Hilda Lessways by Arnold Bennett (reading fiction txt) 📖

Orgreaves was like living in a small private republic that throbbed with a hundred activities and interests. Each member of it was a centre of various energy. And from each, Hilda drew something that was precious: from Mrs. Orgreave, sheer love and calm wisdom; from Janet, sheer love and the spectacle of elegance; from little Alicia candour and admiration; from Tom, knowledge, artistic enthusiasm, and shy, curt sympathy; from Johnnie and Jimmie the homage of their proud and naive mannishness: as for Mr. Orgreave, she admired him perhaps as much as she admired even Janet, and once when he and she had taken a walk together up to Toft End, she had thought him quite exquisite in his attitude to her, quizzical, worldly, and yet sensitively understanding and humane. And withal they never worried her by interferences and criticisms; they never presumed on their hospitality, but left her as free as though her age had been twice what it was. Undoubtedly, in the ardour of her gratitude she idealized every one of them. The sole reproach which in secret she would formulate against them had reference to their quasi- cynical levity in conversation. They would never treat a serious topic seriously for more than a few minutes. Either one or another would yield to the temptation of clever facetiousness, and clever facetiousness would always carry off the honours in a discussion. This did not apply to Mrs. Orgreave, who was incapable of humour; but it applied a little even to Janet.

The thought continually arising in Hilda's mind was: "Why do they care for me? What can they see in me? Why are they so good to me? I was never good to them." She did not guess that, at her very first visit to Lane End House, the force and mystery of her character had powerfully attracted these rather experienced amateurs of human nature. She was unaware that she had made her mark upon Janet and Charlie so far back as the days of the dancing-classes. And she under-estimated the appeal of her situation as an orphan and a solitary whose mother's death, in its swiftness, had amounted to a tragedy.

The scherzo was finished, and Alicia had not returned into the drawing-room. The two pianists sat hesitant.

"Where is that infant?" Tom demanded. "If I finish it all without her she'll be vexed."

"I can tell you where she ought to be," said Mrs. Orgreave placidly. "She ought to be in bed. No wonder she looks pale, stopping up till this time of night!"

Then there were unusual and startling movements behind the door, accompanied by giggling. And Alicia entered, followed by Charlie--Charlie who was supposed at that precise instant to be in London!

"Hello, mater!" said the curly-headed Charlie, with a sublime affectation of calmness, as though he had slipped out of the next room. He produced an effect fully equal to his desires.


III


In a little while, Charlie, on the sofa, was seated at a small table covered with viands and fruit; the white cloth spread on the table made a curiously charming patch amid the sombre colours of the drawing-room. He had protested that, having consumed much food en route, he was not hungry; but in vain. Mrs. Orgreave demolished such arguments by the power of her notorious theory, which admitted no exceptions, that any person coming off an express train must be in need of sustenance. The odd thing was that all the others discovered mysterious appetites and began to eat and drink with gusto, sitting, standing, or walking about, while Charlie, munching, related how he had miraculously got three days' leave from the hospital, and how he had impulsively 'cabbed it' to Euston, and how, having arrived at Knype, he had also 'cabbed it' from Knype to Bleakridge instead of waiting for the Loop Line train. The blot on his advent, in the eyes of Mrs. Orgreave, was that he had no fresh news of Marian and her children.

"You don't seem very surprised to find Hilda here," said Alicia.

"It's not my business to be surprised at anything, kid," Charlie retorted, smiling at Hilda, who sat beside him on the sofa. "Moreover, don't I get ten columns of news every three days? I know far more about this town than you do, I bet!"

Everybody laughed at Mrs. Orgreave, the great letter-writer and universal disseminator of information.

"Now, Alicia, you must go to bed," said Mrs. Orgreave. And Alicia regretted that she had been so indiscreet as to draw attention to herself.

"The kid can stay up if she will say her piece," said Charlie mockingly. He knew that he could play the autocrat, for that evening at any rate.

"What piece?" the child demanded, blushing and defiant.

"Her 'Abou Ben Adhem,'" said Charlie. "Do you think I don't know all about that too?"

"Oh, mother, you are a bore!" Alicia exclaimed, pouting. "Why did you tell him that?... Well, I'll say it if Hilda will recite something as well."

"Me!" murmured Hilda, staggered. "I never recite!"

"I've always understood you recite beautifully," said Mrs. Orgreave.

"You know you do, Hilda!" said Janet.

"Of course you do," said Charlie.

"_You've_ never heard me, anyhow!" she replied to him obstinately. How could they have got it fixed into their heads that she was a reciter? This renown was most disconcerting.

"Now, Hilda!" Mr. Orgreave soothingly admonished her from the back of the sofa. She turned her head and looked up at him, smiling in her distress.

"Go ahead, then, kid! It's agreed," said Charlie.

And Alicia galloped through Leigh Hunt's moral poem, which she was preparing for an imminent speech-day, in an extraordinarily short space of time.

"But I can't remember anything. I haven't recited for years and years," Hilda pleaded, when the child burst out, "Now, Hilda!"

"_Stuff_!" Charlie pronounced.

