CHAPTER X

THE ORGREAVE CALAMITY

I

On the following Saturday afternoon--that is, six days later--Edwin had

unusually been down to the shop after dinner, and he returned home about

four o'clock. Ada, hearing his entrance, came into the hall and said:

"Please, sir, missis is over at Miss Orgreave's and will ye please go

over?"

"Where's Master George?"

"In missis's own room, sir."

"All right."

The "mistress's own room" was the new nomenclature adopted by the

kitchen, doubtless under suggestion, for the breakfast-room or boudoir.

Edwin opened the door and glanced in. George, apparently sketching, sat

at his mother's desk, with the light falling over his right shoulder.

He looked up quickly in self-excuse:

"Mother said I could! Mother said I could!"

For the theory of the special sanctity of the boudoir had mysteriously

established itself in the house during the previous eight or ten days.

George was well aware that even Edwin was not entitled to go in and out

as he chose.

"Keep calm, sonny," said Edwin, teasing him.

With permissible and discreet curiosity he glanced from afar at the

desk, its upper drawers and its pigeon-holes. Obviously it was very

untidy. Its untidiness gave him sardonic pleasure, because Hilda was

ever implying, or even stating, that she was a very tidy woman. He

remembered that many years ago Janet had mentioned orderliness as a

trait of the wonderful girl, Hilda Lessways. But he did not personally

consider that she was tidy; assuredly she by no means reached his

standard of tidiness, which standard indeed she now and then dismissed

as old-maidish. Also, he was sardonically amused by the air of

importance and busyness which she put on when using the desk and the

room; her household accounts, beheld at a distance, were his wicked joy.

He saw a bluish envelope lying untidily on the floor between the desk

and the fireplace, and he picked it up. It had been addressed to "Mrs.

George Cannon, 59 Preston Street, Brighton," and readdressed in a

woman's hand to "Mrs. Clayhanger, Trafalgar Road, Bursley." Whether the

handwriting of the original address was masculine or feminine he could

not decide. The envelope had probably contained only a bill or a

circular. Nevertheless he felt at once inimically inquisitive towards

the envelope. Without quite knowing it he was jealous of all Hilda's

past life up to her marriage with him. After a moment, reflecting that

she had made no mention of a letter, he dropped the envelope

superciliously, and it floated to the ground.

"I'm going to Lane End House," he said.

"Can I come?"

"No."

II

The same overhanging spirit of a great event which had somehow justified

him in being curt to the boy, rendered him self-conscious and furtive as

he stood in the porch of the Orgreaves, waiting for the door to open.

Along the drive that curved round the oval lawn under the high trees

were wheel-marks still surviving from the previous day. The house also

survived; the curtains in all the windows, and the plants or the pieces

of furniture between the curtains, were exactly as usual. Yet the solid

building and its contents had the air of an illusion.

A servant appeared.

"Good afternoon, Selina."

He had probably never before called her by name, but to-day his

self-consciousness impelled him to do uncustomary things.

"Good afternoon, sir," said Selina, whose changeless attire ignored even

the greatest events. And it was as if she had said:

"Ah, sir! To what have we come!"

She too was self-conscious and furtive.

Aloud she said:

"Miss Orgreave and Mrs. Clayhanger are upstairs, sir. I'll tell Miss

Orgreave."

Coughing nervously, he went into the drawing-room, the large obscure

room, crowded with old furniture and expensive new furniture, with

books, knickknacks, embroidery, and human history, in which he had first

set eyes on Hilda. It was precisely the same as it had been a few days

earlier; absolutely nothing had been changed, and yet now it had the

archaeological and forlorn aspect of a museum.

He dreaded the appearance of Janet and Hilda. What could he say to

Janet, or she to him? But he was a little comforted by the fact that

Hilda had left a message for him to join them.

On the previous Tuesday Osmond Orgreave had died, and within twenty-four

hours Mrs. Orgreave was dead also. On the Friday they were buried

together. To-day the blinds were up again; the funereal horses with

their artificially curved necks had already dragged other corpses to the

cemetery; the town existed as usual; and the family of Orgreave was

scattered once more. Marian, the eldest daughter, had not been able to

come at all, because her husband was seriously ill. Alicia Hesketh, the

youngest daughter, far away in her large house in Devonshire, had not

been able to come at all, because she was hourly expecting her third

child; nor would Harry, her husband, leave her. Charlie, the doctor at

Ealing, had only been able to run down for the funeral, because, his

partner having broken his leg, the whole work of the practice was on his

shoulders. And to-day Tom, the solicitor, was in his office exploring

the financial side of his father's affairs; Johnnie was in the office of

Orgreave and Sons, busy with the professional side of his father's

affairs; Jimmie, who had made a sinister marriage, was nobody knew

precisely where; Tom's wife had done what she could and gone home;

Jimmie's wife had never appeared; Elaine, Marian's child, was shopping

at Hanbridge for Janet; and Janet remained among her souvenirs. An

epoch was finished, and the episode that concluded it, in its strange

features and its swiftness, resembled a vast hallucination.

Certain funerals will obsess a whole town. And the funeral of Mr. and

Mrs. Osmond Orgreave might have been expected to do so. Not only had

their deaths been almost simultaneous, but they had been preceded by

superficially similar symptoms, though the husband had died of

pericarditis following renal disease, and the wife of hyperaemia of the

lungs following increasingly frequent attacks of bronchial catarrh. The

phenomena had been impressive, and rumour had heightened them. Also

Osmond Orgreave for half a century had been an important and celebrated

figure in the town; architecturally a large portion of the new parts of

it were his creation. Yet the funeral had not been one of the town's

great feverish funerals. True, the children would have opposed anything

spectacular; but had municipal opinion decided against the children,

they would have been compelled to yield. Again and again prominent men

in the town had as it were bought their funeral processions in advance

by the yard--processions in which their families, willing or not, were

reduced to the role of stewards.

Tom and Janet, however, had ordained that nobody whatever beyond the

family should be invited to the funeral, and there had been no sincere

protest from outside.

The fact was that Osmond Orgreave had never related himself to the

crowd. He was not a Freemason; he had never been President of the

Society for the Prosecution of Felons; he had never held municipal

office; he had never pursued any object but the good of his family. He

was a particularist. His charm was kept chiefly for his own home. And

beneath the cordiality of his more general connections, there had always

been a subtle reservation--on both sides. He was admired for his

cleverness and his distinction, liked where he chose to be liked, but

never loved save by his own kin. Further, he had a name for being

"pretty sharp" in business. Clients had had prolonged difficulties with

him--Edwin himself among them. The town had made up its mind about

Osmond Orgreave, and the verdict, as with most popular verdicts, was

roughly just so far as it went, but unjust in its narrowness. The

laudatory three-quarters of a column in the _Signal_ and the briefer

effusive notice in the new half-penny morning paper, both reflected, for

those with perceptions delicate enough to understand, the popular

verdict. And though Edwin hated long funerals and the hysteria of a

public woe, he had nevertheless a sense of disappointment in the

circumstances of the final disappearance of Osmond Orgreave.

The two women entered the room, silently. Hilda looked fierce and

protective. Janet Orgreave, pale and in black, seemed very thin. She

did not speak. She gave a little nod of greeting.

Edwin, scarcely controlling his voice and his eyes, murmured:

"Good afternoon."

They would not shake hands; the effort would have broken them. All

remained standing, uncertainly. Edwin saw before him two girls aged by

the accumulation of experience. Janet, though apparently healthy, with

her smooth fair skin, was like an old woman in the shell of a young one.

Her eyes were dulled, her glance plaintive, her carriage slack. The

conscious wish to please had left her, together with her main excuse for

being alive. She was over thirty-seven, and more and more during the

last ten years she had lived for her parents. She alone among all the

children had remained absolutely faithful to them. To them, and to

nobody else, she had been essential--a fountain of vigour and brightness

and kindliness from which they drew. To see her in the familiar and

historic room which she had humanised and illuminated with her very

spirit, was heartrending. In a day she had become unnecessary, and

shrunk to the unneeded, undesired virgin which in truth she was. She

knew it. Everybody knew it. All the waves of passionate sympathy which

Hilda and Edwin in their different ways ardently directed towards her

broke in vain upon that fact.

Edwin thought:

"And only the other day she was keen on tennis!"

"Edwin," said Hilda. "Don't you think she ought to come across to our

place for a bit? I'm sure it would be better for her not to sleep

here."

"Most decidedly," Edwin answered, only too glad to agree heartily with

his wife.

"But Johnnie?" Janet objected.

"Pooh! Surely he can stay at Tom's."

"And Elaine?"

"She can come with you. Heaps of room for two."

"I couldn't leave the servants all alone. I really couldn't. They

wouldn't like it," Janet persisted. "Moreover, I've got to give them

notice."

Edwin had to make the motion of swallowing.

"Well," said Hilda obstinately. "Come along now--for the evening,

anyhow. We shall be by ourselves."

"Yes, you must," said Edwin, curtly.

"I--I don't like walking down the street," Janet faltered, blushing.

"You needn't. You can get over the wall," said Edwin.

"Of course you can," Hilda concurred. "Just as you are now. I'll tell

Selina."

She left the room with decision, and the next instant returned with a

telegram in her hand.

"Open it, please. I can't," said Janet.

Hilda read:

"Mother and boy both doing splendidly. Harry."

Janet dropped onto a chair and burst into tears.

"I'm so glad. I'm so glad," she spluttered. "I can't help it."

Then she jumped up, wiped her eyes, and smiled.

For a few yards the Clayhanger and the Orgreave properties were

contiguous, and separated by a fairly new wall, which, after much

procrastination on the part of owners, had at last replaced an

unsatisfactory thorn-hedge. While Selina put a chair in position for

the ladies to stand on as a preliminary to climbing the wall, Edwin

suddenly remembered that in the days of the untidy thorn-hedge Janet had

climbed a pair of steps in order to surmount the hedge and visit his

garden. He saw her balanced on the steps, and smiling and then jumping,

like a child. Now, he preceded her and Hilda on to the wall, and they

climbed carefully, and when they were all up Selina handed him the chair

and he dropped it on his own side of the wall so that they might descend

more easily.

"Be careful, Edwin. Be careful," cried Hilda, neither pleasantly nor

unpleasantly.

And as he tried to read her mood in her voice, the mysterious and

changeful ever-flowing undercurrent of their joint life bore rushingly

away his sense of Janet's tragedy; and he knew that no events exterior

to his marriage could ever overcome for long that constant secret

preoccupation of his concerning Hilda's mood.

III

When they came into the house, Ada met them with zest and calamity in

her whispering voice:

"Please 'm, Mr. and Mrs. Benbow are here. They're in the drawing-room.

They said they'd wait a bit to see if you came back."

Ada had foreseen that, whatever their superficially indifferent

demeanour as members of the powerful ruling caste, her master and

mistress would be struck all of a heap by this piece of news. And they

were. For the Benbows did not pay chance calls; in the arrangement of

their lives every act was neatly planned and foreordained. Therefore

this call was formal, and behind it was an intention.

"_I_ can't see them. I can't possibly, dear," Janet murmured, as it

were intimidated. "I'll run back home."

Hilda replied with benevolent firmness:

"No you won't. Come upstairs with me till they're gone. Edwin, you go

and see what they're after."

Janet faltered and obeyed, and the two women crept swiftly upstairs.

