. The Clayhanger house
might have been a fortress, with the blood-red standard of art and
freedom floating from a pole lashed to its chimney. Of course everybody
pretended to everybody else that the musical evening was a quite
ordinary phenomenon.
It was a success, and a flashing success, yet not unqualified. The
performers--Tertius Ingpen on the piano, on the fiddle, and on the
clarinet, Janet Orgreave on the piano, and very timidly in a little song
by Grieg, Tom Orgreave on the piano and his contralto wife in two famous
and affecting songs by Schumann and also on the piano, and Edwin sick
but obstinate as turner-over of pages--all did most creditably. The
music was given with ardent sympathy, and in none of it did any marked
pause occur which had not been contemplated by the composer himself.
But abstentions had thinned the women among the audience. Elaine Hill
did not come, and, far more important, Mrs. Orgreave did not come. Her
husband, old Osmond Orgreave, had not been expected, as of late (owing
to the swift onset of renal disease, hitherto treated by him with some
contempt) he had declined absolutely to go out at night; but Edwin had
counted on Mrs. Orgreave. She simply sent word that she did not care to
leave her husband, and that Elaine was keeping her company.
Disappointment, keen but brief, resulted. Edwin's severe sick headache
was also a drawback. It did, however, lessen the bad social effect of
an altercation between him and Hilda, in which Edwin's part was
attributed to his indisposition. This altercation arose out of an
irresponsible suggestion from somebody that something else should be
played instead of something else. Now, for Edwin, a programme was a
programme,--sacred, to be executed regardless of every extrinsic
consideration. And seeing that the programme was printed...! Edwin
negatived the suggestion instantly, and the most weighty opinion in the
room agreed with him, but Hilda must needs fly out: "Why not change it?
I'm sure it will be better," etc. Whereas she could be sure of nothing
of the sort, and was incompetent to offer an opinion. And she
unreasonably and unnecessarily insisted, despite Tertius Ingpen, and the
change was made. It was astounding to Edwin that, after the shattering
scene of the afternoon, she should be so foolhardy, so careless, so
obstinate. But she was. He kept his resentment neatly in a little
drawer in his mind, and glanced at it now and then. And he thought of
Tertius Ingpen's terrible remark about women at Ingpen's first visit.
He said to himself: "There's a lot in it, no doubt about that."
At the close of the last item, two of Brahms's Hungarian Dances for
pianoforte duet (played with truly electrifying _brio_ by little
wizening Tom Orgreave and his wife), both Tertius Ingpen and Tom fussed
consciously about the piano, triumphant, not knowing quite what to do
next, and each looking rather like a man who has told a good story, and
in the midst of the applause tries to make out by an affectation of
casualness that the story is nothing at all.
"Of course," said Tom Orgreave carelessly, and glancing at the ground as
he usually did when speaking, "Fine as those dances are on the piano, I
should prefer to hear them with the fiddle."
"Why?" demanded Ingpen challengingly.
"Because they were written for the fiddle," said Tom Orgreave with
finality.
"Written for the fiddle? Not a bit of it!"
With superiority outwardly unruffled, Tom said:
"Pardon me. Brahms wrote them for Joachim. I've heard him play them."
"So have I," said Tertius Ingpen, lightly but scornfully. "But they
were written originally for pianoforte duet, as you played them
to-night. Brahms arranged them afterwards for Joachim."
Tom Orgreave shook under the blow, for in musical knowledge his
supremacy had never been challenged in Bleakridge.
"Surely----!" he began weakly.
"My dear fellow, it is so," said Ingpen impatiently.
"Look it up," said Edwin, with false animation, for his head was
thudding. "George, fetch the encyclopaedia B--and J too."
Delighted, George ran off. He had been examining Johnnie Orgreave's
watch, and it was to Johnnie he delivered the encyclopaedia, amid mock
protests from his uncle Edwin. More than one person had remarked the
growing alliance between Johnnie and young George.
But the encyclopaedia gave no light.
Then the eldest Swetnam (who had come by invitation at the last moment)
said:
"I'm sure Ingpen is right."
He was not sure, but from the demeanour of the two men he could guess,
and he thought he might as well share the glory of Ingpen's triumph.
