These Twain

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.

"Edwin," said Hilda very curtly and severely, "don't be so clumsy. Janet has to go at once. Mr. Orgreave is very ill-very ill indeed. She only came to oblige us." Then she passionately kissed Janet.

It was like a thunderclap in the room. Johnnie and Tom confirmed the news. Of the rest only Tom's wife and Hilda knew. Janet had told Hilda before the music began. Osmond Orgreave had been taken ill between five and six in the afternoon. Dr. Stirling had gone in at once, and pronounced the attack serious. Everything possible was done; even a nurse was obtained instantly, from the Clowes Hospital by the station. From reasons of sentiment, if from no other, Janet would have stayed at home and foregone the musical evening. But those Orgreaves at home had put their heads together and decided that Janet should still go, because without her the entire musical evening would crumble to naught. Here was the true reason of the absence of Mrs. Orgreave and Elaine-both unnecessary to the musical evening. The boys had come, and Tom's wife had come, because, even considered only as an audience, the Orgreave contingent was almost essential to the musical evening. And so Janet, her father's especial favourite and standby, had come, and she had played, and not a word whispered except to Hilda. It was wondrous. It was impressive. All the Orgreaves departed, and the remnant of guests meditated in proud, gratified silence upon the singular fortitude and heroic commonsense that distinguished their part of the world. The musical evening was dramatically over, the refreshments being almost wasted.

VIII

Hilda was climbing on to the wooden-seated chair in the hall to put out the light there when she heard a noise behind the closed door of the kitchen, which she had thought to be empty. She went to the door and pushed it violently open. Not only was the gas flaring away in an unauthorised manner, not only were both servants (theoretically in bed) still up, capless and apronless and looking most curious in unrelieved black, but the adventurous and wicked George was surreptitiously with them, flattering them with his aristocratic companionship, and eating blanc-mange out of a cut-glass dish with a tablespoon. Twice George had been sent to bed. Once the servants had been told to go to bed. The worst of carnivals is that the dregs of the population, such as George, will take advantage of them to rise to the surface and, conscienceless and mischievous, set at defiance the conventions by which society protects itself.

She merely glanced at George; the menace of her eyes was alarming. His lower lip fell; he put down the dish and spoon, and slunk timorously past her on his way upstairs.

Then she said to the servants:

"You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, encouraging him! Go to bed at once." And as they began nervously to handle the things on the table, she added, more imperiously: "At once! Don't keep me waiting. I'll see to all this."

And they followed George meekly.

She gazed in disgust at the general litter of broken refreshments, symbolising the traditional inefficiency of servants, and extinguished the gas.

The three criminals were somewhat the victims of her secret resentment against Edwin, who, a mere martyrised perambulating stomach, had retired. Edwin had defeated her in the afternoon; and all the evening, in the disposition of the furniture, the evidence of his victory had confronted her. By prompt and brutal action, uncharacteristic of him and therefore mean, he had defeated her. True he had embraced and comforted her tears, but it was the kiss of a conqueror. And then, on the top of that, he had proved his commercial incompetence by making a large bad debt, and his commercial rashness by definitely adopting a scheme of whose extreme danger she was convinced. One part of her mind intellectually knew that he had not wilfully synchronised these events in order to wound her, but another part of her mind felt deeply that he had. She had been staggered by the revelation that he was definitely committed to the project of lithography and the new works. Not one word about the matter had he said to her since their altercation on the night of the reception; and she had imagined that, with his usual indecision, he was allowing it to slide. She scarcely recognised her Edwin. Now she accused him of a malicious obstinacy, not understanding that he was involved in the great machine of circumstance and perhaps almost as much surprised as herself at the movement of events. At any rate she was being beaten once more, and her spirit rebelled. Through all the misfortunes previous to her marriage that spirit, if occasionally cowed, had never been broken. She had sat grim and fierce against even bum-bailiffs in her time. Yes, her spirit rebelled, and the fact that others had known about the Shawport land before she knew made her still more mutinous against destiny. She looked round dazed at the situation. What? The mild Edwin defying and crushing her? It was scarcely conceivable. The tension of her nerves from this cause only was extreme. Add to it the strain of the musical evening, intensified by the calamity at the Orgreaves'!

