"D--n him. I told him to tell you I couldn't possibly get here before

night."

"Well, he didn't!" said Maggie stoutly, throwing back the blame upon

Edwin and his hirelings. "I particularly wanted you to come early. I

told Auntie you'd be coming."

"How's she getting on?" Edwin asked with laconic gruffness, dismissing

Maggie's grievance without an apology. He might have to stand nonsense

from Hilda; but he would not stand it from Maggie, of whose notorious

mildness he at once began to take advantage, as in the old days of their

housekeeping together. Moreover, his entrance into this abode was a

favour, exhibiting the condescension of the only human being who could

exercise influence upon Auntie Hamps.

"She's worse," said Maggie, briefly and significantly.

"In bed?" said Edwin, less casually, marking her tone.

Maggie nodded.

"Had the doctor?"

"I should think so indeed!"

"Hm! Why don't you have a light in this lobby?" he enquired suddenly,

on a drily humorous note, as he groped to suspend his overcoat upon an

unstable hatstand. It seemed to be a very cold lobby, after his own

radiator-heated half.

"She never will have a light here, unless she's doing the grand for

someone. Are you going to wash ye?"

"No. I cleaned up at the works." A presentiment of the damp chilliness

of the Hamps bedroom had suggested this precaution.

Maggie preceded him into the sitting-room, where a hexagonal

occasional-table was laid for tea.

"Hello! Do you eat here? What's the matter with the dining-room?"

"The chimney always smokes when the wind's in the south-west."

"Well, why doesn't she have a cowl put on it?"

"You'd better ask her.... Also she likes to save a fire. She can't

bear to have two fires going as well as the kitchen-range. I'll bring

tea in. It's all ready."

Maggie went away.

Edwin looked round the shabby Victorian room. A length of featureless

linoleum led from the door to the table. This carpet-protecting

linoleum exasperated him. It expressed the very spirit of his aunt's

house. He glanced at the pictures, the texts, the beady and the woolly

embroideries, the harsh chairs, and the magnificent morocco exteriors of

the photograph-albums in which Auntie Hamps kept the shiny portraits of

all her relatives, from grand-nieces back to the third and fourth

generation of ancestors. And a feeling of desolation came over him. He

thought: "How many days shall I have to spend in this deadly hole?" It

was extremely seldom that he visited King Street, and when he did come

the house was brightened to receive him. He had almost forgotten what

the house really was. And, suddenly thrown back into it at its most

lugubrious and ignoble, after years of the amenities of Trafalgar Road,

he was somehow surprised that that sort of thing had continued to exist,

and he resented that it should have dared to continue to exist. He had

a notion that, since he had left it behind, it ought to have perished.

He cautiously lifted the table and carried it to the hearthrug. Then he

sat down in the easy-chair, whose special property, as he remembered,

was slowly and inevitably to slide the sitter forward to the hard edge

of the seat; and he put his feet inside the fender. In the grate a small

fire burned between two fire-bricks. He sneezed. Maggie came in with a

tray.

"Are you cold?" she asked, seeing the new situation of the table.

"Am I cold!" Edwin repeated.

"Well," said Maggie, "I always think your rooms are so hot."

Edwin seized the small serviceable tongs which saved the wear of the

large tongs matching the poker and the shovel, and he dragged both

firebricks out of the grate.

"No coal here, I suppose!" he exclaimed gloomily, opening the black

japanned coal-scuttle. "Oh! Corn in Egypt!" The scuttle was full of

coal. He threw on to the fire several profuse shovelfuls of best

household nuts which had cost sixteen shillings a ton even in that

district of cheap coal.

"Well," Maggie murmured, aghast. "It's a good thing it's you. If it

had been anybody else--"

"What on earth does she do with her money?" he muttered.

Shrugging her shoulders, Maggie went out again with an empty tray.

"No servant, either?" Edwin asked, when she returned.

"She's sitting with Auntie."

"Must I go up before I have my tea?"

"No. She won't have heard you come."

There was a grilled mutton-chop and a boiled egg on the crowded small

table, with tea, bread-and-butter, two rounds of dry bread, some cakes,

and jam.

"Which are you having--egg or chop?" Edwin demanded as Maggie sat down.

"Oh! They're both for you."

"And what about you?"

"I only have bread-and-butter as a rule."

Edwin grunted, and started to eat.

"What's supposed to be the matter with her?" he enquired.

"It seems it's congestion of the lung, and thickened arteries. It

wouldn't matter so much about the lung being congested, in itself, only

it's the strain on her heart."

"I see."

"Been in bed all day, I suppose."

"No, she would get up. But she had to go back to bed at once. She had

a collapse."

"Hm!"

He could not think of anything else to say.

"Haven't got to-night's _Signal_, have you?"

"Oh no!" said Maggie, astonished at such a strange demand. "Hilda get

off all right?"

"Yes, they went by the nine train."

"She told me that she should, if she could manage it. I expect Mrs.

Tams was up there early."

Edwin nodded, recalling with bitterness certain moments of the early

morning. And then silence ensued. The brother and sister could not keep

the conversation alive. Edwin thought: "We know each other intimately,

and we respect each other, and yet we cannot even conduct a meal

together without awkwardness and constraint. Has civilisation down here

got no further than that?" He felt sorry for Maggie, and also kindly

disdainful of her. He glanced at her furtively and tried to see in her

the girl of the far past. She had grown immensely older than himself.

She was now at home in the dreadful Hamps environment. True, she had an

income, but had she any pleasures? It was impossible to divine what her

pleasures might be, what she thought about when she lay in bed, to what

hours she looked forward. First his father, then himself, and lastly

Auntie Hamps had subjugated her. And of the three Auntie Hamps had most

ruthlessly succeeded, and in the shortest time. And yet--Edwin

felt--even Auntie Hamps had not quite succeeded, and the original

individual still survived in Maggie and was silently critical of all the

phenomena which surrounded her and to which she had apparently

submitted. Realising this, Edwin ceased to be kindly disdainful.

Towards the end of the meal a heavy foot was heard on the stairs.

"Minnie!" Maggie called.

After shuffling and hesitation the sitting-room door was pushed ever so

little open.

"Yes, miss," said someone feebly.

"Why have you left Mrs. Hamps? Do you need anything?"

"Missis made me go, miss," came the reply, very loosely articulated.

"Come in and take your bread," said Maggie, and aside to Edwin:

"Auntie's at it again!"

After another hesitation the door opened wide, and Minnie became

visible. She was rather a big girl, quite young, fat, too fair,

undecided, obviously always between two minds. Her large apron,

badly-fitting over the blue frock, was of a dubious yellow colour. She

wore spectacles. Behind her spectacles she seemed to be blinking in

confusion at all the subtle complexities of existence. She advanced

irregularly to the table with a sort of nervous desperation, as if

saying: "I have to go through this ordeal." Edwin could not judge

whether she was about to smile or about to weep.

"Here's your bread," said Maggie, indicating the two rounds of dry

bread. "I've left the dripping on the kitchen table for you."

Edwin, revolted, perceived of course in a flash what the life of Minnie

was under the regime of Auntie Hamps.

"Thank ye, miss."

He noticed that the veiled voice was that of a rather deaf person.

Blushing, Minnie took the bread, and moved away. Just as she reached the

door, she gave a great sob, followed by a number of little ones; and the

bread fell on to the carpet. She left it there, and vanished, still

violently sobbing.

Edwin, spellbound, stopped masticating. A momentary sensation almost of

horror seized him. Maggie turned pale, and he was glad that she turned

pale. If she had shown by no sign that such happenings were unusual, he

would have been afraid of the very house itself, of its mere sinister

walls which seemed to shelter sick tyrants, miserable victims, and

enchanted captives; he would have begun to wonder whether he himself was

safe in it.

"What next?" muttered Maggie, intimidated but plucky, rising and

following Minnie. "Just go up to Auntie, will you?" she called to Edwin

over her shoulder. "She oughtn't really to be left alone for a minute."

II

Edwin pushed open the door and crept with precautions into the bedroom.

Mrs. Hamps was dozing. In the half-light of the lowered gas he looked

at her and was alarmed, shocked, for it was at once apparent that she

must be very ill. She lay reclining against several crumpled and

crushed pillows, with her head on one side and her veined hands limp on

the eiderdown, between the heavy brown side-curtains that hung from the

carved mahogany tester. The posture seemed to be that of an exhausted

animal, surprised by the unconsciousness of final fatigue, shameless in

the intense need of repose. Auntie Hamps had ceased to be a Wesleyan, a

pillar of society, a champion of the conventions, and a keeper-up of

appearances; she was just an utterly wearied and beaten creature,

breathing noisily through wide-open mouth. Edwin could not remember

ever having seen her when she was not to some extent arrayed for the

world's gaze; he had not seen her at the crisis of any of her recent

attacks. He knew that more than once she had recovered when good judges

had pronounced recovery impossible; but he was quite sure, now, that she

would never rise from that bed. He had the sudden dreadful thought:

"She is done for, sentenced, cut off from the rest of us. This is the

end for her. She won't be able to pretend any more. All her efforts

have come to this." The thought affected him like a blow. And two

somewhat contradictory ideas sprang from it: first, the entire absurdity

of her career as revealed by its close, and secondly, the tragic dignity

with which its close was endowing her.

At once contemptible and august, she was diminished, even in size. Her

scanty grey hair was tousled. Her pink flannel night-dress with its

long, loose sleeves was grotesque; the multitude of her patched outer

wrappings, from which peeped her head on its withered neck, and

safety-pins, and the orifice of a hot-water bag, were equally grotesque.

None of the bed-linen was clean, or of good quality. The eiderdown was

old, and the needle-points of its small white feathers were piercing it.

The table at the bed-head had a strange collection of poor, odd

crockery. The whole room, with its distempered walls of an

uncomfortable green colour, in spite of several respectable pieces of

mahogany furniture, seemed to be the secret retreat of a graceless and

mean indigence. And above all it was damply cold; the window stood a

little open, and only the tiniest fire burnt in the inefficient grate.

For decades Auntie Hamps, with her erect figure and handsome face, her

black silks, jet ornaments, and sealskins, her small regular

subscriptions and her spasmodic splendours of golden generosity, her

heroic relentless hypocrisies and her absolute self-reliance and

independence, had exhibited a glorious front to the world. With her,

person and individuality were almost everything, and the environment she

had made for herself almost nothing. The ground-floor of her house was

presentable, especially when titivated for occasional hospitalities, but

not more than presentable. The upper floor was never shown. In

particular, Auntie Hamps was not one of those women who invite other

women to their bedrooms. Her bedroom was guarded like a fastness. In

it, unbeheld, lived the other Auntie Hamps, complementary to the grand

and massive Mrs. Hamps known to mankind. And now the fastness was

exposed, defenceless, and its squalid avaricious secrets discovered; and

she was too broken to protest. There was something unbearably pitiful

in that. Her pose was pitiful and her face was pitiful. Those features

were still far from ugly; the contours of the flushed cheeks, the chin,

and the convex eyelids were astonishingly soft, and recalled the young

girl of about half a century earlier. She was both old and young in her

troubled unconsciousness. The reflection was inevitable: "She was a

young girl--and now she is sentenced." Edwin felt himself desolated by

a terrible gloom which questioned the justification of all life. The

cold of the room made him shiver. After gazing for a long time at the

sufferer, he tiptoed to the fire. On the painted iron mantelpiece were

a basalt clock and three photographs; a recent photograph of smirking

Clara surrounded by her brood; a faded photograph of Maggie as a young

girl, intolerably dowdy; and an equally faded photograph of himself as a

young man of twenty,--he remembered the suit and the necktie in which he

had been photographed. The simplicity, the ingenuousness, of his own

boyish face moved him deeply and at the same time disgusted him. "Was I

like that?" he thought, astounded, and he felt intensely sorry for the

raw youth. Above the clock was suspended by a ribbon a new green card,

lettered in silver with some verses entitled "Lean Hard." This card, he

knew, had superseded a booklet of similar tenor that used to lie on the

dressing-table when he was an infant. The verses began:

_Child of My love, "Lean hard",_

_And let Me feel the pressure of thy care._

And they ended:

_Thou lovest Me. I knew it. Doubt not then,_

_But loving Me, LEAN HARD._

All his life he had laughed at the notion of his Auntie leaning hard

upon anything whatever. Yet she had lived continually with these verses

ever since the year of their first publication; she had never tired of

their message. And now Edwin was touched. He seemed to see some

sincerity, some beauty, in them. He had a vision of their author,

unknown to literature, but honoured in a hundred thousand respectable

homes. He thought: "Did Auntie only pretend to believe in them? Or did

she think she did believe in them? Or did she really believe in them?"