The next instant Tertius Ingpen was sketching out future musical
evenings at which quartets and quintets should be performed. He knew
men in the orchestra at the Theatre Royal, Hanbridge; he knew
girl-violinists who could be drilled, and he was quite certain that he
could get a 'cello. From this he went on to part-songs, and in answer
to scepticism about local gift for music, he said that during his visits
of inspection to factories he had heard spontaneous part-singing "that
would knock spots off the Savoy chorus." Indeed, since his return to
it, Ingpen had developed some appreciation of certain aspects of his
native district. He said that the kindly commonsense with which as an
inspector he was received on pot-banks, surpassed anything in the whole
country.
"Talking of pot-banks, you'll get a letter from me about the Palace
Porcelain Company," Tom Orgreave lifting his eyebrows muttered to Edwin
with a strange gloomy constraint.
"I've had it," said Edwin. "You've got some nice clients, I must say."
In a moment, though Tom said not a word more, the Palace Porcelain
Company was on the carpet, to Edwin's disgust. He hated to talk about a
misfortune. But others beside himself were interested in the Palace
Porcelain Company, and the news of its failure had boomed mysteriously
through the Sabbath air of the district.
Hilda and Janet were whispering together. And Edwin, gazing at them,
saw in them the giggling tennis-playing children of the previous
day,--specimens of a foreign race encamped among the men.
Suddenly Hilda turned her head towards the men, and said:
"Of course _Edwin's_ been let in!"
It was a reference to the Palace Porcelain Company. How ungracious! How
unnecessary! How unjust! And somehow Edwin had been fearing it. And
that was really why he had not liked the turn of the conversation,--he
had been afraid of one of her darts!
Useless for Tom Swetnam to say that a number of business men quite as
keen as Edwin had been "let in"! From her disdainful silence it appeared
that Hilda's conviction of the unusual simplicity of her husband was
impregnable.
"I hear you've got that Shawport land," said Johnnie Orgreave.
The mystic influences of music seemed to have been overpowered.
"Who told ye?" asked Edwin in a low voice, once more frightened of
Hilda.
"Young Toby Hall. Met him at the Conservative Club last night."
But Hilda had heard.
"What land is that?" she demanded curtly.
"'What land is that?'" Johnnie mimicked her. "It's the land for the new
works, missis."
Hilda threw her shoulders back, glaring at Edwin with a sort of outraged
fury. Happily most of the people present were talking among themselves.
"You never told me," she muttered.
He said:
"I only knew this afternoon."
Her anger was unmistakable. She was no longer a fluttering feminine
wreck on his manly knee.
"Well, good-bye," said Janet Orgreave startlingly to him. "Sorry I have
to go so soon."
"You aren't going!" Edwin protested with unnatural loudness. "What
about the victuals? I shan't touch 'em myself. But they must be
consumed. Here! You and I'll lead the way."
Half playfully he seized her arm. She glanced at Hilda uncertainly.
"Edwin," said Hilda very curtly and severely, "don't be so clumsy.
Janet has to go at once. Mr. Orgreave is very ill--very ill indeed.
She only came to oblige us." Then she passionately kissed Janet.
It was like a thunderclap in the room. Johnnie and Tom confirmed the
news. Of the rest only Tom's wife and Hilda knew. Janet had told Hilda
before the music began. Osmond Orgreave had been taken ill between five
and six in the afternoon. Dr. Stirling had gone in at once, and
pronounced the attack serious. Everything possible was done; even a
nurse was obtained instantly, from the Clowes Hospital by the station.
From reasons of sentiment, if from no other, Janet would have stayed at
home and foregone the musical evening. But those Orgreaves at home had
put their heads together and decided that Janet should still go, because
without her the entire musical evening would crumble to naught. Here
was the true reason of the absence of Mrs. Orgreave and Elaine--both
unnecessary to the musical evening. The boys had come, and Tom's wife
had come, because, even considered only as an audience, the Orgreave
contingent was almost essential to the musical evening. And so Janet,
her father's especial favourite and standby, had come, and she had
played, and not a word whispered except to Hilda. It was wondrous. It
was impressive. All the Orgreaves departed, and the remnant of guests
meditated in proud, gratified silence upon the singular fortitude and
heroic commonsense that distinguished their part of the world. The
musical evening was dramatically over, the refreshments being almost
wasted.
VIII
Hilda was climbing on to the wooden-seated chair in the hall to put out
the light there when she heard a noise behind the closed door of the
kitchen, which she had thought to be empty. She went to the door and
pushed it violently open. Not only was the gas flaring away in an
unauthorised manner, not only were both servants (theoretically in bed)
still up, capless and apronless and looking most curious in unrelieved
black, but the adventurous and wicked George was surreptitiously with
them, flattering them with his aristocratic companionship, and eating
blanc-mange out of a cut-glass dish with a tablespoon. Twice George had
been sent to bed. Once the servants had been told to go to bed. The
worst of carnivals is that the dregs of the population, such as George,
will take advantage of them to rise to the surface and, conscienceless
and mischievous, set at defiance the conventions by which society
protects itself.
