 Volume 1, Chapter 1 of Clay Hanger. Clay Hanger by Arnold Bennett. Volume 1, his vocation, Chapter 1, The Last of a Schoolboy. Edwin Clay Hanger stood on the steep, sloping, red brick canal bridge in the valley between Bursley and its suburb, Hillport. In that neighborhood, the Canipe and Mersey Canal formed the western boundary of the industrialism of the five towns. To the east rose pitheads, chimneys and kilns, tier above tier, dim in their own mists. To the west, Hillport fields grime, but possessing authentic hedgerows and winding paths, mounted broadly up to the sharp ridge on which stood Hillport Church, a landmark. Beyond the ridge, and partly protected by it from the driving smoke of the five towns, lay the fine and ancient Tory borough of Old Castle, from whose historic middle school Edwin Clay Hanger was now walking home. The fine and ancient Tory borough provided education for the whole of the five towns, but the relentless ignorance of its prejudices had blighted the district. A hundred years earlier, the canal had only been obtained after a vicious parliamentary fight between industry and the fine and ancient borough, which saw in canals a menace to its importance as a centre of traffic. Fifty years earlier, the fine and ancient borough had succeeded in forcing the greatest railway line in England to run through unpopulated country five miles off instead of through the five towns, because it loathed the mere conception of a railway. And now people are inquiring why the five towns, with a railway system special to itself, is characterised by a perhaps excessive provincialism. These interesting details have everything to do with the history of Edwin Clay Hanger, as they have everything to do with the history of each of the two hundred thousand souls in the five towns. Old Castle guessed not the vast influences of its sublime stupidity. It was a breezy Friday in July 1872. The canal, which ran north and south, reflected a blue and white sky. Towards the bridge from the north came a long narrow canal boat roofed with tarpaulins, and towards the bridge from the south came a similar craft sluggishly creeping. The towing path was a morass of sticky brown mud, for in the way of rain that year was breaking the records of a century and a half. Thirty yards in front of each boat, an unhappy skeleton of a horse floundered its best in the quagmire. The honest endeavour of one of the animals received a frequent tonic from a bare-legged girl of seven who heartily curled a whip about its crooked, large-jointed legs. The ragged and filthy child danced in the rich mud around the horse's flanks with the simple joy of one who had been rewarded for good behaviour by the unrestricted use of a whip for the first time. Part II Edwin, with his elbows on the stone parapet of the bridge, stared uninterested at the spectacle of the child, the whip, and the skeleton. He was not insensible to the pecancy of the pageant of life, but his mind was preoccupied with grave and heavy matters. He had left school that day, and what his eyes saw as he leaned on the bridge was not a willing beast and a gladdened infant, but the puzzling world and the advanced guard of its problems bearing down on him. Slim, gawky, untidy, fair, with his worn black braided clothes, and slung over his shoulders in a bursting satchel the last load of his schoolbooks, and on his bright, rough hair a shapeless cap whose lining protruded behind, he had the extraordinary, wistful look of innocence and simplicity which marks most boys of sixteen. It seemed rather a shame, it seemed even tragic, that this naive, simple creature, with his straightforward and friendly eyes, so eager to believe appearances, this creature, immaculate of worldly experience, must soon be transformed into a man, wary, incredulous, detracting. Older eyes might have wept at the simplicity of those eyes. This picture of Edwin as a wistful, innocent would have made Edwin laugh. He had been seven years at school and considered himself a hardened sort of brute, free of illusions, and he sometimes thought that he could judge the world better than most neighbouring mortals. Hello, the Sunday, he murmured, without turning his eyes. Another boy, a little younger and shorter, and clothed in a superior untidiness, had somehow got onto the bridge, and was leaning with his back against the parapet which supported Edwin's elbows. His eyes were franker and simpler even than the eyes of Edwin, and his lips seemed to be permanently parted in a good, humid smile. His name was Charlie Orgreave, but at school he was invariably called the Sunday, not Sunday, but the Sunday, and nobody could authoritatively explain how he had come by the nickname. Its origin was lost in the prehistoric ages of his childhood. He and Edwin had been chums for several years. They had not sworn fearful oaths of loyalty. They did not constitute a secret society. They had not even pricked forearms and written certain words in blood, for these rites are only performed at Harrow, and possibly at the Old Castle High School, which imitates Harrow. Their fellowship meant chiefly that they spent a great