"Yes."
"Because I can"t trust--Maggie--to see to it."
"I"ll see to it."
"Has she done--the silvers--d"you know?"
"She"s doing them," answered Edwin, who thought it would be best to carry out the deception with artistic completeness.
"She needn"t have her dinner before she goes."
"No?"
"No." Auntie Hamps"s face and tone hardened. "Why should she?"
"All right."
"And if she asks--for her wages--tell her--I say there"s nothing due--under the circ.u.mstances."
"All right, Auntie," Edwin agreed, desperate.
Maggie, followed by Clara, softly entered the room. Auntie Hamps glanced at them with a certain cautious suspicion, as though one or other of them was capable of thwarting her in the matter of Minnie. Then her eyes closed, and Edwin was aware of a slackening of her hold on his hand.
The doctor, who called half an hour later, said that she might never speak again, and she never did. Her last conscious moments were moments of satisfaction.
Edwin slowly released his hand.
"Where"s Albert?" he asked Clara, merely for the sake of saying something.
"He"s taking the children home, and then he"s going to the works. He ought to have gone long ago. There"s a dreadful upset there."
"I suppose there is," said Edwin, who had forgotten that the fly-wheel accident must have almost brought Albert"s manufactory to a standstill.
And he wondered whether it was the family instinct, or anxiety about Auntie Hamps"s will, that had caused Albert to absent himself from business on such a critical morning.
"I ought to go too," he muttered, as a full picture of a lithographic establishment masterless swept into his mind.
"Have you telegraphed to Hilda?" Clara demanded.
"No."
"Haven"t you!"
"What"s the use?"
"Well, I should have thought you would."
"Oh, no!" he said, falsely mild. "I shall write." He was immensely glad that Hilda was not present in the house to complicate still further the human equation.
Maggie was silently examining the face obscured in the gloom of the curtains.
Instead of remaining late that night at the works, Edwin came back to the house before six o"clock. He had had word that the condition of Tertius Ingpen was still unchanged. Clara had gone home to see to her children"s evening meal. Maggie sat alone in the darkened bedroom, where Auntie Hamps, her features a mere pale blur between the over-arching curtains, still withheld the secret of her soul"s reality from the world. Even in the final unconsciousness there was something grandiose which lingered from her crowning magnificent deceptions and obstinate effort to safeguard the structure of society. The sublime obstinacy of the woman had transformed hypocrisy into a virtue, and not the imminence of the infinite unknown had sufficed to make her apostate to the steadfast principles of her mortal career.
"What about to-night?" Edwin asked.
"Oh! Clara and I will manage."
There was a tap at the door. Edwin opened it. Minnie, abashed but already taking courage, stood there blinking with a letter in her hand.
"Ah!" he breathed. Hilda"s scrawling calligraphy was on the envelope.
The letter read: "Darling boy. George has influenza, Charlie says.
Temp. 102 anyway. So of course he can"t go out to-morrow. I knew this morning there was something wrong with him. Janet and Charlie send their love. Your ever loving wife, Hilda."
He was exceedingly uplifted and happy and exhausted. Hilda"s handwriting moved him. The whole missive was like a personal emanation from her. It lived with her vitality. It fought for the mastery of the household interior against the mysterious, far-reaching spell of the dying woman. "Your loving wife." Never before, during their marriage, had she written a phrase so comforting and exciting. He thought: "My faith in her is never worthy of her." And his faith leaped up and became worthy of her.
"George has got influenza," he said indifferently.
"George! But influenza"s very serious for him, isn"t it?" Maggie showed alarm.
"Why should it be?"
"Considering he nearly died of it at Orgreaves"!"
"Oh! _Then_! ... He"ll be all right."
But Maggie had put fear into Edwin,--a superst.i.tious fear. Influenza indeed might be serious for George. Suppose he died of it. People did die of influenza. Auntie Hamps--Tertius Ingpen--and now George! ... All these anxieties mingling with his joy in the thought of Hilda! And all the brooding rooms of the house waiting in light or in darkness for a decisive event!