She merely glanced at George; the menace of her eyes was alarming. His
lower lip fell; he put down the dish and spoon, and slunk timorously
past her on his way upstairs.
Then she said to the servants:
"You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, encouraging him! Go to bed at
once." And as they began nervously to handle the things on the table,
she added, more imperiously: "At once! Don't keep me waiting. I'll see
to all this."
And they followed George meekly.
She gazed in disgust at the general litter of broken refreshments,
symbolising the traditional inefficiency of servants, and extinguished
the gas.
The three criminals were somewhat the victims of her secret resentment
against Edwin, who, a mere martyrised perambulating stomach, had
retired. Edwin had defeated her in the afternoon; and all the evening,
in the disposition of the furniture, the evidence of his victory had
confronted her. By prompt and brutal action, uncharacteristic of him
and therefore mean, he had defeated her. True he had embraced and
comforted her tears, but it was the kiss of a conqueror. And then, on
the top of that, he had proved his commercial incompetence by making a
large bad debt, and his commercial rashness by definitely adopting a
scheme of whose extreme danger she was convinced. One part of her mind
intellectually knew that he had not wilfully synchronised these events
in order to wound her, but another part of her mind felt deeply that he
had. She had been staggered by the revelation that he was definitely
committed to the project of lithography and the new works. Not one word
about the matter had he said to her since their altercation on the night
of the reception; and she had imagined that, with his usual indecision,
he was allowing it to slide. She scarcely recognised her Edwin. Now
she accused him of a malicious obstinacy, not understanding that he was
involved in the great machine of circumstance and perhaps almost as much
surprised as herself at the movement of events. At any rate she was
being beaten once more, and her spirit rebelled. Through all the
misfortunes previous to her marriage that spirit, if occasionally cowed,
had never been broken. She had sat grim and fierce against even
bum-bailiffs in her time. Yes, her spirit rebelled, and the fact that
others had known about the Shawport land before she knew made her still
more mutinous against destiny. She looked round dazed at the situation.
What? The mild Edwin defying and crushing her? It was scarcely
conceivable. The tension of her nerves from this cause only was
extreme. Add to it the strain of the musical evening, intensified by
the calamity at the Orgreaves'!
A bell rang in the kitchen, and all the ganglions of her spinal column
answered it. Had Edwin rung? No. It was the front-door.
"Pardon me," said Tertius Ingpen, when she opened. "But all my friends
soon learn how difficult it is to get rid of me."
"Come in," she said, liking his tone, which flattered her by assuming
her sense of humour.
"As I'm sleeping at the office to-night, I thought I might as well take
one or two of my musical instruments after all. So I came back."
"You've been round?" she asked, meaning round to the Orgreaves'.
"Yes."
"What is it, really?"
"Well, it appears to be pericarditis supervening on renal disease. He
lost consciousness, you know."
"Yes, I know. But what is pericarditis?"
"Pericarditis is inflammation of the pericardium."
"And what's the pericardium?"
They both smiled faintly.
"The pericardium is the membrane that encloses the heart. I don't mind
telling you that I've only just acquired this encyclopaedic knowledge
from Stirling,--he was there."
"And is it supposed to be very dangerous?"
"I don't know. Doctors never want to tell you anything except what you
can find out for yourself."
After a little hesitating pause they went into the drawing-room, where
the lights were still burning, and the full disorder of the musical
evening persisted, including the cigarette-ash on the carpet. Tertius
Ingpen picked up his clarinet case, took out the instrument, examined
the mouthpiece lovingly, and with tenderness laid it back.
"Do sit down a moment," said Hilda, sitting limply down. "It's
stifling, isn't it?"
"Let me open the window," he suggested politely.
As he returned from the window, he said, pulling his short beard:
"It was wonderful how those Orgreaves went through the musical evening,
wasn't it? Makes you proud of being English.... I suppose Janet's a
great friend of yours?"
His enthusiasm touched her, and her pride in Janet quickened to it. She
gave a deliberate, satisfied nod in reply to his question. She was glad
to be alone with him in the silence of the house.
"Ed gone to bed?" he questioned, after another little pause.
Already he was calling her husband Ed, and with an affectionate
intonation!
