 12. The top of the square. In making the detour through the cock-yard to reach St. Luke's Square again at the top of it, the only members of the all-grieve clan whom they encountered were Jimmy and Johnny, who, on hearing of the disappearance of their father and Janet, merely pointed out that their father and Janet were notoriously always getting themselves lost, owing to gross carelessness about whatever they happened to be doing. The youths then departed, saying that the Bursley show was nothing, and that they were going to Handbridge. They conveyed the idea that Handbridge was the only place in the world for self-respecting men of fashion. But before leaving, they informed Edwin that a fellow at the corner of the square was letting out rather useful barrels on lease. This fellow proved to be an odd jobman who had been discharged from the Duke of Wellington-Vaults in the marketplace for consistently intemperate language, but whose tongue was such that he had persuaded the landlord on this occasion to let him borrow a dozen stout empty barrels and the police to let him dispose them on the pavement. Every barrel was occupied and, perceiving this, Edwin at once became bold with the barrel-man. He did not comfortably fancy himself perch prominent on a barrel with hilda less sways by his side, but he could enjoy talking about it, and he wished to show hilda that he could be as dashing as those young sparks Jimmy and Johnny. Now, Mester shouted the barrel-man thickly in response to Edwin's airy remark. The easier to chapsel shunned off for the price of a quart. He indicated a couple of barrel tenants of his own tribe who instantly jumped down, touching their soiled caps. They were part of the barrel-man's machinery for increasing profits. Edwin could not withdraw. His very cowardice forced him to be audacious. By the time he had satisfied the clawing greed of three dirty hands, the two barrels had cost him a shilling. Hilda's only observation was, as Edwin helped her to the plateau of the barrel, I too wish they wouldn't spit on their money. All barrels being now let to bonafide tenants and paid for, the three men sidled hastily away in order to drink luck to Sunday schools in the Duke of Wellington's entire. And Edwin, mounting the barrel next to Hilda's, was thinking, I've been done over that job. I ought to have got them for sixpence. He saw how expensive it was going about with delicately nurtured women. Never would he have offered a barrel to Maggie, and even had he done so, Maggie would assuredly have said that she could make shift well enough without one. It's simply perfect for seeing exclaimed Hilda as he achieved her altitude. Her tone was almost corneal. He felt surprisingly at ease. Part II The whole square was now suddenly revealed as a swarming mass of heads, out of which rose banners and pennons that were cruder in tint even than the frocks and hats of the little girls and the dresses and bonnets of their teachers. The men, too, by their neckties, scarves and rosettes, added color to color. All the windows were chromatic with the hues of bright costumes, and from many windows and from every roof that had a flag staff, flags waved heavily against the gorgeous sky. At the bottom of the square the lorries with infants had been arranged, and each looked like a bank of variegated flowers. The principal bands, that is to say, all the bands that could be trusted, were collected round the red bay's platform at the top of the square, and the vast sun-reflecting euphoniums, trumpets and comets made a glittering circle about the officials and ministers and their wives and women. All denominations for one day only fraternized effusively together on that platform, for princes of the Royal House and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Lord Mayor of London had urged that it should be so. The primitive Methodist's parson discovered himself next but one to Father Milton, who on any other day would have been a popish priest, and whose wooden substitute for a wife was the queen on a chessboard, and on all these the sun blazed torridly. And almost in the middle of the square an immense purple banner bellied in the dusty breeze, saying in large gold letters, the blood of the lamb, together with the name of some Sunday school which Edwin from his barrel could not decipher. Then a hoary, white-tide notability on the platform raised his mighty arm very high and a bugle called, and a voice that had filled fields in exciting times of religious revival, floated in thunder across the enclosed square, easily dominating it. Let us sing! And the conductor of the eager mass bands set them free with a gesture, and after they had played a stave, a small, stentorian choir at the back of the platform broke forth, and in a moment the entire multitude, at first raggedly, but soon in good unison, was singing. Rock of ages cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee, let the water and the blood from thy ribbon side which flowed, be of sin the double cure, cleanse from guilt and make me pure. The volume of sound was overwhelming, its crashing force was enough to sweep people from barrels. Edwin could feel moisture in his eyes, and he dared not look at hilda. Why the juice, do I want to cry? he asked himself angrily, and was ashamed. And at the beginning of the second verse, when the glittering instruments bled forth anew, and the innumerable voices high and loud, infantile and aged, flooded swiftly over their brassy notes, subduing them. The effect on Edwin was the same again. A tightening of the throat, and a squeezing down of the eyelids. Why was it? Through a mist he read the words, the blood of the lamb, and he could picture the riven trunk of a man dying, and a torrent of blood flowing therefrom, and people like his Auntie Clara and his brother-in-law Albert, plunging ecstatically into the liquid in order to be white. The picture came again in the third verse, the red fountains and the frantic bathers. Then the notability raised his arm once more, and took off his hat, and all the males on the platform took off their hats, and presently every boy and man in the square had uncovered his head to the strong sunshine. And at last Edwin had to do the same, and only the policemen by virtue of their high office could dare to affront the majesty of God. And the reverberating voice cried, O most merciful Lord have pity upon us, we are brands plucked from the burning, and continued for several minutes to descant upon the theme of everlasting torture by incandescence and thirst. Nominally addressing a deity, but in fact preaching to his audience, he announced that even for the various infant on a lorry there was no escape from the eternal fires saved by complete immersion in the blood, and he was so convinced and convincing that an imaginative nose could have detected the odor of burnt flesh. And all the while the great purple banner waved insistently, the blood of the lamb. Part 3 When the prayer was finished for the benefit of the little ones, another old and favoured hymn had to be sung. None but the classical lyrics of British Christianity had found a place in the programme of the great day, guided by the orchestra, the youth of Bursley, and the maturity thereof chanted with gusto. There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. Dear, dying lamb, thy precious blood, Edwin, like everybody, knew every line of the poem. With the purple banner waving there a bloody motto, he foresaw each sanguinary detail of the verse ere it came to him from the shrill childish throats, and a phrase from another hymn jumped from somewhere in his mind just as William Kalpers ended and a speech commenced. The phrase was India's choral strand. In thinking upon it he forgot to listen to the speech. He saw the flags, banners, and pennons floating in the sunshine and in the heavy breeze. He felt the reverberation of the tropic sun on his head. He saw the crowded humanity of the square attired in its crude primary colours. He saw the great brass serpentine instruments gleaming. He saw the red dais. He saw bursting with infancy the immense cams to which were attached the fantastically plaited horses. He saw the venerable zealots on the dais raving lest after all the institutions whose centenary they had met to honour should not save these children from hopeless and excruciating torture for ever and ever. He saw those majestic purple folds in the centre embroidered with the legend of the blood of the mystic, partial lamb. He saw the meek, stupid, and superstitious faces all turned one way, all for the moment under the empire of one horrible idea, all convinced that the consequences of sins could be prevented by an act of belief, all gloating over inexhaustible tides of blood. And it seemed to him that he was not in England any longer. It seemed to him that in the dim cellars under the shambles behind the town hall, where he had once been, there dwelt, squatting, a strange and savage god who would blast all those who did not enter his presence stripping with gore, be they child or grandfather. It seemed to him that the drums were tom-toms and banes are bizarre. He could fit every detail of the scene to harmonise with a vision of India's choral strand. There was no mist before his eyes now. His sight was so clear that he could distinguish his father at a window of the bank, at the other top corner of the square. Part of his mind was so idle that he could wonder how his father had contrived to get there, and where the Maggie was staying at home with Clara. But the visualisation of India's choral strand in St Luke's Square persisted. A phrase in the speech loosed some catch in him, and he turned suddenly to Hilda, and in an intimate half-whisper murmured, more blood. What! she harshly questioned, but he knew that she understood. Well, he said audaciously, look at it, only once the Ganges at the bottom of the square. No one heard save she, but she put her hand on his arm, protestingly. Even if we don't believe, said she, not harshly but imploringly, we needn't make fun. We don't believe, that new tone of entreaty! She had comprehended without explanation. She was a weird woman. Was there another creature, male or female, to whom he would have dared to say what he had said to her? He had chosen to say it to her because he despised her, because he wished to trample on her feelings. She roused the brute in him, and perhaps no one was more astonished than himself to witness the brute stirring. Imagine saying to the gentle and sensitive Janet, it only once the Ganges at the bottom of the square he could not. They stood silent, gazing and listening, and the sun went higher in the sky and blazed down more cruelly. And then the speech ended, and the speaker wiped his head with an enormous handkerchief, and the multitude led by the brazen instruments, which in a moment it overpowered, was singing to a solemn air. When I surveyed the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain I count but lost, and poor contempt on all my pride. Hilda shook her head. What's the matter, he asked, leaning towards her from his barrel? That's the most splendid religious verse ever written, she said passionately. You can say what you like, it's worthwhile believing anything if you can sing words like that, and mean them. She had an air of restrained fury, but fancy exciting herself over a hymn. Yes, it is fine, that is, he agreed. Do you know who wrote it, she demanded menacingly? I'm afraid I don't remember, he said. The hymn was one of his earliest recollections, but it never occurred to him to be curious as to its authorship. Her lips sneered. Dr. Watts, of course, she snapped. He could hear her beneath the tremendous chanting from the square, repeating the words to herself with her precise and impressive articulation. CHAPTER XIII From the elevation of his barrel Edwin could survey in the lordly and negligent manner of people on a height all the detail of his immediate surroundings. Presently in common with Hilda and the other aristocrats of barrels he became aware of the increased vivacity of a scene which was passing at a little distance near a hokey pokey barrel. The chief actors in the affair appeared to be a young policeman, the owner of the hokey pokey barrel and an old man. It speedily grew into one