The last seemed a possibility. Supposing she did really believe in

them? ... Yes, he was touched. He was ready to admit that spirituality

was denied to none. He seemed to come into contact with the universal

immanent spirituality.

Then he stooped to put some bits of coal silently on the fire.

"Who's that putting coal on the fire?" said a faint but sharply

protesting voice from the bed.

The weakness of the voice gave Edwin a fresh shock. The voice seemed to

be drawing on the very last reserves of its owner's vitality. Owing to

the height of the foot of the bed, Auntie Hamps could not see anything

at the fireplace lower than the mantelpiece. As she withdrew from earth

she employed her fading faculties to expostulate against a waste of coal

and to identify the unseen criminal.

"I am," said Edwin cheerfully. "It was nearly out."

He stood up, smiling slightly, and faced her.

Auntie Hamps, lifting her head and frowning in surprise, gazed at him

for a few moments, as if trying to decide who he was. Then she said, in

the same enfeebled tone as before:

"Eh, Edwin! I never heard you come in. This is an honour!" And her

head dropped back.

"I'm sleeping here," said Edwin, with determined cheerfulness. "Did ye

know?"

She reflected, and answered deliberately, using her volition to

articulate every syllable:

"Yes. Ye're having Maggie's room."

"Oh no, Auntie!"

"Yes, you are. I've told her." The faint voice became harshly

obstinate. "Turn the gas up a bit, Edwin, so that I can see you. Well,

this is an honour. Did Maggie give ye a proper tea?"

"Oh yes, thanks. Splendid."

He raised the gas. Auntie Hamps blinked.

"You want something to shade this gas," said Edwin. "I'll fix ye

something."

The gas-bracket was a little to the right of the fireplace, over the

dressing-table, and nearly opposite the bed. Auntie Hamps nodded.

Having glanced about, Edwin put a bonnet-box on the dressing-table and

on that, upright and open, the Hamps family Bible from the ottoman. The

infirm creation was just lofty enough to come between the light and the

old woman's eyes.

"That'll be better," said he. "You're not at all well, I hear, Auntie."

He endeavoured to be tactful.

She slowly shook her head as it lay on the pillow.

"This is one of my bad days.... But I shall pick up.... Then has Hilda

taken George to London?"

Edwin nodded.

"Eh, I do hope and pray it'll be all right. I've had such good eyesight

myself, I'm all the more afraid for others. What a blessing it's been

to me! ... Eh, what a good mother dear Hilda is!" She added after a

pause: "I daresay there never was such a mother as Hilda, unless it's

Clara."

"Has Clara been in to-day?" Edwin demanded, to change the subject of

conversation.

"No, she hasn't. But she will, as soon as she has a moment. She'll be

popping in. They're such a tie on her, those children are--and how she

looks after them! ... Edwin!" She called him, as though he were

receding.

"Yes?"

The frail voice continued, articulating with great carefulness, and

achieving each sentence as though it were a miracle, as indeed it was:

"I think no one ever had such nephews and nieces as I have. I've never

had children of my own--that was not to be!--but I must say the Lord has

made it up to me in my nephews and nieces. You and Hilda ... and Clara

and Albert ... and the little chicks!" Tears stood in her eyes.

"You're forgetting Maggie," said Edwin, lightly.

"Yes," Auntie Hamps agreed, but in a quite different tone, reluctant and

critical. "I'm sure Maggie does her best. Oh! I'm sure she does ...

Edwin!" Again she called him.

He approached the tumbled bed, and even sat on the edge of it, his hands

in his pockets. Auntie Hamps, though breathing now more rapidly and

with more difficulty, seemed to have revitalised herself at some

mysterious source of energy. She was still preoccupied by the mental

concentration and the effort of volition required for the smallest

physical acts incident to her continued existence; but she had

accumulated power for the furtherance of greater ends.

"D'ye want anything?" Edwin suggested, indicating the contents of the

night-table.

She moved her head to signify a negative. Her pink-clad arms did not

stir. And her whole being seemed to be suspended while she prepared for

an exertion.

"I'm so relieved you've come," she said at length, slowly and painfully.

"You can't think what a relief it is to me. I've really no one but

you.... It's about that girl."

"What girl?"

"Minnie."

"The servant?"

Mrs. Hamps inclined her head, and fetched breath through the wide-open

mouth. "I've only just found it out. She's in trouble. Oh! She

admitted it to me a bit ago. I sent her downstairs. I wouldn't have

her in my bedroom a minute longer. She's in trouble. I felt sure she

was.... She was at class-meeting last Wednesday. And only yesterday I

paid her her wages. Only yesterday! Here she lives on the fat of the

land, and what does she do for it? I assure you I have to see to

everything myself. I'm always after her.... In a month she won't be

fit to be seen ... Edwin, I've never been so ashamed.... That I should

have to tell such a thing to my own nephew!" She ceased, exhausted.

Edwin was somewhat amused. He could not help feeling amused at such an

accident happening in the house of Mrs. Hamps.

"Who's the man?" he asked.

"Yes, and that's another thing!" answered Mrs. Hamps solemnly, in her

extreme weakness. "It's the barman at the Vaults, of all people. She

wouldn't admit it, but I know."

"What are you going to do?"

"She must leave my house at once."

"Where does she live--I mean her people?"

"She has no parents." Auntie Hamps reflected for a few moments. "She

has an aunt at Axe."

"Well, she can't get to Axe to-night," said Edwin positively. "Does

Maggie know about it?"

"Maggie!" exclaimed Mrs. Hamps scornfully. "Maggie never notices

_anything_." She added in a graver tone: "And there's no reason why

Maggie should know. It's not the sort of thing that Maggie ought to

know about. You can speak to the girl herself. It will come much

better from you. I shall simply tell Maggie I've decided the girl must

go."

"She can't go to-night," Edwin repeated, humouringly, but firmly.

Auntie Hamps proved the sincerity of her regard for him by yielding.

"Well," she murmured, "to-morrow morning, then. She can turn out the

sitting-room, and clean the silver in the black box, and then she can

go--before dinner. I don't see why I should give her her dinner. Nor

her extra day's wages either."

"And what shall you do for a servant? Get a charwoman?"

"Charwoman? No! Maggie will manage." And then with a sudden flare of

relished violence: "I always knew that girl was a mopsy slut. And

what's more, if you ask me, she brought him into the house--and after

eleven o'clock at night too!"

"All right!" Edwin muttered, to soothe the patient.

And Mrs. Hamps sadly smiled.

"It's such a relief to me," she breathed. "You don't know what a relief

to me it is to put it in your hands."

Her eyelids dropped. She said no more. Having looked back for an

instant in a supreme effort on behalf of the conventions upon which

society was established, Auntie Hamps turned again exhausted towards the

lifting veil of the unknown. And Edwin began to realise the

significance of the scene that was ended.

III

"I say," Edwin began, when he had silently closed the door of the

sitting-room. "Here's a lark, if you like!" And he gave a short laugh.

It was under such language and such demeanour that he concealed his real

emotion, which was partly solemn, partly pleasurable, and wholly

buoyant.

Maggie looked up gloomily. With a bit of pencil held very close to the

point in her heavy fingers, she was totting up the figures of household

accounts in a penny red-covered cash-book.

Edwin went on:

"It seems the girl yon"--he indicated the kitchen with a jerk of the

head--"'s been and got herself into a mess."

Maggie leaned her chin on her hand.

"Has she been talking to you about it?" With a similar jerk of the head

Maggie indicated Mrs. Hamps's bedroom.

"Yes."

"I suppose she's only just found it out?"

"Who? Auntie? Yes. Did you know about it?"

"Did I know about it?" Maggie repeated with mild disdainful impatience.

"Of course I knew about it. I've known for weeks. But I wasn't going to

tell _her_." She finished bitterly.

Edwin regarded his sister with new respect and not without astonishment.

Never before in their lives had they discussed any inconvenient sexual

phenomenon. Save for vague and very careful occasional reference to

Clara's motherhood, Maggie had never given any evidence to her brother

that she was acquainted with what are called in Anglo-Saxon countries

"the facts of life," and he had somehow thought of her as not having

emerged, at the age of forty-four or so, from the naive ignorance of the

young girl. Now her perfectly phlegmatic attitude in front of the

Minnie episode seemed to betoken a familiarity that approached cynicism.

And she was not at all tongue-tied; she was at her ease. She had become

a woman of the world. Edwin liked her; he liked her manner and her tone.

His interest in the episode even increased.

"She was for turning her out to-night," said he. "I stopped that."

"I should think so indeed!"

"I've got her as far as to-morrow morning."

"The girl won't go to-morrow morning either!" said Maggie. "At least,

if she goes, I go." She spoke with tranquillity, adding: "But we

needn't bother about that. Auntie'll be past worrying about Minnie

to-morrow morning.... I'd better go up to her. She can't possibly be

left alone."

Maggie shut the account-book, and rose.

"I only came down for a sec to tell you. She was dozing," said Edwin

apologetically. "She's awfully ill. I'd no idea."

"Yes, she's ill right enough."

"Who'll sit up with her?"

"I shall."

"Did you sit up with her last night?"

"No--only part of the night."

"We ought to get a nurse."

"Well, we can't get one to-night."

"And what about Clara? Can't she take a turn? Surely in a case like

this she can chuck her eternal kids for a bit."

"I expect she could. But she doesn't know."

"Haven't you sent round?" He expressed surprise.

"I couldn't," said Maggie with undisturbed equanimity. "Who could I

send? I couldn't spare Minnie. The thing didn't seem at all serious

until this morning. Since then I've had my hands full."

"Yes, I can see you have," Edwin agreed appreciatively.

"It was lucky the doctor called on his own. He does sometimes, you

know, since she began to have her attacks."

"Well, I'll go round to Clara's myself," said Edwin.

"I shouldn't," said Maggie. "At least not to-night."

"Why not?" He might have put the question angrily, overbearingly; but

Maggie was so friendly, suave, confidential, persuasive, and so sure of

herself, that with pleasure he copied her accents. He enjoyed thus

talking to her intimately in the ugly dark house, with the life-bearing

foolish Minnie on the one hand, and the dying old woman on the other.

He thought: "There's something splendid about Mag. In fact I always

knew there was." And he forgot her terrible social shortcomings, her

utter lack of the feminine seductiveness that for him ought to be in

every woman, and her invincible stolidity. Her sturdy and yet scarcely

articulate championship of Minnie delighted him and quickened his pulse.

"I'd sooner not have her here to-night," said Maggie. "You knew they'd

had a tremendous rumpus, didn't you?"

"Who? Auntie and Clara?"

"Yes."

"I didn't. What about? When? Nobody ever said anything to me."

"Oh, it must have been two or three months ago. Auntie said something

about Albert not paying me my interest on my money he's got. And then

Clara flared up, and the fat was in the fire."

"D'you mean to say he's not paying you your interest? Why didn't you

tell me?"

"Oh! It doesn't matter. I didn't want to bother you."

