"Aren't you coming, Auntie?" Maggie demanded.

"Let me have a look at Edwin, child," said Auntie Hamps, somewhat nettled. "How set you are!"

"Then I shall go alone," said Maggie.

"Yes. But what about this house business?" Albert tried to stop her.

He could not stop her. Finance, houses, rents, were not real to her.

She owned but did not possess such things. But the endangered jam was real to her. She did not own it, but she possessed it. She departed.

"What's amiss with her to-day?" murmured Mrs. Hamps. "I must go too, or I shall be catching it; my word I shall!"

"What house business?" Edwin asked.

"Well," said Albert. "I like that! Aren't you trying to buy her house from her? We've just been talking it over."

Edwin glanced swiftly at Hilda, and Hilda knew from the peculiar constrained, almost shamefaced, expression on his features, that he was extremely annoyed. He gave a little nervous laugh.

"Oh! Have ye?" he muttered.

VI

Although Edwin discussed the purchase of the house quite calmly with Albert, and appeared to regard it as an affair practically settled, Hilda could perceive from a single gesture of his in the lobby as they were leaving, that his resentment against herself had not been diminished by the smooth course of talking. Nevertheless she was considerably startled by his outburst in the street.

"It's a pity Maggie went off like that," she said quietly. "You might have fixed everything up immediately."

Then it was that he turned on her, glowering angrily.

"Why on earth did you go talking about it, without telling me first?" he demanded, furious.

"But it was understood, dear----" She smiled, affecting not to perceive his temper, and thereby aggravating it.

He almost shouted:

"Nothing of the kind! Nothing of the kind!"

"Maggie was there. I just happened to mention it." Hilda was still quite placid.

"You went down on purpose to tell her, so you needn't deny it. Do you take me for a fool?"

Her placidity was undiminished.

"Of course I don't take you for a fool, dear. I a.s.sure you I hadn't the slightest idea you'd be annoyed."

"Yes, you had. I could see it on your face when I came in. Don't try to stuff me up. You go blundering into a thing, without the least notion--without the least notion! I've told you before, and I tell you again--I won't have you interfering in my business affairs. You know nothing of business. You'll make my life impossible. All you women are the same. You will poke your noses in. There'll have to be a clear understanding between you and me on one or two points, before we go much further."

"But you told me I could mention it to her."

"No, I didn't."

"You did, Edwin. Do be just."

"I didn't say you could go and plunge right into it at once. These things have to be thought out. Houses aren't bought like that. A house isn't a pound of tea, and it isn't a hat."

"I'm very sorry."

"No, you aren't. And you know jolly well you aren't. Your scheme was simply to tie my hands."

She knew the truth of this, and her smile became queer. Nevertheless the amiable calm which she maintained astonished even herself. She was not happy, but certainly she was not unhappy. She had got, or she was going to get, what she wanted; and here was the only fact important to her; the means by which she had got it, or was going to get it, were negligible now. It cost her very little to be magnanimous. She wondered at Edwin. Was this furious brute the timid, worshipping boy who had so marvellously kissed her a dozen years earlier--before she had fallen into the hands of a scoundrel? Were these scenes what the exquisite romance of marriage had come to? ... Well, and if it was so, what then? If she was not happy she was elated, and she was philosophic, and she had the terrific sense of realities of some of her s.e.x. She was out of the Benbow house; she breathed free, she had triumphed, and she had her man to herself. He might be a brute--the Five Towns (she had noticed as a returned exile) were full of brutes whose pa.s.sions surged and boiled beneath the phlegmatic surface--but he existed, and their love existed. And a peep into the depth of the cauldron was exciting.... The injustice or the justice of his behaviour did not make a live question.

Moreover, she did not in truth seriously regard him as a brute. She regarded him as an unreasonable creature, something like a baby, to be humoured in the inessentials of a matter of which the essentials were now definitely in her favour. His taunt that she went blundering into a thing, and that she knew naught of business, amused her. She knew her own business, and knew it profoundly. The actual situation was a proof of that. As for abstract principles of business, the conventions and etiquette of it--her lips condescendingly curled. After all, what had she done to merit this fury? Nothing! Nothing! What could it matter whether the negotiations were begun instantly or in a week's or a month's time? (Edwin would have dilly-dallied probably for three months, or six). She had merely said a few harmless words, offered a suggestion. And now he desired to tear her limb from limb and eat her alive. It was comical! Impossible for her to be angry, in her triumph!

It was too comical! She had married an astounding personage.... But she had married him. He was hers. She exulted in the possession of him.

His absurd peculiarities did not lower him in her esteem. She had a perfect appreciation of his points, including his general wisdom. But she was convinced that she had a special and different and superior kind of wisdom.

"And a nice thing you've let Maggie in for!" Edwin broke out afresh after a spell of silent walking.

"Let Maggie in for?" she exclaimed lightly.

"Albert ought never to have known anything of it until it was all settled. He will be yarning away to her about how he can use her money for her, and what he gets hold of she'll never see again,--you may bet your boots on that. If you'd left it to me I could have fixed things up for her in advance. But no! In you must go! Up to the neck! And ruin everything!"

"Oh!" she said rea.s.suringly. "You'll be able to look after Maggie all right."

He sniffed, and settled down into embittered disgust, quickening somewhat his speed up the slope of Acre Lane.

"Please don't walk so fast, Edwin," she breathed, just like a nice little girl. "I can't keep up with you."

In spite of his enormous anger he could not refuse such a request. She was getting the better of him again. He knew it; he could see through the devices. With an irritated swing of his body he slowed down to suit her.

She had a glimpse of his set, gloomy, savage, ruthless face, the lower lip bulging out. Really it was grotesque! Were they grown up, he and she? She smiled almost self-consciously, fearing that pa.s.sers-by might notice his preposterous condition. All the way up Acre Lane and across by St. Luke's Churchyard into Trafalgar Road they walked thus side by side in silence. By strange good luck they did not meet a single acquaintance, and as Edwin had a latchkey, no servant had to come and open the door and behold them.

Edwin, throwing his hat on the stand, ran immediately upstairs. Hilda pa.s.sed idly into the drawing-room. She was glad to be in her own drawing-room again. It was a distinguished apartment, after Clara's.

There lay the Dvorak music on the piano.... The atmosphere seemed full of ozone. She rang for Ada and spoke to her with charming friendliness about Master George. Master George had returned from an informal cricket match in the Manor Fields, and was in the garden. Yes, Ada had seen to his school-clothes. Everything was in order for the new term shortly to commence. But Master George had received a blow from the cricket-ball on his shin, which was black and blue.... Had Ada done anything to the shin? No, Master George would not let her touch it, but she had been allowed to see it.... Very well, Ada.... There was something beatific about the state of being mistress of a house.

Without the mistress, the house would simply crumble to pieces.

Hilda went upstairs; she was apprehensive, but her apprehensiveness was agreeable to her.... No, Edwin was not in the bedroom.... She could hear him in the bathroom. She tried the door. It was bolted. He always bolted it.

"Edwin!"

"What is it?"

He opened the door. He was in his shirt sleeves and had just finished with the towel. She entered, and shut the door and bolted it. And then she began to kiss him. She kissed him time after time, on his cheek so damp and fresh.

"Poor dear!" she murmured.

She knew that he could not altogether resist those repeated kisses.