These Twain

Footsteps were heard on the lawn behind the swing. Ingpen slid down and Edwin jumped down. Johnnie Orgreave was approaching.

"Hsh!" Ingpen warned him.

"What are you chaps-"

"Hsh!" Ingpen was more imperative.

All three men walked away out of earshot of the yard, towards the window of the drawing-room-Johnnie Orgreave mystified, the other two smiling but with spirits disturbed. Johnnie heard the story in brief; it was told to him in confidence, as Tertius Ingpen held firmly that eavesdroppers, if they had any honour left, should at least hold their tongues.

II

When Tertius Ingpen was introduced to Hilda in the drawing-room, the three men having entered by the French window, Edwin was startled and relieved by the deportment of the orientalist who thought that the proper place for women was behind the veil. In his simplicity he had assumed that the orientalist would indicate his attitude by a dignified reserve. Not at all! As soon as Ingpen reached Hilda's hospitable gaze his whole bearing altered. He bowed, with a deferential bending that to an untravelled native must have seemed exaggerated; his face was transformed by a sweet smile; his voice became the voice of a courtier; he shook hands with chivalrous solicitude for the fragile hand shaken. Hilda was pleased by him, perceiving that this man was more experienced in the world than any of the other worldly guests. She liked that. Ingpen's new symptoms were modified after a few moments, but when he was presented to Mrs. Fearns he reproduced them in their original intensity, and again when he was introduced to Vera Cheswardine.

"Been out without your cap?" Hilda questioned Edwin, lifting her eyebrows. She said it in order to say something, for the entry of this ceremonious personage, who held all the advantages of the native and of the stranger, had a little overpowered the company.

"Only just to see after Mr. Ingpen's machine. Give me your cap, Mr. Ingpen. I'll hang it up."

When he returned to the drawing-room from the hatstand Ingpen was talking with Janet Orgreave, whom he already knew.

"Have you seen George, Edwin?" Hilda called across the drawing-room.

"Hasn't he gone to bed?"

"That's what I want to know. I haven't seen him lately."

Everyone, except Johnnie Orgreave and a Swetnam or so, was preoccupied by the thought of children, by the thought of this incalculable and disturbing race that with different standards and ideals lived so mysteriously in and among their adult selves. Nothing was said about the strange disappearance of Bert Benbow, but each woman had it in mind, and coupled it with Hilda's sudden apprehension concerning George, and imagined weird connections between the one and the other, and felt forebodings about children nearer to her own heart. Children dominated the assemblage and, made restless, the assemblage collectively felt that the moment for separation approached. The At Home was practically over.

Hilda rang the bell, and as she did so Johnnie Orgreave winked dangerously at Edwin, who with sternness responded. He wondered why he should thus deceive his wife, with whom he was so deliciously intimate. He thought also that women were capricious in their anxieties, and yet now and then their moods-once more by the favour of hazard-displayed a marvellous appositeness. Hilda had no reason whatever for worrying more about George on this night than on any other night. Nevertheless this night happened to be the night on which anxiety would be justified.

"Ada," said Hilda to the entering servant. "Have you seen Master George?"

"No'm," Ada replied, almost defiantly.

"When did you see him last?"

"I don't remember, m'm."

"Is he in bed?"

"I don't know, m'm."

"Just go and see, will you?"

"Yes'm."

The company waited with gentle, concealed excitement for the returning Ada, who announced:

"His bedroom door's locked, m'm."

"He will lock it sometimes, although I've positively forbidden him to. But what are you to do?" said Hilda, smilingly to the other mothers.

"Take the key away, obviously," Tertius Ingpen answered the question, turning quickly and interrupting his chat with Janet Orgreave.

"That ought not to be necessary," said Fearns, as an expert father.

Ada departed, thankful to be finished with the ordeal of cross-examination in a full drawing-room.

"Don't you know anything about him?" Hilda addressed Johnnie Orgreave suddenly.

"Me? About your precious? No. Why should I know?"

"Because you're getting such friends, you two."

"Oh! Are we?" Johnnie said carelessly. Nevertheless he was flattered by a certain nascent admiration on the part of George, which was then beginning to be noticeable.

A quarter of an hour later, when several guests had gone, Hilda murmured to Edwin:

"I'm not easy about that boy. I'll just run upstairs."

"I shouldn't," said Edwin.

But she did. And the distant sound of knocking, and "George, George," could be heard even down in the hall.

"I can't wake him," said Hilda, back in the drawing-room.