"Well, you ought to have bothered me," said Edwin, with a trace of

benevolent severity. He was astounded, and somewhat hurt, that this

great family event should have been successfully concealed from him. He

felt furious against Albert and Clara, and at the same time proud that

his prognostication about the investment with Albert had proved correct.

"Did Hilda know?"

"Oh yes. Hilda knew."

"Well, I'm dashed!" The exclamation showed naivete. His impression of

the chicanery of women was deepened, so that it actually disquieted him.

"But I suppose," he went on, "I suppose this row isn't going to stop

Clara from coming here, seeing the state Auntie's in?"

"No, certainly not. Clara would come like a shot if she knew, and

Albert as well. She's a good nurse--in some ways."

"Well, if they aren't told, and anything happens to Auntie in the night,

there'll be a fine to-do afterwards,--don't forget that."

"Nothing'll happen to Auntie in the night," said Maggie, with tranquil

reassurance. "And I don't think I could stand 'em to-night."

The hint of her nervous susceptibility, beneath that stolid exterior,

appealed to him.

Maggie, since closing the account-book, had moved foot by foot anxiously

towards the door, and had only been kept in the room by the imperative

urgency of the conversation. She now had her hand on the door.

"I say!" He held her yet another moment. "What's this about me taking

your room? I don't want to turn you out of your room."

"That's all right," she said, with a kind smile. "It's easiest, really.

Moreover, I daresay there won't be such a lot of sleeping.... I must go

up at once. She can't possibly be left alone."

Maggie opened the door and she had scarcely stepped forth when Minnie

from the kitchen rushed into the lobby and dropped, intentionally or

unintentionally, on her knees before her. Edwin, unobserved by Minnie,

witnessed the scene through the doorway. Minnie, agitated almost to the

point of hysteria, was crying violently and as she breathed her

shoulders lifted and fell, and the sound of her sobbing rose

periodically to a shriek and sank to a groan. She knelt with her body

and thighs upright and her head erect, making no attempt to stem the

tears or to hide her face. In her extreme desolation she was perhaps as

unconscious of herself as she had ever been. Her cap was awry on her

head, and her hair disarranged; the blinking spectacles made her

ridiculous; only the blue print uniform, and the sinister yellowish

apron drawn down tight under her knees, gave a certain respectable

regularity to her extraordinary and grotesque appearance.

To Edwin she seemed excessively young and yet far too large and too

developed for her age. The girl was obviously a fool. Edwin could

perceive in her no charm whatever, except that of her innocence; and it

was not easy to imagine that any man, even the barman at the Vaults,

could have mistaken her, even momentarily, for the ideal. And then some

glance of her spectacled eyes, or some gesture of the great red hand,

showed him his own blindness and mysteriously made him realise the

immensity of the illusion and the disillusion through which she had

passed in her foolish and incontinent simplicity. What had happened to

her was miraculous, exquisite, and terrible. He felt the magic of her

illusion and the terror of her disillusion. Already in her girlishness

and her stupidity she had lived through supreme hours. "Compared to

her," he thought, "I don't know what life is. No man does." And he not

only suffered for her sorrow, he gave her a sacred quality. It seemed to

him that heaven itself ought to endow her with beauty, grace, and

wisdom, so that she might meet with triumphant dignity the ordeals that

awaited her; and that mankind should supplement the work of heaven by

clothing her richly and housing her in secluded splendour, and offering

her the service which only victims merit. Surely her caprices ought to

be indulged and honoured! ... Edwin was indignant; indignation

positively burnt his body. She was helpless and defenceless and she had

been exploited by Auntie Hamps. And after having been exploited she had

been driven out by ukase on week-night to class-meeting and on Sunday

night to chapel, to find Christ, with the result that she had found the

barman at the Vaults. The consequences were inevitable. She was

definitely ruined, unless the child should bereave her by dying; and

even then she might still be ruined. And what about the child, if the

child lived? And although Edwin had never seen the silly girl before,

he said to himself, while noticing that a crumb or two of the bread

dropped by her still remained on the floor: "I'll see that girl through

whatever it costs!" He was not indignant against Auntie Hamps. How

could he be indignant against an expiring old creature already desperate

in the final dilemma. He felt nearly as sorry for Auntie Hamps as for

Minnie. He was indignant against destiny, of which Auntie Hamps was

only the miserable, unimaginative instrument.

"I'd better go to-night, miss. Let me go to-night!" cried Minnie. And

she cried so loudly that Edwin was afraid Auntie Hamps might hear and

might make an apparition at the head of the stairs and curse Minnie with

fearful Biblical names. And the old woman in the curtained bed upstairs

was almost as present to him as the girl kneeling before his eyes on the

linoleum of the lobby.

"Minnie! Minnie! Don't be foolish!" said Maggie, standing over her and

soothing her, not with her hands but with her voice.

Maggie had shown no perturbation or even surprise at Minnie's behaviour.

She stood looking down at her benevolent, deprecating, and calm. And by

contrast with Minnie she seemed to be quite middle-aged. Her tone was

exactly right. It reminded Edwin of the tone which she would use to

himself when, she was sixteen and the housekeeper, and he was twelve.

Maggie had long since lost authority over him; she had lost everything;

she would die without having lived; she had never begun to live--(No,

perhaps once she had just begun to live!)--Minnie had prime knowledge

far exceeding hers. And yet she had power over Minnie and could

exercise it with skill.

Minnie, hesitating, sobbed more slowly, and then ceased to sob.

"Go back into the kitchen and have something to eat, and then you can go

to bed. You'll feel differently in the morning," said Maggie with the

same gentle blandness.

And Minnie, as though fascinated, rose from her knees.

Edwin, surmising what had passed between the two in the kitchen while he

was in the bedroom, was aware of a fresh, intense admiration for Maggie.

She might be dowdy, narrow, dull, obstinate, virgin,--but she was

superb. She had terrific reserves. He was proud of her. The tone

merely of her voice as she spoke to the girl seemed to prove the

greatness of her deeply-hidden soul.

Suddenly Minnie caught sight of Edwin through the doorway, flushed red,

had the air of slavishly apologising to the unapproachable male for

having disturbed him by her insect-woes, and vanished. Maggie hurried

upstairs to the departing. Edwin was alone with the chill draught from

the lobby into the room, and with the wonder of life.

IV

In the middle of the night Edwin kept watch over Auntie Hamps, who was

asleep. He sat in a rocking-chair, with his back to the window and the

right side of his face to the glow of the fire. The fire was as

effective as the size and form of the grate would allow; it burnt richly

red; but its influence did not seem to extend beyond a radius of four

feet outwards from its centre. The terrible damp chill of the Five

Towns winter hung in the bedroom like an invisible miasma. He could feel

the cold from the window, which was nevertheless shut, through the shawl

with which he had closed the interstices of the back of the chair, and,

though he had another thick shawl over his knees, the whole of his left

side felt the creeping attack of the insidious miasma. A thermometer

which he had found and which lay on the night-table five yards from the

fire registered only fifty-two degrees. His expelled breath showed in

the air. It was as if he were fighting with all resources against

frigidity, and barely holding his own.

In the half-light of the gas, still screened from the bed by the

bonnet-box and the Bible, he glanced round amid the dark meadows at the

mean and sinister ugliness of the historic chamber, the secret nest and

withdrawing place of Auntie Hamps; and the real asceticism of her life

and of the life of all her generation almost smote him. Half a century

earlier such a room had represented comfort; in some details, as for

instance in its bed, it represented luxury; and in half a century Auntie

Hamps had learnt nothing from the material progress of civilisation but

the use of the hot-water bag; her vanished and forgotten parents would

have looked askance at the enervating luxuriousness of her hot-water

bag--unknown even to the crude wistful boy Edwin on the mantelpiece.

And Auntie Hamps herself was wont as it were to atone for it by using

the still tepid water therefrom for her morning toilet instead of having

truly hot water brought up from the kitchen. Edwin thought: "Are we

happier for these changes brought about by the mysterious force of

evolution?" And answered very emphatically: "Yes, we are." He would

not for anything have gone back to the austerities of his boyhood.

He rocked gently to and fro in the chair, excited by events and by the

novel situation, and he was not dissatisfied with himself. Indeed he

was aware of a certain calm complacency, for his commonsense had

triumphed over Maggie's devoted silly womanishness. Maggie was for

sitting up through the night; she was anxious to wear herself out for no

reason whatever; but he had sent her to bed until three o'clock,

promising to call her if she should be needed. The exhausted girl was

full of sagacity save on that one point of martyrdom to the

fullest--apparently with her a point of honour. For the sake of the

sensation of having martyrised herself utterly she was ready to imperil

her fitness for the morrow. She secretly thought it was unfair to call

upon him, a man, to share her fatigues. He regarded himself as her

superior in wisdom, and he was relieved that anyone so wise and balanced

as Edwin Clayhanger had taken supreme charge of the household organism.

Restless, he got up from the chair and looked at the bed. He had heard

no unusual sound therefrom, but to excuse his restlessness he had said:

"Suppose some change had occurred and I didn't notice it!" No change

had occurred. Auntie Hamps lay like a mite, like a baby forlorn, senile

and defenceless, amid the heaped pillows and coverings of the bed.

Within the deep gloom of the canopy and the over-arching curtains only

her small, soft face was alive; even her hair was hidden in the

indentation made by the weight of her head in the pillows. She was

unconscious, either in sleep or otherwise,--he could not tell how. And

in her unconsciousness the losing but obstinate fight against the power

which was dragging her over the edge of eternity still went on. It

showed in the apprehensive character of her breathing, which made a

little momentary periodic cloud above her face, and in the uneasy

muscular movements of the lips and jaws, and in the vague noises in her

throat. A tremendous pity for her re-entered his heart, almost breaking

it, because she was so beaten, and so fallen from the gorgeousness of

her splendour. Even Minnie could have imposed her will upon Auntie

Hamps now; each hour she weakened.

He had no more resentment against her on account of Minnie, no

accusation to formulate. He was merely grieved, with a compassionate

grief, that Auntie Hamps had learnt so little while living so long. He

knew that she was cruel only because she was incapable of imagining what

it was to be Minnie. He understood. She worshipped God under the form

of respectability, but she did worship God. Like all religious votaries

she placed religion above morality; hence her chicane, her inveterate

deceit and self-deceit. It was with a religious aim that she had

concealed from him the estrangement between herself and Clara. The

unity of the family was one of her major canons (as indeed it was one of

Edwin's). She had a passion for her nephew and nieces. It was a grand

passion. Her pride in them must have been as terrific as her longing

that they and all theirs should conform to the sole ideal that she

comprehended. Undeniably there was something magnificent in her

religion--her unscrupulousness in the practice of it, and the mighty

consistency of her career. She had lived. He ceased to pity her, for

she towered above pity. She was dying, but only for an instant. He

would smile at his aunt's primeval notions of a future life, yet he had

to admit that his own notions, though far less precise, could not be

appreciably less crude. He and she were anyhow at one in the profound

and staggering conviction of immortality. Enlightened by that

conviction, he was able to reduce the physical and mental tragedy of the

death-bed to its right proportions as a transiency between the heroic

past and the inconceivable future. And in the stillness of the room and

the stillness of the house, perfumed by the abnegation of Maggie and the

desolate woe of the ruined Minnie whom the Clayhangers would save, and

in the outer stillness of the little street with the Norman church-tower

sticking up out of history at the bottom of its slope, Edwin felt

uplifted and serene.

He returned to the rocking-chair.

"She's asleep now in some room I've never seen!" he reflected.

