CHAPTER XIV

TO LONDON

I

In the middle of the night Hilda woke up, and within a few seconds she

convinced herself that her attitude to Miss Gailey's telegram had been

simply monstrous. She saw it, in the darkness, as an enormity. She ought

to have responded to the telegram at once; she ought to have gone to

London by the afternoon train. What had there been to prevent her from

knocking at the door of the inner room, and saying to Mr. Cannon, in the

presence of no matter whom: "I am very sorry, Mr. Cannon, but I've just

had a telegram that mother is ill in London, and I must leave by the

next train"? There had been nothing to prevent her! At latest she should

have caught the evening train. Business was of no account in such a

crisis. Her mother might be very ill, might be dying, might be dead. It

was not for trifles that people sent such telegrams. The astounding

thing was that she should have been so blind to her obvious duty.... And

she said to herself, thinking with a mysterious and beautiful remorse of

the last minute of her talk with Mr. Cannon: "If I had done as I ought

to have done, I should have been in London, or on my way to London,

instead of in the room with him there; and _that_ would not have

occurred!" But what 'that' was, she could not have explained.

Nevertheless, Mr. Cannon's phrase, "It's a good thing you didn't go to

London," still gave her a pleasure, though the pleasure was dulled.

Then she tried to reassure herself. Sarah Gailey was nervous and easily

frightened. Her mother had an excellent constitution. The notion of her

mother being seriously ill was silly. In a few hours she would be with

her mother, and would be laughing at these absurd night-fears. In any

case there would assuredly be a letter from Sarah Gailey by the first

post, so that before starting she would have exact information. She

succeeded, partially, in reassuring herself for a brief space; but soon

she was more unhappy than ever in the clear conviction of her

wrongdoing. Again and again she formulated, in her fancy, scenes of the

immediate future, as for example at her mother's dying bed, and she

imagined conversations and repeated the actual words used by herself and

others, interminably. And then she returned to the previous day, and

hundreds of times she went into the inner room and said to Mr. Cannon:

"I'm very sorry, Mr. Cannon, but I've just had a telegram--" etc. Why

had she not said it?... Thus worked the shuttles of her mind, with

ruthless, insane insistence, until she knew not whether she was awake or

asleep, and the very tissues of her physical brain seemed raw.

She thought feebly: "If I got up and lighted the candle and walked

about, I should end this." But she could not rise. She was netted down

to the bed. And when she tried to soothe herself with other

images--images of delight--she found that they had lost their power.

Undressing, a few hours earlier, she had lived again, in exquisite and

delicious alarm, through the last minute of her talk with Mr. Cannon;

she had gone to sleep while reconstituting those instants. But now their

memory left her indifferent, even inspired repugnance. And her remorse

little by little lost its mysterious beauty.

She clung to the idea of the reassuring letter which she would receive.

That was her sole glint of consolation.

II

At six she was abroad in the house, intensely alive, intensely conscious

of every particle of her body, and of every tiniest operation of her

mind. In less than two hours the letter would drop into the lobby! At

half-past six both she and Florrie were dressed, and Florrie, stern with

the solemnity and importance of her mission, was setting forth to the

Saracen's Head to order a cab to be at the door at eight o'clock.

Hilda had much to do, for it was of course necessary to shut up the

house, and the packing of her trunk had to be finished, and the trunk

locked and corded, and a label found; and there was breakfast to cook.

Mrs. Lessways would have easily passed a couple of days in preparing the

house for closure. Nevertheless, time, instead of flying, lagged. At

seven-thirty Hilda, in the partially dismantled parlour, and Florrie in

the kitchen, were sitting down to breakfast. "In a quarter of an hour,"

said Hilda to herself, "the post will be here." But in four minutes she

had eaten the bacon and drunk the scalding tea, and in five she had

carried all the breakfast-things into the kitchen, where Florrie was

loudly munching over the sloppy deal table. She told Florrie sharply

that there would be ample time to wash up. Then she went to her bedroom,

and, dragging out her trunk, slid it unaided down the stairs. Back again

in the bedroom, she carelessly glanced at the money in her purse, and

then put on her things for the journey. Waiting, she stood at the window

to look for the postman. Presently she saw him in the distance; he

approached quickly, but spent an unendurable minute out of sight in the

shop next door. When he emerged Hilda was in anguish. Had he a letter

for her? Had he not? He seemed to waver at the gateway, and to decide to

enter.... She heard the double blow of his drumstick baton.... Now in a

few seconds she would know about her mother.

Proudly restraining herself, she walked with composure to the stairs.

She was astonished to see Florrie bending down to pick up the letter.

Florrie must have been waiting ready to rush to the front door. As she

raised her body and caught sight of Hilda, Florrie blushed.

The stairs were blocked by the trunk which Hilda had left on the

stair-mat for the cabman to deal with. Standing behind the trunk, Hilda

held forth her hand for the letter.

"Please, miss, it's for me," Florrie whispered, like a criminal.

"For you?" Hilda cried, startled.

In proof Florrie timidly exposed the envelope, on which Hilda plainly

saw, in a coarse, scrawling masculine hand, the words "Miss Florrie

Bagster." Florrie's face was a burning peony.

Hilda turned superciliously away, too proud to demand any explanations.

All her alarms were refreshed by the failure of a letter from Miss

Gailey. In vain she urged to herself that Miss Gailey had thought it

unnecessary to write, expecting to see her; or that the illness having

passed, Miss Gailey, busy, had put off writing. She could not dismiss a

vision of a boarding-house in London upset from top to bottom by the

grave illness of one person in it, and a distracted landlady who had not

a moment even to scribble a post card. And all the time, as this vision

tore and desolated her, she was thinking: "Fancy that child having a

follower, at her age! She's certainly got a follower!"

The cab came five minutes before it was due.

III

As the cab rolled through Market Square, where the Saturday stalls were

being busily set up, the ironmongery building was framed for an instant

by the oblong of the rattling window. Hilda seemed to see the place

anew--for the first time. A man was taking down the shutters of the

shop. Above that were the wire-blinds with the name of "Q. Karkeek"; and

above the blinds the blue posters of the _Five Towns Chronicle_. No

outward sign of Mr. Cannon! And yet Mr. Cannon.... She had an extremely

disconcerting sensation of the mysteriousness of Mr. Cannon, and of the

mysteriousness of all existence. Mr. Cannon existed somewhere at that

moment, engaged in some activity. In a house afar off, unknown to her,

her mother existed--if she was not dead! Florrie, with a bundle of

personal goods on her lap, and doubtless the letter in her bosom, sat

impressed and subdued, opposite to her in the shifting universe of the

cab, which was moving away from the empty and silent home. Florrie was

being thrown back out of luxury into her original hovel, and was

accepting the stroke with the fatalism of the young and of the poor. And

one day Hilda and her mother and Florrie would be united again in the

home now deserted, whose heavy key was in the traveller's satchel....

But would they?

At the station there was a quarter of an hour to wait. Hilda dismissed

Florrie, with final injunctions, and followed her trunk to the bleak

platform. The old porter was very kind. She went to the little yellow

bookstall. There, under her hand, was a low pile of _The Five Towns

Chronicle._ Miracle! Miraculous George Cannon! She flushed with pride,

with a sense of ownership, as she took a penny from her purse to pay for

a copy.

"It's th' new peeper," drawled the bookstall lad, with a most foolish

condescension towards the new paper.

"Lout!" she addressed him in her heart. "If you knew whom you were

talking to--!"

With what pride, masked by careful indifference, she would hand the copy

of the _Chronicle_ to her mother! Her mother would exclaim "Bless us!"

and spend a day or two in conning the thing, making singular discoveries

in it at short intervals.

IV

It was not until she had reached Euston, and driven through a tumultuous

and shabby thoroughfare to King's Cross, and taken another ticket, and

installed herself in another train, that Hilda began to feel suddenly,

like an abyss opening beneath her strength, the lack of food. Meticulous

in her clerical duties, and in many minor mechanical details of her

personal daily existence, she was capable of singular negligences

concerning matters which the heroic part of her despised and which did

not immediately bear on a great purpose in hand. Thus, in her

carelessness, she found herself with less than two shillings in her

pocket after paying for the ticket to Hornsey. She thought, grimly

resigned: "Never heed! I shall manage. In half an hour I shall be there,

and my anxiety will be at an end."

The train, almost empty, waited forlornly in a forlorn and empty part of

the huge, resounding ochreish station. Then, without warning or signal,

it slipped off, as though casually, towards an undetermined goal. Often

it ran level with the roofs of vague, far-stretching acres of houses--

houses vile and frowsy, and smoking like pyres in the dank air. And

always it travelled on a platform of brick arches. Now and then the

walled road received a tributary that rounded subtly into it, and this

tributary could be seen curving away, on innumerable brick arches,

through the chimneypots, and losing itself in a dim horizon of gloom. At

intervals a large, lifeless station brought the train to a halt for a

moment, and the march was resumed. A clock at one of these stations said

a quarter to two.

Then the name of Hornsey quickened her apprehensive heart. As she

descended nervously from the train, her trunk was shot out from the

guard's van behind. She went and stood over it, until the last of a

series of kindly porters came along and touched his cap. When she asked

for a cab, he seemed doubtful whether a cab was available, and looked

uncertainly along the immense empty platform and across at other

platforms. The train had wandered away. She strove momentarily to

understand the reason of these great sleeping stations; but fatigue,

emotional and physical, had robbed her of all intelligent curiosity in

the phenomena of the mysterious and formidable city.

Presently the porter threw the trunk on his shoulder and she trudged

after him up steps and over an iron bridge and down steps; and an

express whizzed like a flying shell through the station and vanished.

And at a wicket, in a ragged road, there actually stood a cab and a

skeleton of a horse between the shafts. The driver bounced up,

enheartened at sight of the trunk and the inexperienced, timid girl; but

the horse did not stir in its crooked coma.

"What address, miss?" asked the cabman.

"Cedars House, Harringay Park Road."

The cabman paused in intense thought, and after a few seconds responded

cheerfully: "Yes, miss."

The porter touched his cap for threepence. The lashed horse plunged

forward. Hilda leaned back in the creaking and depraved vehicle, and

sighed, "So this is their London!"

She found herself travelling in the direction from which she had come,

parallel to the railway, down the longest street that she had ever seen.

On her left were ten thousand small new houses, all alike. On her right

were broken patches of similar houses, interspersed with fragments of

green field and views of the arches of the railway; the conception of

the horrible patience which had gone to the construction of these

endless, endless arches made her feel sick.

The cab turned into another road, and another; and then stopped. She saw

the words "Cedars House" on a gateway. She could not open the door of

the cab. The cabman opened it.

"Blinds down here, miss!" he said, with appropriate mournfulness.

It seemed a rather large house; and every blind was drawn. Had the

incredible occurred, then? Had this disaster befallen just her, of all

the young women in the world?

She saw the figure of Sarah Gailey.

"Good afternoon," she called out calmly. "Here I am. Only I'm afraid I

haven't got enough to pay the cabman."

But while she was speaking she knew from Sarah Gailey's face that the

worst and the most ridiculous of her night-fears had been justified by

destiny.

Three days previously Mrs. Lessways had been suddenly taken ill in the

street. A doctor passing in his carriage had come to her assistance and

driven her home. Food eaten on the previous evening had 'disagreed' with

her. At first the case was not regarded as very serious. But as the

patient did not improve in the night Miss Gailey telegraphed to Hilda.

Immediately afterwards, the doctor, summoned in alarm, diagnosed

peritonitis caused by a perforating cancer. Mrs. Lessways had died on

the third day at eleven in the morning, while Hilda was in the train.

