The little party which Mrs. Hancock invited to receive officially the news of Edith's engagement were all "delighted to be able to accept," even though the notice was so short. Dinner-giving at Heathmoor, though during the summer croquet and lawn-tennis parties, with iced coffee and caviare sandwiches, were of almost daily occurrence—indeed, sometimes they clashed—was chiefly confined to Saturday evening, when no sense of early trains on the morrow made writing on the wall to check conviviality. Mrs. Hancock knew that quite well, though in her notes to her guests she had said, "if by any chance you happen to be disengaged on Tuesday," and would have been much surprised if any previous engagement had forced any one to be obliged to decline. Personally, she would have liked to get together a somewhat larger gathering, for Ellis said there was no doubt about a sufficiency of asparagus, but Lind invariably set his hatchet-like face against a party of more than eight, which he considered a sufficiently festive number. In the earlier years of Lind's iron rule Mrs. Hancock had sometimes invited a larger party, but on these occasions the service had been so slow, the wine so sparingly administered, and Lind's demeanour, if she remonstrated next morning, so frozen and fatalistic, so full of scarcely veiled threats about his not giving satisfaction, that by degrees he had schooled her into submission, and she was beginning to consider that eight was the pleasantest number of guests, and a quarter-to the most suitable hour, which also was Lind's choice. So on this occasion there were the engaged couple and herself, the clergyman, Mr. Martin, and his wife, an eminent and solid solicitor, Mr. Dobbs with Mrs. Dobbs, and Mr. Beaumont, one of the few men in Heathmoor who was not actively engaged all day in making money, partly accounted for by the fact that he had a great deal already, partly that he would have certainly lost it instead. Idle, however, he was not, for he was an entomologist of fanatical activity. He spent most summer evenings in spreading intoxicating mixtures of beer and sugar on tree-trunks to stupefy unwary lepidoptera, most of the night in visiting these banquets with a lantern, and taking into custody his inebriated guests, and the entire day in beating copses for caterpillars, in running over noonday heaths with a green butterfly net, and in killing and setting the trophies of his chase. For a year or two Mrs. Hancock had spread vague snares about him for Edith's sake, feigning an unfounded interest in the crawlings of caterpillars and the dormancy of chrysalides, but her hunting had been firmly and successfully thwarted by his gaunt sister, who devoted her untiring energy to the destruction of winged insects and the preservation of her brother's celibacy. She never went out into Heathmoor society, though she occasionally played hostess at singularly uncomfortable dinners at home. These entertainments were not very popular, since escaped caterpillars sometimes came to the party, a smell of camphor and insects pervaded the house, and Miss Beaumont began yawning punctually at ten o'clock, until the last guest had departed. Then she killed some more moths. But her brother was the nucleus of Heathmoor dinners, and hostesses starting with him built up agreeable gatherings round him, for, though Heathmoor was not one atom more snobbish than other settlements of the kind, it was idle to pretend that the nephew of an earl, brother of a viscountess, and member of the Royal Entomological Society was not a good basis on which to build a social evening. He had a charming tenor voice which he had not the slightest notion how to use; and Heathmoor considered that, had he chosen to go on the operatic stage, there would not have been so much talk about Caruso; while the interest with which he listened to long accounts of household difficulties with fiends in the shape of housemaids was certainly beyond all praise. At home he managed the whole affairs of theménagefrom seeing the cook in the morning to giving his dog his supper in the evening, since his sister, when not occupied with his moths, was absorbed in Roman history.
Mr. Martin and his wife were the first to arrive, and, as usual, the vicar took up his place on the hearthrug with the air of temporary host. This, indeed, was his position at Mrs. Hancock's, for it was he whom she always left in charge of the men in the dining-room when the ladies left them to their wine, with instructions as to where the cigarettes were, and not to stop too long. It was his business also, at which he was adept, to be trumpeter in general of the honour and glory of his hostess, and refer to any late acquisition of hers in the way of motor-cars, palings, or rambler roses. In this position of host he naturally took precedence of everybody else, and hismot"Round collars are more than coronets" when conducting the leading lady to the dining-room in the teeth, you may say, of a baronet, dazzled Heathmoor for weeks whenever they thought of it. His wife, a plump little Dresden shepherdess, made much use of the ejaculation, "Only fancy!" and at her husband's naughtier sallies exclaimed, "Alfred, Alfred!" while she attempted to cover her face with a very small hand to hide her laughter. Soon they were joined by Mr. and Mrs. Dobbs, and shortly after by Mr. Beaumont, who looked, as was indeed the case, as if he had been running.
Mrs. Hancock's dinners were always admirable, and since Mrs. Williams kept a book of all her menus there was no risk of guests being regaled with dishes they had lately partaken of at the house. The conversation, if anything, was slightly less varied, since, apart from contemporaneous happenings that required comment, the main topics of interest were rather of the nature of hardy perennials. Mr. Beaumont's sister was always inquired after, and usually the opinion of his uncle with regard to the latest iniquity of the Radical government. Weather, gardens, croquet were questions that starred the conversational heavens with planet-like regularity, moving in their appointed orbits, and Mr. Dobbs filled such intervals as he could spare from the mastication of his dinner with its praise.
"Delicious glass of sherry, Mrs. Hancock," he said, very early in the proceedings. "You can't buy sherry like that now."
Mr. Martin's evening clothes were not cut so as to suggest his profession. He based his influence not on his clothes, but on his human sympathy with the joys and sorrows of his friends. "There is a time to mourn, to weep, to repent," he said once in a sermon; "but undoubtedly there is a time to be as jolly as a sand-boy." He did not approve of teetotalism; any one could be a teetotaller. You are more of an example by partaking of the good things of this world in due moderation. He drank half his glass of sherry.
"I always tell Mrs. Hancock that her wine would cause a Rechabite to recant," he observed gaily.
Mrs. Martin covered her face with her hand and gave a little spurt of laughter. This was an old joke, but social gaiety would speedily become a thing of the past if we never appeared to be amused at familiar witticisms.
"Alfred, Alfred!" she said. "How can you? Is not Alfred wicked?"
Conversation became general.
"And have you begun croquet yet this year, Mr. Holroyd?" asked Mrs. Dobbs. "I suppose you will carry off all the prizes again, as you always do. I wish you would make Mr. Dobbs take to it instead of spending all his time catching slugs in the garden. So much better for him."
"Do not listen to Mrs. Dobbs, Holroyd!" cried the vicar. "I use my authority to forbid your listening to Mrs. Dobbs. The slugs spoil the flowers, and, like a greedy fellow, I want every flower in Heathmoor for Trinity Sunday."
"Alfred! Alfred!" said his wife.
"Yes, my dear, and you will never guess what Mrs. Hancock has just promised me. While she is at Bath I may order Ellis to send a basket of her best flowers up to the church every Sunday. No limitation over the basket, mind you. It shall be a clothes-basket! And as for best flowers—well, all I can say is that any one who hasn't seen Mrs. Hancock's tulips this year doesn't know what tulips can be."
Mr. Dobbs, who ate with his head perpendicularly above his plate, looked up at his wife.