He was suddenly thinking of his wife. During the previous night, lying

sleepless close to her while she slept soundly, he had reflected long

and with increasing pessimism. The solace of Hilda's kiss had proved

fleeting. She had not realised--he himself was then only realising

little by little--the enormity of the thing she had done. What she had

deliberately and obstinately done was to turn him out of his house. No

injury that she might have chosen could have touched him more closely,

more painfully,--for his house to him was sacred. Her blundering with

the servants might be condoned, but what excuse was it possible to find

for this precipitate flight to London involving the summary ejectment

from the home of him who had created the home and for and by whom the

home chiefly existed? True the astounding feat of wrong-headedness had

been aided by the mere chance of Maggie's calling (capricious women were

always thus lucky!),--Maggie's suggestion and request had given some

afterglow of reason to the mad project. But the justification was still

far from sufficient. And the odious idea haunted him that, even if

Maggie had not called with her tale, Hilda would have persisted in her

scheme all the same. Yes, she was capable of that! The argument that

George's eyes (of whose condition she had learnt by mere hazard) could

not wait until domestic affairs were arranged, was too grotesque to

deserve an answer.

Lying thus close to his wife in the dark, he had perceived that the

conflict between his individuality and hers could never cease. No

diplomatic devices of manner could put an end to it. And he had seen

also that as they both grew older and developed more fully, the conflict

was becoming more serious. He assumed that he had faults, but he was

solemnly convinced that the faults of Hilda were tremendous, essential,

and ineradicable. She had a faculty for acting contrary to justice and

contrary to sense which was simply monstrous. And it had always been

so. Her whole life had been made up of impulsiveness and contumacy in

that impulsiveness. Witness the incredible scenes of the strange

Dartmoor episode--all due to her stubborn irrationality! The

perspective of his marriage was plain to him in the night,--and it ended

in a rupture. He had been resolutely blind to Hilda's peculiarities,

dismissing incident after incident as an isolated misfortune. But he

could be blind no more. His marriage was all of a piece, and he must

and would recognise the fact.... The sequel would be a scandal! ...

Well, let it be a scandal! As the minutes and hours passed in grim

meditation, the more attractive grew the lost freedom of the bachelor

and the more ready he felt to face any ordeal that lay between him and

it.... And just as it was occurring to him that his proper course was

to have fought a terrific open decisive battle with her in front of both

Maggie and Ingpen he had fallen asleep.

Upon awaking, barely in time to arouse Hilda, he knew that the mood of

the night had not melted away as such moods are apt to melt when the

window begins to show a square of silver-grey. The mood was even

intensified. Hilda had divined nothing. She never did divine the

tortures which she inflicted in his heart. She did not possess the

gumption to divine. Her demeanour had been amazing. She averred that

she had not slept at all. Instead of cajoling, she bullied. Instead of

tacitly admitting that she was infamously wronging him, she had assumed

a grievance of her own--without stating it. Once she had said

discontentedly about some trifle: "You might _at any rate_----" as

though the victim should caress the executioner. She had kissed him at

departure, but not as usual effusively, and he had suffered the kiss in

enmity; and after an unimaginable general upset and confusion, in which

George had shown himself strangely querulous, she had driven off with

her son,--unconscious, stupidly unaware, that she was leaving a disaster

behind her. And last of all Edwin, solitary, had been forced to perform

the final symbolic act, that of locking him out of his own sacred home!

The affair had transcended belief.

All day at the works his bitterness and melancholy had been terrible,

and the works had been shaken with apprehension, for no angry menaces

are more disconcerting than those of a man habitually mild. Before

evening he had decided to write to his wife from Auntie Hamps's,--a

letter cold, unanswerable, crushing, that would confront her unescapably

with the alternatives of complete submission or complete separation.

The phrases of the letter came into his mind.... He would see who was

master.... He had been full of the letter when he entered Auntie

Hamps's lobby. But the strange tone in which Maggie had answered his

questions about the sick woman had thrust the letter and the crisis

right to the back of his mind, where they had uneasily remained

throughout the evening. And now in the rocking-chair he was reflecting:

"She's asleep in some room I've never seen!"

He smiled, such a smile, candid, generous, and affectionate, as was

Hilda's joy, such a smile as Hilda dwelt on in memory when she was

alone. The mood of resentment passed away, vanished like a nightmare at

dawn, and like one of his liverish headaches dispersed suddenly after

the evening meal. He saw everything differently. He saw that he had

been entirely wrong in his estimate of the situation, and of Hilda.

Hilda was a mother. She had the protective passion of maternity. She

was carried away by her passions; but her passions were noble,

marvellous, unique. He himself could never--he thought, humbled--attain

to her emotional heights. He was incapable of feeling about anything or

anybody as she felt about George. The revelation concerning George's

eyesight had shocked her, overwhelmed her with remorse, driven every

other idea out of her head. She must atone to George instantly;

instantly she must take measures--the most drastic and certain--to

secure him from the threatened danger. She could not count the cost till

afterwards. She was not a woman in such moments,--she was an instinct,

a desire, a ruthless purpose. And as she felt towards George, so she

must feel, in other circumstances, towards himself. Her kisses proved

it, and her soothing hand when he was unwell. Mrs. Hamps had said: "Eh,

dear! What a good mother dear Hilda is!" A sentimental outcry! But

there was profound truth in it, truth which the old woman had seen

better than he had seen it. "I daresay there never was such a

mother--unless it's Clara!" Hyperbole! And yet he himself now began to

think that there never could have been such a mother as Hilda. Clara

too in her way was wonderful.... Smile as you might, these mothers were

tremendous. The mysterious sheen of their narrow and deep lives dazzled

him. For the first time, perhaps, he bowed his head to Clara.

But Hilda was far beyond Clara. She was not only a mother but a lover.

Would he cut himself off from her loving? Why? For what? To live

alone in the arid and futile freedom of a Tertius Ingpen? Such a notion

was fatuous. Where lay the difficulty between himself and Hilda? There

was no difficulty. How had she harmed him? She had not harmed him.

Everything was all right. He had only to understand. He understood. As

for her impulsiveness, her wrongheadedness, her bizarre

ratiocination,--he knew how to accept them, for was he not a

philosopher? They were indeed part of the incomparable romance of

existence with these prodigious and tantalising creatures. He admitted

that Hilda in some aspects transcended him, but in others he was

comfortably confident of his own steady, conquering superiority. He

thought of her with the most exquisite devotion. He pictured the secret

tenderness of their reunion amid the conventional gloom of Auntie

Hamps's death-bed.... He was confident of his ability to manage Hilda,

at any rate in the big things,--for example the disputed points of his

entry into public activity and their removal from Trafalgar Road into

the country. The sturdiness of the male inspired him. At the same time

the thought of the dark mood from which he had emerged obscurely

perturbed him, like a fearful danger passed; and he argued to himself

with satisfaction, and yet not quite with conviction, that he had

yielded to Maggie, and not to Hilda, in the affair of the journey to

London, and that therefore his masculine marital dignity was intact.

And then he started at a strange sound below, which somehow recalled him

to the nervous tension of the house. It was a knocking at the

front-door. His heart thumped at the formidable muffled noise in the

middle of the night. He jumped up, and glanced at the bed. Auntie Hamps

was not wakened. He went downstairs where the gas which he had lighted

was keeping watch.

CHAPTER XIX

DEATH AND BURIAL

I

Albert Benbow was at the front-door. Edwin curbed the expression of his

astonishment.

"Hello, Albert!"

"Oh! You aren't gone to bed?"

"Not likely. Come in. What's up?"

Albert, with the habit of one instructed never to tread actually on a

doorstep lest it should be newly whitened, stepped straight on to the

inner mat. He seemed excited, and Edwin feared that he had just learnt

of Auntie Hamps's illness and had come in the middle of the night

ostensibly to make enquiries, but really to make a grievance of the fact

that the Benbows had been "kept in ignorance." He could already hear

Albert demanding: "Why have you kept us in ignorance?" It was quite a

Benbow phrase.

Edwin shut the door and shut out the dark and windy glimpse of the outer

world which had emphasised for a moment the tense seclusion of the

house.

"You've heard of course about the accident to Ingpen?" said Albert. His

hands were deep in his overcoat pockets; the collar of the thin, rather

shabby overcoat was turned up; an old cap adhered to the back of his

head. While talking he slowly lifted his feet one after the other, as

though desiring to get warmth by stamping but afraid to stamp in the

night.

"No, I haven't," said Edwin, with false calmness. "What accident?"

The perspective of events seemed to change; Auntie Hamps's illness to

recede, and a definite and familiar apprehension to be supplanted by a

fear more formidable because it was a fear of the unknown.

"It was all in the late special _Signal_!" Benbow protested, as if his

pride had been affronted.

"Well, I haven't seen the _Signal_. What is it?" And Edwin thought:

"Is somebody else dying too?"

"Fly-wheel broke. Ingpen was inspecting the slip-house next to the

engine-house. Part of the fly-wheel came through and knocked a loose

nut off the blunger right into his groin."

"Whose works?"

Albert answered in a light tone:

"Mine."

"And how's he going on?"

"Well, he's had an operation and Sterling's got the nut out. Of course

they didn't know what it was till they got it out. And now Ingpen wants

to see you at once. That's why I've come."

"Where is he?"

"At the hospital."

"Pirehill?"

"No. The Clowes--Moorthorne Road, you know."

"Is he going on all right?"

"He's very weak. He can scarcely whisper. But he wants you. I've been

up there all the time, practically."

Edwin seized his overcoat from the rack.

"I had a rare job finding ye," Benbow went on. "I'd no idea you weren't

all at home. I wakened most of Hulton Street over it. It was Smiths

next door came out at last and told me missis and George had gone to

London and you were over here."

"I wonder who told them!" Edwin mumbled as Albert helped him with the

overcoat. "I must tell Maggie. We've got some illness here, you know."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Auntie. Very sudden. Seemed to get worse to-night. Fact is I

was sitting up while Maggie has a bit of sleep. She was going to send

round for Clara in the morning. I'll just run up to Mag."

Having thus by judicious misrepresentation deprived the Benbows of a

grievance, Edwin moved towards the stairs. Maggie, dressed, already

stood at the top of them, alert, anxious, adequate.

"Albert, is that you?"

After a few seconds of quick murmured explanation, Edwin and Albert

departed, and as they went Maggie, in a voice doubly harassed but

cheerful and oily called out after them how glad she would be, and what

a help it would be, if Clara could come round early in the morning.

The small Clowes Hospital was high up in the town opposite the Park,

near the station and the railway-cutting and not far from the Moorthorne

ridge. Behind its bushes, through which the wet night-wind swished and

rustled, it looked still very new and red in the fitful moonlight. And

indeed it was scarcely older than the Park and swimming-baths close by,

and Bursley had not yet lost its naive pride in the possession of a

hospital of its own. Not much earlier in the decade this town of

thirty-five thousand inhabitants had had to send all its "cases" five

miles in cabs to Pirehill Infirmary. Albert Benbow, with the

satisfaction of a habitue, led Edwin round through an aisle of bushes to

the side-entrance for out-patients. He pushed open a dark door, walked

into a gaslit vestibule, and with the assured gestures of a proprietor

invited Edwin to follow. A fat woman who looked like a char-woman made

tidy sat in a windsor-chair in the vestibule, close to a radiator. She

signed to Albert as an old acquaintance to go forward, and Albert nodded

in the manner of one conspirator to another. What struck Edwin was that

this middle-aged woman showed no sign of being in the midst of the

unusual. She was utterly casual and matter-of-fact. And Edwin had the

sensation of moving in a strange nocturnal world--a world which had

always co-existed with his own, but of which he had been till then most

curiously ignorant. His passage through the town listening absently to

Albert's descriptions of the structural damage to Ingpen and to the

works, and Albert's defence against unbrought accusations, had shown him

that the silent streets lived long after midnight in many a lighted

window here and there and in the movements of mysterious but not furtive

frequenters. And he seemed to have been impinging upon half-veiled

enigmas of misfortune or of love. At the other end of the thread of

adventure was his aunt's harsh bedroom with Maggie stolidly watching the

last ebb of senile vitality, and at this end was the hospital, full of

novel and disturbing vibrations and Tertius Ingpen waiting to impose

upon him some charge or secret.