She nodded again.
"He stuck it out jolly well," said Ingpen, still standing.
"He brings these attacks on himself," said Hilda, with the calm
sententiousness of a good digestion discussing a bad one. She was
becoming pleased with herself--with her expensive dress, her position,
her philosophy, and her power to hold the full attention of this man.
Ingpen replied, looking steadily at her:
"We bring everything on ourselves."
Then he smiled, as a comrade to another.
She shifted her pose. A desire to discuss Edwin with this man grew in
her, for she needed sympathy intensely.
"What do you think of this new scheme of his?" she demanded somewhat
self-consciously.
"The new works? Seems all right. But I don't know much about it."
"Well, I'm not so sure." And she exposed her theory of the entire
satisfactoriness of their present situation, of the needlessness of
fresh risks, and of Edwin's unsuitability for enterprise. "Of course
he's splendid," she said. "But he'll never push. I can look at him
quite impartially--I mean in all those things."
Ingpen murmured as it were dreamily:
"Have you had much experience of business yourself?"
"It depends what you call business. I suppose you know I used to keep a
boarding-house." She was a little defiant.
"No, I didn't know. I may have heard vaguely. Did you make it pay?"
"It did pay in the end."
"But not at first? ... Any disasters?"
She could not decide whether she ought to rebuff the cross-examiner or
not. His manner was so objective, so disinterested, so innocent, so
disarming, that in the end she smiled uncertainly, raising her thick
eyebrows.
"Oh yes," she said bravely.
"And who came to the rescue?" Ingpen proceeded.
"Edwin did."
"I see," said Ingpen, still dreamily.
"I believe you knew all about it," she remarked, having flushed.
"Pardon me! Almost nothing."
"Of course you take Edwin's side."
"Are we talking man to man?" he asked suddenly, in a new tone.
"Most decidedly!" She rose to the challenge.
"Then I'll tell you my leading theory," he said in a soft, polite voice.
"The proper place for women is the harem."
"Mr. Ingpen!"
"No, no!" he soothed her, but firmly. "We're talking man to man. I can
whisper sweet nothings to you, if you prefer it, but I thought we were
trying to be honest. I hold a belief. I state it. I may be wrong, but
I hold that belief. You can persecute me for my belief if you like.
That's your affair. But surely you aren't afraid of an idea! If you
don't like the mere word, let's call it zenana. Call it the
drawing-room and kitchen."
"So we're to be kept to our sphere!"
"Now don't be resentful. Naturally you're to be kept to your own
sphere. If Edwin began dancing around in the kitchen, you'd soon begin
to talk about _his_ sphere. You can't have the advantages of married
life for nothing--neither you nor he. But some of you women nowadays
seem to expect them gratis. Let me tell you, everything has to be paid
for on this particular planet. I'm a bachelor. I've often thought
about marrying, of course. I might get married some day. You never
know your luck. If I do----"
"You'll keep your wife in the harem, no doubt! And she'll have to
accept without daring to say a word all the risks you choose to take."
"There you are again!" he said. "This notion that marriage ought to be
the end of risks for a woman is astonishingly rife, I find. Very
curious! Very curious!" He seemed to address the wall. "Why, it's the
beginning of them. Doesn't the husband take risks?"
"He chooses his own. He doesn't have business risks thrust upon him by
his wife."
"Doesn't he? What about the risk of finding himself tied for life to an
inefficient housekeeper? That's a bit of a business risk, isn't it?
I've known more than one man let in for it."
"And you've felt so sorry for him!"
"No, not specially. You must run risks. When you've finished running
risks you're dead and you ought to be buried. If I was a wife I should
enjoy running a risk with my husband. I swear I shouldn't want to shut
myself up in a glass case with him out of all the draughts! Why, what
are we all alive for?"
The idea of the fineness of running risks struck her as original. It
challenged her courage, and she began to meditate.
"Yes," she murmured. "So you sleep at the office sometimes?"
"A certain elasticity in one's domestic arrangements." He waved a hand,
seeming to pooh-pooh himself lightly. Then, quickly changing his mood,
he bent and said good-night, but not quite with the saccharine
artificiality of his first visit--rather with honest, friendly
sincerity, in which were mingled both thanks and appreciation. Hilda
jumped up responsively. And, the clarinet-case under his left arm, and
the fiddle-case in his left hand, leaving the right arm free, Ingpen
departed.