"What do you want to wake him for, foolish girl?" Edwin demanded.

She enjoyed being called "foolish girl," but she was not to be tranquillised.

"Do you think he is in bed?" she questioned, before the whole remaining company, and the dread suspicion was out!

After more journeys upstairs, and more bangings, and essays with keys, and even attempts at lock-picking, Hilda announced that George's room must be besieged from its window. A ladder was found, and interested visitors went into the back-entry, by the kitchen, to see it reared and hear the result. Edwin thought that the cook in the kitchen looked as guilty as he himself felt, though she more than once asseverated her belief that Master George was safely in bed. The ladder was too short. Edwin mounted it, and tried to prise himself on to the window-sill, but could not.

"Here, let me try!" said Ingpen, joyous.

Ingpen easily succeeded. He glanced through the open window into George's bedroom, and then looked down at the upturned faces, and Ada's apron, whitely visible in the gloom.

"He's here all right."

"Oh, good!" said Hilda. "Is he asleep?"

"Yes."

"He deserves to be wakened," she laughed.

"You see what a foolish girl you've been," said Edwin affectionately.

"Never mind!" she retorted. "You couldn't get on the window. And you were just as upset as anybody. Do you think I don't know? Thank you, Mr. Ingpen."

"Is he really there?" Edwin whispered to Ingpen as soon as he could.

"Yes. And asleep, too!"

"I wonder how the deuce he slipped in. I'll bet anything those servants have been telling a lot of lies for him. He pulls their hair down and simply does what he likes with them."

Edwin was now greatly reassured, but he could not quite recover from the glimpse he had had of George's capacity for leading a double life. Sardonically he speculated whether the heavenly penknife would be brought to his notice by its owner, and if so by what ingenious method.

III

The final sensation was caused by the arrival, in a nearly empty drawing-room, of plump Maggie, nervous, constrained, and somewhat breathless.

"Bert has turned up," she said. "Clara thought I'd better come along and tell you. She felt sure you'd like to know."

"Well, that's all right then," Hilda replied perfunctorily, indicating that Clara's conceited assumption of a universal interest in her dull children was ridiculous.

Edwin asked:

"Did the kid say where he'd been?"

"Been running about the streets. They don't know what's come over him-because, you see, he'd actually gone to bed once. Albert is quite puzzled; but he says he'll have it out of him before he's done."

"When he does get it out of him," thought Edwin again, "there will be a family row and George will be indicted as the corrupter of innocence."

Maggie would not stay a single moment. Hilda attentively accompanied her to the hall. The former and the present mistress of the house kissed with the conventional signs of affection. But the fact that one had succeeded the other seemed to divide them. Hilda was always lying in wait for criticism from Maggie, ready to resent it; Maggie divined this and said never a word. The silence piqued Hilda as much as outspoken criticism would have annoyed her. She could not bear it.

"How do you like my new stair-carpet?" she demanded defiantly.

"Very nice! Very nice, I'm sure!" Maggie replied without conviction. And added, just as she stepped outside the front-door, "You've made a lot of changes." This was the mild, good-natured girl's sole thrust, and it was as effective as she could have wished.

Everybody had gone except the two Orgreaves and Tertius Ingpen.

"I don't know about you, Johnnie, but I must go," said Janet Orgreave when Hilda came back.

"Hold on, Jan!" Johnnie protested. "You're forgetting those duets you are to try with Ingpen."

"Really?"

"Duets!" cried Hilda, instantly uplifted and enthusiastic. "Oh, do let's have some music!"

Ingpen by arrangement with the Orgreaves had brought some pianoforte duets. They were tied to his bicycle. He was known as an amateur of music. Edwin, bidding Ingpen not to move, ran out into the garden to get the music from the bicycle. Johnnie ran after him through the French window.

"I say!" Johnnie called in a low voice.

"What's up?" Edwin stopped for him.

"I've a piece of news for you. About that land you've set your heart on, down at Shawport! … It can be bought cheap-at least the old man says it's cheap-whatever his opinion may be worth. I was telling him about your scheme for having a new printing works altogether. Astonishing how keen he is! If I'd had a plan of the land, I believe he'd have sat down and made sketches at once."

Johnnie (with his brother Jimmie) was in partnership with old Orgreave as an architect.

"'Set my heart on?'" Edwin mumbled, intimidated as usual by a nearer view of an enterprise which he had himself conceived and which had enchanted him from afar. "'Set my heart on?'"

"Well, had you, or hadn't you?"