They might have been executing a strategic retirement from a bad smell.

The instinctive movement, and the manner, were a judgment on the ideals

of the Benbows so terrible and final that even the Benbows, could they

have seen it, must have winced and doubted for a moment their own moral

perfection. It came to this, that the stricken fled from their

presence.

"'What they're after'!" Edwin muttered to himself, half resenting the

phrase; because Clara was his sister; and though she bored and

exasperated him, he could not class her with exactly similar boring and

exasperating women.

And, throwing down his cap, he went with false casual welcoming into the

drawing-room.

Young Bert Benbow, prodigiously solemn and uncomfortable in his birthday

spectacles, was with his father and mother. Immense satisfaction,

tempered by a slight nervousness, gleamed in the eyes of the parents.

And the demeanour of all three showed instantly that the occasion was

ceremonious. Albert and Clara could not have been more pleased and

uplifted had the occasion been a mourning visit of commiseration or even

a funeral.

The washed and brushed schoolboy, preoccupied, did not take his share in

the greetings with sufficient spontaneity and promptitude.

Clara said, gently shocked:

"Bert, what do you say to your uncle?"

"Good afternoon, uncle."

"I should think so indeed!"

Clara of course sprang at once to the luscious first topic, as to a

fruit:

"How is poor Janet bearing up?"

Edwin was very characteristically of the Five Towns in this,--he hated

to admit, in the crisis itself, that anything unusual was happening or

had just happened. Thus he replied negligently:

"Oh! All right!"

As though his opinion was that Janet had nothing to bear up against.

"I hear it was a _very_ quiet funeral," said Clara, suggesting somehow

that there must be something sinister behind the quietness of the

funeral.

"Yes," said Edwin.

"Didn't they ask _you_?"

"No."

"Well--my word!"

There was a silence, save for faint humming from Albert. And then, just

as Clara was mentioning her name, in rushed Hilda.

"What's the matter?" the impulsive Hilda demanded bluntly.

This gambit did not please Edwin, whose instinct was always to pretend

that nothing was the matter. He would have maintained as long as anybody

that the call was a chance call.

After a few vague exchanges, Clara coughed and said:

"It's really about your George and our Bert.... Haven't you heard? ...

Hasn't George said anything?"

"No.... What?"

Clara looked at her husband expectantly, and Albert took the grand male

role.

"I gather they had a fight yesterday at school," said he.

The two boys went to the same school, the new-fangled Higher Grade

School at Hanbridge, which had dealt such a blow at the ancient

educational foundations at Oldcastle. That their Bert should attend the

same school as George was secretly a matter of pride to the Benbows.

"Oh," said Edwin. "We've seen no gaping wounds, have we, Hilda?"

Albert's face did not relax.

"You've only got to look at Bert's chin," said Clara.

Bert shuffled under the world's sudden gaze. Undeniably there was a

small discoloured lump on his chin.

"I've had it out with Bert," Albert continued severely. "I don't know

who was in the wrong--it was about that penknife business, you know--but

I'm quite sure that Bert was not in the right. And as he's the older

we've decided that he must ask George's forgiveness."

"Yes," eagerly added Clara, tired of listening. "Albert says we can't

have quarrels going on like this in the family--they haven't spoken

friendly to each other since that night we were here--and it's the manly

thing for Bert to ask George's forgiveness, and then they can shake

hands."

"That's what I say." Albert massively corroborated her.

Edwin thought:

"I suppose these people imagine they're doing something rather fine."

Whatever they imagined they were doing, they had made both Edwin and

Hilda sheepish. Either of them would have sacrificed a vast fortune and

the lives of thousands of Sunday school officers in order to find a

dignified way of ridiculing and crushing the expedition of Albert and

Clara; but they could think of naught that was effective.

Hilda asked, somewhat curtly, but lamely:

"Where is George?"

"He was in your boudoir a two-three minutes ago, drawing," said Edwin.

Clara's neck was elongated at the sound of the word "boudoir."

"Boudoir?" said she. And Edwin could in fancy hear her going down

Trafalgar Road and giggling at every house-door: "Did ye know Mrs.

Clayhanger has a boudoir? That's the latest." Still he had employed

the word with intention, out of deliberate bravado.

"Breakfast-room," he added, explanatory.

"I should suggest," said Albert, "that Bert goes to him in the

breakfast-room. They'll settle it much better by themselves." He was

very pleased by this last phrase, which proved him a man of the world

after all.

"So long as they don't smash too much furniture while they're about it,"

murmured Edwin.

"Now, Bert, my boy," said Albert, in the tone of a father who is also a

brother.

And, as Hilda was inactive, Bert stalked forth upon his mission of

manliness, smiling awkwardly and blushing. He closed the door after him,

and not one of the adults dared to rise and open it.

"Had any luck with missing words lately?" Albert asked, in a detached

airy manner, showing that the Bert-George affair was a trifle to him, to

be dismissed from the mind at will.

"No," said Edwin. "I've been off missing words lately."

"Of course you have," Clara agreed with gravity. "All this must have

been very trying to you all.... Albert's done very well of course."

"I was on 'politeness,' my boy," said Albert.

"Didn't you know?" Clara expressed surprise.

"'Politeness'?"

"Sixty-four pounds nineteen shillings per share," said Albert

tremendously.

Edwin appreciatively whistled.

"Had the money?"

"No. Cheques go out on Monday, I believe. Of course," he added, "I go

in for it scientifically. I leave no chances, I don't. I'm making a

capital outlay of over five pounds ten on next week's competition, and I

may tell you I shall get it back again, _with_ interest."

At the same moment, Bert re-entered the room.

"He's not there," said Bert. "His drawing's there, but he isn't."

This news was adverse to the cause of manly peace.

"Are you sure?" asked Clara, implying that Bert might not have made a

thorough search for George in the boudoir.

Hilda sat grim and silent.

"He may be upstairs," said the weakly amiable Edwin.

Hilda rang the bell with cold anger.

"Is Master George in the house?" she harshly questioned Ada.

"No'm. He went out a bit since."

The fact was that George, on hearing from the faithful Ada of the

arrival of the Benbows, had retired through the kitchen and through the

back-door, into the mountainous country towards Bleakridge

railway-station, where kite-flying was practised on immense

cinder-heaps.

"Ah! Well," said Albert, undefeated, to Edwin. "You might tell him

Bert's been up specially to apologise to him. Oh! And here's that

penknife!" He looked now at Hilda, and, producing Tertius Ingpen's

knife, he put it with a flourish on the mantelpiece. "I prefer it to be

on your mantelpiece than on ours," he added, smiling rather grandiosely.

His manner as a whole, though compound, indicated with some clearness

that while he adhered to his belief in the efficacy of prayer, he could

not allow his son to accept from George earthly penknives alleged to

have descended from heaven. It was a triumphant hour for Albert Benbow,

as he stood there dominating the drawing-room. He perceived that, in

addition to silencing and sneaping the elder and richer branch of the

family, he was cutting a majestic figure in the eyes of his own son.

In an awful interval, Clara said with a sweet bright smile:

"By the way, Albert, don't forget about what Maggie asked you to ask."

"Oh, yes! By the way," said Albert, "Maggie wants to know how soon you

can complete the purchase of this house of yours."

Edwin moved uneasily.

"I don't know," he mumbled.

"Can you stump up in a month? Say the end of October anyway, at

latest." Albert persisted, and grew caustic. "You've only got to sell

a few of your famous securities."

"Certainly. Before the end of October," Hilda replied, with impulsive

and fierce assurance.

Edwin was amazed by this interference on her part. Was she incapable of

learning from experience? Let him employ the right tone with absolutely

perfect skill, marriage would still be impossible if she meant to carry

on in this way! What did she know about the difficulties of completing

the purchase? What right had she to put in a word apparently so

decisive? Such behaviour was unheard of. She must be mad. Nevertheless

he did not yield to anger. He merely said feebly and querulously:

"That's all very well! That's all very well! But I'm not quite so sure

as all that. Will she let some of it be on mortgage?"

"No, she won't," said Albert.

"Why not?"

"Because I've got a new security for the whole amount myself."

"Oh!"

Edwin glanced at his wife and his resentful eyes said: "There you are!

All through your infernal hurry and cheek Maggie's going to lose

eighteen hundred pounds in a rotten investment. I told you Albert would

get hold of that money if he heard of it. And just look!"

At this point Albert, who knew fairly well how to draw an advantage from

his brother-in-law's characteristic weaknesses, perceived suddenly the

value of an immediate departure. And amid loud enquiries of all sorts

from Clara, and magnificent generalities from Albert, and gloomy, stiff

salutations from uncomfortable Bert, the visit closed.

But destiny lay in wait at the corner of the street for Albert Benbow's

pride. Precisely as the Benbows were issuing from the portico, the

front-door being already closed upon them, the second Swetnam son came

swinging down Trafalgar Road. He stopped, raising his hat.

"Hallo, Mr. Benbow," he said. "You've heard the news, I suppose?"

"What about?"

"Missing word competitions."

It is a fact that Albert paled.

"What?"

"Injunction in the High Court this morning. All the money's impounded,

pending a hearing as to whether the competitions are illegal or not. At

the very least half of it will go in costs. It's all over with missing

words."

"Who told you?"

"I've had a wire to stop me from sending in for next week's."

Albert Benbow gave an oath. His wife ought surely to have been

horrorstruck by the word; but she did not blench. Flushing and scowling

she said:

"What a shame! We've sent ours in."

The faithful creature had for days past at odd moments been assisting

her husband in the dictionary and as a clerk.... And lo! at last,

confirmation of those absurd but persistent rumours to the effect that

certain busybodies meant if they could to stop missing word competitions

on the ground that they were simply a crude appeal to the famous

"gambling instincts" of mankind and especially of Englishmen!

Albert had rebutted the charge with virtuous warmth, insisting on the

skill involved in word-choosing, and insisting also on the historical

freedom of the institutions of his country. He maintained that it was

inconceivable that any English court of justice should ever interfere

with a pastime so innocent and so tonic for the tired brain. And though

he had had secret fears, and had been disturbed and even hurt by the

comments of a religious paper to which he subscribed, he would not waver

from his courageous and sensible English attitude. Now the fearful blow

had fallen, and Albert knew in his heart that it was heaven's punishment

for him. He turned to shut the gate after him, and noticed Bert. It

appeared to him that in hearing the paternal oath, Bert had been guilty

of a crime, or at least an indiscretion, and he at once began to make

Bert suffer.

Meanwhile Swetnam had gone on, to spread the tale which was to bring

indignation and affliction into tens of thousands of respectable homes.

IV

Janet came softly and timidly into the drawing-room.

"They are gone?" she questioned. "I thought I heard the front-door."

"Yes, thank goodness!" Hilda exclaimed candidly, disdaining the

convention (which Edwin still had in respect) that a weakness in family

ties should never be referred to, beyond the confines of the family,

save in urbane terms of dignity and regret excusing so far as possible

the sinner. But in this instance the immense ineptitude of the Benbows

had so affected Edwin that, while objecting to his wife's outbreak, he

could not help giving a guffaw which supported it. And all the time he

kept thinking to himself:

"Imagine that d----d pietistic rascal dragging the miserable shrimp up

here to apologise to George!"

