 Volume 1 Chapter 7 of Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett. Mrs. Hamp's had splendidly arrived. The atmosphere of the sitting room was changed. Maggie, smiling, wore her second-best black silk apron. Clara, smiling and laughing, wore a clean, long white pinafore. Mrs. Nixon, with her dreamy eyes, less vacant than usual, greeted Mrs. Hamp suffusively, and effusively gave humble thanks for kind inquiries after her health. A stranger might have thought that these women were strongly attached to one another by ties of affection and respect. Edwin never understood how his sisters, especially Maggie, could practice such vast and eternal hypocrisy with his aunt. As for him, his aunt acted on him now as generally like a tonic. Some effluence from her quickened him, he put away the worry in connection with his father, and gave himself up to the physical pleasures of tea. Aunt Clara was a handsome woman. She had been called, but not by men whose manners and code she would have approved, a damned fine woman. Her age was about forty, which at that period in a woman's habit of mine was the equivalent of about fifty today. Her latest photograph was considered to be very successful. It showed her standing behind a velvet chair, and leaning her large but still shapely bust, slightly over the chair. Her forearms ruffled and braceleted, lay along the fringed back of the chair, and from one negligent hand depended a rose. A heavy curtain came downwards out of nothing into the picture, and the end of it lay coiled and draped on the seat of the chair. The great dress was of slate-colored silk, with sleeves tight to the elbow, and thence from a ribbon bow, broadening to a wide triangular climax that revealed quantities of lace at the wrists. The pointed ends of the sleeves were picked out with squares of velvet. A short and highly ornamental fringed and looped flounce waved grandly out behind from the waist to the level of the knees. And the stomacher recalled the ornamentation of the flounce, and both the stomacher and flounce gave contrasting value to the severe plainness of the skirt, designed to emphasize the quality of the silk. Round the neck was a lace collaret to match the furniture of the wrists, and the broad ends of the collaret were crossed on the bosom and held by a large jet brooch. Above that you saw a fine regular face, with a firm hard mouth, and a very straight nose and dark eyebrows. Small ears weighted with heavy jet earrings. The photograph could not render the clear perfection of Aunt Clara's rosy skin. She had the color and the flashing eye of a girl. But it did justice to her really magnificent black hair. This hair was all her own, and the coiffure seemed as ample as a judge's week. From the low forehead the hair was parted exactly in the middle for about two inches. Then platted bands crossed and recrossed the scalp in profusion, forming behind a pattern exceedingly complicated, and down either side of the head, now behind the ear, now hiding it, now resting on the shoulders, now hanging clear of them, fell long multitudinous glossy curls. These curls, one of them in the photograph reached as far as the stomacher, could not have been surpassed in Bursley. She was a woman of terrific vitality. Her dead sister had been nothing in comparison with her. She had a glorious digestion, and was the envy of her brother-in-law, who suffered much from biliousness, because she could eat with perfect impunity, hot buttered toast, and raw celery in large quantities. Further she had independent means, and no children to cause anxieties. Yet she was always, as the phrase went, bearing up, or as another phrase went, leaning hard. Frances Ridley Havergull was her favourite author, and Frances Ridley Havergull's little book, Lean Hard, was kept on her dressing table. The girls, however, averred that she never opened it. Aunt Clara's spiritual life must be imagined as a continual, almost physical, leaning on Christ. Nevertheless she never complained, and she was seldom depressed. Her desire and her achievement was to be bright, to take everything cheerfully, to look obstinately on the best side of things, and to instill this religion into others. Part 2 Thus when it was announced that Father had been called out, unexpectedly, leaving an order that they were not to wait for him, she said gaily that they had better be obedient and begin, though it would have been more agreeable to wait for Father. And she said how beautiful the tea was, and how beautiful the toast, and how beautiful the strawberry jam, and how beautiful the pieclets. She would herself pour some hot water into the slop basin, and put a pieclet on a plate thereon, covered to keep warm for Father. She would not hear a word about the toast being a little hard, and when Maggie, in her curious, quiet way, stuck her out that the toast was in fact hard, she said that that precise degree of hardness was the degree which she, for herself, preferred. Then she talked of jams and mentioned gooseberry jam, whereupon Clara privately put her tongue out with the quickness of a snake to signal to Maggie. Ours isn't good this year, said Maggie. I told Auntie we weren't so set up with it a fortnight ago, said Clara simply, like a little angel. Did you, dear? Mrs. Hamps exclaimed, with great surprise, almost with shocked surprise. I'm sure it's beautiful. I was quite looking forward to tasting it. Quiet! I know what your gooseberry jam is. Would you like to try it now, Maggie suggested? But we've warned you. Oh, I don't want to trouble you now. We're also cosy here. Any time. No trouble, Auntie, said Clara, with her most captivating and innocent smile. Well, if you talk about warning me, of course I must insist on having some, said Auntie Clara. Clara jumped up, passed behind Mrs. Hamps, making a contemptuous face at those curls as she did so, and ran gracefully down to the kitchen. Here, she said crossly to Mrs. Nixon. A pot of that gooseberry, please. A small one will do. She knows it's short of sugar, and so she's determined to try it just out of spite. Nothing will stop her. Clara returned, smiling to the tea table, and Maggie neatly unsealed the jam. An aunt Clara, with a face beaming with pleasurable anticipation, helped herself circumspectly to a spoonful. Beautiful, she murmured. Don't you think it's a bit tart, Maggie asked? Oh, no, protestingly. Don't you, asked Clara, with an air of delighted deferential astonishment? Oh, no, Mrs. Hamps repeated. It's beautiful. She did not smack her lips over it, because she would have considered it un-ladylike to smack her lips. But, by less offensive gestures, she sought to convey her unbounded pleasure in the jam. How much sugar did you put in, she inquired, after a while. Half-and-half? Yes, said Maggie. They do say gooseberries were a tiny bit sour this year, owing to the weather, said Mrs. Hamps, reflectively. Clara kicked Edwin under the table, as it were viciously, but her delightful, innocent smile directed vaguely upon Mrs. Hamps did not relax. Such duplicity passed Edwin's comprehension. It seemed to him purposeless. Yet he could not quite deny that there might be a certain sting, a certain insinuation, in his auntie's last remark. Part III Then Mr. Clayhanger entered, blowing forth a long breath as if trying to repulse the oppressive heat of the July afternoon. He came straight to the table with a slightly preoccupied air, quickly, his arms motionless at his sides and slanting a little outwards. Mr. Clayhanger always walked like this, with motionless arms, so that in spite of a rather clumsy and heavy step, the upper part of him appeared to glide along. He shook hands genially without Clara, greeting her almost as grandiosely as she greeted him, putting on for a moment the grand manner, not without dignity. Each admired the other. Each often said that the other was wonderful. Each undoubtedly flattered the other, made a fuss of the other. Mr. Clayhanger's admiration was the greater. The bitterest thing that Edwin had ever heard Maggie say was—it's something to be thankful for that she's his deceased wife's sister—and she had said the bitter thing with such quiet bitterness. Edwin had not instantly perceived the point of it. Darius Clayhanger then sat down with a thud, snatched at the cup of tea which Maggie had placed before him, and drank half of it with a considerable in-drawing noise. No one asked where or why he had been detained, it was not etiquette to do so. If father had been called away or had had to go away, always kept somewhere, the details were out of deference, allowed to remain in mystery, respected by curiosity, father business. All business was sacred. He himself had inculcated this attitude. In a short silence the sound of the bell that the car-man rang before the tram started for Handbridge floated in through the open window. There's the tram, observed Aunty Clara, apparently with warm and special interest in the phenomena of the tram. Then another little silence. Aunty said Clara writhing about youthfully on her chair. Can't you sit still a bit? the father asked, interrupting her roughly but with good humour. You'll be falling off the chair in a minute. Clara blushed swiftly and stopped. Yes, love, Aunty Clara encouraged her. It was as if Aunty Clara had said, your dear father is, of course, quite right. More than right, to insist on your sitting properly at table, however, do not take the correction too much to heart. I sympathise with all your difficulties. I was only going to ask you Clara went on in a weaker stammering voice, if you knew that Edwin's left school today. Her archeness had deserted her. Mischievous little thing thought Edwin, why must she deliberately go and draw attention to that? And he too blushed, feeling as if he owed an apology to the company for having left school. Oh, yes, said Aunty Clara with eager benevolence. I've got something to say about that to my nephew. Mr. Clayhanger searched in a pocket of his alpaca and drew forth an open envelope. Here's the lad's report, Aunty, said he. Happen you'd like to look at it. I should indeed, she replied fervently. I'm sure it's a very good one. Part 4 She took the paper and assumed her spectacles. Conduct excellent, she read, pouring with enthusiasm over the document. And she read again. Conduct excellent. Then she went down the list of subjects, declaiming the number of marks for each. And at the end she read, position in class next term third. Splendid, Eddie, she exclaimed. I thought you were second, said Clara, in her sharp manner. Edwin blushed again and hesitated. A was that, was that, his father demanded. I didn't notice that, third. Charlie Orgreave beat me in the examination, Edwin muttered. Well, that's a pretty how-do-do, said his father. Going down one, you ought to have been first instead of third. And would have been happen if you'd pegged at it. Now I won't have that, I won't have it, Aunty Clara protested, laughingly showing her fine