She did not immediately go to bed. Now that Ingpen was gone she
perceived that though she had really said little in opposition to
Edwin's scheme, he had at once assumed that she was a strong opponent of
it. Hence she must have shown her feelings far too openly at the first
mention of the affair before anybody had left. This annoyed her. Also
the immense injustice of nearly all Ingpen's argument grew upon her
moment by moment. She was conscious of a grudge against him, even while
greatly liking him. But she swore that she would never show the grudge,
and that he should never suspect it. To the end she would play a man's
part in the man-to-man discussion. Moreover her anger against Edwin had
not decreased. Nevertheless, a sort of zest, perhaps an angry joy,
filled her with novel and intoxicating sensations. Let the scheme of
the new works go forward! Let it fail! Let it ruin them! She would
stand in the breach. She would show the whole world that no ordeal
could lower her head. She had had enough of being the odalisque and the
queen, reclining on the soft couch of security. Her nostrils scented
life on the wind.... Then she heard a door close upstairs, and began at
last rapidly, as it were cruelly, to put out the lights.
IX
The incubus and humiliations of a first-class bilious attack are not
eternal. Edwin had not retired very long before the malignant phase of
the terrible malady passed inevitably, by phenomena according with all
clinical experience, into the next phase. And the patient, who from
being chiefly a stomach, had now become chiefly a throbbing head, lay on
his pillow exhausted but once more capable of objective thought. His
resentment against his wife on account of her gratuitous disbelief in
his business faculty, and on account of her interference in a matter
that did not concern her, flickered up into new flame. He was
absolutely innocent. She was absolutely guilty; no excuse existed or
could be invented for her rude and wounding attitude. He esteemed
Tertius Ingpen, bachelor, the most fortunate of men.... Women--unjust,
dishonourable, unintelligent, unscrupulous, giggling, pleasure-loving!
Their appetite for pleasure was infantile and tigerish. He had noticed
it growing in Hilda. Previous to marriage he had regarded Hilda as
combining the best feminine with the best masculine qualities. In many
ways she had exhibited the comforting straightforward characteristics of
the male. But since marriage her mental resemblance to a man had
diminished daily, and now she was the most feminine woman he had ever
met, in the unsatisfactory sense of the word. Women ... Still, the
behaviour of Janet and Hilda during the musical evening had been rather
heroic. Impossible to dismiss them as being exclusively of the giggling
race! They had decided to play a part, and they had played it with
impressive fortitude.... And the house of the Orgreaves--was it about
to fall? He divined that it was about to fall. No death had so far
occurred in the family, which had seemed to be immune through decades
and forever. He wondered what would have happened to the house of
Orgreave in six months' time.... Then he went back into the dark
origins of his bilious attack.... And then he was at inexcusable Hilda
again.
At length he heard her on the landing.
She entered the bedroom, and quickly he shut his eyes. He felt
unpleasantly through his eyelids that she had turned up the gas. Then
she was close to him, sat down on the edge of the bed. She asked him a
question, calmly, as to occurrences since his retirement. He nodded an
affirmative.
"Your forehead's all broken out," she said, moving away.
In a few moments he was aware of the delicious, soothing, heavenly
application to his forehead of a handkerchief drenched in eau de cologne
and water. The compress descended upon his forehead with the infinite
gentleness of an endearment and the sudden solace of a reprieve. He
made faint, inarticulate noises.
The light was extinguished for his ease.
He murmured weakly:
"Are you undressed already?"
"No," she said quietly. "I can undress all right in the dark."
He opened his eyes, and could dimly see her moving darkly about,
brushing her hair, casting garments. Then she came towards him, a vague
whiteness against the gloom, and, bending, felt for his face, and kissed
him. She kissed him with superb and passionate violence; she drew his
life out of him, and poured in her own. The tremendous kiss seemed to
prove that there is no difference between love and hate. It contained
everything--surrender, defiance, anger and tenderness.
Neither of them spoke. The kiss dominated and assuaged him. Its
illogicalness overthrew him. He could never have kissed like that under
such circumstances. It was a high and bold gesture. It expressed and
transmitted confidence. She had explained nothing, justified nothing,
made no charge, asked no forgiveness. She had just confronted him with
one unarguable fact. And it was the only fact that mattered. His
pessimism about marriage lifted. If his spirit was splendidly romantic
enough to match hers, marriage remained a feasible state. And he threw
away logic and the past, and in a magic vision saw that success in
marriage was an affair of goodwill and the right tone. With the whole
force of his heart he determined to succeed in marriage. And in the
mighty resolve marriage presented itself to him as really rather easy
after all.