Clayhanger Part 86

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 rea.s.sured 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. n.o.body 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.

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-cla.s.s 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.

"h.e.l.lo, 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.siduous 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.