‘I’m ordered to tell you that Mr Orgreave will be down in a few minutes,’ she said.
‘Hello!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’d no idea you were in Bursley!’
‘Came today!’ she replied.
‘How odd,’ he thought, ‘that I should call like this on the very day she comes!’ But he pushed away that instinctive thought with the rational thought that such a coincidence could not be regarded as in any way significant.
They shook hands in the middle of the room, and she pressed his hand, while looking downwards with a smile. And his mind was suddenly filled with the idea that during all those months she had been existing somewhere, under the eye of some one, intimate with some one, and constantly conducting herself with a familiar freedom that doubtless she would not use to him. And so she was invested, for him, with mysteriousness. His interest in her was renewed in a moment and in a form much more acute than its first form. Moreover, she presented herself to his judgment in a different aspect. He could scarcely comprehend how he had ever deemed her habitual expression to be forbidding. In fact, he could persuade himself now that she was beautiful, and even nobly beautiful. From one extreme he flew to the other. She sat down on an old sofa; he remained standing. And in the midst of a little conversation about Mrs Orgreave’s indisposition, and the absence of the members of the family (she said she had refused an invitation to go with Janet and Alicia to Hillport), she broke the thread, and remarked –
‘You would have known I was coming if you’d been calling here recently.’ She pushed her feet near the fender, and gazed into the fire.
‘Ah! But, you see, I haven’t been calling recently.’
She raised her eyes to his. ‘I suppose you’ve never thought about me once since I left!’ she fired at him. An audacious and discomposing girl!
‘Oh yes, I have,’ he said weakly. What could you reply to such speeches? Nevertheless he was flattered.
‘Really? But you’ve never inquired about me.’
‘Yes, I have.’
‘Only once.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I asked Janet.’
‘Damn her!’ he said to himself, but pleased with her. And aloud, in a tone suddenly firm, ‘That’s nothing to go by.’
‘What isn’t?’
‘The number of times I’ve inquired.’ He was blushing.
IV
In the smallness of the room, sitting as it were at his feet on the sofa, surrounded and encaged by a hundred domestic objects and by the glow of the fire and the radiance of the gas, she certainly did seem to Edwin to be an organism exceedingly mysterious. He could follow with his eye every fold of her black dress, he could trace the waving of her hair, and watch the play of light in her eyes. He might have physically hurt her, he might have killed her, she was beneath his hand – and yet she was most bafflingly withdrawn, and the essence of her could not be touched nor got at. Why did she challenge him by her singular attitude? Why was she always saying such queer things to him? No other girl (he thought, in the simplicity of his inexperience) would ever talk as she talked. He wanted to test her by being rude to her. ‘Damn her!’ he said to himself again. ‘Supposing I took hold of her and kissed her – I wonder what sort of a face she’d pull then! …’ (And a moment ago he had been appraising her as nobly beautiful! A moment ago he had been dwelling on the lovely compassion of her gesture with Mr Shushions!) This quality of daring and naughty enterprise had never before shown itself in Edwin, and he was surprised to discover in himself such impulses. But then the girl was so provocative. And somehow the sight of the girl delivered him from an excessive fear of consequences. He said to himself, ‘I’ll do something or I’ll say something, before I leave her tonight, just to show her! …’ He screwed up his resolution to the point of registering a private oath that he would indeed do or say something. Without a solemn oath he could not rely upon his valour. He knew that whatever he said or did in the nature of a bold advance would be accomplished clumsily. He knew that it would be unpleasant. He knew that inaction suited much better his instinct for tranquillity. No matter! All that was naught. She had challenged, and he had to respond. Besides, she allured … And, after her scene with him in the porch of the new house, had he not the right? … A girl who had behaved as she did that night cannot effectively contradict herself!
‘I was just reading about this strike,’ she said, rustling the newspaper.
‘You’ve soon got into local politics.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I saw a lot of the men as we were driving from the station. I should think I saw two thousand of them. So of course I was interested. I made Mr Orgreave tell me all about it. Will they win?’
‘It depends on the weather.’ He smiled.
She remained silent, and grave. ‘I see!’ she said, leaning her chin on her hand. At her tone he ceased smiling. She said ‘I see,’ and she actually had seen.
‘You see,’ he repeated. ‘If it was June instead of November! But then it isn’t June. Wages are settled every year in November. So if there is to be a strike it can only begin in November.’
‘But didn’t the men ask for the time of year to be changed?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But you don’t suppose the masters were going to agree to that, do you?’ He sneered masculinely.
‘Why not?’
‘Because it gives them such a pull.’
‘What a shame!’ Hilda exclaimed passionately. ‘And what a shame it is that the masters want to make the wages depend on selling prices! Can’t they see that selling prices ought to depend on wages?’
Edwin said nothing. She had knocked suddenly out of his head all ideas of flirting, and he was trying to reassemble them.
‘I suppose you’re like all the rest!’ she questioned gloomily.
‘How like all the rest?’
‘Against the men. Mr Orgreave is, and he says your father is very strongly against them.’