At the top of the naked stairs which came after a dark corridor was a

long naked resounding passage lighted by a tiny jet at either end. A

cough from behind a half-open door came echoing out and filled the night

and the passage. And then at another door appeared a tall, thin, fair

nurse in blue and white, with thin lips and a slight smile hard and

disdainful.

"Here's Mr. Clayhanger, nurse!" muttered Albert Benbow, taking off his

cap, with a grimace at once sycophantic and grandiose.

Edwin imagined that he knew by sight everybody in the town above a

certain social level, but he had no memory of the face of the nurse.

"How is he?" he asked awkwardly, fingering his hat.

The girl merely raised her eyebrows.

"You mustn't stay," said she, in a mincing but rather loud voice that

matched her lips.

"Oh no, I won't!"

"I suppose _I'd_ better stop outside!" said Benbow.

Edwin followed the nurse into a darkened room, of which the chief

article of furniture appeared to be a screen. Behind the screen was a

bed, and on the bed in the deep obscurity lay a form under creaseless

bedclothes. Edwin first recognised Ingpen's beard, then his visage very

pale and solemn, and without the customary spectacles. Of the whole

body only the eyes moved. As Edwin approached the bed he cast across

Ingpen a shadow from the distant gas.

"Well, old chap!" he began with constraint. "This is a nice state of

affairs! How are you getting on?"

Ingpen's enquiring apprehensive dumb glance silenced the clumsy

greeting. It was just as if he had rebuked: "This is no time for How

d'ye do's." When he had apparently made sure that Edwin was Edwin,

Ingpen turned his eyes to the nurse.

"Water," he whispered.

The nurse shook her head.

"Net yet," she replied, with tepid indifference.

Ingpen's eyes remained on her a moment and then went back to Edwin.

"Ed," he whispered, and gazed once more at the nurse, who, looking away

from the bed, did not move.

Edwin bent over the bed.

"Ed," Ingpen demanded, speaking very deliberately. "Go to my office. In

the top drawer of the desk in the bedroom there's some photos and

letters.... Burn them.... Before morning.... Understand?"

Edwin was profoundly stirred. In his emotion was pride at Ingpen's

trust, astonishment at the sudden, utterly unexpected revelation, and

the thrill of romance.

He thought:

"The man is dying!"

And the tragic sensation of the vigil of the nocturnal world almost

overcame him.

"Yes," he said. "Anything else?"

"No."

"What about keys?"

Ingpen gave him another long glance.

"Trousers."

"Where are his clothes?" Edwin asked the nurse, whose lips were ironic.

"Oh! They'll tell you downstairs. You'd better go now."

As he went from the room he could feel Ingpen's glance following him.

He raged inwardly against the callousness of the nurse. It seemed

monstrous that he should abandon Ingpen for the rest of the night,

defenceless, to the cold tyranny of the nurse, whose power over the

sufferer was as absolute as that of an eastern monarch, who had never

heard of public opinion, over the meanest slave. He could not bear to

picture to himself Ingpen and the nurse alone together.

"Isn't he allowed to drink?" he could not help murmuring, at the door.

"Yes. At intervals."

He wanted to chastise the nurse. He imagined an endless succession of

sufferers under her appalling, inimical nonchalance. Who had allowed

her to be a nurse? Had she become a nurse in order to take some needed

revenge against mankind? And then he thought of Hilda's passionate,

succouring tenderness when he himself was unwell,--he had not been

really ill for years. What was happening to Ingpen could never happen

to him, because Hilda stood everlastingly between him and such a horror.

He considered that a bachelor was the most pathetic creature on the

earth. He was drenched in the fearful, wistful sadness of all life....

The sleeping town; Auntie Hamps on the edge of eternity; Minnie

trembling at the menaces of her own body; Hilda lying in some room that

he had never seen; and Ingpen...!

"Soon over!" observed Albert Benbow in the corridor.

Edwin could have winced at the words.

"How do you think he is?" asked Albert.

"Don't know!" Edwin replied. "Look here, I've got to get hold of his

clothes--downstairs."

"Oh! That's it, is it? Pocket-book! Keys! Eh?"

II

Edwin had once been in Tertius Ingpen's office at the bottom of Crown

Square, Hanbridge, but never in the bedroom which Ingpen rented on the

top floor of the same building. It had been for seventy or eighty years

a building of four squat storeys; but a new landlord, seeing the

architectural development of the town as a local metropolis and

determined to join in it at a minimum of expense, had knocked the two

lower storeys into one, fronted them with fawn-coloured terra cotta, and

produced a lofty shop whose rent exceeded the previous rent of the

entire house.

The landlord knew that passers-by would not look higher up the facade

than the ground-floor, and that therefore any magnificence above that

level was merely wasted. The shop was in the occupation of a tea-dealer

who gave away beautiful objects such as vases and useful objects such as

tea-trays, to all purchasers. Ingpen's office, and a solicitor's office,

were on the first floor, formerly the second; the third floor was the

headquarters of the Hanbridge and District Ethical Society; the top

floor was temporarily unlet, save for Ingpen's room. Nobody except

Ingpen slept in the building, and he very irregularly.

The latchkey for the sidedoor was easy to choose in the glittering light

of the latest triple-jetted and reflectored gaslamps which the

corporation, to match the glories of the new town-hall, had placed in

Crown Square. The lock, strange to say, worked easily. Edwin entered

somewhat furtively, and as it were guiltily, though in Crown Square and

the streets and the other squares visible therefrom, not a soul could be

seen. The illuminated clock of the Old Town Hall at the top of the

square showed twenty-five minutes to four. Immediately within the door

began a new, very long and rather mean staircase, with which Edwin was

acquainted. He closed the door, shutting out the light and the town,

and struck a match in the empty building. He had walked into Hanbridge

from Bursley, and as soon as he began to climb the stairs he was aware

of great fatigue, both physical and mental. The calamity to Ingpen had

almost driven Auntie Hamps out of his mind; it had not, however, driven

Minnie out of his mind. He was gloomy and indignant on behalf of both

Ingpen and Minnie. They were both victims. Minnie was undoubtedly a

fool, and he was about to learn, perhaps, to what extent Ingpen had been

a fool.

Each footstep sounded loud on the boards of deserted house. Having used

several matches and arrived at the final staircase, Edwin wondered how

he was to distinguish Ingpen's room there from the others without trying

keys in all of them till he got to the right one. But on the top

landing he had no difficulty, for Ingpen's card was fastened with a

drawing-pin on to the first door he saw. A match burnt his fingers and

expired just as he was shaking out a likely key from Ingpen's bunch.

And then, in the black darkness, he perceived a line of light under the

door in front of which he stood. He forgot his fatigue in an instant.

His heart leaped. A burglar? Or had Ingpen left the gas burning?

Ingpen could not have left the gas burning since, according to Albert

Benbow, he had been in Bursley all afternoon. With precautions, and

feeling very desperate and yet also craven, he lit a fresh match and

managed quietly to open the door, which was not locked.

As soon as he beheld the illuminated interior of the room, all his skin

crept and flushed as though he had taken a powerful stimulant. A girl

reclined asleep in a small basket lounge-chair by the gas-fire. He

could not see her face, which was turned towards the wall and away from

the gas-jet that hung from the ceiling over an old desk; but she seemed

slim and graceful, and there was something in the abandonment of

unconsciousness that made her marvellously alluring. Her hat and gloves

had been thrown on the desk, and a cloak lay on a chair. These coloured

and intimate objects--extensions of the veritable personality of the

girl--had the effect of delightfully completing the furniture of a room

which was in fact rather bare. A narrow bed in the far corner,

disguised under a green rug as a sofa; a green square of carpet, showing

the unpolished boards at the sides; the desk, and three chairs; a

primitive hanging wardrobe in another corner, hidden by a bulging linen

curtain; a portmanteau; a few unframed prints on the walls; an

alarm-clock on the mantelpiece,--there was nothing else in the chamber

where Ingpen slept when it was too late, or he was too slack, to go to

his proper home. But nothing else was needed. The scene was perfect;

the girl rendered it so. And immense envy of, and admiration for,

Ingpen surged through Edwin, who saw here the realisation of a dream

that was to marriage what poetry is to prose. Ingpen might rail against

women and against marriage in a manner exaggerated and indefensible; but

he had at any rate known how to arrange his life and how to keep his own

counsel. He had all the careless masculine freedom of his

condition,--and in the background this exquisite phenomenon! The girl,

her trustfulness, her abandonment, her secrecy, that white ear peeping

out of her hair,--were his! It was staggering that such romance could

exist in the Five Towns, of all places--for Edwin had the vague notion,

common to all natives, that his own particular district fell short of

full human nature in certain characteristics. For example, he could

credit a human nature dying for love in Manchester, but never in the

Five Towns. Even the occasional divorces that gave piquancy to life in

the Five Towns seemed to lack the mysterious glamour of all other

divorces.

He thought:

"Was it because he was expecting her that he sent me? Perhaps the desk

was only a blind--and he couldn't tell me any more. Anyhow I shall have

to break it to her."

He felt exceedingly awkward and unequal to the situation so startling in

its novelty. Yet he did not wish himself away.

As timidly, hat in hand, he went forward into the room, the girl stirred

and woke up, to the creaking of the chair.

"Oh! Tert!" she murmured between sleeping and waking.

Edwin did not like her voice. It reminded him of the voice of the nurse

whom he had just left.

The girl, looking round, perceived that it was not Tertius Ingpen who

had come in. She gave a short, faint scream, then gathered herself

together and with a single movement stood up, perfectly collected and on

the defensive.

"It's all right! It's all right!" said Edwin. "Mr. Ingpen gave me his

keys and asked me to come over and get some papers he wants.... I hope

I didn't frighten you. I'd no idea----"

She was old! She was old! That is to say, she was not the girl he had

seen asleep. Before his marriage he would have put her age at

thirty-two, but now he knew enough to be sure that she must be more than

that. She was not graceful in movement. The expression of her pale

face was not agreeable. Her gestures were not distinguished. And she

could not act her part in the idyll. Moreover her frock was shabby and

untidy. But chiefly she was old. Had she been young, Edwin would have

excused all the rest. Romance was not entirely destroyed, but very

little remained.

He thought, disdainfully, and as if resenting a deception:

"Is this the best he can do?"

And the Five Towns sank back to its ancient humble place in his esteem.

The woman said with a silly nervous giggle:

"I called to see Mr. Ingpen. He wasn't expecting me. And I suppose

while I was waiting I must have dropped off to sleep."

It might have been true, but to Edwin it was inexpressibly inane.

She seized her hat and then her cloak.

"I'm sorry to say Mr. Ingpen's had an accident," said Edwin.

She stopped, both hands above her head fingering her hat.

"An accident? Nothing serious?"

"Oh no! I don't think so," he lied. "A machinery accident. They had

to take him to the Clowes Hospital at Bursley. I've just come from

there."

She asked one or two more questions, all the time hurrying her

preparations to leave. But Edwin judged with disgust that she was not

deeply interested in the accident. True, he had minimised it, but she

ought not to have allowed him to minimise it. She ought to have

obstinately believed that it was very grave.

"I do hope he'll soon be all right," she said, snatching at her gloves

and going to the door. "Good night!" She gave another silly giggle,

preposterous in a woman of her age. Then she stopped. "I think you're

gentleman enough not to say anything about me being here," she said,

rather nastily. "It was quite an accident. I could easily explain it,

but you know what people are!"

What a phrase--"I think you're gentleman enough!"

He blushed and offered the required assurance.

"Can I let you out?" he started forward.

"No, thanks!"

"But you can't open the door."

"Yes I can."

"The stairs are all dark."

"Please don't trouble yourself," she said drily, in the tone of a woman

who sees offence in the courtesy of a male travelling companion on the

railway.

He heard her steps _diminuendo_ down the stairs.

Closing the door, he went to the window, and drew aside the blind.

