Behind him was the lighted house; in front the gloom of the lawn ending
in shrubberies and gates, with a street-lamp beyond. And there was
silence, save for the vast furnace-breathings, coming over undulating
miles, which the people of the Five Towns, hearing them always, never
hear. A great deal of diffused light filtered through the cloudy sky.
The warm wandering airs were humid on the cheek. He must return home.
He could not stand dreaming all the night in the garden of the
Orgreaves. To his right uprose the great rectangular mass of his
father's new house, entirely free of scaffolding, having all the aspect
of a house inhabited. It looked enormous. He was proud of it. In such
an abode, and so close to the Orgreaves, what could he not do?
Why go to gaze on it again? There was no common sense in doing so. And
yet he felt: "I must have another glance at it before I go home." From
his attitude towards it, he might have been the creator of that house.
That house was like one of his more successful drawings. When he had
done a drawing that he esteemed, he was always looking at it. He would
look at it before running down to breakfast; and after breakfast,
instead of going straight to the shop, he would rush upstairs to have
still another look at it. The act of inspection gave him pleasure. So
with the house. Strange, superficially; but the simple explanation was
that for some things he had the eyes of love... Yes, in his dancing and
happy brain the impulse to revisit the house was not to be conquered.
The few battered yards of hedge between his father's land and that of
Mr Orgreave seemed more passable in the night. He crunched along the
gravel, stepped carefully with noiseless foot on the flower-bed, and
then pushed himself right through the frail bushes, forgetting the
respect due to his suit. The beginning of summer had dried the sticky
clay of the new garden; paths had already been traced on it, and
trenches cut for the draining of the lawn that was to be. Edwin in the
night saw the new garden finished, mellow, blooming with such blossoms
as were sold in Saint Luke's Market; he had scarcely ever seen flowers
growing in the mass. He saw himself reclining in the garden with a rare
and beautiful book in his hand, while the sound of Beethoven's music
came to him through the open window of the drawing-room. In so far as
he saw Maggie at all, he saw her somehow mysteriously elegant and
vivacious. He did not see his father. His fancy had little relation to
reality. But this did not mar his pleasure... Then he saw himself
talking over the hedge, wittily, to amiable and witty persons in the
garden of the Orgreaves.
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