These Twain Part 25

Edwin sat in his cubicle again, his affection for Big James very active.

How simple and agreeable it was to be a man among men only! The printing-business was an organism fifty times as large as the home, and it worked fifty times more smoothly. No misunderstandings, no secrecies (at any rate among the chief persons concerned), and a general recognition of the principles of justice! Even the errand-boy had understood. And the shop-clerk by his tone had admitted that he too was worthy of blame. The blame was not overdone, and common-sense had closed the episode in a moment. And see with what splendid good-will Big James, despite the intense conservatism of old age, had accepted the wholesale condemnation of his idea of a programme! The relations of men were truly wonderful, when you come to think about it. And to be at business was a relief and even a pleasure. Edwin could not remember having ever before regarded the business as a source of pleasure. A youth, he had gone into it greatly against his will, and by tradition he had supposed himself still to hate it.

Why had Hilda misled him as to Big James? For she had misled him. Yes, she had misled him. What was her motive? What did she think she could gain by it? He was still profoundly disturbed by this deception.

"Why!" he thought, "I can't trust her! I shall have to be on my guard!

I've been in the habit of opening my mouth and swallowing practically everything she says!" His sense of justice very sharply resented her perfidy to Big James. His heart warmed to the defence of the excellent old man. What had she got against Big James? Since the day when the enormous man had first shown her over the printing shops, before their original betrothal, a decade and more ago, he had never treated her with anything but an elaborate and sincere respect. Was she jealous of him, because of his, Edwin's, expressed confidence in and ancient regard for him, and because Edwin and he had always been good companions? Or had she merely taken a dislike to him,--a physical dislike? Edwin had noticed that some women had a malicious detestation for some old men, especially when the old men had any touch of the grotesque or the pompous.... Well, he should defend Big James against her. She should keep her hands off Big James. His sense of justice was so powerful in that moment that if he had had to choose between his wife and Big James he would have chosen Big James.

He came out of the cubicle into the shop, and arranged his countenance so that the clerk should suppose him to be thinking in tremendous concentration upon some complex problem of the business. And simultaneously Hilda pa.s.sed up Duck Bank on the way to market. She pa.s.sed so close to the shop that she seemed to brush it like a delicious, exciting, and exasperating menace. If she turned her head she could scarcely fail to see Edwin near the door of the shop. But she did not turn her head. She glided up the slope steadily and implacably.

And even in the distance of the street her individuality showed itself mysterious and strong. He could never decide whether she was beautiful or not; he felt that she was impressive, and not to be scorned or ignored. Perhaps she was not beautiful. Certainly she was not young.

She had not the insipidity of the young girl unfulfilled. Nor did she inspire melancholy like the woman just beyond her prime. The one was going to be; the other had been. Hilda was. And she had lived. There was in her none of the detestable ignorance and innocence that, for Edwin, spoilt the majority of women. She knew. She was an equal, and a dangerous equal. Simultaneously he felt that he could crush and kill the little thing, and that he must beware of the powerful, unscrupulous, inscrutable individuality.... And she receded still higher up Duck Bank and then turned round the corner to the Market Place and vanished. And there was a void.

She would return. As she had receded gradually, so she would gradually approach the shop again with her delicious, exciting, exasperating menace. And he had a scheme for running out to her and with candour inviting her in and explaining to her in just the right tone of good-will that loyalty to herself simply hummed and buzzed in the shop and the printing-works, and that Big James wors.h.i.+pped her, and that though she was perfect in sagacity she had really been mistaken about Big James. And he had a vision of her smiling kindly and frankly upon Big James, and Big James twisting upon his own axis in joyous pride.

Nothing but good-will and candour was required to produce this bliss.

But he knew that he would never run out to her and invite her to enter.

The enterprise was perilous to the point of being foolhardy. With a tone, with a hesitation, with an undecipherable pout, she might, she would, render it absurd.... And then, his pride! ... At that moment young Alec Batchgrew, perhaps then the town's chief mooncalf, came down Duck Bank in dazzling breeches on a superb grey horse. And Edwin went abruptly back to work lest the noodle should rein in at the shop door and talk to him.

IV

When he returned home, a few minutes before the official hour of one o'clock, he heard women's voices and laughter in the drawing-room. And as he stood in the hall, fingering the thin little parcel of six programmes which he had brought with him, the laughter overcame the voices and then expended itself in shrieks of quite uncontrolled mirth.

The drawing-room door was half open. He stepped quietly to it.

The weather, after being thunderous, had cleared, and the part of the drawing-room near the open window was shot with rays of suns.h.i.+ne.

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 surpa.s.sing. 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 pa.s.sion 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.

"n.o.body 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?"