Useless to protest that these catastrophes were unthinkable, that Mrs.

Lessways had never been ill in her life! The catastrophe had happened.

And upstairs a corpse lay in proof.

* * * * *

BOOK II

HER RECOVERY

CHAPTER I

SIN

I

From her bed Hilda could see the trees waving in the wind. Every morning

she had thus watched them, without interest. At first the branches had

been utterly bare, and beyond their reticulation had been visible the

rosy façade of a new Board-school. But now the branches were rich with

leafage, hiding most of the Board-school, so that only a large upper

window of it could be seen. This window, upon which the sun glinted

dazzlingly, threw back the rays on to Hilda's bed, giving her for a few

moments the illusion of direct sunlight. The hour was eleven o'clock. On

the night-table lay a tea-tray in disorder, and on the turned-down sheet

some crumbs of toast. A low, nervous tap at the door caused Hilda to

stir in the bed. Sarah Gailey entered hurriedly. In her bony yellowed

hand she held a collection of tradesmen's account-books.

"Good morning, dear, how are you?" she asked, bending awkwardly over the

bed. In the same instant she looked askance at the tray.

"I'm all right, thanks," said Hilda lazily, observing the ceiling.

"You haven't been too cold without the eiderdown? I forgot to ask you

before. You know I only took it off because I thought the weather was

getting too warm.... I didn't want it for another bed. I assure you it's

in the chest of drawers in my room." Sarah Gailey added the last words

as if supplicating to be believed.

"You needn't tell me that," said Hilda. She was not angry, but bored, by

this characteristic remark of Miss Gailey's. In three months she had

learnt a great deal about the new landlady of the Cedars, that strange

neurotic compound of ability, devotion, thin-skinned vanity, and sheer,

narrow stupidity. "I've been quite warm enough," Hilda added as quickly

as she could, lest Miss Gailey might have time to convince herself to

the contrary.

"And the toast? I do hope--after all I've said to that Hettie about--"

"You see I've eaten it all," Hilda interrupted her, pointing to the

plate.

Their faces were close together; they exchanged a sad smile. Miss Gailey

was still bending over her, anxiously, as over a child. Yet neither the

ageing and worn woman nor the flaccid girl felt the difference between

them in age. Nor was Hilda in any ordinary sense ill. The explanation of

Miss Gailey's yearning attitude lay in an exaggerated idea of her duty

to Hilda, whose mother's death had been the result of an act of

friendliness to her. If Mrs. Lessways had not come to London in order to

keep company with Sarah, she might--she would, under Providence--have

been alive and well that day; such was Sarah's reasoning, which by the

way ignored certain statements of the doctor. Sarah would never forgive

herself. But she sought, by an infatuated devotion, to earn the

forgiveness of Caroline's daughter. Her attentions might have infuriated

an earlier Hilda, or at least have been met with disdain only half

concealed. But on the present actual Hilda they produced simply no

effect of any kind. The actual Hilda, living far within the mysterious

fastness of her own being, was too solitary, too preoccupied, and too

fatigued, to be touched even by the noble beauty that distinguished the

expiatory and protective gesture of the spinster, otherwise somewhat

ludicrous, as she leaned across the bed and cut off the sunshine.

II

On the morning of her mother's funeral, Hilda had gone to Hornsey

Station to meet an uncle of Mrs. Lessways, who was coming down from

Scotland by the night-train. She scarcely knew him, but he was to be

recognizable by his hat and his muffler, and she was to await him at the

ticket-gate. An entirely foolish and unnecessary arrangement, contrived

by a peculiar old man: the only possible course was to accept it.

She had waited over half an hour, between eight and nine, and in that

time she had had full opportunity to understand why those suburban

stations had been built so large. A dark torrent of human beings,

chiefly men, gathered out of all the streets of the vicinity, had dashed

unceasingly into the enclosure and covered the long platforms with

tramping feet. Every few minutes a train rolled in, as if from some

inexhaustible magazine of trains beyond the horizon, and, sucking into

itself a multitude and departing again, left one platform for one moment

empty,--and the next moment the platform was once more filled by the

quenchless stream. Less frequently, but still often, other trains

thundered through the station on a line removed from platforms, and

these trains too were crammed with dark human beings, frowning in study

over white newspapers. For even in 1880 the descent upon London from the

suburbs was a formidable phenomenon. Train after train fled downwards

with its freight towards the hidden city, and the torrent still surged,

more rapid than ever, through the narrow gullet of the station. It was

like the flight of some enormous and excited population from a country

menaced with disaster.

Borne on and buffeted by the torrent, Hilda had seen a well-dressed

epileptic youth, in charge of an elderly woman, approaching the station.

He had passed slowly close by her, as she modestly waited in her hasty

mourning, and she had had a fearful vision of his idiotic greenish face

supported somehow like a mask at the summit of that shaky structure of

limbs. He had indeed stared at her with his apelike eyes. She had

watched him, almost shuddering, till he was lost amid the heedless crowd

within. Then, without waiting longer for her relative, without

reflecting upon what she did, she had walked tremblingly back to the

Cedars, checked by tributaries of the torrent at every street corner....

She had known nothing of the funeral. She had not had speech with the

relative. She was in bed, somehow. The day had elapsed. And in the

following night, when she was alone and quite awake, she had become

aware that she, she herself, was that epileptic shape; that that

epileptic shape was lying in her bed and that there was none other in

the bed. Nor was this a fancy of madness! She knew that she was not mad,

that she was utterly sane; and the conviction of sanity only intensified

her awful discovery. She passed a trembling hand over her face, and felt

the skin corrupt and green. Gazing into the darkness, she knew that her

stare was apelike. She had felt, then, the fullest significance of

horror. In the morning she had ceased to be the epileptic shape, but the

risk of re-transformation had hovered near her, and the intimidation of

it was such that she had wept, aghast and broken as much by the future

as by the past. She had been discovered weeping....

Later, the phrase 'nervous breakdown' had lodged in her confused memory.

The doctor had been very matter-of-fact, logical, and soothing.

Overwork, strain, loss of sleep, the journey, anxiety, lack of food, the

supreme shock, the obstinate refusal of youth to succumb, and then the

sudden sight of the epileptic (with whom the doctor was acquainted):

thus had run the medical reasoning, after a discreet but thorough

cross-examination of her; and it had seemed so plausible and so

convincing that the doctor's pride in it was plain on his optimistic

face as he gave the command: "Absolute repose." But to Hilda the

reasoning and the resultant phrase, 'nervous breakdown,' had meant

nothing at all. Words! Empty words! She knew, profoundly and fatally,

the evil principle which had conquered her so completely that she had no

power left with which to fight it. This evil principle was Sin; it was

not the force of sins, however multifarious; it was Sin itself. She was

the Sinner, convicted and self-convicted. One of the last intelligent

victims of a malady which has now almost passed away from the civilized

earth, she existed in the chill and stricken desolation of incommutable

doom.

III

She had sinned against her mother, and she could not make amends. The

mere thought of her mother, so vivacious, cheerful, life-loving,

even-tempered, charitable, disorderly, incompetent, foolish, and yet

shrewd, caused pain of such intensity that it ceased to be pain. She

ought to have seen her mother before she died; she might have seen her,

had she done what was obviously her duty. It was inconceivable to her,

now, that she should have hesitated to fly instantly to London on

receipt of the telegram. But she had hesitated, and her mother had

expired without having sight of her. All exculpatory arguments were

futile against the fact itself. In vain she blamed the wording of the

telegram! In vain she tried to reason that chance, and not herself, was

the evil-doer! In vain she invoked the aid of simple common sense

against sentimental fancy! In vain she went over the events of the

afternoon preceding the death, in order to prove that at no moment had

she been aware of not acting in accordance with her conscience! The

whole of her conduct had been against her conscience, but pride and

selfishness had made her deaf to conscience. She was the Sinner.

Her despair, except when at intervals she became the loathed epileptic

shape, had been calm. Its symptoms had been, and remained, a complete

lack of energy, and a most extraordinary black indifference to the

surrounding world. Save in the deep centre of her soul, where she

agonized, she seemed to have lost all capacity for emotion. Nothing

moved her, or even interested her. She sat in the house, and ate a

little, and talked a little, like an automaton. She walked about the

streets like a bored exile, but an exile who has forgotten his home. Her

spirit never responded to the stimulus of environment. Suggestions at

once lost their tonic force in the woolly cushion of her apathy. If she

continued to live, it was by inertia; to cease from life would have

required an effort. She did not regret the vocation which she had

abandoned; she felt no curiosity about the fortunes of the newspaper. A

tragic nonchalance held her.

After several weeks she had naturally begun to think of religion; for

the malady alone was proof enough that she had a profoundly religious

nature. Miss Gailey could rarely go to church, but one Sunday morning--

doubtless with intent--she asked Hilda if they should go together, and

Hilda agreed. As they approached the large, high-spired church, Hilda

had vague prickings of hope, and was thereby much astonished. But the

service in no way responded to her expectations. "How silly I am!" she

thought disdainfully. "This sort of thing has never moved me before. Why

should it move me now?" The sermon, evangelical, was upon the Creed, and

the preacher explained the emotional quality of real belief. It was a

goodish sermon. But the preacher had effectually stopped the very last

of those exquisite vague prickings of hope. Hilda agreed with his

definition of real belief, and she knew that real belief was impossible

for her. She could never say, with joyous fervour: "I believe!" At best

she could only assert that she did not disbelieve--and was she so sure

even of that? No! Belief had been denied to her; and to dream of

consolation from religion was sentimentally womanish; even in her

indifference she preferred straightforward, honest damnation to the soft

self-deceptions of feminine religiosity. Ah! If she could have been a

Roman Catholic, genuine and convinced--with what ardour would she have

cast herself down before the confessional, and whispered her sinfulness

to the mysterious face within; and with what ecstasy would she have

received the absolution--that cleansing bath of the soul! Then--she

could have recommenced!... But she was not a Roman Catholic. She could

no more become a Roman Catholic than she could become the queen of some

romantic Latin country of palaces and cathedrals. She was a young

provincial girl staying in a boarding-house at Hornsey, on the Great

Northern line out of London, and she was suffering from nervous

breakdown. Such was the exterior common sense of the situation.

Occasionally the memory of some verse of Victor Hugo, sounding the beat

of one of his vast melancholies, would float through her mind and cause

it to vibrate for an instant with a mournful sensation that resembled

pleasure.

IV

"Are you thinking of getting up, dear?" asked Sarah Gailey, as she

arranged more securely the contents of the tray and found space on it

for her weekly books.

"Yes, I suppose I may as well," Hilda murmured. "It'll be lunch-time

soon." The days were long, yet somehow they seemed short too. Already

before getting up, she would begin to think of the evening and of going

to bed; and Saturday night followed quickly on Monday morning. It was

scarcely credible that sixteen weeks had passed, thus, since her

mother's death,--sixteen weeks whose retrospect showed no achievement of

any kind, and hardly a desire.

"I've given those Boutwoods notice," said Sarah Gailey suddenly, the

tray in her hands ready to lift.

"Not really?"

"They were shockingly late for breakfast again, this morning, both of

them. And Mr. Boutwood had the face to ask for another egg. Hettie came

and told me, so I went in myself. I told him breakfast was served in my

house at nine o'clock, and there was a notice to that effect in the

bedrooms, not to mention the dining-room. And as good a breakfast as

they'd get in any of their hotels, I lay! If the eggs are cold at ten

o'clock and after, that's not my fault. They're both of them perfectly

healthy, and yet they're bone-idle. They never want to go to bed and

they never want to get up. It isn't as if they went to theatres and got

home late and so on. I could make excuses for that--now and then. No!

