I

The dramatic moment of the birthday feast came nearly at the end of the meal when Mrs. Maldon, having in mysterious silence disappeared for a space to the room behind, returned with due pomp bearing a parcel in her dignified hands.  During her brief absence Louis, Rachel, and Julian ­hero of the night ­had sat mute and somewhat constrained round the debris of the birthday pudding.  The constraint was no doubt due partly to Julian’s characteristic and notorious grim temper, and partly to mere anticipation of a solemn event.

Julian Maldon in particular was self-conscious.  He hated intensely to be self-conscious, and his feeling towards every witness of his self-consciousness partook always of the homicidal.  Were it not that civilization has the means to protect itself, Julian might have murdered defenceless aged ladies and innocent young girls for the simple offence of having seen him blush.

He was a perfect specimen of a throw-back to original ancestry.  He had been born in London, of an American mother, and had spent the greater part of his life in London.  Yet London and his mother seemed to count for absolutely nothing at all in his composition.  At the age of seventeen his soul, quitting the exile of London, had come to the Five Towns with a sigh of relief as if at the assuagement of a long nostalgia, and had dropped into the district as into a socket.  In three months he was more indigenous than a native.  Any experienced observer who now chanced at a week-end to see him board the Manchester express at Euston would have been able to predict from his appearance that he would leave the train at Knype.  He was an undersized man, with a combative and suspicious face.  He regarded the world with crafty pugnacity from beneath frowning eyebrows.  His expression said:  “Woe betide the being who tries to get the better of me!” His expression said:  “Keep off!” His expression said:  “I am that I am.  Take me or leave me, but preferably leave me.  I loathe fuss, pretence, flourishes ­any and every form of damned nonsense.”

He had an excellent heart, but his attitude towards it was the attitude of his great-grandmother towards her front parlour ­he used it as little as possible, and kept it locked up like a shame.  In brief, he was more than a bit of a boor.  And boorishness being his chief fault, he was quite naturally proud of it, counted it for the finest of all qualities, and scorned every manifestation of its opposite.  To prove his inward sincerity he deemed it right to flout any form of external grace ­such as politeness, neatness, elegance, compliments, small-talk, smooth words, and all ceremonial whatever.  He would have died in torment sooner than kiss.  He was averse even from shaking hands, and when he did shake hands he produced a carpenter’s vice, crushed flesh and bone together, and flung the intruding pulp away.  His hat was so heavy on his head that only by an exhausting and supreme effort could he raise it to a woman, and after the odious accident he would feel as humiliated as a fox-terrier after a bath.  By the kind hazard of fate he had never once encountered his great-aunt in the street.  He was superb in enmity ­a true hero.  He would quarrel with a fellow and say, curtly, “I’ll never speak to you again”; and he never would speak to that fellow again.  Were the last trump to blow and all the British Isles to be submerged save the summit of Snowdon, and he and that fellow to find themselves alone and safe together on the peak, he could still be relied upon never to speak to that fellow again.  Thus would he prove that he was a man of his word and that there was no nonsense about him.

Strange though it may appear to the thoughtless, he was not disliked ­much less ostracised.  Codes differ.  He conformed to one which suited the instincts of some thirty thousand other adult males in the Five Towns.  Two strapping girls in the warehouse of his manufactory at Knype quarrelled over him in secret as the Prince Charming of those parts.  Yet he had never addressed them except to inform them that if they didn’t mind their p’s and q’s he would have them flung off the “bank” [manufactory].  Rachel herself had not yet begun to be prejudiced against him.

This monster of irascible cruelty regarded himself as a middle-aged person.  But he was only twenty-five that day, and he did not look more, either, despite a stiff, strong moustache.  He too, like Louis and Rachel, had the gestures of youth ­the unconsidered, lithe movements of limb, the wistful, unteachable pride of his age, the touching self-confidence.  Old Mrs. Maldon was indeed old among them.

II

She sat down in all her benevolent stateliness and with a slightly irritating deliberation undid the parcel, displaying a flattish leather case about seven inches by four, which she handed formally to Julian Maldon, saying as she did so ­

“From your old auntie, my dear boy, with her loving wishes.  You have now lived just a quarter of a century.”

