Behind them he could hear the stir of Mrs Hamps's departure. She and
Maggie were coming down the stairs. Guessing not the dramatic arrival
of Janet Orgreave and the mysterious nephew, Mrs Hamps, having peeped
into the empty dining-room, said: "I suppose the dear boy has gone," and
forthwith went herself. Edwin smiled cruelly at the thought of what her
joy would have been actually to inspect the mysterious nephew at close
quarters, and to learn the strange suspicious truth that he was not a
nephew after all.
"Auntie!" yelled the boy across the garden.
"Come along, we must go now," Janet retorted.
"No! I want you to swing me. Make me swing very high."
"George!"
"Let him swing a bit," said Edwin. "I'll go and swing him." And
calling loud to the boy: "I'll come and swing you."
"He's dreadfully spoiled," Janet protested. "You'll make him worse."
"I don't care," said Edwin carelessly.
He seemed to understand, better than he had ever done with Clara's
litter, how and why parents came to spoil their children. It was not
because they feared a struggle of wills; but because of the unreasoning
instinctive pleasure to be derived from the conferring of pleasure,
especially when the pleasure thus conferred might involve doubtful
consequences. He had not cared for the boy, did not care for him. In
theory he had the bachelor's factitious horror of a spoiled child.
Nevertheless he would now support the boy against Janet. His instinct
said: "He wants something. I can give it him. Let him have it. Never
mind consequences. He shall have it."
He crossed the damp grass, and felt the breeze and the sun. The sky was
a moving medley of Chinese white and Prussian blue, that harmonised
admirably with the Indian red architecture which framed it on all sides.
The high trees in the garden of the Orgreaves were turning to rich
yellows and browns, and dead leaves slanted slowly down from their
summits a few reaching even the Clayhanger garden, speckling its
evergreen with ochre. On the other side of the west wall traps and
carts rattled and rumbled and creaked along Trafalgar Road.
The child had stopped swinging, and greeted him with a most heavenly
persuasive grateful smile. A different child! A sudden angel, with
delicate distinguished gestures! ... A wondrous screwing-up of the eyes
in the sun! Weak eyes, perhaps! The thick eyebrows recalled Hilda's.
Possibly he had Hilda's look! Or was that fancy? Edwin was sure that
he would never have guessed George's parentage.
"Now!" he warned. "Hold tight." And, going behind the boy, he strongly
clasped his slim little waist in its blue sailor-cloth, and sent the
whole affair--swing-seat and boy and all--flying to the skies. And the
boy shrieked in the violence of his ecstasy, and his cap fell on the
grass. Edwin worked hard without relaxing.
"Go on! Go on!" The boy shriekingly commanded.
And amid these violent efforts and brusque delicious physical contacts,
Edwin was calmly penetrated and saturated by the mystic effluence that
is disengaged from young children. He had seen his father dead, and had
thought: "Here is the most majestic and impressive enigma that the earth
can show!" But the child George--aged nine and seeming more like
seven--offered an enigma surpassing in solemnity that of death. This
was Hilda's. This was hers, who had left him a virgin. With a singular
thrilled impassivity he imagined, not bitterly, the history of Hilda.
She who was his by word and by kiss, had given her mortal frame to the
unknown Cannon--yielded it. She had conceived. At some moment when he,
Edwin, was alive and suffering, she had conceived. She had ceased to be
a virgin. Quickly, with an astounding quickness--for was not George
nine years old?--she had passed from virginity to motherhood. And he
imagined all that too; all of it; clearly. And here, swinging and
shrieking, exerting the powerful and unique charm of infancy, was the
miraculous sequel! Another individuality; a new being; definitely
formed, with character and volition of its own; unlike any other
individuality in the universe! Something fresh! Something unimaginably
created! A phenomenon absolutely original of the pride and the tragedy
of life! George!
Yesterday she was a virgin, and to-day there was this! And this might
have been his, ought to have been his! Yes, he thrilled secretly amid
all those pushings and joltings! The mystery obsessed him. He had no
rancour against Hilda. He was incapable of rancour, except a kind of
wilful, fostered rancour in trifles. Thus he never forgave the inventor
of Saturday afternoon Bible-classes. But rancour against Hilda! No!
Her act had been above rancour, like an act of Heaven! And she existed
yet. On a spot of the earth's surface entitled Brighton, which he could
locate upon a map, she existed: a widow, in difficulty, keeping a
boarding-house. She ate, slept, struggled; she brushed her hair. He
could see her brushing her hair. And she was thirty-four--was it? The
wonder of the world amazed and shook him. And it appeared to him that
his career was more romantic than ever.
George with dangerous abruptness wriggled his legs downwards and slipped
off the seat of the swing, not waiting for Edwin to stop it. He rolled
on the grass and jumped up in haste. He had had enough.
"Well, want any more?" Edwin asked, breathing hard.
The child made a shy, negative sigh, twisting his tousled head down into
his right shoulder. After all he was not really impudent, brazen. He
could show a delicious timidity. Edwin decided that he was an
enchanting child. He wanted to talk to him, but he could not think of
anything natural and reasonable to say by way of opening.
"You haven't told me your name, you know," he began at length. "How do
I know what your name is? George, yes--but George what? George is
nothing by itself, I know ten million Georges."
The child smiled.
"George Edwin Cannon," he replied shyly.
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