"I suppose I had," Edwin admitted. "Look here, I'll drop in and see you to-morrow morning."

"Right!"

Together they detached the music from the bicycle, and, as Edwin unrolled it and rolled it the other side out to flatten it, they returned silently through the dark wind-stirred garden into the drawing-room.

There were now the two Orgreaves, Tertius Ingpen, and Hilda and Edwin in the drawing-room.

"We will now begin the evening," said Ingpen, as he glanced at the music.

All five were conscious of the pleasant feeling of freedom, intimacy, and mutual comprehension which animates a small company that by self-selection has survived out of a larger one. The lateness of the hour aided their zest. Even the more staid among them perceived as by a revelation that it did not in fact matter, once in a way, if they were tired and inefficient on the morrow, and that too much regularity of habit was bad for the soul. Edwin had brought in a tray from the dining-room, and rearranged the chairs according to Hilda's caprice, and was providing cushions to raise the bodies of the duet-players to the proper height. Janet began to excuse herself, asserting that if there was one member of her family who could not play duets, she was that member, that she had never seen this Dvorak music before, and that if they had got her brother Tom, or her elder sister Marion, or even Alicia, – etc., etc.

"We are quite accustomed to these formal preliminaries from duet-players, Miss Orgreave," said Ingpen. "I never do them myself, – not because I can play well, but because I am hardened. Now shall we start? Will you take the treble or the bass?"

Janet answered with eager modesty that she would take the bass.

"It's all one to me," said Ingpen, putting on spectacles; "I play either equally badly. You'll soon regret leaving the most important part to me. However…! Clayhanger, will you turn over?"

"Er-yes," said Edwin boldly. "But you'd better give me the tip."

He knew a little about printed music, from his experiences as a boy when his sisters used to sing two-part songs. That is to say, he had a vague idea "where a player was" on a page. But the enterprise of turning over Dvorak's "Legends" seemed to him critically adventurous. Dvorak was nothing but a name to him; beyond the correct English method of pronouncing that name, he had no knowledge whatever of the subject in hand.

Then the performance of the "Legends" began. Despite halts, hesitations, occasional loud insistent chanting of the time, explanations between the players, many wrong notes by Ingpen, and a few wrong notes by Janet, and one or two enormous misapprehensions by Edwin, the performance was a success, in that it put a spell on its public, and permitted the loose and tender genius of Dvorak to dominate the room.

"Play that again, will you?" said Hilda, in a low dramatic voice, at the third "Legend."

"We will," Ingpen answered. "And we'll play it better."

Edwin had the exquisite sensation of partially comprehending music whose total beauty was beyond the limitations of his power to enjoy-power, nevertheless, which seemed to grow each moment. Passages entirely intelligible and lovely would break at intervals through the veils of general sound and ravish him. All his attention was intensely concentrated on the page. He could hear Ingpen breathing hard. Out of the corner of his eye he was aware of Johnnie Orgreave on the sofa making signs to Hilda about drinks, and pouring out something for her, and something for himself, without the faintest noise. And he was aware of Ada coming to the open door and being waved away to bed by her mistress.

"Well," he said, when the last "Legend" was played. "That's a bit of the right sort-no mistake." He was obliged to be banal and colloquial.

Hilda said nothing at all. Johnnie, who had waited for the end in order to strike a match, showed by two words that he was an expert listener to duets. Tertius Ingpen was very excited and pleased. "More tricky than difficult, isn't it-to read?" he said privately to his fellow-performer, who concurred. Janet also was excited in her fashion. But even amid the general excitement Ingpen had to be judicious.

"Delightful stuff, of course," he said, pulling his beard. "But he's not a great composer you know, all the same."

"He'll do to be going on with," Johnnie murmured.

"Oh, yes! Delightful! Delightful!" Ingpen repeated warmly, removing his spectacles. "What a pity we can't have musical evenings regularly!"

"But we can!" said Hilda positively. "Let's have them here. Every week!"

"A great scheme!" Edwin agreed with enthusiasm, admiring his wife's initiative. He had been a little afraid that the episode of George had upset her for the night, but he now saw that she had perfectly recovered from it.

"Oh!" Ingpen paused. "I doubt if I could come every week. I could come once a fortnight."

"Well, once a fortnight then!" said Hilda.

"I suppose Sunday wouldn't suit you?"

Edwin challenged him almost fiercely:

"Why won't it suit us? It will suit us first-class."

Ingpen merely said, with quiet delicacy:

"So much the better… We might go all through the Mozart fiddle sonatas."