And as Julian, awkwardly grinning, fumbled with the spring-catch of the case, she was aware of having accomplished a great and noble act of surrender.  She hoped the best from it.  In particular, she hoped that she had saved the honour of her party and put it at last on a secure footing of urbane convivial success.  For that a party of hers should fail in giving pleasure to every member of it was a menace to her legitimate pride.  And so far fate had not been propitious.  The money in the house had been, and was, on her mind.  Then the lateness of the guests had disturbed her.  And then Julian had aggrieved her by a piece of obstinacy very like himself.  Arriving straight from a train journey, he had wanted to wash.  But he would not go to the specially prepared bedroom, where a perfect apparatus awaited him.  No, he must needs take off his jacket in the back room and roll up his sleeves and stamp into the scullery and there splash and rub like a stableman, and wipe himself on the common rough roller-towel.  He said he preferred the “sink.” (Offensive word!  He would not even say “slop-stone,” which was the proper word.  He said “sink,” and again “sink.”)

And then, when the meal finally did begin Mrs. Maldon’s serviette and silver serviette-ring had vanished.  Impossible to find them!  Mr. Batchgrew had of course horribly disarranged the table, and in the upset the serviette and ring might have fallen unnoticed into the darkness beneath the table.  But no search could discover them.  Had the serviette and ring ever been on the table at all?  Had Rachael perchance forgotten them?  Rachael was certain that she had put them on the table.  She remembered casting away a soiled serviette and replacing it with a clean one in accordance with Mrs. Maldon’s command for the high occasion.  She produced the soiled serviette in proof.  Moreover, the ring was not in the serviette drawer of the sideboard.  Renewed search was equally sterile....  At one moment Mrs. Maldon thought that she herself had seen the serviette and ring on the table early in the evening; but at the next she thought she had not.  Conceivably Mr. Batchgrew had taken them in mistake.  Yes, assuredly, he had taken them in mistake ­somehow!  And yet it was inconceivable that he had taken a serviette and ring in mistake.  In mistake for what?  No!...

Mystery!  Excessively disconcerting for an old lady!  In the end Rachel provided another clean serviette, and the meal commenced.  But Mrs. Maldon had not been able to “settle down” in an instant.  The wise, pitying creatures in their twenties considered that it was absurd for her to worry herself about such a trifle.  But was it a trifle?  It was rather a denial of natural laws, a sinister miracle.  Serviette-rings cannot walk, nor fly, nor be annihilated.  And further, she had used that serviette-ring for more than twenty years.  However, the hostess in her soon triumphed over the foolish old lady, and taken the head of the board with aplomb.

And indeed aplomb had been required.  For the guests behaved strangely ­unless it was that the hostess was in a nervous mood for fancying trouble!  Julian Maldon was fidgety and preoccupied.  And Louis himself ­usually a model guest ­was also fidgety and preoccupied.  As for Rachel, the poor girl had only too obviously lost her head about Louis.  Mrs. Maldon had never seen anything like it, never!

III

Julian, having opened the case, disclosed twin brier pipes, silver-mounted, with alternative stems of various lengths and diverse mouthpieces ­all reposing on soft couches of fawn-tinted stuff, with a crimson, silk-lined lid to serve them for canopy.  A rich and costly array!  Everybody was impressed, even startled.  For not merely was the gift extremely handsome ­it was more than a gift; it symbolized the end of an epoch in those lives.  Mrs. Maldon had been no friend of tobacco.  She had lukewarmly permitted cigarettes, which Louis smoked, smoking naught else.  But cigars she had discouraged, and pipes she simply would not have!  Now, Julian smoked nothing but a pipe.  Hence in his great-aunt’s parlour he had not smoked; in effect he had been forbidden to smoke there.  The theory that a pipe was vulgar had been stiffly maintained in that sacred parlour.  In the light of these facts did not Mrs. Maldon’s gift indeed shine as a great and noble act of surrender?  Was it not more than a gift, and entitled to stagger beholders?  Was it not a sublime proof that the earth revolves and the world moves?

