These Twain

"I'm going to Lane End House," he said.

"Can I come?"

"No."

II

The same overhanging spirit of a great event which had somehow justified him in being curt to the boy, rendered him self-conscious and furtive as he stood in the porch of the Orgreaves, waiting for the door to open. Along the drive that curved round the oval lawn under the high trees were wheel-marks still surviving from the previous day. The house also survived; the curtains in all the windows, and the plants or the pieces of furniture between the curtains, were exactly as usual. Yet the solid building and its contents had the air of an illusion.

A servant appeared.

"Good afternoon, Selina."

He had probably never before called her by name, but to-day his self-consciousness impelled him to do uncustomary things.

"Good afternoon, sir," said Selina, whose changeless attire ignored even the greatest events. And it was as if she had said:

"Ah, sir! To what have we come!"

She too was self-conscious and furtive.

Aloud she said:

"Miss Orgreave and Mrs. Clayhanger are upstairs, sir. I'll tell Miss Orgreave."

Coughing nervously, he went into the drawing-room, the large obscure room, crowded with old furniture and expensive new furniture, with books, knickknacks, embroidery, and human history, in which he had first set eyes on Hilda. It was precisely the same as it had been a few days earlier; absolutely nothing had been changed, and yet now it had the archæological and forlorn aspect of a museum.

He dreaded the appearance of Janet and Hilda. What could he say to Janet, or she to him? But he was a little comforted by the fact that Hilda had left a message for him to join them.

On the previous Tuesday Osmond Orgreave had died, and within twenty-four hours Mrs. Orgreave was dead also. On the Friday they were buried together. To-day the blinds were up again; the funereal horses with their artificially curved necks had already dragged other corpses to the cemetery; the town existed as usual; and the family of Orgreave was scattered once more. Marian, the eldest daughter, had not been able to come at all, because her husband was seriously ill. Alicia Hesketh, the youngest daughter, far away in her large house in Devonshire, had not been able to come at all, because she was hourly expecting her third child; nor would Harry, her husband, leave her. Charlie, the doctor at Ealing, had only been able to run down for the funeral, because, his partner having broken his leg, the whole work of the practice was on his shoulders. And to-day Tom, the solicitor, was in his office exploring the financial side of his father's affairs; Johnnie was in the office of Orgreave and Sons, busy with the professional side of his father's affairs; Jimmie, who had made a sinister marriage, was nobody knew precisely where; Tom's wife had done what she could and gone home; Jimmie's wife had never appeared; Elaine, Marian's child, was shopping at Hanbridge for Janet; and Janet remained among her souvenirs. An epoch was finished, and the episode that concluded it, in its strange features and its swiftness, resembled a vast hallucination.

Certain funerals will obsess a whole town. And the funeral of Mr. and Mrs. Osmond Orgreave might have been expected to do so. Not only had their deaths been almost simultaneous, but they had been preceded by superficially similar symptoms, though the husband had died of pericarditis following renal disease, and the wife of hyperæmia of the lungs following increasingly frequent attacks of bronchial catarrh. The phenomena had been impressive, and rumour had heightened them. Also Osmond Orgreave for half a century had been an important and celebrated figure in the town; architecturally a large portion of the new parts of it were his creation. Yet the funeral had not been one of the town's great feverish funerals. True, the children would have opposed anything spectacular; but had municipal opinion decided against the children, they would have been compelled to yield. Again and again prominent men in the town had as it were bought their funeral processions in advance by the yard-processions in which their families, willing or not, were reduced to the rôle of stewards.

Tom and Janet, however, had ordained that nobody whatever beyond the family should be invited to the funeral, and there had been no sincere protest from outside.

The fact was that Osmond Orgreave had never related himself to the crowd. He was not a Freemason; he had never been President of the Society for the Prosecution of Felons; he had never held municipal office; he had never pursued any object but the good of his family. He was a particularist. His charm was kept chiefly for his own home. And beneath the cordiality of his more general connections, there had always been a subtle reservation-on both sides. He was admired for his cleverness and his distinction, liked where he chose to be liked, but never loved save by his own kin. Further, he had a name for being "pretty sharp" in business. Clients had had prolonged difficulties with him-Edwin himself among them. The town had made up its mind about Osmond Orgreave, and the verdict, as with most popular verdicts, was roughly just so far as it went, but unjust in its narrowness. The laudatory three-quarters of a column in the Signal and the briefer effusive notice in the new half-penny morning paper, both reflected, for those with perceptions delicate enough to understand, the popular verdict. And though Edwin hated long funerals and the hysteria of a public woe, he had nevertheless a sense of disappointment in the circumstances of the final disappearance of Osmond Orgreave.