"I told you salmon could be got, my dear!" he said.
"You shall have it," she said, "but don't blame me for the fishmonger's book."
Mr. Martin laughed joyfully.
"My wife tells me I mustn't play golf so much," he said, "because it gives me such an appetite that I eat her out of hearth and home. But I tell her it is one of my parochial duties. How can I get to know the young fellows of the place unless I join in their amusements? They will never tell me their difficulties and temptations unless they have found me in sympathy with their joys. And if when I am playing with them there is trouble in the long grass, and occasionally a little word, a wee naughty little word slips out—("Alfred, Alfred!")—you may be sure that I never seem to hear it."
"Well, I do call that tact!" said Mrs. Hancock genially. "But you must take a little cucumber with your salmon, Mr. Martin. This is the first cucumber Ellis has sent me in."
"A gourd—a positive gourd," said Mr. Martin, taking a slice of this remarkable vegetable. "Jonah and his whale could have sat under it."
"Is not Alfred wicked?" said his wife.
"And you are really off to Bath the day after to-morrow?" asked he. "And are going to drive all the way in your car? Though, of course, with a car like yours it is no distance at all. Sometimes I see your car on one horizon, and then, whizz, you are out of sight again over the other. But no noise, no dust, no smell. But the speed limit, Mrs. Hancock? I am tempted to say no speed limit, either."
He refrained from this audacious suggestion, and continued—
"Such an excellent steady fellow, too, you have in Denton. I always see my friend Denton coming in during the Psalms after he has taken your car home, and if he has to leave again in the middle of the sermon, I'm sure he only does at the call of duty what half the congregation would do for pleasure if they had the courage. They have my sympathy. How bored I should get if I had to listen to a long-winded parson every Sunday."
Mrs. Hancock cast an anxious eye on the asparagus. But there was a perfect haystack of it.
"How much I enjoyed your sermon last Sunday," said she, "about the duty of being cheerful and happy, and doing all we can to make ourselves happy for the sake of others. Oh, you must take more asparagus! Ellis would be miserable if it was not all eaten. It is only the second time we have had it this year."
For the moment she thought of telling Mr. Martin to supply himself with asparagus while she was at Bath. But the duty of making herself happy prevailed, and she refrained, for it occurred to her that Ellis might dispatch daily bundles early in the morning in cardboard boxes, so that they would reach Bath in time to be cooked for dinner. The hotel commissariat would certainly not rise to asparagus so early in the season.
Mrs. Martin in the meantime, with one sycophantic ear open to catch her husband's jokes, was full of fancy ejaculations to Mr. Beaumont, who was describing to her the romantic history of the female oak-egger, which exercised so extraordinary a fascination on all young males for miles around. Here Mr. Dobbs was lacking in felicity, for he remarked that a great many unmarried young ladies would be glad to know how the female oak-egger did it. But Mr. Beaumont made it unnecessary for Mrs. Dobbs even to frown at him, so rapidly did he wonder whether it was called an oak-egger because it laid upwards of a million eggs. Then Mrs. Hancock called the attention of the table generally to the fact that the gooseberry tartlets were the produce of the garden—the first of the year—and Mr. Martin alluded to the Feast of the Blessed Innocents, saying that even massacre had a silver lining, though not for the massacred. A savoury of which Mr. Dobbs was easily induced to take a second helping brought dinner to what musicians call "a full close."
Then came the moment of the evening. Port was ruthlessly supplied by Lind to all the guests, whether they wanted it or not, and Mrs. Hancock rose with her kind brown eyes moist with emotion.
"Ladies and gentlemen," she said, "I have a toast to propose. I ask you to drink the health of my dear daughter and of Edward Holroyd, my future son-in-law. Your health, my dear, dear children!"
Mr. Beaumont instantly led off the musical honours on so high a note that those of the party who could sing followed with faint gasps and screams. And, under cover of the hubbub of comment and congratulation that followed, shyly and eagerly Edith's eye sought her future husband. And when his eye met hers she felt her heart rap out a tumultuous dozen of unbidden beats, fast and sweetly suffocating. Then she blushed furiously at a sudden self-accusation of indelicacy, of unmaidenness. But her heart acquitted her of the indictment. Was it not right to give that tattoo of welcome?
The start for Bath was made in strict accordance with the scheduled plan. Filson, with the heavy luggage on the top of the motor, accompanied by Lind, her lunch, and a freshly cut bundle of asparagus destined for Mrs. Hancock's dinner in the evening, left the house in such good time that she had to wait twenty-five minutes at the station, which it took exactly three to reach. The motor returned in time for Lind to serve Mrs. Hancock's breakfast with all the finish and decorum to which she was accustomed. Then the new nine-inch footstool—Mrs. Hancock had decided against the extravagance of two—the map of the route, the large luncheon-basket, the adjustable card-table, the writing-case, a couple of new volumes from Mudie's, cloaks of varying thickness, and the great green russia leather travelling sack were conveniently bestowed, and full five minutes before the appointed time the car slid silently away from the door, with all possible provision made for a comfortable journey.
The first five minutes were spent in verifying the presence of all these conveniences, and Mrs. Hancock sank back on her carefully adjusted cushions.
"There!" she said. "We are in for it now, dear; and if all goes as well as it has begun we shall be at Bath by five. How much nicer than all the fuss of crossing London, and the risk of having somebody put into our carriage. Fancy our never having thought of motoring to Bath before! Oh, look, there is Mr. Martin going to play golf! How early we all are this morning! And perhaps we shall see Mr. Beaumont with his butterfly net. Then as soon as we get into the main road I shall have a look at the morning paper. There has not been a minute to glance at it yet; or perhaps you would look at it for me, dear Edith, and tell me what there is. The motion always makes the print dance a little before my eyes. I expect the time will slip by so that we shall be astonished when we find we are at Bath, and very likely not be at all tired. And you must be on the look-out for anything interesting, and write to Edward about it, in case, when he comes down for a Sunday, he comes by motor. Then he will be on the look-out and see it, too. Why, we are at Slough already! There is the Great Western line. Filson's train will go along there. If she had started three or four hours earlier her train might have gone by as we passed, and she could have looked out of the window and seen us. That would have been a coincidence!"
The car ran so smoothly on the excellent surface of the Bath road that Mrs. Hancock found that the print of herMorning Posthad not the smallest tendency to "dance," and reserving, as usual, the leaders and longer paragraphs for the digestive period after lunch, she soaked herself gently as in a warm bath, in the announcements of the arrival in London of people she had never seen, and the appearance at the opera of those she had never heard of. What taste exactly was gratified by these tit-bits of information it would be hard to say. Possibly the sense that so many people were moving backwards and forwards enhanced the enjoyment of her own leisure; she mentally contrasted the bustle that was incident to journeys from Paris with her own smooth, unhurrying progress to Bath. Edith, meantime following her mother's suggestion that she should look out of the window in order to be able to communicate to Edward objects of interest to be seen by the road, soon passed from external observation to introspection.
