The flower was a gift to Amy from Bert, out of the birthday bunch presented to him by Rupert. Mysterious relations existed between Bert and the benignant, acquiescent Amy.

"Oh! Amy!" her mother protested, still whispering, but shocked.

Tears came into Amy's eyes. These tears Amy at length wiped away, and, straightening her face, offered the flower with stiff outstretched arm to her friend Flossie. And Flossie smilingly accepted it.

"It _is_ kind of you, you darling!" said Flossie, and stuck the flower in an interstice of her embroidered pinafore.

Amy, gravely lacking in self-control, began to whimper again.

"That's my good little girl!" muttered Clara to her, exhibiting pride in her daughter's victory over self, and rubbed the child's eyes with her handkerchief. The parents were continually thus "bringing up" their children. Hilda pressed her lips together.

Immediately afterwards it was noticed that Flossie was no longer eating.

"I've had quite enough, thank you," said she in answer to expostulations.

"No jam, even? And you've not finished your tea!"

"I've had quite enough, thank you," said she, and folded up her napkin.

"Please, father, can we go and play in the garden now?" Bert asked.

Albert looked at his wife.

"Yes, I think they might," said Clara. "Go and play nicely." They all rose.

"Now quietly, qui-etly!" Albert warned them.

And they went from the room quietly, each in his own fashion,--Flossie like a modest tsarina, young Clara full of virtue and holding Rupert by the hand, Amy lumpily, tiny Lucy as one who had too soon been robbed of the privilege of being the youngest, and Bert in the rear like a criminal who is observed in a suspicious act. And Albert blew out wind, as if getting rid of a great weight.

IV

"Finished your greengage, auntie?" asked Clara, after the pause which ensued while the adults were accustoming themselves to the absence of the children.

And it was Maggie who answered, rather eagerly:

"No, she hasn't. She's left it to the tender mercies of that Maria.

She wouldn't let me stay, and she wouldn't stay herself."

These were almost the first words, save murmurings as to cups of tea, quant.i.ties of sugar and of milk, etc., that the taciturn Maggie had uttered since Hilda's arrival. She was not sulky, she had merely been devoting herself and allowing herself to be exploited, in the vacuous manner customary to her,--and listening receptively--or perhaps not even receptively--offering no remark. Save that the smooth-working mechanism of the repast would have creaked and stopped at her departure, she might have slipped from the room unnoticed as a cat. But now she spoke as one capable of enthusiasm and resentment on behalf of an ideal. To her it was scandalous that greengage jam should be jeopardised for the sake of social pleasures, and suddenly it became evident she and her auntie had had a difference on the matter.

Mrs. Hamps said stoutly and defiantly, with grandeur:

"Well, I wasn't going to have my eldest grand-nephew's twelfth birthday party interfered with for any jam."

"Hear, hear!" said Hilda, liking the terrific woman for an instant.

But mild Maggie was inflexible.

Clara, knowing that in Maggie very slight symptoms had enormous significance, at once changed the subject. Albert went to the back window, whence by twisting his neck he could descry a corner of the garden.

Said Clara, smiling:

"I hear you're going to have some _musical evenings_, Hilda ... on Sunday nights."

Malice and ridicule were in Clara's tone. On the phrase "musical evenings" she put a strange disdainful emphasis, as though a musical evening denoted something not only unrighteous but sn.o.bbish, new-fangled, and absurd. Yet envy also was in her tone.

Hilda was startled.

"Ah! Who told you that?"

"Never mind! I heard," said Clara darkly.

Hilda wondered where the Benbows, from whom seemingly naught could be concealed, had in fact got this t.i.t-bit of news. By tacit consent she and Edwin had as yet said nothing to anybody except the Orgreaves, who alone, with Tertius Ingpen and one or two more intimates, were invited, or were to be invited, to the first evening. Relations between the Orgreaves and the Benbows scarcely existed.

"We're having a little music on Sunday night," said Hilda, as it were apologetically, and scorning herself for being apologetic. Why should she be apologetic to these base creatures? But she couldn't help it; the public opinion of the room was too much for her. She even added: "We're hoping that old Mrs. Orgreave will come. It will be the first time she's been out in the evening for ever so long." The name of Mrs.

Orgreave was calculated by Hilda to overawe them and stop their mouths.