of those episodes which, occurring on the outskirts of some episode immensely greater, draw too much attention to themselves and thereby outrage the sense of proportion residing in most plain men and especially in most policemen. Give him a half of hokey, said a derisive voice. He hasn't got a tooth in his head, but it wants no chewing-okey, does no? There was a general guffaw from the little rabble about the barrel. I give us some of that, said the piping silly voice of the old man, but I'm unget to that there platform I'm telling you. I'm telling all of you. He made a senile plunge against the body of the policeman, as against a moveless barricade, and then his hat was awry and it fell off, and somebody lifted it into the air with a neat kick so that it dropped on the barrel. All laughed. The old man laughed. Now old soldier, said the hot policeman curtly, none of this, none of this. I advise you civilly to be quiet. That's what I advise you. You can't go on the platform without a ticket. Nay, piped the old man. Don't I tell you I lost it down the sitch? And where's your rosette? Never had any rosette, the old man replied. I'm the oldest Sunday school teacher in the five towns. I, fifty years and more since I was super at Turnhill Primitive Sunday School. And all Turnhill knows it. And I've got to get on that there platform. I'm the oldest Sunday school teacher in the five towns, and I was super to rival youngsters in turn. Super, super. And another person unceremoniously jammed the felt hat on the old man's head. It's not to me if you as forty supers said the policeman with menacing disdain. I've got my orders and I'm not here to be knocked about. Where did you have your last drink? No wine, no beer, no spiritual liquors have I tasted for sixty-one years. Come, moderness, whimpered the old man. And he gave another lurch against the policeman. My name's Shushians, and he repeated in a frantic treble. My name's Shushians. Go and bury thy soul, Gaffa, a herculean young collier advised him. Why, murmured Hilda with a sharp frown, that must be poor old Mr. Shushians from Turnhill, and they're guying him. You must stop it. Something must be done at once. She jumped down feverishly and Edwin had to do likewise. He wondered how he should conduct himself so as to emerge creditably from the situation. He felt himself and had always felt himself to be the last man in the world, capable of figuring with authority in a public altercation. He loathed public altercations. The name of Shushians meant nothing to him. He had forgotten it, if indeed he had ever wittingly heard it. And he did not at first recognize the old man. Descended from the barrel he was merely an item in the loose-packed crowd. As in the wake of Hilda he pushed with false eagerness between stubborn shoulders, he heard the band striking up again. Part 2 Approaching he saw that the old man was very old. And then memory stirred. He began to surmise that he had met the wizened face before, that he knew something about it. And the face brought up a picture of the shop door and of his father standing beside it a long time ago. He recalled his last day at school. Yes, of course, this was the old man named Shushians, some sort of an acquaintance of his father's. This was the old man who had wept a surprising tear at the sight of him Edwin. The incident was so far off that it might have been recorded in history books. He had never seen Mr. Shushians since. And the old man was changed nearly out of recognition. The old man had lived too long. He had survived his dignity. He was now nothing but a bundle of capricious and obstinate instincts, set in motion by ancient souvenirs remembered at hazard. The front of his face seemed to have given way in general collapse. The lips were in a hollow, the cheeks were concave, the eyes had receded. And there were pits in the forehead. The pale, silvery, straggling hairs might have been counted. The wrinkled skin was of a curious brown-yellow, and the veins, instead of being blue, were outlined in Indian red. The impression given was that the flesh would be unpleasant and uncanny to the touch. The body was bent and the neck eternally quicked backwards in the effort of the eyes to look up. Moreover, the old man was in a state of neglect. His beard alone proved that. His clothes were dirty and had the air of concealing dirt. And he was dressed with striking oddness. He wore boots that were not a pair. His collar was only fastened by one button behind. The ends oscillated like wings. He had forgotten to fasten them in front. He had forgotten to put on a necktie. He had forgotten the use of buttons on all his garments. He had grown down into a child again. But Providence had not provided him with a nurse. Worse than these merely material phenomena was the mumbling toothless jibber of his shrill protesting, the glassy look of idiocy from his fatigued eyes, and the inane smile and impotent frown that alternated on his features. He was a horrible and offensive old man. He was times obscene victim. Edwin was revolted by the spectacle of the younger men baiting him. He was astonished that they were so short-sighted as not to be able to see the image of themselves in the old man, so imprudent as not to think of their own future, so utterly brutalized. He wandered by the simple force of desire to seclude and shelter the old man, to protect the old man not only from the insults of stupid and crass bullies, but from the old man himself from his own fatuous senility. He wanted to restore to him by a benevolent system of pretenses, the dignity and the self-respect which he had innocently lost, and so to keep him decent to the eye if not to the ear, until death came to repair its omission. And it was for his own sake, for the sake of his own image, as much as for the sake of the old man that he wanted to do this. Part 3 All that flashed through his mind and heart in a second. I know this old gentleman, at least I know him by sight, Hilda was saying to the policeman, he's very well known in Turnhill as an old Sunday school teacher, and I'm sure he ought to be on that platform. Before her eye and her precise and haughty voice, which had no trace of the local accent, the young policeman was secretly abashed, and the louts fell back sheepishly. Yes, he's a friend of my father's, Mr. Clayhanger Printer, said Edwin, behind her. The old man stood blinking in the glare. The policeman, ignoring Hilda, glanced at Edwin and touched his cap. His friends hadn't ordered him out like this, sir, just look at him, he sneered, and added, I'm on point, Judy, if you ask me, I should say his friends ought to take him home. He said this with a peculiar, mysterious emphasis, and looked furtively at the louts for moral support in sarcasm. They encouraged him with grins. He must be got onto the platform somehow, said Hilda, and glanced at Edwin as if counting absolutely on Edwin. That's what he's come for, I'm sure it means everything to him. I, the old mandrone, I was super when we had to teach him their alphabet and give him a crust to start with. Many's the man walking about in these towns in purple, and fine raiment as I taught his letters to, and his spellings, I, and his multiplication table in them days. It's all very well missed, said the policeman, but who's going to get him to the platform? He'll be dropping in a sunstroke before you can say knife. Can't we? She gazed at Edwin appealingly. Dug him into the pub, growled the collier audacious. At the same moment two rosettes bustled up authoritatively. One of them was the burly Albert Benbeau. For the first time Edwin was conscious of genuine pleasure at the sight of his brother-in-law. Albert was a born rosette. What's all this? What's this? What is it? He said sharply. Hello, what, Mr. Shushions? He bent down and looked close at the old man. Where you been, old gentleman? he spoke loud in his ear. Everybody's been asking for you. Service is well nigh over, but you must come up. The old man did not appear to grasp the significance of Albert's patronage. Albert turned to Edwin and winked not only for Edwin's benefit, but for that of the policeman who smiled in a manner that infuriated Edwin. Queer old stick, Albert murmured. No doing anything with him. He's quarrelled with everyone at Turnhill. That's why he wanted to come to us. And of course we weren't going to refuse the old Sunday school teacher in the five towns. He's a catch. Come along, old gentleman. Mr. Shushions did not stir. Now, Mr. Shushions, Hilda persuaded him in a voice exquisitely mild, and with a lovely gesture she bent over him. Let these gentlemen take you up to the platform. That's what you've come for, you know. The transformation in her amazed Edwin who could see the tears in her eyes. The tableau of the little silly old man looking up and Hilda looking down at him, with her lips parted in a heavenly invitation, and one gloved hand caressing his greenish black shoulder and the other mechanically holding the parasol aloft. This tableau was imprinted forever on Edwin's mind. It was a vision blended in an instant and in an instant dissolved. But for Edwin it remained one of the pockle things of his experience. Hilda gave Edwin her parasol and quickly fastened Mr. Shushions collar, and the old man consented to be led off between the two rosettes. The bands were playing the Austrian hymn. Like to come up with you young lady friend, Albert whispered to Edwin, important as he went. Oh, no thanks, Edwin hurriedly smiled. Now, old gentleman, he could hear Albert aduring Mr. Shushions, and he could see him broadly winking to the other rosettes and embracing the yielding crowd in his wink. Thus the doddering old fool who had given his youth to Sunday schools when Sunday schools were not patronized by princes, archbishops, and Lord Mares, when Sunday schools were the scorn of the intelligent, and had sometimes to be held in public houses for lack of better accommodation, thus was he taken off for a show and a museum curiosity by indulgent and shallow Samaritans, who had not even the wit to guess that he had sown what they were reaping. And Darius Clayhanger stood oblivious at a high window of the sacred bank, and Edwin, who all unconscious owed the very fact of his existence to the doting imbecile, regarded him chiefly as a figure in a tableau, as the chance instrument of a woman's beautiful revelation. Mr. Shushions' sole crime against society was that he had forgotten to die. Part IV Hilda Leslie's would not return to the barrels, she was taciturn, and the only remark which she made bore upon the advisability of discovering Janet and Mr. Orgreave. They threaded themselves out of the moving crowd and away from the hokey-pokey stall and the barrels into the tranquility of the marketplace, where the shadow of the gold angel at the top of the town hall's spire was a mere squat shapeless stain on the irregular paving-stones. The sound of the festival came diminished from the square. You're very fond of poetry, aren't you, Edwin asked her, thinking among many other things, of her observation upon the verse of Isaac Watts. Of course, she replied, disagreeably, I can't imagine anybody wanting to read anything else. She seemed to be ashamed of her kindness to Mr. Shushions, and to wish to efface any impression of amiability that she might have made on Edwin. But she could not have done so. Well, he said to himself, there's no getting over it. You're the biggest caution I've ever come across. His condition was one of various agitation. Then, just as they were passing the upper end of the cockyard, which was an archway, Mr. Orgreave and Janet appeared in the archway. We've been looking for you everywhere, and so have we. What have you been doing? What have you been doing? Father and daughter were gay. They had not seen much, but they were gay. Hilda less ways than Edwin were not gay, and Hilda would characteristically make no effort to seem that which she was not. Edwin, therefore, was driven by his own diffidence into a nervous light locacity. He began the tale of Mr. Shushions, and Hilda punctuated it with stabs of phrases. Mr. Orgreave laughed. Janet listened with eager sympathy. Poor old thing, what a shame, said Janet. But to Edwin with the vision of Hilda's mercifulness in his mind, even the sympathy of Janet