Perhaps she would pass up the Square. But she did not pass up the Square

which was peopled by nothing but meek gaslamps under the empire of the

glowing clock in the pediment of the Old Town Hall. Where had she gone?

Where did she come from? Her accent had no noticeable peculiarity. Was

she married, or single, or a widow? Perhaps there was hidden in her

some strange and seductive quality which he had missed.... He saw the

slim girl again reclining in the basket-chair.... After all, she was a

woman, and she had been in Ingpen's room, waiting for him!

Later, seated in front of the open drawer in the old desk, gathering

together letters and photographs--photographs of her in adroitly managed

poses, taken at Oldham; letters in a woman's hand--he was penetrated to

the marrow by the disastrous and yet beautiful infelicity of things.

The mere sight of the letters (of which he forebore to decipher a single

word, even a signature) nearly made him cry; the photographs were tragic

with the intolerable evanescence of life. By the will of Tertius Ingpen

helpless on the bed in the hospital, these documents of a passion or of

a fancy were to be burnt. Why? Was it true that Ingpen was dying?

Better to keep them. No, they must be burnt. He rose, and, with

difficulty, burnt them by instalments in a shovel over the tiny fender

that enclosed the gas-stove,--the room was soon half full of smoke....

Why had he deceived the woman as to the seriousness of Ingpen's

accident? To simplify and mitigate the interview, to save himself

trouble; that was all! Well, she would learn soon enough!

His eye caught a print on the wall above the bed,--a classic example of

the sentimentality of Marcus Stone: departing cavalier, drooping maiden,

terraced garden. It was a dreadful indictment of the Tertius Ingpen who

talked so well, with such intellectual aplomb, with such detachment and

exceptional cynicism. It was like a ray exposing some secret sinister

corner in the man's soul. He had hung up that print because it gave him

pleasure! Poor chap! But Edwin loved him. He decided that he would

call again at the hospital before returning to Auntie Hamps's.

Impossible that the man was dying! If the doctor or the matron had

thought he was in danger they would have summoned his relatives. He

might be dying. He might be dead. He must have immediately feared

death, or he would not have imposed upon Edwin such an errand.... What

simple, touching, admirable trust in a friend's loyalty the man had

displayed!

Edwin put out the gas-stove, which exploded, lit a match, gave a great

yawn, put out the gas, and began the enterprise of leaving the house.

III

"Look here! I must have some tea, _now_!" said Edwin curtly and yet

appealingly to Maggie, who opened the door for him at Auntie Hamps's.

It was nearly eight o'clock. He had been to the hospital again, and,

having reported in three words to Ingpen, whose condition was unchanged,

had remained there some time. But he had said nothing to Ingpen about

the woman. At six o'clock the matron had come into the room, and the

nurse thenceforward until seven o'clock, when she went off duty, was a

changed girl. Edwin slightly knew the matron, who was sympathetic but

strangely pessimistic--considering her healthy, full figure.

"The water's boiling," answered Maggie, in a comforting tone, and

disappeared instantly into the kitchen.

Edwin thought:

"There are some things that girl understands!"

She had shown no curiosity, no desire to impart news, because she had

immediately comprehended that Edwin was, or imagined himself to be, at

the end of his endurance. Maggie, with simple and surpassing wisdom had

just said to herself: "He's been out all night, and he's not used to

it." For a moment he felt that Maggie was wiser, and more intimately

close to him, than anybody else in the world.

"In the dining-room," she called out from the kitchen.

And in the small dining-room there was a fire! It was like a living,

welcoming creature. The cloth was laid, the gas was lighted. On the

table was beautiful fresh bread and butter. A word, a tone, a glance of

his on the previous evening had been enough to bring back the

dining-room into use! Happily the wind suited the chimney. He had

scarcely sat down in front of the fire when Maggie entered with the

teapot. And at the sight of the teapot Edwin felt that he was saved.

Before the tea was out of the teapot it had already magically alleviated

the desperate sensations of physical fatigue and moral weariness which

had almost overcome him on the way from the hospital in the chill and

muddy dawn.

"What will you have to eat?" said Maggie.

"Nothing. I couldn't eat to save my life."

"Perhaps you'll have a bit of bread-and-butter later," said Maggie

blandly.

He shook his head.

"How is she?"

"Worse," said Maggie. "But she's slept."

"Who's up with her now? Minnie?"

"No. Clara."

"Oh! She's come?"

"She came at seven."

Edwin was drinking the divine tea. After a few gulps he told Maggie

briefly about Tertius Ingpen, saying that he had had to go "on business"

for Ingpen to Hanbridge.

"Are you all right for the present?" she asked after a few moments.

He nodded. He was eating bread-and-butter.

"You had any sleep at all?" he mumbled, munching.

"Oh yes! A little," she answered cheerfully, leaving the room.

He poured out more tea, and then sat down in the sole easy-chair for a

minute's reflection before going upstairs and thence to the works.

Not until he woke up did he realise that there had been any danger of

his going to sleep. The earthenware clock on the mantelpiece (a

birthday gift from Clara and Albert) showed five minutes past eleven.

Putting no reliance on the cheap, horrible clock, he looked at his

watch, which had stopped for lack of winding up. The fire was very low.

His chief thought was: "It can't possibly be eleven o'clock, because I

haven't been down to the works, and I haven't sent word I'm not coming

either!" He got up hurriedly and had reached the door when a sound of a

voice on the stairs held him still like an enchantment. It seemed to be

the voice, eloquent, and indeed somewhat Church-of-England, of the Rev.

Christian Flowerdew, the new superintendent of the Bursley Wesleyan

Methodist Circuit. The voice said: "I do hope so!" and then offered a

resounding remark about the weather being the kind of weather that, bad

as it was, people must expect in view of the time of year. Maggie's

voice concurred.

As soon as the front-door closed, Edwin peeped cautiously out of the

dining-room.

"Who was that?" he murmured.

"Mr. Flowerdew. She wanted him. Albert sent for him early this

morning."

Maggie came into the room and shut the door.

"I've been to sleep," said Edwin.

"Yes, I know. I wasn't going to have you disturbed. They're all here."

"Who are all here?"

"Clara and the children. Auntie asked to see all of them. They waited

in the drawing-room for Mr. Flowerdew to go. Bert didn't go to school

this morning, in case--because it was so far off. Clara fetched the

others out of school, except Rupy of course--he doesn't go--"

"Good heavens! I never came across such a morbid lot in my life. I

believe they like it."

Clara could be heard marshalling the brood up the stairs.

"You'd better go up," said Maggie persuasively.

"I'd better go to the works--I'm no use here. What time is it?"

"After eleven. I think you'd better go up."

"Does she ask for me?"

"Oh yes. All the time sometimes. But she forgets for a bit."

"Well, anyhow I must wash myself and change my collar."

"All right. Wash yourself, then."

"How is she now?"

"She isn't taking anything."

When Edwin nervously pushed open the bedroom door, the room seemed to be

crowded. Over the heads of clustering children towered Clara and

Albert. As soon as the watchful Albert caught sight of Edwin, he made a

conspiratorial sign and hurried to the door, driving Edwin out again.

"Didn't know you were here," Edwin muttered.

"I say," Albert whispered. "Has she made a will?"

"I don't know."

The bedroom door half opened, and Clara in her shabby morning dress

glidingly joined them.

"He doesn't know," said Albert to Clara.

Clara's pretty face scowled a little as she asked sharply and

resentfully:

"Then who does know?"

"I should ha' thought _you'd_ know," said Edwin.

"Me! I like that! She hasn't spoken to me for months, has she, Albert?

And she was always frightfully close about all these things."

"About what things?"

"Well, you know."

It was a fact. Auntie Hamps had never discussed her own finance, or her

testamentary dispositions, with anybody. And nobody had ever dared to

mention such subjects to her.

"Don't you think you'd better ask her?" said Clara. "Albert thinks you

ought."

"No, I don't," said Edwin, with curt disdain.

"Well, then I shall," Albert decided.

"So long as you don't do it while I'm there!" Edwin said menacingly.

"If you want to ask people about their wills you ought to ask them

before they're actually dying. Can't you see you can't worry her about

her will now?"

He was intensely disgusted. He thought of Mrs. Hamps's bed, and of

Tertius Ingpen's bed, and of the woman at dead of night in Ingpen's

room, and of Minnie's case; and the base insensibility of Albert and

Clara made him feel sick. He wondered whether any occasion would ever

have solemnity enough for them to make them behave with some

distinction, some grandeur. For himself, if he could have secured a

fortune by breathing one business word to Auntie Hamps just then, he

would have let the fortune go.

"There's nothing more to be said," Clara murmured.

In the glance of both Clara and Albert Edwin saw hatred and envy. Clara

especially had never forgiven him for preventing their father from

pouring money into that sieve, her husband, nor for Hilda's wounding

tongue, nor for his worldly success. And they both suspected that

either Maggie or Auntie Hamps had told him of Albert's default in the

payment of interest, and so fear was added to their hatred and envy.

They all entered the bedroom, the children having been left alone only a

few seconds. Rupert, wearing a new blue overcoat with gilt buttons, had

partially scrambled on to the bed; the pale veiled hands of Auntie Hamps

could be seen round his right hand; Rupert had grown enormous, and had

already utterly forgotten the time when he was two years old. The

others, equally altered, stood two on either side of the bed,--Bert and

young Clara to the right, and Amy and Lucy to the left. Lucy was crying

and Amy was benignantly wiping her eyes. Bert, a great lump of a boy,

was to leave school at Christmas, but he was still ranked with the other

children as a child. Young Clara sharply and Bert heavily turned round

to witness the entrance of their elders.

"Oh! Here's Uncle Edwin!"

"Edwin!"

"Yes, Auntie!"

The moral values of the room were instantly changed by the tone in which

Auntie Hamps had murmured "Edwin." All the Benbows knew, and Edwin

himself knew, that a personage of supreme importance in Auntie Hamps's

eyes had come into the scene. The Benbows became secondary, and even

Auntie Hamps's grasp of Rupert's hand loosened, and, having already

kissed her, the child slipped off the bed. Edwin approached, and over

the heads of the children, and between the great darkening curtains, he

could at last see the face of the dying woman like a senile doll's face

amid the confusion of wrappings and bedclothes. The deep-set eyes

seemed to burn beneath the white forehead and sparse grey hair; the

cheeks, still rounded, were highly flushed over a very small part of

their surface; the mouth, always open, was drawn in, and the chin, still

rounded like the cheeks, protruded. The manner of Auntie Hamps's noisy

breathing, like the puzzled gaze of her eyes, indicated apprehension of

the profoundest, acutest sort.

"Eh!" said she, in a somewhat falsetto voice, jerky and excessively

feeble. "I thought--I'd--lost you." Her hand was groping about.

"No, no," said Edwin, leaning over between young Clara and Rupert.

"She's feeling for your hand, Edwin," said Clara.

He quickly took her hot, brittle fingers; they seemed to cling to his

for essential support.

"Have you--been to the works?" Auntie Hamps asked the question as though

the answer to it would end all trouble.

"No," he said. "Not yet."

"Eh! That's right! That's right!" she murmured, apparently much

impressed by a new proof of Edwin's wisdom.

"I've had a sleep."

"What?"

"I've been having a sleep," he repeated more loudly.

"Eh! That's right! That's right.... I'm so glad--the children have

been to see me.... Amy--did you kiss me?" Auntie Hamps looked at Amy

hard, as if for the first time.

"Yes, Auntie."

And then Amy began to cry.

"Better take them away," Edwin suggested aside to Albert. "It's as much

as she can stand. The parson's only just gone, you know."

Albert, obedient, gave the word of command, and the room was full of

movement.

"Eh, children--children!" Auntie Hamps appealed.

Everybody stood stockstill, gazing attendant.

"Eh, children, bless you all for coming. If you grow up--as good as

your mother--it's all I ask--all I ask.... Your mother and I--have

never had a cross word--have we, mother?"

