Amazing, incalculable woman, wrapped within fold after fold of mystery!
He understood better now, but even now there were things that he did not
understand; and the greatest enigma of all remained unsolved, the
original enigma of her treachery to himself... And she had chosen just
that moment, just that crisis, to reveal to him that sinister secret
which by some unguessed means she had been able to hide from her
acquaintance. Naturally, if she wished to succeed with a boarding-house
in Brighton she would be compelled to conceal somehow the fact that she
was the victim of a bigamist and her child without a lawful name! The
merest prudence would urge her to concealment so long as concealment was
possible; yes, even from Janet! Her other friends deemed her a widow;
Janet thought her the wife of a convict; he alone knew that she was
neither wife nor widow. Through what scathing experience she must have
passed! An unfamiliar and disconcerting mood gradually took complete
possession of him. At first he did not correctly analyse it. It was
sheer, exuberant, instinctive, unreasoning, careless joy.
Then, after a long period of beatific solitude in the breakfast-room, he
heard stealthy noises in the hall, and his fancy jumped to the idea of
burglary. Excited, unreflecting, he hurried into the hall. Johnnie
Orgreave, who had let himself in with a latchkey, was shutting and
bolting the front door. Johnnie's surprise was the greater. He started
violently on seeing Edwin, and then at once assumed the sang-froid of a
hero of romance. When Edwin informed him that Hilda had come, and
Charlie with her, and that those two were watching by the boy, the rest
of the household being in bed, Johnnie permitted himself a few verbal
symptoms of astonishment.
"How is Georgie?" he asked with an effort, as if ashamed.
"He isn't much better," said Edwin evasively.
Johnnie made a deprecatory sound with his tongue against his lips, and
frowned, determined to take his proper share in the general anxiety.
With careful, dignified movements, he removed his silk hat and his heavy
ulster, revealing evening-dress, and a coloured scarf that overhung a
crumpled shirt-front.
"Where've you been?" Edwin asked.
"Tennis dance. Didn't you know?"
"No," said Edwin.
"Really!" Johnnie murmured, with a falsely ingenuous air. After a
pause he said: "They've left you all alone, then?"
"I was in the breakfast-room," said Edwin, when he had given further
information.
They walked into the breakfast-room together. Charlie's cigarette-case
lay on the tray.
"Those your cigarettes?" Johnnie inquired.
"No. They're Charlie's."
"Oh! Master Charlie's, are they? I wonder if they're any good." He
took one fastidiously. Between two enormous outblowings of smoke he
said: "Well, I'm dashed! So Charlie's come with her! I hope the kid'll
soon be better... I should have been back long ago, only I took Mrs
Chris Hamson home."
"Who's Mrs Chris Hamson?"
"Don't you know her? She's a ripping woman."
He stood there in all the splendour of thirty years, with more than
Charlie's _naivete_, politely trying to enter into the life of the
household, but failing to do so because of his preoccupation with the
rippingness of Mrs Chris Hamson. The sight of him gave pleasure to
Edwin. It did not occur to him to charge the young man with being
callous.