deal of time together, instinctively and unconsciously enjoying each other's mere presence, and that in public arguments they always reinforced each other, whatever the degree of intellectual dishonesty, thereby necessitated. I'll bet you mine gets to the bridge first, said the Sunday. With an ingenious movement of the shoulders he arranged himself so that the parapet should bear the weight of his satchel. Edwin Clayhanger slowly turned round, and perceived that the object which the Sunday had appropriated as his was the other canal boat, advancing from the south. Horse or boat, asked Edwin. Boats knows, of course, said the Sunday. Well said Edwin, having surveyed the unconscious competitors and counting on the aid of the whipping child. I don't mind laying you five. That be damned for a tale, protested the Sunday. We said we'd never bet less than ten. You know that. Yes, but Edwin hesitatingly drawled. But what? All right, ten, Edwin agreed. But it's not fair. You've got a rare start on me. Rats said the Sunday with finality. In the pronunciation of this word the difference between his accent and Edwin's came out clear. The Sunday's accent was less local. There was a hint of a short E sound in the R, and a bristness about the consonants that Edwin could never have compassed. The Sunday's accent was as carelessly superior as his clothes. Evidently the Sunday had someone at home who had not learnt the art of speech in the five towns. Part three. He began to outline a scheme in which perpendicular expectation figured, for accurately deciding the winner and a complicated argument might have ensued about this, had it not soon become apparent that Edwin's boat was going to be handsomely beaten, despite the joyous efforts of the little child. The horse that would die but would not give up was only saved from total subsidence at every step by his indomitable, if aged spirit. Edwin handed over the ten marbles even before the other boat had arrived at the bridge. Here he said, and you may as well have these two adding five more to the ten, all he possessed. They were not the poultry marble of today, plaything of infants, but the majestic rinker, black with white spots, the king of marbles in an era when whole populations practised the game. Edwin looked at them half regretfully as they lay in the Sunday's hands. They seemed prodigious wealth in those hands, and he felt somewhat as a condemned man might feel, who bequeathed his jewels on the scaffold. Then there was a rattle, and a tumour grew out larger on the Sunday's thigh. The winning boat, long preceded by its horse, crawled under the bridge and passed northwards to the sea, laden with crates of earthenware. And then the loser, with the little girl's father and mother and her brothers and sisters and her kitchen, drawing room and bedroom and her smoking chimney and her memories and all that was hers in the stern of it, slid beneath the boy's downturn faces while the whip cracked away beyond the bridge. They could see between the white and top haulings that the deep belly of the craft was filled with clay. It is that their clay come from us, Edwin, for not merely was he honestly struck by a sudden new curiosity, but it was meat for him to behave like a man now, and to ask manly questions. Runcorn said the Sunday scornfully. Can't you see it painted all over the boat? Why do they bring clay all the way from Runcorn? They don't bring it from Runcorn, they bring it from Cornwall. It's round by the sea. See? He laughed. Who told you? Edwin roughly demanded. Anybody knows that, said the Sunday grandly, but always maintaining his gay smile. Seems devilish funny to me, Edwin murmured, after reflection, that they should bring clay all that roundabout way just to make crocs of it here. Why should they choose just this place to make crocs in? I always understood, oh, come on, the Sunday cut him short. It's blessed well one o'clock and after. They climbed the long bank from the canal up to the manor farm, at which high point their roads diverged. One path leading direct to Bleak Ridge, where all grieve live, and the other zigzagging down through neglected pastureage into Burstley proper. Usually they parted here without a word, taking pride in such spartan taciturnity, and they would doubtless have done the same this morning also, though it were fiftyfold their last walk together as two schoolboys. But an instant intervened. Hold on, cried the Sunday. To the south of them a mile-and-a-half off in the wreathing mist of the cauldron bar ironworks, there was a yellow gleam that even the capricious sunlight could not kill, and then two rivers of fire sprang from the gleam and ran in a thousand delicate and lovely hues down the side of a mountain of refuse. They were emptying a few tons of molten slag at the cauldron bar ironworks. The two rivers hung slowly dying in the mists of smoke. They reddened and faded, and you thought they had vanished, and you could see them yet, and then they escaped the baffled eye, unless a cloud aided them for a moment against the sun, and their ephemeral but enchanting beauty had expired for ever. One minute ten seconds