for Mr. Shushions had a quality of uncomprehending, facile condescension which slightly jarred on him. The steam-car loitered interview discharged two passengers and began to manoeuvre for the return journey. Oh, do let's go home by car, Father, cried Janet, it's too hot for anything. Edwin took leave of them at the car steps. Janet was the smiling incarnation of loving-kindness. Hilda shook hands grudgingly. Through the windows of the car he saw her sternly staring at the advertisements of the interior. He went down the cockyard into Wedgewood Street whence he could hear the bands again and see the pennants. He thought this is a funny way of spending a morning, and wondered what he should do with himself till dinnertime. It was not yet a quarter-past twelve, still the hours had passed with extraordinary speed. He stood aimless at the corner of the pavement, and people who, having had their fill of the sun and the spectacle in the square, were strolling slowly away, saw a fair young man in a stylish suit, evidently belonging to the aloof classes, gazing at nothing whatever with his hands elegantly in his pockets. Money Things sometimes fall out in a surprising way, and the removal of the clay-hanger household from the corner of Duck Square to the heights of Bleak Ridge was diversified by a circumstance which Edwin, the person whom alone it concerned, had not in the least anticipated. It was the Monday morning after the centenary. Foster's largest furniture van painted all over with fine pictures of the van itself, traveling by road, rail, and sea, stood loaded in front of the shop. One van had already departed, and this second one in its crammed interior, on its crowded roof, on a swinging platform beneath its floor, and on a posterior ledge supported by rusty chains, contained all that was left of the furniture and domestic goods which Darius Clay-Hanger had collected in half a century of ownership. The moral effect of Foster's activity was always salutary, in that Foster would prove to any man how smaller space the acquisitions of a lifetime could be made to occupy when the object was not to display but to pack them. Foster could put all your pride onto four wheels, and Foster's driver would crack a whip and be off with a lot of it as though it were no more than a load of coal. The pavement and the road were littered with straw, and the straw straggled into the shop and heaped itself at the open-side door. One large brass saucepan lay lawn near the doorstep, a proof that Foster was human. For everything except that saucepan a place had been found. That saucepan had witnessed sundry ineffectual efforts to lodge it, and had also suffered frequent forgetfulness. A tin candlestick had taken refuge within it and was trusting for safety to the might of the obstinate vessel. In the sequel the candlestick was pitched by Edwin onto the roof of the van and Darius Clay-Hanger, coming fussily out of the shop, threw a question at Edwin, and then picked up the saucepan and went off to Bleakridge with it, thus making sure that it would not be forgotten, and demonstrating to the town that he, Darius, was at last flitting into his grand new house. Even waited by the saucepan in which Mrs. Nixon had boiled hundred weights of jam, he still managed to keep his arms slanted outwards and motionless, retaining his appearance of a rigid body that swam smoothly along on mechanical legs. Darius, though putting control upon himself, was in a state of high complex emotion, partly due to apprehensiveness about the violent changing of the habits of a quarter of a century, and partly due to nervous pride. Maggie and Mrs. Nixon had gone to the new house half an hour earlier to devise encampments therein for the night, for the Clay-Hangers would definitely sleep no more at the corner of Duck Square. The rooms in which they had eaten and slept and lay awake and learnt what life and what death was, were to be transformed into workshops and stores for an increasing business. The premises were not abandoned empty. The shop had to function as usual on that formidable day, and the printing had to proceed. This had complicated the affair of the removal, but it had helped everybody to pretend in an adult and sedate manner that nothing in the least unusual was afoot. Edwin loitered on the pavement with his brain all tingling, and excitedly incapable of any consecutive thought whatever. It was his duty to wait. Two of Foster's men were across in the vaults of the Dragon, and the rest were at bleak reach with the first and smaller van. Only one of Foster's horses was in the dropped double shafts, and even he had his nose towards the van and in a nose-bag. Two others were to come down soon from bleak ridge to assist. Part 2 A tall, thin, grey-bearded man crossed Trafalgar Road from Abelkia Street. He was very tall and very thin, and the peculiarity of his walk was that the knees were never quite straightened, so that his height was really greater even than it seemed. His dark suit and his boots and hat were extraordinarily neat. You could be sure at once that he was a person of immutable habits. He stopped when, out of the corner of his eye, whose gaze was always precisely parallel to the direction of his feet, he glimpsed Edwin. Deflecting his course he went close to Edwin, and, addressing the vacant air immediately over Edwin's pate, he said in a mysterious confidential whisper, When are you coming in for that money? He spoke as though he was anxious to avoid by a perfect air of nonchalance, arousing the suspicions of some concealed emissary of the Russian secret police. Edwin started. Oh, he exclaimed. Is it ready? Yes, waiting. Are you going to your office now? Yes. Edwin hesitated. It won't take a minute, I suppose. I'll slip along in two shifts. I'll be there almost as soon as you are. Bring a receipt stamp, said the man, and resumed his way. He was the secretary of the Bursley and Turnhill Permanent Fifty Pounds Benefit Building Society, one of the most solid institutions of the district, and he had been its secretary for decades. No stories of the defalcation of other secretaries of societies, no rumours as to the perils of the system of the more famous star bokeh building societies, ever bred a doubt in Bursley or Turnhill of the eternal soundness of the Bursley and Turnhill Permanent Fifty Pounds Benefit Building Society. You could acquire a share in it by an entrance fee of one shilling, and then you paid 18 pence per week for ten years, making something less than forty pounds, and then after an inactive period of three months, the society gave you fifty pounds, and you began their with to build a house, if you wanted a house, and if you were prudent you instantly took out another share. You could have as many shares as you chose. Though the society was chiefly nourished by respectable artisans with stiff chins, nobody in the district would have considered membership to be beneath him. The society was an admiral device for strengthening an impulse towards thrift, because once you had put yourself into its machinery it would stand no nonsense. Prosperous tradesmen would push their children into it and even themselves. This was what had happened to Edwin in the dark past before he had left school. Edwin had regarded the trick with indifference at first, because, except the opening half-crown, his father had paid the subscriptions for him until he left school and became a wage earner, thereafter he had regarded it as simple parental madness. His whole life seemed to be nothing but a waste of Friday evenings on which he went to the society's office between seven and nine to pay the club. The social origin of any family in Bursley might have been decided by the detail, whether it referred to the society as the building society or as the club. Artisans called it the club, because it did resemble an old-fashioned benefit club. Edwin had invariably heard it called club at home and he called it club, and he did not know why. Part 3 On ten thousand Friday evenings, as it seemed to him, he had gone into the gas-lit office with the wire-blinds in the cock-yard, and the procedure never varied. Behind a large table sat two gentlemen, the secretary and a subordinate, who was, however, older than the secretary. They had enormous ledges in front of them, and at the lower corners of the immense pages was a transverse crease, like a mountain range on the left and like a valley on the right, caused by secretarial thumbs in turning over. On the table were also large metal ink stands and wooden money coffers. The two officials both wore spectacles, and they both looked above their spectacles when they talked to members across the table. They spoke in low tones, they smiled with the most scrupulous politeness, they never wasted words. They counted money with prim and efficient gestures, ringing gold with the mean of judges inaccessible to human emotions. They wrote in the ledges and on the membership cards in a hand astoundingly regular and discreetly flourished. The pages of the ledges had the mystic charm of ancient manuscripts, and the finality of decrees of fate. Apparently the scribes never made mistakes, but sometimes they would whisper in colloquy, and one, without leaning his body, would run a finger across the ledger of the other. Their fingers knew intimately the geography of the ledgers, and moved as though they could have found a desired name, date or number in the dark. The whole ceremony was impressive. It really did impress Edwin, as he would wait his turn among the three or four proud and respectable members that the going and coming seemed always to leave in the room. The modest blue-yellow gas, the vast table and ledges, and the two sober heads behind, the polite murmurings, the rustle of leaves, the chink of money, the smooth sound of elegant pens. All this made something not merely impressive, but beautiful. Something that had a true, if narrow dignity, something that ministered to an ideal, if a low one. But Edwin had regarded the operation as a complete loss of the money whose payment it involved. Ten years it was an eternity, and even then his father would have some preposterous suggestion for rendering useless the unimaginable fifty pounds. Meanwhile the weekly deduction of eighteen pence from his miserable income was an exasperating strain. And then one night the secretary had told him that he was entering on his last month. If he had possessed any genuine interest in money he would have known for himself, but he did not, and then the payments had seized. He had said nothing to his father. And now the share had matured and there was the unimaginable sum waiting for him. He got his hat and a stamp and hurried to the cock-yard. The secretary, in his private room now, gave him five notes as though the notes had been nought but tissue paper, and he accepted them in the same inhuman manner. The secretary asked him if he meant to take out another share, and from sheer moral cowardice he said that he did mean to do so. And he did so, on the spot. And in less than ten minutes he was back at the shop. Nothing had happened there. The other horses had not come down from Bleak Ridge and the men had not come out of the dragon. But he had fifty pounds in his pocket, and it was lawfully his. A quarter of an hour earlier he positively could not have conceived the miracle. Part 4 Two days later, on the Wednesday evening, Edwin was in his new bedroom overlooking his father's garden with a glimpse of the garden of Lane End House. His chamber for him was palatial, and it was at once the symbol and the scene of his new life. A stranger entering would have beheld a fair-sized room, a narrow bed, two chairs, an old-fashioned table, a new wardrobe, an old dressing table, a curious carpet and hearth rug, low bookshelves on either side of the fireplace, and a few prints and drawings, not all of them framed, on the distempered walls. A stranger might have said in its praise that it was light and airy, but a stranger could not have had the divine vision that Edwin had. Edwin looked at it and saw clearly and with the surest conviction that it was wonderful. He stood on the hearth rug with his back to the hearth, bending his body concavely and then convexly with the idle, easy sinuousness of youth, and he saw that it was