Bennett Arnold
These Twain
The weather, after being thunderous, had cleared, and the part of the drawing-room near the open window was shot with rays of sunshine.
Janet Orgreave, all dressed in white, lay back in an easy chair; she was laughing and wiping the tears from her eyes. At the piano sat very upright a seemingly rather pert young woman, not laughing, but smiling, with arch sparkling eyes fixed on the others; this was Daisy Marrion, a cousin of Mrs. Tom Orgreave, and the next to the last unmarried daughter of a large family up at Hillport. Standing by the piano was a young timid girl of about sixteen, whom Edwin, who had not seen her before, guessed to be Janet's niece, Elaine, eldest daughter of Janet's elder sister in London; Elaine's approaching visit had been announced. These other two, like Janet, were in white. Lastly there was Hilda, in grey, with a black hat, laughing like a child. "They are all children," he thought as, unnoticed, he watched them in their bright fragile frocks and hats, and in their excessive gaiety, and in the strange abandon of their gestures. "They are a foreign race encamped among us men. Fancy women of nearly forty giggling with these girls as Janet and Hilda are giggling!" He felt much pleasure in the sight. It could not have happened in poor old Maggie's reign. It was delicious. It was one of the rewards of existence, for the grace of these creatures was surpassing. But at the same time it was hysterical and infantile. He thought: "I've been taking women too seriously." And his heart lightened somewhat.
Elaine saw him first. A flush flowed from her cheeks to her neck. Her body stiffened. She became intensely self-conscious. She could not speak, but she leaned forward and gazed with a passion of apprehension at Janet, as if murmuring: "Look! The enemy! Take care!" The imploring silent movement was delightful in its gawky ingenuousness.
"Do tell us some more, Daisy," Hilda implored weakly.
"There is no more," said Daisy, and then started: "Oh, Mr. Clayhanger! How long have you been there?"
He entered the room, yielding himself, proud, masculine, acutely aware of his sudden effect on these girls. For even Hilda was naught but a girl at the moment; and Janet was really a girl, though the presence of that shy niece, just awaking to her own body and to the world, made Janet seem old in spite of her slimness and of that smoothness of skin that was due to a tranquil, kind temperament. The shy niece was enchantingly constrained upon being introduced to Edwin, whom she was enjoined to call uncle. Only yesterday she must have been a child. Her marvellously clear complexion could not have been imitated by any aunt or elder sister.
"And now perhaps you'll tell me what it's all about," said Edwin.
Hilda replied:
"Janet's called about tennis. It seems they're sick of the new Hillport Club. I knew they would be. And so next year Janet's having a private club on her lawn-"
"Bad as it is," said Janet.
"Where the entire conversation won't be remarks by girls about other girls' frocks and remarks by men about the rotten inferiority of other men."
"This is all very sound," said Edwin, rather struck by Hilda's epigrammatic quality. "But what I ask is-what were you laughing at?"
"Oh, nothing!" said Daisy Marrion.
"Very well then," said Edwin, going to the door and shutting it. "Nobody leaves this room till I know… Now, niece Elaine!"
Elaine went crimson and squirmed on her only recently hidden legs, but she did not speak.
"Tell him, Daisy," said Janet.
Daisy sat still straighter.
"It was only about Alec Batchgrew, Mr. Clayhanger; I suppose you know him."
Alec was the youngest scion of the great and detested plutocratic family of Batchgrew, – enormously important in his nineteen years.
"Yes, I know him," said Edwin. "I saw him on his new grey horse this morning."
"His 'orse," Janet corrected. They all began to laugh again loudly.
"He's taken a terrific fancy to Maud, my kiddie sister," said Daisy. "She's sixteen. Yesterday afternoon at the tennis club he said to Maud: 'Look 'ere. I shall ride through the town to-morrow morning on my 'orse, while you're all marketing. I shan't take any notice of any of the other girls, but if you bow to me I'll take my 'at off to you.'" She imitated the Batchgrew intonation.
"That's a good tale," said Edwin calmly. "What a cuckoo! He ought to be put in a museum."
Daisy, made rather nervous by the success of her tale, bent over the piano, and skimmed pianissimo and rapidly through the "Clytie" waltz. Elaine moved her shoulders to the rhythm.
Janet said they must go.
