Part 79 (1/2)

When he was in the pa.s.sage he heard the sound of a sob. Prudently, he had not banged the door after him. He stopped, and listened. Was it a sob? Then he heard another sob. He went back to the drawing-room.

FOUR.

Yes! She stood in the middle of the room weeping. Save Clara, and possibly once or twice Maggie, he had never seen a woman cry--that is, in circ.u.mstances of intimacy; he had seen women crying in the street, and the spectacle usually pained him. On occasion he had very nearly made Maggie cry, and had felt exceedingly uncomfortable. But now, as he looked at the wet eyes and the shaken bosom of Hilda Cannon, he was aware of acute joy. Exquisite moment! d.a.m.n her! He could have taken her and beaten her in his sudden pa.s.sion--a pa.s.sion not of revenge, not of punishment! He could have made her scream with the pain that his love would inflict.

She tried to speak, and failed, in a storm of sobs. He had left the door open. Half blind with tears she dashed to the door and shut it, and then turned and fronted him, with her hands hovering near her face.

”I can't let you do it!” she murmured imploringly, plaintively, and yet with that still obstinate bitterness in her broken voice.

”Then who is to do it?” he demanded, less bitterly than she had spoken, nevertheless not softly. ”Who is to keep you if I don't? Have you got any other friends who'll stand by you?”

”I've got the Orgreaves,” she answered.

”And do you think it would be better for the Orgreaves to keep you, or for me?” As she made no response, he continued: ”Anybody else besides the Orgreaves?”

”No,” she muttered sulkily. ”I'm not the sort of woman that makes a lot of friends. I expect people don't like me, as a rule.”

”You're the sort of woman that behaves like a blooming infant!” he said.

”Supposing I don't help you? What then, I keep asking you? How shall you get money? You can only borrow it--and there's n.o.body but Janet, and she'd have to ask her father for it. Of course, if you'd sooner borrow from Osmond Orgreave than from me--”

”I don't want to borrow from any one,” she protested.

”Then you want to starve! And you want your boy to starve--or else to live on charity! Why don't you look facts in the face? You'll have to look them in the face sooner or later, and the sooner the better. You think you're doing a fine thing by sitting tight and bearing it, and saying nothing, and keeping it all a secret, until you get pitched into the street! Let me tell you you aren't.”

FIVE.

She dropped into a chair by the piano, and rested her elbows on the curved lid of the piano.

”You're frightfully cruel!” she sobbed, hiding her face.

He fidgeted away to the larger of the two windows, which was bayed, so that the room could boast a view of the sea. On the floor he noticed an open book, pages downwards. He picked it up. It was the poems of Crashaw, an author he had never read but had always been intending to read. Outside, the driver of his cab was bunching up his head and shoulders together under a large umbrella, upon which the rain spattered. The flanks of the resigned horse glistened with rain.

”You needn't talk about cruelty!” he remarked, staring hard at the signboard of an optician opposite. He could hear the faint clanging of church bells.

After a pause she said, as if apologetically--

”Keeping a boarding-house isn't my line. But what could I do? My sister-in-law had it, and I was with her. And when she died...

Besides, I dare say I can keep a boarding-house as well as plenty of other people. But--well, it's no use going into that!”

Edwin abruptly sat down near her.

”Come, now,” he said less harshly, more persuasively. ”How much do you owe?”

”Oh!” she cried, pouting, and s.h.i.+fting her feet. ”It's out of the question! They've distrained for seventy-five pounds.”

”I don't care if they've distrained for seven hundred and seventy-five pounds!” She seemed just like a girl to him again now, in spite of her face and her figure. ”If that was cleared off, you could carry on, couldn't you? This is just the season. Could you get a servant in, in time for these three sisters?”

”I could get a charwoman, anyhow,” she said unwillingly.