It's just idleness and carelessness. And if you saw their bedroom! Oh,

my! A nice example to servants! Well, he was very insulting--most

insulting. He said he paid me to give him not what I wanted, but what

_he_ wanted! He said if I went into a shop, and they began to tell me

what I ought to want and when I ought to want it, I should be annoyed. I

said I didn't need anyone to tell me that, I said! And my house wasn't a

shop. He said it was a shop, and if it wasn't, it ought to be! Can you

imagine it?"

Hilda tried to exhibit a tepid sympathy. Miss Gailey's nostrils were

twitching, and the tears stood in those watery eyes. She could manage

the house. By the exertion of all her powers and her force she had made

of herself an exceptionally efficient mistress. But she could not manage

the boarders, because she had not sufficient imagination to put herself

in their place. Presiding over all her secret thoughts was the axiom

that the Cedars was a perfect machine, and that the least that a

grateful boarder could do was to fit into the machine.

"And so you said they could go?"

"That I did! And I'll tell you another thing, my dear, I--"

There was a knock at the door. Sarah Gailey stopped in her confidences

like a caught conspirator, and opened the door. Hettie stood on the

mat--the Hettie who despite frequent protests would leave Hilda's toast

to cool into leather on the landing somewhere between the kitchen and

the bedroom. In Hettie's hand was a telegram, which Miss Gailey

accepted.

"Here, take the tray, Hettie," said she, nervously tearing at the

envelope. "Put these books in my desk," she added.

"And I wonder what _he'll_ say!" she observed, staring absently at the

opened telegram, after Hettie had gone.

"Who?"

"George. He says he'll be up here for lunch. He's bound to be vexed

about the Boutwoods. But he doesn't understand. Men don't, you know!

They don't understand the strain it is on you." The appeal of her eyes

was strangely pathetic.

Hilda said:

"I don't think I shall get up for lunch to-day."

Sarah Gailey moved to the bed, forgetting her own trouble.

"You aren't so well, then, after all!" she muttered, with mournful

commiseration. "But, you know, he'll have to see you, _this_ time. He

wants to."

"But why?"

"Your affairs, I suppose. He says so. 'Coming lunch one. Must see

Hilda.--George.'"

Sarah Gailey offered the telegram. But Hilda could not bear to take it.

This telegram was the first she had set eyes on since the telegram

handed to her by Florrie in George Cannon's office. The mere sight of

the salmon-tinted paper agitated her. "Is it possible that I can be so

silly?" she thought, "over a bit of paper!" But so it was.

On a previous visit of George Cannon's to Hornsey she had kept her bed

throughout the day, afraid to meet him, ashamed to meet him,

inexplicably convinced that to meet him would be a crime against filial

piety. There were obscure grottoes in her soul which she had not had the

courage to explore candidly.

"I think," said Sarah Gailey, reflective and anxious, "I think if you

_could_ get up, it would be nicer than him seeing you here in bed."

Hilda perceived that at last she would be compelled to face George

Cannon.

CHAPTER II

THE LITTLE ROOM

I

After lunch Sarah Gailey left Hilda and Mr. Cannon in 'the little room'

together.

'The little room'--about eight feet square--had no other name; it was

always spoken of affectionately by the boarders, and by the landlady

with pride in its coziness. Situated on the first floor, over the front

part of the hall, it lay between the two principal bedrooms. Old

boarders would discover the little room to new boarders, or new boarders

would discover it for themselves, with immense satisfaction. It was the

chamber of intimacy and of confidences; it was a refuge from the public

life of the Cedars, and, to a certain extent, from the piano. Two women,

newly acquainted, and feeling a mutual attraction, would say to each

other: "Shall we go up to the little room?" "Oh yes, do let us!" And

they would climb the stairs in a fever of anticipation. "Quite the most

charming room in the house, dear Miss Gailey!" another simpering

spinster would say. Yet it contained nothing but an old carpet, two

wicker arm-chairs, a small chair, a nearly empty dwarf bookcase, an

engraving of Marie Antoinette regally facing the revolutionary mob, and

a couple of photographs of the Cedars.

Hilda sat down in one of the arm-chairs, and George Cannon in the other;

he had a small black bag which he placed on the floor by his side.

Hilda's diffidence was extreme. Throughout lunch she had scarcely

spoken; but as there had been eight people at the table, and George

Cannon had chatted with all of them, her taciturnity had passed

inconspicuous. Now she would be obliged to talk. And the sensations

which she had experienced on first meeting George Cannon in the

dining-room were renewed in a form even more acute.

She had, in the first place, the self-consciousness due to her mourning

attire, which drew attention to herself; it might have been a

compromising uniform; and the mere fact of her mother's death--quite

apart from the question of her conduct in relation thereto--gave her, in

an interview with a person whom she had not seen since before the death,

a feeling akin to guiltiness--guiltiness of some misdemeanour of taste,

some infraction of the social law against notoriety. She felt, in her

mourning, like one who is being led publicly by policemen to the

police-station. In her fancy she could hear people saying: "Look at that

girl in deep mourning," and she could see herself blushing, as it were

apologetic.

But much worse than this general mortification in presence of an

acquaintance seen after a long interval was the special constraint due

to the identity of the acquaintance. It was with George Cannon that she

had first deceived and plotted against her ingenuous mother's hasty

plans. It was her loyalty to George Cannon that had been the cause of

her inexplicable disloyalty to her mother. She could not recall her

peculiar and delicious agitations during the final moments of her

previous interview with Cannon--that night of February in the newspaper

office, while her mother was dying in London--without a profound

unreasoning shame which intensified most painfully her natural grief as

an orphan.

There was this to be said: she was now disturbed out of her torpid

indifference to her environment. As she fidgeted there, pale and

frowning, in the noisy basket-chair, beneath George Cannon's eyes, she

actually perceived again that romantic quality of existence which had

always so powerfully presented itself to her in the past. She reflected:

"How strange that the dreaded scene has now actually begun! He has come

to London, and here we are together, in this house, which at the

beginning of the year was nothing but a name to me! And mother is away

there in the churchyard, and I am in black! And it is all due to him. He

sent Miss Gailey and mother to London. He willed it!... No! It is all

due to me! I went to see him one late afternoon. I sought him out. He

didn't seek me out. And just because I went to see him one afternoon,

mother is dead, and I am here! Strange!" These reflections were dimly

beautiful to her, even in her sadness and in her acute distress. The

coma had assuredly passed, if only for a space.

II

"Well, now," he said, after a few inanities had been succeeded by an

awkward pause. "I've got to talk business with you, so I suppose we may

as well begin, eh?" His tone was fairly blithe, but it was that of a man

who was throwing off with powerful ease the weariness of somewhat

exasperating annoyances. Since lunch he had had a brief interview with

Sarah Gailey.

"Yes," she agreed glumly.

"Have you decided what you're going to do?" He began to smile

sympathetically as he spoke.

"I'm not going back to the paper," she curtly answered, cutting short

the smile with fierceness, almost with ferocity. Beyond question she was

rude in her bitterness. She asked herself: "Why do I talk like this? Why

can't I talk naturally and gently and cheerfully? I've really got

nothing against him." But she could not talk otherwise than she did

talk. It was by this symptom of biting acrimony that her agitation

showed itself. She knew that she was scowling as she looked at the

opposite wall, but she could not smooth away the scowl.

"No, I suppose not," he said quietly. "But are you thinking of coming

back to Turnhill?"

She remained mute for some seconds. A feeling of desolation came over

her, and it seemed to her that she welcomed it, trying to intensify it,

and yielding her features to it. "How do I know?" she muttered at

length, shrugging her shoulders.

"Because if you aren't," he resumed, "it's no use you keeping that house

of yours empty. You must remember it's just as you left it; and the

things in it aren't taking any good, either."

She shrugged her shoulders again.

"I don't see that it matters to anybody but me," she said, after another

pause, with a sort of frigid and disdainful nonchalance. And once more

she reflected: "Is it possible that I can behave so odiously?"

He stood up suddenly.

"I don't know what you and Sarah have been plotting together," he said,

wounded and contemptuous, yet with lightness. "But I'm sure I don't want

to interfere in your affairs. With Sarah's I've got to interfere,

unfortunately, and a famous time I'm having!" His nostrils grew

fastidious. "But not yours! I only promised your uncle.... Your uncle

told me you wanted me to--" He broke off.

In an instant she grew confused, alarmed, and extremely ashamed. Her

mood had changed in a flash. It seemed to her that she was in presence

of a disgraceful disaster, which she herself had brought about by wicked

and irresponsible temerity. She was like a child who, having naughtily

trifled with danger, stands aghast at the calamity which his

perverseness has caused. She was positively affrighted. She reflected in

her terror: "I asked for this, and I've got it!"

George Cannon stooped and picked up his little bag. There he towered,

high and massive, above her! And she felt acutely her slightness, her

girlishness, and her need of his help. She could not afford to transform

sympathy into antipathy. She was alone in the world. Never before had

she realized, as she realized then, the lurking terror of her

loneliness. The moment was critical. In another moment he might be gone

from the room, and she left solitary to irremediable humiliation and

self-disgust.

"Please!" she whispered appealingly. The whole of her being became an

appeal--the glance, the gesture, the curve of the slim and fragile body.

She was like a slave. She had no pride, no secret reserve of thought.

She was an instinct. Tears showed in her eyes and affected her voice.

He gave the twisted, difficult, rather foolish smile of one who is

cursing the mortification of a predicament into which he has been cast

through no fault of his own.

"Please what?"

"Please sit down."

He waved a hand, deprecatingly, and obeyed.

"It's all right," he said. "All right! I ought to have known--" Then he

smiled generously.

"Known what?" Her voice was now weak and liquid with woe.

"You'd be likely to be upset."

Not furtively, but openly, she wiped her eyes.

"No, no!" she protested honestly. "It's not that. It's--but--I'm very

sorry."

"I reckon I know a bit what worry is, myself!" he added, with a brief,

almost harsh, laugh.

These strange words struck her with pity.

III

"Well, now,"--he seemed to be beginning again--let's leave Lessways

Street for a minute.... I can sell the Calder Street property for you,

if you like. And at a pretty good price. Sooner or later the town will

have to buy up all that side of the street. You remember I told your

mother last year but one I could get a customer for it? but she wasn't

having any."

"Yes," said Hilda eagerly; "I remember."

In her heart she apologized to George Cannon, once more, for having

allowed her mother to persuade her, even for a day, that that attempt to

buy was merely a trick on his part invented to open negotiations for the

rent-collecting.

"You know what the net rents are," he went on, "as you've had 'em every

month. I dare say the purchase money if it's carefully invested will

bring you in as much. But even if it doesn't bring in quite as much, you

mustn't forget that Calder Street's going down--it's getting more and

more of a slum. And there'll always be a lot of bother with tenants of

that class."

"I wish I could sell everything--everything!" she exclaimed

passionately. "Lessways Street as well! Then I should be absolutely

free!"

"You can!" he said, with dramatic emphasis. "And let me tell you that

ten years hence those Lessways Street houses won't be worth what they

are now!"

"Is that property going down, too?" she asked. "I thought they were

building all round there."

"So they are," he answered. "But cheap cottages. Your houses are too

good for that part of the town; that's what's the matter with them.

People who can afford £25 a year--and over--for rent won't care to live

there much longer. You know the end house is empty."

All houses seemed to her to be a singularly insecure and even perilous

form of property. And the sale of everything she possessed presented

itself to her fancy as a transaction which would enfranchise her from

the past. It symbolized the starting-point of a new life, of a

recommencement unhampered by the vestiges of grief and error. She could

go anywhere, do what she chose. The entire world would lie before her.

