Part 62 (1/2)
”Of course,” said Auntie Hamps, ”you're so difficult to talk to--”
”Difficult to talk to!--Me?”
”Otherwise your auntie might have given you a hint long ago. I believe you are a simpleton after all! I cannot understand what's come over the young men in these days. Letting a girl like that wait and wait!” She implied, with a faint scornful smile, that if she were a young man she would be capable of playing the devil with the maidenhood of the town.
Edwin was rather hurt. And though he felt that he ought not to be ashamed, yet he was ashamed. He divined that she was asking him how he had the face to stand there before her, at his age, with his youth unspilled. After all, she was an astounding woman. He remained silent.
”Why--look how splendid it would be!” she murmured. ”The very thing!
Everybody would be delighted!”
He still remained silent.
”But you can't keep on philandering for ever!” she said sharply.
”She'll never see thirty again! ... Why does she ask you to go and play at tennis? Can you tell me that? ... perhaps I'm saying too much, but this I will say--”
She stopped.
Darius and Maggie appeared at the garden door. Maggie offered her hand to aid her father, but he repulsed it. Calmly she left him, and came up the garden, out of the deep shadow into the suns.h.i.+ne. She had learnt the news of the engagement, and had fully expressed her feelings about it before Darius arrived at his destination and Mrs Hamps vacated the wicker-chair.
”I'll get some chairs,” said Edwin gruffly. He could look n.o.body in the eyes. As he turned away he heard Mrs Hamps say--
”Great news, father! Alicia Orgreave is engaged!”
The old man made no reply. His mere physical present deprived the betrothal of all its charm. The news fell utterly flat and lay unregarded and insignificant.
Edwin did not get the chairs. He sent the servant out with them.
VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER ELEVEN.
AN HOUR.
Janet called out--”Play--no, I think perhaps you'll do better if you stand a little farther back. Now--play!”
She brought down her lifted right arm, and smacked the ball into the net.
”Double fault!” she cried, lamenting, when she had done this twice. ”Oh dear! Now you go over to the other side of the court.”
Edwin would not have kept the rendezvous could he have found an excuse satisfactory to himself for staying away. He was a beginner at tennis, and a very awkward one, having little apt.i.tude for games, and being now inelastic in the muscles. He possessed no flannels, though for weeks he had been meaning to get at least a pair of white pants. He was wearing Jimmie Orgreave's india-rubber pumps, which admirably fitted him.
Moreover, he was aware that he looked better in his jacket than in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves. But these reasons against the rendezvous were naught.
The only genuine reason was that he had felt timid about meeting Janet.
Could he meet her without revealing by his mere guilty glance that his aunt had half convinced him that he had only to ask nicely in order to receive? Could he meet her without giving her the impression that he was a conceited a.s.s? He had met her. She was waiting for him in the garden, and by dint of starting the conversation in loud tones from a distance, and fumbling a few moments with the tennis b.a.l.l.s before approaching her, he had come through the encounter without too much foolishness.
And now he was glad that he had not been so silly as to stay away. She was alone; Mrs Orgreave was lying down, and all the others were out.
Alicia and her Harry were off together somewhere. She was alone in the garden, and she was beautiful, and the shaded garden was beautiful, and the fading afternoon. The soft short gra.s.s was delicate to his feet, and round the oval of the lawn were glimpses of flowers, and behind her clear-tinted frock was the yellow house laced over with green. A column of thick smoke rose from a manufactory close behind the house, but the trees mitigated it. He played perfunctorily, uninterested in the game, dreaming.
She was a wondrous girl! She was the perfect girl! n.o.body had ever been able to find any fault with her. He liked her exceedingly. Had it been necessary, he would have sacrificed his just interests in the altercation with her father in order to avoid a coolness in which she might have been involved. She was immensely distinguished and superior.
And she was over thirty and had never been engaged, despite the number and variety of her acquaintances, despite her challenging readiness to flirt, and her occasional coquetries. Ten years ago he had almost regarded her as a madonna on a throne, so high did she seem to be above him. His ideas had changed, but there could be no doubt that in an alliance between an Orgreave and a Clayhanger, it would be the Clayhanger who stood to gain the greater advantage. There she was! If she was not waiting for him, she was waiting--for some one! Why not for him as well as for another?