These Twain

Her tone, getting more peculiar with each phrase, stopped him again.

"Aren't any servants? What d'you mean?"

"Well, I found the attic full of beer bottles, so I sent her off on the spot."

"Sent who off?"

"Eliza."

"And where's Ada?"

"She's gone too," said Hilda defiantly, and as though rebutting an accusation before it could be made.

"Why?"

"She seemed to want to. And she was very impertinent over it."

He snorted and shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, it's your affair," he muttered, too scornful to ask details.

"It is," said she, significantly laconic.

In the bathroom, vexed and gloomy as he brushed his nails and splashed in the wash basin, he mused savagely over the servant problem. The servant problem had been growing acute. He had predicted several times that a crisis would arrive; a crisis had arrived; he was always right; his rightness was positively uncanny. He had liked Ada; he had not disliked the cook. He knew that Hilda was to blame. How should she not be to blame, – losing her entire staff in one afternoon? It was not merely that she lacked the gift of authoritative control, – it was also that she had no feeling for democratic justice as between one human being and another. And yet among his earliest recollections of her was her passionate sympathy with men on strike as against their employers. Totally misleading manifestations! For her a servant was nothing but a "servant." She was convinced that all her servants were pampered and spoilt; and as for Edwin's treatment of his workpeople she considered it to be ridiculously, criminally soft. If she had implied once she had implied a hundred times that the whole lot of them laughed at him behind his back for a sentimental simpleton. Occasionally Edwin was quite outraged by her callousness. The topic of the eight-hours day, of the ten-hours day, and even of the twelve-hours day (the last for tramwaymen) had been lately exciting the district. And Edwin was distressed that in his own house a sixteen-hour day for labour was in vogue and that the employer perceived no shame in it. He did not clearly see how the shame was to be abolished, but he thought that it ought to be admitted. It was not admitted. From six in the morning until ten at night these mysterious light-headed young women were the slaves of a bell. They had no surcease except one long weekday evening each week and a short Sunday evening each fortnight. At one period Hilda had had a fad for getting them out of bed at half-past five, to cure them of laziness. He remembered one cook whose family lived at the village of Brindley Edge, five miles off. This cook on her weekday evening would walk to Brindley Edge, spend three quarters of an hour in her home, and walk back to Bursley, reaching Trafalgar Road just in time to get to bed. Hilda saw nothing very odd in that. She said the girl could always please herself about going to Brindley Edge.

Edwin's democratic sense was gradually growing in force; it disturbed more and more the peace of his inmost mind. He seldom displayed his sympathies (save to Tertius Ingpen who, though a Tory, was in some ways astoundingly open to ideas, which seemed to interest him as a pretty equation would interest him), but they pursued their secret activity in his being, annoying him at his lithographic works, and still more in his home. He would suppress them, and grin, and repeat his ancient consoling truth that what was, was. The relief, however, was not permanent.

In that year the discovery of Rontgen Rays, the practical invention of the incandescent gas-mantle, the abolition of the man with the red flag in front of self-propelled vehicles, and the fact that Consols stood at 113, had combined to produce in innumerable hearts the illusion that civilisation was advancing at a great rate. But Edwin in his soul scarcely thought so. He was worrying not only about Liberal principles, but about the world; in his youth he had never worried about the world. And of his own personal success he would ask and ask: Is it right? He said to himself in the bathroom: "There's a million domestic servants in this blessed country, and not one of them works less than a hundred hours a week, and nobody cares. I don't think I really care myself. But there it is all the same!" And he was darkly resentful against Hilda on account of the entire phenomenon… He foresaw, too, a period of upset and discomfort in his house. Would there, indeed, ever be any real tranquillity in his house, with that strange, primeval cave-woman in charge of it?

As he descended the stairs, Hilda came out of the dining-room with an empty tray.

She said:

"I wish you'd go out and look for George."

Imagine it-going out into the Five Towns to look for one boy!

"Oh! He'll be all right. I suppose you haven't forgotten Ingpen's coming to-night."

"Of course I haven't. But I want you to go out and look for George."

He knew what was in her mind, – namely an absurd vision of George and his new bicycle crushed under a tramcar somewhere between Bleakridge and Hanbridge. In that year everybody with any pretension to youthfulness and modernity rode a bicycle. Both Edwin and Hilda rode occasionally-such was the power of fashion. Maternal apprehensions had not sufficed to keep George from having a bicycle, nor from riding on it unprotected up and down the greasy slopes of Trafalgar Road to and from school. Edwin himself had bought the bicycle, pooh-poohing danger, and asserting that anyhow normal risks must always be accepted with an even mind.

He was about to declare that he would certainly not do anything so silly as to go out and look for George, – and then all of a sudden he had the queer sensation of being alone with Hilda in the house made strange and romantic by a domestic calamity. He gazed at Hilda with her apron, and the calamity had made her strange and romantic also. He was vexed, annoyed, despondent, gloomy, fearful of the immediate future; he had immense grievances; he hated Hilda, he loathed giving way to her. He thought: "What is it binds me to this incomprehensible woman? I will not be bound!" But he felt that he would be compelled (not by her but by something in himself) to commit the folly of going out to look for George. And he felt that though his existence was an exasperating adventure, still it was an adventure.

"Oh! Damn!" he exploded, and reached for a cap.

And then George came into the hall through the kitchen. The boy often preferred to enter by the back, the stalking Indian way.

IV

George wore spectacles. He had grown considerably. He was now between fourteen and fifteen years of age, and he had begun to look his age. His mental outlook and conversation were on the whole in advance of his age. Even when he was younger he had frequently an adult manner of wise talking, but it had appeared unreal, naïve, – it was amusing rather than convincing. Now he imposed himself even on his family as a genuine adolescent, though the idiom he employed was often schoolboyish and his gestures were immaturely rough. The fact was he was not the same boy. Everybody noticed it. His old charm and delicacy seemed to have gone, and his voice was going. He had become harsh, defiant, somewhat brutal, and egotistic if not conceited. He held a very low opinion of all his school-fellows, and did not conceal it. Yet he was not very high in his form (the lower fifth); his reports were mediocre; and he cut no figure in the playfield. In the home he was charged with idleness, selfishness, and irresolution. It was pointed out to him that he was not making the best of his gifts, and that if he only chose to make the best of them he might easily, etc., etc. Apparently he did not care a bit. He had marked facility on the piano, but he had insisted on giving up his piano lessons and would not open the piano for a fortnight at a time. He still maintained his intention of being an architect, but he had ceased to show any interest in architecture. He would, however, still paint in water-colours; and he read a lot, but gluttonously, without taste. Edwin and Hilda, and especially Hilda, did not hide their discontent. Hilda had outbursts against him. In regard to Hilda he was disobedient. Edwin always spoke quietly to him, and was seldom seriously disobeyed. When disobeyed Edwin would show a taciturn resentment against the boy, who would sulk and then melt.

"Oh! He'll grow out of it," Edwin would say to Hilda, yet Edwin, like Hilda, thought that the boy was deliberately naughty, and they held themselves towards him as grieved persons of superior righteousness towards a person of inferior righteousness. Not even Edwin reflected that profound molecular changes might be proceeding in George's brain, for which changes he was in no way responsible. Nevertheless, despite the blighting disappointment of George's evolution, the home was by no means deeply engloomed. No! George had an appealing smile, a mere gawky boyishness, a peculiar way of existing, that somehow made joy in the home. Also he was a centre of intense and continual interest, and of this he was very well aware.

In passing through the kitchen George had of course been struck by the astounding absence of the cook; he had noticed further a fancy apron and a cap lying on the window sill therein. And when he came into the hall, the strange aspect of his mother (in a servant's apron) and his uncle proved to him that something marvellously unusual, exciting, and uplifting was afoot. He was pleased, agog, and he had the additional satisfaction that great events would conveniently divert attention from his lateness. Still he must be discreet, for the adults were evidently at loggerheads, and therefore touchy. He slipped between Edwin and Hilda with a fairly good imitation of innocent casualness, as if saying: "Whatever has occurred, I am guiltless, and going on just as usual."