"And who's your violinist?" asked Johnnie.

"I am, if you don't mind." Ingpen smiled. "If your sister will take the piano part."

Hilda exclaimed admiringly:

"Do you play the violin, too, Mr. Ingpen?"

"I scrape it. Also the tenor. But my real instrument is the clarinet." He laughed. "It seems odd," he went on with genuine scientific unegotistic interest in himself. "But d'you know I thoroughly enjoy playing the clarinet in a bad orchestra whenever I get the chance. When I happen to have a free evening I often wish I could drop in at a theatre and play rotten music in the band. It's better than nothing. Some of us are born mad."

"But Mr. Ingpen," said Janet Orgreave anxiously, after this speech had been appreciated. "I have never played those Mozart sonatas."

"I am glad to hear it," he replied with admirable tranquillity. "Neither have I. I've often meant to. It'll be quite a sporting event. But of course we can have a rehearsal if you like."

The project of the musical evenings was discussed and discussed until Janet, having vanished silently upstairs, reappeared with her hat and cloak on.

"I can go alone if you aren't ready, Johnnie," said she.

Johnnie yawned.

"No. I'm coming."

"I also must go-I suppose," said Ingpen.

They all went into the hall. Through the open door of the dining-room, where one gas-jet burned, could be seen the rich remains of what had been "light refreshments" in the most generous interpretation of the term.

Ingpen stopped to regard the spectacle, fingering his beard.

"I was just wondering," he remarked, with that strange eternal curiosity about himself, "whether I'd had enough to eat. I've got to ride home."

"Well, what have you had?" Johnnie quizzed him.

"I haven't had anything," said Ingpen, "except drink."

Hilda cried.

"Oh! You poor sufferer! I am ashamed!" And led him familiarly to the table.

IV

Edwin was kept at the front-door some time by Johnnie Orgreave, who resumed as he was departing the subject of the proposed new works, and maintained it at such length that Janet, tired of waiting on the pavement, said that she would walk on. When he returned to the dining-room, Ingpen and Hilda were sitting side by side at the littered table, and the first words that Edwin heard were from Ingpen:

"It cost me a penknife. But it was dirt cheap at the price. You can't expect to be the Almighty for much less than a penknife." Seeing Edwin, he added with a nonchalant smile: "I've told Mrs. Clayhanger all about the answer to prayer. I thought she ought to know."

Edwin laughed awkwardly, saying to himself:

"Ingpen, my boy, you ought to have thought of my position first. You've been putting your finger into a rather delicate piece of mechanism. Supposing she cuts up rough with me afterwards for hiding it from her all this time! … I'm living with her. You aren't."

"Of course," Ingpen added. "I've sworn the lady to secrecy."

Hilda said:

"I knew all the time there was something wrong."

And Edwin thought:

"No, you didn't. And if he hadn't happened to tell you about the thing, you'd have been convinced that you'd been alarming yourself for nothing."

But he only said, not certain of Hilda's humour, and anxious to placate her:

"There's no doubt George ought to be punished."

"Nothing of the kind! Nothing of the kind!" Ingpen vivaciously protested. "Why, bless my soul! The kids were engaged in a religious work. They were busy with someone far more important than any parents." And after a pause, reflectively: "Curious thing, the mentality of a child! I doubt if we understand anything about it."

Hilda smiled, but said naught.

"May I enquire what there is in that bottle?" Ingpen asked.

"Benedictine."

"Have some, Mr. Ingpen."

"I will if you will, Mrs. Clayhanger."

Edwin raised his eyebrows at his wife.

"You needn't look at me!" said Hilda. "I'm going to have some."

Ingpen smacked his lips over the liqueur.

"It's a very bad thing late at night, of course. But I believe in giving your stomach something to think about. I never allow my digestive apparatus to boss me."

"Quite right, Mr. Ingpen."

They touched glasses, without a word, almost instinctively.

"Well," thought Edwin, "for a chap who thinks women ought to be behind the veil…!"

"Be a man, Clayhanger, and have some."

Edwin shook his head.

With a scarcely perceptible movement of her glass, Hilda greeted her husband, peeping out at him as it were for a fraction of a second in a glint of affection. He was quite happy. They were all seated close together, Edwin opposite the other two at the large table. The single gas-jet, by the very inadequacy with which it lighted the scene of disorder, produced an effect of informal homeliness and fellowship that warmed the heart. Each of the three realised with pleasure that a new and promising friendship was in the making. They talked at length about the Musical Evenings, and Edwin said that he should buy some music, and Hilda asked him to obtain a history of music that Ingpen described with some enthusiasm, and the date of the first evening was settled, – Sunday week. And after uncounted minutes Ingpen remarked that he presumed he had better go.