teeth and gazing first at Darius and then at Edwin from under her spectacles, her head being thrown back and the curls hanging far behind. No one shall say that Edwin doesn't work, not even his father while his auntie's about, because I know he does work. And besides, he hasn't gone down. It says position next term, not this term. You were still second today, weren't you, my boy? I suppose so. Yes, Edwin answered, pulling himself together. Well, there you are. Aunty Clara's voice rang triumphantly. She was opening her purse. And there you are, she repeated, popping half a sovereign down in front of him. That's a little present from your auntie on your leaving score. Oh, auntie, he cried feebly. Oh, cried Clara, genuinely startled. Mrs. Hamps was sometimes thus astoundingly munificent. It was she who had given the schooner to Edwin and her presence of elaborately enveloped and costly toilet-soap on the birthdays of the children and at Christmas were massive. Yet Clara always maintained that she was the meanest old thing imaginable. And Maggie had once said that she knew that Aunty Clara made her servant eat dripping instead of butter. To give inferior food to a servant was to Maggie the unforgivable in parsimony. Well, Mr. Clayhanger warningly inquired, what do you say to your aunt? Thank you, Aunty. Edwin sheepishly responded fingering the coin. It was a princely sum, and she had stuck up for him famously in the matter of the report. Strange that his father should not have read the report with sufficient attention to remark the fall to third place. Anyway, that aspect of the affair was now safely over, and it seemed to him that he had not lost much prestige by it. He would still be able to argue with his father on terms not too unequal, he hoped. Part 5 As the tea drew to an end and the plates of toast, bread and butter and tea-cake grew emptier and the slot-basin filled, and only Maggie's flowers remained fresh and immaculate amid the untidy debris of the meal, and as Edwin and Clara became gradually indifferent to jam and then inimical to it, and as the sounds of the street took on the softer quality of summer evening, and the first filmy shades of twilight gathered imperceptibly in the corners of the room, and Mr. Clayhanger performed the eruptions which signified that he had had enough, so Mrs. Hams prepared herself for one of her classic outbursts of feeling. Well, she said at last, putting her spoon to the left of her cup as a final indication that seriously she would drink no more, and she gave a great sigh. School over, and the only sun going out into the world, how time flies, and she gave another great sigh, implying an immense melancholy due to this vision of the reality of things. Then she remembered her courage and the device of leaning hard and all her philosophy. But it's all for the best she broke forth in a new brave tone, everything is ordered for the best. We must never forget that. And I'm quite sure that Edwin will be a very great credit to us all, with help from above. She proceeded powerfully in this strain. She brought in God, Christ, and even the Holy Spirit. She mentioned the dangers of the world and the disguises of the devil and the unspeakable advantages of a good home and the special goodness of Mr. Clayhanger and of Maggie, yes, and of her little Clara and the pride which they all had in Edwin and the unique opportunities which he had of doing good, by example, and also soon by precept, for others younger than himself would begin to look up to him and again her personal pride in him and her sure faith in him and what a solemn hour it was. Nothing could stop her. The girls loathed these exhibitions. Maggie always looked at the table during their progress and she felt as though she had done something wrong and was ashamed of it. Clara not merely felt like a criminal, she felt like an unrepentant criminal. She blushed, she glanced nervously about the room, and all the time she repeated steadily in her heart a highly obscene word which she had heard at school. This unspoken word, held soundlessly but savagely at her aunt in that innocent heart, afforded much comfort to Clara in the affliction. Even Edwin, who was more lenient in all ways than his sisters, profoundly deplored these moralisings of his aunt. They filled him with a desire to run fast and far to be alone at sea or to be deep somewhere in the bosom of the earth. He could not understand this side of his auntie's individuality, but there was no delivery from Mrs. Hamp's. The only person who could possibly have delivered them seemed to enjoy the sinister thralldom. Mr. Clayhanger listened with appreciative and admiring nods. He appeared to be quite sincere, and Edwin could not understand his father either. How simple father must be, he thought vaguely, whereas Clara fatalistically dismissed her father's attitude as only one more of the preposterously unreasonable phenomena which she was constantly meeting in life, and she persevered grimly with her obscene word. Part 6 He said Mrs. Hamp's enthusiastically after a trifling pause. It does me good when I think what a help you'll be to your father in the business, with that clever head of yours. She gazed at him fondly. Now this was Edwin's chance. He did not wish to be any help at all to his father in the business. He had other plans for himself. He had never mentioned them before, because his father had never talked to him about his future career, apparently assuming that he would go into the business. He had been waiting for his father to begin. Surely he had said to himself, Father's bound to speak to me some time about what I'm going to do, and when he does I shall just tell him. But his father never had begun, and by timidity, negligence, and perhaps ill luck, Edwin had thus arrived at his last day at school with a supreme question not merely unsolved, but unattacked. Oh! he blamed himself. Any ordinary boy, he thought, would have discussed such a question naturally long ago. After all, it was not a crime. It was no cause for shame to wish not to be a printer. Yet he was ashamed. Absurd, he blamed himself. But he also blamed his father. Now, however, in responding to his auntie's remark, he could remedy all the past by simply and boldly stating that he did not want to follow his father. It would be unpleasant, of course, but the worst shock would be over in a moment, like the drawing of a tooth. He had nearly to utter certain words. He must utter them. They were perfectly easy to say, and they were also of the greatest urgency. I don't want to be a printer. He mumbled them over in his mind. I don't want to be a printer. What could it matter to his father whether he was a printer or not? Seconds, minutes seemed to pass. He knew that if he was so inconceivably craven as to remain silent, his self-respect would never recover from the blow. Then, in response to Mrs. Hampt's prediction about his usefulness to his father in the business, he said, with a false, jaunty, unconvinced, unconvincing air, well, that remains to be seen. This was all he could accomplish. It seemed as if he had looked death itself in the face and drawn away. Remains to be seen, Aunty Clara repeated with a hint of startled pain. Due to this levity, he was mute. No one suspected as he sat there so boyish, wistful and uneasily squirming that he was agonised to the very centre of his being. All the time in his sweating soul he kept trying to persuade himself. I've given them a hint anyhow. I've given them a hint anyhow. Them included everybody at the table. Part 7 Mr. Clayhanger completely ignoring Edwin's reply to his aunt, and her somewhat shocked repetition of it, turned suddenly towards his son and said in a manner friendly but serious, a manner that assumed everything, a manner that begged the question, unconscious even that there was a question. I should be out the better part of tomorrow. I want you to be sure to be in the shop all afternoon. I'll tell you what for downstairs. It was characteristic of him thus to make a mystery of business in front of the women. Edwin felt the net closing about him. Then he thought of one of those poses which often present themselves to youths of his age. But tomorrow Saturday he said perhaps percally, what about the Bible class? Six months previously a young minister of the Wesleyan circuit to whom heaven had denied both a sense of humour and a sense of honour, had committed the infamy of starting a Bible class for big boys on Saturday afternoons. This outrage had appalled and disgusted the boyhood of Wesleyism in Bursley. Their afternoon for games, their only fair afternoon in the desert of the week to be filched from them and used against them for such an odious purpose as a Bible class, not only Sunday school on Sunday afternoon but a Bible class on Saturday afternoon. It was incredible. It was unbearable. It was gross tyranny and nothing else. Nevertheless the young minister had his way by dint of meanly calling upon parents and invoking their help. The scurvy worm actually got together a class of twelve to fifteen boys to the end of securing their eternal welfare and they had to attend the class though they swore they never would and they had to sing hymns and they had to kneel in prayers and they had to listen to the most intolerable tenium and to take notes of it. All this while the sun was shining or the rain was raining on fields and streets and open spaces and ponds, Edwin had been trapped in the snare. His father, after only three words from the young minister, had yielded up his son like a burnt sacrifice and with a casual nonchalance that utterly confounded Edwin. In vain Edwin had pointed out to his elders that a Saturday afternoon of confinement must be bad for his health. His attention had been directed to his eternal health. In vain he had pointed out that on wet Saturday afternoons he frequently worked at his home lessons which therefore might suffer under the regime of a Bible class. His attention had been directed to the peace which passeth understanding. So he had been beaten and was secretly twitted by Clara as an abject victim. Hence it was with a keen and peculiar feeling of triumph of hopelessly cornering the inscrutable generation which a few months ago had cornered him that he demanded perhaps perkily what about the Bible class? There'll be no more Bible classing, said his father with a mild but slightly sadonic smile as who should say. I'm ready to make all allowances for youth but I must get you to understand as gently as I can that you can't keep going to Bible classes forever and ever. Mrs. Hamp said it won't be as if you're at school but I do hope you won't neglect to study your Bible. Eh, but I do hope you'll always find time for that to your dying day. Oh, but I say Edwin began and stopped. He was beaten by the mere frontry of the replies. His father and his aunt, the latter of whom at any rate was a firm and confessed religious who had been responsible for converting