These Twain Part 74

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 bra.s.s and copper paper-knife wrapped in tissue-paper and labelled "For Edwin, with Auntie's love," and a set of tortoise-sh.e.l.l 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 b.u.t.tress 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 cas.h.i.+er, 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 ent.i.tled "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.

While the ministers succeeded each other in the conduct of the service, each after his different manner, Edwin scrutinised the coffin, and the wreaths, and the cards inscribed with mournful ecstatic affection that nestled amid the flowers, and the faces of the audience, and his thought was: "This will soon be over now!" Beneath his gloomy and wearied expression he was unhappy, but rather hopeful and buoyant, looking forward to approaching felicity. His reflections upon the career of Auntie Hamps were kind, and utterly uncritical; he wondered what her spirit was doing in that moment; the mystery enn.o.bled his mind. Yet he wondered also whether the ministers believed all they were saying, why the superintendent minister read so well and prayed with such a lack of distinction, how much the wreaths cost, whether the Sunday School deputation had silently arrived in the street, and why men in overcoats and hatless looked so grotesque in a room, and why when men and women were a.s.sembled on a formal occasion the women always clung together.

Probing his left-hand pocket, he felt a letter. He had received it that morning from Hilda. George was progressing very well, and Charlie Orgreave had actually brought the oculist with his apparatus to see him at Charlie's house. Charlie would always do impossibilities for Hilda.

It was Charlie who had once saved George's life--so Hilda was convinced.

The oculist had said that George's vision was normal, and that he must not wear gla.s.ses, but that on account of a slight weakness he ought to wear a shade at night in rooms which were lighted from the top. In a few days Hilda and George would return. Edwin antic.i.p.ated their arrival with an impatience almost gleeful, so anxious was he to begin the new life with Hilda. Her letters had steadily excited him. He pictured the intimacies of their reunion. He saw her ideally. His mind rose to the finest manifestations of her individuality, and the inconveniences of that individuality grew negligible. Withal, he was relieved that George's illness had kept her out of Bursley during the illness, death, and burial of Auntie Hamps. Had she been there, he would have had three persons to manage instead of two, and he could not have a.s.serted himself with the same freedom.

And then there was a sound of sobbing outside the door. Minnie, sharing humbly but obstinately in the service according to her station, had broken down in irrational grief at the funeral of the woman whose dying words amounted to an order for her execution. Edwin, though touched, could have smiled; and he felt abashed before the lofty and incomprehensible marvels of human nature. Several outraged bent heads twisted round in the direction of the door, but the minister intrepidly continued with the final prayer. Maggie slipped out, the door closed, and the sound of sobbing receded.

After the benediction Albert resumed full activity, while the remainder of the company stared and cleared their throats without exchanging a word. The news that the hea.r.s.e and coaches had not arrived helped them to talk a little. The fault was not that of the undertaker, but Edwin's. The service had finished too soon, because in response to Mr.

Flowerdew's official question: "How much time do you give me?" he had replied: "Oh! A quarter of an hour," whereas Albert the organiser had calculated upon half an hour. The representatives of the Sunday School were already lined up on the pavement and on the opposite pavement and in the roadway were knots of ragged, callously inquisitive spectators.

The vehicles could at length be described on the brow of Church Street.

They descended the slope in haste. The four mutes nipped down with agility from the hammer cloths, hung their greasy top-hats on the ornamental spikes of the hea.r.s.e, and sneaked grimly into the house. In a second the flowers were s.h.i.+fted from the coffin, and with startling accomplished swiftness the coffin was darted out of the room without its fraudulent bra.s.s handles even being touched, and down the steps into the hea.r.s.e, and the flowers replaced. The one hitch was due to Edwin attempting to get into the first coach instead of waiting for the last one. Albert, putting on his new black gloves, checked him. The ministers and the doctor had to go first, the chapel officials next, and the chief mourners--Edwin, Albert, and Bert--had the third coach. The women stayed behind at the door, frowning at the murmurous crowd of shabby idlers. Albert gave a supreme glance at the vehicles and the walkers, made a signal, and joined Edwin and Bert in the last coach, b.u.t.toning his left hand glove. Edwin would only hold his gloves in his hand. The cortege moved. Rain was threatening, and the street was muddy.