He was ashamed, not merely of his relatives, but somehow of all

humanity. He could scarcely look even a chair in the face. The Benbows

had left behind them desolation, and this desolation affected

everything, and could be tasted on the tongue. Janet of course

instantly noticed it, and felt that she ought not to witness the shaming

of her friends. Moreover, her existence now was chiefly an apology for

itself.

She said:

"I really think I ought to go back and see about a meal for Johnnie in

case he turns up."

"Nonsense!" said Hilda, sharply. "With three servants in the house, I

suppose Johnnie won't starve! Now just sit down. Sit _down_!" Her tone

softened. "My dear, you're worse than a child.... Tell Edwin." She put

a cushion behind Janet in the easy chair. And the gesture made Janet's

eyes humid once more.

Edwin had the exciting, disquieting, vitalising sensation of being shut

up in an atmosphere of women. Not two women, but two thousand, seemed to

hem him in with their incalculable impulses, standards, inspirations.

"Janet wants to consult you," Hilda added; and even Hilda appeared to

regard him as a strong saviour.

He thought:

"After all, then, I'm not the born idiot she'd like to make out. Now

we're getting at her real opinion of me!"

"It's only about father's estate," said Janet.

"Why? Hasn't he made a will?"

"Oh yes! He made a will over thirty years ago. He left everything to

mother and made her sole executor or whatever you call it. Just like

him, wasn't it? ... D'you know that he and mother never had a quarrel,

nor anything near a quarrel?"

"Well," Edwin, nodding appreciatively, answered with an informed

masculine air. "The law provides for all that. Tom will know. Did

your mother make a will?"

"No. Dear thing! She would never have dreamt of it."

"Then letters of administration will have to be taken out," said Edwin.

Janet began afresh:

"Father was talking of making a new will two or three months ago. He

mentioned it to Tom. He said he should like you to be one of the

executors. He said he would sooner have you for an executor than

anybody."

An intense satisfaction permeated Edwin, that he should have been

desired as an executor by such an important man as Osmond Orgreave. He

felt as though he were receiving compensation for uncounted detractions.

"Really?" said he. "I expect Tom will take out letters of

administration, or Tom and Johnnie together; they'll make better

executors than I should."

"It doesn't seem to make much difference who looks after it and who

doesn't," Hilda sharply interrupted. "When there's nothing to look

after."

"Nothing to look after?" Edwin repeated.

"Nothing to look after!" said Hilda in a firm and clear tone.

"According to what Janet says."

"But surely there must be something!"

Janet answered mildly:

"I'm afraid there isn't much."

It was Hilda who told the tale. The freehold of Lane End House belonged

to the estate, but there were first and second mortgages on it, and had

been for years. Debts had always beleaguered the Orgreave family. A

year ago money had apparently been fairly plentiful, but a great deal

had been spent on re-furnishing. Jimmie had had money, in connection

with his sinister marriage; Charlie had had money in connection with his

practice, and Tom had enticed Mr. Orgreave into the Palace Porcelain

Company. Mr. Orgreave had given a guarantee to the Bank for an

overdraft, in exchange for debentures and shares in that company. The

debentures were worthless, and therefore the shares also, and the bank

had already given notice under the guarantee. There was an insurance

policy--one poor little insurance policy for a thousand pounds--whose

capital well invested might produce an income of twelve or fifteen

shillings a week; but even that policy was lodged as security for an

overdraft on one of Osmond's several private banking accounts. There

were many debts, small to middling. The value of the Orgreave

architectural connection was excessively dubious--so much of it had

depended upon Osmond Orgreave himself. The estate might prove barely

solvent; on the other hand it might prove insolvent; so Johnnie, who had

had it from Tom, had told Janet that day, and Janet had told Hilda.

"Your father was let in for the Palace Porcelain Company?" Edwin

breathed, with incredulous emphasis on the initial p's. "What on earth

was Tom thinking of?"

"That's what Johnnie wants to know," said Janet. "Johnnie was very

angry. They've had some words about it."

Except for the matter of the Palace Porcelain Company, Edwin was not

surprised at the revelations, though he tried to be. The more closely

he examined his attitude for years past to the Orgreave household

structure, the more clearly he had to admit that a suspicion of secret

financial rottenness had never long been absent from his mind--not even

at the period of renewed profuseness, a year or two ago, when

furniture-dealers, painters, and paperhangers had been enriched. His

resentment against the deceased charming Osmond and also against the

affectionate and blandly confident mother, was keen and cold. They had

existed, morally, on Janet for many years; monopolised her, absorbed

her, aged her, worn her out, done everything but finish her,--and they

had made no provision for her survival. In addition to being useless,

she was defenceless, helpless, penniless, and old; and she shivered now

that the warmth of her parents' affection was withdrawn by death.

"You see," said Janet. "Father was so transparently honest and

generous."

Edwin said nothing to this sincere outburst.

"Have you got any money at all, Janet?" asked Hilda.

"There's a little household money, and by a miracle I've never spent the

ten-pound note poor dad gave me on my last birthday."

"Well," said Edwin, sardonically imaging that ten-pound note as a sole

defence for Janet against the world. "Of course Johnnie will have to

allow you something out of the business--for one thing."

"I'm sure he will, if he can," Janet agreed. "But he says it's going to

be rather tight. He wants us to clear out of the house at once."

"Take my advice and don't do it," said Edwin. "Until the house is let or

sold it may as well be occupied by you as stand empty--better in fact,

because you'll look after it."

"_That's_ right enough, anyway," said Hilda, as if to imply that by a

marvellous exception a man had for once in a while said something

sensible.

"You needn't use all the house," Edwin proceeded. "You won't want all

the servants."

"I wish you'd say a word to Johnnie," breathed Janet.

"I'll say a word to Johnnie, all right," Edwin answered loudly. "But it

seems to me it's Tom that wants talking to. I can't imagine what he was

doing to let your father in for that Palace Porcelain business. It

beats me."

Janet quietly protested:

"I feel sure he thought it was all right."

"Oh, of course!" said Hilda, bitterly. "Of course! They always do think

it's all right. And here's my husband just going into one of those big

dangerous affairs, and _he_ thinks it's all right, and nothing I can say

will stop him from going into it. And he'll keep on thinking it's all

right until it's all wrong and we're ruined, and perhaps me left a widow

with George." Her lowered eyes blazed at the carpet.

Janet, troubled, glanced from one to the other, and then, with all the

tremendous unconscious persuasive force of her victimhood and her

mourning, murmured gently to Edwin:

"Oh! Don't run any risks! Don't run any risks!"

Edwin was staggered by the swift turn of the conversation. Two thousand

women hemmed him in more closely than ever. He could do nothing against

them except exercise an obstinacy which might be esteemed as merely

brutal. They were not accessible to argument--Hilda especially.

Argument would be received as an outrage. It would be impossible to

convince Hilda that she had taken a mean and disgraceful advantage of

him, and that he had every right to resent her behaviour. She was

righteousness and injuredness personified. She partook, in that moment,

of the victimhood of Janet. And she baffled him.

He bit his lower lip.

"All that's not the business before the meeting," he said as lightly as

he could. "D'you think if I stepped down now I should catch Johnnie at

the office?"

And all the time, while his heart hardened against Hilda, he kept

thinking:

"Suppose I _did_ come to smash!"

Janet had put a fear in his mind, Janet who in her wistfulness and her

desolating ruin seemed to be like only a little pile of dust--all that

remained of the magnificent social structure of a united and numerous

Orgreave family.

V

Edwin met Tertius Ingpen in the centre of the town outside the offices

of Orgreave and Sons, amid the commotion caused by the return of

uplifted spectators from a football match in which the team curiously

known to the sporting world as "Bursley Moorthorne" had scored a broken

leg and two goals to nil.

"Hello!" Ingpen greeted him. "I was thinking of looking in at your

place to-night."

"Do!" said Edwin. "Come up with me now."

"Can't! ... Why do these ghastly louts try to walk over you as if they

didn't see you?" Then in another tone, very quietly, and nodding in the

direction of the Orgreave offices: "Been in there? ... What a week, eh!

... How are things?"

"Bad," Edwin answered. "In a word, bad!"

Ingpen lifted his eyebrows.

They turned away out of the crowd, up towards the tranquillity of the

Turnhill Road. They were manifestly glad to see each other. Edwin had

had a satisfactory interview with Johnnie Orgreave,--satisfactory in the

sense that Johnnie had admitted the wisdom of all that Edwin said and

promised to act on it.

"I've just been talking to young Johnnie for his own good," said Edwin.

And in a moment, with eagerness, with that strange deep satisfaction

felt by the carrier of disastrous tidings, he told Ingpen all that he

knew of the plight of Janet Orgreave.

"If you ask me," said he, "I think it's infamous."

"Infamous," Ingpen repeated the word savagely. "There's no word for it.

What'll she do?"

"Well, I suppose she'll have to live with Johnnie."

"And where will Mrs. Chris come in, then?" Ingpen asked in a murmur.

"Mrs. Chris Hamson?" exclaimed Edwin startled. "Oh! Is that affair

still on the carpet? ... Cheerful outlook!"

Ingpen pulled his beard.

"Anyhow," said he, "Johnnie's the most reliable of the crew. Charlie's

the most agreeable, but Johnnie's the most reliable. I wouldn't like to

count much on Tom, and as for Jimmie, well of course----!"

"I always look on Johnnie as a kid. Can't help it."

"There's no law against that, so long as you don't go and blub it out to

Mrs. Chris," Ingpen laughed.

"I don't know her."

"You ought to know her. She's an education, my boy."

"I've been having a fair amount of education lately," said Edwin. "Only

this afternoon I was practically told that I ought to give up the idea

of my new works because it has risks and the Palace Porcelain Co. was

risky and Janet hasn't a cent. See the point?"

He was obliged to talk about the affair, because it was heavily on his

mind. A week earlier he had persuaded himself that the success of a

marriage depended chiefly on the tone employed to each other by the

contracting parties. But in the disturbing scene of the afternoon, his

tone had come near perfection, and yet marriage presented itself as even

more stupendously difficult than ever. Ingpen's answering words salved

and strengthened him. The sensation of being comprehended was

delicious. Intimacy progressed.

"I say," said Edwin, as they parted. "You'd better not know anything

about all this when you come to-night."

"Right you are, my boy."

Their friendship seemed once more to be suddenly and surprisingly

intensified.

When Edwin returned, Janet had vanished again. Like an animal which

fears the hunt and whose shyness nothing can cure, she had fled to cover

at the first chance. According to Hilda she had run home because it had

occurred to her that she must go through her mother's wardrobe and chest

of drawers without a moment's delay.

Edwin's account to his wife of the interview with Johnnie Orgreave was

given on a note justifiably triumphant. In brief he had "talked sense"

to Johnnie, and Johnnie had been convicted and convinced. Hilda

listened with respectful propriety. Edwin said nothing as to his

encounter with Tertius Ingpen, partly from prudence and partly from

timidity. When Ingpen arrived at the house, much earlier than he might

have been expected to arrive, Edwin was upstairs, and on descending he

found his wife and his friend chatting in low and intimate voices close

together in the drawing-room. The gas had been lighted.

"Here's Mr. Ingpen," said Hilda, announcing a surprise.

"How do, Ingpen?"

"How do, Ed?"