"Here! Hold on a bit!" said Edwin, through the light film of music, and undoing the little parcel he handed one specimen of the programme to Hilda and another to Janet, simultaneously.
"Oh, so my ideas are listened to, sometimes!" murmured Hilda, who was, however, pleased.
A malicious and unjust remark, he thought. But the next instant Hilda said in a quite friendly natural tone:
"Janet's going to bring Elaine. And she says Tom says she is to tell you that he's coming whether he's wanted or not. Daisy won't come."
"Why?" asked Edwin, but quite perfunctorily; he knew that the Marrions were not interested in interesting music, and his design had been to limit the audience to enthusiasts.
"Church," answered Daisy succinctly.
"Come after church."
She shook her head.
"And how's the practising?" Edwin enquired from Janet.
"Pretty fair," said she. "But not so good as this programme. What swells we are, my word!"
"Hilda's idea," said Edwin generously. "Your mother coming?"
"Oh, yes, I think so."
As the visitors were leaving, Hilda stopped Janet.
"Don't you think it'll be better if we have the piano put over there, and all the chairs together round here, Janet?"
"It might be," said Janet uncertainly.
Hilda turned sharply to Edwin:
"There! What did I tell you?"
"Well," he protested good-humouredly, "what on earth do you expect her to say, when you ask her like that? Anyhow I may announce definitely that I'm not going to have the piano moved. We'll try things as they are, for a start, and then see. Why, if you put all the chairs together over there, the place'll look like a blooming boarding-house."
The comparison was a failure in tact, which he at once recognised but could not retrieve. Hilda faintly reddened, and the memory of her struggles as manageress of a boarding-house was harshly revived in her.
"Some day I shall try the piano over there," she said, low.
And Edwin concurred, amiably:
"All right. Some day we'll try it together, just to see what it is like."
The girls, the younger ones still giggling, slipped elegantly out of the house, one after another.
Dinner passed without incident.
V
The next day, Sunday, Edwin had a headache; and it was a bilious headache. Hence he insisted to himself and to everyone that it was not a bilious headache, but just one of those plain headaches which sometimes visit the righteous without cause or excuse; for he would never accept the theory that he had inherited his father's digestive weakness. A liability to colds he would admit, but not on any account a feeble stomach. Hence, further, he was obliged to pretend to eat as usual. George was rather gnat-like that morning, and Hilda was in a susceptible condition, doubtless due to nervousness occasioned by the novel responsibilities of the musical evening-and a Sabbath musical evening at that! After the one o'clock dinner, Edwin lay down on the sofa in the dining-room and read and slept; and when he woke up he felt better, and was sincerely almost persuaded that his headache had not been and was not a bilious headache. He said to himself that a short walk might disperse the headache entirely. He made one or two trifling adjustments in the disposition of the drawing-room furniture-his own disposition of it, and immensely and indubitably superior to that so pertinaciously advocated by Hilda-and then he went out. Neither Hilda nor George was visible. Possibly during his rest they had gone for a walk; they had fits of intimacy.
He walked in the faint September sunshine down Trafalgar Road into the town. Except for a few girls in dowdy finery and a few heavy youths with their black or dark-blue trousers turned up round the ankles far enough to show the white cotton lining, the street was empty. The devout at that hour were either dozing at home or engaged in Sunday school work; thousands of children were concentrated in the hot Sunday schools. As he passed the Bethesda Chapel and School he heard the voices of children addressing the Lord of the Universe in laudatory and intercessory song. Near the Bethesda chapel, by the Duke of Cambridge Vaults, two men stood waiting, their faces firm in the sure knowledge that within three hours the public-houses would again be open. Thick smoke rose from the chimneys of several manufactories and thin smoke from the chimneys of many others. The scheme of a Sunday musical evening in that land presented itself to Edwin as something rash, fantastic, and hopeless, – and yet solacing. Were it known it could excite only hostility, horror, contempt, or an intense bovine indifference; chiefly the last… Breathe the name of Chopin in that land!..
As he climbed Duck Bank he fumbled in his pocket for his private key of the shop, which he had brought with him; for, not the desire for fresh air, but an acute curiosity as to the answer to his letter to the solicitor to the Hall trustees making an offer for the land at Shawport, had sent him out of the house. Would the offer be accepted or declined, or would a somewhat higher sum be suggested? The reply would have been put into the post on Saturday, and was doubtless then lying in the letter-box within the shop. The whole future seemed to be lying unopened in that letter-box.
