These Twain Part 20

And immediately he was asleep. Clara kissed him, bending her head down and with difficulty reaching his cheek with her lips.

Auntie Hamps enquired fondly:

"What does he mean--'mother tired too'?"

"Well," said Clara, "the fact is some of 'em were so excited they stopped my afternoon sleep this afternoon. I always do have my nap, you know,"--she looked at Hilda. "In here! When this door's closed they know mother mustn't be disturbed. Only this afternoon Lucy or Amy--I don't know which, and I didn't enquire too closely--forgot.... He's remembered it, the little Turk."

"Is he asleep?" Hilda demanded in a low voice.

"Fast. He's been like that lately. He'll play a bit, and then he'll stop, and say he's tired, and sometimes cry, and he'll come to me and be asleep in two jiffs. I think he's been a bit run down. He said he had toothache yesterday. It was nothing but a little cold; they've all had colds; but I wrapped his face up to please him. He looked so sweet in his bandage, I a.s.sure you I didn't want to take it off again. No, I didn't.... I wonder why Amy wouldn't play with him? She's such a splendid playmate--when she likes. Full of imagination! Simply full of it!"

Albert had approached from the window.

With an air of important conviction, he said to Hilda:

"Yes, Amy's imagination is really remarkable." As no one responded to this statement, he drummed on the table to ease the silence, and then suddenly added: "Well, I suppose I must be getting on with my dictionary reading! I'm only at S; and there's bound to be a lot of words under U--beginning with _un_, you know. I saw at once there would be." He spoke rather defiantly, as though challenging public opinion to condemn his new dubious activity.

"Oh!" said Clara. "Albert's quite taken up with missing words nowadays."

But instead of conning his dictionary, Albert returned to the window, drawn by his inexhaustible paternal curiosity, and he even opened the window and leaned out, so that he might more effectively watch the garden. And with the fresh air there entered the high, gay, inspiriting voices of the children.

Clara smiled down at the boy sleeping in her lap. She was happy. The child was happy. His flushed face, with its expression of loving innocence, was exquisitely touching. Clara's face was full of proud tenderness. Everybody gazed at the picture with secret and profound pleasure. Hilda wished once more that George was only two and a half years old again. George's infancy, and her early motherhood, had been very different from all this. She had never been able to shut a dining-room door, or any other door, as a sign that she must not be disturbed. And certainly George had never sympathetically remarked that she was tired.... She was envious.... And yet a minute ago she had been execrating the family life of the Benbows. The complexity of the tissue of existence was puzzling.

V

When Albert brought his head once more into the room he suddenly discovered the stuffiness of the atmosphere, and with the large, free gestures of a mountaineer and a sanitarian threw open both windows as wide as possible. The bleak wind from the moorlands surged in, fluttering curtains, and lowering the temperature at a run.

"Won't Rupert catch cold?" Hilda suggested, chilled.

"He's got to be hardened, Rupert has!" Albert replied easily. "Fresh air! Nothing like it! Does 'em good to feel it!"

Hilda thought:

"Pity you didn't think so a bit earlier!"

Her countenance was too expressive. Albert divined some ironic thought in her brain, and turned on her with a sort of parrying jeer:

"And how's the great man getting along?"

In this phrase, which both he and Clara employed with increasing frequency, Albert let out not only his jealousy of, but his respect for, the head of the family. Hilda did not like it, but it flattered her on Edwin's behalf, and she never showed her resentment of the att.i.tude which prompted it.

"Edwin? Oh, he's all right. He's working." She put a slight emphasis on the last p.r.o.noun, in order revengefully to contrast Edwin's industry with Albert's presence during business hours at a children's birthday party. "He said to me as he went out that he must go and earn something towards Maggie's rent." She laughed softly.

Clara smiled cautiously; Maggie smiled and blushed a little; Albert did not commit himself; only Auntie Hamps laughed without reserve.

"Edwin will have his joke," said she.

Although Hilda had audaciously gone forth that afternoon with the express intention of opening negotiations, on her own initiative, with Maggie for the purchase of the house, she had certainly not meant to discuss the matter in the presence of the entire family. But she was seized by one of her characteristic impulses, and she gave herself up to it with the usual mixture of glee and apprehension. She said:

"I suppose you wouldn't care to sell us the house, would you, Maggie?"