‘Look here,’ said Edwin, with an air of resentment as to which he himself could not have decided whether it was assumed or genuine, ‘what earthly right have you to suppose that I’m like all the rest?’
‘I’m very sorry,’ she surrendered. ‘I knew all the time you weren’t.’ With her face still bent downwards, she looked up at him, smiling sadly, smiling roguishly.
‘Father’s against them,’ he proceeded, somewhat deflated. And he thought of all his father’s violent invective, and of Maggie’s bland acceptance of the assumption that workmen on strike were rascals – how different the excellent simple Maggie from this feverish creature on the sofa! ‘Father’s against them, and most people are, because they broke the last arbitration award. But I’m not my father. If you ask me, I’ll tell you what I think – workmen on strike are always in the right; at bottom I mean. You’ve only got to look at them in a crowd together. They don’t starve themselves for fun.’
He was not sure if he was convinced of the truth of these statements; but she drew them out of him by her strange power. And when he had uttered them, they appeared fine to him.
‘What does your father say to that?’
‘Oh!’ said Edwin uneasily. ‘Him – and me – we don’t argue about these things.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, we don’t.’
‘You aren’t ashamed of your own opinions, are you?’ she demanded, with a hint in her voice that she was ready to be scornful.
‘You know all the time I’m not.’ He repeated the phrase of her previous confession with a certain acrimonious emphasis. ‘Don’t you?’ he added curtly.
She remained silent.
‘Don’t you?’ he said more loudly. And as she offered no reply, he went on, marvelling at what was coming out of his mouth. ‘I’ll tell you what I am ashamed of. I’m ashamed of seeing my father lose his temper. So you know!’
She said –
‘I never met anybody like you before. No, never!’
At this he really was astounded, and most exquisitely flattere
d.
‘I might say the same of you,’ he replied, sticking his chin out.
‘Oh no!’ she said. ‘I’m nothing.’
The fact was that he could not foretell their conversation even ten seconds in advance. It was full of the completely unexpected. He thought to himself, ‘You never know what a girl like that will say next.’ But what would he say next?
V
They were interrupted by Osmond Orgreave, with his ‘Well, Edwin,’ jolly, welcoming, and yet slightly quizzical. Edwin could not look him in the face without feeling self-conscious. Nor dared he glance at Hilda to see what her demeanour was like under the good-natured scrutiny of her friend’s father.
‘We thought you’d forgotten us,’ said Mr Orgreave. ‘But that’s always the way with neighbours.’ He turned to Hilda. ‘It’s true,’ he continued, jerking his head at Edwin. ‘He scarcely ever comes to see us, except when you’re here.’
‘Steady on!’ Edwin murmured. ‘Steady on, Mr Orgreave!’ And hastily he asked a question about Mrs Orgreave’s asthma; and from that the conversation passed to the doings of the various absent members of the family.
‘You’ve been working, as usual, I suppose,’ said Edwin.
‘Working!’ laughed Mr Orgreave. ‘I’ve done what I could, with Hilda there! Instead of going up to Hillport with Janet, she would stop here and chatter about strikes.’
Hilda smiled at him benevolently as at one to whom she permitted everything.
‘Mr Clayhanger agrees with me,’ she said.
‘Oh! You needn’t tell me!’ protested Mr Orgreave. ‘I could see you were as thick as thieves over it.’ He looked at Edwin. ‘Has she told you she wants to go over a printing works?’
‘No,’ said Edwin. ‘But I shall be very pleased to show her over ours, any time.’
She made no observation.
‘Look here,’ said Edwin suddenly, ‘I must be off. I only slipped in for a minute, really.’ He did not know why he said this, for his greatest wish was to probe more deeply into the tantalizing psychology of Hilda Lessways. His tongue, however, had said it, and his tongue reiterated it when Mr Orgreave urged that Janet and Alicia would be back soon and that food would then be partaken of. He would not stay. Desiring to stay, he would not. He wished to be alone, to think. Clearly Hilda had been talking about him to Mr Orgreave, and to Janet. Did she discuss him and his affairs with everybody?
Nor would he, in response to Mr Orgreave’s suggestion, promise definitely to call again on the next evening. He said he would try. Hilda took leave of him nonchalantly. He departed.
And as he made the half-circuit of the misty lawn, on his way to the gates, he muttered in his heart, where even he himself could scarcely hear: ‘I swore I’d do something, and I haven’t. Well, of course, when she talked seriously like that, what could I do?’ But he was disgusted with himself and ashamed of his namby-pambiness.
He strolled thoughtfully up Oak Street, and down Trafalgar Road; and when he was near home, another wayfarer saw him face right about and go up Trafalgar Road and disappear at the corner of Oak Street.
The Orgreave servant was surprised to see him at the front door again when she answered a discreet ring.
‘I wish you’d tell Miss Lessways I want to speak to her a moment, will you?’
‘Miss Lessways?’
‘Yes.’ What an adventure!
‘Certainly, sir. Will you come in?’ She shut the door.
‘Ask her to come here,’ he said, smiling with deliberate confidential persuasiveness. She nodded, with a brighter smile.