Mr. Clayhanger from primitive Methodism to Wesleyan Methodism did not trouble to defend their new position by argument. They made no effort to reconcile it with their position of a few months back when the importance of heavenly welfare far exceeded the importance of any conceivable earthly welfare. The fact was that they had no argument if God took precedence of knowledge and of health he took precedence of a peddling shop. That was unanswerable. Part 8 Edwin was dashed. His faith in humanity was dashed. These elders were not sincere, and as Mrs. Hamp's continued to embroider the original theme of her exhortation about the Bible Edwin looked at her stealthily and the doubt crossed his mind whether that majestic and vital woman was ever sincere about anything, even to herself, whether the whole of her daily existence from her getting up to her down-lying was not a grandiose pretense. Not that he had the least desire to cling to the Bible class even as an alternative to the shop. No, he was much relieved to be rid of the Bible class. What overset him was the crude illogicality of the new decree and the shameless tacit admission of previous insincerity. Two hours later, as he stood idly at the window of his bedroom, watching the gas-lamps of Trafalgar Road wax brighter in the last glooms of twilight, he was still occupied with the sham and the unreason and the lack of scruple, suddenly revealed in the life of the elder generation. Unconsciously imitating a trick of his father's when annoyed but calm, he nodded his head several times, and with his tongue against his teeth made the noise which in writing is represented by yet somehow he had always known that it would be so. At bottom he was only pretending to himself to be shocked and outraged. His plans were no further advanced. Indeed they were put back for this Saturday afternoon, vigil in the shop would be in some sort of symbolic temporary defeat for him. Why had he not spoken out clearly? Why was he always like a baby in presence of his father? The future was all askew for him. He had forgotten his tremendous serious resolves. The touch of the half-sovereign in his pocket, however, was comforting in a universe of discomfort. End of Volume 1 Chapter 7 Volume 1 Chapter 8 of Clay Hanger by Arnold Bennett This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 8 in the shop Here lad, said his father to Edwin as soon as he had scraped up the last crumbs of cheese from his plate at the end of dinner on the following day, Edwin rose obediently and followed him out of the room. Having waited at the top of the stairs until his father had reached the foot, he leaned forward as far as he could with one hand on the rail and the other pressing against the wall, swooped down to the mat at the bottom without touching a single step on the way, and made a rocket-like noise with his mouth. He had no other manner of descending the staircase unless he happened to be in disgrace. His father went straight to the desk in the corner behind the account book window, assumed his spectacles, and lifted the lid of the desk. Here he said in a low voice, Mr. Enoch Peake is stepping in this afternoon to look at this here. He displayed the proof, an unusually elaborate wedding card which announced the marriage of Mr. Enoch Peake with Mrs. Louisa loggerheads. You know him, as I mean? Yes, said Edwin, the stout man, the cock-nitch-garden's man. That's him. Well, you tell him I've been called away. Tell him who you are, not but what he'll know. Tell him I think it might be better. Darius's thick finger ran along a line of print. If we put widow of the late Simon loggerhead Zesquire instead of ESQ, see? Otherwise it's all right. Tell him I say, as otherwise it's all right. And ask him if you'll have it printed in silver and how many he wants, and show him this sample envelope. Now do you understand? Yes, said Edwin, in a tone to convey, not disrespectfully, that there was nothing to understand. Curious how his father had the air and all his intellect as if to a problem? Then you'll take it to Big James and he can start shawna on it. The job is promised for Monday afternoon. Will Big James be working? asked Edwin, for it was Saturday afternoon, when, though the shop remained open, the printing office was closed. They're all on over time, said Mr. Clayhanger. And then he added in a voice still lower and with a surreptitious glance at Miss Ingemells, the shopwoman stolledly enfolding newspapers in wrappers at the opposite counter. See to it yourself now, he won't want to talk to her about a thing like that. Tell him I told you specially. Just let me see how well you can do it. Right, said Edwin, and to himself super-siliously it might be life or death. We ought to be doing a lot of business with Enoch Peake later on. Mr. Clayhanger finished in a whisper. I see, said Edwin, impressed, perceiving that he had perhaps been super-silious too soon. Mr. Clayhanger returned his spectacles to their case and, taking his hat from its customary hook behind him over the job-files, consulted his watch and passed round the counter to go. Then he stopped. I'm going to Manchester, he murmured, confidentially, to see if I can pick up a machine as I've heard of. Edwin was flattered. At the dinner-table Mr. Clayhanger had only about safe that he had a train to catch and would probably not be in till late at night. The next moment he glimpsed Darius through the window, his arms motionless by his sides and sticking slightly out, hurrying in the sunshine along Wedgewood Street in the direction of Shoreport Station. Part two. So this was business. It was not the business he desired and meant to have and he was uneasy at the extent to which he was already entangled in it. But it was rather amusing and his father had really been very friendly. He felt a sense of importance. Soon afterwards Clara ran into the shop to speak to Miss Ingemells. The two chatted and giggled together. Father's gone to Manchester, he found opportunity to say to Clara as she was leaving. Why aren't you doing those prizes he told you to do? Retorted Clara and vanished. She wanted none of Edwin's superior heirs. During dinner Mr. Clayhanger had instructed his son to go through the Sunday School prize stock and make an inventory of it. This injunction from the child Clara, which Miss Ingemells had certainly overheard, prevented him as an independent man from beginning his work for at least ten minutes. He whistled, opened his father's desk and stared vacantly into it, examined the pen nib case in detail and tore off two leaves from the date calendar so that it should be ready for Monday. He had a great scorn for Miss Ingemells who was a personable if somewhat heavy creature of twenty-eight, because she kept company with a young man. He had caught them arm and arm and practically hugging each other on Sunday afternoon in the street. He could see nought but silliness in that kind of thing. The entrance of a customer caused him to turn abruptly to the high shelves where the books were kept. He was glad that the customer was not Mr. Enoch Peake, the expectation of whose arrival made him curiously nervous. He placed the stepladder against the shelves, climbed up and began to finger volumes and parcels of volumes. The dust was incredible. The disorder filled him with contempt. It was astounding that his father could tolerate such disorder. No doubt the whole shop was in the same condition. Thirteen Archie's old desk he read on a parcel, but when he opened the parcel he found seven from Jess to Ernest. Hence he had to undo every parcel. However the work was easy. He first wrote the inventory in pencil, then he copied it in ink, then he folded it and wrote very carefully on the back because his father had a mania for endorsing documents in the legal manner. Inventory of Sunday school prize-stock. And after an instant's hesitation he added his own initials. Then he began to tie up and restore the parcels and the single volumes. None of all this literature had any charm for him. He possessed five or six such books all guilt and chromatic, which had been awarded to him at Sunday school, suitably inscribed, for doing nothing in particular, and he regarded them without exception as frauds upon boyhood. However Clara had always enjoyed reading them. But lying flat on one of the top shelves he discovered nearly at the end of his task an oblong tome which did interest him. Casanova's architectural views of European capitals with descriptive letterpress. It had an old-fashioned look and was probably some relic of his father's predecessor in the establishment. Another example of the lack of order which prevailed. Part three. He took the volume to the retreat of the desk and there turned over its pages of coloured illustrations. At first his interest in them and in the letterpress was less instinctive than deliberate. He said to himself, Now if there is anything in me I ought really to be interested in this and I must be interested in it. And he was. He glanced carelessly at the clock which was hung above the shelves of exercise books and notebooks exactly opposite the door. A quarter past four. The afternoon was quietly passing and he had not found it too tedious. In the background of the task which he considered he had accomplished with extraordinary efficiency his senses noted faintly the continual trickle of customers all of whom were infallibly drawn to Miss Ingamel's counter by her mere watchful and receptive appearance. He had heard phrases and ends of phrases such as No, we haven't anything smaller A camel-hair brush Gum but not glue Very sorry, sir, I'll speak firmly to the paper boy and the sound of coins dragged along the counter the sound of the testing of half a sovereign the opening and shutting of the till-draw and occasionally Miss Ingamel's exclaiming to herself upon the stupidity of customers after a customer had gone and once Miss Ingamel's crossing angrily to fix the door ajar which some heedless customer had closed. Did they suppose that people didn't want air like other people? And now it was a quarter past four. Undoubtedly he had a peculiar and pleasant feeling of importance. In another half-minute he glanced at the clock again and it was a quarter to five. What hypnotism attracted him towards the artist's materials cabinet which stood magnificent complicated and complete in the middle of the shop like a monument. His father, after one infantile disastrous raid, had absolutely forbidden any visitation of that cabinet with its glass case of assorted paints, crayons, brushes and pencils and its innumerable long drawers full of paper and cards and wondrous perfectly equipped boxes and T-squares and Set-squares with a hundred other contrivances. But of course the order had now seized to have force Edwin had left school and if he was not a man he was certainly not a boy. He began to open the drawers at first gingerly then boldly. After all it was no business of Missingamels and to