These last four or five days since she had so unemotionally accepted his offer of himself to her had about them something of the unconjectured surprises of dawn, when, after a night of travel, the darkness begins to lift off from the face of a new and unfamiliar country. It was he, in this image, who took the place of the light, and the country which its gradual illumination revealed, as it soaked through and dissolved the webs of darkness, was herself. For it is an undeniable truth that love, that absorption of self in another self, cannot take place till the giver has some notion of the nature of the gift that he brings, and Edith up till the present time was as ignorant of herself as are all girls whose emotions and womanhood have never been really roused. She had accepted her lover without knowing what devotion meant, or who it was who accepted him, except in so far that her name was Edith Hancock, her years twenty-four, and her complexion fair. For the arrows of love are at the least feathered with egotism; they will not fly unless a conscious personality enables them to steer straight, but flutter and dip and reach no mark.
At first, frankly, she was appalled by the barrenness which the light of her lover showed. It appeared to be level land, without streams or inspiring hill-tops, a country uncovetable, a featureless, a mountainous acreage. But it was not stonily barren; even her eyes, unaccustomed to the light and that which it revealed, saw that. It was barren but from emptiness, and empty, perhaps only as the winter fields are bare. It was not an unkindly, an inhospitable land; the very soil of it cried out and told her that. All day the image of her empty country, but not unkindly, hung in her mind even as an unborn melody hovers a little above the brain of the musician, until condensing like dew it melts into it. And all day, but very gradually, for these dawns of love come seldom in a blinding flash of a sun upleaping over the horizon, but rather in a slow crescendo of illumination as of a waxing flame that shall mount to who knows what transmitted fire, the first wonderful twilight of the day grew rosy. And in that morning-rose, which showed her herself, she saw also him whom it welcomed. Eagerly and with strong sense of possession, she claimed him. It was to her that he belonged; he was hers, to be loved and adored, but also to be owned.
Outwardly, she was the Edith whom her mother knew, though in her spirit were beginning those changes which must soon make her old self a thing unrecognizable to her clearer vision. But it was scarcely strange that Mrs. Hancock saw no hint of change, for, as may have been perceived, she had the gift, or limitation of being completely taken up with the surface of things; indeed, to her mind any inquiry into the mechanism of the spirit and its pulses was of the same indelicacy as discussion of the functions and operations of the human body. If your body was ill you went quickly to the doctor, and did not call your friends' attention to your infirmity; if your soul was ill——But Mrs. Hancock's soul was never ill.
They had the satisfaction of seeing a great many more Great Western trains at Reading, and passed out into the delectable country beyond. Then totally unexpected difficulties began to occur with regard to the spot where they should stop and take their lunch. Just outside Reading, indeed, there was seen an entirely suitable place, secluded, shady, out of the wind, and strongly recommended by Denton, but unfortunately it was then only a quarter-past one, and Mrs. Hancock had not intended to lunch till half-past. Therefore they pushed on, going rather slow so as not to miss any really proper encamping ground. Ten minutes later they were again favoured by an oak-tree and a sheltering hedge, but here unfortunately a tramp was asleep by the wayside. At any moment he might wake, and prove to be intoxicated, and Mrs. Hancock was quite sure she could not enjoy her lunch in his vicinity. Further on again there was a wayside cottage too near a proposed halting-place, for children might come out of it and stare, and the cottage was succeeded by a smell of brick fields. Before long Tilehurst began to show up roofs, and it was necessary to get clear of Tilehurst on the far side before any sort of serenity could be hoped for. Then for nearly a mile they had to follow an impenetrable flock of sheep, and it was imperative to get well ahead of them. Pangbourne appeared, and it was already after two o'clock. It will hardly be credited that they had scarcely got free of this contaminating village when a tyre punctured. A halt was inevitable while it was being repaired, but then Denton could not eat while he was mending it, and since they would have to stop again for Denton to have his lunch (since he could not drive during that process), it was better to make a halt for general refreshments when the tyre trouble was overpast.
Mrs. Hancock looked despairingly round.
"It is most annoying," she said. "I do not know that we should not have done better to have had lunch at an inn at Reading, or to have stopped at that first place. Remember to tell Edward, dear, to look out for that first place if he drives down; there is positively nowhere after that where he can find a quiet spot. I wonder if we had better eat a couple of biscuits now in case we can't find a suitable place soon. Dear me, here come those sheep again! They ought not to be allowed to drive sheep along a road that is meant for carriages. Put the window up, dear, against the dust."
Suddenly illumination like a cloud-piercing ray shone on Edith. It struck her that all her life had been spent in looking for a place to have lunch in, so to speak, in putting up windows for fear of the dust, in avoiding the proximity of tramps. Infinitesimal as was the occasion, it seemed to throw an amazing light on to her life. Up till the present it was hardly an exaggeration to say that anything more important, anything more directly concerned with existence had never happened to her. Was it this comfortable ordered life in which an infinite agglomeration of utterly trivial things made up the sum total that caused her lately discovered country to appear so barren? She looked at her mother's face; it was flushed with childish annoyance, just as it had been about three years ago when a perfectly satisfactory housemaid gave notice because she was going to be married. Since then she could remember nothing that had so disconcerted her mother, except when once Denton shut the corner of the new fur carriage-rug into the hinge of the motor-door. On both these previous occasions she had been impressed with the magnitude of the moment; now she felt slightly inclined to laugh. Even if the unthinkable, the supreme disaster happened, and they did not lunch at all, would the world come completely to an end?
But a second glance at her mother's face checked her tendency to laugh, and encouraged a feeling that was quite as novel to her. She felt suddenly and overwhelmingly sorry that this drive, this lunch which her mother had planned with such care and with such pleased anticipation of comfort, should have disappointed her. It was like a child's disappointment over the breakage of a toy or the non-fulfilment of some engaging expedition. There was laughter in her heart no longer; only a tenderness, a commiseration that sympathized in womanly fashion with a childish trouble.
It is darkest before dawn, and this Cimmerian gloom, composed of puncture and the absence of a possible luncheon place, began to lift. Denton was handy with his tools; the sheep were herded through a gate into a field by the roadside, so that when they went on again there was no further passage through the flock to be negotiated. Goring streamed swiftly by them, and hardly were they quit of its outlying houses when a soft stretch of grass by the roadside, uncontaminated by tramp and untenanted by child, spread itself before their eyes. And Mrs. Hancock, as she finished the last jam puff, was more beaming than the sun of this lovely May afternoon.
"I'm not sure that it was not worth while going through all these annoyances and delays," she said, "to have found such a lovely place and to have enjoyed our lunch so much. I was afraid the jam might have run out of the puffs; but it was as safe as if they had just come up from the kitchen. I wish Edward was here to have enjoyed it with us. You must tell him what a good lunch we had!"
And Edith found her mother's enjoyment as tenderly pathetic as her disappointment had been.
