Читать книгу The Complete Clayhanger Family Novels (Clayhanger + Hilda Lessways + These Twain + The Roll Call) - Arnold Bennett - Страница 169

She was sitting in the office chair; he on the desk. She said in a trembling voice—

“I should never have come to the Five Towns again, if you hadn’t—”

“Why not?”

“I couldn’t have stood it. I couldn’t.” She spoke almost bitterly, with a peculiar smile on her twitching lips.

To him it seemed that she had resumed her mystery, that he had only really known her for one instant, that he was bound to a woman entrancing, noble, but impenetrable. And this, in spite of the fact that he was close to her, touching her, tingling to her in the confined, crepuscular intimacy of the cubicle. He could trace every movement of her breast as she breathed, and yet she escaped the inward searching of his gaze. But he was happy. He was happy enough to repel all anxieties and inquietudes about the future. He was steeped in the bliss of the miracle. This was but the fourth day, and they were vowed.

“It was only Monday,” he began.

“Monday!” she exclaimed. “I have thought of you for over a year.” She leaned towards him. “Didn’t you know? Of course you did! ... You couldn’t bear me at first.”

He denied this, blushing, but she insisted.

“You don’t know how awful it was for me yesterday when you didn’t come!” he murmured.

“Was it?” she said, under her breath. “I had some very important letters to write.” She clasped his hand.

There it was again! She spoke just like a man of business, immersed in secret schemes.

“It’s awfully funny,” he said. “I scarcely know anything about you, and yet—”

“I’m Janet’s friend!” she answered. Perhaps it was the delicatest reproof of imagined distrust.

“And I don’t want to,” he went on. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-four,” she answered sweetly, acknowledging his right to put such questions.

“I thought you were.”

“I suppose you know I’ve got no relatives,” she said, as if relenting from her attitude of reproof. “Fortunately, father left just enough money for me to live on.”

“Must you go to Brighton?”

She nodded.

“Where can I write to?”

“It will depend,” she said. “But I shall send you the address tomorrow. I shall write you before I go to bed whether it’s to-night or tomorrow morning.”

“I wonder what people will say!”

“Please tell no one, yet,” she pleaded. “Really, I should prefer not! Later on, it won’t seem so sudden; people are so silly.”

“But shan’t you tell Janet?”

She hesitated. “No! Let’s keep it to ourselves till I come back.”

“When shall you come back?”

“Oh! Very soon. I hope in a few days, now. But I must go to this friend at Brighton. She’s relying on me.”

It was enough for him, and indeed he liked the idea of a secret. “Yes, yes,” he agreed eagerly.

There was the sound of another uproar in Duck Square. It appeared to roll to and fro thunderously.

She shivered. The fire was dead out in the stove, and the chill of night crept in from the street.

“It’s nearly dark,” she said. “I must go! I have to pack... Oh dear, dear—those poor men! Somebody will be hurt!”

“I’ll walk up with you,” he whispered, holding her, in owner ship.

“No. It will be better not. Let me out.”

“Really?”

“Really!”

“But who’ll take you to Knype Station?”

“Janet will go with me.”

She rose reluctantly. In the darkness they were now only dim forms to each other. He struck a match, that blinded them and expired as they reached the passage...

When she had gone, he stood hatless at the open side door. Right at the top of Duck Bank, he could discern, under the big lamp there, a knot of gesticulating and shouting strikers, menacing two policemen; and farther off, in the direction of Moorthorne Road, other strikers were running. The yellow-lit blinds of the Duck Inn across the Square seemed to screen a house of impenetrable conspiracies and debaucheries. And all that grim, perilous background only gave to his emotions a further intensity, troubling them to still stranger ecstasy. He thought: “It has happened to me, too, now—this thing that is at the bottom of everybody’s mind! I’ve kissed her! I’ve got her! She’s marvellous, marvellous! I couldn’t have believed it. But is it true? Has it happened?” It passed his credence... “By Jove! I absolutely forgot about the ring! That’s a nice how d’ye do!” ... He saw himself married. He thought of Clara’s grotesque antics with her tedious babe. And he thought of his father and of vexatious. But that night he was a man. She, Hilda, with her independence and her mystery, had inspired him with a full pride of manhood. And he discovered that one of the chief attributes of a man is an immense tenderness.