be just Missingamels made no sort of pretence that it was any business of hers. She proceeded with her own business. Edwin opened a rather large wooden water colour box. It was marked five and six months. It seemed to comprise everything needed for the production of the most entrancing and majestic architectural views. And as Edwin took out its uppercase and discovered still further marvellous devices and apparatus in its basement beneath he dimly but passionately saw in his heart bright masterpieces that ought to be the fruit of that box. There was a key to it. He must have it. He would have given all that he possessed for it if necessary. Part Four Missingamels, he said, and as she did not look up immediately I say Missingamels, how much does father take off in the shilling to auntie when she buys anything? Don't ask me, Master Edwin said Missingamels, I don't know, how should I know? Well then he muttered, I shall pay full price for it, that's all. He could not wait and he wanted to be on the safe side. Missingamels gave him change for his half-sovereign in a strictly impartial manner to indicate that she accepted no responsibility. And the squaring of Edwin's shoulders conveyed to Missingamels that he advised her to keep carefully within her own sphere and not to make impertinent inquiries about the origin of the half-sovereign which he could see intrigued her acutely. He now owned the box. It was not a box of colours but a box of enchantment. He had had colour boxes before but nothing to compare with this, nothing that could have seemed magical to anybody wiser than a very small boy. Then he bought some cartridge paper. He considered that cartridge paper would be good enough for preliminary experiments. Part 5 It was while he was paying for the cartridge paper he being, as was indeed proper on the customer's side of the counter that a heavy, loudish boy in an apron entered the shop blushing. Edwin turned away. This was Missingamels affair. If you please, Mr. Peake sent me. He cannot come in this afternoon. He's got a bit of ratting on. And will Mr. Clare-Hanger step across to the dragon tonight after eight with that there peeper, paper, as he knows on? At the name of Peake Edwin started he had utterly forgotten the matter. Master Edwin said Missingamels dryly. You know all about that, don't you? Clearly she resented that he knew all about that while she didn't. Oh yes, Edwin Stamford, what did you say? It was his first piece of real business. If you please, Mr. Peake sent me. The messenger blundered through his message again word for word. Very well I'll attend to it said Edwin as nonchalantly as he could. Nevertheless he was at a loss what to do, simple, though the situation might have seemed to a person an experience of business longer than Edwin's. Just as three hours previously his father had appeared to be bracing all his intellect to a problem that struck Edwin as entirely simple so now Edwin seemed to be bracing all his intellect to another aspect of the same problem. Time, revenging his father. What go across to the dragon and in cold blood demand Mr. Enoch Peake and then Palae with Mr. Enoch Peake were one man with another. He had never been inside the dragon. He had been brought up in the belief that the dragon was a place of sin. The dragon was included in the generic term gin palace and quite probably in the Siamese twin term gaming saloon. Moreover to discuss business with Mr. Enoch Peake. Mr. Enoch Peake was as mysterious to Edwin as say a Chinese Mandarin. Still business was business and something would have to be done. He did not know what. Or he to go to the dragon. His father had not foreseen the possibility of this development. He instantly decided one fundamental. He would not consult Miss Ingemells. No, nor even Maggie. There remained only big James. He went across to see big James who was calmly smoking a pipe and still landing at the top of the steps leading to the printing office. Big James showed no astonishment. You come along a me to the dragon tonight young sir at eight o'clock or as soon after as makes no matter and I'll see as you see Mr. Enoch Peake. I shall be coming up with us and bang at eight o'clock or as soon after as makes no matter. You be waiting for me at the back gates there and I'll see as you see Mr. Enoch Peake. Are you going to the dragon? Am I going to the dragon young sir? exclaimed big James in his majestic voice. End of chapter eight volume one. Volume one chapter nine of Clay Hanger by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter nine the town. James Yalat was worthy of his nickname. He stood six feet four and a half inches in height and his girth was proportionate. He had enormous hands and feet, large features, and a magnificent long dark brown beard. Owing to this beard his neck tie was never seen. But the most magnificent thing about him was his base voice. Acknowledged to be the finest base in the town and one of the finest even in Handbridge. Where in his earlier prime James had lived as a news comp on the Staffordshire signal. He was now a jobbing comp in Bursley because Bursley was his native town and because he preferred jobbing. He made the fourth and heaviest member of the celebrated Bursley male glee party. The other three being Arthur Small Rice an old man with a striking falsetto voice Abraham Heracles and Joss Ranpik. These men were accustomed to fame and the big James was the king of them, though the mildest. They sang at dinners, free and easy, concerts and Martin Mass tea meetings. They sang for the glory and when there was no demand for their services they sang to themselves for the sake of singing. Each of them was a star in some church or chapel choir and except Arthur Small Rice they all shared a certain elasticity of religious opinion. James, for example, had varied in ten years from Wesleyan through Old Church to Roman Catholic up at Bleakridge. It all depended on niceties in the treatment accorded to him and on the choice of anthems. Moreover, he liked to change. He was what his superiors called a very superior man. Owing to the more careful enunciation required in singing he had lost a great deal of the five towns accent and one cannot be a compositor for a quarter of a century without insensibly acquiring an education and a store of knowledge far excelling the ordinary. His manner was gentle and perhaps somewhat pompous as is common with very big men. But you could never be sure whether an extremely subdued humor did not underlie his pomposity. He was a bachelor aged forty-five and lived quietly with a married sister at the bottom of Woodison Bank near the national schools. The wonder was that with all his advantages he had not more deeply impressed himself upon Bursley as an individuality and not merely as a voice. But he seemed never to seek to do so. He was without ambition and though curiously careful sometimes about preserving his own dignity and beyond question sensitive by temperament he showed marked respect and even humility to the worldly successful. Despite his bigness and simplicity there was something small about him which came out in odd trifling details. Thus it was characteristic of Big James to ask Edwin to be waiting for him at the back gates in Woodison Bank when he might just as easily have met him at the side door by the closed shop in Wedgewood Street. Edwin, who from mere pride had said nothing to his sisters about the impending visit to the dragon was a little surprised and dash to see Big James in broadcloth and a high hat for he had not dreamed of changing his own everyday suit nor had it occurred to him that the dragon was a temple of ceremoniousness. Big James looked enormous. The wide lapel of his shining frockcoat was buttoned high up under his beard and curved downwards for a distance of considerably more than a yard to his knees. It was a heroic frockcoat. The sleeves were wide but narrowing at the wrists and the white wristbands were very tight. The trousers fell in ample folds on the uppers of the gigantic boots. Big James had a way of sticking out his chest and throwing his head back which would have projected the tip of his beard ten inches forth from his body, had the beard been stiff but the soft silkiness of the beard frustrated this spectacular phenomenon which would have been very interesting to witness. Part 2 The pair stepped across Trafalgar Road together Edwin though he tried to be sedate nothing but a frisking morsel by the side of the vast monument. Compared with the architectural grandeur of Mr. Valet his thin supple free-moving limbs had an almost pathetic appearance of ephemeral fragility. Big James directed himself to the archway leading to the dragon's stables and there he saw an Osler or odd man Edwin feeling the imminence of an ordeal surreptitiously explored a pocket to be sure that the proof of the wedding card was safely there. The Osler raised his reddish eyebrows to Big James Big James jerked his head to one side indicating apparently the entire dragon and simultaneously conveying a query. The Osler paused immobile in instant and then shook his insignificant turn at fate. Big James turned away. No word had been spoken nevertheless the men had exchanged a dialogue which might be thus put into words. I wasn't thinking to see you so soon from the Osler then nobody of any importance has yet gone into the assembly room from Big James nobody worth speaking of and won't for a while from the other. Then I'll take a turn from Big James. The latter now looked down at Edwin and addressed him in words. Seemingly we're too soon, Mr. Edwin. What do you say to a turn around the town, playground way? I doubted we should be too soon. Edwin showed alacrity. As a schoolboy it had been definitely forbidden to him to go out at night and unless sent on a special and hurried errand he had scarcely seen the physiognomy of the streets after eight o'clock. He had never seen the playground in the evening and this evening the town did not seem like the same town. It had become a new and mysterious town of adventure and yet Edwin was not fifty yards away from his own bedroom. They ascended duck-bank together. Edwin proud to be with a celebrity of the caliber of Big James and Big James calmly satisfied to show himself thus formally with his master's son. It appeared almost incredible that those two immortals so diverse had issued from the womb practically alike that a few brief years on the earth had given Big James such a tremendous physical advantage. Several hours' daily submission to the exact regularities of lines of type and to the unvarying demands of fine-nutely-adjusted machines in motion had stamped Big James' body and mind with the delicate and quasi-fineking preciseness which characterizes all compositors and printers and the continual monotonous performance of similar tasks that employed his faculties while never absorbing or straining them had soothed and dulled the fever of life in him to a beneficent