"Bit stiff? I should rather say it was. Especially after Jimmie"s performance. Rather hard lines on Alicia, don"t you think?"
"On all of "em," said Edwin, not seeing why Johnnie"s escapade should press more on Alicia than, for example, on Janet.
"Yes, of course," Harry agreed, evidently seeing and accepting the point. "The less said the better!"
"I"m with you," said Edwin.
Harry resumed his jolly tone:
"Well, you"d better peck a bit. We"ve planned a hard day for you."
"Oh!"
"Yes. Early lunch, and then we"re going to drive over to Princetown.
Tennis with the Governor of the prison. He"ll show us all over the prison. It"s worth seeing."
Impulsively Edwin exclaimed:
"All of you? Is Hilda going?"
"Certainly. Why not?" He raised the whip and pointed: "Behold our n.o.ble towers."
Edwin, feeling really sick, thought:
"Hilda"s mad. She"s quite mad..... Morbid isn"t the word!"
He was confounded.
III
At Tavy Mansion Edwin and Harry were told by a maid that Mrs. Hesketh and Miss Orgreave were in the nursery and would be down in a moment, but that Mrs. Clayhanger had a headache and was remaining in bed for breakfast. The master of the house himself took Edwin to the door of his wife"s bedroom. Edwin"s spirits had risen in an instant, as he perceived the cleverness of Hilda"s headache. There could be no doubt that women were clever, though perhaps unscrupulously and crudely clever, in a way beyond the skill of men. By the simple device of suffering from a headache Hilda had avoided the ordeal of meeting a somewhat estranged husband in public; she was also preparing an excuse for not going to Princetown and the prison. Certainly it was better, in the Dartmoor affair, to escape at the last moment than to have declined the project from the start.
As he opened the bedroom-door, apprehensions and bright hope were mingled in him. He had a weighty grievance against Hilda, whose behaviour at parting had been, he considered, inexcusable; but the warm tone of her curt private telegram to him and of her almost equally curt letter, re-stating her pa.s.sionate love, was really equivalent to an apology, which he accepted with eagerness. Moreover he had done a lot in coming to Devonshire, and for this great act he lauded himself and he expected some grat.i.tude. Nevertheless, despite the pacificism of his feelings, he could not smile when entering the room. No, he could not!
Hilda was lying in the middle of a very wide bed, and her dark hair was spread abroad upon the pillow. On the pedestal was a tea-tray. Squatted comfortably at Hilda"s side, with her left arm as a support, was a baby about a year old, dressed for the day. This was Cecil, born the day after his grandparents" funeral. Cecil, with mouth open and outstretched pink hands, of which the fingers were spread like the rays of half a starfish, from wide eyes gazed at Edwin with a peculiar expression of bland irony. Hilda smiled lovingly; she smiled without reserve. And as soon as she smiled, Edwin could smile, and his heart was suddenly quite light.
Hilda thought:
"That wistful look in his eyes has never changed, and it never will.
Imagine him travelling on Sunday, when the silly old thing might just as well have come on Sat.u.r.day, if he"d had anybody to decide him! He"s been travelling for twenty-four hours or more, and now he"s here! What a shame for me to have dragged him down here in spite of himself! But he would do it for me! He has done it.... I had to have him, for this afternoon! ... After all he must be very good at business. Everyone respects him, even here. We may end by being really rich. Have I ever really appreciated him? ... And now of course he"s going to be annoyed again. Poor boy!"
"h.e.l.lo! Who"s this?" cried Edwin.
"This is Cecil. His mummy"s left him, here with his Auntie Hilda," said Hilda.
"Another clever dodge of hers!" thought Edwin. He liked the baby being there.
He approached the bed, and, staring nervously about, saw that his bag had already mysteriously reached the bedroom.
"Well, my poor boy! What a journey!" Hilda murmured compa.s.sionately.
She could not help showing that she was his mother in wisdom and sense.
"Oh no!" he amiably dismissed this view.
He was standing over her by the bedside. She looked straight up at him timid and expectant. He bent and kissed her. Under his kiss she shifted slightly in the bed, and her arms clung round his neck, and by her arms she lifted herself a little towards him.