said the Sunday, who had snatched out his watch, an inestimable contrivance with a centre-second's hand. By Jove, that was a gooden. A moment later, two smaller boys, both laden with satchels, appeared over the brow from the canal. Let's wait a jiff, said the Sunday to Edwin, and as the smaller boys showed no hurry, he bawled out to them across the intervening cinderwaste. Run! they ran. They were his younger brothers, Johnny and Jimmy. Take this and hook it, he commanded, passing the strap of his satchel over his head as they came up. In fatalistic silence they obeyed the smiling tyrant. What are you going to do? Edwin asked. I'm coming down your way a bit, but I thought you said you were peckish. I shall eat three slices of beef instead of my usual brace, said the Sunday carelessly. Edwin was touched, and the Sunday was touched, because he knew he had touched Edwin. After all, this was a solemn occasion, but neither would overtly admit that its solemnity had affected him. Hence first one, and then the other, began to skim stones with vicious force over the surface of the largest of the three ponds that gave interest to the manna farm. When they had thus proved to themselves that the day differed in no manner from any other, breaking up day, they went forward. On their left were two pit-heads whose double-wheels revolved rapidly in smooth silence, and the puffing engine-house and all the trucks and gear of a large iron-stone mine. On their right was the astonishing farm with barns and ricks and cornfields complete, seemingly quite unaware of its forlorn oddness in that foul arena of manufacture. In front, on a little hill in the vast valley, was spread out the Indian Red architecture of Bursley, tall chimneys and rounded ovens, schools the new scarlet market, the grey tower of the old church, the high spire of the evangelical church, the low spire of the church of Genuflections, and the crimson chapels and rows of little red houses with amber chimney-pots, and the gold angel of the blackened town hall topping the whole. The sedate, reddish browns and reds of the composition all netted in flowing scarves of smoke, harmonized exquisitely with the chill blues of the checkered sky, beauty was achieved, and none saw it. The boys descended without a word through the brick-strewn pastures where a horse or two cropped the short grass. At the railway bridge which carried a branch mineral line over the path, they exchanged a brief folly of words with the working lads who always played pitch and toss there in the dinner hour, and the Sunday added to the collection of shawds and stones lodged on the under-ledges of the low iron girders. As a strange boy he had sworn to put ten thousand stones on those ledges before he died or perish in the attempt. Hence Edwin sometimes called him old perish in the attempt. A little farther on the open gates of a manufactory disclosed six men playing the noble game of rinkers on a smooth patch of ground near the weighing machine. These six men were messes Ford, Carter and Udall, the three partners owning the works and three of their employees. They were celebrated marble players and the boys stayed to watch them, as bending with one knee almost touching the earth, they shot the rinkers from their stubby thumbs with a cannon-like force and precision that no boy could ever hope to equal. The boom mumbled Edwin involuntarily when an impossible shot was accomplished, and the bearded shooter, pleased by this tribute from youth, twisted his white apron into a still narrower ring around his waist. Yet Edwin was not thinking about the game. He was thinking about a battle that lay before him and how he would be weakened in the fight by the fact that in the last school examination Charlie Orgreve, younger than himself by a year, had ousted him from the second place in the school. The report in his pocket said, positioning class next term, third, whereas he had been second since the beginning of the year. There would of course be no next term for him, but the report remained. A youth who has come to grips with that powerful enemy his father cannot afford to be handicapped by even such a trifle as a report entirely irrelevant to the struggle. Suddenly Charlie Orgreve gave a curt nod and departed in nonchalant good humour, doubtless considering that to accompany his chum any father would be to be guilty of girlish sentimentality, and Edwin nodded with equal curtness, and made off slowly into the maze of bursely. The thought in his heart was, I'm on my own now, I've got to face it now by myself, and he felt that not merely his father but the lead universe was against him. He had been at work on Edwin in one way or another for at least a decade in order to equip him for just this very day when he should step into the world. The moment must therefore be regarded as dramatic, the first crucial moment of an experiment long and elaborately prepared. Knowledge was admittedly the armour and the weapon of one about to try conclusions with the world, and many people for many years had been engaged in providing Edwin with knowledge. He had received, in fact, a good education, or