"What are doors for?" he muttered, pleasantly impatient; then he called aloud:
"Simpson. Shut the outer door--and this one, too."
There was no answer. He arose and went to the outer office. Hilda had pa.s.sed through it like an arrow. Simpson was not there. But a man stood leaning against the mantelpiece; he held at full spread a copy of the _Signal_, which concealed all the upper part of him except his fingers and the crown of his head. Though the gas had been lighted in the middle of the room, it must have been impossible for him to read by it, since it shone through the paper. He lowered the newspaper with a rustle and looked at Edwin. He was a big, well-dressed man, wearing a dark grey suit, a blue Melton overcoat, and a quite new glossy "boiler-end" felt hat. He had a straight, prominent nose, and dark, restless eyes, set back; his short hair was getting grey, but not his short black moustache.
"Were you waiting to see me?" Edwin said, in a defensive, half-hostile tone. The man might be a belated commercial traveller of a big house--some of those fellows considered themselves above all laws; on the other hand he might be a new; customer in a hurry.
"Yes," was the reply, in a deep, full and yet uncertain voice. "The clerk said you couldn"t be disturbed, and asked me to wait. Then he went out."
"What can I do for you? It"s really after hours, but some of us are working a bit late."
The man glanced at the outer door, which Edwin was shutting, and then at the inner door, which exposed Edwin"s room.
"I"m George Cannon," he said, advancing a step, as it were defiantly.
For an instant Edwin was frightened by the sudden melodrama of the situation. Then he thought:
"I am up against this man. This is a crisis."
And he became almost agreeably aware of his own being. The man stood close to him, under the gas, with all the enigmatic quality of another being. He could perceive now--at any rate he could believe--that it was George Cannon. Forgetful of what the man had suffered, Edwin felt for him nothing but the instinctive inimical distrust of the individual who has never got at loggerheads with society for the individual who once and for always has. To this feeling was added a powerful resentment of the man"s act in coming--especially unannounced--to just _him_, the husband of the woman he had dishonoured. It was a monstrous act--and doubtless an act characteristic of the man. It was what might have been expected. The man might have been innocent of a particular crime, might have been falsely imprisoned; but what had he originally been doing, with what rascals had he been consorting, that he should be even suspected of crime? George Cannon"s astonishing presence, so suddenly after his release, at the works of Edwin Clayhanger, was unforgiveable.
Edwin felt an impulse to say savagely:
"Look here. You clear out. You understand English, don"t you? Hook it."
But he had not the brutality to say it. Moreover, the clerk returned, carrying, full to the brim, the tin water-receptacle used for wetting the damping-brush of the copying-press.
"Will you come in, please?" said Edwin curtly. "Simpson, I"m engaged."
The two men went into the inner room.
"Sit down," said Edwin grimly.
George Cannon, with a firm gesture, planted his hat on the flat desk between them. He looked round behind him at the shut glazed door.
"You needn"t be afraid," said Edwin. "n.o.body can hear--unless you shout."
He gazed curiously but somewhat surrept.i.tiously at George Cannon, trying to decide whether it was possible to see in him a released convict. He decided that it was not possible. George Cannon had a shifty, but not a beaten, look; many men had a shifty look. His hair was somewhat short, but so was the hair of many men, if not of most. He was apparently in fair health; a.s.suredly his const.i.tution had not been ruined. And if his large, coa.r.s.e features were worn, marked with tiny black spots, and seamed and generally ravaged, they were not more ravaged than the features of numerous citizens of Bursley aged about fifty who saved money, earned honours, and incurred the envy of presumably intelligent persons. And as he realised all this, Edwin"s retrospective painful alarm as to what might have happened if Hilda had noticed George Cannon in the outer office lessened until he could dismiss it entirely. By chance she had ignored Cannon, perhaps scarcely seeing him in her preoccupied pa.s.sage, perhaps taking him vaguely for a customer; but supposing she _had_ recognised him, what then? There would have been an awkward scene--nothing more. Awkward scenes do not kill; their effect is transient. Hilda would have had to behave, and would have behaved, with severe commonsense. He, Edwin himself, would have handled the affair.
A demeanour matter-of-fact and impa.s.sible was what was needed. After all, a man recently out of prison was not a wild beast, nor yet a freak.
Hundreds of men were coming out of prisons every day.... He should know how to deal with this man--not pharisaically, not cruelly, not unkindly, but still with a clear indication to the man of his reprehensible indiscretion in being where he then was.
"Did she recognise me--down there--Dartmoor?" asked George Cannon, without any preparing of the ground, in a deep, trembling voice; and as he spoke a flush spread slowly over his dark features.
"Er--yes!" answered Edwin, and his voice also trembled.
"I wasn"t sure," said George Cannon. "We were halted before I could see. And I daren"t look round--I should ha" been punished. I"ve been punished before now for looking up at the sky at exercise." He spoke more quickly and then brought himself up with a snort. "However, I"ve not come all the way here to talk prison, so you needn"t be afraid. I"m not one of your reformers."
