These Twain Part 34

"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. Flus.h.i.+ng and scowling she said:

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

The faithful creature had for days past at odd moments been a.s.sisting 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 compet.i.tions on the ground that they were simply a crude appeal to the famous "gambling instincts" of mankind and especially of Englishmen!

Albert had reb.u.t.ted the charge with virtuous warmth, insisting on the skill involved in word-choosing, and insisting also on the historical freedom of the inst.i.tutions 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 att.i.tude. 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 inept.i.tude 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 cus.h.i.+on 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.

"Janet wants to consult you," Hilda added; and even Hilda appeared to regard him as a strong saviour.

He thought:

"After all, then, I'm not the born idiot she'd like to make out. Now we're getting at her real opinion of me!"

"It's only about father's estate," said Janet.

"Why? Hasn't he made a will?"

"Oh yes! He made a will over thirty years ago. He left everything to mother and made her sole executor or whatever you call it. Just like him, wasn't it? ... D'you know that he and mother never had a quarrel, nor anything near a quarrel?"

"Well," Edwin, nodding appreciatively, answered with an informed masculine air. "The law provides for all that. Tom will know. Did your mother make a will?"

"No. Dear thing! She would never have dreamt of it."

"Then letters of administration will have to be taken out," said Edwin.

Janet began afresh:

"Father was talking of making a new will two or three months ago. He mentioned it to Tom. He said he should like you to be one of the executors. He said he would sooner have you for an executor than anybody."

An intense satisfaction permeated Edwin, that he should have been desired as an executor by such an important man as Osmond Orgreave. He felt as though he were receiving compensation for uncounted detractions.

"Really?" said he. "I expect Tom will take out letters of administration, or Tom and Johnnie together; they'll make better executors than I should."

"It doesn't seem to make much difference who looks after it and who doesn't," Hilda sharply interrupted. "When there's nothing to look after."

"Nothing to look after?" Edwin repeated.

"Nothing to look after!" said Hilda in a firm and clear tone.

"According to what Janet says."

"But surely there must be something!"

Janet answered mildly:

"I'm afraid there isn't much."

It was Hilda who told the tale. The freehold of Lane End House belonged to the estate, but there were first and second mortgages on it, and had been for years. Debts had always beleaguered the Orgreave family. A year ago money had apparently been fairly plentiful, but a great deal had been spent on re-furnis.h.i.+ng. Jimmie had had money, in connection with his sinister marriage; Charlie had had money in connection with his practice, and Tom had enticed Mr. Orgreave into the Palace Porcelain Company. Mr. Orgreave had given a guarantee to the Bank for an overdraft, in exchange for debentures and shares in that company. The debentures were worthless, and therefore the shares also, and the bank had already given notice under the guarantee. There was an insurance policy--one poor little insurance policy for a thousand pounds--whose capital well invested might produce an income of twelve or fifteen s.h.i.+llings a week; but even that policy was lodged as security for an overdraft on one of Osmond's several private banking accounts. There were many debts, small to middling. The value of the Orgreave architectural connection was excessively dubious--so much of it had depended upon Osmond Orgreave himself. The estate might prove barely solvent; on the other hand it might prove insolvent; so Johnnie, who had had it from Tom, had told Janet that day, and Janet had told Hilda.

"Your father was let in for the Palace Porcelain Company?" Edwin breathed, with incredulous emphasis on the initial p's. "What on earth was Tom thinking of?"

"That's what Johnnie wants to know," said Janet. "Johnnie was very angry. They've had some words about it."

Except for the matter of the Palace Porcelain Company, Edwin was not surprised at the revelations, though he tried to be. The more closely he examined his att.i.tude for years past to the Orgreave household structure, the more clearly he had to admit that a suspicion of secret financial rottenness had never long been absent from his mind--not even at the period of renewed profuseness, a year or two ago, when furniture-dealers, painters, and paperhangers had been enriched. His resentment against the deceased charming Osmond and also against the affectionate and blandly confident mother, was keen and cold. They had existed, morally, on Janet for many years; monopolised her, absorbed her, aged her, worn her out, done everything but finish her,--and they had made no provision for her survival. In addition to being useless, she was defenceless, helpless, penniless, and old; and she s.h.i.+vered now that the warmth of her parents' affection was withdrawn by death.

"You see," said Janet. "Father was so transparently honest and generous."

Edwin said nothing to this sincere outburst.

"Have you got any money at all, Janet?" asked Hilda.

"There's a little household money, and by a miracle I've never spent the ten-pound note poor dad gave me on my last birthday."

"Well," said Edwin, sardonically imaging that ten-pound note as a sole defence for Janet against the world. "Of course Johnnie will have to allow you something out of the business--for one thing."

"I'm sure he will, if he can," Janet agreed. "But he says it's going to be rather tight. He wants us to clear out of the house at once."

"Take my advice and don't do it," said Edwin. "Until the house is let or sold it may as well be occupied by you as stand empty--better in fact, because you'll look after it."

"_That's_ right enough, anyway," said Hilda, as if to imply that by a marvellous exception a man had for once in a while said something sensible.