"No, auntie," said Clara, with a sweet, touching smile that accentuated

the fragile charm of her face.

"Never--since mother was--as tiny as you are."

Auntie Hamps looked up at the ceiling during a few strained breaths, and

then smiled for an instant at the departing children, who filed out of

the room. Rupert loitered behind, gazing at his mother. The mere

contrast between the infant so healthy and the dying old woman was

pathetic to Edwin. Clara, with an exquisite reassuring gesture and

smile picked up the stout Rupert and kissed him and carried him to the

door, while Auntie Hamps looked at mother and son, ecstatic.

"Edwin!"

"Yes, Auntie?"

They were alone now. She had not loosed his hand. Her voice was very

faint, and he bent over her still lower in the alcove of the curtains,

which seemed to stretch very high above them.

"Have you heard from Hilda?"

"Not yet. By the second post, perhaps."

"It's about George's eyes--isn't it?"

"Yes."

"She's done quite right--quite right. It's just--like Hilda. I do

hope--and pray--the boy's eyesight--is safe."

"Oh yes!" said Edwin. "Safe enough."

"You really think so?" She had the air of hanging on his words.

He nodded.

"What a blessing!" She sighed deeply with relief.

Edwin thought:

"I believe her relations must have been her passion." And he was

impressed by the intensity of that passion.

"Edwin!"

"Yes, Auntie."

"Has--that girl--gone yet?"

"Who?" he questioned, and added more softly: "Minnie d'you mean?" His

own voice sounded too powerful, too healthy and dominating, in

comparison with her failing murmurs.

Auntie Hamps nodded. "Yes--Minnie."

"Not yet."

"She's going?"

"Yes."

"Because I can't trust--Maggie--to see to it."

"I'll see to it."

"Has she done--the silvers--d'you know?"

"She's doing them," answered Edwin, who thought it would be best to

carry out the deception with artistic completeness.

"She needn't have her dinner before she goes."

"No?"

"No." Auntie Hamps's face and tone hardened. "Why should she?"

"All right."

"And if she asks--for her wages--tell her--I say there's nothing

due--under the circumstances."

"All right, Auntie," Edwin agreed, desperate.

Maggie, followed by Clara, softly entered the room. Auntie Hamps glanced

at them with a certain cautious suspicion, as though one or other of

them was capable of thwarting her in the matter of Minnie. Then her eyes

closed, and Edwin was aware of a slackening of her hold on his hand.

The doctor, who called half an hour later, said that she might never

speak again, and she never did. Her last conscious moments were moments

of satisfaction.

Edwin slowly released his hand.

"Where's Albert?" he asked Clara, merely for the sake of saying

something.

"He's taking the children home, and then he's going to the works. He

ought to have gone long ago. There's a dreadful upset there."

"I suppose there is," said Edwin, who had forgotten that the fly-wheel

accident must have almost brought Albert's manufactory to a standstill.

And he wondered whether it was the family instinct, or anxiety about

Auntie Hamps's will, that had caused Albert to absent himself from

business on such a critical morning.

"I ought to go too," he muttered, as a full picture of a lithographic

establishment masterless swept into his mind.

"Have you telegraphed to Hilda?" Clara demanded.

"No."

"Haven't you!"

"What's the use?"

"Well, I should have thought you would."

"Oh, no!" he said, falsely mild. "I shall write." He was immensely

glad that Hilda was not present in the house to complicate still further

the human equation.

Maggie was silently examining the face obscured in the gloom of the

curtains.

Instead of remaining late that night at the works, Edwin came back to

the house before six o'clock. He had had word that the condition of

Tertius Ingpen was still unchanged. Clara had gone home to see to her

children's evening meal. Maggie sat alone in the darkened bedroom,

where Auntie Hamps, her features a mere pale blur between the

over-arching curtains, still withheld the secret of her soul's reality

from the world. Even in the final unconsciousness there was something

grandiose which lingered from her crowning magnificent deceptions and

obstinate effort to safeguard the structure of society. The sublime

obstinacy of the woman had transformed hypocrisy into a virtue, and not

the imminence of the infinite unknown had sufficed to make her apostate

to the steadfast principles of her mortal career.

"What about to-night?" Edwin asked.

"Oh! Clara and I will manage."

There was a tap at the door. Edwin opened it. Minnie, abashed but

already taking courage, stood there blinking with a letter in her hand.

"Ah!" he breathed. Hilda's scrawling calligraphy was on the envelope.

The letter read: "Darling boy. George has influenza, Charlie says.

Temp. 102 anyway. So of course he can't go out to-morrow. I knew this

morning there was something wrong with him. Janet and Charlie send

their love. Your ever loving wife, Hilda."

He was exceedingly uplifted and happy and exhausted. Hilda's

handwriting moved him. The whole missive was like a personal emanation

from her. It lived with her vitality. It fought for the mastery of the

household interior against the mysterious, far-reaching spell of the

dying woman. "Your loving wife." Never before, during their marriage,

had she written a phrase so comforting and exciting. He thought: "My

faith in her is never worthy of her." And his faith leaped up and

became worthy of her.

"George has got influenza," he said indifferently.

"George! But influenza's very serious for him, isn't it?" Maggie showed

alarm.

"Why should it be?"

"Considering he nearly died of it at Orgreaves'!"

"Oh! _Then_! ... He'll be all right."

But Maggie had put fear into Edwin,--a superstitious fear. Influenza

indeed might be serious for George. Suppose he died of it. People did

die of influenza. Auntie Hamps--Tertius Ingpen--and now George! ... All

these anxieties mingling with his joy in the thought of Hilda! And all

the brooding rooms of the house waiting in light or in darkness for a

decisive event!

"I must go and lie down," he said. He could contain no more sensations.

"Do," said Maggie.

IV

At two o'clock in the afternoon of Auntie Hamps's funeral, a procession

consisting of the following people moved out of the small, stuffy

dining-room of her house across the lobby into the drawing-room:--the

Rev. Christian Flowerdew, the Rev. Guy Cliffe (second minister), the

aged Reverend Josiah Higginbotham (supernumerary minister), the chapel

and the circuit stewards, the doctor, Edwin, Maggie, Clara, Bert and

young Clara (being respectively the eldest nephew and the eldest niece

of the deceased), and finally Albert Benbow; Albert came last because he

had constituted himself the marshal of the ceremonies. In the

drawing-room the coffin with its hideous brass plate and handles lay

upon two chairs, and was covered with white wreaths. At the head of the

coffin was placed a small table with a white cloth; on the cloth a large

inlaid box (in which Auntie Hamps had kept odd photographs), and on the

box a black book. The drawn blinds created a beautiful soft silvery

gloom which solemnised everything and made even the clumsy carving on

the coffin seem like the finest antique work. The three ministers

ranged themselves round the small table; the others stood in an

irregular horseshoe about the coffin, nervous, constrained, and in dread

of catching each other's glances. Mr. Higginbotham, by virtue of his

age, began to read the service, and Auntie Hamps became "she," "her,"

and "our sister,"--nameless. In the dining-room she had been the paragon

of all excellences,--in the drawing-room, packed securely and neatly in

the coffin, she was a sinner snatched from the consequences of sin by a

miracle of divine sacrifice.

The interment thus commenced was the result of a compromise between two

schools of funebrial manners sharply divergent. Edwin, immediately

after the demise, had become aware of influences far stronger than those

which had shaped the already half-forgotten interment of old Darius

Clayhanger into a form repugnant to him. Both Albert and Clara, but

especially Albert, had assumed an elaborate funeral, with a choral

service at the Wesleyan chapel, numerous guests, a superb procession,

and a substantial and costly meal in the drawing-room to conclude.

Edwin had at once and somewhat domineeringly decided: no guests whatever

outside the family, no service at the chapel, every rite reduced to its

simplest. When asked why, he had no logical answer. He soon saw that

it would be impossible not to invite a minister and the doctor. He

yielded, intimidated by the sacredness of custom. Then not only the

Wesleyan chapel but its Sunday School sent dignified emissaries, who so

little expected a No to their honorific suggestions that the No was

unuttered and unutterable. Certain other invitations were agreed upon.

The Sunday School announced that it would "walk," and it prepared to

"walk."

All the emissaries spoke of Auntie Hamps as a saint; they all averred

with restrained passion that her death was an absolutely irreparable

loss to the circuit; and their apparent conviction was such that Edwin's

whole estimate of Auntie Hamps and of mankind was momentarily shaken.

Was it conceivable that none of these respectable people had arrived at

the truth concerning Auntie Hamps? Had she deceived them all? Or were

they simply rewarding her in memory for her ceaseless efforts on behalf

of the safety of society?

Edwin stood like a rock against a service in the Wesleyan Chapel. Clara

cunningly pointed out to him that the Wesleyan Chapel would be heated

for the occasion, whereas the chapel at the cemetery, where scores of

persons had caught their deaths in the few years of its existence, was

never heated. His reply showed genius. He would have the service at

the house itself. The decision of the chief mourner might be regretted,

and was regretted, but none could impugn its correctitude, nor its

social distinction; some said approvingly that it was 'just like' Edwin.

Thenceforward the arrangements went more smoothly, the only serious

difficulty being about the route to the cemetery. Edwin was met by a

saying that "the last journey must be the longest," which meant that the

cortege must go up St. Luke's Square and along the Market Place past the

Town Hall and the Shambles, encountering the largest number of

sightseers, instead of taking the nearest way along Wedgwood Street.

Edwin chose Wedgwood Street.

In the discussions, Maggie was neutral, thus losing part of the very

little prestige which she possessed. Clara and Albert considered Edwin

to be excessively high-handed. But they were remarkably moderate in

criticism, for the reason that no will had been found. Maggie and Clara

had searched the most secret places of the house for a will, in vain.

All that they had found was a brass and copper paper-knife wrapped in

tissue-paper and labelled "For Edwin, with Auntie's love," and a set of

tortoise-shell combs equally wrapped in tissue-paper and labelled "For

Maggie, with Auntie's love." Naught for Clara! Naught for the chicks.

Albert (who did all the running about) had been to see Mr. Julian

Pidduck, the Wesleyan solicitor, who had a pew at the back of the chapel

and was famous for invariably arriving at morning service half an hour

late. Mr. Pidduck knew of no will. Albert had also been to the

Bank--that is to say, the Bank, at the top of St. Luke's Square, whose

former manager had been a buttress of Wesleyanism. The new manager

(after nearly eight years he was still called the "new" manager, because

the previous manager, old Lovatt, had been in control for nearly thirty

years), Mr. Breeze, was ill upstairs on the residential floor with one

of his periodic attacks of boils; the cashier, however, had told Albert

that certain securities, but no testament, were deposited at the Bank;

he had offered to produce the securities, but only to Edwin, as the

nearest relative. Albert had then secretly looked up the pages entitled

"Intestates' Estates" in Whitaker's Almanac and had discovered that

whereas Auntie Hamps being intestate, her personal property would be

divided equally between Edwin, Maggie, and Clara, her real property

would go entirely to Edwin. (Edwin also had secretly looked up the same

pages.) This gross injustice nearly turned Albert from a Tory into a

Land Laws reformer. It accounted for the comparative submissiveness of

Clara and Albert before Edwin's arrogance as the arbiter of funerals.

They hoped that, if he was humoured, he might forego his rights. They

could not credit, and Edwin maliciously did not tell them, that no

matter what they did he was incapable of insisting on such rights.

While the ministers succeeded each other in the conduct of the service,

each after his different manner, Edwin scrutinised the coffin, and the

wreaths, and the cards inscribed with mournful ecstatic affection that

nestled amid the flowers, and the faces of the audience, and his thought

was: "This will soon be over now!" Beneath his gloomy and wearied

expression he was unhappy, but rather hopeful and buoyant, looking

forward to approaching felicity. His reflections upon the career of

Auntie Hamps were kind, and utterly uncritical; he wondered what her

spirit was doing in that moment; the mystery ennobled his mind. Yet he

wondered also whether the ministers believed all they were saying, why

the superintendent minister read so well and prayed with such a lack of

distinction, how much the wreaths cost, whether the Sunday School

deputation had silently arrived in the street, and why men in overcoats

and hatless looked so grotesque in a room, and why when men and women

were assembled on a formal occasion the women always clung together.

