These Twain Part 64

"You'd better ask her.... Also she likes to save a fire. She can't bear to have two fires going as well as the kitchen-range. I'll bring tea in. It's all ready."

Maggie went away.

Edwin looked round the shabby Victorian room. A length of featureless linoleum led from the door to the table. This carpet-protecting linoleum exasperated him. It expressed the very spirit of his aunt's house. He glanced at the pictures, the texts, the beady and the woolly embroideries, the harsh chairs, and the magnificent morocco exteriors of the photograph-alb.u.ms in which Auntie Hamps kept the s.h.i.+ny portraits of all her relatives, from grand-nieces back to the third and fourth generation of ancestors. And a feeling of desolation came over him. He thought: "How many days shall I have to spend in this deadly hole?" It was extremely seldom that he visited King Street, and when he did come the house was brightened to receive him. He had almost forgotten what the house really was. And, suddenly thrown back into it at its most lugubrious and ign.o.ble, after years of the amenities of Trafalgar Road, he was somehow surprised that that sort of thing had continued to exist, and he resented that it should have dared to continue to exist. He had a notion that, since he had left it behind, it ought to have perished.

He cautiously lifted the table and carried it to the hearthrug. Then he sat down in the easy-chair, whose special property, as he remembered, was slowly and inevitably to slide the sitter forward to the hard edge of the seat; and he put his feet inside the fender. In the grate a small fire burned between two fire-bricks. He sneezed. Maggie came in with a tray.

"Are you cold?" she asked, seeing the new situation of the table.

"Am I cold!" Edwin repeated.

"Well," said Maggie, "I always think your rooms are so hot."

Edwin seized the small serviceable tongs which saved the wear of the large tongs matching the poker and the shovel, and he dragged both firebricks out of the grate.

"No coal here, I suppose!" he exclaimed gloomily, opening the black j.a.panned coal-scuttle. "Oh! Corn in Egypt!" The scuttle was full of coal. He threw on to the fire several profuse shovelfuls of best household nuts which had cost sixteen s.h.i.+llings a ton even in that district of cheap coal.

"Well," Maggie murmured, aghast. "It's a good thing it's you. If it had been anybody else--"

"What on earth does she do with her money?" he muttered.

Shrugging her shoulders, Maggie went out again with an empty tray.

"No servant, either?" Edwin asked, when she returned.

"She's sitting with Auntie."

"Must I go up before I have my tea?"

"No. She won't have heard you come."

There was a grilled mutton-chop and a boiled egg on the crowded small table, with tea, bread-and-b.u.t.ter, two rounds of dry bread, some cakes, and jam.

"Which are you having--egg or chop?" Edwin demanded as Maggie sat down.

"Oh! They're both for you."

"And what about you?"

"I only have bread-and-b.u.t.ter as a rule."

Edwin grunted, and started to eat.

"What's supposed to be the matter with her?" he enquired.

"It seems it's congestion of the lung, and thickened arteries. It wouldn't matter so much about the lung being congested, in itself, only it's the strain on her heart."

"I see."

"Been in bed all day, I suppose."

"No, she would get up. But she had to go back to bed at once. She had a collapse."

"Hm!"

He could not think of anything else to say.

"Haven't got to-night's _Signal_, have you?"

"Oh no!" said Maggie, astonished at such a strange demand. "Hilda get off all right?"

"Yes, they went by the nine train."

"She told me that she should, if she could manage it. I expect Mrs.

Tams was up there early."

Edwin nodded, recalling with bitterness certain moments of the early morning. And then silence ensued. The brother and sister could not keep the conversation alive. Edwin thought: "We know each other intimately, and we respect each other, and yet we cannot even conduct a meal together without awkwardness and constraint. Has civilisation down here got no further than that?" He felt sorry for Maggie, and also kindly disdainful of her. He glanced at her furtively and tried to see in her the girl of the far past. She had grown immensely older than himself.

She was now at home in the dreadful Hamps environment. True, she had an income, but had she any pleasures? It was impossible to divine what her pleasures might be, what she thought about when she lay in bed, to what hours she looked forward. First his father, then himself, and lastly Auntie Hamps had subjugated her. And of the three Auntie Hamps had most ruthlessly succeeded, and in the shortest time. And yet--Edwin felt--even Auntie Hamps had not quite succeeded, and the original individual still survived in Maggie and was silently critical of all the phenomena which surrounded her and to which she had apparently submitted. Realising this, Edwin ceased to be kindly disdainful.

Towards the end of the meal a heavy foot was heard on the stairs.

"Minnie!" Maggie called.

After shuffling and hesitation the sitting-room door was pushed ever so little open.

"Yes, miss," said someone feebly.

"Why have you left Mrs. Hamps? Do you need anything?"

"Missis made me go, miss," came the reply, very loosely articulated.

"Come in and take your bread," said Maggie, and aside to Edwin: "Auntie's at it again!"

After another hesitation the door opened wide, and Minnie became visible. She was rather a big girl, quite young, fat, too fair, undecided, obviously always between two minds. Her large ap.r.o.n, badly-fitting over the blue frock, was of a dubious yellow colour. She wore spectacles. Behind her spectacles she seemed to be blinking in confusion at all the subtle complexities of existence. She advanced irregularly to the table with a sort of nervous desperation, as if saying: "I have to go through this ordeal." Edwin could not judge whether she was about to smile or about to weep.

"Here's your bread," said Maggie, indicating the two rounds of dry bread. "I've left the dripping on the kitchen table for you."

Edwin, revolted, perceived of course in a flash what the life of Minnie was under the regime of Auntie Hamps.

"Thank ye, miss."

He noticed that the veiled voice was that of a rather deaf person.

Blus.h.i.+ng, Minnie took the bread, and moved away. Just as she reached the door, she gave a great sob, followed by a number of little ones; and the bread fell on to the carpet. She left it there, and vanished, still violently sobbing.

Edwin, spellbound, stopped masticating. A momentary sensation almost of horror seized him. Maggie turned pale, and he was glad that she turned pale. If she had shown by no sign that such happenings were unusual, he would have been afraid of the very house itself, of its mere sinister walls which seemed to shelter sick tyrants, miserable victims, and enchanted captives; he would have begun to wonder whether he himself was safe in it.

"What next?" muttered Maggie, intimidated but plucky, rising and following Minnie. "Just go up to Auntie, will you?" she called to Edwin over her shoulder. "She oughtn't really to be left alone for a minute."