Clayhanger Part 94

"Good!" he said heartily.

Joy, wild and exulting, surged through him once more; and it was of such a turbulent nature that it would not suffer any examination of its origin. It possessed him by its might. As he drank the admirable tea he felt that he still needed a lot more sleep. There were two points of pressure at the top of his head. But he knew that he could sleep, and sleep well, whenever he chose; and that on the morrow his body would be perfectly restored.

He walked briskly back to the shop, intending to work, and he was a little perturbed to find that he could not work. His head refused. He sat in the cubicle vaguely staring. Then he was startled by a tremendous yawn, which seemed to have its inception in the very centre of his being, and which by the pang of its escape almost broke him in pieces. "I've never yawned like that before," he thought, apprehensive.

Another yawn of the same seismic kind succeeded immediately, and these frightful yawns continued one after another for several minutes, each leaving him weaker than the one before. "I'd better go home while I can," he thought, intimidated by the suddenness and the mysteriousness of the attack. He went home. Maggie at once said that he would be better in bed, and to his own astonishment he agreed. He could not eat the meal that Maggie brought to his room.

"There's something the matter with you," said Maggie.

"No. I'm only tired." He knew it was a lie.

"You're simply burning," she said, but she refrained from any argument, and left him.

He could not sleep. His antic.i.p.ations in that respect were painfully falsified.

Later, Maggie came back.

"Here's Dr Heve," she said briefly, in the doorway. She was silhouetted against the light from the landing. The doctor, in mourning, stood behind her.

"Dr Heve? What the devil--" But he did not continue the protest.

Maggie advanced into the room and turned up the gas, and the glare wounded his eyes.

"Yes," said Dr Heve, at the end of three minutes. "You've got it. Not badly, I hope. But you've got it all right."

Humiliating! For the instinct of the Clayhangers was always to a.s.sume that by virtue of some special prudence, or immunity, or resisting power, peculiar to them alone, they would escape any popular affliction such as an epidemic. In the middle of the night, amid feverish tossings and crises of thirst, and horrible malaise, it was more than humiliating! Supposing he died? People did die of influenza. The strangest, the most monstrous things did happen. For the first time in his life he lay in the genuine fear of death. He had never been ill before. And now he was ill. He knew what it was to be ill. The stupid, blundering clumsiness of death aroused his angry resentment.

No! It was impossible that he should die! People did not die of influenza.

The next day the doctor laughed. But Edwin said to himself: "He may have laughed only to cheer me up. They never tell their patients the truth." And every cell of his body was vitiated, poisoned, inefficient, profoundly demoralised. Ordinary health seemed the most precious and the least attainable boon.

TWO.

After wildernesses of time that were all but interminable, the attack was completely over. It had lasted a hundred hours, of which the first fifty had each been an age. It was a febrile attack similar to George's, but less serious. Edwin had possibly caught the infection at Knype Railway Station: yet who could tell? Now he was in the drawing-room, shaved, clothed, but wearing slippers for a sign that he was only convalescent, and because the doctor had forbidden him the street. He sat in front of the fire, in the easy chair that had been his father's favourite. On his left hand were an acc.u.mulation of newspapers and a book; on his right, some business letters and doc.u.ments left by the a.s.siduous Stifford after a visit of sympathy and of affairs.

The declining sun shone with weak goodwill on the garden.

"Please, sir, there's a lady," said the servant, opening the door.

He was startled. His first thought naturally was, "It's Hilda!" in spite of the extreme improbability of it being Hilda. Hilda had never set foot in his house. Nevertheless, supposing it was Hilda, Maggie would a.s.suredly come into the drawing-room--she could not do otherwise-- and the three-cornered interview would, he felt, be very trying. He knew that Maggie, for some reason inexplicable by argument, was out of sympathy with Hilda, as with Hilda's son. She had given him regular news of George, who was now at about the same stage of convalescence as him sell, but she scarcely mentioned the mother, and he had not dared to inquire. These thoughts flashed through his brain in an instant.

"Who is it?" he asked gruffly.

"I--I don't know, sir. Shall I ask?" replied the servant, blushing as she perceived that once again she had sinned. She had never before been in a house where aristocratic ceremony was carried to such excess as at Edwin's. Her unconquerable instinct, upon opening the front door to a well-dressed stranger, was to rush off and publish the news that somebody mysterious and grand had come, leaving the n.o.ble visitor on the door-mat. She had been instructed in the ritual proper to these crises, but with little good result, for the crises took her unawares.

"Yes. Go and ask the name, and then tell my sister," said Edwin shortly.

"Miss Clayhanger is gone out, sir."

"Well, run along," he told her impatiently.

He was standing anxiously near the door when she returned to the room.

"Please, sir, it's a Mrs Cannon, and it's you she wants."

"Show her in," he said, and to himself: "My G.o.d!"

In the ten seconds that elapsed before Hilda appeared he glanced at himself in the mantel mirror, fidgeted with his necktie, and walked to the window and back again to his chair. She had actually called to see him! ... His agitation was extreme... But how like her it was to call thus boldly! ... Maggie's absence was providential.

Hilda entered, to give him a lesson in blandness. She wore a veil, and carried a m.u.f.f--outworks of her self-protective, impa.s.sive demeanour.

She was pale, and as calm as pale. She would not take the easy chair which he offered her. Useless to insist--she would not take it. He brushed away letters and doc.u.ments from the small chair to his right, and she took that chair... Having taken it, she insisted that he should resume the easy chair.

"I called just to say good-bye," she said. "I knew you couldn't come out, and I'm going to-night."

"But surely he isn't fit to travel?" Edwin exclaimed.

"George? Not yet. I'm leaving him behind. You see I mustn't stay away longer than's necessary."

She smiled, and lifted her veil as far as her nose. She had not smiled before.

"Charlie's gone back?"

"Oh yes. Two days ago. He left a message for you."

"Yes. Maggie gave it me. By the way, I'm sorry she's not in."

"I've just seen her," said Hilda.

"Oh!"

"She came in to see Janet. They're having a cup of tea in George's bedroom. So I put my things on and walked round here at once."

As Hilda made this surprising speech she gazed full at Edwin.

THREE.

A blush slowly covered his face. They both sat silent. Only the fire crackled l.u.s.tily. Edwin thought, as his agitation increased and entirely confused him, "No other woman was ever like this woman!" He wanted to rise masterfully, to accomplish some gesture splendid and decisive, but he was held in the hollow of the easy chair as though by paralysis. He looked at Hilda; he might have been looking at a stranger. He tried to read her face, and he could not read it. He could only see in it vague trouble. He was afraid of her. The idea even occurred to him that, could he be frank with himself, he would admit that he hated her. The moments were intensely painful; the suspense exasperating and excruciating. Ever since their last encounter he had antic.i.p.ated this scene; his fancy had been almost continuously busy in fashioning this scene. And now the reality had swept down upon him with no warning, and he was overwhelmed.

She would not speak. She had withdrawn her gaze, but she would not speak. She would force him to speak.

"I say," he began gruffly, in a resentful tone, careless as to what he was saying, "you might have told me earlier what you told me on Wednesday night. Why didn't you tell me when I was at Brighton?"

"I wanted to," she said meekly. "But I couldn't. I really couldn't bring myself to do it."

"Instead of telling me a lie," he went on. "I think you might have trusted me more than that."

"A lie?" she muttered. "I told you the truth. I told you he was in prison."