wonderful. As an organic whole it was wonderful, its defects were qualities. For instance it had no convenience for washing, but with a bathroom a few yards off who would encumber his study, it was a study, with washing apparatus. He had actually presented his old ramshackle wash stand to the attic, which was to be occupied by Miss Nixon's niece, a girl engaged to aid her aunt in the terrible work of keeping clean a vast mansion. And the bedroom could show one or two details that in a bedroom were luxurious. Chief of these were the carpet, the hearth rug and the table. Edwin owed them to a marvellous piece of good fortune. He had feared and even Maggie had feared that their father would impair the practical value and the charm of the new house by parsimony in the matter of furniture. The furniture in the domestic portion of the old dwelling was quite inadequate for the new one and scarcely fit for it either. Happily Darius had heard of a house full of furniture for sale at Old Castle by private treaty, and in a wild adventurous hour he had purchased it exceedingly cheap. Edwin had been amazed at his luck. He accepted the windfall as his own private luck, when he first saw the bought furniture in the new house before the removal. Out of it he had selected the table, the carpet and the rug for his bedroom, and none had demurred. He noticed that his father listened to him in affairs of the new house as to an individuality whose views demanded some trifle of respect. Beyond question his father was proving himself to possess a mind equal to the grand situation. What with the second servant and the furniture, Edwin felt that he would not have to blush for the house no matter who might enter it to spy it out. As for his own room he would not object to the Sunday seeing it, indeed he would rather like the Sunday to see it on his next visit. Already it was in nearly complete order for he had shown a singular callous disregard for the progress of the rest of the house, against which surprising display of selfishness both Maggie and Mrs. Nixon had glumly protested. The truth was that he was entirely obsessed by his room. It had disabled his conscience. When he had oscillated on his heels and toes for a few moments with his gaze on the table, he faced about and stared in a sort of vacant beatitude at the bookshelves to the left hand. Those to the right hand were as yet empty. Twilight was deepening. Part 5 He heard his father's heavy and clumsy footsteps on the landing. The old man seemed to wander uncertainly a little, and then he pushed open Edwin's door with a brisk movement and entered the room. The two exchanged a look. They seldom addressed each other save for an immediate practical purpose, and they did not address each other now. But Darius ejaculated as he glanced around. They had no intimacy. Darius never showed any interest in his son as an independent human being with a developing personality, though he might have felt such an interest. And Edwin was never conscious of a desire to share any of his ideas or ideals with his father, whom he was content to accept as a creature of inscrutable motives. Now he resented his father's incursion. He considered his room as his castle, whereof his rightful exclusive dominion ran as far as the doormat, and to placate his pride Darius should have indicated by some gesture or word that he admitted being a visitor on sufferance. It was nothing to Edwin that Darius owned the room and nearly everything in it. He was generally nervous in his father's presence, and his submissiveness only hid a spiritual independence that was not less fierce for being restrained. He thought Darius a gross fleshly organism, as he indeed was, and he privately objected to many paternal mannerisms of eating, drinking, breathing, erectation, speech, deportment and garb. Further he had noted and felt the increasing moroseness of his father's demeanour. He could remember a period when Darius had moods of grim gaiety, displaying rough humour. These moods had long ceased to occur. But this is how you fix yourself up, Darius observed. Yes, Edwin smiled not moving from the hearth rug, and not seizing to oscillate on heels and toes. Well I'll say this, you've got a goodish notion of looking after yourself, when you can spare a few minutes to do a bit downstairs. This sentence was sarcastic and required no finishing. I was just coming, said Edwin, and to himself, what on earth does he want here, making his noises? With youthful lack of imagination and of sympathy he quite failed to perceive the patent fact that his father had been drawn into the room by the very same instinct which had caused Edwin to stand on the hearth rug in an idle bliss of contemplation. It did not cross his mind that his father too was during these days going through wondrous mental experiences, that his father too had begun a new life, that his father too was intensely proud of the house and found pleasure in merely looking at it, and looking at it again and at every corner of it. A glint of gold attracted the eye of Darius to the second shelf of the left-hand bookcase, and he went towards it with the arrogance of an autocrat whose authority recognises no limit. Fourteen fine, carved-backed volumes stood on that shelf in a row. Twelve of them were uniform, the other two odd. These books were taller and more distinguished than any of the neighbours. Their sole possible rivals were half a dozen garishly-bound middle school prizes. Machine-tooled and to be mistaken for treasures only at a distance of several yards. Edwin trembled and loathed himself for trembling. He walked to the window. What be these, Darius inquired? Oh, some books I've been picking up. Part six. That same morning Edwin had been to the St Luke's covered market to buy some apples for Maggie, who had not yet perfected the organisation necessary to a house mistress who does not live within half a minute of a large central source of supplies, and to his astonishment he had observed that one of the interior shops was occupied by a second-hand bookseller with an address at Handbridge. He had never noticed the shop before, or if he had noticed it, he had despised it. But the chat with Tom Orgrieve had awakened in him the alertness of a hunter. The shop was not formally open, Wednesday's market being only half a market. The shopkeeper, however, was busy within. Edwin loitered. Behind the piles of negligible sermons, pietisms, keepsakes, schoolbooks, and Aristotle's tied up in red twine, these last, he could describe in the father gloom actual folios and quartos. It was like seeing the gleam of nuggets on the familiar slopes of Mow Cop, which is the five-towns mountain. The proprietor, an extraordinarily grimy man, invited him to examine. He could not refuse. He found Byron's child Harrod in one volume, and Don Juan in another, both royal octavo additions, slightly stained but bound in full calf. He bought them. He knew that to keep his resolutions he must read a lot of poetry. Then he saw Voltaire's prose tales in four volumes in French, an enchanting Dedo edition, with ink as black as Hades and paper as white as snow, also bound in full calf. He bought them. And then the proprietor showed him, in eight similar volumes, Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique. He did not want it, but it matched the tales, and it was impressive to the eye. And so he bought the other eight volumes. The total cost was seventeen shillings. He was intoxicated, and he was frightened. What a nucleus for a collection of real books of treasures! Those volumes would do no shame even to Tom Orgreave's bookcase, and they had been lying in the covered market of all places in the universe. Blind! How blind he had been to the possibilities of existence! Layed in with a bag of apples in one hand, and a heavy parcel of books in the other, he had had to go up to dinner in the car. It was no matter he possessed riches. The car stopped specially for him at the portals of the new house. He had introduced the books into the new house surreptitiously, because he was in fear despite his acute joy. He had pushed the parcel under the bed. After tea he had passed half an hour in gazing at the volumes, as at precious contraband. Then he had ranged them on the shelf, and had gazed at them for perhaps another quarter of an hour. And now his father, with the infallible nose of fathers, for that which is no concern of theirs, had lighted upon them and was peering into them, and fingering them with his careless, brutal hands, hands that could not differentiate between a ready rechner and a treasure. As the light failed he brought one of them and then another to the window. He muttered, Volte. Byron. And how much did they ask you for these? Fifteen shillings, said Edwin, in a low voice. Here take it, said his father, relinquishing a volume to him. He spoke in a queer, hard voice and instantly left the room. Edwin followed him shortly and assisted Maggie to hang pictures in that wilderness, the drawing room. Supper was eaten in silence, and Maggie looked a scant from her father to her brother, both of whom had a strained demeanor. Volume 2 Chapter 15 of Clay Hanger by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 15 The Insult The cold bath, the early excursion into the oblong of Meadow that was beginning to be a garden, the brisk, stimulating walk down Trafalgar Road to business. All these novel experiences which for a year Edwin had been anticipating with joyous eagerness, as bliss, final and sure, had lost their savor on the following morning. He had been ingenuous enough to believe that he would be happy in the new house, that the new house somehow meant the rebirth of himself and his family. Strange delusion. The bath's splashings and the other things gave him no pleasure, because he was saying to himself all the time, there's going to be a row this morning, there's going to be a regular shindy this morning. Yet he was accustomed to his father's scenes. Not a word at breakfast for which indeed Darius was very late, but a thick cloud over the breakfast table. Maggie showed that she felt the cloud, so did even Mrs. Nixon. The niece alone, unskilled in the science of meteorology, did not notice it, and was perfectly bright. Edwin departed before his father hurrying. He knew that his father, starting from the luxurious books, would ask him brutally what he meant by daring to draw out his share from the club without mentioning the affair, and particularly without confiding to his safe custody the whole sum withdrawn. He knew that his father would persist in regarding the fifty pounds as sacred as the Ark of the Covenant, and on the basis of the alleged outrage would build one of those cold furies that seemed to give him so perverse a delight. On the other hand, despite his father's peculiar intonation of the names of Edwin's authors, Voltaire and Byron, he did not fear to be upbraided for possessing himself of loose and poisonous literature. It was a point to his father's credit that he never attempted any kind of censorship. Edwin never knew whether this attitude was the result of indifference, or due to a grim sporting instinct. There was no sign of trouble in the shop until noon. Darius was very busy superintending the transformation of the former living rooms upstairs into supplementary workshops, and also the jobbing builder was at work according to the plans of Osmond Orgreave. But at five minutes past twelve, just before Stifford went out to his dinner, Darius entered the ebonized cubicle and said curtly to Edwin, who was writing there, show me your book. This demand surprised Edwin. His book was the shop sales book. He was responsible for it and for the petty cash book and for the shop till. His father's private cash book was utterly unknown to him, and he had no trustworthy idea of the financial totality of the business. But the management of the shop till gave him the air of being in his father's confidence, accustomed him to the discipline of anxiety, and also somewhat flattered him. He produced the book. The last complete page had not been added up. Add this, said his father. Darius himself added up the few lines on the incomplete page. Stiff, he shouted, bring me the sales slip. The amounts of sales conducted by Stifford himself were written on a slip