The two women entered the room, silently. Hilda looked fierce and protective. Janet Orgreave, pale and in black, seemed very thin. She did not speak. She gave a little nod of greeting.

Edwin, scarcely controlling his voice and his eyes, murmured:

"Good afternoon."

They would not shake hands; the effort would have broken them. All remained standing, uncertainly. Edwin saw before him two girls aged by the accumulation of experience. Janet, though apparently healthy, with her smooth fair skin, was like an old woman in the shell of a young one. Her eyes were dulled, her glance plaintive, her carriage slack. The conscious wish to please had left her, together with her main excuse for being alive. She was over thirty-seven, and more and more during the last ten years she had lived for her parents. She alone among all the children had remained absolutely faithful to them. To them, and to nobody else, she had been essential-a fountain of vigour and brightness and kindliness from which they drew. To see her in the familiar and historic room which she had humanised and illuminated with her very spirit, was heartrending. In a day she had become unnecessary, and shrunk to the unneeded, undesired virgin which in truth she was. She knew it. Everybody knew it. All the waves of passionate sympathy which Hilda and Edwin in their different ways ardently directed towards her broke in vain upon that fact.

Edwin thought:

"And only the other day she was keen on tennis!"

"Edwin," said Hilda. "Don't you think she ought to come across to our place for a bit? I'm sure it would be better for her not to sleep here."

"Most decidedly," Edwin answered, only too glad to agree heartily with his wife.

"But Johnnie?" Janet objected.

"Pooh! Surely he can stay at Tom's."

"And Elaine?"

"She can come with you. Heaps of room for two."

"I couldn't leave the servants all alone. I really couldn't. They wouldn't like it," Janet persisted. "Moreover, I've got to give them notice."

Edwin had to make the motion of swallowing.

"Well," said Hilda obstinately. "Come along now-for the evening, anyhow. We shall be by ourselves."

"Yes, you must," said Edwin, curtly.

"I-I don't like walking down the street," Janet faltered, blushing.

"You needn't. You can get over the wall," said Edwin.

"Of course you can," Hilda concurred. "Just as you are now. I'll tell Selina."

She left the room with decision, and the next instant returned with a telegram in her hand.

"Open it, please. I can't," said Janet.

Hilda read:

"Mother and boy both doing splendidly. Harry."

Janet dropped onto a chair and burst into tears.

"I'm so glad. I'm so glad," she spluttered. "I can't help it."

Then she jumped up, wiped her eyes, and smiled.

For a few yards the Clayhanger and the Orgreave properties were contiguous, and separated by a fairly new wall, which, after much procrastination on the part of owners, had at last replaced an unsatisfactory thorn-hedge. While Selina put a chair in position for the ladies to stand on as a preliminary to climbing the wall, Edwin suddenly remembered that in the days of the untidy thorn-hedge Janet had climbed a pair of steps in order to surmount the hedge and visit his garden. He saw her balanced on the steps, and smiling and then jumping, like a child. Now, he preceded her and Hilda on to the wall, and they climbed carefully, and when they were all up Selina handed him the chair and he dropped it on his own side of the wall so that they might descend more easily.

"Be careful, Edwin. Be careful," cried Hilda, neither pleasantly nor unpleasantly.

And as he tried to read her mood in her voice, the mysterious and changeful ever-flowing undercurrent of their joint life bore rushingly away his sense of Janet's tragedy; and he knew that no events exterior to his marriage could ever overcome for long that constant secret preoccupation of his concerning Hilda's mood.

III

When they came into the house, Ada met them with zest and calamity in her whispering voice:

"Please 'm, Mr. and Mrs. Benbow are here. They're in the drawing-room. They said they'd wait a bit to see if you came back."

