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Updated: June 7, 2025
He hoped he had not offended her, because he wanted very much not to go in cold blood to the famed mansion of the Orgreaves but by some magic to find himself within it one night, at his ease, sharing in brilliant conversation. "Oh no!" he said to himself. "She's not offended. A fine girl like that isn't offended for nothing at all!" He had been invited to visit the Orgreaves!
"I hear you're getting frightfully thick with the Orgreaves," Clara observed, with a malicious accent and smile, as if to imply that he was getting frightfully above himself, and simultaneously that the Orgreaves were after all no better than other people. "Who told you that?" He walked towards the doorway uneasily.
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 bind 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.
He looked at it with perturbation, and left it. The consoling thing was that the Orgreaves had always expressed high esteem for Hilda. He leaned on the Orgreaves. He wondered how the affair would end? It could not indefinitely continue on its present footing. How indeed would it end?
On the lawn of the Orgreaves, Alicia was battling fiercely at tennis with an elegant young man whose name he did not know. Croquet was deposed; tennis reigned. Even Alicia's occasional shrill cry had a mournful quality in the languishing beauty of the evening. "I wish you'd tell your father I shan't be able to go tomorrow," Edwin said to Janet. "But he's told all of us you are going!"
Janet was her friend, in theory her one intimate friend: she had seen her once in London, beautiful, agreeable, affectionate, intelligent; all the Orgreaves were lovable. The glance of Edwin Clayhanger, and the sincerity of his smile, had affected her in a manner absolutely unique.... But would she ever go back? It seemed to her fantastic, impossible, that she should ever go back.
And the discreet Janet, comprehending Hilda, had not even mentioned this fact to the rest of the family. George Cannon, in a light summer suit and straw hat, was already on the platform at Knype. Hilda had feared that at Bleakridge he might be looking out of the window of the local train, which started from Turnhill; she had desired not to meet him in the presence of any of the Orgreaves.
Have you got any other friends who'll stand by you?" "I've got the Orgreaves," she answered. "And do you think it would be better for the Orgreaves to keep you, or for me?" As she made no response, he continued: "Anybody else besides the Orgreaves?" "No," she muttered sulkily. "I'm not the sort of woman that makes a lot of friends. I expect people don't like me, as a rule."
He was extraordinarily wakeful and alive, every sense painfully sharpened. At last he decided to go to bed. In his bedroom he gazed idly out at the blank density of the fog. And then his heart leapt as his eye distinguished a moving glimmer below in the garden of the Orgreaves. He threw up the window in a tumult of anticipation. The air was absolutely still.
"You needn't talk like that," she retorted calmly, "unless you want to go down in my good opinion. You don't mean to tell me honestly that you don't know what's been the talk of the town for years and years!" "It's ridiculous," said Edwin. "Why what do you know of her you don't know the Orgreaves at all!" "I know that, anyway," said Auntie Hamps. "Oh! Stuff!" He grew impatient.
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