calm, refined and beautified by the pleasurable exercise of song. Big James had seldom known a violent emotion. He had craved nothing, sought for nothing, and lost nothing. Edwin, like Big James in progress from everlasting to everlasting, was all in co-aid, unformed, undisciplined and burning with capricious fires. All expectant, eager, reluctant, tingling, timid, innocently and wistfully audacious by taking the boy's hand Big James might have poetically symbolized their relation. Part 3 Are you going to sing tonight at the dragon, Mr. Yarlott? asked Edwin. He lengthened his step to Big James, controlled his ardent body and tried to remember that he was a man with a man. I am, young sir, said Big James, there is a party of us. Is it the male glee party, Edwin pursued? Yes, Mr. Edwin. Then Mr. Smallrice will be there. He will, Mr. Edwin. Why can Mr. Smallrice sing such high notes? Big James slowly shook his head as Edwin looked up at him. I tell you what it is, young sir, it's a gift. That's what it is. Same as I can sing low. But Mr. Smallrice is very old, isn't he? There's a parrot in a cage over at the duck there as is 85 years old and that's proved by record-kept, young sir. No, protested Edwin's incredulity politely. By record-kept, said Big James. Do you often sing at the dragon, Mr. Yarlott? Time was, said Big James, when some of us used to sing there every night. Sundays accepted and concerts and whatnot accepted. I for hours and hours every night, and still do sometimes. After your work? After our work I, and often till dawn in summer, one o'clock, two o'clock, half past two o'clock every night. But now they say that this new licensing act will close every public house in this town at eleven o'clock and a straight-up eleven at that. But what do you do it for? What do we do it for? We do it to pass the time and the glass, young sir. Not as I should like you to think as I ever drank, Mr. Edwin. One quart of ale I take every night and have ever done. No more, no less. But Edwin's rapid-breaking voice interrupted eagerly the deep majestic tones. Aren't you tired the next day? I should be. I never, said Big James. I get up from my bed as fresh as a daisy at six sharp, and I've known the nights when my bed near saw me. You must be strong, Mr. Yarlott. My word!" Edwin exclaimed. These revelations of the habits and prowess of Big James astounded him. He had never suspected that such things went on in the town. I'm middling. I suppose it's a free and easy at the dragon tonight, Mr. Yarlott. What a manner of speaking, said Big James. I wish I could stay for it. And why not? Big James suggested a look down at Edwin with half-humorous insertitude. Edwin shrugged his shoulders superiorly, indicating by instinct in spite of himself that possibly Big James was trespassing over the social line that divided them. And yet Big James' father would have condescended to Edwin's grandfather. Only Edwin now belonged to the employing class, whilst Big James belonged to the employed. Already Edwin, whose father had been thrashed by workmen whom a compositor would hesitate to call skilled, already Edwin had the mere natural to a ruler, and Big James, with dignified deference, would submit unresentingly to his attitude. It was the subtlest thing. It was not that Edwin obscurely objected to the suggestion of his being present at the free and easy. It was that he objected, but nicely and with good nature, to any assumption of Big James' right to influence him towards an act that his father would not approve. Instead of saying why not, Big James ought to have said, Nobody but you can decide that, as your father's away, James ought to have been strictly impartial. Part Four Well said Big James when they arrived at the playground which lay north of the covered meat market or shambles. It looks as if they have been able to make a start yet at the blood-tub. His tone was marked by a calm grand disdain, as of one entertainer talking about another, the blood-tub, otherwise known as snags, was the centre of nocturnal pleasure in Bursley. It stood almost on the very spot where the jawbone of a whale had once lain, as a supreme natural curiosity. It represented the softened manners which had developed out of the old medievalism of the century. It had supplanted the bear-pit and the cock-pit. It corresponded somewhat with the ideals symbolised by the new town hall. In the tiny, odourous bear-houses of all the undulating, twisting, ready streets that surrounded the contiguous open spaces of Duck Bank, the playground, the marketplace, and St. Luke's Square, the folk no longer discussed eagerly what chance on Sunday morning the municipal bear would have against five dogs. They had progressed as far as a free library, boxing gloves, rabbit coursing, and the blood-tub. This last was a theatre with wooden sides and a canvas roof, and it would hold quite a crowd of people. In front of it was a platform and an orchestra, lighted by oil-flares, that, as B. James and Edwin approached, were gaining strength in the twilight. Liney against the platform was a blackboard on which was chalked the announcement of two plays. The forty thieves, author unstated, and crookshanks the bottle. The orchestra, after terrific concussions, fell silent, and then a troupe of players in costume, cramped on the narrow trestle boards, performed a sample scene from the forty thieves, just to give the crowd in front an idea of the wonders of this powerful work. And four thieves passed and repast behind the screen, hiding the doors, and reappeared nine times as four fresh thieves until the tale of forty was complete, and then old Hammerad, the beloved clown who played the drum, and whose wife kept a barber shop in Buckrow and shaved for a penny, left his drum and did two-minute stiff clowning, and then the orchestra burst forth again, and the brazen voice of old Snags, in his moleskin waistcoat, easily rode the storm, aduring the folk to walk up and walk up, which some of the folk did do. And lastly the band played God Save the Queen, and the players, followed by old Snags, processionally entered the booth. I lay they come out again, said Big James, with grim blandness. Why, asked Edwin, he was absolutely new to the scene. I lay they haven't got twenty-couple inside, said Big James. And in less than a minute the troupe did indeed emerge, and old Snags he postulated with a dilatory public, respectfully but firmly. It had been a queer year for Mr. Snags. Rain had ruined the wakes. Rain had ruined everything. Rain had nearly ruined him. July was obviously not a month in which a self-respecting theatre ought to be open, but Mr. Snags had got to the point of catching at straws. He stated that in order to prove his absolute bona fides, the troupe would now give a scene from that world-renowned and unique drama The Bottle, after which the performance really would commence, since he could not as a gentleman keep his kind patrons within waiting any longer. His habit, which emphasized itself as he grew older, was to treat the staring crowd in front of his booth like a family of nephews and nieces. The device was quite useless. For the public's solidity was impregnable. It touched the heroic. No more granitic and crass solidity could have been discovered in England. The crowd stood, it exercised no other function of existence. It just stood, and there it would stand under-convinced that the greatest part of the spectacle was positively at an end. Part 5 With a ceremonious gesture signifying that he assumed the young sir's consent, Big James turned away. He had displayed to Edwin the poverty and the futility of the blood-tub. Edwin would perhaps have liked to stay. The scenes enacted on the outer platform were certainly tinged with the ridiculous, but they were the first histrionics that he had ever witnessed, and he could not help thinking, hoping, in spite of his common sense, that within the booth all was different, miraculously transformed into the grand and the impressive. Left to himself, he would surely have preferred an evening at the blood-tub to a business interview with Mr. Enoch Peake at the Dragon. But naturally he had to scorn the blood-tub with a scorn equal to the massive and silent scorn of Big James. And on the whole he considered that he was behaving as a man with another man rather well. He sought by depreciatory remarks to keep the conversation at its proper adult level. Big James led him through the marketplace where a few vegetable, tripe and gingerbread stalls, relics of the day's market, were still attracting customers in the twilight. These slattenly and picturesque groups beneath their flickering yellow flares were encamped at the gigantic foot of the Town Hall porch as at the foot of a precipice. The monstrous black walls of the Town Hall rose and were merged in gloom, and the spire of the Town Hall, on whose summits to the gold angel holding a gold crown, rose right into the heavens and was there lost. It was marvellous that this town, by adding stone to stone, had upreared this monument which in expressing the secret nobility of its ideals dwarfed the town. On every side of it the beer-houses full of a dull, savage ecstasy of life gleamed brighter than the shops. Big James led Edwin down through the mysteries of the Cockyard and up along Bugs Gutter and so back to the Dragon. CHAPTER X When Edwin, shyly, followed Big James into the assembly room of the Dragon, it already held a fair sprinkling of men and newcomers continued to drop in. They were soberly and respectively clothed, though a few had dotted handkerchiefs round their necks instead of collars and ties. The occasion was a jollity of the Bursley Mutual Burial Club. This club, a singular example of that dogged private cooperative enterprise, which so sharply distinguishes English corporate life from the corporate life of other European countries, had lustily survived from a period when men were far less sure of a decent burial than they were then in the very prosperous early seventies. It had helped to maintain the barbaric fashion of ostentatiously expensive funerals out of which undertakers and beer-sellers made vast sums, but it had also provided a basis of common endeavour and of fellowship, and its respectability was intense and at the same time broad-minded. To be an established subscriber to the Burial Club was evidence of good character and of social spirit. The periodic jollities of this company of men whose professed aim was to bury each other had a high reputation for excellence. Up to a year previously they had always been held at the duck in Duck Square opposite. But Mr. Enoch Peake, chairman of the club, had by persistent and relentless chicane, triumphing over immense influences, changed their venue to the dragon, whose landlady Mrs. Louisa Loggerheads he was then courting. It must be stated that Mrs. Louisa's name contained no slur of contankerousness. It is merely the local word for a harmless plant, the napweed. He had now