Part 22 (1/2)
They were more effective than the best arguments or the most graceful articulate surrenders. Thus she completed her triumph. But whether the virtue of the kisses lay in their sensuousness or in their sentiment, neither he nor she knew. And she did not care.... She did not kiss him with abandonment. There was a reserve in her kisses, and in her smile.
Indeed she went on kissing him rather sternly. Her glance, when their eyes were very close together, was curious. It seemed to imply: ”We are in love. And we love. I am yours. You are mine. Life is very fine after all. I am a happy woman. But still--_each is for himself in this world_, and that's the bedrock of marriage as of all other inst.i.tutions.” Her sense of realities again! And she went on kissing, irresistibly.
”Kiss me.”
And he had to kiss her.
Whereupon she softened to him, and abandoned herself to the emanations of his charm, and her lips became almost liquid as she kissed him again; nevertheless there was still a slight reserve in her kisses.
At tea she chattered like a magpie, as the saying is. Between her and George there seemed to be a secret instinctive understanding that Edwin had to be humoured, enlivened, drawn into talk,--for although he had kissed her, his mood was yet by no means restored to the normal. He would have liked to remain, majestic, within the tent of his soul. But they were too clever for him. Then, to achieve his discomfiture, entered Johnnie Orgreave, with a suggestion that they should all four--Edwin, Hilda, Janet, and himself--go to the theatre at Hanbridge that night. Hilda accepted the idea instantly. Since her marriage, her appet.i.te for pleasure had developed enormously. At moments she was positively greedy for pleasure. She was incapable of being bored at the theatre, she would sooner be in the theatre of a night than out of it.
”Oh! Do let's go!” she cried.
Edwin did not want to go, but he had to concur. He did not want to be pleasant to Johnnie Orgreave or to anybody, but he had to be pleasant.
”Be on the first car that goes up after seven fifteen,” said Johnnie as he was departing.
Edwin grunted.
”You understand, Teddy? The first car that goes up after seven fifteen.”
”All right! All right!”
Blithely Hilda went to beautify herself. And when she had beautified herself and made herself into a queen of whom the haughtiest master-printer might be proud, she despatched Ada for Master George.
And Master George had to come to her bedroom.
”Let me look at that leg,” she said. ”Sit down.”
Devious creature! During tea she had not even divulged that she had heard of the damaged s.h.i.+n. Master George was taken by surprise. He sat down. She knelt, and herself unloosed the stocking and exposed the little calf. The place was black and blue, but it had a healthy look.
”It's nothing,” she said.
And then, all in her splendid finery, she kissed the dirty discoloured s.h.i.+n. Strange! He was only two years old and just learning to talk.
”Now then, missis! Here's the tram!” Edwin yelled out loudly, roughly, from below. He would have given a sovereign to see her miss the car, but his inconvenient sense of justice forced him to warn her.
”Coming! Coming!”
She kissed Master George on the mouth eagerly, and George seemed, unusually, to return the eagerness. She ran down the darkening stairs, ecstatic.
In the dusky road, Edwin curtly signalled to the vast ascending steam-car, and it stopped. Those were in the old days, when people did what they liked with the cars, stopping them here and stopping them there according to their fancy. The era of electricity and fixed stopping-places, and soulless, conscienceless control from London had not set in. Edwin and Hilda mounted. Two hundred yards further on the steam-tram was once more arrested, and Johnnie and Janet joined them.
Hilda was in the highest spirits. The great affair of the afternoon had not been a quarrel, but an animating experience which, though dangerous, intensified her self-confidence and her zest.
CHAPTER IX
THE WEEK-END
I