"Ooh! Bags I!" he exclaimed loudly, at the hall-table, and seized the indiarubber, which Edwin had promised him. His school vocabulary comprised an extraordinary number of words ending in gs. He would never, for example, say "first," but "foggs"; and never "second," but "seggs." That very morning, for example, meeting Hilda on the mat at the foot of the stairs, he had shocked her by saying: "You go up foggs, mother, and I'll go seggs."

"George!" Hilda severely protested. Her anxiety concerning him was now turned into resentment. "Have you had an accident?"

"An accident?" said George, as though at a loss. Yet he knew perfectly that his mother was referring to the bicycle.

Edwin said curtly:

"Now, don't play the fool. Have you fallen off your bike? Look at your overcoat. Don't leave that satchel there, and hang your coat up properly."

The overcoat was in a grievous state. A few days earlier it had been new. Besides money, it had cost an enormous amount of deliberation and discussion, like everything else connected with George. Against his will, Edwin himself had been compelled to conduct George to Shillitoe's, the tailor's, and superintend a third trying-on, for further alterations, after the overcoat was supposed to be finished. And lo, now it had no quality left but warmth! Efforts in regard to George were always thus out of proportion to the trifling results obtained. At George's age Edwin doubtless had an overcoat, but he positively could not remember having one, and he was quite sure that no schoolboy overcoat of his had ever preoccupied a whole household for two minutes, to say nothing of a week.

George's face expressed a sense of injury, and his face hardened.

"Mother made me take my overcoat. You know I can't cycle in my overcoat. I've not been on my bicycle all day. Also my lamp's broken," he said, with gloomy defiance.

His curiosity about wondrous events in the house was quenched.

And Edwin felt angry with Hilda for having quite unjustifiably assumed that George had gone to school on his bicycle. Ought she not to have had the ordinary gumption to assure herself, before worrying, that the lad's bicycle was not in the shed? Incredible thoughtlessness! All these alarms for nothing!

"Then why are you so late?" Hilda demanded, diverting to George her indignation at Edwin's unuttered but yet conveyed criticism of herself.

"Kept in."

"All this time?" Hilda questioned, suspiciously.

George sullenly nodded.

"What for?"

"Latin."

"Homework? Again?" ejaculated Edwin. "Why hadn't you done it properly?"

"I had a headache last night. And I've got one to-day."

"Another of your Latin headaches!" said Edwin sarcastically. There was nothing, except possibly cod liver oil, that George detested more than Edwin's serious sarcasm.

The elders glanced at one another and glanced away. Both had the same fear-the dreadful fear that George might be developing the worse characteristics of his father. Both had vividly in mind the fact that this boy was the son of George Cannon. They never mentioned to each other either the fear or the fact; they dared not. But each knew the thoughts of the other. The boy was undoubtedly crafty; he could conceal subtle designs under a simple exterior; he was also undoubtedly secretive. The recent changes in his disposition had put Edwin and Hilda on their guard, and every time young George displayed cunning, or economised the truth, or lied, the fear visited them. "I hope he'll turn out all right!" Hilda had said once. Edwin had nearly replied: "What are you worrying about? The sons of honest men are often rascals. Why on earth shouldn't the son of a rascal be an honest man?" But he had only said, with good-humoured impatience: "Of course he'll turn out all right!" Not that he himself was convinced.

Edwin now attacked the boy gloomily:

"You didn't seem to have much of a headache when you came in just now."

It was true.

But George suddenly burst into tears. His headaches were absolutely genuine. The emptiness of the kitchen and the general queer look of things in the house had, however, by their promise of adventurous happenings, caused him to forget his headache altogether, and the discovery of the new indiarubber had been like a tonic to a convalescent. The menacing attitude of the elders had now brought about a relapse. The headache established itself as his chief physical sensation. His chief moral sensation was that of a terrible grievance. He did not often cry; he had not indeed cried for about a year. But to-night there was something nervous in the very air, and the sob took him unawares. The first sob having prostrated all resistance, others followed victoriously, and there was no stopping them. He did not quite know why he should have been more liable to cry on this particular occasion than on certain others, and he was rather ashamed; on the other hand it was with an almost malicious satisfaction that he perceived the troubling effect of his tears on the elders. They were obviously in a quandary. Serve them right!

"It's my eyes," he blubbered. "I told you these specs would never suit me. But you wouldn't believe me, and the headmaster won't believe me."