She shut her eyes. She would not loose him. She seemed again to be drawing the life out of him. At last she let him go, and gave a great sigh. All the past which did not agree with that kiss and that sigh of content was annihilated, and an immense rea.s.surance filled Edwin"s mind.
"So you"ve got a headache?"
She gave a succession of little nods, smiling happily.
"I"m so glad you"ve come, dearest," she said, after a pause. She was just like a young girl, like a child, in her relieved satisfaction.
"What about George?"
"Well, as it was left to me to decide, I thought I"d better ask Maggie to come and stay in the house. Much better than packing him off to Auntie Hamps"s."
"And she came?"
"Oh yes!" said Edwin, indifferently, as if to say: "Of course she came."
"Then you did get my letter in time?"
"I shouldn"t have got it in time if I"d left Sat.u.r.day morning as you wanted. Oh! And here"s a letter for _you_."
He pulled a letter from his pocket. The envelope was of the peculiar tinted paper with which he had already been familiarised. Hilda became self-conscious as she took the letter and opened it. Edwin too was self-conscious. To lighten the situation, he put his little finger in the baby"s mouth. Cecil much appreciated this form of humour, and as soon as the finger was withdrawn from his toothless gums, he made a bubbling whirring noise, and waved his arms to indicate that the game must continue. Hilda, frowning, read the letter. Edwin sat down, ledging himself cautiously on the brink of the bed, and leaned back a little so as to be able to get at the baby and tickle it among its frills. From the distance, beyond walls, he could hear the powerful happy cries of older babies, beings fully aware of themselves, who knew their own sentiments and could express them. And he glanced round the long low room with its two small open windows showing sunlit yellow cornfields and high trees, and its monumental furniture, and the disorder of Hilda"s clothes and implements humanising it and individualising it and making it her abode, her lair. And he glanced prudently at Hilda over the letter-paper. She had no headache; it was obvious that she had no headache. Yet in the most innocent touching way she had nodded an affirmative to his question about the headache. He could not possibly have said to her: "Look here, you know you haven"t got a headache." She would not have tolerated the truth. The truth would have made her transform herself instantly into a martyr, and him into a brute. She would have stuck to it, even if the seat of eternal judgment had suddenly been installed at the bra.s.sy foot of the bed, that she had a headache.
It was with this mentality (he reflected, a.s.suming that his own mentality never loved anything as well as truth) that he had to live till one of them expired. He reminded himself wisely that the woman"s code is different from the man"s. But the honesty of his intelligence rejected such an explanation, such an excuse. It was not that the woman had a different code,--she had no code except the code of the utter opportunist. To live with her was like living with a marvellous wild animal, full of grace, of cunning, of magnificent pa.s.sionate gestures, of terrific affection, and of cruelty. She was at once indispensable and intolerable. He felt that to match her he had need of all his force, all his prescience, all his duplicity. The mystery that had lain between him and Hilda for a year was in the letter within two feet of his nose. He could watch her as she read, study her face; he knew that he was the wiser of the two; she was at a disadvantage; as regards the letter, she was fighting on ground chosen by him; and yet he could not in the least foresee the next ten minutes,--whether she would advance, retreat, feint, or surrender.
"Did you bring your dress-clothes?" she murmured, while she was reading.
She had instructed him in her letter on this point.
"Of course," he said, manfully, striving to imply the immense untruth that he never stirred from home without his dress-clothes.
She continued to read, frowning, and drawing her heavy eyebrows still closer together. Then she said:
"Here!"
And pa.s.sed him the letter. He could see now that she was becoming excited.
The letter was from the legitimate Mrs. George Cannon, and it said that, though nothing official was announced or even breathed, her solicitor had gathered from a permanent and important underling of the Home Office that George Cannon"s innocence was supposed to be established, and that the Queen"s pardon would, at some time or other, be issued. It was an affecting letter. Edwin, totally ignorant of all that had preceded it, did not immediately understand its significance. At first he did not even grasp what it was about. When he did begin to comprehend he had the sensation of being deprived momentarily of his bearings. He had expected everything but this. That is to say, he had absolutely not known what to expect. The shock was severe.
"_What_ is it? _What_ is it?" he questioned, as if impatient.
Hilda replied: