At the Works
i
That night, late, Hilda and Janet shut themselves up in the bedroom together. The door clicked softly under Janet’s gentle push, and they were as safe from invasion as if the door had been of iron, and locked and double-locked and barred with bars of iron. Alicia alone might have disturbed them, but Alicia was asleep. Hilda had a sense of entire security in this room such as she had never had since she drove away from Lessways Street, Turnhill, early one morning, with Florrie Bagster in a cab. It was not that there had been the least real fear of any room of hers being attacked: it was that this room seemed to have been rendered mystically inviolate by long years of Janet’s occupation. “Janet’s bedroom!”—the phrase had a sanction which could not possibly have attached itself to, for instance, “Hilda’s bedroom!” Nor even to “mother’s bedroom”—mother’s bedroom being indeed at the mercy of any profane and marauding member of the family, a sort of market-place for the transaction of affairs.
And, further, Janet’s bedroom was distinguished and made delicious for Hilda by its fire. It happened to be one of the very few bedrooms in the Five Towns at that date with a fire, as a regular feature of it. Mrs. Orgreave had a fire in the parental bedroom, when she could not reasonably do without it, but Osmond Orgreave suffered the fire rather than enjoyed it. As for Tom, though of a shivery disposition, he would have dithered to death before admitting that a bedroom fire might increase his comfort. Johnnie and Jimmie genuinely liked to be cold in their bedroom. Alicia pined for a fire, but Mrs. Orgreave, imitating the contrariety of fate, forbade a fire to Alicia, and one consequence of this was that Alicia sometimes undressed in Janet’s bedroom, making afterwards a dash for the Pole. The idea of a bedroom was always, during nearly half the year, associated with the idea of discomfort in Hilda’s mind. And now, in Janet’s bedroom, impressed as she was by the strangeness of the fact that the prime reason for hurrying at top-speed into bed had been abolished, she yet positively could not linger, the force of habit being too strong for her. And she was in bed, despite efforts to dawdle, while Janet was still brushing her hair.
As she lay and watched Janet’s complex unrobing, she acquired knowledge. And once more, she found herself desiring to be like Janet—not only in appearance, but in soft manner and tone. She thought: “How shall I dress tomorrow afternoon?” All the operations of her brain related themselves somehow to tomorrow afternoon. The anticipation of the visit to the printing-works burned in her heart like a steady lamp that shone through the brief, cloudy interests of the moment. And Edwin Clayhanger was precisely the topic which Janet seemed, as it were, expressly to avoid. Janet inquired concerning life at Brighton and the health of Sarah Gailey; Janet even mentioned George Cannon; Hilda steadied her voice in replying, though she was not really apprehensive, for Janet’s questions, like the questions of the whole family, were invariably discreet and respectful of the individual’s privacy. But of Edwin Clayhanger, whose visit nevertheless had been recounted to her in the drawing-room on her return, Janet said not a word.
And then, when she had extinguished the gas, and the oriental sleeve of her silk nightgown delicately brushed Hilda’s face, as she got into bed, she remarked:
“Strange that Edwin Clayhanger should call just to-night!”
Hilda’s cheek warmed.
“He asked me to go and look over their printing-works tomorrow,” said she quickly.
Janet was taken aback.
“Really!” she exclaimed, unmistakably startled. She spoke a second too soon. If she had delayed only one second, she might have concealed from Hilda that which Hilda had most plainly perceived, to wit, anxiety and jealousy. Yes, jealousy, in this adorably benevolent creature’s tone. Hilda’s interest in tomorrow afternoon was intensified.
“Shall you be able to come?” she asked.
“What time?”
“He said about half-past six, or a quarter to seven.”
“I can’t,” said Janet dreamily, “because of that Musical Society meeting—you know—I told you, didn’t I?”