Mrs. Maldon was as susceptible as any one to the drama of the moment, perhaps more than any one.  She thrilled and became happy as Julian in silence minutely examined the pipes.  She had taken expert advice before purchasing, and she was tranquil as to the ability of the pipes to withstand criticism.  They bore the magic triple initials of the first firm of brier-pipe makers in the world ­initials as famous and as welcome on the plains of Hindustan as in the Home Counties or the frozen zone.  She gazed round the table with increasing satisfaction.  Louis, who was awkwardly fixed with regard to the light, the shadow of his bust falling always across his plate, had borne that real annoyance with the most charming good-humour.  He was a delight to the eye; he had excellent qualities, especially social qualities.  Rachel sat opposite to the hostess ­an admirable girl in most ways, a splendid companion, and a sound cook.  The meal had been irreproachable, and in the phrase of the Signal “ample justice had been done” to it.  Julian was on the hostess’s left, with his back to the window and to the draught.  A good boy, a sterling boy, if peculiar!  And there they were all close together, intimate, familiar, mutually respecting; and the perfect parlour was round about them:  a domestic organism, honest, dignified, worthy, more than comfortable.  And she, Elizabeth Maldon, in her old age, was the head of it, and the fount of good things.

“Thank ye!” ejaculated Julian, with a queer look askance at his benefactor.  “Thank ye, aunt!”

It was all he could get out of his throat, and it was all that was expected of him.  He hated to give thanks ­and he hated to be thanked.  The grandeur of the present flattered him.  Nevertheless he regarded it as essentially absurd in its pretentiousness.  The pipes were A1, but could a man carry about a huge contraption like that?  All a man needed was an A1 pipe, which, if he had any sense, he would carry loose in his pocket with his pouch ­and be hanged to morocco cases and silk linings!

“Stoke up, my hearties!” said Louis, drawing forth a gun-metal cigarette-case, which was chained to his person by a kind of cable.

Undoubtedly the case of pipes represented for Julian a triumph over Louis, or, at least, justice against Louis.  For obvious reasons Julian had not quarrelled with a rich and affectionate great-aunt because she had accorded to Louis the privilege of smoking in her parlour what he preferred to smoke, while refusing a similar privilege to himself.  But he had resented the distinction.  And his joy in the spectacular turn of the wheel was vast.  For that very reason he hid it with much care.  Why should he bubble over with gratitude for having been at last treated fairly?  It would be pitiful to do so.  Leaving the case open upon the table, he pulled a pouch and an old pipe from his pocket, and began to fill the pipe.  It was inexcusable, but it was like him ­he had to do it.

“But aren’t you going to try one of the new ones?” asked Mrs. Maldon, amiably but uncertainly.

“No,” said he, with cold nonchalance.  Upon nobody in the world had the sweet magic of Mrs. Maldon’s demeanour less influence than upon himself.  “Not now.  I want to enjoy my smoke, and the first smoke out of a new pipe is never any good.”

It was very true, but far more wanton than true.  Mrs. Maldon in her ignorance could not appreciate the truth, but she could appreciate its wantonness.  She was wounded ­silly, touchy old thing!  She was wounded, and she hid the wound.

Rachel flushed with ire against the boor.

“By the way,” Mrs. Maldon remarked in a light, indifferent tone, just as though the glory of the moment had not been suddenly rent and shrivelled.  “I didn’t see your portmanteau in the back room just now, Julian.  Has any one carried it upstairs?  I didn’t hear any one go upstairs.”

“I didn’t bring one, aunt,” said Julian.

“Not bring ­”

“I was forgetting to tell ye.  I can’t sleep here to-night.  I’m off to South Africa to-morrow, and I’ve got a lot of things to fix up at my digs to-night.”  He lit the old pipe from a match which Louis passed to him.

“To South Africa?” murmured Mrs. Maldon, aghast.  And she repeated, “South Africa?” To her it was an incredible distance.  It was not a place ­it was something on the map.  Perhaps she had never imaginatively realized that actual people did in fact go to South Africa.  “But this is the first I have heard of this!” she said.  Julian’s extraordinary secretiveness always disturbed her.