He penetrated into his own shop like a thief, for it was not meet for an important tradesman to be seen dallying with business of a Sunday afternoon. As he went into the shutter-darkened interior he thought of Hilda, whom many years earlier he had kissed in that very same shutter-darkened interior one Thursday afternoon. Life appeared incredible to him, and in his wife he could see almost no trace of the girl he had kissed there in the obscure shop. There was a fair quantity of letters in the box. The first one he opened was from a solicitor; not the solicitor to the Hall trustees, but Tom Orgreave, who announced to Edwin Clayhanger, Esquire, dear sir, that his clients, the Palace Porcelain Company of Longshaw, felt compelled to call their creditors together. The Palace Porcelain Company, who had believed in the efficacy of printed advertising matter and expensive catalogues, owed Edwin a hundred and eighty pounds. It was a blow, and the more so in that it was unexpected. "Did I come messing down here on a Sunday afternoon to receive this sort of news?" he bitterly asked. A moment earlier he had not doubted the solvency of the Palace Porcelain Company; but now he felt that the Company wouldn't pay two shillings in the pound, – perhaps not even that, as there were debenture-holders. The next letter was an acceptance of his offer for the Shawport land. The die was cast, then. The new works would have to be created; lithography would increase; in the vast new enterprise he would be hampered by the purchase of Maggie's house; he had just made a bad debt; and he would have Hilda's capricious opposition to deal with. He quitted the shop abruptly, locked the door, and went back home, his mind very active but undirected.
VI
Something unfamiliar in the aspect of the breakfast-room as glimpsed through the open door from the hall, drew him within. Hilda had at last begun to make it into "her" room. She had brought an old writing-desk from upstairs and put it between the fireplace and the window. Edwin thought: "Doesn't she even know the light ought to fall over the left shoulder, not over the right?" Letter paper and envelopes and even stamps were visible; and a miscellaneous mass of letters and bills had been pushed into the space between the flat of the desk and the small drawers about it. There was also an easy-chair, with a freshly-covered cushion on it; a new hearthrug that Edwin neither recognised nor approved of; several framed prints, and other oddments. His own portrait still dominated the mantelpiece, but it was now flanked by two brass candle-sticks. He thought: "If she'd ask me, I could have arranged it for her much better than that." Nevertheless the idea of her being absolute monarch of the little room, and expressing her individuality in it and by it, both pleased and touched him. Nor did he at all resent the fact that she had executed her plan in secret. She must have been anxious to get the room finished for the musical evening.
Thence he passed into the drawing-room, – and was thunderstruck. The arrangement of the furniture was utterly changed, and the resemblance to a boarding-house parlour after all achieved. The piano had crossed the room; the chairs were massed together in the most ridiculous way; the sofa was so placed as to be almost useless. His anger was furious but cold. The woman had considerable taste in certain directions, but she simply did not understand the art of fixing up a room. Whereas he did. Each room in the house (save her poor little amateurish breakfast-room or "boudoir") had been arranged by himself, even to small details, – and well arranged. Everyone admitted that he had a talent for interiors. The house was complete before she ever saw it, and he had been responsible for it. He was not the ordinary inexperienced ignorant husband who "leaves all that sort of thing to the missis." Interiors mattered to him; they influenced his daily happiness. The woman had clearly failed to appreciate the sacredness of the status quo. He appreciated it himself, and never altered anything without consulting her and definitely announcing his intention to alter. She probably didn't care a fig for the status quo. Her conduct was inexcusable. It was an attack on vital principles. It was an outrage. Doubtless, in her scorn for the status quo, she imagined that he would accept the fait accompli. She was mistaken. With astounding energy he set to work to restore the status quo ante. The vigour with which he dragged and pushed an innocent elephantine piano was marvellous. In less than five minutes not a trace remained of the fait accompli. He thought: "This is a queer start for a musical evening!" But he was triumphant, resolute, and remorseless. He would show her a thing or two. In particular he would show that fair play had to be practised in his house. Then, perceiving that his hands were dirty, and one finger bleeding, he went majestically, if somewhat breathless, upstairs to the bathroom, and washed with care. In the glass he saw that, despite his exertions, he was pale. At length he descended, wondering where she was, where she had hidden herself, who had helped her to move the furniture, and what exactly the upshot would be. There could be no doubt that he was in a state of high emotion, in which unflinching obstinacy was shot through with qualms about disaster.
