Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett (best romance novels of all time txt) 📖

thinking of her five absent children, and her ten grandchildren, for the telegram to be opened.

Janet opened it.

Her lips parted to speak, and remained so in silent astonishment. "Just read that!" she said to Edwin, passing the telegram to him; and she added to her father: "It was for me, after all."

Edwin read, aloud: "Am sending George down to-day. Please meet 6:30 train at Knype. Love. Hilda."

"Well, I never!" exclaimed Mrs Orgreave. "You don't mean to tell me she's letting that boy travel alone! What next?"

"Where's the telegram sent from?" asked Mr Orgreave.

Edwin examined the official indications: "Victoria."

"Then she's brought him up to London, and she's putting him in a train at Euston. That's it."

"Only there is no London train that gets to Knype at half-past six," Edwin said. "It's 7:12, or 7:14--I forget."

"Oh! That's near enough for Hilda," Janet smiled, looking at her watch.

"She doesn't mean any other train?" Mrs Orgreave fearfully suggested.

"She can't mean any other train. There is no other. Only probably she's been looking at the wrong time-table," Janet reassured her mother.

"Because if the poor little thing found no one to meet him at Knype--"

"Don't worry, dear," said Janet. "The poor little thing would soon be engaging somebody's attention. Trust him!"

"But has she been writing to you lately?" Mrs Orgreave questioned.

"No."

"Then why--"

"Don't ask me!" said Janet. "No doubt I shall get a letter to-morrow, after George has come and told us everything! Poor dear, I'm glad she's doing so much better now."

"Is she?" Edwin murmured, surprised.

"Oh yes!" said Janet. "She's got a regular bustling partner, and they're that busy they scarcely know what to do. But they only keep one little servant."

In the ordinary way Janet and Edwin never mentioned Hilda to one another. Each seemed to be held back by a kind of timid shame and by a cautious suspicion. Each seemed to be inquiring: "What does he know?" "What does she know?"

"If I thought it wasn't too cold, I'd go with you to Knype," said Mr Orgreave.

"Now, Osmond!" Mrs Orgreave sat up.

"Shall I go?" said Edwin.

"Well," said Janet, with much kindliness, "I'm sure he'd be delighted to see you."

Mrs Orgreave rang the bell.

"What do you want, mother?"

"There'll be the bed--"

"Don't you trouble with those things, dear," said Janet, very calmly. "There's heaps of time."

But Janet was just as excited as her parents. In two minutes the excitement had spread through the whole house, like a piquant and agreeable odour. The place was alive again.

"I'll just step across and ask Maggie to alter supper," said Edwin, "and then I'll call for you. I suppose we'll go down by train."

"I'm thankful he's had influenza," observed Mrs Orgreave, implying that thus there would be less chance of George catching the disease under her infected roof.

That George had been down with influenza before Christmas was the sole information about him that Edwin obtained. Nobody appeared to consider it worth while to discuss the possible reasons for his sudden arrival. Hilda's caprices were accepted in that house like the visitations of heaven.

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SIX.

Edwin and Janet stood together on the windy and bleak down-platform of Knype Station, awaiting the express, which had been signalled. Edwin was undoubtedly very nervous and constrained, and it seemed to him that Janet's demeanour lacked naturalness.

"It's just occurred to me how she made that mistake about the time of the train," said Edwin, chiefly because he found the silence intolerably irksome. "It stops at Lichfield, and in running her eye across the page she must have mixed up the Lichfield figures with the Knype figures--you know how awkward it is in a time-table. As a matter of fact, the train does stop at Lichfield about 6:30."

"I see," said Janet reflectively.

And Edwin was saying to himself--

"It's a marvel to me how I can talk to her at all. What made me offer to come with her? How much does she know about me and Hilda? Hilda may have told her everything. If she's told her about her husband why shouldn't she have told her about me? And here we are both pretending that there's never been anything at all between me and Hilda!"

Then the train appeared, obscure round the curve, and bore down formidable and dark upon them, growing at every instant in stature and in noise until it deafened and seemed to fill the station; and the platform was suddenly in an uproar.

And almost opposite Janet and Edwin, leaning forth high above them from the door of a third-class carriage, the head and the shoulders of George Cannon were displayed in the gaslight. He seemed to dominate the train and the platform. At the windows on either side of him were adult faces, excited by his excitement, of the people who had doubtless been friendly to him during the journey. He distinguished Janet and Edwin almost at once, and shouted, and then waved.

"Hello, young son of a gun!" Edwin greeted him, trying to turn the handle of the door. But the door was locked, and it was necessary to call a porter, who tarried.