"Some Tennyson?" Mrs. Orgreave suggested. "Don't you know any Tennyson? We must have something, now." And Alicia, exulting in the fact that she had paid the penalty imposed, cried that there could be no drawing back.

Hilda was lost. Mrs. Orgreave's tone, with all its softness, was a command. "Tennyson? I've forgotten 'Maud,'" she muttered.

"I'll prompt you," said Charlie. "Thomas!"

Everybody looked at Tom, expert in literature as well as in music; Tom, the collector, the owner of books and bookcases. Tom went to a bookcase and drew forth a green volume, familiar and sacred throughout all England.

"Oh dear!" Hilda moaned.

"Where do you mean to begin?" Charlie sternly inquired. "It just happens that I'm reading 'In Memoriam,' myself. I read ten stanzas a day."

Hilda bent over the book with him.

"But I must stand up," she said, with sudden fire. "I can't recite sitting down."

They all cried "Bravo!" and made a circle for her. And she stood up.

The utterance of the first lines was a martyrdom for her. But after that she surrendered herself frankly to the mood of the poem and forgot to suffer shame, speaking in a loud, clear, dramatic voice which she accompanied by glances and even by gestures. After about thirty lines she stopped, and, regaining her ordinary senses, perceived that the entire family was staring at her with an extreme intentness.

"I can't do any more," she murmured weakly, and dropped on to the sofa.

Everybody clapped very heartily.

"It's wonderful!" said Janet in a low tone.

"I should just say it was!" said Tom seriously, and Hilda was saturated with delicious joy.

"You ought to go on the stage; that's what you ought to do!" said Charlie.

For a fraction of a second, Hilda dreamt of the stage, and then Mrs. Orgreave said softly, like a mother:

"I'm quite sure Hilda would never dream of any such thing!"


IV


There was an irruption of Jimmie and Johnnie, and three of the Swetnam brothers, including him known as the Ineffable. Jimmie and Johnnie played the role of the absolutely imperturbable with a skill equal to Charlie's own; and only a series of calm "How-do's?" marked the greetings of these relatives. The Swetnams were more rollickingly demonstrative. Now that the drawing-room was quite thickly populated, Hilda, made nervous by Mr. Orgreave's jocular insinuation that she herself was the object of the Swetnams' call, took refuge, first with Janet, and then, as Janet was drawn into the general crowd, with Charlie, who was absently turning over the pages of "In Memoriam."

"Know this?" he inquired, friendly, indicating the poem.

"I don't," she said. "It's splendid, isn't it?"

"Well," he answered. "It's rather on the religious tack, you know. That's why I'm reading it." He smiled oddly.

"Really?"

He hesitated, and then nodded. It was the strangest avowal from this young dandy of twenty-three with the airy and cynical tongue. Hilda thought: "Here, then, is another!" And her own most secret troubles recurred to her mind.

"What's that about Teddy Clayhanger?" Charlie cried out, suddenly looking up. He had caught the name in a distant conversation.

Janet explained how they had seen Edwin, and went on to say that it was impossible to persuade him to call.

"What rot!" said Charlie. "I bet you what you like I get him here to-morrow night." He added to Hilda: "Went to school with him!" Hilda's face burned.

"I bet you don't," said Janet stoutly, from across the room.

"I'll bet you a shilling I do," said Charlie.

"Haven't a penny left," Janet smiled. "Father, will you lend me a shilling?"

"That's what I'm here for," said Mr. Orgreave.

"Mr. Orgreave," the youngest Swetnam put in, "you talk exactly like the dad talks."

The bet was made, and according to a singular but long-established family custom, Tom had to be stake-holder.

Hilda became troubled and apprehensive. She hoped that Charlie would lose, and then she hoped that he would win. Looking forward to the intimate bedroom chat with Janet which brought each evening to a heavenly close, she said to herself: "If he _does_ come, I shall make Janet promise that I'm not to be asked to recite or anything. In fact, I shall get her to see that I'm not discussed."



CHAPTER V EDWIN CLAYHANGER

I


The next evening, Mr. and Mrs. Orgreave, Hilda, Janet, and Alicia were in the dining-room of the Orgreaves awaiting the advent at the supper- table of sundry young men whose voices could be heard through open doors in the distance of the drawing-room.

Charlie Orgreave had won his bet: and Edwin Clayhanger was among those young men who had remained behind in the drawing-room to exchange, according to the practice of young men, ideas upon life and the world. Hilda had been introduced to him, but owing to the performance of another Beethoven symphony there had been almost no conversation before supper, and she had not heard him talk. She had stationed herself behind the grand piano, on the plea of turning over the pages for the musicians (though it was only with great uncertainty, and in peril of missing the exact instant for turning, that she followed the music on the page), and from this security she had furtively glanced at Edwin when her task allowed. "Perhaps I was quite mistaken last night," she said to herself. "Perhaps he is perfectly ordinary." The strange thing was that she could not decide whether he was ordinary or not. At one moment his face presented no interest, at another she saw it just as she had seen it, framed in the illuminated aperture of the shop-shutters, on the