Her presence would thus often produce an excitation in the organism of the business. She was so foreign to it, so unsoiled by it, so aloof from it, so much more gracious, civilised, enigmatic than anything that the business could show! And, fundamentally, she was the cause of the business; it was all for her; it existed with its dirt, noise, crudity, strain, and eternal effort so that she might exist in her elegance, her disturbing femininity, her restricted and deep affections, her irrational capriciousness, and her strange, brusque commonsense. The clerks and some of the women felt this; Big James certainly felt it; and Edwin felt it, and denied it to himself, more than anybody. There was no economic justice in the arrangement. She would come in veiled, her face mysterious behind the veil, and after a few minutes she would delicately lift her gloved fingers to the veil, and raise it, and her dark, pale, vivacious face would be disclosed. "Here I am!" And the balance was even, her debt paid! That was how it was.
In the month that had passed since the visit to Dartmoor, Edwin, despite his resolve to live heroically and philosophically, had sometimes been forced into the secret attitude: "This woman will kill me, but without her I shouldn't be interested enough to live." He was sometimes morally above her to the point of priggishness, and sometimes incredibly below her; but for the most part living in a different dimension. She had heard nothing further from Mrs. Cannon; she knew nothing of the bigamist's fate, though more than once she had written for news. Her moods were unpredictable and disconcerting, and as her moods constituted the chief object of Edwin's study the effect on him was not tranquillising. At the start he had risen to the difficulty of the situation; but he could not permanently remain at that height, and the situation had apparently become stationary. His exasperations, both concealed and open, were not merely unworthy of a philosopher, they were unworthy of a common man. "Why be annoyed?" he would say to himself. But he was annoyed. "The tone--the right tone!" he would remind himself. Surely he could remember to command his voice to the right tone? But no! He could not. He could infallibly remember to wind up his watch, but he could not remember that. Moreover, he felt, as he had felt before, on occasions, that no amount of right tone would keep their relations smooth, for the reason that principles were opposed. Could she not see? ... Well, she could not. There she was, entire, unalterable--impossible to chip inconvenient pieces off her--you must take her or leave her; and she could not see, or she would not--which in practice was the same thing.
And yet some of the most exquisite moments of their union had occurred during that feverish and unquiet month--moments of absolute surrender and devotion on her part, of protective love on his; and also long moments of peace. With the early commencement of autumn, all the family had resumed the pursuit of letters with a certain ardour. A startling feminist writer, and the writer whose parentage and whose very name lay in the Five Towns, who had re-created the East and whose vogue was a passion among the lettered--both these had published books whose success was extreme and genuine. And in the curtained gas-lit drawing-room of a night Hilda would sit rejoicing over the triumphant satire of the woman-novelist, and Edwin and George would lounge in impossible postures, each mesmerised by a story of the Anglo-Indian; and between chapters Edwin might rouse himself from the enchantment sufficiently to reflect: "How indescribably agreeable these evenings are!" And ten to one he would say aloud, with false severity: "George! Bed!" And George, a fine judge of genuineness in severity, would murmur carelessly: "All right! I'm going!" And not go.
And now Edwin in the office thought:
"She's come to fetch me away."
He was gratified. But he must not seem to be gratified. The sanctity of business from invasion had to be upheld. He frowned, feigning more diligently than ever to be occupied. She came in, with that air at once apologetic and defiant that wives have in affronting the sacred fastness. Nobody could have guessed that she had ever been a business woman, arriving regularly at just such an office every morning, shorthand-writing, twisting a copying-press, filing, making appointments. Nobody could have guessed that she had ever been in business for herself, and had known how sixpence was added to sixpence and a week's profit lost in an hour. All such knowledge had apparently dropped from her like an excrescence, had vanished like a temporary disfigurement, and she looked upon commerce with the uncomprehending, careless, and yet impressed eyes of a young girl.
"Hello, missis!" he exclaimed casually.
Then George came in. Since the visit to Dartmoor Hilda had much increased her intimacy with George, spending a lot of time with him, walking with him, and exploring in a sisterly and reassuring manner his most private life. George liked it, but it occasionally irked him and he would give a hint to Edwin that mother needed to be handled at times.
"You needn't come in here, George," said Hilda.
"Well, can I go into the engine-house?" George suggested. Edwin had always expected that he would prefer the machine-room. But the engine-house was his haunt, probably because it was dirty, fiery, and stuffy.