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 tantalising 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? To-morrow? 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, Goodnight!”
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.
Chapter 18.
Curiosity.
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