“I only got the telegram about my berth this morning,” said Julian, rather sullenly on the defensive.

“Is it business?” Mrs. Maldon asked.

“You may depend it isn’t pleasure, aunt,” he answered, and shut his lips tight on the pipe.

After a pause Mrs. Maldon tried again.

“Where do you sail from?”

Julian answered ­

“Southampton.”

There was another pause.  Louis and Rachel exchanged a glance of sympathetic dismay at the situation.

Mrs. Maldon then smiled with plaintive courage.

“Of course if you can’t sleep here, you can’t,” said she benignly.  “I can see that.  But we were quite counting on having a man in the house to-night ­with all these burglars about ­weren’t we, Rachel?” Her grimace became, by an effort, semi-humorous.

Rachel diplomatically echoed the tone of Mrs. Maldon, but more brightly, with a more frankly humorous smile ­

“We were, indeed!”

But her smile was a masterpiece of duplicity, somewhat strange in a girl so downright; for beneath it burned hotly her anger against the brute Julian.

“Well, there it is!” Julian gruffly and callously summed up the situation, staring at the inside of his teacup.

“Propitious moment for getting a monopoly of door-knobs at the Cape, I suppose?” said Louis quizzically.  His cousin manufactured, among other articles, white and jet door-knobs.

“No need for you to be so desperately funny!” snapped Julian, who detested Louis’ brand of facetiousness.  It was the word “propitious” that somehow annoyed him ­it had a sarcastic flavour, and it was “Louis all over.”

“No offence, old man!” Louis magnanimously soothed him.  “On the contrary, many happy returns of the day.”  In social intercourse the younger cousin’s good-humour and suavity were practically indestructible.

But Julian still scowled.

Rachel, to make a tactful diversion, rose and began to collect plates.  The meal was at an end, and for Mrs. Maldon it had closed in ignominy.  From her quarter of the table she pushed crockery towards Rachel with a gesture of disillusion; the courage to smile had been but momentary.  She felt old ­older than she had ever felt before.  The young generation presented themselves to her as almost completely enigmatic.  She admitted that they were foreign to her, that she could not comprehend them at all.  Each of the three at her table was entirely free and independent ­each could and did act according to his or her whim, and none could say them nay.  Such freedom seemed unreal.  They were children playing at life, and playing dangerously.  Hundreds of times, in conversation with her coevals, she had cheerfully protested against the banal complaint that the world had changed of late years.  But now she felt grievously that the world was different ­that it had indeed deteriorated since her young days.  She was fatigued by the modes of thought of these youngsters, as a nurse or mother is fatigued by too long a spell of the shrillness and the naïveté of a family of infants.  She wanted repose....  Was it conceivable that when, with incontestable large-mindedness, she had given a case of pipes to Julian, he should first put a slight on her gift and then, brusquely leaving her in the lurch, announce his departure for South Africa, with as much calm as though South Africa were in the next street?...  And the other two were guilty in other ways, perhaps more subtly, of treason against forlorn old age.

And then Louis, in taking the slop-basin from her trembling fingers, to pass it to Rachel, gave her one of his adorable, candid, persuasive, sympathetic smiles.  And lo! she was enheartened once more.  And she remembered that dignity and kindliness had been the watchwords of her whole life, and that it would be shameful to relinquish the struggle for an ideal at the very threshold of the grave.  She began to find excuses for Julian.  The dear lad must have many business worries.  He was very young to be at the head of a manufacturing concern.  He had a remarkable brain ­worthy of the family.  Allowances must be made for him.  She must not be selfish....  And assuredly that serviette and ring would reappear on the morrow.

“I’ll take that out,” said Louis, indicating the tray which Rachel had drawn from concealment under the Chesterfield, and which was now loaded.  Mrs. Maldon employed an old and valued charwoman in the mornings.  Rachel accomplished all the rest of the housework herself, including cookery, and she accomplished it with the stylistic smartness of a self-respecting lady-help.