Edward Holroyd had arranged to go down to Bath for a certain Saturday till Monday, some fortnight after the safe arrival there (on the stroke of five) of Mrs. Hancock's motor. He had spent a couple of rather lonely weeks at Heathmoor since the departure of his neighbours, and he was pleased to find how much he missed Edith. His failure to achieve poignant emotion over his engagement had troubled him; he was distressed about the indolence of his temperament. He had never yet seen a girl whom he so much admired and liked, but the very fact that he was able to contemplate her image and tell himself how charming she was, seemed to him part of that failure. She affected him with the same degree of emotion that a spring morning or a melodious song stirred in him. He could, while basking in her charm, tell himself that he basked; he was not by the exquisitiveness of the conditions rendered in the least oblivious of himself; his sensations had not any overpowering mastery over him. Duly he sat and thought about her when he got home in the evening from his day in the City, duly and honestly he told himself how delightful her perpetual presence would be to him. But he did not dream and doat; he never lost himself in haze of rapture; he was not blinded by any intolerable brightness. But he wanted immensely to see her again; he missed her as much as he was capable of missing anything. But his industry at his office and his appetite at his dinner were wholly unaffected, though they would quite certainly have been impaired if for any reason his engagement had been broken off. She was the nicest girl he had ever seen, and in the autumn she was going to marry him.
To-night, on the eve of his departure to Bath, he reminded himself many times of his great good fortune. He had known friends who had suffered the torments of the lost over the obduracy or the indifference of girls whom they wanted to marry, and his sympathy with such men was tinged with jealousy that they felt so keenly. She had been neither indifferent nor obdurate; she had at once granted him his heart's desire. And then he faced the question that arose out of his fortunate situation. Would he have suffered unutterable torments if she had refused him? He knew he would not.
The night was warm; a full moon rode high in an unclouded heaven; and he let himself out of the French windows of his drawing-room into the small lawn behind the house. A windless calm reigned, and the shadow of the trees that bounded his lawn fell in sharp unwavering outline on the dewy grass. Next door the black mass of Mrs. Hancock's house, unpierced by any lights except the small illuminated square from servants' rooms in the top story, stood with blinds drawn down over the windows, solid, concrete, comfortable, a brick and mortar rendering of the ordered life that was lived there. No roofs, he felt sure, leaked; no windows stuck; no door squealed on its hinges; and its inhabitants, whom he knew so well, to whom he was so sincerely attached, were equally strangers to squealing and leaking. Soul and body they were watertight; undesirable emotions no more percolated into their souls than did rainwater into their roofs; they stood with their well-built walls cool in summer and warm in winter; their windows never rattled when gales bugled outside. And he himself, he knew also, was in the same excellent state of repair; it was a characteristic of Heathmoor to be in an excellent state of repair. They all stood like that, side by side in detached residences, with small though charming gardens behind.
For the moment he was in revolt against this deadly respectability; then, with a comical despair, he knew that he was not even in revolt. He could not do more than imagine being in revolt. Rightly or wrongly, he connected all this well-ordered comfort, those eggs and bacon for breakfast and buttered toast for tea with his inability to feel keenly. Life had never stung or prodded him any more than it appeared to have stung or prodded Mrs. Hancock; and that she could be stung or prodded by anything was beyond the bounds of the most fantastic imagination. There were no wasps' nests in all Heathmoor; the gardens were too well looked after. And there were no psychical wasps or gadflies either; the gospel of Mr. Martin, preached so regularly and convincingly every Sunday, made it a sin to be otherwise than cheerful and contented and well-fed. No disturbing influence ever came down in those first-class carriages; not even Mrs. Grundy ever paid them a visit; she left her own dear children to look after themselves with a complete and untroubled confidence in their good behaviour.
As for Edward, his conduct had from boyhood upwards been such as to justify that lady's absence. In life he was a natural Grundyite, indisposed to the venial if unjustifiable violences of youth, not so much from a lack of vitality or, on the other hand, from high principle, but from a sheer, innate respectability which beat in his blood. He had been one of those boys who never have given their parents a moment's anxiety, not from any stern sense of right behaviour, but because he was that exceedingly rare product in a world that is almost entirely composed of exceptions—a perfectly normal young man, one, that is, who lies just about upon the mean which is fixed resultantly by contending forces. He was thatlusus naturæ,an average young man, a sport, an exception, a rare variety (to be collected by the Mr. Beaumont of human moths), an instance in himself of the average, which in the sum is made up of qualities of specimens, none of which is average. He was in life and conduct what the average young man is supposed to be and, in the mass, not individually, is. He was neither milksop nor adventurer, neither celibate by nature nor debauchee. He was not miserly with money or spendthrift, neither devout nor irreligious. In two points only did he depart from the perfect specimen of the average: he was exceedingly good-looking, and he had been a dreamer, though his dream blossoms as yet had borne no fruit. Indeed, as has been already stated, he had largely acquiesced in their barrenness, and in the matter of the ideal She had shaken himself awake. Round one subject only did they linger, that was music, in regard to which, so far as he performed at all, he was so atrocious a practitioner.
It was long past midnight as he stood there in his garden and surveyed the solidity of the house next door, and the novelty (to him) of his reflections about it had been perhaps induced by his listening that night to that out of which his dreams were made, for he had just come back—motoring down in great comfort—from a performance at the opera of the "Gotterdämmerung." All evening he had been wrapped and absorbed in the immense tragedy of its portentous people, and just now they and their woes and their loves seemed to him more real, more essentially existent than all the actual and tangible things with which he was surrounded. They were the substance of which this moonlight, this square house next door, the remembrance of Edith even, were but the shadows of the spaces they moved among, even as the shadows on the grass were but an accident of light occurring to the trees that cast them. On such a night after the uproar of cosmic cataclysm the moon shone on the waters of the Rhine with their restored treasure; through a hundred and a thousand such nights Brunnhilde slept below her breast-plate on the mountain-top, maiden, but goddess no more, till to Siegfried's soul she resumed a nobler divinity.... And that divine duet, with its webs of melody passing through and through it like a shuttle of pure light, was but the expression of love, such love as it had been given to man to feel, since a man wrote and recorded it. It was such music now that his soul should be making when he thought of Edith. But he knew that no such frenzy of fire inspired him; if his soul sang it was but a cheerful little tune, admirably adapted to the domestic hearth. And that was the best music he could make. Anyhow, it had no wrong notes in it; it had no wild cadences or broken and sobbing rhythms. It was just a cheerful little tune such as they sang in church about morning gilding the skies. You only had to substitute "moon" for "morning" ... and you were as jolly and comfortable as possible.
Edward began to be aware that his brain was dictating thoughts which his conscious mind did not endorse. They resembled the tissue of confused images which lie on the borderland which intervenes between the sheer incoherence of sleeping dreams and the drowsiness which precedes it. But there was an uneasy, though only momentary, wonder in his mind whether these disordered images sprang not from the poppy soil of sleep but from a gradually awakening brain, whether they were not the light at the end of a tunnel rather than the dimness of its entrance. The cool cells of thought had grown feverish with the excitement of the drama he had just seen ... or had they begun to stir to their own proper activity? Which was real, in fact, the white cool flame of the moonlight as it shone on still trees and dewy grass, or the song of Siegfried, which burned the sunset air and blinded with rapture the eyes of Brunnhilde, when she woke, goddess no more, and by that the more divine?