In his weak but ungoverned nervous excitement, from which a faint trace of hysteria was not absent, he now seemed rather more like an ex-convict, despite his good clothes. He had become, to Edwin"s superior self-control, suddenly wistful. And at the same time, the strange opening question, and its accent, had stirred Edwin, and he saw with remorse how much finer had been Hilda"s morbid and violent pity than his own harsh commonsense and anxiety to avoid emotion. The man in good clothes moved him more than the convict had moved him. He seemed to have received vision, and he saw not merely the unbearable pathos of George Cannon, but the high and heavenly charitableness of Hilda, which he had constantly douched, and his own common earthliness. He was exceedingly humbled. And he also thought, sadly: "This chap"s still attached to her. Poor devil!"
"What have you come for?" he enquired.
George Cannon cleared his throat. Edwin waited, in fear, for the avowal. He could make nothing out of the visitor"s face; its expression was anxious and drew sympathy, but there was something in it which chilled the sympathy it invoked and which seemed to say: "I shall look after myself." It yielded naught. You could be sorry for the heart within, and yet could neither like nor esteem it. "Punished for looking up at the sky." ... Glimpses of prison life presented themselves to Edwin"s imagination. He saw George Cannon again halted and turning like a serf to the wall of the corridor. And this man opposite to him, close to him in the familiar room, was the same man as the serf! Was he the same man? ... Inscrutable, the enigma of that existence whose breathing was faintly audible across the desk.
"You know all about it--about my affair, of course?"
"Well," said Edwin. "I expect you know how much I know."
"I"m an honest man--you know that. I needn"t begin by explaining that to you."
Edwin nerved himself:
"You weren"t honest towards Hilda, if it comes to that."
He used his wife"s Christian name, to this man with whom he had never before spoken, naturally, inevitably. He would not say "my wife." To have said "my wife" would somehow have brought some muddiness upon that wife, and by contact upon her husband.
"When I say "honest" I mean--you know what I mean. About Hilda--I don"t defend that. Only I couldn"t help myself.... I daresay I should do it again." Edwin could feel his eyes smarting and he blinked, and yet he was angry with the man, who went on: "It"s no use talking about that.
That"s over. And I couldn"t help it. I had to do it. She"s come out of it all right. She"s not harmed, and I thank G.o.d for it! If there"d been a child living ... well, it would ha" been different."
Edwin started. This man didn"t know he was a father--and his son was within a few yards of him--might come running in at any moment! (No!
Young George would not come in. Nothing but positive orders would get the boy out of the engine-house so long as the engine-man remained there.) Was it possible that Hilda had concealed the existence of her child, or had announced the child"s death? If so, she had never done a wiser thing, and such sagacity struck him as heroic. But if Mrs. Cannon knew as to the child, then it was Mrs. Cannon who, with equal prudence and for a different end, had concealed its existence from George Cannon or lied to him as to its death. Certainly the man was sincere. As he said "Thank G.o.d!" his full voice had vibrated like the voice of an ardent religionist at a prayer-meeting.
George Cannon began again:
"All I mean is I"m an honest man. I"ve been d.a.m.nably treated. Not that I want to go into that. No! I"m a fatalist. That"s over. That"s done with. I"m not whining. All I"m insisting on is that I"m not a thief, and I"m not a forger, and I"ve nothing to hide. Perhaps I brought my difficulties about that bank-note business on myself. But when you"ve once been in prison, you don"t choose your friends--you can"t. Perhaps I might have ended by being a thief or a forger, only on this occasion it just happens that I"ve had a good six years for being innocent. I never did anything wrong, or even silly, except let myself get too fond of somebody. That might happen to anyone. It did happen to me. But there"s nothing else. You understand? I never--"
"Yes, yes, certainly!" said Edwin, stopping him as he was about to repeat all the argument afresh. It was a convincing argument.
"No one"s got the right to look down on me, I mean," George Cannon insisted, bringing his face forward over the desk. "On the contrary this country owes me an apology. However, I don"t want to go into that.
That"s done with. Spilt milk"s spilt. I know what the world is."
"I agree. I agree!" said Edwin.
He did. The honesty of his intelligence admitted almost too eagerly and completely the force of the pleading.
"Well," said George Cannon, "to cut it short, I want help. And I"ve come to you for it."
"Me!" Edwin feebly exclaimed.
"You, Mr. Clayhanger! I"ve come straight here from London. I haven"t a friend in the whole world, not one. It"s not everybody can say that.
There was a fellow named Dayson at Turnhill--used to work for me--he"d have done something if he could. But he was too big a fool to be able to; and besides, he"s gone, no address. I wrote to him."
"Oh, that chap!" murmured Edwin, trying to find relief in even a momentary turn of the conversation. "I know who you mean.
Shorthand-writer. He died in the Isle of Man on his holiday two years ago. It was in the papers."
"_That"s_ his address, is it? Good old Dead Letter Office! Well, he is crossed off the list, then; no mistake!" Cannon snarled bitterly. "I"m aware you"re not a friend of mine. I"ve no claim on you. You don"t know me; but you know about me. When I saw you in Dartmoor I guessed who you were, and I said to myself you looked the sort of man who might help another man.... Why did you come into the prison? Why did you bring her there? You must have known I was there." He spoke with a sudden change to reproachfulness.
"I didn"t bring her there." Edwin blushed. "It was---- However, we needn"t go into that, if you don"t mind."
"Was she upset?"