"I must go and lie down," he said. He could contain no more sensations.
"Do," said Maggie.
IV
At two o"clock in the afternoon of Auntie Hamps"s funeral, a procession consisting of the following people moved out of the small, stuffy dining-room of her house across the lobby into the drawing-room:--the Rev. Christian Flowerdew, the Rev. Guy Cliffe (second minister), the aged Reverend Josiah Higginbotham (supernumerary minister), the chapel and the circuit stewards, the doctor, Edwin, Maggie, Clara, Bert and young Clara (being respectively the eldest nephew and the eldest niece of the deceased), and finally Albert Benbow; Albert came last because he had const.i.tuted himself the marshal of the ceremonies. In the drawing-room the coffin with its hideous bra.s.s plate and handles lay upon two chairs, and was covered with white wreaths. At the head of the coffin was placed a small table with a white cloth; on the cloth a large inlaid box (in which Auntie Hamps had kept odd photographs), and on the box a black book. The drawn blinds created a beautiful soft silvery gloom which solemnised everything and made even the clumsy carving on the coffin seem like the finest antique work. The three ministers ranged themselves round the small table; the others stood in an irregular horseshoe about the coffin, nervous, constrained, and in dread of catching each other"s glances. Mr. Higginbotham, by virtue of his age, began to read the service, and Auntie Hamps became "she," "her,"
and "our sister,"--nameless. In the dining-room she had been the paragon of all excellences,--in the drawing-room, packed securely and neatly in the coffin, she was a sinner s.n.a.t.c.hed from the consequences of sin by a miracle of divine sacrifice.
The interment thus commenced was the result of a compromise between two schools of funebrial manners sharply divergent. Edwin, immediately after the demise, had become aware of influences far stronger than those which had shaped the already half-forgotten interment of old Darius Clayhanger into a form repugnant to him. Both Albert and Clara, but especially Albert, had a.s.sumed an elaborate funeral, with a choral service at the Wesleyan chapel, numerous guests, a superb procession, and a substantial and costly meal in the drawing-room to conclude.
Edwin had at once and somewhat domineeringly decided: no guests whatever outside the family, no service at the chapel, every rite reduced to its simplest. When asked why, he had no logical answer. He soon saw that it would be impossible not to invite a minister and the doctor. He yielded, intimidated by the sacredness of custom. Then not only the Wesleyan chapel but its Sunday School sent dignified emissaries, who so little expected a No to their honorific suggestions that the No was unuttered and unutterable. Certain other invitations were agreed upon.
The Sunday School announced that it would "walk," and it prepared to "walk."
All the emissaries spoke of Auntie Hamps as a saint; they all averred with restrained pa.s.sion that her death was an absolutely irreparable loss to the circuit; and their apparent conviction was such that Edwin"s whole estimate of Auntie Hamps and of mankind was momentarily shaken.
Was it conceivable that none of these respectable people had arrived at the truth concerning Auntie Hamps? Had she deceived them all? Or were they simply rewarding her in memory for her ceaseless efforts on behalf of the safety of society?
Edwin stood like a rock against a service in the Wesleyan Chapel. Clara cunningly pointed out to him that the Wesleyan Chapel would be heated for the occasion, whereas the chapel at the cemetery, where scores of persons had caught their deaths in the few years of its existence, was never heated. His reply showed genius. He would have the service at the house itself. The decision of the chief mourner might be regretted, and was regretted, but none could impugn its correct.i.tude, nor its social distinction; some said approvingly that it was "just like" Edwin.
Thenceforward the arrangements went more smoothly, the only serious difficulty being about the route to the cemetery. Edwin was met by a saying that "the last journey must be the longest," which meant that the cortege must go up St. Luke"s Square and along the Market Place past the Town Hall and the Shambles, encountering the largest number of sightseers, instead of taking the nearest way along Wedgwood Street.
Edwin chose Wedgwood Street.