When the front door of the Orgreaves interposed itself that night between Edwin and a little group of gas-lit faces, he turned away towards the warm gloom of the garden in a state of happy excitement. He had left fairly early, despite protests, because he wished to give his father no excuse for a spectacular display of ; Edwin’s desire for a existence was growing . But now that he was in the open air, he did not want to go home. He wanted to be in full possession of himself, at leisure and in freedom, and to examine the treasure of his sensations. “It’s been rather quiet,” the Orgreaves had said. “We generally have people dropping in.” Quiet! It was the least quiet evening he had ever spent.
He was ; not with wine, though he had drunk wine. A group of well-intentioned philanthropists, organised into a powerful society for combating the fearful evils of alcoholism, had seized Edwin at the age of twelve and made him himself with solemn childish signature and ceremonies never to taste alcohol save by doctor’s orders. He thought of this pledge in the garden of the Orgreaves. “Damned rot!” he murmured, and dismissed the pledge from his mind as unimportant, if not indeed . No ! The whole philosophy of inspired him, at that moment, with impatient scorn. It was the hope of pleasure that intoxicated him, the vision which he had had of the possibilities of being really interested in life. He saw new avenues toward joy, and the sight thereof made him , less with the desire to be immediately at them than with the present of them. He was conscious of actual physical and agreeable smartings in his head; electric . But he did not reason; he felt. He was passive, not active. He would not even, just then, attempt to make new plans. He was in a beatitude, his mouth that it was smiling.
Two.
Behind him was the lighted house; in front the gloom of the lawn ending in shrubberies and gates, with a street-lamp beyond. And there was silence, save for the vast furnace-breathings, coming over undulating miles, which the people of the Five Towns, hearing them always, never hear. A great deal of light filtered through the cloudy sky. The warm wandering airs were humid on the cheek. He must return home. He could not stand dreaming all the night in the garden of the Orgreaves. To his right uprose the great rectangular mass of his father’s new house, free of scaffolding, having all the aspect of a house inhabited. It looked enormous. He was proud of it. In such an , and so close to the Orgreaves, what could he not do?
Why go to gaze on it again? There was no common sense in doing so. And yet he felt: “I must have another glance at it before I go home.” From his attitude towards it, he might have been the creator of that house. That house was like one of his more successful drawings. When he had done a drawing that he , he was always looking at it. He would look at it before running down to breakfast; and after breakfast, instead of going straight to the shop, he would rush upstairs to have still another look at it. The act of gave him pleasure. So with the house. Strange, superficially; but the simple explanation was that for some things he had the eyes of love... Yes, in his dancing and happy brain the impulse to revisit the house was not to be conquered.
The few yards of hedge between his father’s land and that of Mr Orgreave seemed more passable in the night. He along the , stepped carefully with noiseless foot on the flower-bed, and then pushed himself right through the bushes, forgetting the respect due to his suit. The beginning of summer had dried the sticky clay of the new garden; paths had already been traced on it, and cut for the draining of the lawn that was to be. Edwin in the night saw the new garden finished, , blooming with such blossoms as were sold in Saint Luke’s Market; he had scarcely ever seen flowers growing in the mass. He saw himself reclining in the garden with a rare and beautiful book in his hand, while the sound of Beethoven’s music came to him through the open window of the drawing-room. In so far as he saw Maggie at all, he saw her somehow mysteriously elegant and . He did not see his father. His fancy had little relation to reality. But this did not his pleasure... Then he saw himself talking over the hedge, , to and persons in the garden of the Orgreaves.
Three.