Heathmoor, the essential spirit of Heathmoor, in the incarnation of the striking of the clock at the livery stables, came to his rescue, for it unmistakably reminded him that the hour was two in the morning—a time which probably occurred every night, but a time of which the evidence was a matter of inference rather than experience. He hailed it as a navigator driving before the wind in rock-sown and dangerous waters might hail a harbour light that betokened an inlet in a wave-beaten and inexorable cliff. He could "put in," and escape from these threats of wave-crest and storm. It was long past the proper time to go to bed, or, in Heathmoor phrase, he would "never" get up in the morning.
But that waiting in the still moonlight shadowed by the unwavering trees had been a moment of revelation. A little light, coming from the realms of music where alone his imagination worked, had been blinked into the windows of the dark and tidy room where otherwise he lived. It was like a distant lightning flash coming at night to a room where in a cool clean bed a man lay drowsy but awake. He wondered whether the storm would move nearer. And before he slept he wondered whether Edith would understand. She knew he was "fond of music." Would she understand that "fond of music" was a mere phrase of nonsense if meant to convey what it held for him?
He fell into a slightly priggish sleep.
He arrived at the admirable Star Hotel at Bath next afternoon, and found a room had been engaged for him by Mrs. Hancock, who, with Edith, welcomed him at the station. He had been uncertain whether he was her guest or not, but she at once put and end to all doubt on this point by telling him that she had bargained with the manager on his behalf, and that he had granted him the reduced terms on which she, making a long stay, was entertained, which saved him half-a-crown a day, and included the unlimited use of the bathroom. Of course he would use their sitting-room quite freely, just as if it was his own.
"And I can't tell you how pleased I am to see you, dear Edward," she said, laying a cordial hand on his knee. "We will have tea at once, as my bath is at half-past five, and I like to reach the establishment a full ten minutes before the hour, and so after tea you and Edith will be left to your own devices. What a lot you will have to tell each other, for it's a fortnight and three days since we left home, though I'm sure it doesn't seem more than a week. Ellis sends us a bundle of asparagus every morning, and says it will last another ten days at least. They are most civil about having it cooked, and don't charge a penny for it or for giving melted butter with it. I quite expected they would charge for the melted butter!"
This seemed to be the sum of Mrs. Hancock's news, and shortly after tea (she had brought her own tea with her, which, perhaps, served to counterbalance the munificence of the management as regards the melted butter) she went off to her bath, leaving the two together.
Edward had occupied a chair, while Edith sat on the sofa; now he came beside her.
"Well?" he said, capturing her hand.
Edith looked at him as she had never looked before; her eyes sought and held and embraced him.
"Tell me all you have been doing," she said, "especially the little things. I think the little things matter most. They are more intimate."
"But I want your news," said he.
She flushed a little.
"I have wanted you," she said simply. "What a little thing!"
Not till then did he understand the change that had come over her in this last fortnight—the change that concerned him alone. It was clear that the music which her soul made was no cheerful little chant. Inarticulate, it sang and soared. A little of that fire leaped across to him, kindling him.
"That was sweet of you!" he said. "But it makes me feel rather nervous. What if you are disappointed?"
She came a little closer to him.
"I've got an awful confession to make!" she said. "When—when you asked me first, I was so pleased and glad, but I didn't care. Not care. But since then——" She looked up at him.
"I care so much," she said. "And I want to be worthy. You have such fine thoughts, Edward, thoughts so much above me. I've always known that, but now that I care for you I realize it. When you play, for instance, you are hearing things I am deaf to, seeing visions, perhaps, that I am blind to. But I do want to learn. Will you teach me? Nobody but you can teach me."
Her confession ennobled her; he saw a glimpse of her far above him. All the years that he had known her he had thought that there was nothing up high like that. But it had always been there; it wanted but the sun and wind of love to part the cloud and show the shining peaks. Human peaks, divine peaks, the highlands of dawning love. She was beginning to realize for herself, quite easily, quite without effort all that he lacked, all that in the vague dream of his youth he believed to lie outside of him. Already she was there, her foot on the eternal snows, bathed in the eternal sunshine. The commonest and greatest miracle of all was in process within; the waterpots were already reddening with the true grape.
"I never guessed," she said. "And, oh, Edward, if only caring made me less stupid! But be patient with me and wait for me to learn. I shall be able to learn if you will teach me. There is a whole great world round me, full of splendour and beauty, which somehow doesn't come in one's way at Heathmoor. I think"—and she laughed—"I think the asparagus, so to speak, shuts it out. But it is there; it's everywhere. You took me right up to it, and even then I didn't recognize it at once. Now I am beginning to recognize it. I get glimpses of it, anyhow."
This was near enough to the dream-thoughts that had come to him last night as he looked at the square house next door to enable him to join her. But she, who besought him to teach her, spoke authentically of what she had seen; he, the teacher, but babbled and halted over things imagined and not realized.
"Ah, that is so much what I felt last night," he said. "I went to the 'Gotterdämmerung' in town, and when I came back I stood in the garden, and all that you say was in my mind. There is a splendid world round us, and too much asparagus. I don't mean——"
She guessed just what he stopped himself from saying.
"But mother is such a dear," she said. "I love her comfortable little plans. They are as touching as a child's. I wouldn't spoil her pleasure for anything. Tell me about the 'Gotterdämmerung'; it is all that which I want to learn. There's love in it, and tragedy, all big. Music says what you feel. Isn't that it? I can see it does to you when you play. And what music says to you, you, the fact of you, say to me."
Yet he felt this was exactly the same girl whom he had long known, comfortable, pleasant, pretty. The change was but the change that happens to a plant when the spike of blossoms shoots upwards from its heart, and was not so much change as growth. She had shot up, far away ahead of him with her budding stem, and all the time she thought she was reaching up to him. And he, gratified and a little embarrassed, thought so, too.
"You mustn't say such things to me," he said. "It makes me feel as if—as if you had put me on a pedestal, somehow. But it is true, that music says to me things which turn into ideas, longings, aspirations. But, so far from me teaching you what it means, it is you who have got to teach me. It is you who are the explanation of it all. Don't you see——"
He stopped a moment, trying himself to grasp the thought which eluded him. So, at least, he imagined to himself; in reality he sought the fire that should kindle him. And fire of a sort was not hard to find, for they sat alone together, and she, whom he liked and admired, clung to him. He kissed her and found himself nearer to passion than he had ever been yet.
"It must have been you that I was looking for," he said.
Again in her the tremulous flame of a girl's first love shot up, fed with the new fuel. Then, by a sudden impulse, she got up and stood a little away from him, passing her hand over her eyes.
"I feel as if it can't be," she said, "and yet when you say it is, I can't disbelieve you. But are you sure?"
He got up also.
"I tell you the truth when I say that I never cared like this before," he said. "All that I know of love is yours; you lit it."