Ada had foreseen that, whatever their superficially indifferent demeanour as members of the powerful ruling caste, her master and mistress would be struck all of a heap by this piece of news. And they were. For the Benbows did not pay chance calls; in the arrangement of their lives every act was neatly planned and foreordained. Therefore this call was formal, and behind it was an intention.

"I can't see them. I can't possibly, dear," Janet murmured, as it were intimidated. "I'll run back home."

Hilda replied with benevolent firmness:

"No you won't. Come upstairs with me till they're gone. Edwin, you go and see what they're after."

Janet faltered and obeyed, and the two women crept swiftly upstairs. They might have been executing a strategic retirement from a bad smell. The instinctive movement, and the manner, were a judgment on the ideals of the Benbows so terrible and final that even the Benbows, could they have seen it, must have winced and doubted for a moment their own moral perfection. It came to this, that the stricken fled from their presence.

"'What they're after'!" Edwin muttered to himself, half resenting the phrase; because Clara was his sister; and though she bored and exasperated him, he could not class her with exactly similar boring and exasperating women.

And, throwing down his cap, he went with false casual welcoming into the drawing-room.

Young Bert Benbow, prodigiously solemn and uncomfortable in his birthday spectacles, was with his father and mother. Immense satisfaction, tempered by a slight nervousness, gleamed in the eyes of the parents. And the demeanour of all three showed instantly that the occasion was ceremonious. Albert and Clara could not have been more pleased and uplifted had the occasion been a mourning visit of commiseration or even a funeral.

The washed and brushed schoolboy, preoccupied, did not take his share in the greetings with sufficient spontaneity and promptitude.

Clara said, gently shocked:

"Bert, what do you say to your uncle?"

"Good afternoon, uncle."

"I should think so indeed!"

Clara of course sprang at once to the luscious first topic, as to a fruit:

"How is poor Janet bearing up?"

Edwin was very characteristically of the Five Towns in this, – he hated to admit, in the crisis itself, that anything unusual was happening or had just happened. Thus he replied negligently:

"Oh! All right!"

As though his opinion was that Janet had nothing to bear up against.

"I hear it was a very quiet funeral," said Clara, suggesting somehow that there must be something sinister behind the quietness of the funeral.

"Yes," said Edwin.

"Didn't they ask you?"

"No."

"Well-my word!"

There was a silence, save for faint humming from Albert. And then, just as Clara was mentioning her name, in rushed Hilda.

"What's the matter?" the impulsive Hilda demanded bluntly.

This gambit did not please Edwin, whose instinct was always to pretend that nothing was the matter. He would have maintained as long as anybody that the call was a chance call.

After a few vague exchanges, Clara coughed and said:

"It's really about your George and our Bert… Haven't you heard? … Hasn't George said anything?"

"No… What?"

Clara looked at her husband expectantly, and Albert took the grand male rôle.

"I gather they had a fight yesterday at school," said he.

The two boys went to the same school, the new-fangled Higher Grade School at Hanbridge, which had dealt such a blow at the ancient educational foundations at Oldcastle. That their Bert should attend the same school as George was secretly a matter of pride to the Benbows.

"Oh," said Edwin. "We've seen no gaping wounds, have we, Hilda?"

Albert's face did not relax.

"You've only got to look at Bert's chin," said Clara.

Bert shuffled under the world's sudden gaze. Undeniably there was a small discoloured lump on his chin.

"I've had it out with Bert," Albert continued severely. "I don't know who was in the wrong-it was about that penknife business, you know-but I'm quite sure that Bert was not in the right. And as he's the older we've decided that he must ask George's forgiveness."

"Yes," eagerly added Clara, tired of listening. "Albert says we can't have quarrels going on like this in the family-they haven't spoken friendly to each other since that night we were here-and it's the manly thing for Bert to ask George's forgiveness, and then they can shake hands."

"That's what I say." Albert massively corroborated her.

Edwin thought:

"I suppose these people imagine they're doing something rather fine."

Whatever they imagined they were doing, they had made both Edwin and Hilda sheepish. Either of them would have sacrificed a vast fortune and the lives of thousands of Sunday school officers in order to find a dignified way of ridiculing and crushing the expedition of Albert and Clara; but they could think of naught that was effective.

