These Twain

His eye caught a print on the wall above the bed, – a classic example of the sentimentality of Marcus Stone: departing cavalier, drooping maiden, terraced garden. It was a dreadful indictment of the Tertius Ingpen who talked so well, with such intellectual aplomb, with such detachment and exceptional cynicism. It was like a ray exposing some secret sinister corner in the man's soul. He had hung up that print because it gave him pleasure! Poor chap! But Edwin loved him. He decided that he would call again at the hospital before returning to Auntie Hamps's. Impossible that the man was dying! If the doctor or the matron had thought he was in danger they would have summoned his relatives. He might be dying. He might be dead. He must have immediately feared death, or he would not have imposed upon Edwin such an errand… What simple, touching, admirable trust in a friend's loyalty the man had displayed!

Edwin put out the gas-stove, which exploded, lit a match, gave a great yawn, put out the gas, and began the enterprise of leaving the house.

III

"Look here! I must have some tea, now!" said Edwin curtly and yet appealingly to Maggie, who opened the door for him at Auntie Hamps's.

It was nearly eight o'clock. He had been to the hospital again, and, having reported in three words to Ingpen, whose condition was unchanged, had remained there some time. But he had said nothing to Ingpen about the woman. At six o'clock the matron had come into the room, and the nurse thenceforward until seven o'clock, when she went off duty, was a changed girl. Edwin slightly knew the matron, who was sympathetic but strangely pessimistic-considering her healthy, full figure.

"The water's boiling," answered Maggie, in a comforting tone, and disappeared instantly into the kitchen.

Edwin thought:

"There are some things that girl understands!"

She had shown no curiosity, no desire to impart news, because she had immediately comprehended that Edwin was, or imagined himself to be, at the end of his endurance. Maggie, with simple and surpassing wisdom had just said to herself: "He's been out all night, and he's not used to it." For a moment he felt that Maggie was wiser, and more intimately close to him, than anybody else in the world.

"In the dining-room," she called out from the kitchen.

And in the small dining-room there was a fire! It was like a living, welcoming creature. The cloth was laid, the gas was lighted. On the table was beautiful fresh bread and butter. A word, a tone, a glance of his on the previous evening had been enough to bring back the dining-room into use! Happily the wind suited the chimney. He had scarcely sat down in front of the fire when Maggie entered with the teapot. And at the sight of the teapot Edwin felt that he was saved. Before the tea was out of the teapot it had already magically alleviated the desperate sensations of physical fatigue and moral weariness which had almost overcome him on the way from the hospital in the chill and muddy dawn.

"What will you have to eat?" said Maggie.

"Nothing. I couldn't eat to save my life."

"Perhaps you'll have a bit of bread-and-butter later," said Maggie blandly.

He shook his head.

"How is she?"

"Worse," said Maggie. "But she's slept."

"Who's up with her now? Minnie?"

"No. Clara."

"Oh! She's come?"

"She came at seven."

Edwin was drinking the divine tea. After a few gulps he told Maggie briefly about Tertius Ingpen, saying that he had had to go "on business" for Ingpen to Hanbridge.

"Are you all right for the present?" she asked after a few moments.

He nodded. He was eating bread-and-butter.

"You had any sleep at all?" he mumbled, munching.

"Oh yes! A little," she answered cheerfully, leaving the room.

He poured out more tea, and then sat down in the sole easy-chair for a minute's reflection before going upstairs and thence to the works.

Not until he woke up did he realise that there had been any danger of his going to sleep. The earthenware clock on the mantelpiece (a birthday gift from Clara and Albert) showed five minutes past eleven. Putting no reliance on the cheap, horrible clock, he looked at his watch, which had stopped for lack of winding up. The fire was very low. His chief thought was: "It can't possibly be eleven o'clock, because I haven't been down to the works, and I haven't sent word I'm not coming either!" He got up hurriedly and had reached the door when a sound of a voice on the stairs held him still like an enchantment. It seemed to be the voice, eloquent, and indeed somewhat Church-of-England, of the Rev. Christian Flowerdew, the new superintendent of the Bursley Wesleyan Methodist Circuit. The voice said: "I do hope so!" and then offered a resounding remark about the weather being the kind of weather that, bad as it was, people must expect in view of the time of year. Maggie's voice concurred.

As soon as the front-door closed, Edwin peeped cautiously out of the dining-room.

