Clayhanger

"Bless ye!" cried Auntie Hamps, "I was in such a fl.u.s.ter I forgot to ask the little toddler. But I didn't hear her cough. I do hope it is.

October's a bad time for coughs to begin. I ought to have asked. But I'm getting an old woman."

"We were just arguing whether you were thirty-eight or thirty-nine, auntie," said Edwin.

"What a tease he is--with his beard!" she archly retorted. "Well, your old aunt is sixty this day."

"Sixty!" the nephew and niece repeated together in astonishment.

Auntie Hamps nodded.

"You're the finest sixty I ever saw!" said Edwin, with unaffected admiration.

And she was fine. The pride in her eye as she made the avowal--probably the first frank avowal of her age that had pa.s.sed those lips for thirty years--was richly justified. With her clear, rosy complexion, her white regular teeth, her straight spine, her plump figure, her brilliant gaze, her rapid gestures, and that authentic hair of hers falling in Victorian curls, she offered to the world a figure that no one could regard without a physical pleasure and stimulation. And she was so s.h.i.+ningly correct in her black silk and black velvet, and in the ma.s.sive jet at her throat, and in the slenderness of her shoe! It was useless to recall her duplicities, her mendacities, her hypocrisies, her meannesses. At any rate she could be generous at moments, and the splendour of her vitality sometimes, as now, hid all her faults. She would confess to aches and pains like other folk, bouts of rheumatism for example--but the high courage of her body would not deign to ratify such miserable statements; it haughtily repelled the touch of time; it kept at least the appearance of victory. If you did not like Auntie Hamps willingly, in her hours of bodily triumph, you had to like her unwillingly. Both Edwin and Maggie had innumerable grievances against her, but she held their allegiance, and even their warm instinctive affection, on the morning of her sixtieth birthday. She had been a lone widow ever since Edwin could remember, and yet she had continued to bloom. Nothing could desiccate nor wither her. Even her sins did not find her out. G.o.d and she remained always on the best terms, and she thrived on insincerity.

FIVE.

"There's a little parcel for you, auntie," said Edwin, with a particular effort to make his voice soft and agreeable. "But it's in Manchester.

It won't be here till to-morrow. My fault entirely! You know how awful I am for putting off things."

"We quite expected it would be here to-day," said the loyal Maggie, when most sisters--and Clara a.s.suredly--would have said in an eager, sarcastic tone: "Yes, it's just like Edwin, and yet I reminded him I don't know how many times!" (Edwin felt with satisfaction that the new leaf was already turned. He was glad that he had said 'My fault entirely.' He now said to himself: "Maggie's all right, and so am I. I must keep this up. Perfect nonsense, people hinting that she and I can't get on together!")

"Please, please!" Auntie Hamps entreated. "Don't talk about parcels!"

And yet they knew that if they had not talked about a parcel the ageing lady would have been seriously wounded. "All I want is your love. You children are all I have now. And if you knew how proud I am of you all, seeing you all so nice

If only your poor mother--!"

Impossible not to be impressed by those accents! Edwin and Maggie might writhe under Auntie Hamps's phraseology; they might remember the most horrible examples of her cant. In vain! They were impressed. They had to say to themselves: "There's something very decent about her, after all."

Auntie Hamps looked from one to the other, and at the quiet opulence of the breakfast-table, and the s.p.a.cious solidities of the room.

Admiration and respect were in that eye, always too masculine to weep under emotion. Undoubtedly she was proud of her nephew and nieces. And had she not the right to be? The bearded Edwin, one of the chief tradesmen in the town, and so fond of books, such a reader, and so quiet in his habits! And the two girls, with nice independent fortunes: Clara so fruitful and so winning, and Maggie so dependable, so kind! Auntie Hamps had scarce anything else to wish for. Her ideals were fulfilled.

Undoubtedly since the death of Darius her att.i.tude towards his children had acquired even a certain humility.

"Shall you be in to-morrow morning, auntie?" Maggie asked, in the constrained silence that followed Mrs Hamps's protestations.