won Mrs. Loggerheads after being a widower thrice and with her the second best house in the town. There were long benches down the room with forms on either side of them. Big James, not without pomp, escorted a blushing Edwin to the end of one of these tables near a small raised platform that occupied the extremity of the room. Over this platform was printed a legend, as a bird is known by its note, and over the legend was a full-rigged ship in a glass case and a pair of antlers. The walls of the room were dark brown, the ceiling gray with sort of various sorts, and the floor tiled red and black and sanded. Smoke rose in spirals from about a score of churchwarden pipes and as many cutties which were charged from tin pouches and lighted by spills of newspaper from the three double gas jets that hung down over the benches. Two middle-aged women, one in black and the other checked, served beer, porter and stout in mugs and gin in glasses, passing in and out through a side door. The company talked little, and it had not yet begun seriously to drink, but sprawled about in attitudes of restful abeyance, it was smoking religiously, and the flat noise of solemn expectorations punctuated the minutes. Edwin was easily the youngest person present. The average age appeared to be about fifty, but nobody's curiosity seemed to be much stirred by his odd arrival, and he seized gradually to blush. When, however, one of the women paused before him in silent question, and he had to explain that he required no drink because he had only called for a moment about a matter of business, he blushed again vigorously. Part Two Then Mr. Enoch Peake appeared. He was a short, stout old man with fat hands, a red, minutely wrinkled face, and very small eyes. Greeted with the respect due to the owner of Cocknitch Gardens, a sporting resort where all the best foot racing and rabbit-coursing took place, he accepted it in Somnolent indifference, and immediately took off his coat and sat down in cotton-shirt sleeves. Then he pulled out a red handkerchief and his tobacco-box and set them on the table. Big James Motion to Edwin Evening Mr. Peake said Big James crossing the floor, and here's a young gent wishful for two words with you. Mr. Peake stared vacantly. Young Mr. Clayhanger explained Big James, It's about this card Edwin began in a whisper. Drawing the wedding card sheepishly from his pocket, Father had to go to Manchester, he added, when he had finished. Mr. Enoch Peake seized the card in both hands and examined it, and Edwin could hear his heavy breathing. Mrs. Louise the loggerheads, a comfortable, smiling, administrative woman of fifty, showed herself at the service door and nodded with dignity to a few of the habitués. Mrs. is at door, said Big James to Mr. Peake. Is her, muttered Mr. Peake, not interrupting his examination of the card. One of the serving women, having removed Mr. Peake's coat, brought a new church warden, filled it, and carefully directed the tip towards his tight little mouth. The lips closed on it. Then she lighted a spill and applied it to the distant bowl and the mouth puffed, and then the woman deposited the bowl cautiously on the bench. Lastly she came with a small glass of slow gin. Mr. Peake did not move. At length Mr. Peake withdrew the pipe from his mouth, and after an interval said, Aye. He continued to stare at the card, now held in one hand. And is it to be printed in silver, Edwin asked? Mr. Peake took a few more puffs. Aye. When he had stared further for a long time at the card, his hand moved slowly with it towards Edwin, and Edwin resumed possession of it. Mrs. Louise's loggerheads had now vanished. Mrs. has gone, said Big James. Has her, muttered Mr. Peake. Edwin rose to leave, though unwillingly, but Big James asked him in polite reproach whether he should not stay for the first song. He nodded encouraged and sat down. He did not know that the uppermost idea in Big James' mind for an hour past had been that Edwin would hear him sing. Mr. Peake lifted his glass, held it from him, approached his lips towards it, and emptied it at a draught. He then glanced round and said thickly, Gentlemen all, Mr. Small-Rise, Mr. Herakles, Mr. Rompik, and Mr. Yarlott will now oblige with one of the old favourites. There were some applause, a few coats were removed, and Mr. Peake fixed himself in a contemplative attitude. Part 3 Mrs. Arthur Small-Rise, Abraham Herakles, Joss Rompik, and James Yarlott rose, stepped heavily onto the little platform and stood in a line with their hands in their pockets. As a bird is known by its note, was hidden by the rampart of their shoulders. They had no music, they knew the music, they had sung it a thousand times. They knew precisely the effects which they wished to produce and the means of production. They worked together like an inspired machine. Mr. Arthur Small-Rise gave a rapid glance into a corner, and from that corner a concertina spoke, one short note. Then began with no hesitating, shuffling preliminaries nor mute consultations, the singing of that classic quartet justly celebrated from Hull to Wigan and from North Allerton to Lichfield, Loud Oceans Raw. The thing was performed with absolute assurance and perfection. Mr. Arthur Small-Rise did the yapping of the short waves on the foam-veiled rocks, and Big James in full escrandia did the long and mighty rolling of the deep. It was majestic, terrific, and overwhelming. Many bars before the close, Edwin was thrilled as by an exquisite and vast revelation. He tingled from head to foot. He had never heard any singing like it or any singing in any way comparable to it. He had never guessed that song held such possibilities of emotion. The pure and fine essential qualities of the voices, the dizzying harmonies, the fugal calls and responses, the strange relief of the unisons and above all, the free natural mien of the singers, proudly aware that they were producing something beautiful that could not be produced more beautifully, conscious of unchallenged supremacy. All this enfevered him to an unprecedented and self-astonished enthusiasm. He murmured under his breath as Loud Oceans Raw died away and the little voices of the street supervened. By gad, by gad! The applause was generous. Edwin stamped and clapped with childlike violence and fury. Mr. Peek slowly and regularly thumbt one fist on the bench, puffing the while. Glasses and mugs could be seen but not heard dancing. Mr. Arthur Smallrise, Mr. Abram Herakles, Mr. Joss Rawpik and Mr. James Yarlott entirely inattentive to the acclamations, stepped heavily from the platform and sat down. When Edwin caught Big James' eye, he clapped again, reanimating their general approval and Big James gazed at him with bland satisfaction. Mr. Enoch Peek was now saved for the rise and fall of his great chest as immobile and brooding as an Indian god. Part 4 Edwin did not depart. He reflected that even if his father should come home earlier than the last train and prove curious, it would be impossible for him to know the exact moment at which his son had been able to have speech with Mr. Enoch Peek on the important matter of business. For ought his father could ever guess he might have been prevented from obtaining the attention of the chairman of the proceedings until, say, eleven o'clock. Also he meant to present his conduct to his father in the light of an enterprising and fearless action, showing a marked aptitude for affairs. Mr. Enoch Peek, whom his father was anxious to flatter, had desired his father's company at the Dragon and to save the situation Edwin had courageously gone instead. That was it. Besides, he would have stayed in any case. His mind was elevated above the fear of consequences. There was some concertina playing with a realistic imitation of church bells born on the wind from a distance, and then the Bursley Prize handbell ringers, or campinologists, produced a whole family of real bells from under a form, and the Osler and the two women arranged a special table, and the campinologists fixed their bells on it and themselves around it and performed a selection of scotch and Irish airs without once deceiving themselves as to the precise note a chosen bell would admit when duly shaken. Singular as was this feat, it was far less so than a young man's performance of the offerclid, a serpentine instrument that coiled around and about its player, and when breathed into persuasively gave forth prodigious brassy sounds that resembled the night noises of beasts of prey. This item roused the Indian god from his umbilical contemplations, and as the young offerclid player somewhat breathless passed down the room with his brazen creature in his arms, Mr. Enoch Peake pulled him by the jacket-tail. Hey, said Mr. Enoch Peake, is that the offerclid as thy father used to play at the old church? Yes, Mr. Peake said the young man with bright respect. Mr. Peake dropped his eyes again, and when the young man had gone, he murmured to his stomach, I well knowed it where the offerclid as his father used to play at the old church, and suddenly starting up he continued hoarsely. Gentlemen all, Mr. James Yarlott will now kindly oblige with the miller of the D. And one of the women relighted his pipe and served him with beer. Part 5 Big James rendering of the miller of the D had been renowned in the five towns since 1852. It was classical, hallowed. It was the only possible rendering of the miller of the D. If the greatest bass in the world had come incognito to Bursley and sung the miller of the D, people would have said, ah, but ye should hear Big James sing it. It suited Big James. The sentiments of the song were his sentiments. He expressed them with natural simplicity, but at the same time they underwent a certain refinement at his hands. For even when he sang at his loudest, Big James was refined, natty and restrained. His instinctive gentleness was invincible and all-pervading, and the real beauty and enormous power of his magnificent voice saved him by its mere distinction from the charge of being finicking. The simple sound of the voice gave pleasure, and the simple production of that sound was Big James' deepest joy. Amid all the expected loud applause, the giant looked naively for Edwin's boyish, mad enthusiasm and felt it, and was thrilled and very glad that he had brought Edwin. As for Edwin, Edwin was humbled that he should have been so blind to what Big James was. He had always regarded Big James as a dull, decent, somewhat peculiar fellow in a dirty apron who was his father's foreman. He had actually talked once to Big James of the wonderful way in which Maggie and Clara sang, and Big James had been properly respectful. But the singing of Maggie and Clara was less than nothing. The crudest amateurism compared to these public performances of Big James. Even the accompanying concertina was far more cleverly handled than the clay-hanger piano had ever been handled. Yes, Edwin was humbled, and he had a great wish to be