Part 27 (2/2)

She moved towards the door.

”Hilda,” he said.

She stopped.

”Come here,” he commanded with gentle bluffness.

She wavered towards him.

”Come here, I tell you,” he said again.

He drew her down to him, all fluttering and sobbing and wet, and kissed her, kissed her several times; and then, sitting on his knees, she kissed him. But, though she mysteriously signified forgiveness, she could not smile; she was still far too agitated and out of control to be able to smile.

The scene was over. The proprieties of the musical evening were saved.

Her broken body and soul huddled against him were agreeably wistful to his triumphant manliness.

But he had had a terrible fright. And even now there was a certain mere bravado in his att.i.tude. In his heart he was thinking:

”By Jove! Has it come to this?”

The responsibilities of the future seemed too complicated, wearisome and overwhelming. The earthly career of a bachelor seemed almost heavenly in its wondrous freedom.... Etches v. Etches.... The unexampled creature, so recently the source of ineffable romance, still sat on his knees, weighing them down. Suddenly he noticed that his head ached very badly--worse than it had ached all day.

VII

The Sunday musical evening, beyond its artistic thrills and emotional quality, proved to be exciting as a social manifestation. Those present at it felt as must feel Russian conspirators in a back room of some big grey house of a Petrograd suburb when the secret printing-press begins to function before their eyes. This concert of profane harmonies, deliberately planned and pouring out through open windows to affront the ears of returners from church and chapel, was considered by its organisers as a remarkable event; and rightly so. The Clayhanger house might have been a fortress, with the blood-red standard of art and freedom floating from a pole lashed to its chimney. Of course everybody pretended to everybody else that the musical evening was a quite ordinary phenomenon.

It was a success, and a flas.h.i.+ng success, yet not unqualified. The performers--Tertius Ingpen on the piano, on the fiddle, and on the clarinet, Janet Orgreave on the piano, and very timidly in a little song by Grieg, Tom Orgreave on the piano and his contralto wife in two famous and affecting songs by Schumann and also on the piano, and Edwin sick but obstinate as turner-over of pages--all did most creditably. The music was given with ardent sympathy, and in none of it did any marked pause occur which had not been contemplated by the composer himself.

But abstentions had thinned the women among the audience. Elaine Hill did not come, and, far more important, Mrs. Orgreave did not come. Her husband, old Osmond Orgreave, had not been expected, as of late (owing to the swift onset of renal disease, hitherto treated by him with some contempt) he had declined absolutely to go out at night; but Edwin had counted on Mrs. Orgreave. She simply sent word that she did not care to leave her husband, and that Elaine was keeping her company.

Disappointment, keen but brief, resulted. Edwin's severe sick headache was also a drawback. It did, however, lessen the bad social effect of an altercation between him and Hilda, in which Edwin's part was attributed to his indisposition. This altercation arose out of an irresponsible suggestion from somebody that something else should be played instead of something else. Now, for Edwin, a programme was a programme,--sacred, to be executed regardless of every extrinsic consideration. And seeing that the programme was printed...! Edwin negatived the suggestion instantly, and the most weighty opinion in the room agreed with him, but Hilda must needs fly out: ”Why not change it?

I'm sure it will be better,” etc. Whereas she could be sure of nothing of the sort, and was incompetent to offer an opinion. And she unreasonably and unnecessarily insisted, despite Tertius Ingpen, and the change was made. It was astounding to Edwin that, after the shattering scene of the afternoon, she should be so foolhardy, so careless, so obstinate. But she was. He kept his resentment neatly in a little drawer in his mind, and glanced at it now and then. And he thought of Tertius Ingpen's terrible remark about women at Ingpen's first visit.

He said to himself: ”There's a lot in it, no doubt about that.”

At the close of the last item, two of Brahms's Hungarian Dances for pianoforte duet (played with truly electrifying _brio_ by little wizening Tom Orgreave and his wife), both Tertius Ingpen and Tom fussed consciously about the piano, triumphant, not knowing quite what to do next, and each looking rather like a man who has told a good story, and in the midst of the applause tries to make out by an affectation of casualness that the story is nothing at all.

”Of course,” said Tom Orgreave carelessly, and glancing at the ground as he usually did when speaking, ”Fine as those dances are on the piano, I should prefer to hear them with the fiddle.”

”Why?” demanded Ingpen challengingly.

”Because they were written for the fiddle,” said Tom Orgreave with finality.

”Written for the fiddle? Not a bit of it!”

With superiority outwardly unruffled, Tom said:

”Pardon me. Brahms wrote them for Joachim. I've heard him play them.”

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