of paper from which Edwin transferred the items at frequent intervals to the book. Go to your dinner, said Darius to Stifford when he appeared at the door of the cubicle with the slip. It's not quite time yet, sir. Go to your dinner, I tell you. Stifford had three quarters of an hour for his dinner. Part 2 Darius combined the slip with the book and made a total. Petty cash, he muttered shortly. Edwin produced the petty cash book, a volume of very trifling importance. Now bring me the till. Edwin went out of the cubicle and brought the till, which was a large and battered Japan cash box with a lid in two independent parts, from its well-concealed drawer behind the fancy counter. Darius counted the coins in it and made calculations on blotting paper, breathing statoriously all the time. What on earth are you trying to get at? Edwin asked with innocent familiarity. He thought that the club share crisis had been postponed by one of his father's swift, strange caprices. Darius turned on him glaring. I'm trying to get at where you got the brass from to buy them their books as I saw last night. Where did you get it from? There's not wrong here unless you're mighty lot cleverer than I take you for. Where did you get it from? You don't mean to tell me as you saved it up. Edwin had had some shocks in his life. This was the greatest. He could feel his cheeks and his hands growing dully-hot and his eyes smarting. And he was suddenly animated by an almost murderous hatred and an inexpressible disgust for his father, who in the grossness of his perceptions and his notions had imagined his son to be a thief. Loathsome beast he thought savagely. I'm waiting, said his father. I've drawn my club money, said Edwin. For an instant the old man was at a loss. Then he understood. He had entirely forgotten the maturing of the club share and assuredly he had not dreamed that Edwin would accept and secrete so vast a sum as fifty pounds, without uttering a word. Darius had made a mistake and a bad one. But in those days fathers were never wrong. Above all they never apologized. In Edwin's wicked act of concealment Darius could choose new and effective ground and he did so. And what does mean by doing that and saying nowt? Sneaking. What do you mean by calling me a thief? Edwin and Darius were equally starvelled by this speech. Edwin knew not what had come over him, and Darius never having been addressed in such a dangerous tone by his son was at a loss. I never called you a thief. Yes you did. Yes you did. Edwin nearly shouted now. You starve me for money until I haven't got sixpence to bless myself with. You couldn't get a man to do what I do for twice what you pay me. And then you call me a thief. And then you jump down my throat because I spend a bit of money of my own. He snorted. He knew that he was quite mad, but there was a strange drunken pleasure in this madness. Oh, dear tongue lads, had Darius as stiffly as he could. But Darius, having been unprepared, was intimidated. Darius vaguely comprehended that a new and disturbing factor had come into his life. Make a less row, he went on more strongly. Do you want all the street to hear? I won't make a less row. You make as much noise as you want and I'll make as much noise as I want. Edwin cried louder and louder, and then in bitter scorn, thief indeed. I never called you. Let me out, Edwin shouted. They were very close together. Darius saw that his son's face was all drawn. Edwin snatched his hat off his hook, pushed violently past his father, and sticking his hands deep in his pocket strode into the street. In four minutes he was hammering on the front door of the new house. Maggie opened in alarm. Edwin did not see how alarmed she was by his appearance. What father things I've been stealing, his damned money! Edwin snapped in a breaking voice. The statement was not quite accurate, but it suited his boiling anger to put it in the present tense, instead of in the past. He hesitated an instant in the hall, throwing a look behind at Maggie, who stood entranced with her hand on the latch of the open door. Then he bounded upstairs and shut himself in his room with a tremendous bang that shook the house. He wanted to cry, but he would not. Nobody disturbed him till about two o'clock when Maggie knocked at the door and opened it without entering. Edwin, I've kept your dinner hot. No thanks. He was standing with his legs wide apart on the hearth rug. Fathers had his dinner and gone. No thanks. She closed the door again. Volume 2 Chapter 16 of Clay Hanger by Arnold Bennett Chapter 16 The Sequel I say, Edwin, Maggie called through the door. Well, come in, come in, he replied, gruffly. And as he spoke, he sped from the window where he was drumming on the pane to the hearth rug so that he should have the air of not having moved since Maggie's previous visit. He knew not why he made this manoeuvre, unless it was that he thought vaguely that Maggie's impression of the seriousness of the crisis might thereby be intensified. She stood in the doorway, evidently placatory and sympathetic, and behind her stood Mrs. Nixon in a condition of great mental turmoil. I think you'd better come and have your tea, said Maggie, firmly and yet gently. She was soft and stout and incapable of asserting herself with dignity. But she was his elder, and there were moments when an unusual, scarce, perceptible quality in her voice would demand from him a particular attention. He shook his head and looked sternly at his watch, in the manner of one who could be adamant. He was astonished to see that the hour was a quarter past six. Where is he, he asked? Father, he's had his tea and gone back to the shop. Come along. I must wash myself first, said Edwin Gloomily. He did not wish to yield, but he was undeniably very hungry indeed. Mrs. Nixon could not leave him alone at tea, worrying him with offers of specialities to tempt him. He wondered who had told the old thing about the affair. Then he reflected that she had probably heard his outburst when he entered the house. Possibly the pert, nice niece also had heard it. Maggie remained sewing at the bow-window of the dining-room, while he ate a plentious tea. Father said I could tell you that you could pay yourself an extra half crown a week wages from next Saturday, said Maggie suddenly, when she saw he had finished. It was always Edwin who paid wages in the Clayhanger establishment. He was extremely startled by this news with all that it implied of surrender and of Pacific intentions, but he endeavored to hide what he felt and only snorted. He's been talking then. What did he say? Oh, not much, he told me I could tell you if I liked. It would have looked better of him if he told me himself, said Edwin, determined to be ruthless. Maggie offered no response. Part 2 After about a quarter of an hour he went into the garden and kicked stones in front of him. He could not classify his thoughts. He considered himself to be perfectly tranquilized now. But he was mistaken. As he idled in the beautiful August twilight near the garden front of the house, catching faintly the conversation of Mrs. Nixon and her niece, as it floated through the open window of the kitchen, round the corner, together with quiet, soothing sounds of washing up, he heard a sudden noise in the garden porch and turned swiftly. His father stood there. Both of them were off guard, their eyes met. Had your tea? Darius asked in an unnatural tone. Yes, said Edwin. Darius, having saved his face, hurried into the house, and Edwin moved down the garden with heart sensibly beating. The encounter renewed his agitation. And at the corner of the garden, over the hedge which had been repaired, Janet entrapped him. She seemed to have sprung out of the ground. He could not avoid greeting her, and in order to do so he had to dominate himself by force. She was in white. She appeared always to wear white on fine summer days. Her smile was exquisitely benignant. So you're installed, she began. They talked of the removal, she asking questions and commenting, and he giving brief replies. I'm all alone tonight, she said, in a pause, except for Alicia. Mother and father and the boys are gone to a fate at Longshore. And Miss Leswayes, he inquired self-consciously. Oh, she's gone, said Janet, she's gone back to London. Went yesterday. Rather sudden, isn't it? Well, she had to go. Does she live in London, Edwin asked, with an air of indifference? She does just now. I only ask because I thought from something she said she came from Turnhill Way. Her people do, said Janet. Yes, you may say she's a Turnhill girl. She seems very fond of poetry, said Edwin. You've noticed that Janet's face illuminated the dark. You should hear her recite. Recites, does she? You'd have heard her that night you were here, but when she knew you were coming she made us all promise not to ask her. Really, said Edwin, but why? She didn't know me. She'd never seen me. Oh, she might have to seen you in the street, in fact I believe she had. But that wasn't the reason, Janet laughed. It was just that you were a stranger. She's very sensitive, you know. Yes, he admitted. Part 3 He took leave of Janet somehow and went for a walk up to Toft End, where the wind blows. His thoughts were more complex than ever in the darkness. So she had made the more promise not to ask her to recite when he was at the Orgreaves. She had seen him previous to that in the street, and had obviously discussed him with Janet. And then, at nearly midnight, she had followed him to the new house. And on the day of the centenary she had maneuvered to let Janet and Mr. Orgreave go in front. He did not like her, and she was too changeable, too dark, and too light. But it was exciting. It was flattering. He saw her again and again her gesture as she bent to Mr. Shushion's, and the straightening of her spine as she left the garden porch on the night of his visit to the Orgreaves. Yet he did not like her. Her sudden departure, however, was a disappointment. It was certainly too abrupt. Probably very characteristic of her. Strange day. He had been suspected of theft. He had stood up to his father. He had remained away from the shop, and his father's only retort was to give him a rise of half a crown a week. The old man must have had a bit of a shock, he said to himself, grimly vain. I lay I don't hear another word about that fifty pounds. Yes, amid his profound resentment there was some ingenuous vanity at the turn which things had taken. And he was particularly content about the rise of half a crown a week, because that relieved him from the most difficult of all the resolutions, the carrying out of which was to mark the beginning of the new life. It settled the financial question, for the present at any rate. It was not enough, but it was a great deal from his father. He was ashamed that he could not keep his righteous resentment pure from this gross satisfaction at an increase of income. The fineness of his nature was thereby hurt. But the gross satisfaction would well up in his mind. And in the night with the breeze on his cheek in the lamps of the five towns curving out below him, he was not unhappy, despite what he had suffered and was still suffering. He had a tingling consciousness of being unusually alive. Part Four Later in his bedroom, shut in and safe and independent with the new blind drawn, and the gas fizzing in its opaline globe, he tried to read Don Juan. He could not, he was incapable of fixity of mind. He could not follow the sense of a single stanza. Images of his father and of Hilda Leswayes mingled with reveries of the insult he had received, and the triumph he had won. And all the confused wonder of the day and evening engaged his thoughts. He dwelt lovingly on the supreme disappointment of his career. He fancied what he would have been doing and where he would have been then if his appalling father had not made it impossible for him to be an architect. He pitied himself. But he saw the material of happiness ahead in the faithful execution of his resolves for self-perfecting. And Hilda had flattered him. Hilda had given him a new conception of himself. A tiny idea arose in his brain that there was perhaps some slight excuse for his father's suspicion of him. After all he had been secretive. He trampled on that idea and it arose again. He