He revisited the drawing-room to survey his labours. She was there. Whence she had sprung, he knew not. But she was there. He caught sight of her standing by the window before entering the room.
When he got into the room he saw that her emotional excitement far surpassed his own. Her lips and her hands were twitching; her nostrils dilated and contracted; tears were in her eyes.
"Edwin," she exclaimed very passionately, in a thick voice, quite unlike her usual clear tones, as she surveyed the furniture, "this is really too much!"
Evidently she thought of nothing but her resentment. No consideration other than her outraged dignity would have affected her demeanour. If a whole regiment of their friends had been watching at the door, her demeanour would not have altered. The bedrock of her nature had been reached.
"It's war, this is!" thought Edwin.
He was afraid; he was even intimidated by her anger; but he did not lose his courage. The determination to fight for himself, and to see the thing through no matter what happened, was not a bit weakened. An inwardly feverish but outwardly calm vindictive desperation possessed him. He and she would soon know who was the stronger.
At the same time he said to himself:
"I was hasty. I ought not to have acted in such a hurry. Before doing anything I ought to have told her quietly that I intended to have the last word as regards furniture in this house. I was within my rights in acting at once, but it wasn't very clever of me, clumsy fool!"
Aloud he said, with a kind of self-conscious snigger:
"What's too much?"
Hilda went on:
"You simply make me look a fool in my own house, before my own son and the servants."
"You've brought it on yourself," said he fiercely. "If you will do these idiotic things you must take the consequences. I told you I didn't want the furniture moved, and immediately my back's turned you go and move it. I won't have it, and so I tell you straight."
"You're a brute," she continued, not heeding him, obsessed by her own wound. "You're a brute!" She said it with terrifying conviction. "Everybody knows it. Didn't Maggie warn me? You're a brute and a bully. And you do all you can to shame me in my own house. Who'd think I was supposed to be the mistress here? Even in front of my friends you insult me."
"Don't act like a baby. How do I insult you?"
"Talking about boarding-houses. Do you think Janet and all of them didn't notice it?"
"Well," he said. "Let this be a lesson to you."
She hid her face in her hands and sobbed, moving towards the door.
He thought:
"She's beaten. She knows she's got to take it."
Then he said:
"Do I go altering furniture without consulting you? Do I do things behind your back? Never!"
"That's no reason why you should try to make me look a fool in my own house. I told Ada how I wanted the furniture, and George and I helped her. And then a moment afterwards you give them contrary orders. What will they think of me? Naturally they'll think I'm not your wife, but your slave. You're a brute." Her voice rose.
"I didn't give any orders. I haven't seen the damned servants and I haven't seen George."
She looked up suddenly:
"Then who moved the furniture?"
"I did."
"Who helped you?"
"Nobody helped me."
"But I was here only a minute or two since."
"Well, do you suppose it takes me half a day to move a few sticks of furniture?"
She was impressed by his strength and his swiftness, and apparently silenced; she had thought that the servants had been brought into the affair.
"You ought to know perfectly well," he proceeded, "I should never dream of insulting you before the servants. Nobody's more careful of your dignity than I am. I should like to see anybody do anything against your dignity while I'm here."
She was still sobbing.
"I think you ought to apologise to me," she blubbered. "Yes, I really do."
"Why should I apologise to you? You moved the furniture against my wish. I moved it against yours. That's all. You began. I didn't begin. You want everything your own way. Well, you won't have it."
She blubbered once more:
"You ought to apologise to me."
And then she wept hysterically.
He meditated sourly, harshly. He had conquered. The furniture was as he wished, and it would remain so. The enemy was in tears, shamed, humiliated. He had a desire to restore her dignity, partly because she was his wife and partly because he hated to see any human being beaten. Moreover, at the bottom of his heart he had a tremendous regard for appearances, and he felt fears for the musical evening. He could not contemplate the possibility of visitors perceiving that the host and hostess had violently quarrelled. He would have sacrificed almost anything to the social proprieties. And he knew that Hilda would not think of them, or at any rate would not think of them effectively. He did not mind apologising to her, if an apology would give her satisfaction. He was her superior in moral force, and naught else mattered.