"Who was that?" he murmured.

"Mr. Flowerdew. She wanted him. Albert sent for him early this morning."

Maggie came into the room and shut the door.

"I've been to sleep," said Edwin.

"Yes, I know. I wasn't going to have you disturbed. They're all here."

"Who are all here?"

"Clara and the children. Auntie asked to see all of them. They waited in the drawing-room for Mr. Flowerdew to go. Bert didn't go to school this morning, in case-because it was so far off. Clara fetched the others out of school, except Rupy of course-he doesn't go-"

"Good heavens! I never came across such a morbid lot in my life. I believe they like it."

Clara could be heard marshalling the brood up the stairs.

"You'd better go up," said Maggie persuasively.

"I'd better go to the works-I'm no use here. What time is it?"

"After eleven. I think you'd better go up."

"Does she ask for me?"

"Oh yes. All the time sometimes. But she forgets for a bit."

"Well, anyhow I must wash myself and change my collar."

"All right. Wash yourself, then."

"How is she now?"

"She isn't taking anything."

When Edwin nervously pushed open the bedroom door, the room seemed to be crowded. Over the heads of clustering children towered Clara and Albert. As soon as the watchful Albert caught sight of Edwin, he made a conspiratorial sign and hurried to the door, driving Edwin out again.

"Didn't know you were here," Edwin muttered.

"I say," Albert whispered. "Has she made a will?"

"I don't know."

The bedroom door half opened, and Clara in her shabby morning dress glidingly joined them.

"He doesn't know," said Albert to Clara.

Clara's pretty face scowled a little as she asked sharply and resentfully:

"Then who does know?"

"I should ha' thought you'd know," said Edwin.

"Me! I like that! She hasn't spoken to me for months, has she, Albert? And she was always frightfully close about all these things."

"About what things?"

"Well, you know."

It was a fact. Auntie Hamps had never discussed her own finance, or her testamentary dispositions, with anybody. And nobody had ever dared to mention such subjects to her.

"Don't you think you'd better ask her?" said Clara. "Albert thinks you ought."

"No, I don't," said Edwin, with curt disdain.

"Well, then I shall," Albert decided.

"So long as you don't do it while I'm there!" Edwin said menacingly. "If you want to ask people about their wills you ought to ask them before they're actually dying. Can't you see you can't worry her about her will now?"

He was intensely disgusted. He thought of Mrs. Hamps's bed, and of Tertius Ingpen's bed, and of the woman at dead of night in Ingpen's room, and of Minnie's case; and the base insensibility of Albert and Clara made him feel sick. He wondered whether any occasion would ever have solemnity enough for them to make them behave with some distinction, some grandeur. For himself, if he could have secured a fortune by breathing one business word to Auntie Hamps just then, he would have let the fortune go.

"There's nothing more to be said," Clara murmured.

In the glance of both Clara and Albert Edwin saw hatred and envy. Clara especially had never forgiven him for preventing their father from pouring money into that sieve, her husband, nor for Hilda's wounding tongue, nor for his worldly success. And they both suspected that either Maggie or Auntie Hamps had told him of Albert's default in the payment of interest, and so fear was added to their hatred and envy.

They all entered the bedroom, the children having been left alone only a few seconds. Rupert, wearing a new blue overcoat with gilt buttons, had partially scrambled on to the bed; the pale veiled hands of Auntie Hamps could be seen round his right hand; Rupert had grown enormous, and had already utterly forgotten the time when he was two years old. The others, equally altered, stood two on either side of the bed, – Bert and young Clara to the right, and Amy and Lucy to the left. Lucy was crying and Amy was benignantly wiping her eyes. Bert, a great lump of a boy, was to leave school at Christmas, but he was still ranked with the other children as a child. Young Clara sharply and Bert heavily turned round to witness the entrance of their elders.

"Oh! Here's Uncle Edwin!"

"Edwin!"

"Yes, Auntie!"