"Please do sell it all for me!" she pleaded wistfully. "Supposing you

could, about how much should I have--I mean income?"

He glanced about, and then, taking a pencil from his waistcoat pocket,

scribbled a few figures on his cuff.

"Quite three pounds a week," he said.

IV

After a perfunctory discussion, which was somewhat self-consciously

prolonged by both of them in order to avoid an appearance of hastiness

in an important decision, George Cannon opened his black bag and then

looked round for ink. The little room, having no table, had no inkpot,

and the lawyer took from his pocket an Eagle indelible pencil--the

fountain-pen of those simple days. It needed some adjustment; he stepped

closer to the window, and held the pointed end of the case up to the

light, while screwing the lower end; he was very fastidious in these

mechanical details of his vocation. Hilda watched him from behind, with

an intentness that fascinated herself.

"And how's the _Chronicle_ getting on?" she asked, in a tone of friendly

curiosity which gave an exaggerated impression of her actual feeling.

She was more and more ashamed that during lunch she had not troubled to

put a question about the paper. She was even ashamed of her social

indifference. That Sarah Gailey, narrow and preoccupied, should be

indifferent, should never once in three months have referred to her

brother's organ, was not surprising; but it was monstrous that she,

Hilda, the secretary, the priestess, should share this uncivil apathy;

and it was unjust to mark the newspaper, as somehow she had been doing,

with the stigma of her mother's death. She actually began to

characterize her recent mental attitude to her past life as morbid.

"Oh!" he murmured absently, with gloomy hesitation, as he manipulated

the pencil.

She went on still more persuasively:

"I suppose you've got a new secretary?"

"No," he said, as though it fatigued and annoyed him to dwell on the

subject. "I told 'em they must manage without.... It's no fun starting a

new paper in a God-forsaken hole like the Five Towns, I can tell you."

Plainly his high exuberant hopes had been dashed, had perhaps been

destroyed.

She did not reply. She could not. She became suddenly sad with sympathy,

and this sadness was beautiful to her. Already, when he was scribbling

on it, she had noticed that his wristband was frayed. Now, silhouetted

against the window, the edge of the wristband caught her attention

again, and grew strangely significant. This man was passing through

adversity! It seemed tragic and shocking to her that he should have to

pass through adversity, that he could not remain for ever triumphant,

brilliant, cocksure in all his grand schemes, and masculinely scathless.

It seemed wrong to her that he should suffer, and desirable that anybody

should suffer rather than he. George Cannon with faulty linen! By what

error of destiny had this heart-rending phenomenon of discord been

caused? (Yes, heart-rending!) Was it due to weary carelessness, or to

actual, horrible financial straits? Either explanation was very painful

to her. She had a vision of a whole sisterhood of women toiling amid

steam and soapsuds in secret, and in secret denying themselves, to

provide him with all that he lacked, so that he might always emerge into

the world unblemished and glitteringly perfect. She would have

sacrificed the happiness of multitudes to her sense of fitness.

V

There being no table, George Cannon removed a grotesque ornament from

the dwarf bookcase, and used the top of the bookcase as a writing-board.

Hilda was called upon to sign two papers. He explained exactly what

these papers were, but she did not understand, nor did she desire to

understand. One was an informal sale-note and the other was an

authority; but which was which, and to what each had reference, she

superbly and wilfully ignored. She could, by a religious effort of

volition, make of herself an excellent clerk, eagerly imitative and

mechanical, but she had an instinctive antipathy to the higher forms of

business. Moreover, she wanted to trust herself to him, if only as a

mystic reparation of her odious rudeness at the beginning of the

interview. And she thought also: "These transactions will result in

profit to him. It is by such transactions that he lives. I am helping

him in his adversity."

When he gave her the Eagle pencil, and pointed to the places where she

was to sign, she took the pencil with fervour, more and more anxious to

atone to him. For a moment she stood bewildered, in a dream, staring at

the scratched mahogany top of the bookcase. And the bookcase seemed to

her to be something sentient, patient, and helpful, that had always been

waiting there in the corner to aid George Cannon in this

crisis--something human like herself. She loved the bookcase, and the

Eagle pencil, and the papers, and the pattern on the wall. George Cannon

was standing behind her. She felt his presence like a delicious danger.

She signed the papers, in that large scrawling hand which for a few

brief weeks she had by force cramped down to the submissive caligraphy

of a clerk. As she signed, she saw the name "Karkeek" in the midst of

one of the documents, and remembered, with joyous nonchalance, that

George Cannon's own name never appeared in George Cannon's affairs.

He took her place in front of the little bookcase, and folded the

documents. There he was, beside her, in all his masculinity--his

moustache, his blue chin, his wide white hands, his broadcloth--there he

was planted on his massive feet as on a pedestal! She did not see him;

she was aware of him. And she was aware of the closed door behind them.

One of the basket-chairs, though empty, continued to creak, like a thing

alive. Faintly, very faintly, she could hear the piano--Mrs. Boutwood

playing! Overhead were the footsteps of Sarah Gailey and Hettie--they

were checking the linen from the laundry, as usual on Saturday

afternoon. And she was aware of herself, thin, throbbing, fragile,

mournful, somehow insignificant!

He looked round at her, with a half-turn of the head. In his glance was

good humour, good nature, protectiveness, and rectitude; and, more than

these, some of the old serenely smiling triumphant quality. He was not

ruined! He was not really in adversity! He remained the conqueror! She

thrilled with her relief.

"You're in my hands now--no mistake!" he murmured roguishly, picking up

the documents, and bending over the bag.

Hilda could hear a heavy footstep on the stairs, ascending.

In the same instant she had an extraordinary and disconcerting impulse

to seize his hand--she knew not why, whether it was to thank him, to

express her sympathy, or to express her submission. She struggled

against this impulse, but the impulse was part of herself and of her

inmost self; She was afraid, but her fear was pleasurable. She was

ashamed, but her shame was pleasurable. She wanted to move away from

where she stood. She thought: "If only I willed to move away, I could

move away. But, no! I shall not will it. I like remaining just here, in

this fear, this shame, and this agitation." She had a clear, dazzling

perception of the splendour and the fineness of sin; but she did not

know what sin! And all the time the muscles of her arm were tense in the

combat between the weakening desire to keep her arms still and the

growing desire to let her hand seize the hand of George Cannon. And all

the time the heavy footstep was ascending the interminable staircase.

And all the time George Cannon, with averted head, was fumbling in the

bag. And then, in a flash, she was really afraid; the fear was no longer

pleasurable, and her shame had become a curse. She said to herself: "I

cannot move, now. In a minute I shall do this horrible thing. Nothing

can save me." Despairing, she found a dark and tumultuous joy in

despair. The trance endured for ages, while disaster approached nearer

and nearer.

Then, after the heavy footstep had been climbing the staircase since

earth began, the door was brusquely opened, and the jovial fat face of

Mr. Boutwood appeared, letting in the louder sound of the piano.

"Oh, I beg pardon!" he muttered, pretending that he had assumed the

little room to be empty. The fact was that he was in search of George

Cannon, in whom he had recognized a fraternal spirit.

"Come in, Mr. Boutwood," said Hilda, with an easy, disdainful calm which

absolutely astounded herself. "That's all, then?" she added, to George

Cannon, glancing at him indifferently. She departed without waiting for

an answer.

VI

Putting on a bonnet, and taking an umbrella to occupy her hands, she

went out into the remedial freedom of the streets. And after turning the

first corner she saw coming towards her the figure of a woman whom she

seemed to know, elegant, even stately, in youthful grace. It was Janet

Orgreave, wearing a fashionable fawn-coloured summer costume. As they

recognized each other the girls blushed slightly. Janet hastened

forward. Hilda stood still. She was amazed at the chance which had sent

her two unexpected visitors in the same day. They shook hands and

kissed.

"So I've found you!" said Janet. "How are you, you poor dear? Why didn't

you answer my letter?"

"Letter?" Hilda repeated, wondering. Then she remembered that she had

indeed received a letter from Janet, but in her comatose dejection had

neglected to answer it.

"I'm up in London with father for the weekend. We want you to come with

us to the Abbey to-morrow. And you must come back with us to Bursley on

Monday. You _must_! We're quite set on it. I've left father all alone

this afternoon, to come up here and find you out. Not that he minds!

What a way it is! But how are you, Hilda?"

Hilda was so touched by Janet's affectionate solicitude that her eyes

filled with tears. She looked at that radiating and innocent goodness,

and thought: "How different I am from her! She hasn't the least idea how

different I am!"

For a moment, Janet seemed to her to be a sort of angel--modish, but

exquisitely genuine. She saw in the invitation to the Five Towns a

miraculous defence against a peril the prospect of which was already

alarming her. She would be compelled to go to Turnhill in order to visit

Lessways Street and decide what of her mother's goods she must keep. She

would of course take Janet with her. In all the Turnhill affairs Janet

should accompany her. Her new life should begin under the protection of

Janet's society. And her heart turned from the old life towards the new

with hope and a vague brightening expectation of happiness.

At the Cedars she led Janet to her bedroom, and then came out of the

bedroom to bid good-bye to George Cannon. The extreme complexity of

existence and of her sensations baffled and intimidated her.

CHAPTER III

JOURNEY TO BLEAKRIDGE

I

Hilda and Janet were mounting the precipitous Sytch Bank together on

their way from Turnhill into Bursley. It was dark; they had missed one

train at Turnhill and had preferred not to wait for the next. Although

they had been very busy in Hilda's house throughout all the afternoon

and a part of the evening, and had eaten only a picnic meal, neither of

them was aware of fatigue, and the two miles to Bursley seemed a trifle.

Going slowly up the steep slope, they did not converse. Janet said that

the weather was changing, and Hilda, without replying, peered at the

black baffling sky. The air had, almost suddenly, grown warmer. Above,

in the regions unseen, mysterious activities were in movement, as if

marshalling vast forces. The stars had vanished. A gentle but equivocal

wind on the cheek presaged rain, and seemed to be bearing downwards into

the homeliness of the earth some strange vibration out of infinite

space. The primeval elements of the summer night encouraged and

intensified Hilda's mood, half joyous, half apprehensive. She thought:

"A few days ago, I was in Hornsey, with the prospect of the visit to

Turnhill before me. Now the visit is behind me. I said that Janet should

be my companion, and she has been my companion. I said that I would cut

myself free, and I have cut myself free. I need never go to Turnhill

again, unless I like. The two trunks will be sent for to-morrow; and all

the rest will be sold--even the clock. The thing is done. I have

absolute liberty, and an income, and the intimacy of this splendid

affectionate Janet.... How fortunate it was that Mr. Cannon was not at

his office when we called! Of course I was obliged to call.... And yet

would it not be more satisfactory if I had seen him?... I must have been

in a horribly morbid state up at Hornsey.... Soon I must decide about my

future. Soon I shall actually have decided!... Life is very queer!" She

had as yet no notion whatever of what she would do with her liberty and

her income and the future; but she thought vaguely of something heroic,

grandiose, and unusual.

II

In her hand she carried a small shabby book, bound in blue and gold,

with gilt edges a little irregular. She had found this book while

sorting out the multitudinous contents of her mother's wardrobe, and at

the last moment, perceiving that it had been overlooked, and being

somehow ashamed to leave it to the auctioneers, she had brought it away,

not knowing how she would ultimately dispose of it. The book had

possibly been dear to her mother, but she could not embarrass her

freedom by conserving everything that had possibly been dear to her

mother. It was entitled _The Girl's Week-day Book_, by Mrs. Copley, and

it had been published by the Religious Tract Society, no doubt in her

mother's girlhood. The frontispiece, a steel engraving, showed a group

of girls feeding some swans by the terraced margin of an ornamental

water, and it bore the legend, "Feeding the Swans." And on the title-

page was the text: "That our daughters may be as corner-stones, polished

after the similitude of a palace. Psalm cxliv. 12." In the table of

contents were such phrases as: "One thing at a time. Darkness and Light.