"I don't think I ought to apologise," he said, with a slight laugh. "But if you think so I don't mind apologising. I apologise. There!" He dropped into an easy-chair.
To him it was as if he had said:
"You see what a magnanimous chap I am."
She tried to conceal her feelings, but she was pleased, flattered, astonished. Her self-respect returned to her rapidly.
"Thank you," she murmured, and added: "It was the least you could do."
At her last words he thought:
"Women are incapable of being magnanimous."
She moved towards the door.
"Hilda," he said.
She stopped.
"Come here," he commanded with gentle bluffness.
She wavered towards him.
"Come here, I tell you," he said again.
He drew her down to him, all fluttering and sobbing and wet, and kissed her, kissed her several times; and then, sitting on his knees, she kissed him. But, though she mysteriously signified forgiveness, she could not smile; she was still far too agitated and out of control to be able to smile.
The scene was over. The proprieties of the musical evening were saved. Her broken body and soul huddled against him were agreeably wistful to his triumphant manliness.
But he had had a terrible fright. And even now there was a certain mere bravado in his attitude. In his heart he was thinking:
"By Jove! Has it come to this?"
The responsibilities of the future seemed too complicated, wearisome and overwhelming. The earthly career of a bachelor seemed almost heavenly in its wondrous freedom… Etches v. Etches… The unexampled creature, so recently the source of ineffable romance, still sat on his knees, weighing them down. Suddenly he noticed that his head ached very badly-worse than it had ached all day.
VII
The Sunday musical evening, beyond its artistic thrills and emotional quality, proved to be exciting as a social manifestation. Those present at it felt as must feel Russian conspirators in a back room of some big grey house of a Petrograd suburb when the secret printing-press begins to function before their eyes. This concert of profane harmonies, deliberately planned and pouring out through open windows to affront the ears of returners from church and chapel, was considered by its organisers as a remarkable event; and rightly so. The Clayhanger house might have been a fortress, with the blood-red standard of art and freedom floating from a pole lashed to its chimney. Of course everybody pretended to everybody else that the musical evening was a quite ordinary phenomenon.
It was a success, and a flashing success, yet not unqualified. The performers-Tertius Ingpen on the piano, on the fiddle, and on the clarinet, Janet Orgreave on the piano, and very timidly in a little song by Grieg, Tom Orgreave on the piano and his contralto wife in two famous and affecting songs by Schumann and also on the piano, and Edwin sick but obstinate as turner-over of pages-all did most creditably. The music was given with ardent sympathy, and in none of it did any marked pause occur which had not been contemplated by the composer himself. But abstentions had thinned the women among the audience. Elaine Hill did not come, and, far more important, Mrs. Orgreave did not come. Her husband, old Osmond Orgreave, had not been expected, as of late (owing to the swift onset of renal disease, hitherto treated by him with some contempt) he had declined absolutely to go out at night; but Edwin had counted on Mrs. Orgreave. She simply sent word that she did not care to leave her husband, and that Elaine was keeping her company. Disappointment, keen but brief, resulted. Edwin's severe sick headache was also a drawback. It did, however, lessen the bad social effect of an altercation between him and Hilda, in which Edwin's part was attributed to his indisposition. This altercation arose out of an irresponsible suggestion from somebody that something else should be played instead of something else. Now, for Edwin, a programme was a programme, – sacred, to be executed regardless of every extrinsic consideration. And seeing that the programme was printed…! Edwin negatived the suggestion instantly, and the most weighty opinion in the room agreed with him, but Hilda must needs fly out: "Why not change it? I'm sure it will be better," etc. Whereas she could be sure of nothing of the sort, and was incompetent to offer an opinion. And she unreasonably and unnecessarily insisted, despite Tertius Ingpen, and the change was made. It was astounding to Edwin that, after the shattering scene of the afternoon, she should be so foolhardy, so careless, so obstinate. But she was. He kept his resentment neatly in a little drawer in his mind, and glanced at it now and then. And he thought of Tertius Ingpen's terrible remark about women at Ingpen's first visit. He said to himself: "There's a lot in it, no doubt about that."
At the close of the last item, two of Brahms's Hungarian Dances for pianoforte duet (played with truly electrifying brio by little wizening Tom Orgreave and his wife), both Tertius Ingpen and Tom fussed consciously about the piano, triumphant, not knowing quite what to do next, and each looking rather like a man who has told a good story, and in the midst of the applause tries to make out by an affectation of casualness that the story is nothing at all.