The servant vanished, and Hilda came. She was as red as fire. He began hurriedly –
‘When will you come to look over our works? Tomorrow? I should like you to come.’ He used a tone that said: ‘Now don’t let’s have any nonsense! You know you want to come.’
She frowned frankly. There they were in the hall, like a couple of conspirators, but she was frowning; she would not meet him half-way. He wished he had not permitted himself this caprice. What importance had a private oath? He felt ridiculous.
‘What time?’ she demanded, and in an instant transformed his disgust into delight.
‘Any time.’ His heart was beating with expectation.
‘Oh no! You must fix the time.’
‘Well, after tea. Say between half-past six and a quarter to seven. That do?’
She nodded.
‘Good,’ he murmured. ‘That’s all! Thanks. Good night!’
He hastened away, with a delicate photograph of the palm of her hand printed in minute sensations on the palm of his.
‘I did it, anyhow!’ he muttered loudly, in his heart. At any rate he was not shamed. At any rate he was a man. The man’s face was burning, and the damp noxious chill of the night only caressed him agreeably.
18
Curiosity
I
HE WAS AFRAID that, from some obscure motive of propriety or self-protection, she would bring Janet with her, or perhaps Alicia. On the other hand, he was afraid that she would come alone. That she should come alone seemed to him, in spite of his reason, too brazen. Moreover, if she came alone would he be equal to the situation? Would he be able to carry the thing off in a manner adequate? He lacked confidence. He desired the moment of her arrival, and yet he feared it. His heart and his brain were all confused together in a turmoil of emotion which he could not analyse nor define.
He was in love. Love had caught him, and had affected his vision so that he no longer saw any phenomenon as it actually was; neither himself, nor Hilda, nor the circumstances which were uniting them. He could not follow a train of thought. He could not remain of one opinion nor in one mind. Within himself he was perpetually discussing Hilda, and her attitude. She was marvellous! But was she? She admired him! But did she? She had shown cunning! But was it not simplicity? He did not even feel sure whether he liked her. He tried to remember what she looked like, and he positively could not. The one matter upon which he could be sure was that his curiosity was hotly engaged. If he had had to state the case in words to another he would not have gone further than the word ‘curiosity.’ He had no notion that he was in love. He did not know what love was; he had not had sufficient opportunity of learning. Nevertheless the processes of love were at work within him. Silently and magically, by the force of desire and of pride, the refracting glass was being specially ground which would enable him, which would compel him, to see an ideal Hilda when he gazed at the real Hilda. He would not see the real Hilda any more unless some cataclysm should shatter the glass. And he might be likened to a prisoner on whom the gate of freedom is shut for ever, or to a stricken sufferer of whom it is known that he can never rise again and go forth into the fields. He was as somebody to whom the irrevocable had happened. And he knew it not. None knew. None guessed. All day he went his ways, striving to conceal the whirring preoccupation of his curiosity (a curiosity which he thought showed a fine masculine dash), and succeeded fairly well. The excellent, simple Maggie alone remarked in secret that he was slightly nervous and unnatural. But even she, with all her excellent simplicity, did not divine his victimhood.
At six o’clock he was back at the shop from his tea. It was a wet, chill night. On the previous evening he had caught cold, and he was beginning to sneeze. He said to himself that Hilda could not be expected to come on such a night. But he expected her. When the shop clock showed half-past six, he glanced at his watch, which also showed half-past six. Now at any instant she might arrive. The shop door opened, and simultaneously his heart ceased to beat. But the person who came in, puffing and snorting, was his father, who stood within the shop while shaking his soaked umbrella over the exterior porch. The draught from the shiny dark street and square struck cold, and Edwin responsively sneezed; and Darius Clayhanger upbraided him for not having worn his overcoat, and he replied with foolish unconvincingness that he had got a cold, that it was nothing. Darius grunted his way into the cubicle. Edwin remained in busy idleness at the
right-hand counter; Stifford was tidying the contents of drawers behind the fancy-counter. And the fizzing gas-burners, inevitable accompaniment of night at the period, kept watch above. Under the heat of the stove, the damp marks of Darius Clayhanger’s entrance disappeared more quickly than the minutes ran. It grew almost impossible for Edwin to pass the time. At moments when his father was not stirring in the cubicle, and Stifford happened to be in repose, he could hear the ticking of the clock, which he could not remember ever having heard before, except when he mounted the steps to wind it.
At a quarter to seven he said to himself that he gave up hope, while pretending that he never had hoped, and that Hilda’s presence was indifferent to him. If she came not that day she would probably come some other day. What could it matter? He was very unhappy. He said to himself that he should have a long night’s reading, but the prospect of reading had no savour. He said: ‘No, I shan’t go in to see them tonight, I shall stay in and nurse my cold, and read.’ This was mere futile bravado, for the impartial spectator in him, though far less clear-sighted and judicial now than formerly, foresaw with certainty that if Hilda did not come he would call at the Orgreaves’. At five minutes to seven he was miserable: he had decided to hope until five minutes to seven. He made it seven in despair. Then there were signs of a figure behind the misty glass of the door. The door opened. It could not be she! Impossible that it should be she! But it was she; she had the air of being a miracle.