Respect for Ministers. The Drowning Fly. Trifling with words of

Scripture. Goose and Swan. Delicate Health. Conscientious Regard to

Truth. Sensibility and Gentleness contrasted with Affectation. Curiosity

and Tattling. Instability of Worldly Possessions." A book representing,

for Hilda, all that was most grotesque in an age that was now definitely

finished and closed! A silly book!

During the picnic meal she had idly read extracts from it to Janet,

amusing sentences; and though the book had once been held sacred by her

who was dead, and though they were engaged in stirring the scarce-cold

ashes of a tragedy, the girls had nevertheless permitted themselves a

kindly, moderate mirth. Hilda had quoted from a conversation in it:

"Well, I would rather sit quietly round this cheerful fire, and talk

with dear mamma, than go to the grandest ball that ever was known!" and

Janet had plumply commented: "What a dreadful lie!" And then they had

both laughed openly, perhaps to relieve the spiritual tension caused by

the day's task and the surroundings. After that, Hilda had continued to

dip into the book, but silently. And Janet had imagined that Hilda was

merely bored by the monotonous absurdity of the sentiments expressed.

Janet was wrong. Hilda had read the following: "One word more. Do not

rest in your religious impressions. You have, perhaps, been the subject

of terror on account of sin; your mind has been solemnized by some event

in Providence; by an alarming fit of sickness, or the death of a

relative, or a companion.... This is indeed to be reckoned a great

mercy; but then the danger is, lest you should rest here; lest those

tears, and terrors, and resolutions, should be the only evidences on

which you venture to conclude on the safety of your immortal state. What

is your present condition?..."

Which words intimidated Hilda in spite of herself. In vain she repeated

that the book was a silly book. She really believed that it was silly,

but she knew also that there was an aspect of it which was not silly.

She was reminded by it that she had found no solution of the problem

which had distracted her in Hornsey. 'What is your present condition?'

Her present condition was still that of a weakling and a coward who had

sunk down inertly before the great problem of sin. And now, in the

growing strength of her moral convalescence, she was raising her eyes

again to meet the problem. Her future seemed to be bound up with the

problem. As she breasted the top of the Sytch under the invisible

lowering clouds, with her new, adored friend by her side, and the

despised but powerful book in her hand, she mused in an ambiguous

reverie upon her situation, dogged by the problem which alone was

accompanying her out of the past into the future. Her reverie was shot

through by piercing needles of regret for her mother; and even with the

touch of Janet's arm against her own in the darkness she had sharp

realizations of her extreme solitude in the world. Withal, the sense of

life was precious and beautiful. She was not happy; but she was filled

with the mysterious vital elation which surpasses happiness.

III

They descended gently into Bursley, crossing the top of St. Luke's

Square and turning eastwards into Market Square, ruled by the sombre and

massive Town Hall in whose high tower an illuminated dial shone like a

topaz. To Hilda, this nocturnal entry into Bursley had the romance of an

entry into a town friendly but strange and recondite. During the few

days of her stay with the Orgreaves in the suburb of Bleakridge, she had

scarcely gone into the town once. She had never seen it at night. In the

old Turnhill days she had come over to Bursley occasionally with her

mother; but to shoppers from Turnhill, Bursley meant St. Luke's Square

and not a yard beyond.

Now the girls arrived at the commencement of the steam-car track, where

a huge engine and tram were waiting, and as they turned another corner,

the long perspective of Trafalgar Road, rising with its double row of

lamps towards fashionable Bleakridge, was revealed to Hilda. She

thought, naturally, that every other part of the Five Towns was more

impressive and more important than the poor little outskirt, Turnhill,

of her birth. In Turnhill there was no thoroughfare to compare with

Trafalgar Road, and no fashionable suburb whatever. She had almost the

feeling of being in a metropolis, if a local metropolis.

"It's beginning to rain, I think," said Janet.

"Who's that?" Hilda questioned abruptly, ignoring the remark in the

swift, unreflecting excitement of a sensibility surprised.

"Where?"

"There!"

They were going down Duck Bank into the hollow. On the right, opposite

the lighted Dragon Hotel, lay Duck Square in obscure somnolence; at the

corner of Duck Square and Trafalgar Road was a double-fronted shop, of

which all the shutters were up except two or three in the centre of the

doorway. Framed thus in the aperture, a young man stood within the shop

under a bright central gas-jet; he was gazing intently at a large sheet

of paper which he held in his outstretched hands, and the girls saw him

in profile: tall, rather lanky, fair, with hair dishevelled, and a

serious, studious, and magnanimous face; quite unconscious that he made

a picture for unseen observers.

"That?" said Janet, in a confidential and interested tone. "That's young

Clayhanger--Edwin Clayhanger.[1] His father's the printer, you know.

Came from Turnhill, originally."

"I never knew," said Hilda. "But I seem to have heard the name."

"Oh! It must have been a long time ago. He's got the best business in

Bursley now. Father says it's one of the best in the Five Towns. He's

built that new house just close to ours. Don't you remember I pointed it

out to you? Father's the architect. They're going to move into it next

week or the week after. I expect that's why the son and heir's working

so late to-night, packing and so on, perhaps."

The young man moved out of sight. But his face had made in those few

thrilling seconds a deep impression on Hilda; so that in her mind she

still saw it, with an almost physical particularity of detail. It

presented itself to her, in some mysterious way, as a romantic visage,

wistful, full of sad subtleties, of the unknown and the seductive, and

of a latent benevolence. It was as recondite and as sympathetic as the

town in which she had discovered it.

She said nothing.

"Old Mr. Clayhanger is a regular character," Janet eagerly went on, to

Hilda's great content. "Some people don't like him. But I rather do like

him." She was always thus kind. "Grandmother once told me he sprang from

simply nothing at all--worked on a potbank when he was quite a child."

"Who? The father, you mean?"

"Yes, the father. Now, goodness knows how much he isn't worth I Father

is always saying he could buy _us_ up, lock, stock, and barrel." Janet

laughed. "People often call him a miser, but he can't be so much of a

miser, seeing that he's built this new house."

"And I suppose the son's in the business?"

"Yes. He wanted to be an architect. That was how father got to know him.

But old Mr. Clayhanger wouldn't have it. And so he's a printer, and one

day he'll be one of the principal men in the town."

"Oh! So you know him?"

"Well, we do and we don't. I go into the shop sometimes; and then I've

seen him once or twice up at the new house. We've asked him to come in

and see us. But he's never come, and I don't think he ever will. I

believe his father does keep him grinding away rather hard. I'm sure

he's frightfully clever."

"How can you tell?"

"Oh! From bits of things he says. And he's read everything, it seems!

And once he saved a great heavy printing-machine from going through the

floor of the printing-shop into the basement. If it hadn't been for him

there'd have been a dreadful accident. Everybody was talking about that.

He doesn't look it, does he?"

They were now passing the corner at which stood the shop. Hilda peered

within the narrowing, unshuttered slit, but she could see no more of

Edwin Clayhanger.

"No, he doesn't," she agreed, while thinking nevertheless that he did

look precisely that. "And so he lives all alone with his father. No

mother?"

"No mother. But there are two sisters. The youngest is married, and just

going to have a baby, poor thing! The other one keeps house. I believe

she's a splendid girl, but neither of them is a bit like Edwin. Not a

bit. He's--"

"What?"

"I don't know. Look here, miss! What about this rain? I vote we take the

car up the hill."

IV

The steam-car was rumbling after them down Duck Bank. It stopped, huge

above them, and they climbed into it through an odour of warm grease

that trailed from the engine. The conductor touched his hat to Janet,

who smiled like a sister upon this fellow-being. Two middle-aged men

were the only other occupants of the interior of the car; both raised

their hats to Janet. The girls sat down in opposite corners next to the

door. Then, with a deafening continuous clatter of loose glass-panes and

throbbing of its filthy floor, the vehicle started again, elephantine.

It was impossible to talk in that unique din. Hilda had no desire to

talk. She watched Janet pay the fares as in a dream, without even

offering her own penny, though as a rule she was touchily punctilious in

sharing expenses with the sumptuous Janet. Without being in the least

aware of it, and quite innocently, Janet had painted a picture of the

young man, Edwin Clayhanger, which intensified a hundredfold the strong

romantic piquancy of Hilda's brief vision of him. In an instant Hilda

saw her ideal future--that future which had loomed grandiose,

indefinite, and strange--she saw it quite precise and simple as the wife

of such a creature as Edwin Clayhanger. The change was astounding in its

abruptness. She saw all the delightful and pure vistas of love with a

man, subtle, baffling, and benevolent, and above all superior; with a

man who would be respected by a whole town as a pillar of society, while

bringing to his intimacy with herself an exotic and wistful quality

which neither she nor anyone could possibly define. She asked: "What

attracts me in him? I don't know. _I like him_." She who had never

spoken to him! She who never before had vividly seen herself as married

to a man! He was clever; he was sincere; he was kind; he was

trustworthy; he would have wealth and importance and reputation. All

this was good; but all this would have been indifferent to her, had

there not been an enigmatic and inscrutable and unprecedented something

in his face, in his bearing, which challenged and inflamed her

imagination.

It did not occur to her to think of Janet as in the future a married

woman. But of herself she thought, with new agitations: "I am innocent

now! I am ignorant now! I am a girl now! But one day I shall be so no

longer. One day I shall be a woman. One day I shall be in the power and

possession of some man--if not this man, then some other. Everything

happens; and this will happen!" And the hazardous strangeness of life

enchanted her.

CHAPTER IV

WITH THE ORGREAVES

I

The Orgreave family was holding its nightly session in the large

drawing-room of Lane End House when Hilda and Janet arrived. The

bow-window stood generously open in three different places, and the

heavy outer curtains as well as the lace inner ones were moving gently

in the capricious breeze that came across the oval lawn. The

multitudinous sound of rain on leaves entered also with the wind; and a

steam-car could be heard thundering down Trafalgar Road, from which the

house was separated by only a few intervening minor roofs.

Mrs. Orgreave, the plump, faded image of goodness, with Janet's full red

lips and Janet's kindly eyes, sat as usual, whether in winter or in

summer, near the fireplace, surveying with placidity the theatre where

the innumerable dramas of her motherhood had been enacted. Tom, her

eldest, the thin, spectacled lawyer, had, as a boy of seven, rampaged on

that identical Turkey hearthrug, when it was new, a quarter of a century

earlier. He was now seated at the grand piano with the youngest child,

Alicia, a gawky little treasure, always alternating between pertness and

timidity, aged twelve. Jimmie and Johnnie, young bloods of nineteen and

eighteen, were only present in their mother's heart, being in process of

establishing, by practice, the right to go forth into the world of an

evening and return when they chose without suffering too much from

family curiosity. Two other children--Marian, eldest daughter and sole

furnisher of grandchildren to the family, and Charlie, a young doctor--

were permanently away in London. Osmond Orgreave, the elegant and

faintly mocking father of the brood, a handsome grizzled man of between

fifty and sixty, was walking to and fro between the grand piano and the

small upright piano in the farther half of the room.