Hilda asked, somewhat curtly, but lamely:

"Where is George?"

"He was in your boudoir a two-three minutes ago, drawing," said Edwin.

Clara's neck was elongated at the sound of the word "boudoir."

"Boudoir?" said she. And Edwin could in fancy hear her going down Trafalgar Road and giggling at every house-door: "Did ye know Mrs. Clayhanger has a boudoir? That's the latest." Still he had employed the word with intention, out of deliberate bravado.

"Breakfast-room," he added, explanatory.

"I should suggest," said Albert, "that Bert goes to him in the breakfast-room. They'll settle it much better by themselves." He was very pleased by this last phrase, which proved him a man of the world after all.

"So long as they don't smash too much furniture while they're about it," murmured Edwin.

"Now, Bert, my boy," said Albert, in the tone of a father who is also a brother.

And, as Hilda was inactive, Bert stalked forth upon his mission of manliness, smiling awkwardly and blushing. He closed the door after him, and not one of the adults dared to rise and open it.

"Had any luck with missing words lately?" Albert asked, in a detached airy manner, showing that the Bert-George affair was a trifle to him, to be dismissed from the mind at will.

"No," said Edwin. "I've been off missing words lately."

"Of course you have," Clara agreed with gravity. "All this must have been very trying to you all… Albert's done very well of course."

"I was on 'politeness,' my boy," said Albert.

"Didn't you know?" Clara expressed surprise.

"'Politeness'?"

"Sixty-four pounds nineteen shillings per share," said Albert tremendously.

Edwin appreciatively whistled.

"Had the money?"

"No. Cheques go out on Monday, I believe. Of course," he added, "I go in for it scientifically. I leave no chances, I don't. I'm making a capital outlay of over five pounds ten on next week's competition, and I may tell you I shall get it back again, withinterest."

At the same moment, Bert re-entered the room.

"He's not there," said Bert. "His drawing's there, but he isn't."

This news was adverse to the cause of manly peace.

"Are you sure?" asked Clara, implying that Bert might not have made a thorough search for George in the boudoir.

Hilda sat grim and silent.

"He may be upstairs," said the weakly amiable Edwin.

Hilda rang the bell with cold anger.

"Is Master George in the house?" she harshly questioned Ada.

"No'm. He went out a bit since."

The fact was that George, on hearing from the faithful Ada of the arrival of the Benbows, had retired through the kitchen and through the back-door, into the mountainous country towards Bleakridge railway-station, where kite-flying was practised on immense cinder-heaps.

"Ah! Well," said Albert, undefeated, to Edwin. "You might tell him Bert's been up specially to apologise to him. Oh! And here's that penknife!" He looked now at Hilda, and, producing Tertius Ingpen's knife, he put it with a flourish on the mantelpiece. "I prefer it to be on your mantelpiece than on ours," he added, smiling rather grandiosely. His manner as a whole, though compound, indicated with some clearness that while he adhered to his belief in the efficacy of prayer, he could not allow his son to accept from George earthly penknives alleged to have descended from heaven. It was a triumphant hour for Albert Benbow, as he stood there dominating the drawing-room. He perceived that, in addition to silencing and sneaping the elder and richer branch of the family, he was cutting a majestic figure in the eyes of his own son.

In an awful interval, Clara said with a sweet bright smile:

"By the way, Albert, don't forget about what Maggie asked you to ask."

"Oh, yes! By the way," said Albert, "Maggie wants to know how soon you can complete the purchase of this house of yours."

Edwin moved uneasily.

"I don't know," he mumbled.

"Can you stump up in a month? Say the end of October anyway, at latest." Albert persisted, and grew caustic. "You've only got to sell a few of your famous securities."

"Certainly. Before the end of October," Hilda replied, with impulsive and fierce assurance.

Edwin was amazed by this interference on her part. Was she incapable of learning from experience? Let him employ the right tone with absolutely perfect skill, marriage would still be impossible if she meant to carry on in this way! What did she know about the difficulties of completing the purchase? What right had she to put in a word apparently so decisive? Such behaviour was unheard of. She must be mad. Nevertheless he did not yield to anger. He merely said feebly and querulously:

"That's all very well! That's all very well! But I'm not quite so sure as all that. Will she let some of it be on mortgage?"