No name, however, could overawe Mrs. Hamps. She smiled kindly, and with respect for the caprices of others; she spoke in a tone exceptionally polite,--but what she said was: "I'm sorry ... I'm sorry."

The deliverance was final. Auntie Hamps was almost as deeply moved about the approaching desecration of the Sabbath as Maggie had been about the casual treatment of jam. In earlier years she would have said a great deal more--just as in earlier years she would have punctuated Bert's birthday mouthfuls with descants upon the excellence of his parents and moral exhortations to himself; but Auntie Hamps was growing older, and quieter, and "I'm sorry ... I'm sorry" meant much from her.

Hilda became sad, disgusted, indignant, moody. The breach which separated her and Edwin from the rest of the family was enormous, as might be seen in the mere fact that they had never for a moment contemplated asking anybody in the family to the musical evening, nor had the family ever dreamed of an invitation. It was astonishing that Edwin should be so different from the others. But after all, was he?

She could see in him sometimes bits of Maggie, of Clara, and even of the Unspeakable. She was conscious of her grievances against Edwin. Among these was that he never, or scarcely ever, praised her. At moments, when she had tried hard, she felt a great need of praise. But Edwin would watch her critically, with the d.a.m.nable grim detachment of the Five Towns towards a stranger or a returned exile.

As she sat in the stuffy dining-room of the Benbows, surrounded by hostilities and incomprehensions, she had a sensation of unreality, or at any rate of a vast mistake. Why was she there? Was she not tied by intimate experience to a man at that very instant in prison? (She had a fearful vision of him in prison,--she, sitting there in the midst of Maggie, Clara, and Auntie Hamps!) Was she not the mother of an illegitimate boy? Victimised or not, innocent or not, she, a guest at Bert's intensely legitimate birthday fete, was the mother of an illegitimate boy. Incredible! She ought never to have married into the Clayhangers, never to have come back to this cackling provincial district. All these people were inimical towards her,--because she represented the luxury and riches and worldly splendour of the family, and because her illegitimate boy had tempted the heir of the Benbows to blasphemous wickedness, and because she herself had tempted a weak Edwin to abandon chapel and to desecrate the Sabbath, and again because she, without a penny of her own, had stepped in and now represented the luxury and riches and worldly splendour of the family. And all the family's grievances against Edwin were also grievances against her.

Once, long ago, when he was yet a bachelor, and had no hope of Hilda, Edwin had prevented his father, in dotage, from lending a thousand pounds to Albert upon no security. The interference was unpardonable, and Hilda would not be pardoned for it.

Such was marriage into a family. Such was family life.... Yes, she felt unreal there, and also unsafe. She had prevaricated about George and the penknife; and she had allowed Clara to remain under the impression that her visit to the house was a birthday visit. Auntie Hamps and destiny, between them, would lay bare all this lying. The antipathy against her would increase. But let it increase never so much, it still would not equal Hilda's against the family, as she thrilled to it then. Their narrow ignorance, their narrow self-conceit, their detestation of beauty, their pietism, their bigotry--revolted her.

In what century had they been living all those years? Was this married life? Had Albert and Clara ever felt a moment of mutual pa.s.sion? They were nothing but parents, eternally preoccupied with "oughts" and "ought nots" and forbiddances and horrid reluctant permissions. They did not know what joy was, and they did not want anybody else to know what joy was. Even on the outskirts of such a family, a musical evening on a Sunday night appeared a forlorn enterprise. And all the families in all the streets were the same. Hilda was hard enough on George sometimes, but in that moment she would have preferred George to be a thoroughly bad rude boy and to go to the devil, and herself to be a woman abandoned to every licence, rather than that he and she should resemble Clara and her offspring. All her wrath centred upon Clara as the very symbol of what she loathed.

"h.e.l.lo!" cried the watchful Albert from the window. "What's happening, I wonder?"

In a moment Rupert ran into the room, and without a word scrambled on his mother's lap, absolutely confident in her goodness and power.

"What's amiss, tuppenny?" asked his father.

"Tired," answered Rupert, with a faint, endearing smile.

He laid himself close against his mother's breast, and drew up his knees, and Clara held his body in her arms, and whispered to him.

"Amy 'udn't play with me," he murmured.

"Wouldn't she? Naughty Amy!"

"Mammy tired too," he glanced upwards at his mother's eyes in sympathy.