slept very heavily and woke with a headache. A week elapsed before his agitation entirely disappeared. And hence before he could realize how extreme that agitation had been. He was ashamed of having so madly and wildly abandoned himself to passion. Time passed like a ship across a distant horizon which moves but which does not seem to move. One Monday evening Edwin said that he was going round to Lane End House. He had been saying so for weeks and hesitating. He thoroughly enjoyed going to Lane End House. There was no reason why he should not go frequently and regularly. And there were several reasons why he should. Yet his visitings were capricious because his nature was irresolute. That night he went, sticking a hat carelessly on his head and his hands deep into his pockets. Down the slope of Trafalgar Road in the biting November mist, between the two rows of gas lamps that flickered feebly into the pale gloom came a long straggling band of men who also, to compensate for the absence of overcoats, stuck hands deep into pockets and strode quickly. With reluctance they divided for the passage of the steam car and closed growling together again on its rear. The potters were on strike and a burly contingent was returning in embittered silence from a mass meeting at Hanbridge. When the sound of the steam car subsided, as the car dipped over the hill-top on its descent towards Hanbridge, nothing could be heard but the tramp-tramp of the procession on the road. Edwin hurried down the side street and in a moment rang at the front door of the augurives. He nodded familiarly to the servant who opened, stepped onto the mat, and began contorting his legs in order to wipe the edge of his boot soles. Quite a stranger, sir, said Martha, bridling and respectfully aware of her attractiveness for this friend of the house. Yes, he laughed. Anybody in? Well, sir, I'm afraid Miss Janet and Miss Alicia are out. And Mr. Tom? Mr. Tom's out, sir. He pretty nearly always is now, sir. The fact was that Tom was engaged to be married and the servant indicated by a scarcely perceptible motion of the chin that fiancés were and ever would be all the same. And Mr. John and Mr. James are out, too, sir. They also were usually out. They were both assisting their father in business and sought relief from his gigantic conception of a day's work by evening diversions at Hanbridge. These two former noisy liberals had joined the Hanbridge Conservative Club because it was a club and had a billiard table that could only be equaled at the Five Towns Hotel at Knype. And Mr. Orgreave? He's working upstairs, sir. Mrs. Orgreave's got her asthma, and so he's working upstairs. Well, tell them I've called. Edwin turned to depart. I'm sure Mr. Orgreave would like to know your hearsay, said the maid firmly, if you'll just step into the breakfast room. That maid did as she chose with visitors for whom she had a fancy. Part II She conducted him to the so-called breakfast room and shot the door on him. It was a small chamber behind the drawing-room, and shabbier than the drawing-room. In earlier days the children had used it for their lessons and hobbies, and now it was used as a sitting-room when mere coziness was demanded by a decimated family. Edwin stooped down and mended the fire. Then he went to the wall and examined a framed water-colour of the old sitch pottery, which was signed with his initials. He had done it, aided by a photograph and by Johnny Orgreave in details of perspective, and by dint of pre-prandial frequentings of the sitch, as a gift for Mrs. Orgreave. It always seemed to him to be rather good. He then bent to examine book-shelves. Like the hall, the drawing-room, and the dining-room, this apartment, too, was plentiously full of everything, and littered over with the apparatus of various personalities. Only from habit did Edwin glance at the books. He knew their backs by heart, and books in quantity no longer intimidated him. Despite his grave defects as a keeper of resolves, despite his paltry trick of picking up a newspaper, or periodical and reading it all through out of sheer vacillation and mental sloth, before starting serious perusals, despite the human disinclination which he had to bracing himself and keeping up the tension in a manner necessary for the reading of long and difficult works, and despite sundry, ignominious backslidings into original sluggishness, till he had accomplished certain literary adventures. He could not enjoy Don Juan, expecting from it a voluptuous and daring grandeur, he had found in it nothing whatever that even roughly fitted into his idea of what poetry was. But he had had a passion for child-harrod, many stanzas of which thrilled him again and again, bringing back to his mind what Hilda Lessways had said about poetry. And further he had a passion for Voltaire. In Voltaire also he had been deceived, as in Byron. He had expected something violent, arid, closely argumentative, and he found gaiety grace and really the funniest jokes. He could read Candide almost without a dictionary, and he had intense pride in doing so, and for sometimes afterwards Candide and La Princess de Babylone, and a few similar witty trifles were the greatest stories in the world for him. Only a faint reserve in Tom Orgreave's responsive enthusiasm made him cautiously reflect. He could never be intimate with Tom, because Tom somehow never came out from behind his spectacles. But he had learnt much from him, and in a special, a familiarity with the less difficult of Bach's preludes and fugues, which Tom loved to play. Edwin knew not even the notes of music, and he was not sure that Bach gave him pleasure. Bach affected him strangely. He would ask for Bach out of a continually renewed curiosity, so that he could examine once more and yet again the sensations which the music produced and the habit grew. As regards the fugues there could be no doubt that the fugue began, a desire was thereby set up in him for the resolution of the confusing problem created in the first few bars, and that he waited with a pleasant and yet a trying anxiety for the indications of that resolution, and that the final reassuring and utterly tranquilizing chords gave him deep joy. When he innocently said that he was glad when the end came of a fugue, all the Orgreaves laughed heartily, but after laughing Tom said that he knew what Edwin meant, and quite agreed. Part 3 It was while he was glancing along the untidy and crowded shelves with sophisticated eye that the door briskly opened. He looked up, mildly expecting a face familiar, and saw one that startled him, and heard a voice that aroused disconcerting vibrations in himself. It was Hilda Lessway's. She had in her hand a copy of the signal. Over fifteen months had gone since their last meeting, but not since he had last thought of her. Her features seemed strange, his memory of them had not been reliable. He had formed an image of her in his mind, and had often looked at it, and he now saw that it did not correspond with the reality. The souvenir of their brief intimacy swept back upon him. Incredible that she should be there in front of him, and yet there she was. More than once, after reflecting on her, he had laughed and said lightly to himself, Well, the chances are I shall never see her again. Funny girl. But the recollection of her gesture with Mr. Shushions prevented him from dismissing her out of his head with quite that lightness. I'm ordered to tell you that Mr. Orgreave will be down in a few minutes, she said. Hello, he exclaimed. I had no idea you were in Bursley. Came to-day, she replied. How odd he thought that I should call like this on the very day she comes. But he pushed away that instinctive thought with the rational thought that such a coincidence could not be regarded in any way significant. They shook hands in the middle of the room, and she pressed his hand while looking downwards with a smile, and his mind was suddenly filled with the idea that during all those months she had been existing somewhere under the eye of someone, intimate with someone, and constantly conducting herself with a familiar freedom that doubtless she would not use to him, and so she was invested for him with mysteriousness. His interest in her was renewed in a moment, and in a form much more acute than its first form. Moreover, she presented herself to his judgment in a different aspect. He could scarcely comprehend how he had ever deemed her habitual expression to be forbidding. In fact, he could persuade himself now that she was beautiful, and even nobly beautiful. From one extreme he flew to the other. She sat down on an old sofa, he remained standing, and in the midst of a little conversation about Mrs. Orgreave's indisposition and the absence of the members of the family, she said she had refused an invitation to go with Janet and Alicia to Hillport, she broke the thread and remarked, You would have known I was coming if you had been calling here recently, she pushed her feet near the fender and gazed into the fire. Ah! but you see I haven't been calling recently. She raised her eyes to his. I suppose you've never thought about me once since I left, she fired at him, an audacious and discomposing girl. Oh, yes I have, he said weakly. What could you reply to such speeches? Nevertheless, he was flattered. Really, but you've never inquired about me? Yes I have. Only once? How do you know? I asked Janet. Damn her, he said to himself, but pleased with her. And allowed in a tone, suddenly firm. That's nothing to go by. What isn't? The number of times I've inquired. He was blushing. Part 4 In the smallness of the room sitting as it were at his feet on the sofa, surrounded and encaged by a hundred domestic objects and by the glow of the fire and the radiance of the gas, she certainly did seem to Edwin to be an organism exceedingly mysterious. He could follow with his eye every fold of her black dress, he could trace the waving of her hair, and watch the play of light in her eyes. He might have physically hurt her, he might have killed her, she was beneath his hand, and yet she was most bafflingly withdrawn, and the essence of her could not be touched, nor got at. Why did she challenge him by her singular attitude? Why was she always saying such queer things to him? No other girl, he thought, in the simplicity of his inexperience, would ever talk as she talked. He wanted to test her by being rude to her. Damn her, he thought to himself again, supposing I took hold of her and kissed her. I wonder what sort of a face she'd pull then. And a moment ago he had been appraising her as nobly beautiful, a moment ago he had been dwelling on the lovely compassion of her gesture with Mr. Shushian's. This quality of daring and naughty enterprise had never before shown itself in Edwin, and he was surprised to discover in himself such impulses. But then the girl was so provocative, and somehow the sight of the girl delivered him from an excessive fear of consequences. He said to himself, I'll do something or I'll say something before I leave her tonight, just to show her. He screwed up his resolution to the point of registering a private oath that he would indeed do or say something. Without a solemn oath he could not rely upon his valour. He knew that whatever he said or did in the nature of a bold advance would be accomplished clumsily. He knew that it would be unpleasant. He knew that in action suited much better his instinct for tranquility. No matter all that was nought she had challenged and he had to respond. Besides, she allured. And after her scene with him in the porch of the new house, had he not the right? A girl who had behaved as she did that night cannot effectively contradict herself. I was just reading about this strike, she said, rustling the newspaper. You've soon got into local politics. Well, she said, I saw a lot of the men as we were driving from the station. I should think I saw two thousand of them. So, of course, I was interested. I made Mr. Orgreave tell me all about it. Will they win? It depends on the weather, he smiled. She remained silent and grave. I see, she said, leaning her chin on her hand. At her tone he sees smiling. She said, I see, and she actually had seen. You see, he repeated, if it was June instead of November, but then it isn't June. Wages