Part 89 (1/2)

”Here's Edwin.”

Janet appeared in the doorway, pale. She was wearing an ap.r.o.n with a bib.

”I--I thought I'd just look in and inquire,” Edwin said awkwardly, fiddling with his hat and a pocket of his overcoat. ”What's he like now?”

Janet gave details. The sick-room lay hidden behind the face of the door, mysterious and sacred.

”Mr Edwin thinks you ought to telegraph,” said Mrs Orgreave timidly.

”Do you?” demanded Janet. Her eyes seemed to pierce him. Why did she gaze at him with such particularity, as though he possessed a special interest in Hilda?

”Well--” he muttered. ”You might just wire how things are, and leave it to her to come as she thinks fit.”

”Just so,” said Mr Orgreave quickly, as if Edwin had expressed his own thought.

”But the telegram couldn't be delivered to-night,” Janet objected.

”It's nearly half-past seven now.”

It was true. Yet Edwin was more than ever conscious of a keen desire to telegraph at once.

”But it would be delivered first thing in the morning,” he said. ”So that she'd have more time to make arrangements if she wanted to.”

”Well, if you think like that,” Janet acquiesced.

The visage of Mrs Orgreave lightened.

”I'll run down and telegraph myself, if you like,” said Edwin. ”Of course you've written to her. She knows--”

”Oh yes!”

Five.

In a minute he was walking rapidly, with his ungainly, slouching stride, down Trafalgar Road, his overcoat flying loose. Another crisis was approaching, he thought. As he came to Duck Square, he met a newspaper boy shouting shrilly and wearing the contents bill of a special edition of the ”Signal” as an ap.r.o.n: ”Duke of Clarence. More serious bulletin.”

The scourge and fear of influenza was upon the town, upon the community, tangible, oppressive, tragic.

In the evening calm of the shabby, gloomy post-office, holding a stubby pencil that was chained by a cable to the wall, he stood over a blank telegraph-form, hesitating how to word the message. Behind the counter an instrument was ticking unheeded, and far within could be discerned the vague bodies of men dealing with parcels. He wrote, ”Cannon, 59 Preston Street, Brighton. George's temperature 104.” Then he paused, and added, ”Edwin.” It was sentimental. He ought to have signed Janet's name. And, if he was determined to make the telegram personal, he might at least have put his surname. He knew it was sentimental, and he loathed sentimentality. But that evening he wanted to be sentimental.

He crossed to the counter, and pushed the form under the wire-netting.

A sleepy girl accepted it, and glanced mechanically at the clock, and then wrote the hour 7:42.

”It won't be delivered to-night,” she said, looking up, as she counted the words.

”No, I know,” said Edwin.

”Sixpence, please.”

As he paid the sixpence he felt as though he had accomplished some great, critical, agitating deed. And his heart a.s.serted itself again, thunderously beating.

VOLUME FOUR, CHAPTER ELEVEN.