“Oh no!” said she.  “I can carry it quite easily, thanks.”

Louis insisted masculinely ­

“I’ll take that tray out.”

And he took it out, holding his head back as he marched, so that the smoke of the cigarette between his lips should not obscure his eyes.  Rachel followed with some oddments.  Behold those two away together in the seclusion of the kitchen; and Mrs. Maldon and Julian alone in the parlour!

“Very fine!” muttered Julian, fingering the magnificent case of pipes.  Now that there were fewer spectators, his tongue was looser, and he could relent.

“I’m so glad you like it,” Mrs. Maldon responded eagerly.

The world was brighter to her, and she accepted Julian’s amiability as Heaven’s reward for her renewal of courage.

IV

“Auntie-” began Louis, with a certain formality.

“Yes?”

Mrs. Maldon had turned her chair a little towards the fire.  The two visitants to the kitchen had reappeared.  Rachel with a sickle-shaped tool was sedulously brushing the crumbs from the damask into a silver tray.  Louis had taken the poker to mend the fire.

He said, nonchalantly ­

“If you’d care for me to stay the night here instead of Julian, I will.”

“Well ­” Mrs. Maldon was unprepared for this apparently quite natural and kindly suggestion.  It perturbed, even frightened her by its implications.  Had it been planned in the kitchen between those two?  She wanted to accept it; and yet another instinct in her prompted her to decline it absolutely and at once.  She saw Rachel flushing as the girl industriously continued her task without looking up.  To Mrs. Maldon it seemed that those two, under the impulsion of Fate, were rushing towards each other at a speed far greater than she had suspected.

Julian stirred on his chair, under the sharp irritation caused by Louis’ proposal.  He despised Louis as a boy of no ambition ­a butterfly being who had got no farther than the adolescent will-to-live, the desire for self-indulgence, whereas he, Julian, was profoundly conscious of the will-to-dominate, the hunger for influence and power.  And also he was jealous of Louis on various counts.  Louis had come to the Five Towns years after Julian, and had almost immediately cut a figure therein; Julian had never cut a figure.  Julian had been the sole resident great-nephew of a benevolent aunt, and Louis had arrived and usurped at least half the advantages of the relationship, if not more; Louis lived several miles nearer to his aunt.  Julian it was who, through his acquaintance with Rachel’s father and her masterful sinister brother, had brought her into touch with Mrs. Maldon.  Rachel was Julian’s creation, so far as his aunt was concerned.  Julian had no dislike for Rachel; he had even been thinking of her favourably.  But Louis had, as it were, appropriated her ...  From the steely conning-tower of his brows Julian had caught their private glances at the table.  And Louis was now carrying trays for her, and hobnobbing with her in the kitchen!  Lastly, because Julian could not pass the night in the house, Louis, the interloper, had the effrontery to offer to fill his place ­on some preposterous excuse about burglars!  And the fellow was so polite and so persuasive, with his finicking eloquence.  By virtue of a strange faculty not uncommon in human nature Julian loathed Louis’ good manners and appearance ­and acutely envied them.

He burst out with scarcely controlled savagery ­

“A lot of good you’d be with burglars!”

The women were outraged by his really shocking rudeness.  Rachel bit her lip and began to fold up the cloth.  Mrs. Maldon’s head slightly trembled.  Louis alone maintained a perfect equanimity.  It was as if he were invulnerable.

“You never know!” he smiled amiably, and shrugged his shoulders.  Then he finished his operation on the fire.

“I’m sure it’s very kind and thoughtful of you, Louis,” said Mrs. Maldon, driven to acceptance by Julian’s monstrous behaviour.

“Moreover,” Louis urbanely continued, smoothing down his trousers with a long perpendicular caress as he usually did after any bending ­“moreover, there’s always my revolver.”

He gave a short laugh.

“Revolver!” exclaimed Mrs. Maldon, intimidated by the mere name.  Then she smiled, in an effort to reassure herself.  “Louis, you are a tease.  You really shouldn’t tease me.”