The moral values of the room were instantly changed by the tone in which Auntie Hamps had murmured "Edwin." All the Benbows knew, and Edwin himself knew, that a personage of supreme importance in Auntie Hamps's eyes had come into the scene. The Benbows became secondary, and even Auntie Hamps's grasp of Rupert's hand loosened, and, having already kissed her, the child slipped off the bed. Edwin approached, and over the heads of the children, and between the great darkening curtains, he could at last see the face of the dying woman like a senile doll's face amid the confusion of wrappings and bedclothes. The deep-set eyes seemed to burn beneath the white forehead and sparse grey hair; the cheeks, still rounded, were highly flushed over a very small part of their surface; the mouth, always open, was drawn in, and the chin, still rounded like the cheeks, protruded. The manner of Auntie Hamps's noisy breathing, like the puzzled gaze of her eyes, indicated apprehension of the profoundest, acutest sort.

"Eh!" said she, in a somewhat falsetto voice, jerky and excessively feeble. "I thought-I'd-lost you." Her hand was groping about.

"No, no," said Edwin, leaning over between young Clara and Rupert.

"She's feeling for your hand, Edwin," said Clara.

He quickly took her hot, brittle fingers; they seemed to cling to his for essential support.

"Have you-been to the works?" Auntie Hamps asked the question as though the answer to it would end all trouble.

"No," he said. "Not yet."

"Eh! That's right! That's right!" she murmured, apparently much impressed by a new proof of Edwin's wisdom.

"I've had a sleep."

"What?"

"I've been having a sleep," he repeated more loudly.

"Eh! That's right! That's right… I'm so glad-the children have been to see me… Amy-did you kiss me?" Auntie Hamps looked at Amy hard, as if for the first time.

"Yes, Auntie."

And then Amy began to cry.

"Better take them away," Edwin suggested aside to Albert. "It's as much as she can stand. The parson's only just gone, you know."

Albert, obedient, gave the word of command, and the room was full of movement.

"Eh, children-children!" Auntie Hamps appealed.

Everybody stood stockstill, gazing attendant.

"Eh, children, bless you all for coming. If you grow up-as good as your mother-it's all I ask-all I ask… Your mother and I-have never had a cross word-have we, mother?"

"No, auntie," said Clara, with a sweet, touching smile that accentuated the fragile charm of her face.

"Never-since mother was-as tiny as you are."

Auntie Hamps looked up at the ceiling during a few strained breaths, and then smiled for an instant at the departing children, who filed out of the room. Rupert loitered behind, gazing at his mother. The mere contrast between the infant so healthy and the dying old woman was pathetic to Edwin. Clara, with an exquisite reassuring gesture and smile picked up the stout Rupert and kissed him and carried him to the door, while Auntie Hamps looked at mother and son, ecstatic.

"Edwin!"

"Yes, Auntie?"

They were alone now. She had not loosed his hand. Her voice was very faint, and he bent over her still lower in the alcove of the curtains, which seemed to stretch very high above them.

"Have you heard from Hilda?"

"Not yet. By the second post, perhaps."

"It's about George's eyes-isn't it?"

"Yes."

"She's done quite right-quite right. It's just-like Hilda. I do hope-and pray-the boy's eyesight-is safe."

"Oh yes!" said Edwin. "Safe enough."

"You really think so?" She had the air of hanging on his words.

He nodded.

"What a blessing!" She sighed deeply with relief.

Edwin thought:

"I believe her relations must have been her passion." And he was impressed by the intensity of that passion.

"Edwin!"

"Yes, Auntie."

"Has-that girl-gone yet?"

"Who?" he questioned, and added more softly: "Minnie d'you mean?" His own voice sounded too powerful, too healthy and dominating, in comparison with her failing murmurs.

Auntie Hamps nodded. "Yes-Minnie."

"Not yet."

"She's going?"

"Yes."

"Because I can't trust-Maggie-to see to it."

"I'll see to it."

"Has she done-the silvers-d'you know?"

"She's doing them," answered Edwin, who thought it would be best to carry out the deception with artistic completeness.

"She needn't have her dinner before she goes."

"No?"

"No." Auntie Hamps's face and tone hardened. "Why should she?"

"All right."

"And if she asks-for her wages-tell her-I say there's nothing due-under the circumstances."

"All right, Auntie," Edwin agreed, desperate.

Maggie, followed by Clara, softly entered the room. Auntie Hamps glanced at them with a certain cautious suspicion, as though one or other of them was capable of thwarting her in the matter of Minnie. Then her eyes closed, and Edwin was aware of a slackening of her hold on his hand. The doctor, who called half an hour later, said that she might never speak again, and she never did. Her last conscious moments were moments of satisfaction.

Edwin slowly released his hand.

"Where's Albert?" he asked Clara, merely for the sake of saying something.