Ingpen did not rise. Nor did they shake hands, but in the Five Towns

friends who have reached a certain degree of intimacy proudly omit the

ceremony of handshaking when they meet. It was therefore impossible for

Hilda to divine that Edwin and Tertius had previously met that day, and

apparently Ingpen had not divulged the fact. Edwin felt like a plotter.

The conversation of course never went far away from the subject of the

Orgreaves--and Janet in particular. Ingpen's indignation at the

negligence which had left Janet in the lurch was more than warm enough

to satisfy Hilda, whose grievance against the wicked carelessness of

heads of families in general seemed to be approaching expression again.

At length she said:

"It's enough to make every woman think seriously of where she'd be--if

anything happened."

Ingpen smiled teasingly.

"Now you're getting personal."

"And what if I am? With my headstrong husband going in for all sorts of

schemes!" Hilda's voice was extraordinarily clear and defiant.

Edwin nervously rose.

"I'll just get some cigarettes," he mumbled.

Hilda and Ingpen scarcely gave him any attention. Already they were

exciting themselves. Although he knew that the supply of cigarettes was

in the dining-room, he toured half the house before going there; and

then lit the gas and with strange deliberation drew the blinds; next he

rang the bell for matches, and, having obtained them, lit a cigarette.

When he re-entered the drawing-room, Ingpen was saying with terrific

conviction:

"You're quite wrong, as I've told you before. It's your instinct that's

wrong, not your head. Women will do anything to satisfy their

instincts, simply anything. They'll ruin your life in order to satisfy

their instincts. Yes, even when they know jolly well their instincts

are wrong!"

Edwin thought:

"Well, if these two mean to have a row, it's no affair of mine."

But Hilda, seemingly overfaced, used a very moderate tone to retort:

"You're very outspoken."

Tertius Ingpen answered firmly:

"I'm only saying aloud what every man thinks.... Mind--every man."

"And how comes it that _you_ know so much about women?"

"I'll tell you sometime," said Ingpen, shortly, and then smiled again.

Edwin, advancing, murmured:

"Here. Have a cigarette."

A few moments later Ingpen was sketching out a Beethoven symphony

unaided on the piano, and holding his head back to keep the

cigarette-smoke out of his eyes.

VI

When the hour struck for which Hilda had promised a sandwich supper

Edwin and Tertius Ingpen were alone in the drawing-room, and Ingpen was

again at the piano, apparently absorbed in harmonic inventions of his

own. No further word had been said upon the subject of the discussion

between Ingpen and Hilda. On the whole, despite the reserve of Hilda's

demeanour, Edwin considered that marriage at the moment was fairly

successful, and the stream of existence running in his favour. At five

minutes after the hour, restless, he got up and said:

"I'd better be seeing what's happened to that supper."

Ingpen nodded, as in a dream.

Edwin glanced into the dining-room, where the complete supper was

waiting in illuminated silence and solitude. Then he went to the

boudoir. There, the two candlesticks from the mantelpiece had been put

side by side on the desk, and the candles lit the figures of Hilda and

her son. Hilda, kneeling, held a stamped and addressed letter in her

hand, the boy was bent over the desk at his drawing, which his mother

regarded. Edwin in his heart affectionately derided them for employing

candles when the gas would have been so much more effective; he thought

that the use of candles was "just like" one of Hilda's unforeseeable

caprices. But in spite of his secret derision he was strangely affected

by the group as revealed by the wavering candle-flames in the general

darkness of the room. He seldom saw Hilda and George together; neither

of them was very expansive; and certainly he had never seen Hilda

kneeling by her son's side since a night at the Orgreaves' before her

marriage, when George lay in bed unconscious and his spirit hesitated

between earth and heaven. He knew that Hilda's love for George had in

it something of the savage, but, lacking demonstrations of it, he had

been apt to forget its importance in the phenomena of their united

existence. Kneeling by her son, Hilda had the look of a girl, and the

ingenuousness of her posture touched Edwin. The idea shot through his

brain like a star, that life was a marvellous thing.

As the door had been ajar, they scarcely heard him come in. George

turned first.

And then Ada was standing at the door.

"Yes'm?"

"Oh! Ada! Just run across with this letter to the pillar, will you?"

"Yes'm."

"You've missed the post, you know," said Edwin.

Hilda got up slowly.

"It doesn't matter. Only I want it to be in the post."

As she gave the letter to Ada he speculated idly as to the address of

the letter, and why she wanted it to be in the post. Anyhow, it was

characteristic of her to want the thing to be in the post. She would

delay writing a letter for days, and then, having written it, be "on

pins" until it was safely taken out of the house; and even when the

messenger returned she would ask: "Did you put that letter in the post?"

Ada had gone.

"What's he drawing, this kid?" asked Edwin, genially.

Nobody answered. Standing between his wife and the boy he looked at the

paper. The first thing he noticed was some lettering, achieved in an

imitation of architect's lettering: "_Plan for proposed new

printing-works to be erected by Edwin Clayhanger, Esq., upon land at

Shawport. George Edwin Clayhanger, architect._" And on other parts of

the paper, "Ground-floor plan" and "Elevation." The plan at a distance

resembled the work of a real architect. Only when closely examined did

it reveal itself as a piece of boyish mimicry. The elevation was not

finished.... It was upon this that, with intervals caused by the

necessity of escaping from bores, George had been labouring all day.

And here was exposed the secret and the result of his chumminess with

Johnnie Orgreave. Yet the boy had never said a word to Edwin in

explanation of that chumminess; nor had Johnnie himself.

"He's been telling me he's going to be an architect," said Hilda.

"Is this plan a copy of Johnnie's, or is it his own scheme?" asked

Edwin.

"Oh, his own!" Hilda answered, with a rapidity and an earnestness which

disclosed all her concealed pride in the boy.

Edwin was thrilled. He pored over the plan, making remarks and putting

queries, in a dull matter-of-fact tone; but he was so thrilled that he

scarcely knew what he was saying or understood the replies to his

questions. It seemed to him wondrous, miraculous, overwhelming, that

his own disappointed ambition to be an architect should have re-flowered

in his wife's child who was not his child. He was reconciled to being a

printer, and indeed rather liked being a printer, but now all his career

presented itself to him as a martyrisation. And he passionately swore

that such a martyrisation should not happen to George. George's ambition

should be nourished and forwarded as no boyish ambition had ever been

nourished and forwarded before. For a moment he had a genuine

conviction that George must be a genius.

Hilda, behind the back of proud, silent George, pulled Edwin's face to

hers and kissed it. And as she kissed she gazed at Edwin and her eyes

seemed to be saying: "Have your works; I have yielded. Perhaps it is

George's plan that has made me yield, but anyhow I am strong enough to

yield. And my strength remains."

And Edwin thought: "This woman is unique. What other woman could have

done that in just that way?" And in their embrace, intensifying and

complicating its significance, were mingled the sensations of their

passion, his triumph, her surrender, the mysterious boy's promise, and

their grief for Janet's tragedy.

"Old Ingpen's waiting for his supper, you know," said Edwin tenderly.

"George, you must show that to Mr. Ingpen."

BOOK II

THE PAST

CHAPTER XI

LITHOGRAPHY

I

Edwin, sitting behind a glazed door with the word "Private" elaborately

patterned on the glass, heard through the open window of his own office

the voices of the Benbow children and their mother in the street

outside.

"Oh, Mother! What a big sign!"

"Yes. Isn't Uncle Edwin a proud man to have such a big sign?"

"Hsh!"

"It wasn't up yesterday."

"L, i, t, h, o,----"

"My word, Rupy! You are getting on!"

"They're such large letters, aren't they, mother? ... 'Lithographic' ...

'Lithographic printing. Edwin Clayhanger'."

"Hsh! ... Bert, how often do you want me to tell you about your

shoe-lace?"

"I wonder if George has come."

"Mother, can't _I_ ring the bell?"

All the children were there, with their screeching voices. Edwin

wondered that Rupert should have been brought. Where was the sense of

showing a three-year-old infant like Rupert over a printing-works? But

Clara was always like that. The difficulty of leaving little Rupert

alone at home did not present itself to the august uncle.

Edwin rose, locked a safe that was let into the wall of the room, and

dropped the key into his pocket. The fact of the safe being let into

the wall gave him as much simple pleasure as any detail of the new

works; it was an idea of Johnnie Orgreave's. He put a grey hat

carelessly at the back of his head, and, hands in pockets, walked into

the next and larger room, which was the clerks' office.

Both these rooms had walls distempered in a green tint, and were fitted

and desked in pitchpine. Their newness was stark, and yet in the

clerks' office the irrational habituating processes of time were already

at work. On the painted iron mantelpiece lay a dusty white tile,

brought as a sample long before the room was finished, and now without

the slightest excuse for survival. Nevertheless the perfunctory cleaner

lifted the tile on most mornings, dusted underneath it, and replaced it;

and Edwin and his staff saw it scores of times daily and never

challenged it, and gradually it was acquiring a prescriptive right to

exist just where it did. And the day was distant when some

inconvenient, reforming person would exclaim:

"What's this old tile doing here?"

What Edwin did notice was that the walls and desks showed marks and even

wounds; it seemed to him somehow wrong that the brand new could not

remain forever brand new. He thought he would give a mild reproof or

warning to the elder clerk, (once the shop-clerk in the ancient

establishment at the corner of Duck Bank and Wedgwood Street) and then

he thought: "What's the use?" and only murmured:

"I'm not going off the works."

And he passed out, with his still somewhat gawky gait, to the small

entrance-hall of the works. On the outer face of the door, which he

closed, was painted the word "Office." He had meant to have the words

"Counting-House" painted on that door, because they were romantic and

fine-sounding; but when the moment came to give the order he had quaked

before such romance; he was afraid as usual of being sentimental and of

"showing off," and with assumed satire had publicly said: "Some chaps

would stick 'Counting-house' as large as life all across the door." He

now regretted his poltroonery. And he regretted sundry other failures

in courage connected with the scheme of the works. The works existed,

but it looked rather like other new buildings, and not very much like

the edifice he had dreamed. It ought to have been grander, more

complete, more dashingly expensive, more of an exemplar to the slattern

district. He had been (he felt) unduly influenced by the local spirit

for half-measures. And his life seemed to be a life of half-measures, a

continual falling-short. Once he used to read studiously on Tuesday,

Thursday and Saturday evenings. He seldom read now, and never with

regularity. Scarcely a year ago he had formed a beautiful vague project

of being "musical." At Hilda's instigation he had bought a book of

musical criticism by Hubert Parry, and Hilda had swallowed it in three

days, but he had begun it and not finished it. And the musical

evenings, after feeble efforts to invigorate them, had fainted and then

died on the miserable excuse that circumstances were not entirely

favourable to them. And his marriage, so marvellous in its romance

during the first days...!

Then either his commonsense or his self-respect curtly silenced these

weak depreciations. He had wanted the woman and he had won her,--he had

taken her. There she was, living in his house, bearing his name,

spending his money! The world could not get over that fact, and the

carper in Edwin's secret soul could not get over it either. He had said

that he would have a new works, and, with all its faults and little

cowardices, there the new works was! And moreover it had just been

assessed for municipal rates at a monstrous figure. He had bought his

house (and mortgaged it); he had been stoical to bad debts; he had sold

securities--at rather less than they cost him; he had braved his

redoubtable wife; and he had got his works! His will, and naught else,

was the magic wand that had conjured it into existence.

