Bennett Arnold
These Twain
III
Hilda, having observed the strange, excited gesture, paused a moment, in an equally strange tranquillity, before speaking. Edwin fronted her at the very door. Then she said, clearly and deliberately, through her veil:
"Auntie Hamps has had an attack-heart. The doctor says she can't possibly live through the night. It was at Clara's."
This was the first of Mrs. Hamps's fatal heart-attacks.
"Ah!" breathed Edwin, with apparently a purely artistic interest in the affair. "So that's it, is it? Then she's at Clara's."
"Yes."
"What doctor?"
"I forget his name. Lives in Acre Lane. They sent for the nearest. She can't get her breath-has to fight for it. She jumped out of bed, struggling to breathe."
"Have you seen her?"
"Yes. They made me."
"Albert there?"
"Oh, yes."
"Well, I suppose I'd better go round. You go back. I'll follow you."
He was conscious of not the slightest feeling of sorrow at the imminent death of Auntie Hamps. Even the image of the old lady fighting to fetch her breath scarcely moved him, though the deathbed of his father had been harrowing enough. He and Hilda had the same thought: "At last something has happened to Auntie Hamps!" And it gave zest.
"I must speak to you," said Hilda, low, and moved towards the inner door.
The clerk Simpson was behind them at his ink-stained desk, stamping letters, and politely pretending to be deaf.
"No," Edwin stopped her. "There's someone in there. We can't talk there."
"A customer?"
"Yes … I say, Simpson. Have you done those letters?"
"Yes, sir," answered Simpson, smiling. He had been recommended as a "very superior" youth, and had not disappointed, despite a constitutional nervousness.
"Take them to the pillar, and call at Mr. Benbow's and tell them that I'll be round in about a quarter of an hour. I don't know as you need come back. Hurry up."
"Yes, sir."
Edwin and Hilda watched Simpson go.
"Whatever's the matter?" Hilda demanded in a low, harsh voice, as soon as the outer door had clicked. It was as if something sinister in her had been suddenly released.
"Matter? Nothing. Why?"
"You look so queer."
"Well-you come along with these shocks." He gave a short, awkward laugh. He felt and looked guilty, and he knew that he looked guilty.
"You looked queer when you came out."
"You've upset yourself, my child, that's all." He now realised the high degree of excitement which he himself, without previously being aware of it, had reached.
"Edwin, who is it in there?"
"Don't I tell you-it's a customer."
He could see her nostrils twitching through, the veil.
"It's George Cannon in there!" she exclaimed.
He laughed again. "What makes you feel that?" he asked, feeling all the while the complete absurdity of such fencing.
"When I ran out I noticed somebody. He was reading a newspaper and I couldn't see him. But he just moved it a bit, and I seemed to catch sight of the top of his head. And when I got into the street I said to myself, 'It looked like George Cannon,' and then I said, 'Of course it couldn't be.' And then with this business about Auntie Hamps the idea went right out of my head."
"Well, it is, if you want to know."
Her mysterious body and face seemed to radiate a disastrous emotion that filled the whole office.
"Did you know he was coming?"
"I did not. Hadn't the least notion!" The sensation of criminality began to leave Edwin. As Hilda seemed to move and waver, he added:
"Now you aren't going to see him!"
And his voice menacingly challenged her, and defied her to stir a step. The most important thing in the world, then, was that Hilda should not see George Cannon. He would stop her by force. He would let himself get angry and brutal. He would show her that he was the stronger. He had quite abandoned his earlier attitude of unsentimental callousness which argued that after all it wouldn't ultimately matter whether they encountered each other or not. Far from that, he was, so it appeared to him, standing between them, desperate and determined, and acting instinctively and conventionally. Their separate pasts, each full of grief and tragedy, converged terribly upon him in an effort to meet in just that moment, and he was ferociously resisting.
"What does he want?"
"He wants me to help him to go to America."
"You!
"He says he hasn't a friend."
"But what about his wife?"
"That's just what I said… He's left her. Says he can't live with her."
There was a silence, in which the tension appreciably lessened.
"Can't live with her! Well, I'm not surprised. But I do think it's strange, him coming to you."
"So do I," said Edwin drily, taking the upper hand; for the change in Hilda's tone-her almost childlike satisfaction in the news that Cannon would not live with his wife-seemed to endow him with superiority. "But there's a lot of strange things in this world. Now listen here. I'm not going to keep him waiting; I can't."
He then spoke very gravely, authoritatively and ominously: "Find George and take him home at once."
Hilda, impressed, gave a frown.
"I think it's very wrong that you should be asked to help him." Her voice' shook and nearly broke. "Shall you help him, Edwin?"
"I shall get him out of this town at once, and out of the country. Do as I say. As things are he doesn't know there is any George, and it's just as well he shouldn't. But if he stays anywhere about, he's bound to know."
All Hilda's demeanour admitted that George Cannon had never been allowed to know that he had a son; and the simple candour of the admission frightened Edwin by its very simplicity.
"Now! Off you go! George is in the engine-house."
Hilda moved reluctantly towards the outer-door, like a reproved and rebellious schoolgirl. Suddenly she burst into tears, sprang at Edwin, and, putting her arms round his neck, kissed him through the veil.
"Nobody but you would have helped him-in your place!" she murmured passionately, half admiring, half protesting. And with a backward look as she hurried off, her face stern and yet soft seemed to appeal: "Help him."
Edwin was at once deeply happy and impregnated with a sense of the frightful sadness that lurks in the hollows of the world. He stood alone with the flaring gas, overcome.
IV
He went back to the private room, self-conscious and rather tongue-tied, with a clear feeling of relief that Hilda was disposed of, removed from the equation-and not unsuccessfully. After the woman, to deal with the man, in the plain language of men, seemed simple and easy. He was astounded, equally, by the grudging tardiness of Mrs. Cannon's information to Hilda as to the release, and by the baffling, inflexible detraction of Hilda's words: "Well, I'm not surprised." And the flitting image of Auntie Hamps fighting for life still left him untouched. He looked at George Cannon, and George Cannon, with his unreliable eyes, looked at him. He almost expected Cannon to say: "Was that Hilda you were talking to out there?" But Cannon seemed to have no suspicion that, in either the inner or the outer room, he had been so close to her. No doubt, when he was waiting by the mantel-piece in the outer room, he had lifted the paper as soon as he heard the door unlatched, expressly in order to screen himself from observation. Probably he had not even guessed that the passer was a woman. Had Simpson been there, the polite young man would doubtless have said: "Good night, Mrs. Clayhanger," but Simpson had happened not to be there.
"Are you going to help me?" asked George Cannon, after a moment, and his heavy voice was so beseeching, so humble, so surprisingly sycophantic, so fearful, that Edwin could scarcely bear to hear it. He hated to hear that one man could be so slavishly dependent on another. Indeed, he much preferred Cannon's defiant, half-bullying tone.
"Yes," said he. "I shall do what I can. What do you want?"
"A hundred pounds," said George Cannon, and, as he named the sum, his glance was hard and steady.
Edwin was startled. But immediately he began to readjust his ideas, persuading himself that after all the man could not prudently have asked for less.
"I can't give it you all now."
Cannon's face lighted up in relief and joy. His black eyes sparkled feverishly with the impatience of an almost hopeless desire about to be satisfied. Although he did not move, his self-control had for the moment gone completely, and the secrets of his soul were exposed.
"Can you send it me-in notes? I can give you an address in Liverpool." His voice could hardly utter the words.
"Wait a second," said Edwin.
He went to the safe let into the wall, of which he was still so naïvely proud, and unlocked it with the owner's gesture. The perfect fitting of the bright key, the ease with which it turned, the silent, heavy swing of the massive door on its hinges-these things gave him physical as well as moral pleasure. He savoured the security of his position and his ability to rescue people from destruction. From the cavern of the safe he took out a bag of gold, part of the money required for wages on the morrow, – he would have to send to the Bank again in the morning. He knew that the bag contained exactly twenty pounds in half-sovereigns, but he shed the lovely twinkling coins on the desk and counted them.
"Here," he said. "Here's twenty pounds. Take the bag, too-it'll be handier," and he put the money into the bag. Then a foolish, grand idea struck him. "Write down the address on this envelope, will you, and I'll send you a hundred to-morrow. You can rely on it."
"Eighty, you mean," muttered George Cannon.
"No," said Edwin, with affected nonchalance, blushing, "a hundred. The twenty will get you over and you'll have a hundred clear when you arrive on the other side."