"I have to cycle home," he announced once more.

"To-night?" Hilda exclaimed.

"No. This morning."

"All the way to Axe?"

"Oh, no! I'm three miles this side of Axe. It's only six and a half miles."

"But all those hills!"

"Pooh! Excellent for the muscles of the calf."

"Do you live alone, Mr. Ingpen?"

"I have a sort of housekeeper."

"In a cottage?"

"In a cottage."

"But what do you do-all alone?"

"I cultivate myself."

And Hilda, in a changed tone, said:

"How wise you are!"

"Rather inconvenient, being out there, isn't it?" Edwin suggested.

"It may be inconvenient sometimes for my job. But I can't help that. I give the State what I consider fair value for the money it pays me, and not a grain more. I've got myself to think about. There are some things I won't do, and one of them is to live all the time in a vile hole like the Five Towns. I won't do it. I'd sooner be a blooming peasant on the land."

As he was a native he had the right to criticise the district without protest from other natives.

"You're quite right as to the vile hole," said Hilda with conviction.

"I don't know-" Edwin muttered. "I think old Bosley isn't so bad."

"Yes. But you're an old stick-in-the-mud, dearest," said Hilda. "Mr. Ingpen has lived away from the district, and so have I. You haven't. You're no judge. We know, don't we, Mr. Ingpen?"

When, Ingpen having at last accumulated sufficient resolution to move and get his cap, they went through the drawing-room to the garden, they found that rain was falling.

"Never mind!" said Ingpen, lifting his head sardonically in a mute indictment of the heavens. "I have my mack."

Edwin searched out the bicycle and brought it to the window, and Hilda stuck a hat on his head. Leisurely Ingpen clipped his trousers at the ankle, and unstrapped a mackintosh cape from the machine, and folded the strap. Leisurely he put on the cape, and gazed at the impenetrable heavens again.

"I can make you up a bed, Mr. Ingpen."

"No, thanks. Oh, no, thanks! The fact is, I rather like rain."

Leisurely he took a box of fusees from his pocket, and lighted his lamp, examining it as though it contained some hidden and perilous defect. Then he pressed the tyres.

"The back tyre'll do with a little more air," he said thoughtfully. "I don't know if my pump will work."

It did work, but slowly. After which, gloves had to be assumed.

"I suppose I can get out this way. Oh! My music! Never mind, I'll leave it."

Then with a sudden access of ceremoniousness he bade adieu to Hilda; no detail of punctilio was omitted from the formality.

"Good-bye. Many thanks."

"Good-bye. Thank you!"

Edwin preceded the bicyclist and the bicycle round the side of the house to the front-gate at the corner of Hulton Street and Trafalgar Road.

In the solemn and chill nocturnal solitude of rain-swept Hulton Street, Ingpen straddled the bicycle, with his left foot on one raised pedal and the other on the pavement; and then held out a gloved hand to Edwin.

"Good-bye, old chap. See you soon."

Much good-will and appreciation and hope was implicit in that rather casual handshake.

He sheered off strongly down the dark slope of Hulton Street in the rain, using his ankles with skill in the pedal-stroke. The man's calves seemed to be enormously developed. The cape ballooned out behind his swiftness, and in a moment he had swerved round the flickering mournful gas-lamp at the bottom of the mean new street and was gone.

CHAPTER VI

HUSBAND AND WIFE

I

"I'm upstairs," Hilda called in a powerful whisper from the head of the stairs as soon as Edwin had closed and bolted the front-door.

He responded humorously. He felt very happy, lusty, and wideawake. The evening had had its contretemps, its varying curve of success, but as a whole it was a triumph. And, above all, it was over, – a thing that had had to be accomplished and that had been accomplished, with dignity and effectiveness. He walked in ease from room to lighted empty room, and the splendid waste of gas pleased him, arousing something royal that is at the bottom of generous natures. In the breakfast-room especially the gas had been flaring to no purpose for hours. "Her room, her very own room!" He wondered indulgently when, if ever, she would really make it her own room by impressing her individuality upon it. He knew she was always meaning to do something drastic to the room, but so far she had got no further than his portrait. Child! Infant! Wayward girl! … Still the fact of the portrait on the mantelpiece touched him.