even as some said, a thoroughly sound education. Assuredly, as complete an equipment of knowledge as could be obtained in the county, for the curriculum of the old castle high school was less in accord with common sense than that of the middle school. He knew, however, nothing of natural history, and in particular of himself, of the mechanism of the body and mind through which his soul had to express and fulfil itself. Not one word of information about either physiology or psychology had ever been breathed to him, nor had it ever occurred to anyone around him that such information was needful. And as no one had tried to explain to him the mysteries which he carried about with him inside that fair skin of his, so no one had tried to explain to him the mysteries by which he was hemmed in, either mystically through religion or rationally through philosophy. Never in chapel or at Sunday school had a difficulty being genuinely faced, and as for philosophy, he had not the slightest conception of what it meant. He imagined that a philosopher was one who made the best of a bad job, and he had never heard the word used in any other sense. He had great potential intellectual curiosity, but nobody had thought to stimulate it by even casually telling him that the finest minds of humanity had been trying to systematise the mysteries for quite 25 centuries. Of physical science he had been taught nothing, save a grotesque perversion to the effect that gravity was a force which drew things towards the centre of the earth. In the matter of chemistry, it had been practically demonstrated to him scores of times, so that he should never forget this grand basic truth, that sodium and potassium may be relied upon to fizz flamingly about on a surface of water. Of geology he was perfectly ignorant, though he lived in a district whose whole livelihood depended on the scientific use of geological knowledge, and though the existence of old castle itself was due to a freak of the earth's crust which geologists call a fault. Geography had been one of his strong points. He was aware of the rivers of Asia in their order, and of the principal products of Uruguay, and he could name the capitals of nearly all the United States. But he had never been instructed for five minutes in the geography of his native county, of which he knew neither the boundaries nor the rivers nor the terrain characteristics. He could have drawn a map of Orinico, but he could not have found the Trent in a day's march. He did not even know where his drinking water came from. Their geological considerations are the cause of all history had never been hinted to him, nor that history bears immediately upon modern life and bore on his own life. For him, history hung unsupported and unsupporting in the air. In the course of his school career, he had several times approached the 19th century, but it seemed to him that for administrative reasons he had always been dragged back into the Middle Ages. Once his form had got as far as the infancy of his own father, and concerning this period, he had learned that great dissatisfaction prevailed among the laboring classes, who were led to believe by mischievous demagogues, etc. But the next term, he was recoiling around Henry VIII, who was a skillful warrior and politician, but unfortunate in his domestic relations. And so to Elizabeth, then whom few sovereigns have been so much belied, but her character comes out unscathed after the closest examination. History indeed resolved itself into a series of more or less sanguinary events arbitrarily grouped under the names of persons who had to be identified with the assistance of numbers. Neither of the development of national life nor of the clash of nations did he really know anything that was not inessential and anecdotic. He could not remember the clauses of Magna Carta, but he knew eternally that it was signed at a place amusingly called runnymeat, and the one fact engraved on his memory about the battle of Waterloo was that it was fought on a Sunday. And as he had acquired absolutely nothing about political economy or about logic, and was therefore at the mercy of the first agreeable sophistry that might take his fancy by storm, his unfitness to commence the business of being a citizen almost reached perfection. For his personal enjoyment of the earth and air and sun and stars and of society and solitude, no preparation had been made or dreamt of. The sentiment of nature had never been encouraged in him or even mentioned. He knew not how to look at a landscape nor at a sky, of plants and trees he was as exquisitely ignorant as of astronomy. It had not occurred to him to wonder why the days are longer in summer, and he vaguely supposed that the cold of winter was due to an increased distance of the earth from the sun. Still he had learnt that Saturn had a ring and sometimes he unconsciously looked for it in the firmament as for a tea-tree. Of art and the arts he had been taught nothing. He had never seen a great picture or statue nor heard great orchestral or solo music, and he had no idea that architecture was an art and emotional, though it moved