These Twain Part 44

"You ought to have brought him. In fact I quite thought he was coming.

Anyhow, I told Alicia to invite him, too, as soon as we knew you were bringing old Jan down."

"She did mention it, Alicia did. But, oh! He wouldn't hear of it.

Works! Works! No holiday all summer."

"I'll tell you a scheme," said Harry roguishly. "Refuse to rejoin the domestic hearth until he comes and fetches you."

She gave a little laugh. "Oh, he won't come to fetch me."

"Well," said Harry shortly and decisively, "we shall see what can be done. I may tell you we're rather great at getting people down here....

I wonder where those girls are?" He turned round and Hilda turned round.

The red Georgian house with its windows in octagonal panes, its large pediment hiding the centre of the roof, and its white paint, showed brilliantly across the hoop-studded green, between some cypresses and an ilex; on either side were smooth walls of green--trimmed shrubs forming long alleys whose floors were also green; and here and there a round or oval flowerbed, and, at the edges of the garden, curved borders of flowers. Everything was still, save the ship-like birds on the pond, the distant children in the plantation, and the slow-moving, small clouds overhead. The sun's warmth was like an endearment.

Janet and Alicia, their arms round each other's shoulders, sauntered into view from behind the cypresses. On the more sheltered lawn nearest the house they were engaged in a quiet but tremendous palaver; n.o.body but themselves knew what they were talking about; it might have been the affair of Johnnie and Mrs. Chris Hamson, as to which not a word had been publicly said at Tavy Mansion since Janet and Hilda's arrival. Janet still wore black, and now she carried a red sunshade belonging to Alicia. Alicia was in white, not very clean white, and rather tousled.

She was only twenty-five. She had grown big and jolly and downright (even to a certain shamelessness) and careless of herself. Her body had the curves, and her face the emaciation, of the young mother. She used abrupt, gawky, kind-hearted gestures. Her rough affectionateness embraced not merely her children, but all young living things, and many old. For her children she had a pa.s.sion. And she would say openly, as it were, defiantly, that she meant to be the mother of more children--lots more.

"Hey, la.s.s!" cried out Harry, using the broad Staffordshire accent for the amus.e.m.e.nt of Hilda.

The sisters stopped and untwined their arms.

"Hey, lad!" Alicia loudly responded. But instead of looking at her husband she was looking through him at the babies in the plantation behind the pond.

Janet smiled, in her everlasting resignation. Hilda, smiling at her in return from the distance, recalled the tone in which Harry had said 'old Jan'--a tone at once affectionate and half-contemptuous. She was old Jan, now; destined to be a burden upon somebody and of very little use to anybody; no longer necessary. If she disappeared, life would immediately close over her, and not a relative, not a friend, would be inconvenienced. Some among them would remark: "Perhaps it's for the best." And Janet knew it. In the years immediately preceding the death of Mr. and Mrs. Orgreave, she had hardened a little from her earlier soft, benevolent self--hardened to everybody save her father and mother, whom she protected--and now she was utterly tender again, and her gentle acquiescences seemed to say: "I am defenceless, and to-morrow I shall be old."

"I'm going to telegraph to Edwin Clayhanger to come down for the week-end," shouted Harry.

And Alicia shouted in reply:

"Oh! Spiffing!"

Hilda said nervously:

"You aren't, really?"

She had no intention of agreeing to the pleasant project. A breach definitely existed between Edwin and herself, and the idea of either maintaining it or ending it on foreign ground was inconceivable. Such things could only be done at home. She had telegraphed a safe arrival, but she had not yet written to him nor decided in what tone she should write.

Two gardeners, one pushing a wheeled water-can, appeared from an alley and began silently and a.s.siduously to water a shaded flower-bed. Alicia and Harry continued to shout enthusiastically to each other in a manner sufficiently disturbing, but the gardeners gave no sign that anybody except themselves lived in the garden. Alicia, followed by Janet, was slowly advancing towards the croquet lawn, when a parlourmaid tripping from the house overtook her, and with modest deference murmured something to the bawling, jolly mistress. Alicia, still followed by Janet, turned and went into the house, while the parlourmaid with bent head waited discreetly to bring up the rear.