The black and gold sign that surmounted its blue roofs could be seen

from the top of Acre Lane and half way along Shawport Lane, proclaiming

the progress of lithography and steam-printing, and the name of Edwin

Clayhanger. Let the borough put that in its pipe and smoke it! He was

well aware that the borough felt pride in his works. And he had orders

more than sufficient to keep the enterprise handsomely going. Even in

the Five Towns initiative seemed to receive its reward.

Life might be as profoundly unsatisfactory as you pleased, but there was

zest in it.

The bell had rung. He opened the main door, and there stood Clara and

her brood. And Edwin was the magnificent, wonderful uncle. The

children entered, with maternal precautions and recommendations. Every

child was clean and spruce: Bert clumsy, Clara minxlike, Amy heavy and

benignant, Lucy the pretty little thing, and Rupert simply

adorable--each representing a separate and considerable effort of

watchful care. The mother came last, worn, still pretty, with a slight

dragging movement of the limbs. In her glittering keen eyes were both

envy and naive admiration of her brother. "What a life!" thought Edwin,

meaning what a narrow, stuffy, struggling, conventional, unlovely

existence was the Benbows'! He and they lived in different worlds of

intelligence. Nevertheless he savoured the surpassing charm of Rupert,

the goodness of Amy, the floral elegance of Lucy, and he could

appreciate the unending labours of that mother of theirs, malicious

though she was. He was bluff and jolly with all of them. The new works

being fairly close to the Benbow home, the family had often come _en

masse_ to witness its gradual mounting, regarding the excursions as a

sort of picnic. And now that the imposing place was inaugurated and the

signs up, Uncle Edwin had been asked to show them over it in a grand

formal visit, and he had amiably consented.

"Has George come, Uncle Edwin?" asked Bert.

George had not come. A reconciliation had occurred between the cousins

(though by no means at the time nor in the manner desired by Albert);

they were indeed understood by the Benbows to be on the most touching

terms of intimacy, which was very satisfactory to the righteousness of

Albert and Clara; and George was to have been of the afternoon party;

but he had not arrived. Edwin, knowing the unknowableness of George,

suspected trouble.

"Machines! Machines!" piped tiny white-frocked Rupert, to whom wondrous

tales had been told.

"You'll see machines all right," said Edwin promisingly. It was not his

intention to proceed straight to the machine-room. He would never have

admitted it, but his deliberate intention was to display the works

dramatically, with the machine-room as a culmination. The truth was,

the man was full of secret tricks, contradicting avuncular superior

indifference. He was a mere boy--he was almost a school-girl.

He led them through a longish passage, and up steps and down

steps--steps which were not yet hollowed, but which would be

hollowed--into the stone-polishing shop, which was romantically obscure,

with a specially dark corner where a little contraption was revolving

all by itself in the process of smoothing a stone. Young Clara stared

at the two workmen, while the rest stared at the contraption, and Edwin,

feeling ridiculously like a lecturer, mumbled words of exposition. And

then next, after climbing some steps, they were in a lofty apartment

with a glass roof, sunshine-drenched and tropical. Here lived two more

men, including Karl the German, bent in perspiration over desks, and

laboriously drawing. Round about were coloured designs, and stones

covered with pencilling, and boards, and all sorts of sheets of paper

and cardboard.

"Ooh!" murmured Bert, much impressed by the meticulous cross-hatching of

Karl's pencil on a stone.

And Edwin said:

"This is the drawing-office."

"Oh yes!" murmured Clara vaguely. "It's very warm, isn't it?"

None of them except Bert was interested. They gazed about dully,

uncomprehendingly, absolutely incurious.

"Machines!" Rupert urged again.

"Come on, then," said Edwin going out with assumed briskness and gaiety.

At the door stood Tertius Ingpen, preoccupied and alert, with all the

mien of a factory inspector in full activity.

"Don't mind me," said Ingpen, "I can look after myself. In fact I

prefer to."

At the sight of an important stranger speaking familiarly to Uncle

Edwin, all the children save Rupert grew stiff, dismal and apprehensive,

and Clara looked about as though she had suddenly discovered very

interesting phenomena in the corners of the workshop.

"My sister, Mrs. Benbow--Mr. Ingpen. Mr. Ingpen is Her Majesty's

Inspector of Factories, so we must mind what we're about," said Edwin.

Clara gave a bright, quick smile as she limply shook hands. The

sinister enchantment which precedes social introduction was broken. And

Clara, overcome by the extraordinary chivalry and deference of Ingpen's

customary greeting to women, decided that he was a particularly polite

man; but she reserved her general judgment on him, having several times

heard Albert inveigh against the autocratic unreasonableness of this

very inspector, who, according to Albert, forgot that even an employer

had to live, and that that which handicapped the employer could not

possibly help the workman--"in the long run."

"Machines!" Rupert insisted.

They all laughed; the other children laughed suddenly and imitatively,

and an instant later than the elders; and Tertius Ingpen, as he grasped

the full purport of the remark, laughed more than anyone. He turned

sideways and bent slightly in order to give vent to his laughter, which,

at first noiseless and imprisoned, gradually grew loud in freedom. When

he had recovered, he said thoughtfully, stroking his soft beard:

"Now it would be very interesting to know exactly what that child

understands by 'machines'--what his mental picture of them is. Very

interesting! Has he ever seen any?"

"No," said Clara.

"Ah! That makes it all the more interesting," Ingpen added roguishly:

"I suppose you think you do know, Mrs. Benbow?"

Clara smiled the self-protective, non-committal smile of one who is not

certain of having seen the point.

"It's very hot in here, Edwin," she said, glancing at the door. The

family filed out, shepherded by Edwin.

"I'll be back in a sec," said he to Clara, on the stairs, and returned

to the drawing-office.

Ingpen was in apparently close conversation with Karl.

"Yes," murmured Ingpen, thoughtfully tapping his teeth. "The whole

process is practically a contest between grease and water on the stone."

"Yes," said Karl gruffly, but with respect.

And Edwin could almost see the tentacles of Ingpen's mind feeling and

tightening round a new subject of knowledge, and greedily possessing it.

What a contrast to the vacuous indifference of Clara, who was so

narrowed by specialisation that she could never apply her brain to

anything except the welfare and the aggrandizement of her family! He

dwelt sardonically upon the terrible results of family life on the

individual, and dreamed of splendid freedoms.

"Mr. Clayhanger," said Ingpen, in his official manner, turning.

The two withdrew to the door. Invisible, at the foot of the stairs,

could be heard the family, existing.

"Haven't seen much of lithography, eh?" said Edwin, in a voice

discreetly restrained.

Ingpen, ignoring the question, murmured:

"I say, you know this place is much too hot."

"Well," said Edwin. "What do you expect in August?"

"But what's the object of all that glass roof?"

"I wanted to give 'em plenty of light. At the old shop they hadn't

enough, and Karl, the Teuton there, was always grumbling."

"Why didn't you have some ventilation in the roof?"

"We did think of it. But Johnnie Orgreave said if we did we should

never be able to keep it watertight."

"It certainly isn't right as it is," said Ingpen. "And our experience

is that these skylighted rooms that are too hot in summer are too cold

in winter. How should you like to have your private office in here?"

"Oh!" protested Edwin. "It isn't so bad as all that."

Ingpen said quietly:

"I should suggest you think it over--I mean the ventilation."

"But you don't mean to say that this shop here doesn't comply with your

confounded rules?"

Ingpen answered:

"That may or may not be. But we're entitled to make recommendations in

any case, and I should like you to think this over, if you don't mind.

I haven't any thermometer with me, but I lay it's ninety degrees here,

if not more." In Ingpen's urbane, reasonable tone there was just a hint

of the potential might of the whole organised kingdom.

"All serene," said Edwin, rather ashamed of the temperature after all,

and loyally responsive to Ingpen's evident sense of duty, which somehow

surprised him; he had not chanced, before, to meet Ingpen at work;

earthenware manufactories were inspected once a quarter, but other

factories only once a year. The thought of the ameliorating influence

that Ingpen must obviously be exerting all day and every day somewhat

clashed with and overset his bitter scepticism concerning the real value

of departmental administrative government,--a scepticism based less upon

experience than upon the persuasive tirades of democratic apostles.

They walked slowly towards the stairs, and Ingpen scribbled in a

notebook.

"You seem to take your job seriously," said Edwin, teasing.

"While I'm at it. Did you imagine that I'd dropped into a sinecure?

Considering that I have to keep an eye on three hundred and fifty

potbanks, over a thousand other factories, and over two thousand

workshops of sorts, my boy...! _And_ you should see some of 'em. _And_

you should listen to the excuses."

"No wonder," thought Edwin, "he hasn't told me what a fine and large

factory mine is! ... Still, he might have said something, all the same.

Perhaps he will."

When, after visiting the composing-room, and glancing from afar at the

engine-house, the sight-seeing party reached the machine-room, Rupert

was so affected by the tremendous din and the confusing whir of huge

machinery in motion that he began to cry, and, seizing his mother's

hand, pressed himself hard against her skirt. The realisation of his

ambition had overwhelmed him. Amy protectingly took Lucy's hand. Bert

and Clara succeeded in being very casual.

In the great lofty room there were five large or fairly large machines,

and a number of small ones. The latter had chiefly to do with envelope

and bill-head printing and with bookbinding, and only two of them were

in use. Of the large machines, three were functioning--the cylinder

printing-machine which had been the pride of Edwin's father, the

historic "old machine," also his father's, which had been so called ever

since Edwin could remember and which was ageless, and Edwin's latest and

most expensive purchase, the "Smithers" litho-printer. It was on the

guarded flank of the Smithers, close to the roller-racks, that Edwin

halted his convoy. The rest of the immense shop with its complex masses

of metal revolving, sliding, or paralysed, its shabby figures of men,

boys, and girls shifting mysteriously about, its smell of iron, grease,

and humanity, and its fearful racket, was a mere background for the

Smithers in its moving might.

The Smithers rose high above the spectators, and at one end of it,

higher even than the top parts of the machine, was perched a dirty,

frowsy, pretty girl. With a sweeping gesture of her bare arms this girl

took a wide sheet of blank paper from a pile of sheets, and lodged it on

the receiving rack, whereupon it was whirled off, caught into the

clutches of the machine, turned, reversed, hidden away from sight among

revolving rollers red and black, and finally thrust out at the other end

of the machine, where it was picked up by a dirty, frowsy girl, not

pretty, smaller and younger than the high-perched creature, indeed

scarcely bigger than Amy. And now on the sheet was printed four times

in red the words "Knype Mineral Water Mnfg. Co. Best and cheapest.

Trademark." Clara screeched a question about the trademark, which was

so far invisible. Edwin made a sign to the lower dirty, frowsy girl,

who respectfully but with extreme rapidity handed him a sheet as it came

off the machine, and he shouted through the roar in explanation that the

trademark, a soda-water syphon in blue, would be printed on the same

sheet later from another stone, and the sheets cut into fours, each

quarter making a complete poster. "I thought it must be like that,"

replied Clara superiorly. From childhood she had been well accustomed

to printing processes, and it was not her intention to be perplexed by

"this lithography." Edwin made a gesture to hand back the sheet to the

machine-girl, but the machine would not pause to allow her to take it.