In the faint light of the dying fire, Hilda made out little by little the mysterious, pale heaps of clothes, and all the details of the room strewn and disordered by reason of an additional occupant. The adventure was now of infinite complexity, and its complexity seemed to be symbolized by the suggestive feminine mysteriousness of what she saw and what she divined in the darkness of the chamber. She thought: “I am here on false pretences. I ought to tell my secret. That would be fair—I have no right to intrude between her and him.” But she instinctively and powerfully resisted such ideas; with firmness she put them away, and yielded herself with a more exquisite apprehension to the anticipation of tomorrow.
ii
The order of meals at Lane End was somewhat peculiar even then, and would now be almost unique. It was partly the natural expression of an instinctive and justified feeling of superiority, and partly due to a discretion which forbade the family to scandalize the professional classes of the district by dining at night. Dinner occurred in the middle of the day, and about nine in the evening was an informal but copious supper. Between those two meals, there came a tea which was neither high or low, and whose hour, six o’clock in theory, depended to a certain extent, in practice, on Mr. Orgreave’s arrival from the office. Not seldom Mr. Orgreave was late; occasionally he was very late. The kitchen waited to infuse the tea until a command came from some woman, old or young, who attentively watched a window for a particular swinging of the long gate at the end of the garden, or listened, when it was dark, for the bang of the gate and a particular crunching of gravel.
On this Tuesday evening, Osmond Orgreave was very late, and the movement of the household was less smooth than usual, owing to Mrs. Orgreave’s illness and to the absence of Janet at Hillport in connection with the projected Hillport Choral Society. (Had Janet been warned of Hilda’s visit, she would not have accepted an invitation to a tea at Hillport as a preliminary to the meeting of the provisional committee.) Hilda was in a state of acute distress. The appointment with Edwin Clayhanger seemed to be absolutely sacred to her; to be late for it would amount to a crime: to miss it altogether would be a calamity inconceivable. The fingers of all the clocks in the house were revolving with the most extraordinary rapidity—she was helpless.
She was helpless, because she had said nothing all day of her appointment, and because Janet had not mentioned it either. Janet might have said before leaving: “Tea had better not wait too long—Hilda has to be down at Clayhanger’s at half-past six.” Janet’s silence impressed Hilda: it was not merely strange—it was formidable: it affected the whole day. Hilda thought: “Is she determined not to speak of it unless I do?” Immediately Janet was gone, Hilda had run up to the bedroom. She was minded to change the black frock which she had been wearing, and which she hated, and to put on another skirt and bodice that Janet had praised. She longed to beautify herself, and yet she was still hesitating about it at half-past five in the evening as she had hesitated at eight in the morning. In the end she had decided not to change, an account of the rain. But the rain had naught to do with her decision. She would not change, because she was too proud to change. She would go just as she was! She could not accept the assistance of an attractive bodice!... Unfeminine, perhaps, but womanly.
At twenty-five minutes to seven, she went into Mrs. Orgreave’s bedroom, rather like a child, and also rather like an adult creature in a distracting crisis. Tom Orgreave and Alicia were filling the entire house with the stormy noise of a piano duet based upon Rossini’s William Tell.
“I think I’ll miss tea, Mrs. Orgreave,” she said. “Edwin Clayhanger invited me to go over the printing-works at half-past six, and it’s twenty-five minutes to seven now.”
“Oh, but, my dear,” cried Mrs. Orgreave, “why ever didn’t you tell them downstairs, or let me know earlier?”
And she pulled at the bell-rope that overhung the head of the bed. Not a trace of teasing archness in her manner! Hilda’s appointment might have been of the most serious business interest, for anything Mrs. Orgreave’s demeanor indicated to the contrary. Hilda stood mute and constrained.
“You run down and tell them to make tea at once, dear. I can’t let you go without anything at all. I wonder what can have kept Osmond.”
Almost at the same moment, Osmond Orgreave entered the bedroom. His arrival had been unnoticed amid the tremendous resounding of the duet.
“Oh, Osmond,” said his wife. “Wherever have you been so late? Hilda wants to go—Edwin Clayhanger has invited her to go over the works.”
Hilda, trembling at the door, more than half expected Mr. Orgreave to say: “You mean, she’s invited herself.” But Osmond received the information with exactly the same polite, apologetic seriousness as his wife, and,............