Part 80 (1/2)

”Drive home in the dark? Not much!” Edwin murmured.

”He's afraid of my driving,” said Hilda.

When Edwin and Ingpen were alone together once more, Ingpen's expression changed back instantly to that which Hilda had disturbed, and Edwin's impatience, which had uneasily simmered during the interruption, began to boil.

”Her husband's in a lunatic asylum, I may tell you,” said Ingpen.

”Whose?”

”The young woman's in question.”

For Edwin, it was as if a door had opened in a wall and disclosed a vast unsuspected garden of romance.

”Really!”

”Yes, my boy,” Ingpen went on, quietly, with restraint, but not without a nave and healthy pride in the sudden display of the marvellous garden. ”And I didn't meet her at a concert, or on the Grand Ca.n.a.l, or anything of that sort. I met her in a mill at Oldham while I was doing my job. He was the boss of the mill; I walked into an office and he was lying on the floor on the flat of his back, and she was wiping her feet on his chest. He was saying in a very anxious tone: 'You aren't half wiping them. Harder! Harder!' That was his little weakness, you see.

He happened to be convinced that he was a doormat. She had been hiding the thing for weeks, coming with him to the works, and so on, to calm him.” Ingpen spoke more quickly and excitedly: ”I never saw a more awful thing in my life! I never saw a more awful thing in my life! And coming across it suddenly, you see.... There was something absolutely odious in him lying down like that, and her trying to soothe him in the way he wanted. You should have seen the serious expression of his face, simply bursting with anxiety for her to wipe her boots properly on him.

And her face when she caught sight of me. Oh! Dreadful! Dreadful!”

Ingpen paused, and then continued calmly: ”Of course I soon tumbled to it. For the matter of that, it didn't want much tumbling to. He went raving mad the same afternoon. And he's been more or less raving mad ever since.”

”What a ghastly business.... Any children?”

”No, thank G.o.d!” Ingpen answered with fresh emotion. ”But don't you forget that she's still the wife of that lunatic, and he'll probably live for ever. She's tied up to him just as if she was tied up to a post. Those are our Divorce Laws! Isn't it appalling? Isn't it inconceivable? Just think of the situation of that woman!” Ingpen positively glared at Edwin in the intensity of his indignation.

”Awful!” Edwin murmured.

”Quite alone in the world, you know!” said Ingpen. ”I'm hanged if I know what she'd have done without me. She hadn't a friend--at any rate she hadn't a friend with a grain of sense. Astonis.h.i.+ng how solitary some couples are! ... It aged her frightfully. She's much younger than she looks. Happily there was a bit of money--enough in fact.”

Deeply as Edwin had been impressed by his romantic discovery of a woman in Ingpen's room at Hanbridge, he was still more impressed by it now.

He saw the whole scene again, and saw it far more poetically. He accused himself of blindness, and also of a certain harshness of att.i.tude towards the woman. He endowed her now with wondrous qualities. The adventure, in its tragicalness and its clandestine tenderness, was enchanting. How exquisite must be the relations between Ingpen and the woman if without warning she could go to his lair at night and wait confidently for his return! How divine the surprise for him, how ardent the welcome! He envied Ingpen. And also he admired him, for Ingpen had obviously conducted the affair with worthy expertise. And he had known how to win devotion.

With an air of impartiality Ingpen proceeded:

”You wouldn't see her quite at her best, I'm afraid. She's very shy--and naturally she'd be more shy than ever when you saw her. She's quite a different woman when the shyness has worn off. The first two or three times I met her I must say I didn't think she was anything more than a nice well-meaning creature,--you know what I mean. But she's much more than that. Can't play, but I believe she has a real feeling for music.

She has time for reading, and she does read. And she has a more masculine understanding than nearly any other woman I've ever come across.”

”You wait a bit!” thought Edwin. This simplicity on the part of a notable man of the world pleased him and gave him a comfortable sense of superiority.

Aloud he responded sympathetically:

”Good! ... Do I understand she's living in the Five Towns now?”

”Yes,” said Ingpen, after a hesitation. He spoke in a peculiar, significant voice, carefully modest. The single monosyllable conveyed to Edwin: ”I cannot deny it. I was necessary to this woman, and in the end she followed me!”

Edwin was impressed anew by the full revelation of romance which had concealed itself in the squalid dailiness of the Five Towns.

”In fact,” said Ingpen, ”you never know your luck. If she'd been free I might have been fool enough to get married.”

”Why do you say a thing like that?”