She was the slave of the machine; so long as it functioned, every second

of her existence was monopolised, and no variation of conduct

permissible. The same law applied to the older girl up near the

ceiling. He put the sheet in its place himself, and noticed that to do

so required appreciable care and application of the manipulative

faculty.

These girls, and the other girls at their greasy task in the great

shaking interior which he had created, vaguely worried him. Exactly

similar girls were employed in thousands on the pot-banks, and had once

been employed also at the pit-heads and even in the pits; but until

lately he had not employed girls, nor had his father ever employed

girls; and these girls so close to him, so dependent on him, so

submissive, so subjugated, so soiled, so vulgar, whose wages would

scarcely have kept his wife in boots and gloves, gave rise to strange

and disturbing sensations in his heart--not merely in regard to

themselves, but in regard to the whole of the workpeople. A question

obscure and lancinating struck upwards through his industrial triumph

and through his importance in the world, a question scarcely articulate,

but which seemed to form itself into the words: Is it right?

"Is what right?" his father would have snapped at him. "Is what right?"

would have respectfully demanded Big James, who had now sidled

grandiosely to the Smithers, and was fussing among the rollers in the

rack. Neither of them would have been capable of comprehending his

trouble. To his father an employee was an employee, to be hired as

cheaply as possible, and to be exploited as completely as possible. And

the attitude of Big James towards the underlings was precisely that of

his deceased master. They would not be unduly harsh, they would often

be benevolent, but the existence of any problem, and especially any

fundamental problem, beyond the direct inter-relation of wages and work

could not conceivably have occurred to them. After about three quarters

of a century of taboo trade-unions had now for a dozen years ceased to

be regarded as associations of anarchistic criminals. Big James was

cautiously in favor of trade-unions, and old Darius Clayhanger in late

life had not been a quite uncompromising opponent of them. As for

Edwin, he had always in secret sympathised with them, and the

trade-unionists whom he employed had no grievance against him. Yet this

unanswerable, persistent question would pierce the complacency of

Edwin's prosperity. It seemed to operate in a sort of fourth dimension;

few even amongst trade-unionists themselves would have reacted to it.

But Edwin lived with it more and more. He was indeed getting used to

it. Though he could not answer it, he could parry it, thanks to

scientific ideas obtained from Darwin and Spencer, by the reflection

that both he and his serfs, whatever their sex, were the almost blind

agencies of a vast process of evolution. And this he did, exulting with

pride sometimes in the sheer adventure of the affair, and sharing his

thoughts with none.... Strange that once, and not so many years ago

either, he had been tempted to sell the business and live inert and

ignobly secure on the interest of invested moneys! But even to-day he

felt sudden fears of responsibility; they came and went.

The visitors, having wandered to and fro, staring, trailed out of the

machine-room, led by Edwin. A wide door swung behind them, and they

were in the abrupt, startling peace of another corridor. Clara wiped

Rupert's eyes, and he smiled, like a blossom after a storm. The mother

and the uncle exchanged awkward glances. They had nothing whatever to

say to each other. Edwin could seldom think of anything that he really

wanted to say to Clara. The children were very hot and weary of

wonders.

"Well," said Clara, "I suppose we'd better be moving on now." She had

somewhat the air of a draught-animal about to resume the immense labour

of dragging a train. "It's very queer about George. He was to have

come with us for tea."

"Oh! Was he?"

"Of course he was," Clara replied sharply. "It was most distinctly

arranged."

At this moment Tertius Ingpen and Hilda appeared together at the other

end of the corridor. Hilda's unsmiling face seemed enigmatic. Ingpen

was talking with vivacity.

Edwin thought apprehensively:

"What's up now? What's she doing here, and not George?"

And when the sisters-in-law, so strangely contrasting, shook hands, he

thought:

"Is it possible that Albert looks on his wife as something

unpredictable? Do those two also have moods, and altercations and

antagonisms? Are they always preoccupied about what they are thinking

of each other? No! It's impossible. Their life must be simply

fiendishly monotonous." And Clara's inferiority before the erect,

flashing individuality of Hilda appeared to him despicable. Hilda bent

and kissed Rupert, Lucy, Amy and young Clara, as it were with passion.

She was marvellous as she bent over Rupert. She scarcely looked at

Edwin. Ingpen stood aside.

"I'm very sorry," said Hilda perfunctorily. "I had to send George on an

errand to Hanbridge at the last moment."

Nothing more! No genuine sign of regret! Edwin blamed her severely.

"Send George on an errand to Hanbridge!" That was Hilda all over! Why

the devil should she go out of her way to make unpleasantness with

Clara? She knew quite well what kind of a woman Clara was, and that the

whole of Clara's existence was made up of domestic trifles, each of

which was enormous for her.

"Will he be down to tea?" asked Clara.

"I doubt it."

"Well ... another day, then."

Clara, gathering her offspring, took leave at a door in the corridor

which gave on to the yard. Mindful to the last of Mr. Ingpen's presence

(which Hilda apparently now ignored), she smiled sweetly as she went.

But behind the smile, Edwin with regret, and Hilda with satisfaction,

could perceive her everlasting grudge against their superior splendour.

Even had they sunk to indigence Clara could never have forgiven Edwin

for having towards the end of their father's life prevented Albert from

wheedling a thousand pounds out of old Darius, nor Hilda for her

occasional pricking, unanswerable sarcasms.... Still, Rupert,

descending two titanic steps into the yard, clung to his mother as to an

angel.

"And _what_ errand to Hanbridge?" Edwin asked himself mistrustfully.

II

Scarcely a minute later, when Edwin, with Hilda and Ingpen, was back at

the door of the machine-room, the office boy could be seen voyaging

between roaring machines across the room towards his employer. The

office boy made a sign of appeal, and Edwin answered with a curt sign

that the office boy was to wait.

"What's that ye say?" Edwin yelled in Ingpen's ear.

Ingpen laughed, and made a trumpet with his hands:

"I was only wondering what your weekly running expenses are."

Even Ingpen was surprised and impressed by the scene, and Edwin was

pleased now, after the flatness of Clara's inspection, that he had

specially arranged for two of the machines to be running which strictly

need not have been running that afternoon. He had planned a spectacular

effect, and it had found a good public.

"Ah!" He hesitated, in reply to Ingpen. Then he saw Hilda's face, and

his face showed confusion and he smiled awkwardly.

Hilda had caught Ingpen's question. She said nothing. Her expressive,

sarcastic, unappeasable features seemed to say: "Running expenses!

Don't mention them. Can't you see they must be enormous? How can he

possibly make this place pay? It's a gigantic folly--and what will be

the end of it?"

After all, her secret attitude towards the new enterprise was unchanged.

Arguments, facts, figures, persuasions, brutalities had been equally and

totally ineffective. And Edwin thought:

"She is the bitterest enemy I have."

Said Ingpen:

"I like that girl up there on the top of that machine. And doesn't she

just know where she is! What a movement of the arms, eh?"

Edwin nodded, appreciative, and then beckoned to the office boy.

"What is it?"

"Please, Sir, Mrs. 'Amps in the office to see you."

"All right," he bawled, casually. But in reality he was taken aback.

"It's Auntie Hamps now!" he said to the other two. "We shall soon have

all Bursley here this afternoon."

Hilda raised her eyebrows.

"D'you know 'Auntie Hamps'?" she grimly asked Ingpen. Her voice, though

she scarcely raised it, was plainer than the men's when they shouted.

As Ingpen shook his head, she added: "You ought to."

Edwin did not altogether care for this public ridicule of a member of

the family. Auntie Hamps, though possibly a monster, had her qualities.

Hilda, assuming the lead, beckoned with a lift of the head. And Edwin

did not care for that either, on his works. Ingpen followed Hilda as

though to a menagerie.

Auntie Hamps, in her black attire, which by virtue of its changeless

style amounted to a historic uniform, was magnificent in the private

office. The three found her standing in wait, tingling with vitality

and importance and eagerness. She watched carefully that Edwin shut the

door, and kept her eye not only on the door but also on the open window.

She received the presentation of Mr. Tertius Ingpen with grandeur and

with high cordiality, and she could appreciate even better than Clara

the polished fealty of his greeting.

"Sit down, Auntie."

"No, I won't sit down. I thought Clara was here. I told her I might

come if I could spare a moment. I must say, Edwin"--she looked around

the small office, and seemed to be looking round the whole works in a

superb glance--"you make me proud of you. You make me proud to be your

Auntie."

"Well," said Edwin, "you can be proud sitting down."

She smiled. "No, I won't sit down. I only just popped in to catch

Clara. I was going to tea with her and the chicks." Then she lowered

her voice: "I suppose you've heard about Mr. John Orgreave?" Her tone

proved, however, that she supposed nothing of the kind.

"No. What about Johnnie?"

"He's run away with Mrs. Chris Hamson."

Her triumph was complete. It was perhaps one of her last triumphs, but

it counted among the greatest of her career as a watchdog of society.

The thing was a major event, and the report was convincing. Useless to

protest "Never!" "Surely not!" "It can't be true!" It carried truth

on its face. Useless to demand sternly: "Who told you?" The news had

reached Auntie Hamps through a curious channel--the stationmaster at

Latchett. Heaven alone could say how Auntie Hamps came to have

relations with the stationmaster at Latchett. But you might be sure

that, if an elopement was to take place from Latchett station, Auntie

Hamps would by an instinctive prescience have had relations with the

station-master for twenty years previously. Latchett was the next

station, without the least importance, to Shawport on the line to Crewe.

Johnnie Orgreave had got into the train at Shawport, and Mrs. Chris had

joined it at Latchett, her house being near by. Once on the vast

platforms of Crewe, the guilty couple would be safe from curiosity, lost

in England, like needles in a haystack.

The Orgreave-Hamson flirtation had been afoot for over two years, but

had only been seriously talked about for less than a year. Mrs. Chris

did not "move" much in town circles. She was older than Johnnie, but

she was one of your blonde, slim, unfruitful women, who under the shade

of a suitable hat-brim are ageless. Mr. Chris was a heavy man, "glumpy"

as they say down there, a moneymaker in pots, and great on the colonial

markets. He made journeys to America and to Australia. His Australian

journey occupied usually about four months. He was now on his way back

from Sydney, and nearly home. Mrs. Chris had not long since inherited a

moderate fortune. It must have been the fortune, rendering them

independent, that had decided the tragic immoralists to abandon all for

love. The time of the abandonment was fixed for them by circumstance,

for it had to occur before the husband's return.

Imagine the Orgreave business left in the hands of an incompetent

irresponsible like Jimmie Orgreave! And then, what of that martyr,

Janet? Janet and Johnnie had been keeping house together--a tiny house.

And Janet had had to "have an operation." Women, talking together, said

exactly what the operation was, but the knowledge was not common. The

phrase "have an operation" was enough in its dread. As a fact the

operation, for calculus, was not very serious; it had perfectly

succeeded, and Janet, whom Hilda had tenderly visited, was to emerge

from the nursing home at Knype Vale within three days. Could not

Johnnie and his Mrs. Chris have waited until she was re-established? No,

for the husband was unpreventibly approaching, and romantic love must

not be baulked. Nothing could or should withstand romantic love. Janet

had not even been duly warned; Hilda had seen her that very morning, and

assuredly she knew nothing then. Perhaps Johnnie would write to her

softly from some gay seaside resort where he and his leman were hiding

their strong passion. The episode was shocking; it was ruinous. The

pair could never return. Even Johnnie alone would never dare to return.