A sudden and terrific envy possessed Hilda as she contrasted the circ.u.mstances of these people with her own. These people lived in lovely and cleanly surroundings without a care beyond the apprehension of nursery ailments. They had joyous and kindly dispositions. They were well-bred, and they were attended by servants who, professionally, were even better bred than themselves, and who were rendered happy by smooth words and good pay. They lived at peace with everyone. Full of health, they ate well and slept well. They suffered no strain. They had absolutely no problems, and they did not seek problems. Nor had they any duties, save agreeable ones to each other. Their world was ideal. If you had asked them how their world could be improved for them, they would not have found an easy reply. They could only have demanded less taxes and more fine days.... Whereas Hilda and hers were forced to live among a brutal populace, amid the most horrible surroundings of smoke, dirt, and squalor. In Devonshire the Five Towns was unthinkable; the whiteness of the window-curtains at Tavy Mansion almost broke the heart of the housewife in Hilda. And compare--not Hilda's handkerchief-garden, but even the old garden of the Orgreaves, with this elysium, where nothing offended the eye and the soot nowhere lay on the trees, blackening the shiny leaves and stunting the branches.

And compare the too mean planning and s.p.a.ce-saving of the house in Trafalgar Road with the lavish generosity of s.p.a.ce inside Tavy Mansion!...

Edwin in the Bursley sense was a successful man, and had consequence in the town, but the most that he had accomplished or could accomplish would not amount to the beginning of appreciable success according to higher standards. n.o.body in Bursley really knew the meaning of the word success. And even such local success as Edwin had had--at what peril and with what worry was it won! These Heskeths were safe forever. Ah!

She envied them, and she intensely depreciated everything that was hers.

She stood in the Tavy Mansion garden--it seemed to her--like an impostor. Her husband was merely struggling upwards. And moreover she had quarrelled with him, darkly and obscurely; and who could guess what would be the end of marriage? Harry and Alicia never quarrelled; they might have tiffs--nothing worse than that; they had no grounds for quarrelling.... And supposing Harry and Alicia guessed the link connecting her with Dartmoor prison! ... No, it could not be supposed.

Her envy melted into secret deep dejection amid the beautiful and prosperous scene.

"Evidently some one's called," said Harry, of his wife's disappearance.

"I hope she's nice."

"Who?"

"Whoever's called. Shall we knock the b.a.l.l.s about a bit?"

They began a mild game of croquet. But after a few minutes Hilda burst out sharply:

"You aren't playing your best, Mr. Hesketh. I wish you would."

He was startled by her eyes and her tone.

"Honest Injun! I am," he fibbed in answer. "But I'll try to do better.

You must remember croquet isn't my game. Alicia floors me at it five times out of six."

Then the parlourmaid and another maid came out to lay tea on two tables under the ilex.

"Bowley," said Harry over his shoulder. "Bring me a telegraph-form next time you come out, will you?"

"Yes, sir," said the parlourmaid.

Hilda protested:

"No, Mr. Hesketh! Really! I a.s.sure you--"

The telegraph-form came with the tea. Harry knocked a ball against a coloured stick, and both he and Hilda sat down with relief.

"Who's called, Bowley?"

"Mrs. Rotherwas, sir."

Harry counted the cups.

"Isn't she staying for tea?"

"No, sir. I think not, sir."

Hilda, humming, rose and walked about. At the same moment Alicia, Janet, and a tall young woman in black and yellow emerged from the house. Hilda moved behind a tree. She could hear good-byes. The group vanished round the side of the house, and then came the sound of hoofs and of wheels crunching. An instant later Alicia arrived at the ilex, bounding and jolly; Janet moved more sedately. The St. Bernard, who had been reposing near the pond, now smelt the tea and hot cakes and joined the party. The wagging of his powerful tail knocked over a wicker-chair, and Alicia gave a squeal. Then Alicia, putting her hands to her mouth, shouted across the lawn and the pond:

"Nursey! Nursey! Take them in!"

And a faint reply came.

"What was the Rotherwas dame after?" asked Harry, sharpening a pencil, when Alicia had ascertained the desires of her guests as to milk and sugar.

"She was after you, of course," said Alicia. "Tennis party on Monday.

She wants you to balance young Truscott. I just told her so. We shall all go. You'll go, Hilda. She'll be delighted. I should have brought her along only she was in such a hurry."

Hilda enquired:

"Who is Mrs. Rotherwas?"