him in a very peculiar fashion. Of the art of English literature or of any other literature he had likewise been taught nothing, but he knew the meaning of a few obsolete words in a few plays of Shakespeare. He had not learnt how to express himself orally in any language, but through hard drilling he was so genuinely erudite in accidents and syntax that he could pass and analyse with superb assurance the most magnificent sentences of Milton, Virgil and Racine. This skill, together with an equal skill in utilising the elementary properties of numbers and geometrical figures, was the most brilliant achievement of his long apprenticeship. And now his education was finished. It had cost his father twenty-eight shillings a term, or four guineas a year, and no trouble. In younger days his father had spent more money and far more personal attention on the upbringing of a dog. His father had enjoyed success with dogs through treating them as individuals, but it had not happened to him nor to anybody in authority to treat Edwin as an individual. Nevertheless, it must not be assumed that Edwin's father was a callous and conscienceless brute, and Edwin a martyr of neglect. Old Clayhanger was, on the contrary, an average upright and respectable parent who had given his son a thoroughly sound education, and Edwin had had the good fortune to receive that thoroughly sound education as a preliminary to entering the world. He was very far from realising the imperfections of his equipment for the grand entry, but still he was not without uneasiness. In particular the conversation incident to the canal boat wager was disturbing him. It amazed him, as he reflected, that he should have remained to such an advanced age in a state of ignorance concerning the origin of the clay from which the crocs of his native district were manufactured. That the Sunday should have been able to inform him did not cause him any shame, for he guessed from the peculiar eager tone of voice in which the facts had been delivered, that the Sunday was merely retailing some knowledge recently acquired by chance. He knew all the Sunday's tones of voice, and also was well aware that the Sunday's brain was not on the whole better store than his own. Further, the Sunday was satisfied with his bit of accidental knowledge. Edwin was not. Edwin wanted to know why, if the clay for making earthenware was not caught in the five towns, the five towns had become the great seat of the manufacture. Why were not pots made in the south, where the clay came from? He could not think of any answer to this enigma, nor of any means of arriving by himself at an answer. The feeling was that he ought to have been able to arrive at the answer as at the answer to an equation. He did not definitely blame his education, nor did he think clearly about the thing at all. But as a woman with a vague discomfort dimly fears cancer, so he dimly feared that there might be something fundamentally unsound in this sound education of his. And he had remorse for all the shirking that he had been guilty of during all his years at school. He shook his head solemnly at the immense and nearly universal shirking that continually went on. He could only acquit three or four boys among the hundreds he had known of the shameful sin, and all that he could say in favour of himself was that there were many worse than Edwin Clayhanger. Not merely the boys, but the masters were sinners. Only two masters could he unreservedly respect as having acted conscientiously up to their pretensions, and one of these was an unpleasant brute. All the cleverness, the ingenuities, the fakes, the insincereities, the incapacities, the vanities and the dishonesties of the rest stood revealed to him, and he judged them by the mere essential force of character alone. A schoolmaster might as well attempt to deceive God as a boy who is watching him every day with the inhuman eye of youth. All this must end now, he said to himself, meaning all that could be included in the word shirk. He was splendidly serious, he was as splendidly serious as a reformer. By a single urgent act of thought he would have made himself a man and changed imperfection into perfection. He desired, and there was real passion in his desire, to do his best, to exhaust himself in doing his best in living according to his conscience. He did not know of what he was capable nor what he could achieve. Achievement was not the matter of his desire but endeavour, honest and terrific endeavour. He admitted to himself his shortcomings, and he did not underestimate the difficulties that lay before him. But he said, thinking of his father, surely he'll see I mean business. Surely he's bound to give in when he sees how much in earnest I am. He was convinced, almost, that passionate faith could move mountainous fathers. I'll show him, he muttered. And he meant that he would show the world. He was honouring the world, he was paying the finest homage to it. In that head of his, a flame burned that was like an altar fire, a miraculous and beautiful phenomenon that which nothing is more miraculous nor more beautiful over the whole earth. Whence had