Everybody became alert, and as it grew apparent that the company was a.s.sisting at the actual birth of a family episode or incident, a peculiar feeling of eager pleasure spread through the room, and the appet.i.te for history-making leapt up.

"Indeed I should!" Maggie answered, with a deepening flush, and all were astonished at her decisiveness, and at the warmth of her tone. "I never wanted the house. Only it was arranged that I should have it, so of course I took it." The long-silent victim was speaking. Money was useless to her, for she was incapable of turning it into happiness; but she had her views on finance and property, nevertheless; and though in all such matters she did as she was told, submissively accepting the decisions of brother or brother-in-law as decrees of fate, yet she was quite aware of the victimhood. The a.s.semblage was surprised and even a little intimidated by her mild outburst.

"But you've got a very good tenant, Maggie," said Auntie Hamps enthusiastically.

"She's got a very good tenant, admitted!" Albert said judicially and almost sternly. "But she'd never have any difficulty in finding a very good tenant for that house. That's not the point. The point is that the investment really isn't remunerative. Maggie could do much better for herself than that. Very much better. Why, if she went the right way about it she could get ten per cent on her money! I know of things.... And I bet she doesn't get three and a half per cent clear from the house. Not three and a half." He glanced reproachfully at Hilda.

"Do you mean the rent's too low?" Hilda questioned boldly.

He hesitated, losing courage.

"I don't say it's too low. But Maggie perhaps took the house over at too big a figure."

Maggie looked up at her brother-in-law.

"And whose fault was that?" she asked sharply. The general surprise was intensified. No one could understand Maggie. No one had the wit to perceive that she had been truly annoyed by Auntie Hamps's negligence in regard to jam, and was momentarily capable of bitterness. "Whose fault was that?" she repeated. "You and Clara and Edwin settled it between you. You yourself said over and over again it was a fair figure."

"I thought so at the time! I thought so at the time!" said Albert quickly. "We all acted for the best."

"I'm sure you did," murmured Auntie Hamps.

"I should think so, indeed!" murmured Clara, seeking to disguise her constraint by attentions to the sleeping Rupert.

"Is Edwin thinking of buying, then?" Albert asked Hilda in a quiet, studiously careless voice.

"We've discussed it," responded Hilda.

"Because if he is, he ought to take it over at the price Mag took it at.

She oughtn't to lose on it. That's only fair."

"I'm sure Edwin would never do anything unfair," said Auntie Hamps.

Hilda made no reply. She had already heard the argument from Edwin, and Albert now seemed to her more tedious and unprincipled than usual. Her reason admitted the force of the argument as regards Maggie, but instinct opposed it.

Nevertheless she was conscious of sudden sympathy for Maggie, and of a weakening of her prejudice against her.

"Hadn't we better be going, Auntie?" Maggie curtly and reproachfully suggested. "You know quite well that jam stands a good chance of being ruined."

"I suppose we had," Auntie Hamps concurred with a sigh, and rose.

"I shall be able to carry out my plan," thought Hilda, full of wisdom and triumph. And she saw Edwin, owner of the house, with his wild lithographic project scotched. And the realisation of her own sagacity thus exercised on behalf of those she loved, made her glad.

At the same moment, just as Albert was recommencing his flow, the door opened and Edwin entered. He had glimpsed the children in the garden and had come into the house by the back way. There were cries of stupefaction and bliss. Both Albert and Clara were unmistakably startled and flattered. Indeed, several seconds elapsed before Albert could a.s.sume the proper grim, casual air. Auntie Hamps rejoiced and sat down again. Maggie disclosed no feeling, and she would not sit down again. Hilda had a serious qualm. She was obliged to persuade herself that in opening the negotiations for the house she had not committed an enormity. She felt less sagacious and less dominant. Who could have dreamt that Edwin would pop in just then? It was notorious, it was even a subject of complaint, that he never popped in. In reply to enquiries he stammered in his customary hesitating way that he happened to be in the neighbourhood on business and that it had occurred to him, etc., etc. In short, there he was.