"Yes, I shall," said Mrs Hamps, with a.s.surance. "I shall be mending curtains."

"Well, then, I shall call. About eleven." Maggie turned to Edwin benevolently. "It won't be too soon if I pop in at the shop a little before eleven?"

"No," said Edwin with equal benevolence. "It's not often Sutton's delivery is after ten. That'll be all right. I'll have it unpacked."

SIX.

He lit a cigarette.

"Have one?" he suggested to Mrs Hamps, holding out the case.

"I shall give you a rap over the knuckles in a minute," smiled Mrs Hamps, who was now leaning an elbow on the table in easy intimacy. And she went on in a peculiar tone, low, mysterious, and yet full of vivacity: "I can't quite make out who that little nephew is that Janet Orgreave is taking about."

"Little nephew that Janet's taking about!" murmured Maggie, in surprise; and to Edwin, "Do you know?"

Edwin shook his head. "When?" he asked.

"Well, this morning," said Mrs Hamps. "I met them as I was coming up.

She was on one side of the road, and the child was on the other--just opposite Howson's. My belief is she'd lost all control over the little jockey. Oh! A regular little jockey! You could see that at once.

'Now, George, come along,' she called to him. And then he shouted, 'I want you to come on this side, auntie.' Of course I couldn't stop to see it out. She was so busy with him she only just moved to me."

"George? George?" Maggie consulted her memory. "How old was he, about?"

"Seven or eight, I should say."

"Well, it couldn't be one of Tom's children. Nor Alicia's."

"No," said Auntie Hamps. "And I always understood that the eldest daughter's--what's her name?"

"Marian."

"Marian's were all girls."

"I believe they are. Aren't they, Edwin?"

"How can I tell?" said Edwin. It was a marvel to him how his auntie collected her information. Neither she nor Clara had ever been in the slightest degree familiar with the Orgreaves, and Maggie, so far as he knew, was not a gossiper. He thought he perceived, however, the explanation of Mrs Hamps's visit. She had encountered in the street a phenomenon which would not harmonise with facts of her own knowledge, and the discrepancy had disturbed her to such an extent that she had been obliged to call in search of relief. There was that, and there was also her natural inclination to show herself off on her triumphant sixtieth birthday.

"Charles Orgreave isn't married, is he?" she inquired.

"No," said Maggie.

SEVEN.

Silence fell upon this enigma of Janet's entirely unaccountable nephew.

"Charlie may be married," said Edwin humorously, at length. "You never know! It's a funny world! I suppose you've seen," he looked particularly at his auntie, "that your friend Parnell's dead?"

She affected to be outraged.

"I've seen that Parnell is dead," she rebuked him, with solemn quietness. "I saw it on a poster as I came up. I don't want to be uncharitable, but it was the best thing he could do. I do hope we've heard the last of all this Home Rule now!"

Like many people Mrs Hamps was apparently convinced that the explanation of Parnell's scandalous fall and of his early death was to be found in the inherent viciousness of the Home Rule cause, and also that the circ.u.mstances of his end were a proof that Home Rule was cursed of G.o.d. She reasoned with equal power forwards and backwards. And she was so earnest and so dignified that Edwin was sneaped into silence.

Once more he could not keep from his face a look that seemed to apologise for his opinions. And all the heroic and pa.s.sionate grandeur of Parnell's furious career shrivelled up to mere sordidness before the inability of one narrow-minded and ignorant but vigorous woman to appreciate its quality. Not only did Edwin feel apologetic for himself, but also for Parnell. He wished he had not tried to be funny about Parnell; he wished he had not mentioned him. The brightness of the birthday was for an instant clouded.

"I don't know what's coming over things!" Auntie Hamps murmured sadly, staring out of the window at the street gay with October sun s.h.i.+ne.

"What with that! And what with those terrible baccarat scandals. And now there's this free education, that we ratepayers have to pay for.

They'll be giving the children of the working cla.s.ses free meals next!"

she added, with remarkably intelligent antic.i.p.ation.