At the cemetery it was raining, and the walkers made a string of glistening umbrellas; only the paid mutes had no umbrellas. Near the gates, under an umbrella, stood a man with a protruding chin and a wiry grey moustache. He came straight to Edwin and shook hands. It was Mr.

Breeze, the Bank manager. His neck, enveloped in a white m.u.f.fler, showed a large excrescence behind, and he kept his head very carefully in one position.

He said, in his defiant voice:

"I only had the news this morning, and I felt that I should pay the last tribute of respect to the deceased. I had known her in business and privately for many years."

His greeting of Albert was extremely reserved, and Albert showed him a meek face. Albert's overdraft impaired the cordiality of their relations.

"Sorry to hear you've got your old complaint!" said Edwin, astounded at this act of presence by the terrible bank-manager.

Vehicles, by some munic.i.p.al caprice, were forbidden to enter the cemetery. And in the rain, between the stone-perpetuated great names of the town's history--the Boultons, the Lawtons, the Blackshaws, the Beardmores, the Dunns, the Longsons, the Hulmes, the Suttons, the Greenes, the Gardiners, the Calverts, the Dawsons, the Brindleys, the Baineses, and the Woods--the long procession preceded by Auntie Hamps tramped for a third of a mile along the asphalted path winding past the chapel to the graveside. And all the way Mr. Breeze, between Edwin and Albert, with Bert a yard to the rear, talked about boils, and Edwin said "Yes" and "No," and Albert said nothing. And at the graveside the three ministers removed their flat round hats and put on skull-caps while skilfully holding their umbrellas aloft.

And while Mr. Flowerdew was reading from a little book in the midst of the large encircling bare-headed crowd with umbrellas, and the gravedigger with absolute precision accompanied his words with three castings of earth into the hollow of the grave, Edwin scanned an adjoining tombstone, which marked the family vault of Isaac Plant, a renowned citizen. He read, chased in gilt letters on the Aberdeen granite, the following lines:

"Sacred to the memory of Adelaide Susan, wife of Isaac Plant, died 27th June, 1886, aged 47 years. And of Mary, wife of Isaac Plant, died 11th December, 1890, aged 33 years. And of Effie Harriet, wife of Isaac Plant, died 9th December, 1893, aged 27 years. _The Flower Fadeth_.

And of Isaac Plant, died 9th February, 1894, aged 79 years. _I know that my Redeemer Liveth_." And the pa.s.sionate career of the aged and always respectable rip seemed to Edwin to have been a wondrous thing.

The love of life was in Isaac Plant. He had risen above death again and again. After having detested him, Edwin now liked him on the tombstone.

And even in that hilly and bleak burial ground, with melancholy sepulchral parties and white wind-blown surplices dotted about the sodden slopes, and the stiff antipathetic mult.i.tude around the pit which held Auntie Hamps, and the terrible seared, harsh, grey-and-brown industrial landscape of the great smoking amphitheatre below, Edwin felt happy in the sensation of being alive and of having to contend with circ.u.mstance. He was inspired by the legend of Isaac Plant and of Auntie Hamps, who in very different ways had intensely lived. And he thought in the same mood of Tertius Ingpen, who was now understood to be past hope. If he died,--well, he also had intensely lived! And he thought too of Hilda, whose terrific vitality of emotion had caused him such hours of apprehension and exasperation. He exulted in all those hours. It seemed almost a pity that, by reason of his new-found understanding of Hilda, such hours would not recur. His heart flew impatiently forward into the future, to take up existence with her again.

When the ministers pocketed their skull-caps and resumed their hats, everybody except Edwin appeared to feel relief in turning away from the grave. Faces brightened; footsteps were more alert. In the drawing-room Edwin had thought: "It will soon be over," and every face near him was saying, "It is over"; but now that it was over Edwin had a pang of depression at the eagerness with which all the mourners abandoned Auntie Hamps to her strange and desolate grave amid the sinister population of corpses.