"Well, my dear?" said Mrs. Orgreave to Hilda. "You aren't wet?" She drew

Hilda towards her and stroked her shoulder, and then kissed her. The

embrace was to convey the mother's sympathy with Hilda in the ordeal of

the visit to Turnhill, and her satisfaction that the ordeal was now

over. The ageing lady seemed to kiss her on behalf of the entire

friendly family; all the others, appreciating the delicacy of the

situation, refrained from the peril of clumsy speech.

"Oh no, mother!" Janet exclaimed reassuringly. "We came up by car. And I

had my umbrella. And it only began to rain in earnest just as we got to

the gate."

"Very thoughtful of it, I'm sure!" piped the pig-tailed Alicia from the

piano. She could talk, in her pert moments, exactly like her brothers.

"Alicia, darling," said Janet coaxingly, as she sat on the sofa flanked

by the hat, gloves, and jacket which she had just taken off, "will you

run upstairs with these things, and take Hilda's too? I'm quite

exhausted. Father will swoon if I leave them here. I suppose he's

walking about because he's so proud of his new birthday slippers."

"But I'm just playing the symphony with Tom!" Alicia protested.

"I'll run up--I was just going to," said Hilda.

"You'll do no such thing!" Mrs. Orgreave announced, sharply. "Alicia,

I'm surprised at you! Here Janet and Hilda have been out since noon, and

you--"

"And so on and so on," said Alicia, jumping up from the piano in

obedience.

"We didn't wait supper," Mrs. Orgreave went on. "But I told Martha to

leave--"

"Mother, dearest," Janet stopped her. "Please don't mention food. We've

stuffed ourselves, haven't we, Hilda? Anyone been?"

"Swetnam," said Alicia, as she left the room with her arms full.

"_Mr_. Swetnam," corrected Mrs. Orgreave.

"Which one? The Ineffable?"

"The Ineffable," replied Mr. Orgreave, who had wandered, smiling

enigmatically, to the sofa. His legs, like the whole of his person, had

a distinguished air; and he held up first one slippered foot and then

the other to the silent, sham-ecstatic inspection of the girls. "He may

look in again, later on. It's evidently Hilda he wants to see." This

said, Mr. Orgreave lazily sank into an easy chair, opposite the sofa,

and lighted a cigarette. He was one of the most industrious men in the

Five Towns, and assuredly the most industrious architect; but into an

idle hour he could pack more indolence than even Johnnie and Jimmie,

alleged wastrels, could accomplish in a week.

"I say, Janet," Tom sang out from the piano, "you aren't really

exhausted, are you?"

"I'm getting better."

"Well, let's dash through the scherzo before the infant comes back. She

can't take it half fast enough."

"And do you think I can?" said Janet, rising. In theory, Janet was not a

pianist, and she never played solos, nor accompanied songs; but in the

actual practice of duet-playing her sympathetic presence of mind at

difficult crises of the music caused her to be esteemed by Tom, the

expert and enthusiast, as superior to all other performers in the

family.

II

Hilda listened with pleasure and with exaltation to the scherzo. Beyond

a little part-singing at school she had no practical acquaintance with

music; there had never been a piano at home. But she knew that this

music was Beethoven's; and from the mere intonation of that name, as it

was uttered in her presence in the house of the Orgreaves, she was aware

of its greatness, and the religious faculty in her had enabled her at

once to accept its supremacy as an article of genuine belief; so that,

though she understood it not, she felt it, and was uplifted by it.

Whenever she heard Beethoven--and she heard it often, because Tom, in

the words of the family, had for the moment got Beethoven on the

brain--her thoughts and her aspirations were ennobled.

She was singularly content with this existence amid the intimacy of the

Orgreaves. The largeness and prodigality and culture of the family life,

so different from anything she had ever known, and in particular so

different from the desolating atmosphere of the Cedars, soothed and

flattered her in a manner subtly agreeable. At the same time she was but

little irked by it, for the reason that her spirit was not one to be

unduly affected by exterior social, intellectual, and physical

conditions. Moreover, the Orgreaves, though obviously of a class

superior to her own, had the facile and yet aristocratic

unceremoniousness which, unconsciously, repudiates such distinctions

until circumstances arise that compel their acknowledgment. To live

among the Orgreaves was like living in a small private republic that

throbbed with a hundred activities and interests. Each member of it was

a centre of various energy. And from each, Hilda drew something that was

precious: from Mrs. Orgreave, sheer love and calm wisdom; from Janet,

sheer love and the spectacle of elegance; from little Alicia candour and

admiration; from Tom, knowledge, artistic enthusiasm, and shy, curt

sympathy; from Johnnie and Jimmie the homage of their proud and naïve

mannishness: as for Mr. Orgreave, she admired him perhaps as much as she

admired even Janet, and once when he and she had taken a walk together

up to Toft End, she had thought him quite exquisite in his attitude to

her, quizzical, worldly, and yet sensitively understanding and humane.

And withal they never worried her by interferences and criticisms; they

never presumed on their hospitality, but left her as free as though her

age had been twice what it was. Undoubtedly, in the ardour of her

gratitude she idealized every one of them. The sole reproach which in

secret she would formulate against them had reference to their quasi-

cynical levity in conversation. They would never treat a serious topic

seriously for more than a few minutes. Either one or another would yield

to the temptation of clever facetiousness, and clever facetiousness

would always carry off the honours in a discussion. This did not apply

to Mrs. Orgreave, who was incapable of humour; but it applied a little

even to Janet.

The thought continually arising in Hilda's mind was: "Why do they care

for me? What can they see in me? Why are they so good to me? I was never

good to them." She did not guess that, at her very first visit to Lane

End House, the force and mystery of her character had powerfully

attracted these rather experienced amateurs of human nature. She was

unaware that she had made her mark upon Janet and Charlie so far back as

the days of the dancing-classes. And she under-estimated the appeal of

her situation as an orphan and a solitary whose mother's death, in its

swiftness, had amounted to a tragedy.

The scherzo was finished, and Alicia had not returned into the

drawing-room. The two pianists sat hesitant.

"Where is that infant?" Tom demanded. "If I finish it all without her

she'll be vexed."

"I can tell you where she ought to be," said Mrs. Orgreave placidly.

"She ought to be in bed. No wonder she looks pale, stopping up till this

time of night!"

Then there were unusual and startling movements behind the door,

accompanied by giggling. And Alicia entered, followed by

Charlie--Charlie who was supposed at that precise instant to be in

London!

"Hello, mater!" said the curly-headed Charlie, with a sublime

affectation of calmness, as though he had slipped out of the next room.

He produced an effect fully equal to his desires.

III

In a little while, Charlie, on the sofa, was seated at a small table

covered with viands and fruit; the white cloth spread on the table made

a curiously charming patch amid the sombre colours of the drawing-room.

He had protested that, having consumed much food en route, he was not

hungry; but in vain. Mrs. Orgreave demolished such arguments by the

power of her notorious theory, which admitted no exceptions, that any

person coming off an express train must be in need of sustenance. The

odd thing was that all the others discovered mysterious appetites and

began to eat and drink with gusto, sitting, standing, or walking about,

while Charlie, munching, related how he had miraculously got three days'

leave from the hospital, and how he had impulsively 'cabbed it' to

Euston, and how, having arrived at Knype, he had also 'cabbed it' from

Knype to Bleakridge instead of waiting for the Loop Line train. The blot

on his advent, in the eyes of Mrs. Orgreave, was that he had no fresh

news of Marian and her children.

"You don't seem very surprised to find Hilda here," said Alicia.

"It's not my business to be surprised at anything, kid," Charlie

retorted, smiling at Hilda, who sat beside him on the sofa. "Moreover,

don't I get ten columns of news every three days? I know far more about

this town than you do, I bet!"

Everybody laughed at Mrs. Orgreave, the great letter-writer and

universal disseminator of information.

"Now, Alicia, you must go to bed," said Mrs. Orgreave. And Alicia

regretted that she had been so indiscreet as to draw attention to

herself.

"The kid can stay up if she will say her piece," said Charlie mockingly.

He knew that he could play the autocrat, for that evening at any rate.

"What piece?" the child demanded, blushing and defiant.

"Her 'Abou Ben Adhem,'" said Charlie. "Do you think I don't know all

about that too?"

"Oh, mother, you are a bore!" Alicia exclaimed, pouting. "Why did you

tell him that?... Well, I'll say it if Hilda will recite something as

well."

"Me!" murmured Hilda, staggered. "I never recite!"

"I've always understood you recite beautifully," said Mrs. Orgreave.

"You know you do, Hilda!" said Janet.

"Of course you do," said Charlie.

"_You've_ never heard me, anyhow!" she replied to him obstinately. How

could they have got it fixed into their heads that she was a reciter?

This renown was most disconcerting.

"Now, Hilda!" Mr. Orgreave soothingly admonished her from the back of

the sofa. She turned her head and looked up at him, smiling in her

distress.

"Go ahead, then, kid! It's agreed," said Charlie.

And Alicia galloped through Leigh Hunt's moral poem, which she was

preparing for an imminent speech-day, in an extraordinarily short space

of time.

"But I can't remember anything. I haven't recited for years and years,"

Hilda pleaded, when the child burst out, "Now, Hilda!"

"_Stuff_!" Charlie pronounced.

"Some Tennyson?" Mrs. Orgreave suggested. "Don't you know any Tennyson?

We must have something, now." And Alicia, exulting in the fact that she

had paid the penalty imposed, cried that there could be no drawing back.

Hilda was lost. Mrs. Orgreave's tone, with all its softness, was a

command. "Tennyson? I've forgotten 'Maud,'" she muttered.

"I'll prompt you," said Charlie. "Thomas!"

Everybody looked at Tom, expert in literature as well as in music; Tom,

the collector, the owner of books and bookcases. Tom went to a bookcase

and drew forth a green volume, familiar and sacred throughout all

England.

"Oh dear!" Hilda moaned.

"Where do you mean to begin?" Charlie sternly inquired. "It just happens

that I'm reading 'In Memoriam,' myself. I read ten stanzas a day."

Hilda bent over the book with him.

"But I must stand up," she said, with sudden fire. "I can't recite

sitting down."

They all cried "Bravo!" and made a circle for her. And she stood up.

The utterance of the first lines was a martyrdom for her. But after that

she surrendered herself frankly to the mood of the poem and forgot to

suffer shame, speaking in a loud, clear, dramatic voice which she

accompanied by glances and even by gestures. After about thirty lines

she stopped, and, regaining her ordinary senses, perceived that the

entire family was staring at her with an extreme intentness.

"I can't do any more," she murmured weakly, and dropped on to the sofa.

Everybody clapped very heartily.

"It's wonderful!" said Janet in a low tone.

"I should just say it was!" said Tom seriously, and Hilda was saturated

with delicious joy.

"You ought to go on the stage; that's what you ought to do!" said

Charlie.

For a fraction of a second, Hilda dreamt of the stage, and then Mrs.

Orgreave said softly, like a mother:

"I'm quite sure Hilda would never dream of any such thing!"

IV

There was an irruption of Jimmie and Johnnie, and three of the Swetnam

brothers, including him known as the Ineffable. Jimmie and Johnnie

played the rôle of the absolutely imperturbable with a skill equal to

Charlie's own; and only a series of calm "How-do's?" marked the

greetings of these relatives. The Swetnams were more rollickingly

demonstrative. Now that the drawing-room was quite thickly populated,

Hilda, made nervous by Mr. Orgreave's jocular insinuation that she

herself was the object of the Swetnams' call, took refuge, first with

Janet, and then, as Janet was drawn into the general crowd, with

Charlie, who was absently turning over the pages of "In Memoriam."

"Know this?" he inquired, friendly, indicating the poem.