"Of course," said Tom Orgreave carelessly, and glancing at the ground as he usually did when speaking, "Fine as those dances are on the piano, I should prefer to hear them with the fiddle."
"Why?" demanded Ingpen challengingly.
"Because they were written for the fiddle," said Tom Orgreave with finality.
"Written for the fiddle? Not a bit of it!"
With superiority outwardly unruffled, Tom said:
"Pardon me. Brahms wrote them for Joachim. I've heard him play them."
"So have I," said Tertius Ingpen, lightly but scornfully. "But they were written originally for pianoforte duet, as you played them to-night. Brahms arranged them afterwards for Joachim."
Tom Orgreave shook under the blow, for in musical knowledge his supremacy had never been challenged in Bleakridge.
"Surely-!" he began weakly.
"My dear fellow, it is so," said Ingpen impatiently.
"Look it up," said Edwin, with false animation, for his head was thudding. "George, fetch the encyclopædia B-and J too."
Delighted, George ran off. He had been examining Johnnie Orgreave's watch, and it was to Johnnie he delivered the encyclopædia, amid mock protests from his uncle Edwin. More than one person had remarked the growing alliance between Johnnie and young George.
But the encyclopædia gave no light.
Then the eldest Swetnam (who had come by invitation at the last moment) said:
"I'm sure Ingpen is right."
He was not sure, but from the demeanour of the two men he could guess, and he thought he might as well share the glory of Ingpen's triumph.
The next instant Tertius Ingpen was sketching out future musical evenings at which quartets and quintets should be performed. He knew men in the orchestra at the Theatre Royal, Hanbridge; he knew girl-violinists who could be drilled, and he was quite certain that he could get a 'cello. From this he went on to part-songs, and in answer to scepticism about local gift for music, he said that during his visits of inspection to factories he had heard spontaneous part-singing "that would knock spots off the Savoy chorus." Indeed, since his return to it, Ingpen had developed some appreciation of certain aspects of his native district. He said that the kindly commonsense with which as an inspector he was received on pot-banks, surpassed anything in the whole country.
"Talking of pot-banks, you'll get a letter from me about the Palace Porcelain Company," Tom Orgreave lifting his eyebrows muttered to Edwin with a strange gloomy constraint.
"I've had it," said Edwin. "You've got some nice clients, I must say."
In a moment, though Tom said not a word more, the Palace Porcelain Company was on the carpet, to Edwin's disgust. He hated to talk about a misfortune. But others beside himself were interested in the Palace Porcelain Company, and the news of its failure had boomed mysteriously through the Sabbath air of the district.
Hilda and Janet were whispering together. And Edwin, gazing at them, saw in them the giggling tennis-playing children of the previous day, – specimens of a foreign race encamped among the men.
Suddenly Hilda turned her head towards the men, and said:
"Of course Edwin's been let in!"
It was a reference to the Palace Porcelain Company. How ungracious! How unnecessary! How unjust! And somehow Edwin had been fearing it. And that was really why he had not liked the turn of the conversation, – he had been afraid of one of her darts!
Useless for Tom Swetnam to say that a number of business men quite as keen as Edwin had been "let in"! From her disdainful silence it appeared that Hilda's conviction of the unusual simplicity of her husband was impregnable.
"I hear you've got that Shawport land," said Johnnie Orgreave.
The mystic influences of music seemed to have been overpowered.
"Who told ye?" asked Edwin in a low voice, once more frightened of Hilda.
"Young Toby Hall. Met him at the Conservative Club last night."
But Hilda had heard.
"What land is that?" she demanded curtly.
"'What land is that?'" Johnnie mimicked her. "It's the land for the new works, missis."
Hilda threw her shoulders back, glaring at Edwin with a sort of outraged fury. Happily most of the people present were talking among themselves.
"You never told me," she muttered.
He said:
"I only knew this afternoon."
Her anger was unmistakable. She was no longer a fluttering feminine wreck on his manly knee.
"Well, good-bye," said Janet Orgreave startlingly to him. "Sorry I have to go so soon."
"You aren't going!" Edwin protested with unnatural loudness. "What about the victuals? I shan't touch 'em myself. But they must be consumed. Here! You and I'll lead the way."
Half playfully he seized her arm. She glanced at Hilda uncertainly.