A bell rang in the kitchen, and all the ganglions of her spinal column answered it. Had Edwin rung? No. It was the front-door.

"Pardon me," said Tertius Ingpen, when she opened. "But all my friends soon learn how difficult it is to get rid of me."

"Come in," she said, liking his tone, which flattered her by assuming her sense of humour.

"As I'm sleeping at the office to-night, I thought I might as well take one or two of my musical instruments after all. So I came back."

"You've been round?" she asked, meaning round to the Orgreaves'.

"Yes."

"What is it, really?"

"Well, it appears to be pericarditis supervening on renal disease. He lost consciousness, you know."

"Yes, I know. But what is pericarditis?"

"Pericarditis is inflammation of the pericardium."

"And what's the pericardium?"

They both smiled faintly.

"The pericardium is the membrane that encloses the heart. I don't mind telling you that I've only just acquired this encyclopædic knowledge from Stirling, – he was there."

"And is it supposed to be very dangerous?"

"I don't know. Doctors never want to tell you anything except what you can find out for yourself."

After a little hesitating pause they went into the drawing-room, where the lights were still burning, and the full disorder of the musical evening persisted, including the cigarette-ash on the carpet. Tertius Ingpen picked up his clarinet case, took out the instrument, examined the mouthpiece lovingly, and with tenderness laid it back.

"Do sit down a moment," said Hilda, sitting limply down. "It's stifling, isn't it?"

"Let me open the window," he suggested politely.

As he returned from the window, he said, pulling his short beard:

"It was wonderful how those Orgreaves went through the musical evening, wasn't it? Makes you proud of being English… I suppose Janet's a great friend of yours?"

His enthusiasm touched her, and her pride in Janet quickened to it. She gave a deliberate, satisfied nod in reply to his question. She was glad to be alone with him in the silence of the house.

"Ed gone to bed?" he questioned, after another little pause.

Already he was calling her husband Ed, and with an affectionate intonation!

She nodded again.

"He stuck it out jolly well," said Ingpen, still standing.

"He brings these attacks on himself," said Hilda, with the calm sententiousness of a good digestion discussing a bad one. She was becoming pleased with herself-with her expensive dress, her position, her philosophy, and her power to hold the full attention of this man.

Ingpen replied, looking steadily at her:

"We bring everything on ourselves."

Then he smiled, as a comrade to another.

She shifted her pose. A desire to discuss Edwin with this man grew in her, for she needed sympathy intensely.

"What do you think of this new scheme of his?" she demanded somewhat self-consciously.

"The new works? Seems all right. But I don't know much about it."

"Well, I'm not so sure." And she exposed her theory of the entire satisfactoriness of their present situation, of the needlessness of fresh risks, and of Edwin's unsuitability for enterprise. "Of course he's splendid," she said. "But he'll never push. I can look at him quite impartially-I mean in all those things."

Ingpen murmured as it were dreamily:

"Have you had much experience of business yourself?"

"It depends what you call business. I suppose you know I used to keep a boarding-house." She was a little defiant.

"No, I didn't know. I may have heard vaguely. Did you make it pay?"

"It did pay in the end."

"But not at first? … Any disasters?"

She could not decide whether she ought to rebuff the cross-examiner or not. His manner was so objective, so disinterested, so innocent, so disarming, that in the end she smiled uncertainly, raising her thick eyebrows.

"Oh yes," she said bravely.

"And who came to the rescue?" Ingpen proceeded.

"Edwin did."

"I see," said Ingpen, still dreamily.

"I believe you knew all about it," she remarked, having flushed.

"Pardon me! Almost nothing."

"Of course you take Edwin's side."

"Are we talking man to man?" he asked suddenly, in a new tone.

"Most decidedly!" She rose to the challenge.

"Then I'll tell you my leading theory," he said in a soft, polite voice. "The proper place for women is the harem."

"Mr. Ingpen!"

"No, no!" he soothed her, but firmly. "We're talking man to man. I can whisper sweet nothings to you, if you prefer it, but I thought we were trying to be honest. I hold a belief. I state it. I may be wrong, but I hold that belief. You can persecute me for my belief if you like. That's your affair. But surely you aren't afraid of an idea! If you don't like the mere word, let's call it zenana. Call it the drawing-room and kitchen."