The discovery that George's eyesight was defective, about two months earlier, had led to a desperate but of course hopeless struggle on his part against the wearing of spectacles. It was curious that in the struggle he had never even mentioned his strongest objection to spectacles, – namely, the fact that Bert Benbow wore spectacles.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Edwin demanded.

Between sobs George replied with overwhelming disillusioned disgust:

"What's the good of telling you anything? You only think I'm codding."

And he passed upstairs, apparently the broken victim of fate and parents, but in reality triumphant. His triumph was such that neither Edwin nor Hilda dared even to protest against the use of such an inexcusable word as 'codding.'

Hilda went into the kitchen, and Edwin rather aimlessly followed her. He felt incompetent. He could do nothing except carry trays, and he had no desire to carry trays. Neither spoke. Hilda was bending over the fire, then she arranged the grid in front of the fire to hold a tin, and she greased the tin. He thought she looked very wistful, for all the somewhat bitter sturdiness of her demeanour. Tertius Ingpen was due for the evening; she had no servants-through her own fault; and now a new phase had arrived in the unending responsibility for George's welfare. He knew that she was blaming him on account of George. He knew that she believed in the sincerity of George's outburst; he believed in it himself. The spectacles were wrong; the headache was genuine. And he, Edwin, was guilty of the spectacles because he had forced Hilda, by his calm bantering commonsense, to consult a small local optician of good reputation.

Hilda had wanted to go to Birmingham or Manchester; but Edwin said that such an idea was absurd. The best local optician was good enough for the great majority of the inhabitants of the Five Towns and would be good enough for George. Why not indeed? Why the craze for specialists? There could be nothing uniquely wrong with the boy's eyes, – it was a temporary weakness. And so on and so on, in accordance with Edwin's instinct for denying the existence of a crisis. And the local optician, consulted, had borne him out. The local optician said that every year he dealt with dozens of cases similar to George's. And now both the local optician and Edwin were overthrown by a boy's sobbing tears.

Suddenly Hilda turned round upon her husband.

"I shall take George to London to-morrow about his eyes," she said, with immense purpose and sincerity, in a kind of fierce challenge.

This was her amends to George for having often disbelieved him, and for having suspected him of taking after his father. She made her amends passionately, and with all the force of her temperament. In her eyes George was now a martyr.

"To London?" exclaimed Edwin weakly.

"Yes. It's no use half doing these things. I shall ask Charlie Orgreave to recommend me a first-class oculist."

Edwin dared say nothing. Either Manchester or Birmingham would have been just as good as London, perhaps better. Moreover, she had not even consulted him. She had decided by a violent impulse and announced her decision. This was not right; she would have protested against a similar act by Edwin. But he could not argue with her. She was far beyond argument.

"I wouldn't have that boy's eyesight played with for anything!" she said fiercely.

"Well, of course you wouldn't! Who would?" Edwin thought, but he did not say it.

"Go and see what he's doing," she said.

Edwin slouched off. He was no longer the master of the house. He was only an economic factor and general tool in the house. And as he wandered like a culprit up the stairs of the mysteriously transformed dwelling he thought again: "What is it that binds me to her?" But he was abashed and in spite of himself impressed by the intensity of Hilda's formidable emotion. Nevertheless as he began vaguely to perceive all that was involved in her threat to go to London on the morrow, he stiffened, and said to himself: "We shall see about that. We shall just see about that!"

V

They were at the meal. Hilda had covered George's portion of fish with a plate and put it before the fire to keep warm. She was just returning to the table. Tertius Ingpen, who sat with his back to the fire, looked at her over his shoulder with an admiring smile and said:

"Well, I've had some good meals in this house, but this is certainly the best bit of fish I ever tasted. So that the catastrophe in the kitchen leaves me unmoved."