"Ye're very kind," said Cannon weakly. "I-"
"Here. Here's the envelope. Here's a bit of pencil." Edwin stopped him hastily. His fear of being thanked made him harsh.
While Cannon was nervously writing the address, he noticed that the man's clumsy fingers were those of a day-labourer.
"You'll get it all back. You'll see," said Cannon, as he stood up to leave, holding his glossy felt hat in his left hand.
"Don't worry about that. I don't want it. You owe me nothing."
"You'll have every penny back, and before long, too."
Edwin smiled, deprecating the idea.
"Well, good luck!" he said. "You'll get to Crewe all right. There's a train at Shawport at eight seven."
They shook hands, and quitted the inner office. As he traversed the outer office on his way forth, in front of Edwin, Cannon turned his head, as if to say something, but, confused, he said nothing and went on, and at once he disappeared into the darkness outside. And Edwin was left with a memory of his dubious eyes, hard rather than confident, profoundly relieved rather than profoundly grateful.
"By Jove!" Edwin murmured by himself. "Who'd have thought it? … They say those chaps always turn up again like bad pennies, but I bet he won't." Simultaneously he reflected upon the case of Mrs. Cannon, deserted; but it did not excite his pity. He fastened the safe, extinguished the lights, shut the office, and prepared his mind for the visit to Auntie Hamps.
V
Hilda and her son were in the dining-room, in which the table, set for a special meal-half-tea, half-supper-made a glittering oblong of white. On the table, among blue-and-white plates, and knives and forks, lay some of George's shabby school-books. In most branches of knowledge George privately knew that he could instruct his parents-especially his mother. Nevertheless that beloved outgrown creature was still occasionally useful at home-lessons, as for instance in "poetry." George, disdainful, had to learn some verses each week, and now his mother held a book entitled "The Poetry Reciter," while George mumbled with imperfect verbal accuracy the apparently immortal lines:
Abou Ben Adhem, may his tribe increase,
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace.
His mother, however, scarcely regarded the book. She knew the poem by heart, and had indeed recited it to George, who, though he was much impressed by her fire, could not by any means have been persuaded to imitate the freedom of her delivery. His elocution to-night was unusually bad, for the reason that he had been pleasurably excited by the immense news of Auntie Hamps's illness. Not that he had any grudge against Auntie Hamps! His pleasure would have been as keen in the grave illness of any other important family connection, save his mother and Edwin. Such notable events gave a sensational interest to domestic life which domestic life as a rule lacked.
Then, through the half-open door of the dining-room came the sound of Edwin's latch-key in the front-door.
"There's uncle!" exclaimed George, and jumped up.
Hilda stopped him.
"Put your books together," said she. "You know uncle likes to go up to the bathroom before he does anything!"
It was a fact that the precisian hated even to be greeted, on his return home in the evening, until he came downstairs from the bathroom.
Hilda herself collected the books and put them on the sideboard.
"Shall I tell Ada?" George suggested, champing the bit.
"No. Ada knows."
With deliberation Hilda tended the fire. Her mind was in a state of emotional flux. Memories and comparisons mournfully and yet agreeably animated it. She thought of the days when she used to recite amid enthusiasm in the old drawing-room of the Orgreaves; and of the days when she was a wanderer, had no home, no support, little security; and of the brief, uncertain days with George Cannon; and of the eternal days when her only assurance was the assurance of disaster. She glanced at George, and saw in him reminders of his tragic secret father now hidden away, forced into the background, like something obscene. Nearly every development of the present out of the past seemed to her, now, to be tragic. Johnnie Orgreave had of course not come back from his idyll with the ripping Mrs. Chris Hamson; their seclusion was not positively known; but the whole district knew that the husband had begun proceedings and that the Orgreave business was being damaged by the incompetence of Jimmie Orgreave, whose deplorable wife had a few days earlier been seen notoriously drunk in the dress-circle of the Hanbridge Theatre Royal. Janet was still at Tavy Mansion because there was no place for her in the Five Towns. Janet had written to Hilda, sadly, and the letter breathed her sense of her own futility and superfluousness in the social scheme. In one curt phrase, that very afternoon, the taciturn Maggie, who very seldom complained, had disclosed something of what it was to live day and night with Auntie Hamps. Even Clara, the self-sufficient, protected by an almost impermeable armour of conceit, showed signs of the anxiety due to obscure chronic disease and a husband who financially never knew where he was. Finally, the last glories of Auntie Hamps were sinking to ashes. Only Hilda herself was, from nearly every point of view, in a satisfactory and promising situation. She possessed love, health, money, stability. When danger threatened, a quiet and unfailingly sagacious husband was there to meet and destroy it. Surely nothing whatever worth mentioning, save the fact that she was distantly approaching forty, troubled the existence of Hilda now; and her age certainly did not trouble her.