She looked at him mutely, inquiring, scrutinizing. Something within her wanted more, wanted a conviction that she had not yet got. It was as if there was still some closed chamber in her heart that was not yet flooded; the tide did not flow freely throughout her. And for that moment's space she wondered if he, too, was in the same incomplete stress of emotion, if the entire abandonment which she knew she lacked held off from him.
For a moment only the doubt lasted, the next it was enough for her that so much was hers already; the unfolding of love was at work on the petals of her girlhood, and she did not even desire to hurry the hour of full-blowing.
That for the present was the apex of the mounting flame in her, which made the air round it quiver and glow, so that its heat and radiance were beginning to touch with lambency all the common things of every day around her, transforming them, as by the light of an Indian sunset, into opalescent brightnesses. Already to her the sun was of a wider light, the wind of May more caressing, the fields greener, the faces she passed in the street lit with a happiness and a humanity she had never noticed before. She saw and heard and apprehended all that touched her senses with a greater vividness; the paper she read from to Mrs. Hancock when she rested after her bath had a new significance, and as she conned aloud the list of surnames of those who had been born, married, and died—which was the opening chapter of the daily lecture, in case her mother knew any of them—she found herself wondering about the history of their loves. The most commonplace events filled her with reflections which, though delightfully commonplace themselves, were utterly new to her as material for thought. If the Prime Minister went to Balmoral—the kind of news that was particularly gratifying to Mrs. Hancock—Edith now was interested in it, not from wonder—like her mother—as to what they would say to each other, but because before the Prime Minister was a baby in his cradle, a man and a woman had looked with eyes of dawning love on each other. The whole world was vivified, a keener pleasure infused the common actions of life, she ate and drank with a new savour, she went to sleep with a more luxurious sense of that drowsy gulf, and, above all, she awoke with welcome for the day. She joined every morning the ranks of those living and sentient things to whom the knowledge of love had come; she was struggling, yet the struggle was effortless, as if a new force invading her soul did the battle for her—on to the level of real existence, leaving the desert for fertile lands. She read the secret in the eyes and mouths of those she met in the street, for they knew it, even as did the wind and the sun, and the stars that wheeled. Sometimes she spoke of this new thing to her mother, who must be among the initiated, and then the wing of comedy shed a feather as it passed. Mrs. Hancock's reminiscences of her beautiful days were of the nature of pressed flowers; it seemed that their fragrance had departed, though they retained their outward form.
"Your father was a very handsome young man, dear," she would say—"very handsome, indeed, with a rather bluish chin, for at that time he had no beard. I don't think there can ever have been a more poetical lover, and scarcely a day passed when he did not bring me some volume of Tennyson's early poems, or Mr. Browning's. Edith, if you would put the window just an inch more up we can talk. Thank you, dear! He could understand all Mr. Browning wrote about different ways of love, and explained it most beautifully. There was 'One Way of Love' and 'Another Way of Love,' and one of them happened about the middle of June. I learned that one by heart in order to please him. He used to say the most wonderful of all was 'By the Fireside,' which was in November; but that was after they married. Oh, look, dear; what a tiresome dog! Some day it will be run over, and it won't be Denton's fault. Your father was very jealous, and, though I hope you will never give Edward any cause for that any more, I am sure, than I did, men are like that sometimes, and they don't seem to be able to help it. He was quite devoted to me, so it sprang from a good cause. Yes, he used to read Mr. Browning's poems, though he was very fond of Mrs. Browning's too. Mr. and Mrs. Browning! What a lot of poetry they must have read to each other—all made up by themselves! I wonder if she understood it as well as your father! He never found any difficulty about carrying on the sense between the lines, which I think is the hardest part. And to think that now you are going through the same happy time! Darling, look, it is half-past three; and we must turn at once, else we shall never get home in time for tea. Will you tell Denton down the tube to turn as soon as he possibly can? When we get home I will let you read the copies of Mr. Browning's poems which your father gave me. Have you heard from Edward this morning? When he comes I shall have to talk to him about business."
This business talk, which, so far as Mrs. Hancock was concerned, followed on the lines which she had laid down for herself in the matter of allowance for Edith, took place next morning. He had suggested the more usual course that their respective solicitors should represent their clients' views to each other, but Mrs. Hancock preferred a personal and direct interview. She felt that Edward, who was so generous, would understand the somewhat peculiar position that she fully intended to take up, whereas the more practical and less sympathetic mind of a solicitor might not see things in so romantic a light. So Edith was informed when it was twenty minutes to eleven and time that she should put her hat on, while Edward was told that it was quite excusable that he should not want to go to church after sitting in an airless office all the week. But it was a little chilly, and she asked him to shut completely the window of the sitting-room.
"And now, dear Edward," she said, "we must have a little business talk, which I am sure will soon be done, since I am as certain to approve of your plans about Edith as you are to approve of mine. And then, when we have talked it over, we can instruct our solicitors, and they will draw up the settlement. Please smoke a cigarette; you will be more comfortable so. There we are!"
Mrs. Hancock, indeed, felt perfectly comfortable. She had pictured her plans in such delicious grandmotherly colours to herself that they could not fail to touch Edward's heart. And she proceeded to lay them before him.
"I am what they call fairly off, my dear," she said, "and, indeed, I put by a little every year, though, as you know, to do that I live extremely simply, just with the ordinary little comforts of life to which I have been accustomed. Now at my death every penny of my fortune will go to Edith, with the exception of two or three little bequests to servants. At present it is something over a hundred thousand pounds. You and Edith will enjoy that for many, many years after I am gone."
Mrs. Hancock felt as if she was making some deed of tremendous generosity; the sense of that and the allusion to her own death caused her eyes to stand in moisture, which she wiped away with one of her new handkerchiefs, which were so expensive.
"But I am beginning at the end," she said, "and we must come back to the present. I mean, dear Edward, to give Edith the whole of her trousseau. I shall be very much vexed with you if you want not to let me have my way about that. Everything she can want, and, indeed, much more than I ever had, in the way of frocks and linen, shall be hers, and shall be paid for by me. Put your cigarette in your mouth, and don't think of interrupting me."
She beamed delightedly at him, sure that had she not positively forbidden it he would have protested against her munificence. Munificence, too, she really thought it, when she considered how much lace....
"But that is not my great plan," she said. "I know so well, without your telling me, that you will shower on Edith more than a girl accustomed to the simplicity of life she has hitherto led can possibly dream of spending, and so I have thought of a great expense which, please God, will certainly come upon you and her, which you have not, I expect, taken into consideration. Children, my dear Edward; I want it to be my pleasure and privilege to provide for them, and, with careful management, I shall be able to give each of your children as they are born the sum of a hundred pounds, and on every one of all their birthdays, if they live to be a hundred, fifty pounds more!"
To Mrs. Hancock's cars this sounded immense. It is true that her original plan had been to make the yearly birthday gift a hundred pounds to each of them, but in the interval between forming that idea and to-day she had seen that such a scheme would amount to a lavishness that was positively unreasonable, if not actually wrong. It is true that it was not exactly likely that she would continue to be in a position to shower this largess on children that were yet unborn for a hundred years after their birth, unless she was to outrival the decades of old Parr; but the sentence sounded well, and expressed, though hyperbolically, the sumptuous extent of her intentions. But she had to climb down from those great heights, and proceeded to small details.