able to do something brilliantly himself. He knew not what. The intoxication of the desire for glory was upon him as he sat amid those shirt-sleeved men near the brooding Indian god under a crawling bluish canopy of smoke gazing absently at the legend that the bird is known by its note. After an interval during which Mr. Enoch Peake was roused more than once, a man with a langeshir accent recited a poem entitled The Patent Hairbrushing Machine, the rotary hairbrush being at that time an exceedingly pecan't novelty that had only been heard of in the barber's shops of the five towns, though travellers to Manchester could boast that they had sat under it. The principle of the new machine was easily grasped and the sensations induced by it easily imagined. The recitation had a success which was indicated by slapping of thighs and great blowings off of mirth. But Mr. Enoch Peake preserved his tranquility throughout it, and immediately it was over he announced with haste, gentlemen all, Miss Florence Simcox, or shall I say Mrs. Offlow, wife of the gentleman who was just obliged, the champion female clogdancer of the Midlands will now oblige. Part 6 These words put every man whom they surprised into a state of unusual animation, and they surprised most of the company. It may be doubted whether a female clogdancer had ever footed it in Bursley. Several public houses possessed local champions of a street, of a village, but these were emphatically not women. Enoch Peake had arranged this daring item in the course of his afternoon's business at Cocknidge Gardens. Mr. Offlow being an expert in ratting terriers and Mrs. Offlow happening to be on a tour with her husband through the realms of her championship, a tour which mingled the varying advantages derivable from terriers, recitations and clogs. The affair was therefore respectable beyond caval. Nevertheless, when Florence shone suddenly at the service door, the shortness of her red and black velvet skirts, and the undeniable complete visibility of her rounded calves produced an uneasy and agreeable impression that Enoch Peake, for a chairman of the Mutual Burial Club, had gone rather far, superbly far, and that his moral ascendancy over Louisa loggerheads must indeed be truly astonishing. Louisa now stood gravely behind the dancer in the shadow of the doorway, and the contrast between her and Florence was in every way striking enough to prove what a wonderful and mysterious man Enoch Peake was. Florence was accustomed to audiences. She was a pretty doll-like woman if inclined to amplitude, but the smile between those shaking golden ringlets had neither the modesty nor the false modesty nor the desilety that Bursley was accustomed to think proper to the face of woman. It could have stared down any man in the place except perhaps Mr. Peake. The gestures of Mr. Off-Flow and her gestures as he arranged and prepared the surface of the little square dancing board that was her throne showed that he was the husband of Florence Simcox and she the wife of Off-Flow, the reciter and dog fancia. Further it was his role to play the concertina to her. He had had to learn the concertina, possibly a secret humiliation for one whose judgment in terriers was not excelled in many public houses. Part 7 She danced, and the service doorway showed a vista of opened mouth scullions. There was no sound in the room to save the concertina and the champion clogs. Every eye was fixed on those clogs. Even the little eyes of Mr. Peake quitted the button of his waistcoat and burned like diamond points on those clogs. Florence herself chiefly gazed on those clogs but occasionally her nonchalant, petulant gaze would wander up and down her bare arms and across her bosom. At intervals with her ringed fingers she would lift the short skirt and nothing an imperceptibility, half an inch with glanced-down cast and the effect was profound, reckoned-eyed, inexplicable. Her style was not that of a male clogdancer but it was indudably clogdancing full of marvels to the connoisseur and to the profane, nought but a highly complicated series of wooden noises. Florence's face began to perspire then the concertina seized playing so that an undistracted attention might be given to the supremely difficult final figures of the dance. And thus was rendered back to the people in the charming form of beauty that which the instinct of the artist had taken from the sordid ugliness of the people. The clog, the very emblem of the servitude and the squalor of brutalized populations was changed on the light feet of this favourite into the medium of grace. Few of these men but at some time of their lives had worn the clog, had clattered in it through winter's slush and through the freezing darkness before dawn to the manufactory and the mill and the mine. Whence after a day of labour under discipline more than military they had clattered back to their little candle-lighted homes. One of the slattens behind the doorway actually stood in clogs to watch the dancer. The clog meant everything that was harsh, foul and desolating. It summoned images of misery and disgust. Yet on those feet that had never worn it seriously it became the magic instrument of pleasure waking dulled wits and forgotten aspirations putting upon everyone an enchantment. And then suddenly the dancer threw up one foot as high as her head and brought two clogs down together with a double mallet on the board and stood still. It was over. Mrs. Louisa Loggerheads turned nervously away pushing her servants in front of her and when the Society of Mutual Barriers had recovered from the startling shameless insolence of that last high kick it gave the rain to its panting excitement and roared and stamped. Edwin was staggered. The blood swept into his face a hot tide. He was ravished, but he was also staggered. He did not know what to think of Florence the champion female clog dancer. He felt that she was wondrous. He felt that he could have gazed at her all night. But he felt that she had put him under the necessity of reconsidering some of his fundamental opinions. For example, he was obliged to admit within himself a lessening of scorn for the attitude towards each other of Miss Ingamel's and her young man. He saw those things in a new light and he reflected dazzled by the unforeseen chances of existence. Yesterday I was at school and today I see this. He was so preoccupied by his own intimate sensations that the idea of applauding never occurred to him until he perceived his conspicuousness in not applauding whereupon he clapped self-consciously. Part 8 Miss Florence Simcock, somewhat breathless, tripped away with simulated coyness and many curtsies. She had done her task and as a woman she had to go. This was a gathering of members of the Mutual Burial Club, a masculine company and not meat for females. The men pulled themselves together, remembering that their proudest quality was a stoic callousness that nothing could overthrow. They refilled pipes, ordered more beer and resumed the mask of invulnerable solemnity. I muttered Mr. Enochpeak. Edwin, with a great effort, rose and walked out. He would have liked to say good night to Big James. He did not deny that he ought to have done so, but he dared not complicate his exit. On the pavement outside, in the warm, damp night, a few loitering listeners stood doggedly before an open window, harkening, their hands deep in their pockets, motionless. And Edwin could hear Mr. Enochpeak. Gentlemen all, Mr. Arthur Smallrise, Mr. Abram Heracles, and Mr. Joss Rampic, and Mr. James Yarlet. End of chapter 10, volume 1 volume 1 chapter 11 of Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett this LibriVox recording is in the public domain chapter 11 son and father later that evening Edwin sat at a small deal table in the embrasure of the dormer window of the empty attic next to his bedroom during the interval between tea and the rendezvous with Big James he had formally planted his flag in that room he had swept it out with a long brush while Clara stood at the door giggling at the spectacle and telling him that he had no right thus to annex territory in the absence of the overlord he had mounted a pair of steps and put a lot of lumber through a trap at the head of the stairs into the loft and he had got a table, a lamp, and a chair that was all that he needed for the moment he had gone out to meet Big James with his head quite half full of this vague attic project but the night sights of Bursley and especially the music at the dragon and still more especially the dancing at the dragon had almost expelled the attic project from his head when he returned unobtrusively into the house and learned from a disturbed Mrs. Nixon who was sewing in the kitchen that he was understood to be in his new attic and that his sisters had gone to bed the enchantment of the attic had instantly resumed much of its power over him and he had hurried upstairs fortified with a slice of bread and half a cold sausage he had eaten the food absently in gulps while staring at the cover of Kazanov's architectural views of European capitals abstracted from the shop without payment then he had pinned part of a sheet of cartridge paper on an old drawing board which he possessed and had sat down for his purpose the paper ought to have been soaked and stretched on the board with paste but that would have meant a delay of seven or eight hours and he was not willing to wait though he could not concentrate his mind to begin his mind could not be reconciled to waiting so he had decided to draw his picture in pencil outline and then stretch the paper early on Sunday morning it would dry during chapel his new box of paints a cracked T-square and some India rubber also lay on the table he had chosen view of the cathedral of Notre Dame Paris from the Pont des Arts it pleased him by the colouration of the old houses in front of Notre Dame and the reflections in the water of the Seine and the elusive blueness of the twin towers amid the pale grey clouds of a Parisian sky a romantic scene he wanted to copy it exactly to recreate it from beginning to end to feel the thrill of producing each wonderful effect himself yet he sat inactive he sat and vaguely gazed at the slope of Trafalgar Road with its double row of yellow jewels beautifully ascending in fire to the ridge of the horizon and there losing itself in the deep and solemn purple of the summer night and he thought how ugly and commonplace all that was and how different from all that were the noble capitals of Europe scarcely a sound came through the open window song doubtless still gushed forth at the dragon and revelers would not for hours awake the street on their way to the exacerbating atmosphere of home Part 2 he had no resolution to take up the pencil yet after the male glee party had sung loud Ocean's Roar he remembered that he had had a most clear and distinct impulse to begin drawing architecture at once and to do something grand and fine as