"We shall be only too pleased for Albert to take over the pew," said Hilda.
"But have you chosen another pew?" Mrs. Hamps looked at Edwin.
"Oh, no!" said Hilda lightly.
"But-"
"Now, Auntie," the tingling woman warned Auntie Hamps as one powerful individuality may warn another, "don't worry about us. You know we're not great chapel-goers."
She spoke the astounding words gaily, but firmly. She could be firm, and even harsh, in her triumphant happiness. Edwin knew that she detested Auntie Hamps. Auntie Hamps no doubt also knew it. In their mutual smilings, so affable, so hearty, so appreciative, apparently so impulsive, the hostility between them gleamed mysteriously like lightning in sunlight.
"Mrs. Edwin's family were Church of England," said Auntie Hamps, in the direction of Mr. Peartree.
"Nor great church-goers, either," Hilda finished cheerfully.
No woman had ever made such outrageous remarks in the Five Towns before. A quarter of a century ago a man might have said as much, without suffering in esteem-might indeed have earned a certain intellectual prestige by the declaration; but it was otherwise with a woman. Both Mrs. Hamps and the minister thought that Hilda was not going the right way to live down her dubious past. Even Edwin in his pride was flurried. Great matters, however, had been accomplished. Not only had the attack of Auntie Hamps and Mr. Peartree been defeated, but the defence had become an onslaught. Not only was he not the treasurer of the District Additional Chapels Fund, but he had practically ceased to be a member of the congregation. He was free with a freedom which he had never had the audacity to hope for. It was incredible! Yet there it was! A word said, bravely, in a particular tone, – and a new epoch was begun. The pity was that he had not done it all himself. Hilda's courage had surpassed his own. Women were astounding. They were disconcerting too. His manly independence was ever so little wounded by Hilda's boldness in initiative on their joint behalf.
"Do come and take something, Auntie," said Hilda, with the most winning, the most loving inflection.
Auntie Hamps passed out.
Hilda turned back into the room: "Do go with Auntie, Mr. Peartree. I must just-" She affected to search for something on the mantelpiece.
Mr. Peartree passed out. He was unmoved. He did not care in his heart. And as Edwin caught his indifferent eye, with that "it's-all-one-to-me" glint in it, his soul warmed again slightly to Mr. Peartree. And further, Mr. Peartree's aloof unworldliness, his personal practical unconcern with money, feasting, ambition, and all the grosser forms of self-satisfaction, made Edwin feel somewhat a sensual average man and accordingly humiliated him.
As soon as, almost before, Mr. Peartree was beyond the door, Hilda leaped at Edwin, and kissed him violently. The door was not closed. He could hear the varied hum of the party.
"I had to kiss you while it's all going on," she whispered. Ardent vitality shimmered in her eyes.
CHAPTER IV
THE WORD
Ada was just crossing the hall to the drawing-room, a telegram on a salver in her red hand.
"Here you are, Ada," said Edwin, stopping her, with a gesture towards the telegram.
"It's for Mr. Tom Swetnam, sir."
Edwin and Hilda followed the starched and fussy girl into the drawing-room, in which were about a dozen people, including Fearns, the lawyer, and his wife, the recently married Stephen and Vera Cheswardine, several Swetnams, and Janet Orgreave, who sat at the closed piano, smiling vaguely.
Tom Swetnam, standing up, took the telegram.
"I never knew they delivered telegrams at this time o' night," said Fearns sharply, looking at his watch. He was wont to keep a careful eye on the organisation of railways, ships, posts, and other contrivances for the shifting of matter from one spot to another. An exacting critic of detail, he was proud of them in the mass, and called them civilisation.
"They don't," said Tom Swetnam naughtily, glad to plague a man older than himself, and the father of a family. Tom was a mere son, but he had travelled, and was, indeed, just returned from an excursion through Scandinavia. "Observe there's no deception. The envelope's been opened. Moreover, it's addressed to Ben Clewlow, not to me. Ben's sent it up. I asked him to. Now, we'll see."
Having displayed the envelope like a conjurer, he drew forth the telegram, and prepared to read it aloud. One half of the company was puzzled; the other half showed an instructed excitement. Tom read the message:
"'Twenty-seven pounds ten nine. Philosophers tell us that there is nothing new under the sun. Nevertheless it may well be doubted whether the discovery of gold at Barmouth, together with two earthquake shocks following each other in quick succession in the same district, does not constitute, in the history of the gallant little Principality, a double event of unique-'" He stopped.
Vera Cheswardine, pretty, fluffy, elegant, cried out with all the impulsiveness of her nature:
"Novelty!"
"Whatever is it all about?" mildly asked Mrs. Fearns, a quiet and dignified, youngish woman whom motherhood had made somewhat absent-minded when she was away from her children.
"Missing-word competition," Fearns explained to her with curt, genial superiority. He laughed outright. "You do go it, some of you chaps," he said. "Why, that telegram cost over a couple of bob, I bet!"
"Well, you see," said Tom Swetnam, "three of us share it. We get it thirty-six hours before the paper's out-fellow in London-and there's so much more time to read the dictionary. No use half doing a thing! Twenty-seven pounds odd! Not a bad share this week, eh?"
"Won anything?"
"Rather. We had the wire about the winning word this morning. We'd sent it in four times. That makes about £110, doesn't it? Between three of us. We sent in nearly two hundred postal orders. Which leaves £100 clear. Thirty-three quid apiece, net."
He tried to speak calmly and nonchalantly, but his excitement was extreme. The two younger Swetnams regarded him with awe. Everybody was deeply impressed by the prodigious figures, and in many hearts envy, covetousness, and the wild desire for a large, free life of luxury were aroused.
"Seems to me you've reduced this game to a science," said Edwin.
"Well, we have," Tom Swetnam admitted. "We send in every possible word."
"It's a mere thousand per cent profit per week," murmured Fearns. "At the rate of fifty thousand per cent per annum."
Albert Benbow, entering, caught the last phrase, which very properly whetted his curiosity as a man of business. Clara followed him closely. On nearly all ceremonial occasions these two had an instinctive need of each other's presence and support; and if Albert did not run after Clara, Clara ran after Albert.
Then came the proof of the genius, the cynicism and the insight of the leviathan newspaper-proprietor who had invented the dodge of inviting his readers to risk a shilling and also to buy a coupon for the privilege of supplying a missing word, upon the understanding that the shillings of those who supplied the wrong word should be taken for ever away from them and given to those who supplied the right word. The entire company in the Clayhanger drawing-room was absorbed in the tremendous missing-word topic, and listened to Swetnam as to a new prophet bearing the secret of eternal felicity. The rumour of Swetnam's triumph drew people out of the delectable dining-room to listen to his remarks; and among these was Auntie Hamps. So it was in a thousand, in ten thousand, in hundreds of thousands of homes of all kinds throughout the kingdom. The leviathan journalist's readers (though as a rule they read nothing in his paper save the truncated paragraph and the rules of the competition) had grown to be equivalent to the whole British public. And he not only held them but he had overshadowed