He had not his key to the new house, but he knew a way of getting into it through the cellar. No reason in doing so; nevertheless he must get into it, must localise his dream in it! He down under the blank east wall, and, feet foremost, disappeared slowly, as though the house were swallowing him. He stood on the stillage of the cellar, and struck a match. Immense and , the cellar; and the doorless , leading to the cellar steps, seemed to lead to affrighting matters. He was in the earth, in it, with the smells of damp and of bricks and of the earth itself about him, and above him rose the house, a room over him, and a room over that and another over that, and then the chimney-cowl up in the sky. He jumped from the stillage, and went quickly to the doorway and saw the cellar steps. His heart was beating. He trembled, he was afraid, afraid, acutely conscious of himself amid the fundamental mysteries of the universe. He reached the top of the steps as the match expired. After a moment he could distinguish the forms of things in the hall, even the main features of the pattern of the tiles. The small in the front door, whose repeated those of the drawing-room window in daytime, now showed a uniform dull grey, lifeless. The cellar was formidable below, and the stairs curved into the formidable. But he climbed them. The house seemed full of noises. When he stopped to listen he could hear scores of different infinitesimal sounds. His thrilled, as if a hand delicate and terrible had run down it in a . All the unknown of the night and of the universe was pressing upon him, but it was he alone who had created the night and the universe. He reached his room, the room in which he meant to inaugurate the new life and the endeavour towards perfection. Already, after his manner, he had settled where the bed was to be, and where the table, and all the other objects of his world. There he would sit and read rare and beautiful books in the original French! And there he would sit to draw! And to the right of the over bookshelves would be such and such a picture, and to the left of the hearth over bookshelves such and such another picture... Only, now, he could not dream in the room as he had meant to dream; because beyond the open door was the empty landing and the well of the stairs and all the terror of the house. The terror came and with the delicious sensations that had seized him in the of the garden of the Orgreaves. No! Never had he been so intensely alive as then!
He went cautiously to the window and looked . Instantly the terror of the house was . It fell away, was gone. He was not alone in his fancy-created universe. The illusion of reality came back like a clap of thunder. He could see a girl herself through the gap in the hedge which he had made ten minutes earlier.
Four.
“What the deuce is she after?” he muttered. He wondered whether, if she happened to glance upwards, she would be able to see him. He stood away a little from the window, but as in the safer position he could no longer distinguish her he came again close to the glass. After all, there could be no risk of her seeing him. And if she did see him,—the fright would be hers, not his.
Having passed through the hedge, she stopped, down, leaning backward and to one side, and lifted the of her skirt to examine it; possibly it was torn; then she dropped it. By that black, tight skirt and by something in her walk he knew she was Hilda; he could not decipher her features. She moved towards the new house, very slowly, as if she had emerged for an aimless nocturnal stroll. Strange and creature! He peered as far as he could leftwards, to see the west wall of Lane End House. In a window of the upper floor a light burned. The family had doubtless gone to bed, or were going... And she had wandered forth and was in his garden. “Cheek!” If ever he got an opportunity he should mysteriously tease her on the subject of illegal night excursions! Yes, he should be very witty and . “Nothing but cheek!” He was confirmed in his to her. She had no charm, and yet the entire Orgreave family was infatuated about her. Her interruption on behalf of Victor Hugo seemed to be . Girls ought not to use that ruthless tone. And her eyes were hard, even cruel. She was less feminine than masculine. Her hair was not like a girl’s hair.
She still came on, until the projecting roof of the bay-window beneath him hid her from sight. He would have opened his window and leaned out to glimpse her, could he have done so without noise. Where was she? In the garden porch? She did not reappear. She might be capable of getting into the house! She might even then actually be getting into the house! She was queer, incalculable. Supposing that she was in the habit of surreptitiously visiting the house, and had found a key to fit one of the doors, or supposing that she could push up a window,—she would doubtless mount the stairs and trap him! Absurd, these ; as absurd as a nightmare! But they influenced his conduct. He felt himself forced to provide against the wildest hazards. he departed from the bedroom and the stairs, stamping, , with all possible noise; in addition he whistled. This was to warn her to fly. He stopped in the hall until she had had time to fly, and then he lit a match as a signal which surely no carelessness could miss. He could have gone direct by the front door into the street, so leaving her to her odd self; but, instead, he drew back the slip-catch of the garden door and opened it, self-consciously humming a .
She was within the porch. She turned to look at him. He could feel his heart-beats. His cheeks burned, and yet he was chilled.
“Who’s there?” he asked. But he did not succeed to his own satisfaction in alarmed surprise.
“Me!” said Hilda, challengingly, rudely.
“Oh!” he murmured, at a loss. “Did you want me? Did any one want me?”
“Yes,” she said. “I just wanted to ask you something,” she paused. He could not see her , but it seemed to him that she must be. He remembered that she had rather thick , and that when she brought them nearer together by a frown, they made almost one continuous line, the effect of which was not attractive.
“Did you know I was in here?”
“Yes. That’s my bedroom window over there—I’ve left the gas up—and I saw you get through the hedge. So I came down. They’d all gone off to bed except Tom, a............