Hilda, with face suddenly transformed by a responsive smile, insinuated herself between the table and her arm-chair, drew forward the chair by its arms, and sat down. Her keen pleasure in the compliment was obvious. Edwin noted that the meal was really very well served, the table brighter than usual, the toast crisper, and the fish-a fine piece of hake white as snow within its browned exterior-merely perfect. There was no doubt that Hilda could be extremely efficient when she desired; Edwin's criticism was that she was too often negligent, and that in her moods of conscientiousness she gave herself too urgently and completely, producing an unnecessary disturbance in the atmosphere of the home. Nevertheless Edwin too felt pleasure in the compliment to Hilda; and he calmly enjoyed the spectacle of his wife and his friend side by side on such mutually appreciative terms. The intimacy of the illuminated table in the midst of the darker room, the warmth and crackling of the fire, the grave solidity of the furniture, the springiness of the thick carpet, and the delicate odours of the repast, – all these things satisfied in him something that was profound. And the two mature, vivacious, intelligent faces under the shaded gas excited his loyal affection.

"That's right," Hilda murmured, in her clear enunciation. "I do like praise!"

"Now then, you callous brute," said Ingpen to Edwin. "What do you say?"

And Hilda cried with swift, complaining sincerity:

"Oh! Edwin never praises me!"

Her sincerity convinced by its very artlessness. The complaint had come unsought from her heart. And it was so spontaneous and forcible that Tertius Ingpen, as a tactful guest, saw the advisability of easing the situation by laughter.

"Yes, I do!" Edwin protested, and though he was shocked, he laughed, in obedience to Ingpen's cue. It was true; he did praise her; but not frequently, and almost always in order to flatter her rather than to express his own emotion. Edwin did not care for praising people; he would enthusiastically praise a book, but not a human being. His way was to take efficiency for granted. "Not so bad," was a superlative of laudation with him. He was now shocked as much by the girl's outrageous candour as by the indisputable revelation that she went hungry for praise. Even to a close friend such as Ingpen, surely a wife had not the right to be quite so desperately sincere. Edwin considered that in the presence of a third person husband and wife should always at any cost maintain the convention of perfect conjugal amenity. He knew couples who achieved the feat, – Albert and Clara, for example. But Hilda, he surmised, had other ideas, if indeed she had ever consciously reflected upon this branch of social demeanour. Certainly she seemed at moments to lose all regard for appearances.

Moreover, she was polluting by acerbity the pure friendliness of the atmosphere, and endangering cheer.

"He's too wrapped up in the works to think about praising his wife," Hilda continued, still in the disconcerting vein of sincerity, but with less violence and a more philosophical air. The fact was that, although she had not regained the zest of the mood so rudely dissipated by the scene with Ada, she was kept cheerful by the mere successful exercise of her own energy in proving to these two men that servants were not in the least essential to the continuance of plenary comfort in her house; and she somewhat condescended towards Edwin.

"By the way, Teddie," said Ingpen, pulling lightly at his short beard, "I heard a rumour that you were going to stand for the Town Council in the South ward. Why didn't you?"

Edwin looked a little confused.

"Who told you that tale?"

"It was about."

"It never came from me," said Edwin.

Hilda broke in eagerly:

"He was invited to stand. But he wouldn't. I thought he ought to. I begged him to. But no, he wouldn't. And did you know he refused a J.P.ship too?"

"Oh!" mumbled Edwin. "That sort o' thing's not my line."

"Oh, isn't it!" Ingpen exclaimed. "Then whose line is it?"

"Look at all the rotters in the Council!" said Edwin.

"All the more reason why you should be on it!"

"Well, I've got no time," Edwin finished gloomily and uneasily.

Ingpen paused, tapping his teeth with his finger, before proceeding, in a judicial, thoughtful manner which in recent years he had been developing:

"I'll tell you what's the matter with you, old man. You don't know it, but you're in a groove. You go about like a shuttle from the house to the works and the works to the house. And you never think beyond the works and the house."

"Oh, don't I?"

Ingpen went placidly on:

"No, you don't. You've become a good specimen of the genus 'domesticated business man.' You've forgotten what life is. You fancy you're at full stretch all the time, but you're in a coma. I suppose you'll never see forty again-and have you ever been outside this island? You went to Llandudno this year because you went last year. And you'll go next year because you went this year. If you happen now and then to worry about the failure of your confounded Liberal Party you think you're a blooming broad-minded publicist. Where are your musical evenings? When I asked you to go with me to a concert at Manchester last week but one, you thought I'd gone dotty, simply because it meant your leaving the works early and not getting to bed until the unheard-of-time of one thirty a.m."