are settled every year in November. So, if there is to be a strike, it can only begin in November. But didn't the men ask for the time of year to be changed? Yes, he said, but you don't suppose the masters were going to agree to that, do you? He sneered masculinely. Why not? Because it gives them such a pull. What a shame, he'll do exclaim passionately, and what a shame it is that the masters want to make the wages depend on selling prices. Can't they see that selling prices ought to depend on wages? Edwin said nothing. She had knocked suddenly out of his head all ideas of flirting and he was trying to reassemble them. I suppose you're like all the rest, she questioned gloomily. How, like all the rest? Against the men. Mr. Orgreave is, and he says your father is very strongly against them. Look here, said Edwin, with an air of resentment as to which he himself could not have decided whether it was assumed or genuine. What earthly right have you to suppose that I'm like all the rest? I'm very sorry she surrendered. I knew all the time you weren't. With her face still bent downward she looked up at him smiling sadly, smiling roguishly. Fathers against them, he proceeded somewhat deflated, and he thought of all his father's violent invective and of Maggie's bland acceptance of the assumption that workmen on strike were rascals. How different the excellent simple Maggie from this feverish creature on the sofa. Fathers against them, and most people are because they broke the last arbitration award. But I'm not my father. If you ask me I'll tell you what I think. Workmen on strike are always in the right, at bottom I mean. You've only got to look at them in a crowd together. They don't starve themselves for fun. He was not sure if he was convinced of the truth of these statements, but she drew them out of him by her strange power, and when he had uttered them they appeared fine to him. What does your father say to that? Oh, said Edwin uneasily. Him and me we don't argue about these things. Why not? Well we don't. You aren't ashamed of your own opinions are you? She demanded with a hint in her voice that she was ready to be scornful. You know all the time I'm not. He repeated the phrase of her previous confession with a certain acrimonious emphasis. Don't you? He added curtly. She remained silent. Don't you? He said more loudly, and as she offered no reply he went on marveling at what was coming out of his mouth. I'll tell you what I'm ashamed of. I'm ashamed of seeing my father lose his temper. So you know. She said, I never met anybody like you before. No never. At this he really was astounded and most exquisitely flattered. I might say the same of you, he replied, sticking his chin on. Oh no, she said I'm nothing. The fact was that he could not foretell their conversation even ten seconds in advance. It was full of the completely unexpected. He thought to himself, you never know what a girl like that will say next. But what would he say next? Part 5 They were interrupted by Osmond Orgreave with his, well, Edwin, jolly, welcoming and yet slightly quizzical. Edwin could not look him in the face without feeling self-conscious. Nor did he glance at Hilda to see what her demeanor was like under the good-natured scrutiny of her friend's father. We thought you'd forgotten us, said Mr. Orgreave. But that's always the way with neighbours, he turned to Hilda. It's true he continued jerking his head at Edwin. He scarcely ever comes to see us except when you're here. Steady on, Edwin murmured, steady on, Mr. Orgreave. And hastily he asked a question about Mrs. Orgreave's asthma, and from that the conversation passed to the doings of the various absent members of the family. You've been working, as usual, I suppose, said Edwin. Working, laughed Mr. Orgreave, I've done what I called with Hilda there. Instead of going up to Hillpot with Janet, she would stop here and chat her about strikes. Hilda smiled at him benevolently, as at one to whom she permitted everything. Mr. Clayhanger agrees with me, she said. Oh, you needn't tell me protested, Mr. Orgreave. I could see you were as thick as thieves over it. He looked at Edwin. As she told you, she wants to go over a printing-works. No, said Edwin. But I shall be very pleased to show her over hours any time. She made no observation. Look here, said Edwin. Suddenly I must be off. I only stepped in for a minute, really. He did not know why he said this, for his greatest wish was to probe more deeply into the tantalising psychology of Hilda Leswayes. His tongue, however, had said it, and his tongue reiterated it, when Mr. Orgreave urged that Janet and Alicia would be back soon, and that food would then be partaken of. He would not stay. Desiring to stay, he would not. He wished to be alone, to think. Clearly Hilda had been talking about him to Mr. Orgreave and to Janet. Did she discuss him and his affairs with everybody? Nor would he in response to Mr. Orgreave's suggestion promise definitely to call again on the next evening. He said he would try. Hilda took leave of him nonchalantly. He departed. And as he made the half-circuit of the misty lawn on his way to the gates, he muttered in his heart, where even he himself could scarcely hear, I swore I'd do something and I haven't. Well, of course, when she talked seriously like that, what could I do? But he was disgusted with himself and ashamed of his namby pambiness. He strolled thoughtfully up Oak Street and down Trafalgar Road, and when he was near home, another Wayfarer saw him face right about and go up Trafalgar Road and disappear at the corner of Oak Street. The Orgreave servant was surprised to see him at the front door again when she answered a discreet ring. I wish you tell Miss Leswayes I want to speak to her a moment, will you? Miss Leswayes? Yes. What an adventure. Certainly, sir, will you come in? She shut the door. Ask her to come here, he said, smiling with deliberate confidential persuasiveness. She nodded with a brighter smile. The servant vanished and healed it came. She was as red as fire. He began hurriedly. When will you come and look over our works? Tomorrow? I should like you to come. He used a tone that said, Now don't let's have any nonsense. You know you want to come. She frowned frankly. There they were in the hall like a couple of conspirators, but she was frowning. She would not meet him halfway. He wished he had not permitted himself this caprice. What importance had a private oath? He felt ridiculous. What time, she demanded, and in an instant transformed his disgust into delight. Any time his heart was beating with expectation. Oh, no, you must fix the time. Well, after tea, say between half-past six and a quarter to seven. That do? She nodded. Good, he murmured. That's all, thanks. Good night. He hastened away with a delicate photograph of the palm of her hand printed in minute sensations on the palm of his. I did it anyhow, he muttered loudly in his heart. At any rate he was not ashamed. At any rate he was a man. The man's face was burning, and the damp, noxious chill of the night only caressed him agreeably. End of chapter 17 volume 2 Volume 2 chapter 18 of Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. He was afraid that from some obscure motive of propriety or self-protection she would bring Janet with her or perhaps Alicia. On the other hand he was afraid that she would come alone. That she should come alone seemed to him in spite of his reason to brazen. Moreover if she came alone would he be equal to the situation? Would he be able to carry the thing off in a manner adequate? He lacked confidence. He desired the moment of her arrival, and yet he feared it. His heart and his brain were all confused together in a turmoil of emotion which he could not analyze or define. He was in love. Love had caught him and had affected his vision so that he no longer saw any phenomenon as it actually was. Neither himself nor Hilda nor the circumstances which were uniting them. He could not follow a train of thought. He could not remain of one opinion nor in one mind. Within himself he was perpetually discussing Hilda and her attitude. She was marvellous. But was she? She admired him. But did she? She had shown cunning. But was it not simplicity? He did not even feel sure whether he liked her. He tried to remember what she looked like and he positively could not. The one matter on which he could be sure was that his curiosity was hotly engaged. If he had had to state the case in words to another he would not have gone further than the word curiosity. He had no notion that he was in love. He did not know what love was. He had not had sufficient opportunity of learning. Nevertheless the processes of love were at work within him. Silently and magically by the force of desire and of pride the refracting glass was being specially ground which would enable him which would compel him to see an ideal Hilda when he gazed at the real Hilda. He would not see the real Hilda any more unless some cataclysm should shatter the glass and he might be likened to a prisoner on whom the gate of freedom is shut forever or to a stricken sufferer of whom it is known that he can never rise again and go forth into the fields. He was as somebody to whom the irrevocable had happened and he knew it not. None knew, none guessed. All day he went his ways striving to conceal the whirring preoccupation of his curiosity. A curiosity which he thought showed a fine masculine dash and succeeded fairly well. The excellent simple Maggie alone remarked in secret that he was slightly nervous and unnatural. But even she with all her excellent simplicity did not divine his victimhood. At six o'clock he was back at the shop from his tea. It was a wet chill night. On the previous evening he had caught cold and he was beginning to sneeze. He said to himself that Hilda could not be expected to come on such a night. But he expected her. When the shop-clock showed half past six he glanced at his watch which also showed half past six. Now at any instant she might arrive. The shop-door opened and simultaneously his heart seized to beat. But the person who came in puffing and snorting was his father, who stood within the shop while shaking his soaked umbrella over the exterior porch. The draught from the shiny dark street and square struck cold and Edwin responsibly sneezed. And Darius Clayhanger upbraided him for not having worn his overcoat. And he replied with foolish unconvincingness that he had got a cold that it was nothing. Darius grunted his way into the cubicle. Edwin remained in busy idleness at the right-hand counter. Stifford was tidying the contents of drawers behind the fancy counter, and the fizzing gas burner's inevitable accompaniment of night at the period kept watch above. Under the heat of the stove the damp marks of Darius Clayhanger's entrance disappeared more quickly than the minutes ran. It grew almost impossible for Edwin to pass the time. At moments when his father was not stirring in the cubicle, and Stifford happened to be in repose, he could hear the ticking of the clock, which he could not remember ever having heard before except when he mounted the steps to wind it. At a quarter to seven he said to himself that he gave up hope, while pretending that he never had hoped and that Hilda's presence was indifferent to him. If she came not that day she would probably come some other day. What could it matter? He was very unhappy. He said to himself that he should have a long night's reading, but the prospect of reading had no saver. He said, No, I shan't go in to see them tonight, I shall stay in and nurse my cold and read. This was mere futile bravado, for the impartial spectator in him, though far less clear-sighted and judicial now than formally, foresaw with certainty that if Hilda did not come he would call at the all-greaves. At five minutes to seven he was miserable. He had decided to hope until five minutes to seven. He made it seven in despair. Then there were signs of a figure behind the misty glass of the door, the door opened. It could not be she. Impossible that it should be she, but it was she. She had the air of being a miracle. Part II His feelings were complex and contradictory, flitting about and crossing each other in his mind with astounding rapidity. He wished she had