Ada entered with the hot dishes, and went out.
At length Hilda heard the bathroom door. She left the dining-room, shutting the door on George, who could take a hint very well-considering his years. Edwin, brushed and spruce, was coming downstairs, rubbing his clean hands with physical satisfaction. He nodded amiably, but without smiling.
"Has he gone?" said Hilda, in a low voice.
Edwin nodded. He was at the foot of the stairs.
She did not offer to kiss him, having a notion that he would prefer not to be kissed just then.
"How much did you give him?" She knew he would not care for the question, but she could not help putting it.
He smiled, and touched her shoulder. She liked him to touch her shoulder.
"That's all right," he said, with a faint condescension. "Don't you worry about that."
She did not press the point. He could be free enough with information-except when it was demanded. Some time later he would begin of his own accord to talk.
"How was Auntie Hamps?"
"Well, if anything, she's a bit easier. I don't mind betting she gets over it."
They went into the dining-room almost side by side, and she enquired again about his headache.
The meal was tranquil. After a few moments Edwin opened the subject of Auntie Hamps's illness with some sardonic remarks upon the demeanour of Albert Benbow.
"Is Auntie dying?" asked George with gusto.
Edwin replied:
"What are those schoolbooks doing there on the sideboard? I thought it was clearly understood that you were to do your lessons in your mother's boudoir."
He spoke without annoyance, but coldly. He was aware that neither Hilda nor her son could comprehend that to a bookman schoolbooks were not books, but merely an eyesore. He did not blame them for their incapacity, but he considered that an arrangement was an arrangement.
"Mother put them there," said the base George.
"Well, you can take them away," said Edwin firmly. "Run along now."
George rose from his place between Hilda and Edwin, and from his luscious plate, and removed the books. Hilda watched him meekly go. His father, too, had gone. Edwin was in the right; his position could not be assailed. He had not been unpleasant, but he had spoken as one sublimely confident that his order would not be challenged. Within her heart Hilda rebelled. If Edwin had been responsible for some act contrary to one of her decrees, she would never in his presence have used the tone that he used to enforce obedience. She would have laughed or she would have frowned, but she would never have been the polite autocrat. Nor would he have expected her to play the rôle; he would probably have resented it.
Why? Were they not equals? No, they were not equals. The fundamental unuttered assumption upon which the household life rested was that they were not equals. She might cross him, she might momentarily defy him, she might torture him, she might drive him to fury, and still be safe from any effective reprisals, because his love for her made her necessary to his being; but in spite of all that his will remained the seat of government, and she and George were only the Opposition. In the end, she had to incline. She was the complement of his existence, but he was not the complement of hers. She was just a parasite, though an essential parasite. Why? … The reason, she judged, was economic, and solely economic. She rebelled. Was she not as individual, as original, as he? Had she not a powerful mind of her own, experience of her own, ideals of her own? Was she not of a nature profoundly and exceptionally independent?..
Her lot was unalterable. She had of course, not the slightest desire to leave him; she was devoted to him; what irked her was that, even had she had the desire, she could not have fulfilled it, for she was too old now, and too enamoured of comfort and security, to risk such an enterprise. She was a captive, and she recalled with a gentle pang, less than regret, the days when she was unhappy and free as a man, when she could say, "I will go to London," "I will leave London," "I am deceived and ruined, but I am my own mistress."
These thoughts in the idyllic tranquillity of the meal, mingled, below her smiling preoccupations of an honoured house-mistress, with the thoughts of her love for her husband and son and of their excellences, of the masculine love which enveloped and shielded her, of her security, of the tragedy of the bribed and dismissed victim and villain, George Cannon, of the sorrows of some of her friends, and of the dead. In her heart was the unquiet whispering: "I submit, and yet I shall never submit."