"Take another cigarette, Edward," she said, "or otherwise you will be arguing with me, and, as I have quite made up my mind, there would be no use in that. My dear, I am a very determined person when once my mind is made up, and I shan't listen to your remonstrances, so you needn't trouble to make them. There! I can afford to do this, and since I can, I am determined to. Now, as regards smaller matters, I know you are very well off, but I want to spare you any extra expenses that I possibly can, and a hundred little schemes occur to me. I send myself to sleep at night with thinking what I can take on my shoulders, for I assure you it is the little drains on one's purse that make the big hole in it, so in the first place let me tell you that your motor bills for tyres and petrol needn't be a penny more after your marriage than they are to-day. I intend that Edith—and I shall tell her so—shall consider my car as hers, in exactly the same manner as she has always considered it ours, shall we say? Morning and afternoon, whenever she feels inclined, she can have her drive with me, onmytyres, and onmypetrol. You will be sure when you are away in the City that your car won't be scouring all over the country, eating up every penny you make."
There is a psychical phenomenon known as suggestion, whereby the operator produces a hypnotic effect on his subject, causing his mind to receive and adopt the desired attitude. For the moment, at any rate, Mrs. Hancock was producing this effect on Edward; her own sublime conviction that she was making the most generous provision infected him as she reeled off this string of benefits. But there are subtle conditions under which suggestion acts, which, perhaps, she did not appreciate, for at this point the effect began to wear off. Probably she should have stopped there; unfortunately she continued. It may be that she began to see through herself, and thus enabled her subject to see through her.
"Household books, too!" she said. "You have no conception, nor has Edith—for it takes years of careful housekeeping to understand all about it—you have no conception what economies can be made in them, nor, if you do not practise them, what a tremendous drain they are. Let us say that Edith is alone for lunch, while you are in the City, and she orders a fillet of sole, and a cutlet, with some French beans, and a little cherry tart, and perhaps a peach to finish up with, for dear Edith has such an excellent appetite, I am glad to say, and is not like so many women who, when they are alone, have a sandwich on a tray or a piece of cake, and find themselves getting anæmic and run down in consequence. Edith, as I was saying, orders a decent little lunch like what she is accustomed to, every day like that, when she is alone, and at the end of the week I shouldn't wonder if her lunches had cost her twenty-five or thirty shillings. Well, I want to spare you all that expense; there will be lunch for Edith every day at my house, so that all the household books for your purse will be a couple of poached eggs in the morning and a plain little dinner in the evening, if you want to be alone with her. Otherwise you can both find your dinner, and such a warm welcome, my dear, as often as you like where she had her lunch. And even if it costs me another gardener, I am determined to have my croquet-lawn as good as a croquet-lawn can be, and you can come across and play on it, and have your cup of tea or your whisky and soda with me any day you like. I mean to turn my house into a hotel for you and my darling, where you will ask for whatever you like, motors and what not, and never have a bill sent in to you. Everything provided, Edward, all the year round, and the warmest welcome from the old proprietress. There! I don't think I can say more than that; and I certainly don't mean less. About wedding presents I shall say nothing, because I mean them to be a surprise."
But the suggestive glamour had faded, and Edward found himself adding up in a clear-sighted and business-like manner what this all amounted to. Immediately the result seemed to be that Mrs. Hancock would have Edith's companionship at lunch and in her drives, and that he could play croquet next door. Edith the day before had alluded to her mother's childlike pleasure in her plans, but it seemed to him that a certain power of parsimonious calculation presided over their childlikeness, and it was not without a sense of surprise and almost of incredulity that he made the inference that Mrs. Hancock had no intention of giving her daughter any allowance or of settling anything on her. For himself, he could not by any stretch of malignant criticism be called niggardly or close-handed, and he felt justified in making quite sure of the unlooked-for situation.
"Then you do not propose to settle anything on Edith," he said, "or make her any allowance?"
He knew that this was a perfectly proper suggestion to make, that the absence of any provision for Edith was ludicrous, yet the moment he had made the suggestion he was sorry. He understood also what Edith had meant by "childlikeness," for Mrs. Hancock's face changed suddenly from its beaming and delighted aspect, and looked pathetic, hurt, misunderstood. It was clear that she had taken the sincerest pleasure in devising all these dazzling plans, which at present, anyhow, cost her nothing, and in avoiding any direct expenditure. She had quite certainly convinced herself of her own generosity, and of the unselfish thought and ingenuity—which caused her to lie awake at night—that had devised those schemes. But this miserliness, the ingenuity of which was so perfectly transparent to anybody else, was not, he felt convinced, transparent to her. Hurriedly he corrected himself; it was as if he had unthinkingly taken a toy away from a child; now he made the utmost haste to restore it, to anticipate the howl in preparation for which it had opened its mouth.
"How stupid of me!" he said. "I had quite forgotten in the multitude of your gifts that you were providing with such generosity for our children. Of course you do that instead of giving money to Edith. I think that is a delightful plan. Why, they will all be heirs and heiresses by the time they grow up. And the lunches and drives for Edith, too; she will never be lonely while I am away in town. And the croquet and everything. I never heard so many nice plans."
He knew he was being weak, was yielding on points on which he really had no business to yield, in order to avoid a scene. It was quite ridiculous—and he was aware of that fact—to treat this middle-aged and wideawake woman as if she was a child, to give her anything to prevent her howling, but the morality of the matter did not trouble him at all. She was like a child; he saw the resemblance; but no less striking was the resemblance to a selfish child, or to a very miserly grown-up person. He did not really doubt that some part of her brain, carefully walled up and sequestered, knew that she was acting in a thoroughly miserly manner, but she entirely refused to attend to that, treating it as we treat some involuntary suggestion of a disobedient mind, putting it from her even as she put away secular reflections when in church, and indulging instead and painting in tender but vivid colours the image of the beloved old granny—not so old, either—incessantly signing the most sumptuous cheques for the benefit of her beloved chicks, or looking from the drawing-room window on to the velvet-napped croquet-lawn where Edward stood with brimming whisky and soda, while Edith, a child tugging at her skirts, went through hoop after hoop. She loved to see everybody happy round her, all enjoying the fruits of her bounty, and if, incidentally, she herself gained a companion in her daily drives, at any rate Edith would not sit solitary over her expensive lunch while Edward was in town. And if, in reality, she was a somewhat selfish person, and one somewhat insincere, how much more comfortable that she should think that she was brimming with kind plans for other people, when as a matter of fact she was only making the most pleasing schemes for herself. It was not possible entirely to agree with her in her estimate of herself, but there was certainly no use in distressing her by letting her know that he saw through her. She had hypnotized herself—by excessive gazing—into her creed about herself, and any dissension from it was only likely to make her think that the dissentient was unkind, not shake her belief in her own tender benevolence. She started from that even as Euclid starts his amazing propositions from certain postulates; if you did not accept the postulates you could not proceed any further in her company.