"I made mamma let me come!" George cried victoriously. "I told you I should!" He was far too agitated to think of shaking hands, and seemed to be in a state of fever. All his gestures were those of a proud, hysterical conqueror, and like a conqueror he gazed down at Edwin and Janet, who stood beneath him with upturned faces. He had absolutely forgotten the existence of his acquaintances in the carriage. "Did you know I've had the influenza? My temperature was up to 104 once--but it didn't stay long," he added regretfully.

When the door was at length opened, he jumped headlong, and Edwin caught him. He shook hands with Edwin and allowed Janet to kiss him.

"How hot you are!" Janet murmured.

The people in the compartment passed down his luggage, and after one of them had shouted good-bye to him twice, he remembered them, as it were by an effort, and replied, "Good-bye, good-bye," in a quick, impatient tone.

It was not until his anxious and assiduous foster-parents had bestowed him and his goods in the tranquillity of an empty compartment of the Loop Line train that they began to appreciate the morbid unusualness of his condition. His eyes glittered with extraordinary brilliance. He talked incessantly, not listening to their answers. And his skin was burning hot.

"Why, whatever's the matter with you, my dear?" asked Janet, alarmed. "You're like an oven!"

"I'm thirsty," said George. "If I don't have something to drink soon, I don't know what I shall do."

Janet looked at Edwin.

"There won't be time to get something at the refreshment room?"

They both felt heavily responsible.

"I might--" Edwin said irresolutely.

But just then the guard whistled.

"Never mind!" Janet comforted the child. "In twenty minutes we shall be in the house... No! you must keep your overcoat buttoned."

"How long have you been like that, George?" Edwin asked. "You weren't like that when you started, surely?"

"No," said George judicially. "It came on in the train."

After this, he appeared to go to sleep.

"He's certainly not well," Janet whispered.

Edwin shrugged his shoulders. "Don't you think he's grown?" he observed.

"Oh yes!" said Janet. "It's astonishing, isn't it, how children shoot up in a few weeks!"

They might have been parents exchanging notes, instead of celibates playing at parenthood for a hobby.

"Mamma says I've grown an inch." George opened his eyes. "She says it's about time I had! I dare say I shall be very tall. Are we nearly there?" His high, curt, febrile tones were really somewhat alarming.

When the train threw them out into the sodden waste that surrounds Bleakridge Station, George could scarcely stand. At any rate he showed no wish to stand. His protectors took him strongly by either arm, and thus bore him to Lane End House, with irregular unwilling assistance from his own feet. A porter followed with the luggage. It was an extremely distressing passage. Each protector in secret was imagining for George some terrible fever, of swift onslaught and fatal effect. At length they entered the garden, thanking their gods.

"He's not well," said Janet to her mother, who was fussily awaiting them in the hall. Her voice showed apprehension, and she was not at all convincing when she added: "But it's nothing serious. I shall put him straight to bed and let him eat there."

Instantly George became the centre of the house. The women disappeared with him, and Edwin had to recount the whole history of the arrival to Osmond Orgreave in the drawing-room. This recital was interrupted by Mrs Orgreave.

"Mr Edwin, Janet thinks if we sent for the doctor, just to be sure. As Johnnie isn't in, would you mind--"

"Stirling, I suppose?" said Edwin.

Stirling was the young Scottish doctor who had recently come into the town and taken it by storm.

When Edwin at last went home to a much-delayed meal, he was in a position to tell Maggie that young George Cannon had thought fit to catch influenza a second time in a couple of months. And Maggie, without a clear word, contrived to indicate that it was what she would have expected from a boy of George's violent temperament.


VOLUME FOUR, CHAPTER TEN.


GEORGE AND THE VICAR.

On the Tuesday evening Edwin came home from business at six o'clock, and found that he was to eat alone. The servant anxiously explained that Miss Clayhanger had gone across to the Orgreaves' to assist Miss Orgreave. It was evident that before going Miss Clayhanger had inspired the servant with a full sense of the importance of Mr Clayhanger's solitary meal, and of the terrible responsibility lying upon the person in charge of it. The girl was thrillingly alive; she would have liked some friend or other of the house to be always seriously ill, so that Miss Clayhanger might often leave her to the voluptuous savouring of this responsibility whose formidableness surpassed words. Edwin, as he went upstairs and as he came down again, was conscious of her excited presence somewhere near him, half-visible in the warm gas-lit house, spying upon him in order to divine the precise moment for the final service of the meal.

And in the dining-room the table was laid differently, so that he might be well situated, with regard to the light, for reading. And by the side of his plate were the newspaper, the magazines, and the book, among which Maggie had well guessed that he would make his choice for perusal. He was momentarily touched. He warmed his hands at the splendid fire, and then he warmed his back, watching the servant as with little flouncings and perkings she served, and he was touched by