Front matter (continued 10)

"Yes, he is rather that way inclined," said Janet.

"I wanted him to take Ladderedge at once, even if we didn't move into it. Anyhow we couldn't move into it immediately, because of the repairs and things. They'll take a fine time, I know. We can get it for sixty pounds a year. And what's sixty pounds more or less to Edwin? It's no more than what the rent of this house would be. But no, he wouldn't! He must see where he stands with this house before he does anything else! You can't alter him, you know!"

The door was cautiously pushed, and Ingpen entered.

"So you're discussing her!" he said, low, with a satiric grin.

"Discussing who?" Hilda sharply demanded.

"You know."

"Tertius," said Hilda, "you're worse than a woman."

He giggled with delight.

"I suppose you mean that to be very severe."

"If you want to know, we were talking about Ladderedge."

"So apologise!" added Janet, sitting up.

Ingpen's face straightened, and he began to tap his teeth with his thumb.

"Curious! That's just what I came in about. I've been trying to get a chance to tell you all the evening. There's somebody else after Ladderedge, a man from Axe. He's been to look over it twice this week. I thought I'd tip you the wink."

Hilda stood erect, putting her shoulders back.

"Have you told Edwin?" she asked very curtly.

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"He said it was only a dodge of the house-agent's to quicken things up."

"And do you think it is?"

"Well, I doubt it," Ingpen answered apprehensively. "That's why I wanted to warn you--his lordship being what he is."

Voices, including Edwin's, could be heard in the hall.

"Here, I'm not going to be caught conspiring with you!" Ingpen whispered. "It's more than my place is worth." And he departed.

The voices receded, and Hilda noiselessly shut the door. Everything was now changed for her by a tremendous revulsion. The beating of the measure of the mazurka seemed horrible and maddening. Her thought was directed upon Edwin with the cold fury of which only love is capable. It was not his fault that some rival was nibbling at Ladderedge, but it was his fault that Ladderedge should still be in peril. She saw all her grandiose plan ruined. She felt sure that the rival was powerful and determined, and that Edwin would let him win, either by failing to bid against him, or by mere shilly-shallying. Ladderedge was not the only suitable country residence in the county; there were doubtless many others; but Ladderedge was just what she wanted, and--more important with her--it had become a symbol. She had a misgiving that if they did not get Ladderedge they would remain in Trafalgar Road, Bursley, for ever and ever. Yet, angry and desperate though she was, she somehow did not accuse and arraign Edwin--any more than she would have accused and arraigned a climate. He was in fact the climate in which she lived. A moment ago she had said: "You can't alter him!" But now all the energy of her volition cried out that he must be altered.

"My girl," she said, turning to Janet, "do you think you can stand a scene to-morrow?"

"A scene?" Janet repeated the word guardedly. The look on Hilda's face somewhat alarmed her.

"Between Edwin and me. I'm absolutely determined that we shall take Ladderedge, and I don't care how much of a row we have over it."

"It isn't as bad as all that?" Janet softly murmured, with her skill to soothe.

"Yes it is!" said Hilda violently.

"I was wondering the other day, after one of your letters," Janet proceeded gently, "why after all you were so anxious to go into the country. I thought you wanted Edwin to be on the Town Council or something of that kind. How can he do that if you're right away at a place like Stockbrook?"

"So I should like him to be on the Town Council! But all I really want is to get him away from his business. You don't know, Janet!" she spoke bitterly, and with emotion. "Nobody knows except me. He'll soon be the slave of his business if he keeps on. Oh! I don't mean he stays at nights at it. He scarcely ever does. But he's always thinking about it. He simply can't bear being a minute late for it, everything must give way to it,--he takes that as a matter of course, and that's what annoys me, especially as there's no reason for it, seeing how much he trusts Big James and Simpson. I believe he'd do anything for Big James. He'd listen to Big James far sooner than he'd listen to me.... Disagreeable fawning old man, and quite stupid. Simpson isn't so bad. I tell you Edwin only looks on his home as a nice place to be quiet in when he isn't at the works. I've never told him so, and I don't think he suspects it, but I will tell him one of these days. He's very good, Edwin is, in all the little things. He always tries to be just. But he isn't just in the big thing. He's most frightfully unjust. I sometimes wonder where he imagines I come in. Of course he'd do any mortal thing for me--except spare half a minute from the works.... What do I care about money? I don't care that much about money. When there's money I can spend it, that's all. But I'd prefer to be poor, and him to be rude and cross and impatient--which he scarcely ever is--than have this feeling all the time that it's the works first, and everything else second. I don't mind for myself--no, really I don't, at least very little! But I do mind for him. I call it humiliating for a man to get like that. It puts everything upside down. Look at Stephen Cheswardine, for instance. There's a pretty specimen! And Edwin'll be as bad as him soon."

"But everyone says how fond Stephen is of his wife!"

"And isn't Edwin fond of me? Stephen Cheswardine despises his wife--only he can't do without her. That's all. And he treats her accordingly. And I shall be the same."

"Oh! Hilda!'

"Yes, I shall. Yes, I shall. But I won't have it. I'd as lief be married to a man like Charles Fearns. He isn't a slave to his business anyhow. I shall get Edwin further away. And when I've got him away I shall see he doesn't go to the works on Saturdays, too. I've quite made up my mind about that. And if he isn't on the Town Council he can be on the County Council--that's quite as good, I hope!"

Never before had Hilda spoken so freely to anyone, not even to Janet. Fierce pride had always kept her self-contained. But now she had no feeling of shame at her outburst. Tears stood in her eyes--and yet she faced Janet, making no effort to hide them.