Normal human vanity renders complete self-knowledge impossible, but complete self-blindness is almost equally uncommon, and at the very back of her mind Mrs. Hancock knew very well that she was acting in a manner which, if occurring in anybody else, she would have unhesitatingly labelled mean. But she never indulged in such thoughts about herself; she turned a deliberate back upon them, for they were rankly inconsistent with the spirit of cheerful selfishness which was the key to her character. She shut the door on them as she shut it on tales of misery and crime, ignoring and, if necessary, denying their existence. And if it was easy to spoil her childlike pleasures, it was easy also to restore them in all their integrity, and Edward's assurance that he had never heard so many nice plans was amply sufficient for her. Again her well-favoured face beamed with delighted smiles.
"I thought you would like them," she said, shutting the door not only on her knowledge of her meanness, but on his also, "and you have no idea what a pleasure it was to me to make them. So, since you approve, we will regard my share of the arrangements as settled. And now for your part. I am certain I shall be as satisfied with what you intend to do as you are with my intentions. But before we go on you must tell me what I have to do. Must I have a deed drawn up? Is it a deed they call it?"
He was careful not to spoil pleasure this time.
"I think that is scarcely necessary," he said. "You see you are—are making no settlements on Edith. You have promised to do certain things for our children, but for the present, anyhow——"
She interrupted.
"I see," she said, "but you must be certain to tell me whenever it is necessary for me to have a deed drawn up. I shall be always ready to do it, and to thank you for reminding me. Well, then."
She settled herself in her chair with an air of pleased expectation, and, it must be confessed, a secret gratification that she had not got to "put her name" to anything at all.
"I shall draw up a will," he said, "settling the whole of my property on Edith in trust for her children, if she has any, and, if not, for her use during her lifetime. In other words, she will enjoy the interest on my money, though the property itself will be in the hands of trustees. It amounts at present to about thirty thousand pounds."
Edward paused, for it was clear that Mrs. Hancock was pondering some point.
"Let me thoroughly understand," she said. "In case of your death, Edward, without children (though it really is quite horrid to think about such a thing), if she wanted to build herself a little house, shall we say, would she not be able to put her hand on three or four thousand pounds?"
"No. She would have the income from my money for life."
Mrs. Hancock was almost as eager to secure financial advantages for Edith, as she was to retain her own herself—almost, not quite.
"But she would find it difficult to live in a suitable house, the sort of house to which she has been accustomed, on the interest of thirty thousand pounds," said she.
"Do you think so? It means about fifteen hundred a year."
"Yes, I know, my dear, a very nice pleasant little income. But you must think what she has been accustomed to, for I must say that, though, as you know, I live very simply, yet I have never grudged Edith anything. Think if she was ill! A long illness is so terribly expensive. Would it not be better to insure your life, and settle that on her, so that she could have a little fund for a rainy day? I know my husband insured his life long before he married me."
Edward stiffened a little.
"I think, then, she might look to you for assistance," he said.
"Ah, how pleased I should be to make any economies for her sake," she said, with feeling. "But what if I am no longer here to help her?"
"In that case she will have all your money in her complete command," he remarked.
This was undoubtedly the case, and it was not possible to pursue that particular line of grabbing any further. She smiled at him not quite so tenderly.
"My dear, how sharp the City makes you business men," she observed.
Heathmoor seemed to have done pretty well in that line for her, but he did not draw attention to that.
"I don't think I feel inclined to make any further provision over that," he said. "Edith is coming to me, I must remind you, quite portionless."
A sudden resentment at her attitude seized him.
"Or how would it be if you and I both insured our lives for, let us say, ten thousand pounds," he suggested, "and settled it on her?"
Mrs. Hancock became dignified.
"At my death," she said, "she already comes into a considerable fortune."
"Very well. I quite agree with you that no further provision is necessary."
Mrs. Hancock had not much liked the reminder that Edith came portionless to him, and did not want that section of the argument—for it really was becoming an argument—pursued further. She retreated into her stronghold of satisfaction again.
"And now about the allowance you will make her?" she asked genially.
"I was proposing to give her two hundred and fifty a year for her private and personal expenses," he said.
Mrs. Hancock's smile completely faded.
"Yes," she said, "yes."
"I gather from your tone that you are not satisfied?" said he.
There was a short, rather unpleasant pause. Then she assumed an air of confiding candour.
"I did expect, dear Edward," she said, "that you would make a rather larger allowance than that for her. It is no use my denying it. And would you mind not smoking another cigarette just yet? The air is getting quite thick. Now, just as you have told me quite frankly what you think of my provision for Edith, so I will tell you. There is nothing like a perfectly frank talk for getting over difficulties. All her life dear Edith has had a very handsome allowance from me, with really nothing to spend it on except a dress or a pair of boots. I don't deny that I have often stinted myself so as not to stint her, but what her mother has done, that, I think, her husband should do. I don't think you consider how many more calls a married woman has on her purse than a girl living at home—all the running up to London to get household necessities for you, all the greater expenditure on dress that a married woman must make beyond what a girl requires. Indeed, I don't see how Edith can manage it on the sum you mention."
Edward's sympathy with Mrs. Hancock's childlike pleasure evaporated. He did not believe for a moment that the "very handsome allowance" given her by her mother amounted to anything like the sum he proposed. He knew also that the sum he proposed was a very reasonable one.
"If you would tell me how much she has hitherto spent," he said, "I should have some guide."
This Mrs. Hancock did not in the least wish to do.
"I do not mean to say that dear Edith is extravagant," said she, "but there is a great deal of difference between extravagance and counting every penny. There has been no need for her to do that; she is not accustomed to it."
It was impossible for him to ask her point blank what Edith's allowance had been; it was impossible also to ask the girl herself. He could not do such things; they were contrary to his average politeness of behaviour.
"It is true that when I settled to give Edith this allowance," he said, "I supposed that you would also give her something. I did not know what your intentions might be."
Mrs. Hancock brightened.
"But you do now, dear Edward," she said, "and you said you quite appreciate them. Dear me, what was the expression you used which warmed my heart so? Oh, yes; you had never heard so many nice plans. I am going to provide—and I assure you the more it costs me the better shall I be pleased—for your children when I give Edith, oh, so gaily, into your care. That shall be my part; you were pleased with that. I dare say it had never occurred to you, and you thought it very likely, that I should give Edith a hundred or a hundred and fifty a year, so that she would have three hundred and fifty or four hundred pounds of her own a year. Then, indeed, she would be well off; she would be as comfortable as she had ever been."
Suddenly the intolerable sordidness of the discussion struck him. Justly he told himself that it was none of his making, but he could at any rate decline to let it continue. He did not hug himself over his generosity, for he knew that in his comfortable circumstances it made no real difference whether he gave Edith four hundred a year or not; merely he could not possibly go on bargaining and disputing. He got up.
"She shall have four hundred a year," he said.
Mrs. Hancock gave a little cry of delight.
"Exactly what I thought that your generosity would insist on giving her," she said. "It is nice to find how well we agree. I was sure we should. And what a delicious sunny morning!"