“I’m not,” said Louis, with that careful air of false blank casualness which he would invariably employ for his more breath-taking announcements.  “I always carry a loaded revolver.”

The fearful word “loaded” sank into the heart of the old woman, and thrilled her.  It was a fact that for some weeks past Louis had been carrying a revolver.  At intervals the craze for firearms seizes the fashionable youth of a provincial town, like the craze for marbles at school, and then dies away.  In the present instance it had been originated by the misadventure of a dandy with an out-of-work artisan on the fringe of Hanbridge.  Nothing could be more correct than for a man of spirit and fashion thus to arm himself in order to cow the lower orders and so cope with the threatened social revolution.

“You don’t, Louis!” Mrs. Maldon deprecated.

“I’ll show you,” said Louis, feeling in his hip pocket.

“Please!” protested Mrs. Maldon, and Rachel covered her face with her hands and drew back from Louis’ sinister gesture.  “Please don’t show it to us!” Mrs. Maiden’s tone was one of imploring entreaty.  For an instant she was just like a sentimentalist who resents and is afraid of hearing the truth.  She obscurely thought that if she resolutely refused to see the revolver it would somehow cease to exist.  With a loaded revolver in the house the situation seemed more dangerous and more complicated than ever.  There was something absolutely terrifying in the conjuncture of a loaded revolver and a secret hoard of bank-notes.

“All right!  All right!” Louis relented.

Julian cut across the scene with a gruff and final ­

“I must clear out of this!”

He rose.

“Must you?” said his aunt.

She did not unduly urge him to delay, for the strain of family life was exhausting her.

“I must catch the 9.48,” said Julian, looking at the clock and at his watch.

Herein was yet another example of the morbid reticence which so pained Mrs. Maldon.  He must have long before determined to catch the 9.48; yet he had said nothing about it till the last moment!  He had said nothing even about South Africa until the news was forced from him.  It had been arranged that he should come direct to Bursley station from his commercial journey in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, pass the night at his aunt’s house, which was conveniently near the station, and proceed refreshed to business on the morrow.  A neat arrangement, well suiting the fact of his birthday!  And now he had broken it in silence, without a warning, with the baldest possible explanation!  His aunt, despite her real interest in him, could never extract from him a clear account of his doings and his movements.  And this South African excursion was the last and worst illustration of his wilful cruel harshness to her.

Nevertheless, the extreme and unimaginable remoteness of South Africa seemed to demand a special high formality in bidding him adieu, and she rendered it.  If he would not permit her to superintend his packing (he had never even let her come to his rooms!), she could at least superintend the putting on of his overcoat.  And she did.  And instead of quitting him as usual at the door of the parlour, she insisted on going to the front door and opening it herself.  She was on her mettle.  She was majestic and magnificent.  By refusing to see his ill-breeding she actually did terminate its existence.  She stood at the open front door with the three young ones about her, and by the force of her ideal the front door became the portal of an embassy and Julian’s departure a ceremony of state.  He had to shake hands all round.  She raised her cheek, and he had to kiss.  She said, “God bless you!” and he had to say, “Thank you.”

As he was descending the outer steps, the pipe-case clipped under his arm, Louis threw at him ­

“I say, old man!”

“What?” He turned round with sharp defiance beneath the light of the street-lamp.

“How are you going to get to London to-morrow morning in time for the boat-train at Waterloo, if you’re staying at Knype to-night.”

Louis travelled little, but it was his foible to be learned in boat-trains and “connections.”

“A friend o’ mine’s motoring me to Stafford at five to-morrow morning, if you want to know.  I shall catch the Scotch express.  Anything else?”

“Oh!” muttered Louis, checked.

Julian clanked the gate and vanished up the street, Mrs. Maldon waving.

“What friend?  What motor?” reflected Mrs. Maldon sadly.  “He is incorrigible with his secretiveness.”

“Mrs. Maldon,” said Rachel anxiously, “you look pale.  Is it being in this draught?” She shut the door.

Mrs. Maldon sighed and moved away.  She hesitated at the parlour door and then said ­

“I must go upstairs a moment.”