Probing his left-hand pocket, he felt a letter. He had received it that

morning from Hilda. George was progressing very well, and Charlie

Orgreave had actually brought the oculist with his apparatus to see him

at Charlie's house. Charlie would always do impossibilities for Hilda.

It was Charlie who had once saved George's life--so Hilda was convinced.

The oculist had said that George's vision was normal, and that he must

not wear glasses, but that on account of a slight weakness he ought to

wear a shade at night in rooms which were lighted from the top. In a few

days Hilda and George would return. Edwin anticipated their arrival

with an impatience almost gleeful, so anxious was he to begin the new

life with Hilda. Her letters had steadily excited him. He pictured the

intimacies of their reunion. He saw her ideally. His mind rose to the

finest manifestations of her individuality, and the inconveniences of

that individuality grew negligible. Withal, he was relieved that

George's illness had kept her out of Bursley during the illness, death,

and burial of Auntie Hamps. Had she been there, he would have had three

persons to manage instead of two, and he could not have asserted himself

with the same freedom.

And then there was a sound of sobbing outside the door. Minnie, sharing

humbly but obstinately in the service according to her station, had

broken down in irrational grief at the funeral of the woman whose dying

words amounted to an order for her execution. Edwin, though touched,

could have smiled; and he felt abashed before the lofty and

incomprehensible marvels of human nature. Several outraged bent heads

twisted round in the direction of the door, but the minister intrepidly

continued with the final prayer. Maggie slipped out, the door closed,

and the sound of sobbing receded.

After the benediction Albert resumed full activity, while the remainder

of the company stared and cleared their throats without exchanging a

word. The news that the hearse and coaches had not arrived helped them

to talk a little. The fault was not that of the undertaker, but

Edwin's. The service had finished too soon, because in response to Mr.

Flowerdew's official question: "How much time do you give me?" he had

replied: "Oh! A quarter of an hour," whereas Albert the organiser had

calculated upon half an hour. The representatives of the Sunday School

were already lined up on the pavement and on the opposite pavement and

in the roadway were knots of ragged, callously inquisitive spectators.

The vehicles could at length be described on the brow of Church Street.

They descended the slope in haste. The four mutes nipped down with

agility from the hammer cloths, hung their greasy top-hats on the

ornamental spikes of the hearse, and sneaked grimly into the house. In

a second the flowers were shifted from the coffin, and with startling

accomplished swiftness the coffin was darted out of the room without its

fraudulent brass handles even being touched, and down the steps into the

hearse, and the flowers replaced. The one hitch was due to Edwin

attempting to get into the first coach instead of waiting for the last

one. Albert, putting on his new black gloves, checked him. The

ministers and the doctor had to go first, the chapel officials next, and

the chief mourners--Edwin, Albert, and Bert--had the third coach. The

women stayed behind at the door, frowning at the murmurous crowd of

shabby idlers. Albert gave a supreme glance at the vehicles and the

walkers, made a signal, and joined Edwin and Bert in the last coach,

buttoning his left hand glove. Edwin would only hold his gloves in his

hand. The cortege moved. Rain was threatening, and the street was

muddy.

At the cemetery it was raining, and the walkers made a string of

glistening umbrellas; only the paid mutes had no umbrellas. Near the

gates, under an umbrella, stood a man with a protruding chin and a wiry

grey moustache. He came straight to Edwin and shook hands. It was Mr.

Breeze, the Bank manager. His neck, enveloped in a white muffler, showed

a large excrescence behind, and he kept his head very carefully in one

position.

He said, in his defiant voice:

"I only had the news this morning, and I felt that I should pay the last

tribute of respect to the deceased. I had known her in business and

privately for many years."

His greeting of Albert was extremely reserved, and Albert showed him a

meek face. Albert's overdraft impaired the cordiality of their

relations.

"Sorry to hear you've got your old complaint!" said Edwin, astounded at

this act of presence by the terrible bank-manager.

Vehicles, by some municipal caprice, were forbidden to enter the

cemetery. And in the rain, between the stone-perpetuated great names of

the town's history--the Boultons, the Lawtons, the Blackshaws, the

Beardmores, the Dunns, the Longsons, the Hulmes, the Suttons, the

Greenes, the Gardiners, the Calverts, the Dawsons, the Brindleys, the

Baineses, and the Woods--the long procession preceded by Auntie Hamps

tramped for a third of a mile along the asphalted path winding past the

chapel to the graveside. And all the way Mr. Breeze, between Edwin and

Albert, with Bert a yard to the rear, talked about boils, and Edwin said

"Yes" and "No," and Albert said nothing. And at the graveside the three

ministers removed their flat round hats and put on skull-caps while

skilfully holding their umbrellas aloft.

And while Mr. Flowerdew was reading from a little book in the midst of

the large encircling bare-headed crowd with umbrellas, and the

gravedigger with absolute precision accompanied his words with three

castings of earth into the hollow of the grave, Edwin scanned an

adjoining tombstone, which marked the family vault of Isaac Plant, a

renowned citizen. He read, chased in gilt letters on the Aberdeen

granite, the following lines:

"Sacred to the memory of Adelaide Susan, wife of Isaac Plant, died 27th

June, 1886, aged 47 years. And of Mary, wife of Isaac Plant, died 11th

December, 1890, aged 33 years. And of Effie Harriet, wife of Isaac

Plant, died 9th December, 1893, aged 27 years. _The Flower Fadeth_.

And of Isaac Plant, died 9th February, 1894, aged 79 years. _I know

that my Redeemer Liveth_." And the passionate career of the aged and

always respectable rip seemed to Edwin to have been a wondrous thing.

The love of life was in Isaac Plant. He had risen above death again and

again. After having detested him, Edwin now liked him on the tombstone.

And even in that hilly and bleak burial ground, with melancholy

sepulchral parties and white wind-blown surplices dotted about the

sodden slopes, and the stiff antipathetic multitude around the pit which

held Auntie Hamps, and the terrible seared, harsh, grey-and-brown

industrial landscape of the great smoking amphitheatre below, Edwin felt

happy in the sensation of being alive and of having to contend with

circumstance. He was inspired by the legend of Isaac Plant and of

Auntie Hamps, who in very different ways had intensely lived. And he

thought in the same mood of Tertius Ingpen, who was now understood to be

past hope. If he died,--well, he also had intensely lived! And he

thought too of Hilda, whose terrific vitality of emotion had caused him

such hours of apprehension and exasperation. He exulted in all those

hours. It seemed almost a pity that, by reason of his new-found

understanding of Hilda, such hours would not recur. His heart flew

impatiently forward into the future, to take up existence with her

again.

When the ministers pocketed their skull-caps and resumed their hats,

everybody except Edwin appeared to feel relief in turning away from the

grave. Faces brightened; footsteps were more alert. In the

drawing-room Edwin had thought: "It will soon be over," and every face

near him was saying, "It is over"; but now that it was over Edwin had a

pang of depression at the eagerness with which all the mourners

abandoned Auntie Hamps to her strange and desolate grave amid the

sinister population of corpses.

He lingered, glancing about. Mr. Breeze also lingered, and then in his

downright manner squarely approached Edwin.

"I'll walk down with ye to the gates," said he.

"Yes," said Edwin.

Mr. Breeze moved his head round with care. Their umbrellas touched. In

front of them the broken units of a procession tramped in disorder,

chatting.

"I've got that will for you," said Mr. Breeze in a confidential tone.

"What will?"

"Mrs. Hamps's."

"But your cashier said there was no will at your place!"

"My cashier doesn't know everything," remarked Mr. Breeze. And in his

voice was the satisfied grimness of a true native of the district, and a

Longshaw man. "Mrs. Hamps deposited her will with me as much as a friend

as anything else. The fact is I had it in my private safe. I should

have called with it this morning, but I knew that you'd be busy, and

what's more I can't go paying calls of a morning. Here it is."

Mr. Breeze drew an endorsed foolscap envelope from the breast pocket of

his overcoat, and handed it to Edwin.

"Thanks," said Edwin very curtly. He could be as native as any native.

But beneath the careful imperturbability of his demeanour he was not

unagitated.

"I've got a receipt for you to sign," said Mr. Breeze. "It's slipped

into the envelope. Here's an ink-pencil."

Edwin comprehended that he must stand still in the rain and sign a

receipt for the will as best he could under an umbrella. He complied.

Mr. Breeze said no more.

"Good-bye, Mr. Breeze," said Edwin at the gates.

"Good-day to you, Mr. Clayhanger."

The coaches trotted down the first part of the hill into Bursley but as

soon as the road became a street, with observant houses on either side,

the pace was reduced to a proper solemnity. Edwin was amused and even

uplifted by the thought of the will in his pocket; his own curiosity

concerning it diverted him; he anticipated complications with a light

heart. To Albert he said nothing on the subject, which somehow he could

not bring himself to force bluntly into the conversation. Albert talked

about his misfortunes at the works, including the last straw of the

engine accident; and all the time he was vaguely indicating reasons--the

presence of Bert in the carriage necessitated reticence--for his default

in the interest-paying to Maggie. At intervals he gave out that he was

expecting much from Bert, who at the New Year was to leave school for

the works--and Bert taciturn behind his spectacles had to seem loyal,

earnest, and promising.

As they approached the Clowes Hospital Edwin saw a nurse in a bonnet,

white bow, and fluent blue robe emerging from the shrubbery and putting

up an umbrella. She looked delightful,--at once modest and piquant,

until he saw that she was the night-nurse; and even then she still

looked delightful. He thought: "I'd no idea she could look like that!"

and began to admit to himself that perhaps in his encounters with her in

the obscurity of the night he had not envisaged the whole of her

personality. Involuntarily he leaned forward. Her eyes were

scintillant and active, and they caught his. He saluted; she bowed,

with a most inviting, challenging and human smile.

"There's Nurse Faulkner!" he exclaimed to Albert. "I must just ask her

how Ingpen is. I haven't heard to-day." He made as if to lean out of

the window.

"But you can't stop the procession!" Albert protested in horror, unable

to conceive such an enormity.

"I'll just slip out!" said Edwin, guiltily.

He spoke to the coachman and the coach halted.

In an instant he was on the pavement.

"Drive on," he instructed the coachman, and to the outraged Albert:

"I'll walk down."

Nurse Faulkner, apparently flattered by the proof of her attractiveness,

stopped and smiled upon the visitor. She had a letter in one hand.

"Good afternoon, nurse."

"Good morning, Mr. Clayhanger. I'm just going out for my morning walk

before breakfast," said she.

She had dimples. These dimples quite ignored Edwin's mourning and the

fact that he had quitted a funeral in order to speak to her.

"How is Mr. Ingpen to-day?" Edwin asked. He could read on the envelope

in her hand the words "The Rev."

She grew serious, and said in a low, cheerful tone: "I think he's going

on pretty well."

Edwin was startled.

"D'you mean he's getting better?"

"Slowly. He's taking food more easily. He was undoubtedly better this

morning. I haven't seen him since, of course."

"But the matron seemed to think----" He stopped, for the dimples began

to reappear.

"Matron always fears the worst, you know," said Nurse Faulkner, not

without irony.

"Does she?"

The matron had never held out hope to Edwin; and he had unquestioningly

accepted her opinion. It had not occurred to him that the matron of a

hospital could be led astray by her instinctive unconscious appetite for

gloom and disaster.

The nurse nodded.

"Then you think he'll pull through?"

"I'm pretty sure he will. But of course I've not seen the doctor--I

mean since the first night."

"I'm awfully glad."