"He's taking the children home, and then he's going to the works. He ought to have gone long ago. There's a dreadful upset there."

"I suppose there is," said Edwin, who had forgotten that the fly-wheel accident must have almost brought Albert's manufactory to a standstill. And he wondered whether it was the family instinct, or anxiety about Auntie Hamps's will, that had caused Albert to absent himself from business on such a critical morning.

"I ought to go too," he muttered, as a full picture of a lithographic establishment masterless swept into his mind.

"Have you telegraphed to Hilda?" Clara demanded.

"No."

"Haven't you!"

"What's the use?"

"Well, I should have thought you would."

"Oh, no!" he said, falsely mild. "I shall write." He was immensely glad that Hilda was not present in the house to complicate still further the human equation.

Maggie was silently examining the face obscured in the gloom of the curtains.

Instead of remaining late that night at the works, Edwin came back to the house before six o'clock. He had had word that the condition of Tertius Ingpen was still unchanged. Clara had gone home to see to her children's evening meal. Maggie sat alone in the darkened bedroom, where Auntie Hamps, her features a mere pale blur between the over-arching curtains, still withheld the secret of her soul's reality from the world. Even in the final unconsciousness there was something grandiose which lingered from her crowning magnificent deceptions and obstinate effort to safeguard the structure of society. The sublime obstinacy of the woman had transformed hypocrisy into a virtue, and not the imminence of the infinite unknown had sufficed to make her apostate to the steadfast principles of her mortal career.

"What about to-night?" Edwin asked.

"Oh! Clara and I will manage."

There was a tap at the door. Edwin opened it. Minnie, abashed but already taking courage, stood there blinking with a letter in her hand. "Ah!" he breathed. Hilda's scrawling calligraphy was on the envelope.

The letter read: "Darling boy. George has influenza, Charlie says. Temp. 102 anyway. So of course he can't go out to-morrow. I knew this morning there was something wrong with him. Janet and Charlie send their love. Your ever loving wife, Hilda."

He was exceedingly uplifted and happy and exhausted. Hilda's handwriting moved him. The whole missive was like a personal emanation from her. It lived with her vitality. It fought for the mastery of the household interior against the mysterious, far-reaching spell of the dying woman. "Your loving wife." Never before, during their marriage, had she written a phrase so comforting and exciting. He thought: "My faith in her is never worthy of her." And his faith leaped up and became worthy of her.

"George has got influenza," he said indifferently.

"George! But influenza's very serious for him, isn't it?" Maggie showed alarm.

"Why should it be?"

"Considering he nearly died of it at Orgreaves'!"

"Oh! Then! … He'll be all right."

But Maggie had put fear into Edwin, – a superstitious fear. Influenza indeed might be serious for George. Suppose he died of it. People did die of influenza. Auntie Hamps-Tertius Ingpen-and now George! … All these anxieties mingling with his joy in the thought of Hilda! And all the brooding rooms of the house waiting in light or in darkness for a decisive event!

"I must go and lie down," he said. He could contain no more sensations.

"Do," said Maggie.

IV

At two o'clock in the afternoon of Auntie Hamps's funeral, a procession consisting of the following people moved out of the small, stuffy dining-room of her house across the lobby into the drawing-room: – the Rev. Christian Flowerdew, the Rev. Guy Cliffe (second minister), the aged Reverend Josiah Higginbotham (supernumerary minister), the chapel and the circuit stewards, the doctor, Edwin, Maggie, Clara, Bert and young Clara (being respectively the eldest nephew and the eldest niece of the deceased), and finally Albert Benbow; Albert came last because he had constituted himself the marshal of the ceremonies. In the drawing-room the coffin with its hideous brass plate and handles lay upon two chairs, and was covered with white wreaths. At the head of the coffin was placed a small table with a white cloth; on the cloth a large inlaid box (in which Auntie Hamps had kept odd photographs), and on the box a black book. The drawn blinds created a beautiful soft silvery gloom which solemnised everything and made even the clumsy carving on the coffin seem like the finest antique work. The three ministers ranged themselves round the small table; the others stood in an irregular horseshoe about the coffin, nervous, constrained, and in dread of catching each other's glances. Mr. Higginbotham, by virtue of his age, began to read the service, and Auntie Hamps became "she," "her," and "our sister," – nameless. In the dining-room she had been the paragon of all excellences, – in the drawing-room, packed securely and neatly in the coffin, she was a sinner snatched from the consequences of sin by a miracle of divine sacrifice.