"He was a friend of yours, was he not?" asked Auntie Hamps in bland

sorrow of Tertius Ingpen.

He was a friend, and a close friend, of all three of them. And not only

had he outraged their feelings--he had shamed them, irretrievably

lowered their prestige. They could not look Auntie Hamps in the face.

But Auntie Hamps could look them in the face. And her glance, charged

with grief and with satisfaction, said: "How are the mighty fallen, with

their jaunty parade of irreligion, and their musical evenings on

Sundays, with the windows open while folks are coming home from chapel!"

And there could be no retort.

"Another good man ruined by women!" observed Tertius Ingpen, with a

sigh, stroking his beard.

Hilda sprang up; and all her passionate sympathy for Janet, and her

disappointment and disgust with Johnnie, the victim of desire, and her

dissatisfaction with her husband and her hatred of Auntie Hamps, blazed

forth and devastated the unwise Ingpen as she scathingly replied:

"Mr. Ingpen, that is a caddish thing to say!"

She despised convention; she was frankly and atrociously rude; and she

did not care. Edwin blushed. Tertius Ingpen blushed.

"I'm sorry," said Ingpen, keeping his temper. "I think I ought to have

left a little earlier. Good-bye, Ed. Mrs. Hamps--" He bowed with

extreme urbanity to the ladies, and departed.

Shortly afterwards Auntie Hamps also departed, saying that she must not

be late for tea at dear Clara's. She was secretly panting to disclose

the whole situation to dear Clara. What a scene had Clara missed by

leaving the works too soon!

CHAPTER XII

DARTMOOR

I

"What was that telegram you had this afternoon, Hilda?"

The question was on Edwin's tongue as he walked up Acre Lane from the

works by his wife's side. But it did not achieve utterance. A year had

passed since he last walked up Acre Lane with Hilda; and now of course

he recalled the anger of that previous promenade. In the interval he

had acquired to some extent the habit of containing his curiosity and

his criticism. In the interval he had triumphed, but Hilda also had

consolidated her position, so that despite the increase of his prestige

she was still his equal; she seemed to take strength from him in order

to maintain the struggle against him.

During the final half-hour at the works the great, the enormous problem

in his mind had been--not whether such and such a plan of action for

Janet's welfare in a very grave crisis would be advisable, but whether

he should demand an explanation from Hilda of certain disquieting

phenomena in her boudoir. In the excitement of his indecision Janet's

tragic case scarcely affected his sensibility. For about twelve months

Hilda had, he knew, been intermittently carrying on a correspondence as

to which she had said no word to him; she did not precisely conceal it,

but she failed to display it. Lately, so far as his observation went,

it had ceased. And then to-day he had caught sight of an orange

telegraph-envelope in her wastepaper basket. Alone in the boudoir, and

glancing back cautiously and guiltily at the door, he had picked up the

little ball of paper and smoothed it out, and read the words: "Mrs.

Edwin Clayhanger." In those days the wives of even prominent business

men did not customarily receive such a rain of telegrams that the

delivery of a telegram would pass unmentioned and be forgotten. On the

contrary, the delivery of a telegram was an event in a woman's life.

The telegram which he had detected might have been innocently

negligible, in forty different ways. It might, for example, have been

from Janet, or about a rehearsal of the Choral Society, or from a

tradesman at Oldcastle, or about rooms at the seaside. But supposing

that it was not innocently negligible? Supposing that she was keeping a

secret? ... What secret? What conceivable secret? He could conceive no

secret. Yes, he could conceive a secret. He had conceived and did

conceive a secret, and his private thoughts elaborated it.... He had

said to himself at the works: "I may ask her as we go home. I shall

see." But, out in the street, with the disturbing sense of her

existence over his shoulder, he knew that he should not ask her. Partly

timidity and partly pride kept him from asking. He knew that, as a wise

husband, he ought to ask. He knew that commonsense was not her strongest

quality, and that by diffidence he might be inviting unguessed future

trouble; but he would not ask. In the great, passionate war of marriage

they would draw thus apart, defensive and watchful, rushing together at

intervals either to fight or to kiss. The heat of their kisses had not

cooled; but to him at any rate the kisses often seemed intensely

illogical; for, though he regarded himself as an improving expert in the

science of life, he had not yet begun to perceive that those kisses were

the only true logic of their joint career.

He was conscious of grievances against her as they walked up Acre Lane,

but instead of being angrily resentful, he was content judicially to

register the grievances as further corroboration of his estimate of her

character. They were walking up Acre Lane solely because Hilda was

Hilda. A year ago they had walked up Acre Lane in order that Edwin

might call at the shop. But Acre Lane was by no means on the shortest

way from Shawport to Bleakridge. Hilda, however, on emerging from the

works, full of trouble concerning Janet, had suddenly had the beautiful

idea of buying some fish for tea. In earlier days he would have said:

"How accidental you are! What would have happened to our tea if you

hadn't been down here, or if you hadn't by chance thought of fish?" He

would have tried to show her that her activities were not based in the

principles of reason, and that even the composition of meals ought not

to depend upon the hazard of an impulse. Now, wiser, he said not a

word. He resigned himself in silence to an extra three-quarters of a

mile of walking. In such matters, where her deep instinctiveness came

into play, she had established over him a definite ascendancy.

Then another grievance was that she had sent George to Hanbridge,

knowing that George, according to a solemn family engagement, ought to

have been at the works. She was conscienceless. A third grievance,

naturally, was her behaviour to Ingpen. And a fourth came back again to

George. Why had she sent George to Hanbridge at all? Was it not to

despatch a telegram which she was afraid to submit to the

inquisitiveness of the Post Office at Bursley? A daring supposition,

but plausible; and if correct, of what duplicity was she not guilty!

The mad, shameful episode of Johnnie Orgreave, the awful dilemma of

Janet--colossal affairs though they were--interested him less and less

as he grew more and more preoccupied with his relations to Hilda. And

he thought, not caring:

"Something terrific will occur between us, one of these days."

And then his bravado would turn to panic.

II

They passed along Wedgwood Street, and Hilda preceded him into the chief

poulterer-and-fishmonger's. Here was another slight grievance of

Edwin's; for the chief poulterer-and-fishmonger's happened now to be the

Clayhanger shop at the corner of Wedgwood Street and Duck Bank.

Positively there had been competitors for the old location! Why should

Hilda go there and drag him there? Could she not comprehend that he had

a certain fine delicacy about entering? ... The place where the former

sign had been was plainly visible on the brickwork above the shop-front.

Rabbits, fowl, and a few brace of grouse hung in the right-hand window,

from which most of the glass had been removed; and in the left, upon

newly-embedded slabs of Sicilian marble, lay amid ice the curved forms

of many fish, and behind them was the fat white-sleeved figure of the

chief poulterer-and-fishmonger's wife with her great, wet hands. He was

sad. He seriously thought yet again: "Things are not what they were in

this town, somehow." For this place had once been a printer's; and he

had a conviction that printing was an aristocrat among trades. Indeed,

could printing and fishmongering be compared?

The saleswoman greeted them with deference, calling Edwin "sir," and yet

with a certain complacent familiarity, as an occupant to ex-occupants.

Edwin casually gave the short shake of the head which in the district

may signify "Good-day," and turned, humming, to look at the hanging

game. It seemed to him that he could only keep his dignity as a man of

the world by looking at the grouse with a connoisseur's eye. Why didn't

Hilda buy grouse? The shop was a poor little interior. It smelt ill.

He wondered what the upper rooms were like, and what had happened to the

decrepit building at the end of the yard. The saleswoman slapped the

fish about on the marble, and running water could be heard.

"Edwin," said Hilda, with enchanting sweetness and simplicity, "would

you like hake or turbot, dear?"

Impossible to divine from her voice that the ruin of their two favourite

Orgreaves was complete, that she was conducting a secret correspondence,

and that she had knowingly and deliberately offended her husband!

Both women waited, moveless, for the decision, as for an august decree.

When the transaction was finished, the saleswoman handed over the parcel

into Hilda's gloved hands; it was a rough-and-ready parcel, not at all

like the neat stiff paper-bag of the modern age.

"Very hot, isn't it, ma'am?" said the saleswoman.

And Hilda, utterly distinguished in gesture and tone, replied with calm,

impartial urbanity:

"Very. Good afternoon."

"I'd better take that thing," said Edwin outside, in spite of himself.

She gave up the parcel to him.

"Tell cook to fry it," said Hilda. "She always fries better than she

boils."

He repeated:

"'Tell cook to fry it.' What's up now?" His tone challenged.

"I must go over and see Janet at once. I shall take the next car."

He lifted the end of his nose in disgust. There was no end to the

girl's caprices.

"Why at once?" the superior male demanded. Disdain and resentment were

in his voice. Hundreds of times, when alone, he had decided that he

would never use that voice--first, because it was unworthy of a

philosopher, second, because it never achieved any good result, and

third, because it often did harm. Yet he would use it. The voice had

an existence and a volition of its own within his being; he marvelled

that the essential mechanism of life should be so clumsy and

inefficient. He heard the voice come out, and yet was not displeased,

was indeed rather pleasantly excited. A new grievance had been created

for him; he might have ignored it, just as he might ignore a solitary

cigarette lying in his cigarette case. Both cigarettes and grievances

were bad for him. But he could not ignore them. The last cigarette in

the case magnetised him. Useless to argue with himself that he had

already smoked more than enough,--the cigarette had to emerge from the

case and be burnt; and the grievance too was irresistible. In an

instant he had it between his teeth and was darkly enjoying it. Of

course Hilda's passionate pity for Janet was a fine thing. Granted!

But therein was no reason why she should let it run away with her. The

worst of these capricious, impulsive creatures was that they could never

do anything fine without an enormous fuss and upset. What possible

difference would it make whether Hilda went to break the news of

disaster to Janet at once or in an hour's time? The mere desire to

protect and assuage could not properly furnish an excuse for

unnecessarily dislocating a household and depriving oneself of food. On

the contrary, it was wiser and more truly kind to take one's meals

regularly in a crisis. But Hilda would never appreciate that profound

truth--never, never!

Moreover, it was certain that Johnnie had written to Janet.

"I feel I must go at once," said Hilda.

He spoke with more marked scorn:

"And what about your tea?"

"Oh, it doesn't matter about my tea."

"Of course it matters about your tea. If you have your tea quietly,

you'll find the end of the world won't have come, and you can go and see

Janet just the same, and the whole house won't have been turned upside

down."

She put her lips together and smiled mysteriously, saying nothing. The

racket of the Hanbridge and Knype steam-car could be heard behind them.

She did not turn her head. The car overtook them, and then stopped a

few yards in front. But she did not hail the conductor. The car went

onwards.

He had won. His argument had been so convincing that she could not help

being convinced. It was too powerful for even her obstinacy, which as a

rule successfully defied any argument whatever.

Did he smile and forgive? Did he extend to her the blessing of his

benevolence? No. He could not have brought himself to such a point.

After all, she had done nothing to earn approval; she had simply

refrained from foolishness. She had had to be reminded of

considerations which ought ever to have been present in her brain.

Doubtless she thought that he was hard, that he was incapable of her

divine pity for Janet. But that was only because she could not imagine

a combination of emotional generosity and calm commonsense; and she

never would be able to imagine it. Hence she would always be unjust to

him.

