Clayhanger Part 74

He felt sick. Janet might have been a doctor who had informed him that he was suffering from an unexpected disease, and that an operation severe and perilous lay in front of him. The impartial observer in him asked somewhat disdainfully why he should allow himself to be deranged in this physical manner, and he could only reply feebly and very meekly that he did not know. He felt sick.

Suddenly he said to himself making a discovery--

"Of course she won't come to Bursley. She'd be ashamed to meet me."

"How long?" he demanded of Janet.

"It was last year, I think," said Janet, with emotion increased, her voice heavy with the load of its sympathy. When he first knew Janet an extraordinary quick generous concern for others had been one of her chief characteristics. But of late years, though her deep universal kindness had not changed, she seemed to have hardened somewhat on the surface. Now he found again the earlier Janet.

"You never told me."

"The truth is, we didn't know," Janet said, and without giving Edwin time to put another question, she continued: "The poor thing's had a great deal of trouble, a very great deal. George's health, now! The sea air doesn't suit him. And Hilda couldn't possibly leave Brighton."

"Oh! She's still at Brighton?"

"Yes."

"Let me see--she used to be at--what was it?--Preston Street?"

Janet glanced at him with interest: "What a memory you've got! Why, it's ten years since she was here!"

"Nearly!" said Edwin. "It just happened to stick in my mind. You remember she came down to the shop to ask me about trains and things the day she left."

"Did she?" Janet exclaimed, raising her eyebrows.

Edwin had been suspecting that possibly Hilda had given some hint to Janet as to the nature of her relations with him. He now ceased to suspect that. He grew easier. He gathered up the reins again, though in a rather limp hand.

"Why is she so bound to stay in Brighton?" he inquired with affected boldness.

"She's got a boarding-house."

"I see. Well, it's a good thing she has a private income of her own."

"That's just the point," said Janet sadly. "We very much doubt if she has any private income any longer."

Edwin waited for further details, but Janet seemed to speak unwilling.

She would follow him, but she would not lead.

FOUR.

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 fact.i.tious 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 gra.s.s, 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 s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g-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 gra.s.s. 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 surpa.s.sing in solemnity that of death. This was Hilda's. This was hers, who had left him a virgin. With a singular thrilled impa.s.sivity 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 pa.s.sed 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 Sat.u.r.day afternoon Bible-cla.s.ses. 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 ent.i.tled 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 gra.s.s 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.

FIVE.

"Now, George!" came Janet's voice, more firmly than before. After all, she meant in the end to be obeyed. She was learning her business as aunt to this new and difficult nephew; but learn it she would, and thoroughly!

"Come on!" Edwin counselled the boy.

They went together to the house. Maggie had found Janet, and the two were conversing. Soon afterwards aunt and nephew departed.