"So we're to be kept to our sphere!"

"Now don't be resentful. Naturally you're to be kept to your own sphere. If Edwin began dancing around in the kitchen, you'd soon begin to talk about his sphere. You can't have the advantages of married life for nothing-neither you nor he. But some of you women nowadays seem to expect them gratis. Let me tell you, everything has to be paid for on this particular planet. I'm a bachelor. I've often thought about marrying, of course. I might get married some day. You never know your luck. If I do-"

"You'll keep your wife in the harem, no doubt! And she'll have to accept without daring to say a word all the risks you choose to take."

"There you are again!" he said. "This notion that marriage ought to be the end of risks for a woman is astonishingly rife, I find. Very curious! Very curious!" He seemed to address the wall. "Why, it's the beginning of them. Doesn't the husband take risks?"

"He chooses his own. He doesn't have business risks thrust upon him by his wife."

"Doesn't he? What about the risk of finding himself tied for life to an inefficient housekeeper? That's a bit of a business risk, isn't it? I've known more than one man let in for it."

"And you've felt so sorry for him!"

"No, not specially. You must run risks. When you've finished running risks you're dead and you ought to be buried. If I was a wife I should enjoy running a risk with my husband. I swear I shouldn't want to shut myself up in a glass case with him out of all the draughts! Why, what are we all alive for?"

The idea of the fineness of running risks struck her as original. It challenged her courage, and she began to meditate.

"Yes," she murmured. "So you sleep at the office sometimes?"

"A certain elasticity in one's domestic arrangements." He waved a hand, seeming to pooh-pooh himself lightly. Then, quickly changing his mood, he bent and said good-night, but not quite with the saccharine artificiality of his first visit-rather with honest, friendly sincerity, in which were mingled both thanks and appreciation. Hilda jumped up responsively. And, the clarinet-case under his left arm, and the fiddle-case in his left hand, leaving the right arm free, Ingpen departed.

She did not immediately go to bed. Now that Ingpen was gone she perceived that though she had really said little in opposition to Edwin's scheme, he had at once assumed that she was a strong opponent of it. Hence she must have shown her feelings far too openly at the first mention of the affair before anybody had left. This annoyed her. Also the immense injustice of nearly all Ingpen's argument grew upon her moment by moment. She was conscious of a grudge against him, even while greatly liking him. But she swore that she would never show the grudge, and that he should never suspect it. To the end she would play a man's part in the man-to-man discussion. Moreover her anger against Edwin had not decreased. Nevertheless, a sort of zest, perhaps an angry joy, filled her with novel and intoxicating sensations. Let the scheme of the new works go forward! Let it fail! Let it ruin them! She would stand in the breach. She would show the whole world that no ordeal could lower her head. She had had enough of being the odalisque and the queen, reclining on the soft couch of security. Her nostrils scented life on the wind… Then she heard a door close upstairs, and began at last rapidly, as it were cruelly, to put out the lights.

IX

The incubus and humiliations of a first-class bilious attack are not eternal. Edwin had not retired very long before the malignant phase of the terrible malady passed inevitably, by phenomena according with all clinical experience, into the next phase. And the patient, who from being chiefly a stomach, had now become chiefly a throbbing head, lay on his pillow exhausted but once more capable of objective thought. His resentment against his wife on account of her gratuitous disbelief in his business faculty, and on account of her interference in a matter that did not concern her, flickered up into new flame. He was absolutely innocent. She was absolutely guilty; no excuse existed or could be invented for her rude and wounding attitude. He esteemed Tertius Ingpen, bachelor, the most fortunate of men… Women-unjust, dishonourable, unintelligent, unscrupulous, giggling, pleasure-loving! Their appetite for pleasure was infantile and tigerish. He had noticed it growing in Hilda. Previous to marriage he had regarded Hilda as combining the best feminine with the best masculine qualities. In many ways she had exhibited the comforting straightforward characteristics of the male. But since marriage her mental resemblance to a man had diminished daily, and now she was the most feminine woman he had ever met, in the unsatisfactory sense of the word. Women … Still, the behaviour of Janet and Hilda during the musical evening had been rather heroic. Impossible to dismiss them as being exclusively of the giggling race! They had decided to play a part, and they had played it with impressive fortitude… And the house of the Orgreaves-was it about to fall? He divined that it was about to fall. No death had so far occurred in the family, which had seemed to be immune through decades and forever. He wondered what would have happened to the house of Orgreave in six months' time… Then he went back into the dark origins of his bilious attack… And then he was at inexcusable Hilda again.