He lingered, glancing about. Mr. Breeze also lingered, and then in his downright manner squarely approached Edwin.

"I'll walk down with ye to the gates," said he.

"Yes," said Edwin.

Mr. Breeze moved his head round with care. Their umbrellas touched. In front of them the broken units of a procession tramped in disorder, chatting.

"I've got that will for you," said Mr. Breeze in a confidential tone.

"What will?"

"Mrs. Hamps's."

"But your cas.h.i.+er said there was no will at your place!"

"My cas.h.i.+er doesn't know everything," remarked Mr. Breeze. And in his voice was the satisfied grimness of a true native of the district, and a Longshaw man. "Mrs. Hamps deposited her will with me as much as a friend as anything else. The fact is I had it in my private safe. I should have called with it this morning, but I knew that you'd be busy, and what's more I can't go paying calls of a morning. Here it is."

Mr. Breeze drew an endorsed foolscap envelope from the breast pocket of his overcoat, and handed it to Edwin.

"Thanks," said Edwin very curtly. He could be as native as any native.

But beneath the careful imperturbability of his demeanour he was not unagitated.

"I've got a receipt for you to sign," said Mr. Breeze. "It's slipped into the envelope. Here's an ink-pencil."

Edwin comprehended that he must stand still in the rain and sign a receipt for the will as best he could under an umbrella. He complied.

Mr. Breeze said no more.

"Good-bye, Mr. Breeze," said Edwin at the gates.

"Good-day to you, Mr. Clayhanger."

The coaches trotted down the first part of the hill into Bursley but as soon as the road became a street, with observant houses on either side, the pace was reduced to a proper solemnity. Edwin was amused and even uplifted by the thought of the will in his pocket; his own curiosity concerning it diverted him; he antic.i.p.ated complications with a light heart. To Albert he said nothing on the subject, which somehow he could not bring himself to force bluntly into the conversation. Albert talked about his misfortunes at the works, including the last straw of the engine accident; and all the time he was vaguely indicating reasons--the presence of Bert in the carriage necessitated reticence--for his default in the interest-paying to Maggie. At intervals he gave out that he was expecting much from Bert, who at the New Year was to leave school for the works--and Bert taciturn behind his spectacles had to seem loyal, earnest, and promising.

As they approached the Clowes Hospital Edwin saw a nurse in a bonnet, white bow, and fluent blue robe emerging from the shrubbery and putting up an umbrella. She looked delightful,--at once modest and piquant, until he saw that she was the night-nurse; and even then she still looked delightful. He thought: "I'd no idea she could look like that!"

and began to admit to himself that perhaps in his encounters with her in the obscurity of the night he had not envisaged the whole of her personality. Involuntarily he leaned forward. Her eyes were scintillant and active, and they caught his. He saluted; she bowed, with a most inviting, challenging and human smile.

"There's Nurse Faulkner!" he exclaimed to Albert. "I must just ask her how Ingpen is. I haven't heard to-day." He made as if to lean out of the window.

"But you can't stop the procession!" Albert protested in horror, unable to conceive such an enormity.

"I'll just slip out!" said Edwin, guiltily.

He spoke to the coachman and the coach halted.

In an instant he was on the pavement.

"Drive on," he instructed the coachman, and to the outraged Albert: "I'll walk down."

Nurse Faulkner, apparently flattered by the proof of her attractiveness, stopped and smiled upon the visitor. She had a letter in one hand.

"Good afternoon, nurse."

"Good morning, Mr. Clayhanger. I'm just going out for my morning walk before breakfast," said she.

She had dimples. These dimples quite ignored Edwin's mourning and the fact that he had quitted a funeral in order to speak to her.

"How is Mr. Ingpen to-day?" Edwin asked. He could read on the envelope in her hand the words "The Rev."