"I don't," she said. "It's splendid, isn't it?"

"Well," he answered. "It's rather on the religious tack, you know.

That's why I'm reading it." He smiled oddly.

"Really?"

He hesitated, and then nodded. It was the strangest avowal from this

young dandy of twenty-three with the airy and cynical tongue. Hilda

thought: "Here, then, is another!" And her own most secret troubles

recurred to her mind.

"What's that about Teddy Clayhanger?" Charlie cried out, suddenly

looking up. He had caught the name in a distant conversation.

Janet explained how they had seen Edwin, and went on to say that it was

impossible to persuade him to call.

"What rot!" said Charlie. "I bet you what you like I get him here

to-morrow night." He added to Hilda: "Went to school with him!" Hilda's

face burned.

"I bet you don't," said Janet stoutly, from across the room.

"I'll bet you a shilling I do," said Charlie.

"Haven't a penny left," Janet smiled. "Father, will you lend me a

shilling?"

"That's what I'm here for," said Mr. Orgreave.

"Mr. Orgreave," the youngest Swetnam put in, "you talk exactly like the

dad talks."

The bet was made, and according to a singular but long-established

family custom, Tom had to be stake-holder.

Hilda became troubled and apprehensive. She hoped that Charlie would

lose, and then she hoped that he would win. Looking forward to the

intimate bedroom chat with Janet which brought each evening to a

heavenly close, she said to herself: "If he _does_ come, I shall make

Janet promise that I'm not to be asked to recite or anything. In fact, I

shall get her to see that I'm not discussed."

CHAPTER V

EDWIN CLAYHANGER

I

The next evening, Mr. and Mrs. Orgreave, Hilda, Janet, and Alicia were

in the dining-room of the Orgreaves awaiting the advent at the supper-

table of sundry young men whose voices could be heard through open doors

in the distance of the drawing-room.

Charlie Orgreave had won his bet: and Edwin Clayhanger was among those

young men who had remained behind in the drawing-room to exchange,

according to the practice of young men, ideas upon life and the world.

Hilda had been introduced to him, but owing to the performance of

another Beethoven symphony there had been almost no conversation before

supper, and she had not heard him talk. She had stationed herself behind

the grand piano, on the plea of turning over the pages for the musicians

(though it was only with great uncertainty, and in peril of missing the

exact instant for turning, that she followed the music on the page), and

from this security she had furtively glanced at Edwin when her task

allowed. "Perhaps I was quite mistaken last night," she said to herself.

"Perhaps he is perfectly ordinary." The strange thing was that she could

not decide whether he was ordinary or not. At one moment his face

presented no interest, at another she saw it just as she had seen it,

framed in the illuminated aperture of the shop-shutters, on the previous

night. Or she fancied that she saw it thus. The more she tried to

distinguish between Edwin's reality and her fancies concerning Edwin,

the less she succeeded. She would pronounce positively that her fancies

were absurd and even despicable. But this abrupt positiveness did not

convince. Supposing that he was after all marvellous among men! During

the day she had taken advantage of the mention of his name to ascertain

discreetly some details of the legendary feat by which as a boy he had

saved his father's printing-shop from destruction. The details were

vague, and not very comprehensible, but they seemed to indicate on his

part an astounding presence of mind, a heroic promptitude in action.

Assuredly, the Orgreaves regarded him as a creature out of the common

run. And at the same time they all had the air of feeling rather sorry

for him.

Standing near the supper-table, Hilda listened intently for the sound of

his voice among the other voices in the drawing-room. But she could not

separate it from the rest. Perhaps he was keeping silence. She said to

herself: "Yet what do I care whether he is keeping silence or not?"

Mr. Orgreave remarked, in the suspense, glancing ironically at his wife:

"I think I'll go upstairs and do an hour's planning. They aren't likely

to be more than an hour, I expect?"

"Hilda," said Mrs. Orgreave, quite calm, but taking her husband quite

seriously, "will you please go and tell those young men from me that

supper is waiting?"

II

Of course Hilda obeyed, though it appeared strange to her that Mrs.

Orgreave had not sent Alicia on such an errand. Passing out of the

bright dining-room where the gas was lit, she hesitated a moment in the

dark broad corridor that led to the drawing-room. The mission, she felt,

would make her rather prominent in front of Edwin Clayhanger, the

stranger, and she had an objection to being prominent in front of him;

she had, indeed, taken every possible precaution against such a danger.

"How silly I am to loiter here!" she thought. "I might be Alicia!"

The boys, she could now hear, were discussing French literature, and in

particular Victor Hugo. When she caught the name of Victor Hugo she

lifted her chin, and moved forward a little. She worshipped Victor Hugo

with a passion unreflecting and intense, simply because certain detached

lines from his poems were the most splendid occupants of her memory,

dignifying every painful or sordid souvenir. At last Charlie's clear,

gay voice said:

"It's all very well, and Victor Hugo _is_ Victor Hugo; but you can say

what you like--there's a lot of this that'll bear skipping, your

worships."

Already she was at the doorway. In the dusk of the unlighted chamber the

faces of the four Orgreaves and Clayhanger showed like pale patches on

the gloom.

"Not a line!" she said fiercely, with her extremely clear articulation.

She had no right to make such a statement, for she had not read the

twentieth part of Victor Hugo's work; she did not even know what book

they were discussing--Charlie held the volume lightly in his hand--but

she was incensed against the mere levity of Charlie's tone.

She saw Edwin Clayhanger jump at the startling interruption. And all

five looked round. She could feel her face burning.

Charlie quizzed her with a word, and then turned to Edwin Clayhanger for

support. "Don't _you_ think that some of it's dullish, Teddy?"

Edwin Clayhanger, shamefaced, looked at Hilda wistfully, as if in

apology, as if appealing to her clemency against her fierceness; and

said slowly:

"Well--yes."

He had agreed with Charlie; but while disagreeing with Hilda he had

mysteriously proved to her that she had been right in saying to herself

on the previous evening: "_I like him_."

The incident appeared to her to be enormous and dramatic. She moved

away, as it were breathless under emotion, and then, remembering her

errand, threw over her shoulder:

"Mrs. Orgreave wants to know when you're coming to supper."

III

The supper-table was noisy and joyous--more than usually so on account

of the presence of Charlie, the gayest member of the family. At either

end of the long, white-spread board sat Mr. and Mrs. Orgreave; Alicia

stood by Mr. Orgreave, who accepted her caresses with the negligence of

a handsome father. Along one side sat Hilda, next to Janet, and these

two were flanked by Jimmie and Johnnie, tall, unbending, apparently

determined to prove by a politely supercilious demeanor that to pass a

whole evening thus in the home circle was considered by them to be a

concession on their part rather than a privilege. Edwin Clayhanger sat

exactly opposite to Hilda, with Charlie for sponsor; and Tom's

spectacles gleamed close by.

Hilda, while still constrained, was conscious of pleasure in the scene,

and of a certain pride in forming part of it. These prodigal and

splendid persons respected and liked her, even loved her. Her recitation

on the previous evening had been a triumph. She was glad that she had

shown them that she could at any rate do one thing rather well; but she

was equally glad that she had obtained Janet's promise to avoid any

discussion of her qualities or her situation. After all, with her

self-conscious restraint and her pitiful assured income of three pounds

a week, she was a poor little creature compared with the easy, luxurious

beings of this household, whose upkeep could not cost less than three

pounds a day. Janet, in rich and complicated white, and glistening with

jewels at hand and neck, was a princess beside her. She hated her spare

black frock, and for the second time in her life desired expensive

clothes markedly feminine. She felt that she was at a grave

disadvantage, and that to remedy this disadvantage would be necessary,

not only dresses and precious stones, but an instinctive faculty of soft

allurement which she had not. Each gesture of Janet's showed seductive

grace, while her own rare gestures were stiffened by a kind of masculine

harshness. Every time that the sad-eyed and modest Edwin Clayhanger

glanced at Janet, and included herself in the glance, she fancied that

he was unjustly but inevitably misprising herself. And at length she

thought: "Why did I make Janet promise that I shouldn't be talked about?

Why shouldn't he know all about my mourning, and that I'm the only girl

in the Five Towns that can write shorthand. Why should I be afraid to

recite again? However much I might have suffered through nervousness if

I'd recited, I should have shown I'm not such a poor little thing as all

that! Why am I such a baby?" She wilted under her own disdain.

It was strange to think that Edwin Clayhanger, scarcely older than the

irresponsible Charlie, was the heir to an important business, was

potentially a rich and influential man. Had not Mr. Orgreave said that

old Mr. Clayhanger could buy up all the Orgreaves if he chose? It was

strange to think that this wistful and apparently timid young man, this

nice boy, would one day be the head of a household, and of a table such

as this! Yes, it would assuredly arrive! Everything happened. And the

mother of that household? Would it be she? Her imagination leaped far

into the future, as she exchanged a quiet, furtive smile with Mrs.

Orgreave, and she tried to see herself as another Mrs. Orgreave, a

strenuous and passionate past behind her, honoured, beloved, teased,

adored. But she could not quite see herself thus. Impossible that she,

with her temperament so feverish, restive, and peculiar, should ever

reach such a haven! It was fantastically too much to expect! And yet, if

not with Edwin Clayhanger, then with another, with some mysterious being

whom she had never seen!... Did not everything happen?... But then,

equally, strange and terrible misfortunes might be lying in wait for

her!... The indescribable sharp savour of life was in her nostrils.

IV

The conversation had turned upon Bradlaugh, the shameless free-thinker,

the man who had known how to make himself the centre of discussion in

every house in England. This was the Bradlaugh year, the apogee of his

notoriety. Dozens of times at the Cedar's meal-table had she heard the

shocking name of Bradlaugh on outraged tongues, but never once had a

word been uttered in his favour. The public opinion of the

boarding-house was absolutely unanimous in reckoning him a scoundrel. In

the dining-room of the Orgreaves the attitude towards him was different.

His free-thought was not precisely defended, but champions of his right

to sit in the House of Commons were numerous. Hilda grew excited, and

even more self-conscious. It was as if she were in momentary expectation

of being challenged by these hardy debaters: "Are not _you_ a

free-thinker?" Her interest was personal; the interest of one in peril.

Compared to the discussions at the Cedars, this discussion was as the

open, tossing, windy sea to a weed-choked canal. The talk veered into

mere profane politics, and Mr. Orgreave, entrenching himself behind an

assumption of careless disdain, was severely attacked by all his sons

except Jimmie, who, above Hilda's left shoulder, pretended to share the

paternal scorn. The indifference of Hilda to politics was complete. She

began to feel less disturbed; she began to dream. Then she suddenly

heard, through her dream, the name of Bradlaugh again; and Edwin

Clayhanger, in response to a direct question from Mr. Orgreave, was

saying:

"You can't help what you believe. You can't make yourself believe

anything. And I don't see why you should, either. There's no virtue in

believing."

And Tom was crying "Hooray!"

Hilda was thunderstruck. She was blinded as though by a mystic

revelation. She wanted to exult, and to exult with all the ardour of her

soul. This truth which Edwin Clayhanger had enunciated she had indeed

always been vaguely aware of; but now in a flash she felt it, she faced

it, she throbbed to its authenticity, and was free. It solved every

difficulty, and loosed the load that for months past had wearied her

back. "There's no virtue in believing." It was fundamental. It was the

gift of life and of peace. Her soul shouted, as she realized that just

there, in that instant, at that table, a new epoch had dawned for her.

Never would she forget the instant and the scene--scene of her re-birth!