At length he heard her on the landing.

She entered the bedroom, and quickly he shut his eyes. He felt unpleasantly through his eyelids that she had turned up the gas. Then she was close to him, sat down on the edge of the bed. She asked him a question, calmly, as to occurrences since his retirement. He nodded an affirmative.

"Your forehead's all broken out," she said, moving away.

In a few moments he was aware of the delicious, soothing, heavenly application to his forehead of a handkerchief drenched in eau de cologne and water. The compress descended upon his forehead with the infinite gentleness of an endearment and the sudden solace of a reprieve. He made faint, inarticulate noises.

The light was extinguished for his ease.

He murmured weakly:

"Are you undressed already?"

"No," she said quietly. "I can undress all right in the dark."

He opened his eyes, and could dimly see her moving darkly about, brushing her hair, casting garments. Then she came towards him, a vague whiteness against the gloom, and, bending, felt for his face, and kissed him. She kissed him with superb and passionate violence; she drew his life out of him, and poured in her own. The tremendous kiss seemed to prove that there is no difference between love and hate. It contained everything-surrender, defiance, anger and tenderness.

Neither of them spoke. The kiss dominated and assuaged him. Its illogicalness overthrew him. He could never have kissed like that under such circumstances. It was a high and bold gesture. It expressed and transmitted confidence. She had explained nothing, justified nothing, made no charge, asked no forgiveness. She had just confronted him with one unarguable fact. And it was the only fact that mattered. His pessimism about marriage lifted. If his spirit was splendidly romantic enough to match hers, marriage remained a feasible state. And he threw away logic and the past, and in a magic vision saw that success in marriage was an affair of goodwill and the right tone. With the whole force of his heart he determined to succeed in marriage. And in the mighty resolve marriage presented itself to him as really rather easy after all.

CHAPTER X

THE ORGREAVE CALAMITY

I

On the following Saturday afternoon-that is, six days later-Edwin had unusually been down to the shop after dinner, and he returned home about four o'clock. Ada, hearing his entrance, came into the hall and said:

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

"Where's Master George?"

"In missis's own room, sir."

"All right."

The "mistress's own room" was the new nomenclature adopted by the kitchen, doubtless under suggestion, for the breakfast-room or boudoir. Edwin opened the door and glanced in. George, apparently sketching, sat at his mother's desk, with the light falling over his right shoulder.

He looked up quickly in self-excuse:

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

For the theory of the special sanctity of the boudoir had mysteriously established itself in the house during the previous eight or ten days. George was well aware that even Edwin was not entitled to go in and out as he chose.

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

With permissible and discreet curiosity he glanced from afar at the desk, its upper drawers and its pigeon-holes. Obviously it was very untidy. Its untidiness gave him sardonic pleasure, because Hilda was ever implying, or even stating, that she was a very tidy woman. He remembered that many years ago Janet had mentioned orderliness as a trait of the wonderful girl, Hilda Lessways. But he did not personally consider that she was tidy; assuredly she by no means reached his standard of tidiness, which standard indeed she now and then dismissed as old-maidish. Also, he was sardonically amused by the air of importance and busyness which she put on when using the desk and the room; her household accounts, beheld at a distance, were his wicked joy. He saw a bluish envelope lying untidily on the floor between the desk and the fireplace, and he picked it up. It had been addressed to "Mrs. George Cannon, 59 Preston Street, Brighton," and readdressed in a woman's hand to "Mrs. Clayhanger, Trafalgar Road, Bursley." Whether the handwriting of the original address was masculine or feminine he could not decide. The envelope had probably contained only a bill or a circular. Nevertheless he felt at once inimically inquisitive towards the envelope. Without quite knowing it he was jealous of all Hilda's past life up to her marriage with him. After a moment, reflecting that she had made no mention of a letter, he dropped the envelope superciliously, and it floated to the ground.