not come, because his father was there, and the thought of his father would intensify his self-consciousness. He wondered why he should care whether she came or not. After all she was only a young woman who wanted to see a printing-works. At best she was not so agreeable as Janet, at worst she was appalling, and moreover he knew nothing about her. He had a glimpse of her face as with a little tightening of the lips she shut her umbrella. What was there in that face, judged impartially? Why should he be to so absurd a degree curious about her? He thought how exquisitely delicious it would be to be walking with her by the shore of a lovely lake on a summer evening, pale hills in the distance. He had this momentary vision by reason of a coloured print of the silver strand of a Scottish lock which was leaning in a gilt-frame against the artist's materials cabinet, and was marked twelve and six. During the day he had imagined himself with her in all kinds of beautiful spots and situations. But the chief of his sensation was one of exquisite relief. She had come, he could wreak his hungry curiosity upon her. Yes, she was alone. No Janet, no Alicia. How had she managed it? What had she said to the all-greaves? That she should have come alone and through the November rain in the night affected him deeply. It gave her the quality of a heroine of high adventure. It was as though she had set sail unaided in a frail skiff on a formidable ocean to meet him. It was inexpressibly romantic and touching. She came towards him, her face sedately composed. She wore a small hat, a veil, and a macintosh, and black gloves that were splashed with wet. Certainly she was a practical woman. She had said she would come, and she had come, sensibly, but how charmingly protected against the shocking conditions of the journey. There is naught charming in a macintosh, and yet there was, in this macintosh, something in the contrast between its harshness and her fragility. The veil was supremely charming. She had half lifted it, exposing her mouth. The upper part of her flushed face was caged behind the bars of the veil, behind those bars her eyes mysteriously gleamed. Spanish. No exaggeration in all this. He felt every bit of it honestly, as he stood at the counter in thrilled expectancy. By virtue of his impassioned curiosity, the terraces of Granada and the mantillas of Senoritas were not more romantic than he had made his father's shop and her dripping macintosh. He tried to see her afresh. He tried to see her as though he had never seen her before. He tried desperately once again to comprehend what it was in her that peaked him, and he could not. He fell back from the attempt. Was she the most wondrous, or was she commonplace? Was she deceiving him, or did he alone possess the true insight? Useless. He was baffled. Far from piercing her soul he could scarcely even see her at all. That is, with intelligence. And it was always so when he was with her. He was in a dream, a vapour. He had no helm, his faculties were not under control. She robbed him of judgment. And then the clear tones of her voice fell on the listening shop. Good evening, Mr. Clayhanger. What a night, isn't it? I hope I'm not too late. Firm business-like syllables. And she straightened her shoulders. He suffered. He was not happy. Whatever his feelings he was not happy in that instant. He was not happy because he was wrung between hope and fear alike divine. But he would not have exchanged his sensations for the extremest felicity of any other person. They shook hands. He suggested that she should remove her Macintosh. She consented. He had no idea that the effect of the removal of the Macintosh would be so startling as it was. She stood intimately revealed in her frock. The Macintosh was formal and defensive. The frock was intimate and acquiescent. Darius blundered out of the cubicle, and Edwin had a dreadful moment introducing her to Darius and explaining their purpose. Why had he not prepared the ground in advance? His pusillanimous cowered us again. However the directing finger of God sent a customer into the shop, and Edwin escaped with his hilda through the aperture in the counter. Part 3 The rickety building at the back of the premises, which was still the main theatre of printing activities, was empty save for Big James, the hour of seven being passed. Big James was just beginning to roll his apron round his waist in preparation for departure. This happened to be one of the habits of his advancing age. Up till a year or two previously he would have taken off his apron and left it in the workshop, but now he could not confide it to the workshop. He must carry it about him until he reached home and a place of safety for it. When he saw Edwin and a young lady appear in the doorway, he let the apron fall over his knees again. As the day was only the second of the industrial week, the apron was almost clean, and even the office towel which hung on a roll as somewhat conspicuously near the door was not offensive. A single gas jet burned. The workshop was in the langur of repose after toil, which had officially commenced at 8 a.m. The perfection of Big James's attitude and attitude symbolised by the letting down of his apron helped to put Edwin at ease in the original and difficult circumstances. Good evening, Mr Edwin. Good evening, Miss, was all that the man actually said with his tongue, but the formality of his majestic gestures indicated in the most dignified way his recognition of a sharp difference of class and his exact comprehension of his own role in the affair. He stood waiting, he had been about to depart, but he was entirely at the disposal of the company. This is Mr Yal at our foreman, said Edwin, and to Big James, Miss Lesway's has just come to look round. Hilda smiled, Big James swavly nodded his head. Here are some of the types, said Edwin, because a big case was the object nearest him, and he glanced at Big James. In a moment the foreman was explaining to Hilda in his superb voice the use of the composing stick, and he accompanied the theory by a beautiful exposition of the practice. Edwin could stand aside and watch. Hilda listened and looked with an extraordinary air of sympathetic interest, and she was so serious, so adult. But it was the quality of sympathy, he thought, that was her finest, her most attractive. It was either that or her proud independence, as of a person not accustomed to bend to the will of others, or to go to others for advice. He could not be sure. No, her finest quality was her mystery. Even now, as he gazed at her comfortably, she baffled him. All her exquisite little movements and intonations baffled him. Of one thing, however, he was convinced, that she was fundamentally different from other women. There was she, and there was the rest of the sex. For appearances sake he threw in short phrases now and then, to which Big James, by his mere deportment, gave the importance of the words of a master. I suppose you printers did something special among yourselves to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the invention of printing, said Hilda suddenly, glancing from Edwin to Big James, and Big James and Edwin glanced at one another. Neither had ever heard of the 400th anniversary of the invention of printing. In a couple of seconds Big James's downcast eye had made it clear that he regarded this portion of the episode as master's business. When was that? Let me see, Edwin foolishly blurted out, oh, some years ago, two or three, perhaps four. I'm afraid we didn't, said Edwin, smiling. Oh, Sid held us slowly. I think they made a great fuss of it in London. She relented somewhat. I don't really know much about it, but the other day I happened to be reading the new history of printing—you know, Kranswix, isn't it? Oh yes, Edwin concurred, though he had never heard of Kranswix's new history of printing either. He knew that he was not emerging credibly from this portion of the episode, but he did not care. The whole of his body went hot and then cold as his mind presented the simple question, why had she been reading the history of printing? Could the reason be any other than her interest in himself? Or was she a prodigy among young women who read histories of everything in addition to being passionate about verse? He said that it was ridiculous to suppose that she would read a history of printing solely from interest in himself. Nevertheless, he was madly happy for a few moments, and as it were, staggered with joy. He decided to read a history of printing at once. Big James came to the end of his exposition of the craft. The stove was dying out, and the steam boiled a cold. Big James regretted that the larger machines could not be seen in action and that the place was getting chilly. Edwin began to name various objects that were lying about with their functions, but it was evident that the interest of the workshop was now nearly exhausted. Big James suggested that if Miss could make it convenient to call, say, on the next afternoon, she could see the large New Columbia in motion. Edwin seized the idea and beautified it. And on this he wavered towards the door. And she followed, and Big James, indignity, bowed them forth to the elevated porch, and began to rewind his flowing apron once more. They patted down the dark steps, now protected with felt roofing, and ran across six feet of exposed yard into what had once been Mrs. Nixon's holy kitchen. Part 4 After glancing at sundry minor workshops in delicious propinquity and solitude, they mounted to the first floor where there was an account book ruling and binding shop, the site of the old sitting-room and the girl's bedroom. In each chamber Edwin had to light a gas, and the corridors and stairways were traversed by the ray of matches. It was excitingly intricate. Then they went to the attics because Edwin was determined that she should see all. There he found a forgotten candle. I used to work here, he said, holding high the candle. There was no other place for me to work in. They were in his old work attic, now piled with stocks of paper wrapped up in posters. Work? What sort of work? Well, reading, drawing, you know, at that very table. To be sure there the very table was thick with dust. It had been too rickety to deserve removal to the heights of Bleak Ridge. He was touched by the site of the table now, though he saw it at least once every week. His existence at the corner of Duck Square seemed now to have been beautiful and sad, seemed to be far off and historic, and the attic seemed unhappy in its present humiliation. But there's no fireplace, Mermon Hilda. I know, said Edwin, but how did you do in winter? I did without. He had, in fact, been less of a martyr than those three telling words would indicate. Nevertheless, it appeared to him that he really had been a martyr, and he was glad. He could feel her sympathy and her quiet admiration vibrating through the air towards him. Had she not said that she had never met anybody like him? He turned and looked at her. Her eyes glittered in the candlelight with tears too proud to fall. Solom and exquisite bliss. Profound anxiety and apprehension. He was an arena where all the sensations of which a human being is capable struggled in blind confusion. Afterwards he could recall her visit only in fragments. The next fragment that he recollected was the last. She stood outside the door in her Macintosh. The rain had seized. She was going. Behind them he could feel his father in the cubicle and stiffered arranging the toilette of the shop for the night. Please don't come out here, she enjoined, half in entreaty, half in command. Her solicitude thrilled him. He was on the step, she was on the pavement, so that he looked down at her with the sodden, light-reflecting slope of Duck Square for a background to her. Oh, I'm all right. Well, you'll come tomorrow afternoon? No, you aren't all right. You've got a cold and you'll make it worse. And this isn't the end of winter, it's the beginning. I think you're very liable to colds. No, he said, enchanted beside himself in an ecstasy of pleasure. I shall expect you to-morrow about three. Thank you, she said, simply, I'll come. They shook hands. Now do go in. She finished round the corner. All evening, he neither read nor spoke. End of chapter 18 volume 2