BOOK III
EQUILIBRIUM
CHAPTER XVII
GEORGE'S EYES
I
Hilda sat alone in the boudoir, before the fire. She had just come out of the kitchen, and she was wearing the white uniform of the kitchen, unsuited for a boudoir; but she wore it with piquancy. The November afternoon had passed into dusk, and through the window, over the roofs of Hulton Street, stars could be seen in a darkening clear sky. After a very sharp fall and rise of the barometer, accounting for heavy rainstorms, the first frosts were announced, and winter was on the doorstep. The hardy inhabitants of the Five Towns, Hilda among them, were bracing themselves to the discipline of winter, with its mud, increased smuts, sleet, and damp, piercing chills; and they were taking pleasure in the tonic prospect of discomfort. The visitation had threatened ever since September. Now it had positively come. Let it come! Build up the fire, stamp the feet, and defy it! Hilda was exhilarated, having been reawakened to the zest and the romance of life, not merely by the onset of winter, but by dramatic events in the kitchen.
A little over three years had elapsed since the closing of the episode of George Cannon, and for two of those years Hilda had had peace in the kitchen. She had been the firm mistress who knows what she wants, and, knowing also how to handle the peculiar inmates of the kitchen, gets it; she had been the mistress who "won't put up with" all sorts of things, including middle-age and ugliness in servants, and whom heaven has spoilt by too much favour. Then the cook, with the ingratitude of a cherished domestic, had fallen in love and carried her passion into a cottage miles away at Longshaw. And from that moment Hilda had ceased to be the mistress who by firmness commands fate; she had become as other mistresses. In a year she had had five cooks, giving varying degrees of intense dissatisfaction. She had even dismissed the slim and constant Ada once, but, yielding to an outburst of penitent affection, had withdrawn the notice. The last cook, far removed from youthfulness or prettiness, had left suddenly that day, after insolence, after the discovery of secret beer and other vileness in the attic-bedroom, after a scene in which Hilda had absolutely silenced her, reducing ribaldry to sobs. Cook and trunk expelled, Hilda had gone about the house like a fumigation, and into the kitchen like the embodiment of calm and gay efficiency. She would do the cooking herself. She would show the kitchen that she was dependent upon nobody. She had quickened the speed of Ada, accused her "tartly," but not without dry good-humour, of a disloyal secretiveness, and counselled her to mind what she was about if she wanted to get on in the world.
Edwin knew nothing, for all had happened since his departure to the works after midday dinner. He would be back in due course, and George would be back, and Tertius Ingpen (long ago reconciled) was coming for the evening. She would show them all three what a meal was, and incidentally Ada would learn what a meal was. There was nothing like demonstrating to servants that you could beat them easily at their own game.
She had just lived through her thirty-ninth birthday. "Forty!" she had murmured to herself with a shiver of apprehension, meaning that the next would be the fortieth. It was an unpleasant experience. She had told Edwin not to mention her birthday abroad. Clumsy George had enquired: "Mother, how old are you?" To which she had replied, "Lay-ours for meddlers!" a familiar phrase whose origin none of them understood, but George knew that it signified, "Mind your own business." No! She had not been happy on that birthday. She had gazed into the glass and decided that she looked old, that she did not look old, that she looked old, endlessly alternating. She was not stout, but her body was solid, too solid; it had no litheness, none whatever; it was absolutely set; the cleft under the chin was quite undeniable, and the olive complexion subtly ravaged. Still, not a hair of her dark head had changed colour. It was perhaps her soul that was greying. Her married life was fairly calm. It had grown monotonous in ease and tranquillity. The sharp, respectful admiration for her husband roused in her by his handling of the Cannon episode, had gradually been dulled. She had nothing against him. Yet she had everything against him, because apart from his grave abiding love for her he possessed an object and interest in life, and because she was a mere complement and he was not. She had asked herself the most dreadful of questions: "Why have I lived? Why do I go on living?" and had answered: "Because of them," meaning Edwin and her son. But it was not enough for her, who had once been violently enterprising, pugnacious, endangered, and independent. For after she had watched over them she had energy to spare, and such energy was not being employed and could not be employed. Reading-a diversion! Fancy work-a detestable device for killing time and energy! Social duties-ditto! Charity-hateful! She had slowly descended into marriage as into a lotus valley. And more than half her life was gone. She could never detect that any other married woman in the town felt as she felt. She could never explain herself to Edwin, and indeed had not tried to explain herself.