Mrs. Orgreave remonstrated with mild sadness:

"No virtue in believing! Eh, Mr. Edwin!" And Hilda, under the ageing

lady's grieved glance, tried to quench the exultation on her face,

somewhat like a child trapped. But she could not. Tom again cried

"Hooray!" His tone, however, grated on her sensibility. It lacked

emotion. It was the tone of a pugilist's backer. And Janet permitted

herself some pleasantry. And Charlie became frankly facetious. Was it

conceivable that Charlie could be interested in religion? She liked him

very much, partly because he and she had learnt to understand each other

at the dancing-classes, and partly because his curly hair and his candid

smile compelled sympathy. But her esteem for him had limits. It was

astonishing that a family otherwise simply perfect should be content

with jocosity when jocosity was so obviously out of place. Were they,

then, afraid of being serious?... Edwin Clayhanger was not laughing; he

had blushed. Her eyes were fixed on him with the extremest intensity,

studying him, careless of the danger that his gaze might catch hers. She

was lost in him. And then, he caught her; and, burning with honest

shame, she looked downwards.

CHAPTER VI

IN THE GARDEN

I

That evening Janet did not stay long in Hilda's bedroom, having

perceived that Hilda was in one of her dark, dreamy moods.

As soon as she was gone, Hilda lowered the gas a little, and then went

to the window, and opened it wider, and, drawing aside the blind, looked

forth. The night was obscure and warm; and a wet wind moved furtively

about in the elm-trees of the garden. The window was at the side of the

house; it gave on the west, and commanded the new house just finished by

Mr. Orgreave for the Clayhanger family. The block of this generously

planned dwelling rose massively at a distance of perhaps forty feet,

dwarfing a whole row of cottages in the small street behind Lane End

House; its various chimneypots stood out a deeper black against the

enigmatic sky. Beyond the Clayhanger garden-plot, as yet uncultivated,

and its high boundary wall, ran the great silent thoroughfare, Trafalgar

Road, whose gas-lamps reigned in the nocturnal silence that the last

steam-car had left in its wake.

Hilda gazed at the house; and it seemed strange to her that the house,

which but a short time ago had no existence whatever, and was yet cold

and soulless, was destined to be the living home of a family, with

history in its walls and memories clinging about it. The formidable

magic of life was always thus discovering itself to her, so that she

could not look upon even an untenanted, terra-cotta-faced villa without

a secret thrill; and the impenetrable sky above was not more charmed and

enchanted than those brick walls. When she reflected that one day the

wistful, boyish Edwin Clayhanger would be the master of that house, that

in that house his will would be stronger than any other will, the

mystery that hides beneath the surface of all things surged up and

overwhelmed thought. And although scarcely a couple of hours had elapsed

since the key of the new life had been put into her hands, she could not

make an answer when she asked herself: "Am I happy or unhappy?"

II

The sound of young men's voices came round the corner of the house from

the lawn. Some of the brothers Orgreave were saying good-night to Edwin

Clayhanger in the porch. She knew that they had been chatting a long

time in the hall, after Clayhanger had bidden adieu to the rest of the

family. She wondered what they had been talking about, and what young

men did in general talk about when they were by themselves and

confidential. In her fancy she endowed their conversations with the

inexplicable attractiveness of masculinity, as masculinity is understood

by women alone. She had an intense desire to overhear such a

conversation, and she felt that she would affront the unguessed perils

of it with delight, drinking it up eagerly, every drop, even were the

draught deadly. Meanwhile, the mere inarticulate sound of those distant

voices pleased her, and she was glad that she was listening and that the

boys knew it not.

Silence succeeded the banging of the front door. And then, after a

pause, she was startled to hear the crunching of gravel almost under her

window. In alarm she dropped the blind, but continued to peer between

the edge of the blind and the window-frame. At one point the contiguous

demesnes of the Orgreaves and the Clayhangers were separated only by a

poor, sparse hedge, a few yards in length. Somebody was pushing his way

through this hedge. It was Edwin Clayhanger. Despite the darkness of the

night she could be sure that the dim figure was Edwin Clayhanger's by

the peculiar, exaggerated swing of the loose arms. He passed the hedge,

carelessly brushed his clothes with his hands, and walked slowly up the

Clayhanger garden towards the new house, and in the deep shadow of the

house was lost. Still, she could catch vague noises of movement. In a

state of extreme excitation she wondered what he could be doing. It

seemed to her that he and she were sharing the night together.

III

She thought:

"I would give anything to be able to speak to him privately and ask him

a little more about what he said to-night. I ought to. I may never see

him again. At any rate, I may never have another chance. He may have

meant something else. He may not have been serious...." The skin of her

face prickled, and a physical wave of emotion seemed to sweep downwards

through her whole body. The thrill was exquisite, but it was

intimidating.

She whispered to herself:

"I could go downstairs and outside, and find him, and just ask him."

The next instant she was opening the door of her bedroom.... No, all the

household had not yet retired, for a light was still burning in the

corridor. Nevertheless she might go. She descended the stairs, asking

herself aghast: "Why am I doing this?" Another light was burning in the

hall, and through the slit of the half-shut door of the breakfast-room

she could see light. She stood hesitant. Then she heard the striking of

a match in the breakfast-room, and she boldly pushed the door open. Tom,

with a book before him, was lighting his pipe.

"Hello!" he said. "What's the matter?"

"Oh, nothing!" she replied. "Only, I'm just going to walk about in the

garden a minute. I shan't go to sleep unless I do." She spoke quite

easily.

"All serene!" he agreed. "So long as you keep off the grass! It's bound

to be damp. I'll unchain the door for you, shall I?"

She said that she could unfasten the door for herself, and he did not

insist. The hospitality of the Orgreaves was never irksome. Tom had

scarcely half-risen from his chair.

"I shan't be long," she added casually.

"That's all right, Hilda," he said. "I'm not going to bed just yet."

"All the others gone?"

He nodded. She pulled the door to, tripped delicately through the hall,

and unchained the heavy front door as quietly as she could.

IV

She was outside, amid all the influences of the night. Gradually her

eyes accustomed themselves again to the gloom. She passed along the

facade of the house until she came to the corner, where the breeze

surprised her, and whence she could discern the other house and, across

the indistinct hedge, the other garden. Where was Edwin Clayhanger? Was

he wandering in the other garden, or had he entered the house? Then a

brief flare lit up a lower window of the dark mass for a few instants.

He was within. She hesitated. Should she go forward, or should she go

back? At length she went forward, and, finding in the hedge the gap

which Clayhanger had made, forced her way through it. Her skirt was torn

by an obstinate twig. Quite calmly she bent down and with her fingers

examined the rent; it was not important. She was now in the garden of

the Clayhangers, and he whom she sought was moving somewhere in the

house. "Supposing I _do_ meet him," she thought, "what shall I say to

him?" She did not know what she should say to him, nor why she had

entered upon this singular adventure. But the consciousness of self, the

fine, disturbing sense of being alive in every vein and nerve, was a

rich reward for her audacity. She wished that that tense moment of

expectation might endure for ever.

She approached the house, trembling. It was not by volition that she

walked over the uneven clayey ground, but by instinct. She was in front

of the garden-porch, and here she hesitated again, apparently waiting

for a sign from the house. She glanced timidly about her, as though in

fear of marauders that might spring out upon her from the shadow. Just

over the boundary wall the placid flame of a gas-lamp peeped. Then,

feeling with her feet for the steps, she ascended into the shelter of

the porch. Almost at the same moment there was another flare behind the

glass of the door; she heard the sound of unlatching; the flare expired.

She was absolutely terror-struck now.

The door opened, grating on some dirt or gravel.

"Who's there?" demanded a queer, shaking voice.

She could see his form.

"Me!" she answered, in a harsh tone which was the expression of her

dismay.

The deed was done, irretrievably. In her bedroom she had said that she

would try to speak with him, and lo! they were face to face, in the

dark, in secret! Her terror was now, at any rate, desperately calm. She

had plunged; she was falling into the deep sea; she was hopelessly cut

off from the past.

"Oh!" came the uncertain voice weakly. "Did you want me? Did anyone want

me?"

She heard the door being closed behind him.

She told him, with peculiar curtness, how she had seen him from her

window, and how she wished to ask him an important question.

"I dare say you think it's very queer of me," she added.

"Not at all," he said, with an insincerity that annoyed her.

"Yes, you do!" she sharply insisted. "But I want to know"--what did she

want to know?--"I want to know--did you mean it when you said--you know,

at supper--that there's no virtue in believing?"

He stammered: "Did I say there was no virtue in believing?"

She cried out, irritated: "Of course you did! Do you mean to say you can

say a thing like that and then forget about it? If it's true, it's one

of the most wonderful things that were ever said. And that's why I

wanted to know if you meant it, of whether you were only saying it

because it sounded clever."

She stopped momentarily, wondering why she was thus implying an untruth;

for the fact was that she had never doubted that he had been in earnest.

"That's what they're always doing in that house, you know--being

clever!" she went on, in a tone apparently inimical to 'that house.'

"Yes," came the voice. "I meant it. Why?"

And the voice was so simple and so sincere that it pierced straight to

her heart and changed her secret mood swiftly to the religious, so that

she really was occupied by the thoughts with which, a moment previously,

she had only pretended to be occupied; and the splendour of the

revelation was renewed. Nevertheless, some impulse, perverse or

defensive, compelled her to assume a doubt of his assurance. She

suspected that, had she not adopted this tactic, she might have melted

before him in gratitude.

"You did?" she murmured.

She thanked him, after that, rather coldly; and they talked a little

about the mere worry of these religious questions. He protested that

they never worried him, and reaffirmed his original proposition.

"I hope you are right," she said softly, in a thrilled voice. She was

thinking that this was the most wonderful, miraculous experience that

she had ever had.

V

Silence.

"Now," she thought, "I must go back." Inwardly she gave a delicious

sigh.

But just as she was about to take her prim leave, the scarce-discerned

figure of her companion stepped out into the garden.

"By Jove!" said Edwin Clayhanger. "It's beginning to rain, I do

believe."

The wind blew, and she felt rain on her cheek. Clayhanger advised her to

stand against the other wall of the porch for better protection. She

obeyed. He re-entered the porch, but was still exposed to the rain. She

called him to her side. Already he was so close that she could have

touched his shoulder by outstretching her arm.

"Oh! I'm all right!" he said lightly, and did not move.

"You needn't be afraid of me!" She was hurt that he had refused her

invitation to approach her. The next instant she would have given her

tongue not to have uttered those words. But she was in such a tingling

state of extreme sensitiveness as rendered it impossible for her to

exercise a normal self-control.

Scarcely conscious of what she did, she asked him the time. He struck a

match to look at his watch. The wind blew the match out, but she saw his

wistful face, with his disordered hair under the hat. It had the quality

of a vision.

He offered to get a light in the house, but abruptly she said good

night.

Then they were shaking hands--she knew not how or why. She could not

loose his hand. She thought: "Never have I held a hand so honest as this

hand." At last she dropped it. They stood silent while a trap rattled up

Trafalgar Road. It was as if she was bound to remain moveless until the

sounds of the trap had died away.

She walked proudly out into the rain. He called to her: "I say, Miss

Lessways!" But she did not stop.

In a minute she was back again in Lane End House.

"That you?" Tom's voice from the breakfast-room!

"Yes," she answered clearly. "I've put the chain on. Good night."

"Good night. Thanks."

She ascended the stairs, smiling to herself, with the raindrops fresh on

her cheek. In her mind were no distinct thoughts, either concerning the

non-virtue of belief, or the new epoch, or Edwin Clayhanger, or even the

strangeness of her behaviour. But all her being vibrated to the

mysterious and beautiful romance of existence.