it suddenly sprung that flame, after years of muddy inefficiency, of contentedness with the second rate, and the dishonest, that flame astoundingly burst forth from a hidden, unheeded spark that none had ever thought to blow upon. It bursts forth out of a damp jungle of careless habits and negligence that could not possibly have fed it. There is little to encourage it. The very architecture of the streets shows that environment has done not for it. Ragged brickwork, walls finished anyhow with saggers and slag, narrow, uneven alleys leading to higgledy-piggledy workshops and kilns, cottages transformed into factories and factories into cottages, clumsily, hastily, because nothing matters so long as it will do. Everywhere something forced to fulfil badly the function of something else. In brief the reign of the slovenly makeshift, shameless, filthy and picturesque. Edwin himself seemed no tabernacle for that singular flame. He was not merely untidy and dirty. At his age such defects might have excited in a sane observer uneasiness by their absence, but his gestures and his gait were untidy. He did not mind how he walked. All his sprawling limbs were saying, What does it matter so long as we get there? The angle of the slaternly bag across his shoulders was an insult to the flame, and yet the flame burned with serene and terrible pureness. It was surprising that no one saw it passing along the mean black smoke-ball streets that huddled about St. Luke's Church. Sundry experienced and fat old women were standing or sitting at their cottage doors, one or two smoking catties. But even they, who in child-bed and at gravesides, had been at the very core of life for long years. They, who saw more than most, could only see a fresh lad passing along with fair hair and a clear complexion, and gawky knees and elbows, a fierce, rapt expression on his straightforward, good-natured face. Some knew that it was Clayhanger's lad, a nice-behaved young gentleman, and the spitting image of his poor mother. They all knew what a lad is, the feel of his young skin under his duds, the capricious freedom of his movements, his sudden madnesses and shoutings and tendernesses and the exceeding power of his unconscious, wistful charm. They could divine all that in a glance, but they could not see the mysterious and holy flame of the desire for self-perfection blazing within that tousled head. And if Edwin had suspected that anybody could indeed perceive it, he would have whipped it out for shame, though the repudiation had meant everlasting death, such as youth in the five towns if not elsewhere. A few yards down Woodeson Bank, cocks and hens were scurrying with next horizontal from all quarters and were even flying to the call of a little old woman who threw grain from the top-step of her porch. On the level of the narrow pavement stood an immense constable, clad in white trousers, with a gun under his arm for the killing of mad dogs. He was talking to the woman, and their two heads were exactly at the same height. On a pair of small double-gates near the old woman's cottage were painted the words, steam-printing works, no admittance except on business. And from as far as Duck Square could be heard the puff-puff which proved the use of steam in this works to which idlers and mere pleasure-seekers were forbidden access. Duck Square was one of the oldest, if the least imposing, of all the public places in Bursley. It had no traffic across it being only a sloping rectangle, like a vacant lot, with Trafalgar Road and Wedgwood Street for its exterior sides and no outlet on its inner sides. The buildings on those inner sides were low and humble, and as it were withdrawn from the world, the chief of them being the ancient Duck Inn, where the handbell-ringers used to meet. But Duck Square looked out upon the very berth of Trafalgar Road, that wide, straight thoroughfare whose name dates it, which had been invented in the lifetime of a few then living, to unite Bursley with Handbridge. It also looked out upon the berth of the old Bursley It also looked out upon the berth of several old Pack Horse Roads, which Trafalgar Road had supplanted. One of these was Woodyson Bank, that wound slowly uphill and down-dale, apparently always choosing the longest and hardest route to Handbridge. And another was Aberkeer Street, formerly known as Warm Lane, that reached Handbridge in a manner equally difficult and unhurried. At the junction of Trafalgar Road and Aberkeer Street stood the Dragon Hotel, once the great posting-house of the town, from which all roads started. Duck Square had watched coaches and wagons stop at and start from the Dragon Hotel for hundreds of years. It had seen the dragon rebuilt in brick and stone with fine bay windows on each storey in early Georgian times. And it had seen even the new structure become old and assume the dignity of age. Duck Square could remember strings of pack mules driven by women, traipsing in zig-zags down Woodyson Bank and Warm Lane, and occasionally falling with awful smashes of the crockery they carried in the deep, slippery, scarce, passable mire of the first slunts into the