"My dear!" breathed the deprecating Janet, shocked out of her tepid virginal calm by a revelation of conjugal misery such as had never been vouchsafed to her. She was thinking: "How can the poor thing face her guests after this? Everybody will see that something's happened--it will be awful! She really ought to think of her position."

There was a silence.

The door opened with a sharp sound, and Hilda turned away her head as from the suddenly visible mouth of a cannon. The music could be heard plainly, and beneath it the dull shuffling of feet on the bare boards of the drawing-room. Manna Höst came in radiant, followed by Edwin and Tom Swetnam.

"Well, Hilda," said Edwin, with a slight timid constraint. "I've got rid of your house for you. Here are the deluded victims."

"We have seen every corner of it, Mrs. Clayhanger," said Manna Höst, enthusiastically. "It is lovely. But how can you wish to leave it? It is so practical!"

Perceiving the agitation of Hilda's face, Edwin added in a lower voice to his wife:

"I thought I wouldn't say anything until it was settled, for fear you might be let in for a disappointment. He'll buy it if I leave fifteen hundred on mortgage. So I shall. But of course he wanted her to have a good look at it first."

"How unfair I am!" thought Hilda, as she made some banal remark to Miss Höst. "Don't I know I can always rely on him?"

"Mr. Clayhanger made us promise not to----" Miss Höst began to explain.

"It was just like him!" Hilda interrupted, smiling.

She had a strong desire to jump at Edwin and kiss him. She was saved. Her grandiose plan would proceed. The house sold, Edwin was bound to secure Ladderedge Hall against no matter what rival; and he would do it. But it was the realisation of her power over her husband that gave her the profoundest joy.

About an hour later, when everyone felt that the party was over, the guests, reluctant to leave, and excited afresh by the news that the house had changed hands during the revel, were all assembled in the drawing-room. A few were seated on the chairs which, with the tables, had been pushed against the walls. George had squatted on the carpet rolled up into the hearth, where the fire was extinct; he was not wearing his green shade. The rest were grouped around Manna Höst in the middle of the room.

Miss Höst, the future mistress of the abode, was now more than ever the centre of regard. Apparently as fresh as at the start, and picking delicately at a sweet biscuit, the flushed blonde stood answering questions about her views on England and especially on the Five Towns. She was quite sure of herself, and utterly charming in her confidence. Annunciata Fearns envied her acutely. The other women were a little saddened by the thought of all the disillusions that inevitably lay before her. It was touching to see her glance at Tom Swetnam, convinced that she understood him to the core, and in him all the psychology of his sex.

"Everybody knows," she was saying, "that the English are the finest nation, and I think the Five Towns are much more English than London. That's why I adore the Five Towns. You do not know how English you are here. It makes me laugh because you are so English, and you do not know it. I love you."

"You're flattering us," said Stephen Cheswardine, enchanted with the girl.

Everybody waited in eager delight for her next words. Such tit-bits of attention and laudation did not often fall to the district. It occurred to people that after all the local self-conceit might not be entirely unjustified.

"Ah!" Manna pouted. "But you have spots!"

"Spots!" repeated young Paul Swetnam, amid a general laugh.

She turned to him: "You said there were no spots on Knype Football Club, did you not? Well, there is a spot on you English. You are dreadfully exasperating to us Danes. Oh, I mean it! You are exasperating because you will not show your feelings!"

"Tom, that must be one for you," said Charlie Fearns.

"We're too proud," said Dr. Stirling.

"No," replied Manna maliciously. "It is not pride. You are afraid to show your feelings. It is because you are cowards--in that!"

"We aren't!" cried Hilda, inspired. And yielding to the temptation which had troubled her incessantly ever since she left the boudoir, she put her arms round Edwin and kissed him. "So there!"

"Loud applause!" said young George on the roll of carpet. He said it kindly, but with a certain superiority, perhaps due to the facts that he was wearing a man's "long trousers" for the first time that night, and that he regarded himself as already almost a Londoner. There was some handclapping.

Edwin's eyes had seduced Hilda. Looking at them surreptitiously she had suddenly recalled another of his tricks,--tricks of goodness. When she had told him one evening that Minnie was prematurely the mother of a girl, he had said: "Well, we'll put £130 in the savings bank for the kid." "£130? Whatever are you talking about?" "£130. I received it from America this very morning as ever is." And he showed her a draft on Brown, Shipley & Co. He said 'from America.' He was too delicate to say 'from George Cannon.' It had been a triumphant moment for him. And now, as before them all Hilda held him to her, the delicious thought that she had power over him, that she was shaping the large contours of his existence, made her feel solemn in her bliss. And yet simultaneously she was reflecting with a scarcely perceptible hardness: "It's each for himself in marriage after all, and I've got my own way." And then she noticed the whiteness of his shirt-front under her chin, and that reminded her of his mania for arranging his linen according to his own ideas in his own drawer, and the absurd tidiness of his linen; and she wanted to laugh.

"What a romance she has made of my life!" thought Edwin, confused and blushing, as she loosed him. And though he looked round with affection at the walls which would soon no longer be his, the greatness of the adventure of existence with this creature, to him unique, and the eternal expectation of some new ecstasy, left no room in his heart for a regret.

He caught sight of Ingpen alone in a corner by the piano, nervously stroking his silky beard. The memory of the secret woman in Ingpen's room came back to him. Without any process of reasoning, he felt very sorry for both of them, and he was aware of a certain condescension in himself towards Ingpen.