grand and fine as the singing something that would thrill people as the singing thrilled if he had not rushed home instantly it was solely because he had been held back by the stronger desire to hear more music and by the hope of further novel and exciting sensations but Florence the clock dancer had easily diverted the seeming powerful current of his mind he wanted as much as ever to do wondrous things and to do them soon but it appeared to him that he must think out first the enigmatic subject of Florence never had he seen any female creature as he saw her and ephemeral images of her were continually forming and dissolving before him he could come to no conclusion at all about the subject of Florence only his boyish pride was gradually being beaten back by an oncoming idea that up to that very evening he had been a sort of rather silly kid with no eyes in his head it was in order to ignore for a time this unsettling and humiliating idea that finally he began to copy the outlines of the Parisian scene on his cartridge paper he was in no way a skilled draftsman but he had dabbled in pencils and colours and had lately picked up from a handbook the hint that in blocking out a drawing the first thing to do was to observe what points were vertically under what points and what points horizontal with what points he seemed to see the whole secret of draftsmanship in this priceless council which indeed with an elementary knowledge of geometry acquired at school and the familiarity of his fingers with a pencil constituted the whole of his technical equipment all the rest was mere desire happily the architectural nature of the subject made it more amenable than say a rural landscape to the use of a t-square and common sense and Edwin considered that he was doing rather well until quitting measurements and rulings he arrived at the stage of drawing the detail of the towers then at once the dream of perfect accomplishment began to fade at the edges and the crust of faith to yield ominously each stroke was a falling away from the ideal a blow to hope and suddenly a yawn surprised him and recalled him to the existence of his body he thought I can't really be tired it would be absurd to go to bed for his theory had long been that the notions of parents about bedtime were indeed absurd and that he would be just as thoroughly reposed after three hours sleep as after ten and now that he was a man he meant to practice his theory so far as circumstances allowed he looked at his watch it was turned half past eleven a delicious wave of joy and of satisfaction animated him he had never been up so late within his recollection save on a few occasions when even infants were allowed to be up late he was alone secreted master of his time and his activity his mind charged with novel impressions and a congenial work in progress alone it was as if he was spiritually alone in the vast solitude of the night it was as if he could behold the unconscious forms of all humanity sleeping this feeling that only he had preserved consciousness and energy that he was the sole active possessor of the mysterious night affected him in the most exquisite manner he had not been so nobly happy in his life and at the same time he was proud in a childlike way of being up so late part three he heard the door being pushed open and he gave a jump and turned his head his father stood in the entrance to the attic hello father he said weekly, ingratiatingly what are doing at this time of night, lad? Darius Clayhanger demanded strange to say the autocrat was not angered by the remarkable sight in front of him Edwin knew that his father would probably come home from Manchester on the mail train which would stop to set down a passenger at Shoreport by suitable arrangement and he had expected that his father would go to bed as usual on such evenings after having eaten the supper left for him in the sitting-room his father's bedroom was next door to the sitting-room save for Mrs. Nixon in a distant nook, Edwin had the attic floor to himself he ought to have been as safe from intrusion there as in the father's capital of Europe his father did not climb the attic stairs once in six months so that he had regarded himself as secure still he must have positively forgotten the very existence of his father he must have been lost otherwise he could not but have heard the footsteps on the stairs I was just drawing said Edwin with a little more confidence he looked at his father and saw an old man a man who for him had always been old generally harsh, often truculent and seldom indulgent he saw an ugly, undistinguished and somewhat vulgar man far less dignified for instance than Big James a man who had his way by force and scarcely ever by argument a man whose arguments for or against a given course was simply pitiable if not despicable he sometimes indeed thought that there must be a peculiar twist in his father's brain which prevented him from appreciating an adverse point in a debate he had seized to expect that his father would listen to reason latterly he was always surprised when, as tonight he caught a glance of mild benevolence on that face yet he would never fail to respond to such a mood eagerly without resentment it might be said that he regarded his father as he regarded the weather fatalistically no more than against the weather would he have dreamed of bearing malice against his father even had such a plan not been unwise and dangerous he was convinced that his father's interest in him was about the same as the son's interest in him his father was nearly always wrapped in business affairs and seemed to come to the trifling affairs of Edwin with difficulty as out of an absorbing engrossment assuredly he would have been amazed to know that his father had been thinking of him all the afternoon and evening but it was so Darius Clayhanger had been nervous as to the manner in which the boy would acquit himself in the bit of business which had been confided to him it was the boy's first bit of business straightforward as it was the boy might muddle it might omit a portion of it might say the wrong thing might forget Darius hoped for the best but he was afraid he saw in his son an amiable irresponsible fool he compared Edwin at sixteen with himself at the same age Edwin had never had a care never suffered deprivation never been forced to think for himself Darius might more justly have put it never been allowed to think for himself Edwin had lived in cotton wool and knew less of the world than his father had known at half his years much less Darius was sure that Edwin had never even come near suspecting the miracles which his father had accomplished this was true and not merely was Edwin stupendously ignorant and even petally scornful of realities but he was ignorant of his own ignorance education Darius snorted to Darius it seemed that Edwin's education was like lying down in an orchard in lovely summer and having ripe fruit dropped into your mouth a cocky infant, a girl and yet there was something about Edwin that his father admired even respected and envied an occasional gesture, an attitude in walking, an intonation, a smile Edwin his own son had a personal distinction that he himself could never compass Edwin talked more correctly than his father he thought differently from his father he had an original grace in the essence of his being he was superior to both his father and his sisters sometimes when his father saw him walking along the street or coming into a room or uttering some simple phrase or shrugging his shoulders Darius was aware of a faint thrill pride perhaps but he would never have admitted it an agreeable perplexity rather a state of being puzzled how he, so common, had begotten a creature so subtly aristocratic aristocratic was the word and Edwin seemed so young, fragile, innocent and defenseless Part 4 Darius advanced into the attic what about that matter of enic peaks he asked hoping and fearing, really anxious for his son he defended himself against probable disappointment by preparing to lapse into savage paternal pessimism and disgust at the futility of an offspring nursed in luxury oh it's all right said Edwin eagerly Mr. Peake sent word he couldn't come and he wanted you to go across to the dragon this evening so I went instead it sounded dashingly capable he finished the recital and added that of course Big James had not been able to proceed with the job and where's the proof demanded Darius his relief expressed itself in a superficial surliness but Edwin was not deceived as his father gazed mechanically at the proof that Edwin produced hurriedly from his pocket he added with a negligent air there was a free and easy on at the dragon father was there, muttered Darius Edwin saw that whatever danger had existed was now over and I suppose said Darius with assumed grimness if I hadn't happened to have seen a light from the bottom of the attic stairs I should never have known or about all this here he indicated the cleansed attic, the table, the lamp and the apparatus of art oh yes you would father Edwin reassured him Darius came nearer they were close together Edwin twisted on the cane chair and his father almost over him the lamp smelt and gave off a stuffy warmth the open window through which came a wandering air was a black oblong the triangular side walls of the dorma shut them intimately in the house slept what art up to the tone was benign Edwin had not been ordered abruptly off to bed with a reprimand for late hours and silly proceedings generally he sought the reason in vain one reason was that Darius Clayhanger had made a grand bargain at Manchester in the purchase of a second hand printing machine I'm copying this he replied slowly and then all the details tumbled rashly out of his mouth one after the other oh father I found this book in the shop packed away on a top shelf and I wanted to borrow it I only want to borrow it and I bought this paint box out of auntie's half sovereign I paid Mrs. Ingamel's the full price I thought I'd have a go at some of these architecture things Darius glared at the copy it's only just started you know then prize books have you done all that yes father and put all the prices down as I told you yes father then a pause Edwin's heart was beating hard I want to do some of these architecture things he repeated no remark from his father then he said fastening his gaze intensely on the table you know father what I should really like to be I should like to be an architect it was out he had said it should he said his father who attached no importance of any kind to this avowal of a preference well what you want is a bit of business training for a start I'm thinking oh of course said when concurred with pathetic eagerness and added a piece of information for his father I'm only sixteen aren't I sixteen ought have been in bed this two hours and more off with you Edwin retired in an extraordinary state of relief and happiness End of chapter eleven volume one