"No, she won't," said Albert.

"Why not?"

"Because I've got a new security for the whole amount myself."

"Oh!"

Edwin glanced at his wife and his resentful eyes said: "There you are! All through your infernal hurry and cheek Maggie's going to lose eighteen hundred pounds in a rotten investment. I told you Albert would get hold of that money if he heard of it. And just look!"

At this point Albert, who knew fairly well how to draw an advantage from his brother-in-law's characteristic weaknesses, perceived suddenly the value of an immediate departure. And amid loud enquiries of all sorts from Clara, and magnificent generalities from Albert, and gloomy, stiff salutations from uncomfortable Bert, the visit closed.

But destiny lay in wait at the corner of the street for Albert Benbow's pride. Precisely as the Benbows were issuing from the portico, the front-door being already closed upon them, the second Swetnam son came swinging down Trafalgar Road. He stopped, raising his hat.

"Hallo, Mr. Benbow," he said. "You've heard the news, I suppose?"

"What about?"

"Missing word competitions."

It is a fact that Albert paled.

"What?"

"Injunction in the High Court this morning. All the money's impounded, pending a hearing as to whether the competitions are illegal or not. At the very least half of it will go in costs. It's all over with missing words."

"Who told you?"

"I've had a wire to stop me from sending in for next week's."

Albert Benbow gave an oath. His wife ought surely to have been horrorstruck by the word; but she did not blench. Flushing and scowling she said:

"What a shame! We've sent ours in."

The faithful creature had for days past at odd moments been assisting her husband in the dictionary and as a clerk… And lo! at last, confirmation of those absurd but persistent rumours to the effect that certain busybodies meant if they could to stop missing word competitions on the ground that they were simply a crude appeal to the famous "gambling instincts" of mankind and especially of Englishmen!

Albert had rebutted the charge with virtuous warmth, insisting on the skill involved in word-choosing, and insisting also on the historical freedom of the institutions of his country. He maintained that it was inconceivable that any English court of justice should ever interfere with a pastime so innocent and so tonic for the tired brain. And though he had had secret fears, and had been disturbed and even hurt by the comments of a religious paper to which he subscribed, he would not waver from his courageous and sensible English attitude. Now the fearful blow had fallen, and Albert knew in his heart that it was heaven's punishment for him. He turned to shut the gate after him, and noticed Bert. It appeared to him that in hearing the paternal oath, Bert had been guilty of a crime, or at least an indiscretion, and he at once began to make Bert suffer.

Meanwhile Swetnam had gone on, to spread the tale which was to bring indignation and affliction into tens of thousands of respectable homes.

IV

Janet came softly and timidly into the drawing-room.

"They are gone?" she questioned. "I thought I heard the front-door."

"Yes, thank goodness!" Hilda exclaimed candidly, disdaining the convention (which Edwin still had in respect) that a weakness in family ties should never be referred to, beyond the confines of the family, save in urbane terms of dignity and regret excusing so far as possible the sinner. But in this instance the immense ineptitude of the Benbows had so affected Edwin that, while objecting to his wife's outbreak, he could not help giving a guffaw which supported it. And all the time he kept thinking to himself:

"Imagine that d-d pietistic rascal dragging the miserable shrimp up here to apologise to George!"

He was ashamed, not merely of his relatives, but somehow of all humanity. He could scarcely look even a chair in the face. The Benbows had left behind them desolation, and this desolation affected everything, and could be tasted on the tongue. Janet of course instantly noticed it, and felt that she ought not to witness the shaming of her friends. Moreover, her existence now was chiefly an apology for itself.

She said:

"I really think I ought to go back and see about a meal for Johnnie in case he turns up."

"Nonsense!" said Hilda, sharply. "With three servants in the house, I suppose Johnnie won't starve! Now just sit down. Sit down!" Her tone softened. "My dear, you're worse than a child… Tell Edwin." She put a cushion behind Janet in the easy chair. And the gesture made Janet's eyes humid once more.

Edwin had the exciting, disquieting, vitalising sensation of being shut up in an atmosphere of women. Not two women, but two thousand, seemed to hem him in with their incalculable impulses, standards, inspirations.