valley. Duck Square had witnessed the slow declension of these roads into mire streets and slum streets at that, and the death of all mules, and the disappearance of all coaches and all neighing and prancing and whip-cracking romance, while Trafalgar Road, simply because it was straight and broad and easily graded, flourished with toll-bars and a couple of pair-horse trams that ran on lines. And many people were proud of those cushioned trams, but perhaps they had never known that coach-drivers used to tell each other about the state of the turn at the bottom of Warm Lane since absurdly renamed in honour of an Egyptian battle, and that Woodyson Bank, now unnoticed, saved by doubtful characters, policemen and schoolboys, was once regularly taken by four horses at a canter. The history of human manners is crunched and embedded in the very mechanism of that part of the borough, and the burgesses unheedingly tread it down every day and talk gloomily about the ugly, smoky prose of industrial manufacture. And yet the Dragon Hotel, safely surviving all revolutions by the mighty virtue and attraction of ale, stands before them to remind them of the interestingness of existence. Part 2 At the southern corner of Trafalgar Road and Wedgewood Street, with Duck Square facing it, the Dragon Hotel and Warm Lane to its right, and Woodyson Bank creeping inconspicuously down to its left, stood a three-story building consisting of house and shop, the frontage being in Wedgewood Street. Over the double-windowed shop was a discreet signboard in gilt letters, D. Clayhanger, printer and stationer. But above the first floor was a later and much larger sign with the single word steam printing. All the brickwork of the facade was painted yellow, and had obviously been painted yellow many times. The woodwork of the plate glass windows was a very dark green approaching black. The upper windows were stumpy, almost square, some dirty, and some clean and curtained, with prominent sills and architraves. The line of the projecting spouting at the base of the roof was slightly curved through subsidence. At either end of the roof ridge rose twin chimneys each with three salmon-coloured chimney pots. The gigantic word steam printing could be seen from the windows of the Dragon, from the porch of the big Wesleyan Chapel higher up the slope, from the Conservative Club and the playground at the top of the slope, and as for Duck Square itself, it could see little else. The left-hand shop window was alluringly set out with the lighter apparatus of writing and reading, and showed incidentally several rosy pictures of ideal English maidens. That, to the right, was grim and heavy with ledges, inks and variegated specimens of steam printing. Part 3 In the wedge-shaped doorway between the windows stood two men, one middle-aged and one old, one bare-headed and the other with a beaver hat engaged in conversation. They were talking easily, pleasantly, with free gestures, the younger looking down in deferential smiles at the elder, and the elder looking up indignantly at the younger. You could see that, having begun with a business matter, they had quitted it for a topic of the hour. But business nonetheless went forward. The shop function, the presses behind the shop were being driven by steam as advertised, a customer emerged and was curtly knotted at by the proprietor as he squeezed past, a girl with a small flannel apron over a large cotton apron went timidly into the shop. The trickling, calm commerce of a provincial town was proceeding, bit being added to bit and item to item, until, at the week's end, a series of apparent nothings had swollen into the livelihood of near half a score of people, and nobody perceived how interesting it was, this interchange of activities, this ebb and flow of money, this sluggish rise and fall of reputations and fortunes, stretching out of one century into another and towards a third. Printing had been done at that corner though not by steam since the time of the French Revolution. Bibles and illustrated herbals had been laboriously produced by hand at that corner, and hawked on the backs of asses all over the county, and nobody heard romance in the puffing of the hidden steam engine, all applying catalogs and billheads on the self-same spot at the rate of hundreds an hour. The younger and bigger of the two men chatting in the doorway was Darius Clayhanger, Edwin's father, and the first printer to introduce steam into Bursley. His age was then under forty-five, but he looked more. He was dressed in black with an ample shirt front and a narrow black cravat tied in an angular bow. The wristbands were almost tied on the wrists and owing to the shortness of the alpaca coat sleeves they were very visible, even as Darius Clayhanger stood with his two hands deep in the horizontal pockets of his full-fall trousers. They were not precisely dirty these wristbands, nor was the shirt front, nor the turned-down pointed collar, but all the linen looked as though it would scarcely be wearable the next day. Clayhanger's linen invariably looked like that, not dirty and not clean, and further he appeared to wear