When they arrived home, she was still smiling mysteriously to herself.

She did not take her hat off--sign of disturbance! He moved with

careful tranquillity through the ritual that preceded tea. He could

feel her in the house, ordering it, softening it, civilising it. He

could smell the fish. He could detect the subservience of Ada to her

mistress's serious mood. He went into the dining-room. Ada followed him

with a tray of hot things. Hilda followed Ada. Then George entered,

cleaner than ordinary. Edwin savoured deeply the functioning of his

home. And his wife had yielded. Her instinct had compelled her not to

neglect him; his sagacity had mastered her. In her heart she must

admire his sagacity, whatever she said or looked, and her unreasoning

passion for him was still the paramount force in her vitality.

"Now, are you two all right?" said Hilda, when she had poured out the

tea, and Edwin was carving the fish.

Edwin glanced up.

"I don't want any tea," she said. "I couldn't touch it."

She bent and kissed George, took her gloves from the sideboard, and left

the house, the mysterious smile still on her face.

III

Edwin controlled his vexation at this dramatic move. It was only slight,

and he had to play the serene omniscient to George. Further, the

attractive food helped to make him bland.

"Didn't you know your mother had to go out?" said Edwin, with astounding

guile.

"Yes, she told me upstairs," George murmured, "while she was washing me.

She said she had to go and see Auntie Janet again."

The reply was a blow to Edwin. She had said nothing to him, but she had

told the boy. Still, his complacency was not overset. Boy and

stepfather began to talk, with the mingled freedom and constraint

practised by males accustomed to the presence of a woman, when the woman

is absent. Each was aware of the stress of a novel, mysterious, and

grave situation. Each also thought of the woman, and each knew that the

other was thinking of the woman. Each, over a serious apprehension,

seemed to be lightly saying: "It's rather fun to be without her for a

bit. But we must be able to rely on her return." Nothing stood between

them and domestic discomfort. Possible stupidity in the kitchen had no

check. As regards the mere household machine, they had a ridiculous and

amusing sense of distant danger.

Edwin had to get up in order to pour out more tea. He reckoned that he

could both make tea and pour it out with more exactitude than his wife,

who often forgot to put the milk in first. But he could not pour it out

with the same grace. His brain, not his heart, poured the tea out. He

left the tray in disorder. The symmetry of the table was soon wrecked.

"Glad you're going back to school, I suppose?" said Edwin satirically.

George nodded. He was drinking, and he glanced at Edwin over the rim of

the cup. He had grown much in twelve months, and was more than twelve

months older. Edwin was puzzled by the almost sudden developments of

his intelligence. Sometimes the boy was just like a young man; his

voice had become a little uncertain. He still showed the greatest

contempt for his fingernails, but he had truly discovered the

toothbrush, and was preaching it at school among a population that

scoffed yet was impressed.

"Yes, I'm glad," he answered.

"Oh! You're glad, are you?"

"Well, I'm glad in a way. A boy does have to go to school, doesn't he,

uncle? And the sooner it's over the better. I tell you what I should

like--I should like to go to school night and day and have no holidays

till it was all done. I sh'd think you could save at least three years

with that."

"A bit hard on the masters, wouldn't it be?"

"I never thought of that. Of course it would never be over for them. I

expect they'd gradually die."

"Then you don't like school?"

George shook his head.

"Did you like school, uncle?"

Edwin shook his head. They both laughed.

"Uncle, can I leave school when I'm sixteen?"

"I've told you once."

"Yes, I know. But did you mean it? People change so."

"I told you you could leave school when you're sixteen if you pass the

London Matric."

"But what good's the London Matric to an architect? Mr. Orgreave says it

isn't any good, anyway."

"When did he tell you that?"

"Yesterday."

"But not so long since you were all for being a stock-breeder!"

"Ah! I was only pretending to myself!" George smiled.

"Well, fetch me my cigarettes off the mantelpiece in the drawing-room."

The boy ran off, eager to serve, and Edwin's glance followed him with

affection. George's desire to be an architect had consistently

strengthened, save during a brief period when the Show of the North

Staffordshire Agricultural Society, held with much splendour at

Hanbridge, had put another idea into his noddle--an idea that fed itself

richly on glorious bulls and other prize cattle for about a week, and

then expired. Indeed, already it had been in a kind of way arranged

that the youth should ultimately be articled to Johnnie Orgreave. Among

many consequences of Johnnie's defiance to society would probably be the

quashing of that arrangement. And there was Johnnie, on the eve of his

elopement, chatting to George about the futility of the London

Matriculation! Edwin wondered how George would gradually learn what had

happened to his friend and inspirer, John Orgreave.

He arrived with the cigarettes, and offered them, and lit the match, and

offered that.

"And what have you been doing with yourself all afternoon?" Edwin

enquired, between puffs of smoke.

"Oh, nothing much!"

"I thought you were coming to the works and then going down to Auntie

Clara's for tea."

"So I was. But mother sent me to Hanbridge."

"Oh," murmured Edwin casually. "So your mother packed you off to

Hanbridge, did she?"

"I had to go to the Post Office," George continued. "I think it was a

telegram, but it was in an envelope, and some money."

"_In_deed!" said Edwin, with a very indifferent air.

He was, however, so affected that he jumped up abruptly from the table,

and went into the darkening, chill garden, ignoring George. George,

accustomed to these sudden accessions of interest and these sudden

forgettings, went unperturbed his ways.

About half past eight Hilda returned. Edwin was closing the curtains in

the drawing-room. The gas had been lighted.

"Johnnie has evidently written to Alicia," she burst out somewhat

breathless. "Because Alicia's telegraphed to Janet that she must

positively go straight down there and stay with them when she leaves the

Home."

"What, on Dartmoor?" Edwin muttered, in a strange voice. The very word

"Dartmoor" made him shake.

"It isn't actually on the moor," said Hilda. "And so I shall take her

down myself. I've told her all about things. She wasn't a bit

surprised. They're a strange lot."

She tried to speak quite naturally, but he knew that she was not

succeeding. Their eyes would not meet. Edwin thought:

"How far away we are from this morning!" Hazard and fate, like

converging armies, seemed to be closing upon him.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DEPARTURE

I

It was a wet morning. Hilda, already in full street attire, save for

her gloves, and with a half empty cup of tea by her side, sat at the

desk in the boudoir. She unlocked the large central drawer immediately

below the flap of the desk, with a peculiar, quick, ruthless gesture,

which gesture produced a very short snappy click that summed up all the

tension spreading from Hilda's mind throughout the house and even into

the town. It had been decided that in order to call for Janet at the

Nursing Home and catch the Crewe train at Knype for the Bristol and

Southwest of England connexion, Hilda must leave the house at five

minutes to nine.

This great fact was paramount in the minds of various people besides

Hilda. Ada upstairs stood bent and flushed over a huge portmanteau into

which she was putting the last things, while George hindered her by

simultaneously tying to the leather handle a wet label finely directed

by himself in architectural characters. The cook in the kitchen was

preparing the master's nine o'clock breakfast with new solicitudes

caused by a serious sense of responsibility; for Hilda, having informed

her in moving tones that the master's welfare in the mistress's absence

would depend finally on herself, had solemnly entrusted that welfare to

her--had almost passed it to her from hand to hand, with precautions,

like a jewel in a casket. Ada, it may be said, had immediately felt the

weight of the cook's increased importance. Edwin and the clerks at the

works knew that Edwin had to be home for breakfast at a quarter to nine

instead of nine, and that he must not be late, as Mrs. Clayhanger had a

train to catch, and accordingly the morning's routine of the office was

modified. And, finally, a short old man in a rainy stable-yard in Acre

Parade, between Acre Lane and Oldcastle Street, struggling to force a

collar over the head of a cab-horse that towered above his own head, was

already blasphemously excited by those pessimistic apprehensions about

the flight of time which forty years of train-catching had never

sufficed to allay in him. As for Janet, she alone in her weakness and

her submissiveness was calm; the nurse and Hilda understood one another,

and she was "leaving it all" to them.

Hilda opened the drawer, half lifting the flap of the desk to disclose

its contents. It was full of odd papers, letters, bills,

blotting-paper, door-knobs, finger-plates, envelopes, and a small book

or two. A prejudiced observer, such as Edwin, might have said that the

drawer was extremely untidy. But to Hilda, who had herself put in each

item separately, and each for a separate reason, the drawer was not

untidy, for her intelligence knew the plan of it, and every item as it

caught her eye suggested a justifying reason, and a good one.

Nevertheless, she formed an intention to "tidy out" the drawer (the only

drawer in the desk with a safe lock), upon her return home. She felt at

the back of the drawer, drew forth the drawer a little further, and felt

again, vainly. A doubt of her own essential orderliness crossed her

mind. "Surely I can't have put those letters anywhere else? Surely

I've not mislaid them?" Then she closed the flap of the desk, and

pulled the drawer right out, letting it rest on her knees. Yes, the

packet was there, hidden, and so was another packet of letters--in the

handwriting of Edwin. She was reassured. She knew she was tidy, had

always been tidy. And Edwin's innuendos to the contrary were

inexcusable. Jerking the drawer irregularly back by force into its

place, she locked it, reopened the desk, laid the packet on the

writing-pad, and took a telegram from her purse to add to the letters in

the packet.

The letters were all in the same loose, sloping hand, and on the same

tinted notepaper. The signature was plain on one of them, "Charlotte M.

Cannon," and then after it, in brackets "(Canonges),"--the latter being

the real name of George Cannon's French father, and George Cannon's only

legal name. The topmost letter began: "Dear Madam, I think it is my duty

to inform you that my husband still declares his innocence of the crime

for which he is now in prison. He requests that you shall be informed

of this. I ought perhaps to tell you that, since the change in my

religious convictions, my feelings--" The first page ended there.

Hilda turned the letters over, preoccupied, gazing at them and

deciphering chance phrases here and there. The first letter was dated

about a year earlier; it constituted the beginning of the resuscitation

of just that part of her life which she had thought to be definitely

interred in memory.

Hilda had only once--and on a legal occasion--met Mrs. Canonges (as with

strict correctness she called herself in brackets)--a surprisingly old

lady, with quite white hair, and she had thought: "What a shame for that

erotic old woman to have bought and married a man so much younger than

herself! No wonder he ran away from her!" She had been positively

shocked by the spectacle of the well-dressed, well-behaved,

quiet-voiced, prim, decrepit creature with her aristocratic voice. And

her knowledge of the possibilities of human nature was thenceforth

enlarged. And when George Cannon (known to the law only as Canonges)

had received two years' hard labour for going through a ceremony of

marriage with herself, she had esteemed, despite all her resentment

against him, that his chief sin lay in his real first marriage, not in

his false second one, and that for that sin the old woman was the more

deserving of punishment. And when the old woman had with strange

naivete written to say that she had become a convert to Roman

Catholicism and that her marriage and her imprisoned bigamous husband

were henceforth to her sacred, Hilda had reflected sardonically: "Of

course it is always that sort of woman that turns to religion, when

she's too old for anything else!" And when the news came that her

deceiver had got ten years' penal servitude (and might have got penal

servitude for life) for uttering a forged Bank-of-England note, Hilda

had reflected in the same strain: "Of course, a man who would behave as

George behaved to me would be just the man to go about forging bank

notes! I am not in the least astonished. What an inconceivable

simpleton I was!"