The interment thus commenced was the result of a compromise between two schools of funebrial manners sharply divergent. Edwin, immediately after the demise, had become aware of influences far stronger than those which had shaped the already half-forgotten interment of old Darius Clayhanger into a form repugnant to him. Both Albert and Clara, but especially Albert, had assumed an elaborate funeral, with a choral service at the Wesleyan chapel, numerous guests, a superb procession, and a substantial and costly meal in the drawing-room to conclude. Edwin had at once and somewhat domineeringly decided: no guests whatever outside the family, no service at the chapel, every rite reduced to its simplest. When asked why, he had no logical answer. He soon saw that it would be impossible not to invite a minister and the doctor. He yielded, intimidated by the sacredness of custom. Then not only the Wesleyan chapel but its Sunday School sent dignified emissaries, who so little expected a No to their honorific suggestions that the No was unuttered and unutterable. Certain other invitations were agreed upon. The Sunday School announced that it would "walk," and it prepared to "walk."

All the emissaries spoke of Auntie Hamps as a saint; they all averred with restrained passion that her death was an absolutely irreparable loss to the circuit; and their apparent conviction was such that Edwin's whole estimate of Auntie Hamps and of mankind was momentarily shaken. Was it conceivable that none of these respectable people had arrived at the truth concerning Auntie Hamps? Had she deceived them all? Or were they simply rewarding her in memory for her ceaseless efforts on behalf of the safety of society?

Edwin stood like a rock against a service in the Wesleyan Chapel. Clara cunningly pointed out to him that the Wesleyan Chapel would be heated for the occasion, whereas the chapel at the cemetery, where scores of persons had caught their deaths in the few years of its existence, was never heated. His reply showed genius. He would have the service at the house itself. The decision of the chief mourner might be regretted, and was regretted, but none could impugn its correctitude, nor its social distinction; some said approvingly that it was 'just like' Edwin. Thenceforward the arrangements went more smoothly, the only serious difficulty being about the route to the cemetery. Edwin was met by a saying that "the last journey must be the longest," which meant that the cortège must go up St. Luke's Square and along the Market Place past the Town Hall and the Shambles, encountering the largest number of sightseers, instead of taking the nearest way along Wedgwood Street. Edwin chose Wedgwood Street.

In the discussions, Maggie was neutral, thus losing part of the very little prestige which she possessed. Clara and Albert considered Edwin to be excessively high-handed. But they were remarkably moderate in criticism, for the reason that no will had been found. Maggie and Clara had searched the most secret places of the house for a will, in vain. All that they had found was a brass and copper paper-knife wrapped in tissue-paper and labelled "For Edwin, with Auntie's love," and a set of tortoise-shell combs equally wrapped in tissue-paper and labelled "For Maggie, with Auntie's love." Naught for Clara! Naught for the chicks.

Albert (who did all the running about) had been to see Mr. Julian Pidduck, the Wesleyan solicitor, who had a pew at the back of the chapel and was famous for invariably arriving at morning service half an hour late. Mr. Pidduck knew of no will. Albert had also been to the Bank-that is to say, the Bank, at the top of St. Luke's Square, whose former manager had been a buttress of Wesleyanism. The new manager (after nearly eight years he was still called the "new" manager, because the previous manager, old Lovatt, had been in control for nearly thirty years), Mr. Breeze, was ill upstairs on the residential floor with one of his periodic attacks of boils; the cashier, however, had told Albert that certain securities, but no testament, were deposited at the Bank; he had offered to produce the securities, but only to Edwin, as the nearest relative. Albert had then secretly looked up the pages entitled "Intestates' Estates" in Whitaker's Almanac and had discovered that whereas Auntie Hamps being intestate, her personal property would be divided equally between Edwin, Maggie, and Clara, her real property would go entirely to Edwin. (Edwin also had secretly looked up the same pages.) This gross injustice nearly turned Albert from a Tory into a Land Laws reformer. It accounted for the comparative submissiveness of Clara and Albert before Edwin's arrogance as the arbiter of funerals. They hoped that, if he was humoured, he might forego his rights. They could not credit, and Edwin maliciously did not tell them, that no matter what they did he was incapable of insisting on such rights.