Now the affair of the alcoholic cook, aided by winter's first fillip, stimulated and brightened her. And while thinking with a glance at the clock of the precise moment when she must return to the kitchen and put a dish down to the fire, she also thought, rather hopefully and then quite hopefully, about the future of her marriage. Her brain seemed to straighten and correct itself, like the brain of one who, waking up in the morning, slowly perceives that the middle-of-the-night apprehensiveness about eventualities was all awry in its pessimism. She saw that everything could and must be improved, that the new life must begin. Edwin needed to be inspired; she must inspire him. He slouched more and more in his walk; he was more and more absorbed in his business, quieter in the evenings, more impatient in the mornings. Moreover, the household machine had been getting slack. A general tonic was required; she would administer it-and to herself also. They should all feel the invigorating ozone that very night. She would organise social distractions; on behalf of the home she would reclaim from the works those odd hours and half-hours of Edwin's which it had imperceptibly filched. She would have some new clothes, and she would send Edwin to the tailor's. She would make him buy a dog-cart and a horse. Oh! She could do it. She had the mastery of him in many things when she chose to be aroused. In a word, she would "branch out."
She was not sure that she would not prosecute a campaign for putting Edwin on the Town Council, where he certainly ought to be. It was his duty to take a share in public matters, and ultimately to dominate the town. Suggestions had already been made by wirepullers, and unreflectively repulsed by the too casual Edwin. She saw him mayor, and herself mayoress. Once, the prospect of any such formal honour, with all that it entailed of ceremoniousness and insincere civilities, would have annoyed if not frightened her. But now she thought, proudly and timidly and desirously, that she would make as good a mayoress as most mayoresses, and that she could set one or two of them an example in tact and dignity. Why not? Of late neither mayors nor mayoresses in the Five Towns had been what they used to be. The grand tradition was apparently in abeyance, the people who ought to carry it on seeming somehow to despise it. She could remember mayors, especially Chief Bailiffs at Turnhill, who imposed themselves upon the imagination of the town. But nowadays the name of a mayor was never a household word. She had even heard Ingpen ask Edwin: "See, who is the new mayor?" and Edwin start his halting answer: "Let me see-"
And she had still another and perhaps greater ambition-to possess a country house. In her fancy her country house was very like Alicia Hesketh's house, Tavy Mansion, which she had never ceased to envy. She felt that in a new home, spacious, with space around it, she could really commence the new life. She saw the place perfectly appointed and functioning perfectly-no bother about smuts on white curtains; no half-trained servants; none of the base, confined, promiscuity of filthy Trafalgar Road; and the Benbows and Auntie Hamps at least eight or ten miles off! She saw herself driving Edwin to the station in the morning, or perhaps right into Bursley if she wanted to shop… No, she would of course shop at Oldcastle… She would leave old Darius Clayhanger's miracle-house without one regret. And in the new life she would be always active, busy, dignified, elegant, influential, and kind. And to Edwin she would be absolutely indispensable.
In these imaginings their solid but tarnished love glittered and gleamed again. She saw naught but the charming side of Edwin and the romantic side of their union. She was persuaded that there really was nobody like Edwin, and that no marriage had ever had quite the mysterious, secretly exciting quality of hers. She yearned for him to come home at once, to appear magically in the dusk of the doorway. The mood was marvellous.
II
The door opened.
"Can I speak to you, m'm?"
It was the voice of Ada, somewhat perturbed. She advanced a little and stood darkly in front of the open doorway.
"What is it, Ada?" Hilda asked curtly, without turning to look at her.
"It's-" Ada began and stopped.
Hilda glanced round quickly, recognising now in the voice a peculiar note with which experience had familiarised her. It was a note between pertness and the beginning of a sob, and it always indicated that Ada was feeling more acutely than usual the vast injustice of the worldly scheme. It might develop into tears; on the other hand it might develop into mere insolence. Hilda discerned that Ada was wearing neither cap nor apron. She thought: "If this stupid girl wants trouble, she has come to me at exactly and precisely the right moment to get it. I'm not in the humour, after all I've gone through to-day, to stand any nonsense either from her or from anybody else."