eternally the same suit, ever on the point of being done for and never being done for. The trousers always had marked transverse creases, the waistcoat always showed shiningly the outline of every article in the pockets thereof, and it always had a few stains down the front, and never more than a few, and the lowest button insecure. The coat faintly discoloured round the collar and fretted at the cuffs, fitted him easily and loosely like the character of an old crony. It was as if it had grown up with him and had expanded with his girth. His head was a little bald on the top, but there was still a great deal of mixed brown and grayish hair at the back and the sides, and the moustache hanging straight down with an effect recalling the mouth of a seal was plentious and defiant. The moustache of character contradicting the full placidity of the badly shaved chin. Darius Clayhanger had a habit when reflective or fierce of biting with his upper teeth as far down as he could on the lower lip. This trick added emphasis to the moustache. He stored his feet in their clumsy boots plundered firmly about sixteen inches apart, his elbows sticking out, and his head bent sideways listening to answering his companion, with me and na-iga, na-rogish, na-distinctly respectful. The older man, Mr. Shushians, was apparently very old. He was one of those men of whom one says in conclusion that they are very old. He seemed to be so fully occupied all the time in conducting those physical operations which we perform without thinking of them, that each in his case became a feat. He balanced himself on his legs with conscious craft. He directed carefully his shaking and gnarled hand to his beard in order to stroke it. When he collected his thoughts into a sentence and uttered it in his weak, wavering voice, he did something wonderful. He listened closely as though to an imperfectly acquired foreign language. And when he was not otherwise employed, he gave attention to the serious business of breathing. He wore a black silk stock in a style even more antique than his remarkable headgear, and his trousers were very tight. He had survived into another and a more fortunate age than his own. Part IV Edwin, his heavy bag on his shoulders, found the doorway blocked by these two. He hesitated with a different charming smile, feeling as he often did in front of his father that he ought to apologize for his existence. And yet fiercely calling himself an ass for such a sentiment. Darius Clayhanger nodded at him carelessly, but not without a surprising benevolence over his shoulder. This is him, said Darius briefly. Edwin was startled to catch a note of pride in his father's voice. Little Mr. Shushien's turned slowly and looked up at Edwin's face, for he was shorter even than the boy, and gradually acquainted himself with the fact that Edwin was the son of his father. Is this the son, Darius, he asked, and his ancient eyes were shining. Edwin had scarcely ever heard anyone address his father by his Christian name. Darius nodded, and then, seeing the old man's hand creeping out towards him, Edwin pulled off his cap and took the hand, and was struck by the hot smooth brittleness of the skin and the earnest, tremulous weakness of the caressing grasp. Edwin had never seen Mr. Shushien's before. Nay, nay, my boy, trembled the old man. Don't bear the head to me, not to me. I'm one of the old sort. Eh, I'm real glad to see thee. He kept Edwin's hand and stared long at him with his withered face transfigured by solemn emotion. Slowly he turned towards Darius and pulled himself together. Those begotten a fine lad, Darius. A fine, honest lad. So-so, said Darius gruffly, whom Edwin was amazed to see in a state of agitation similar to that of Mr. Shushien's. The men gazed at each other. Edwin looked at the ground and other unresponsive objects. Edwin, his father said abruptly, run and ask Big James for the proof of that primitive method as tin paper. There's a good lad. And Edwin hastened through the shadowy shop as if loosed from a captivity, and in passing through his satchel down on a bale of goods. Part 5 He comprehended nothing of the encounter, neither as to the origin of the old man's status in his father's esteem, nor as to the cause of his father's strange emotion. He regarded the old man impatiently as an aged simpleton. Probably over Pius certainly connected with the primitive methodists. His father had said, There's a good lad. Almost cocholingly. And this was odd. Although nobody could be more persuasively agreeable than his father when he chose, the occasions when he cared to exert his charm, especially over his children, were infrequent and getting more so. Edwin also saw something symbolically ominous in his being sent direct to the printing office. It was no affair of his to go to the printing office. He particularly did not want to go to the printing office. However, he met Big James with flowing beard and flowing apron crossing the yard. Big James was brushing crumbs from the beard. Bar the once the proof of some him-paper, I don't know what he said. I was just coming, so was I, Mr. Edwin, replied Big James in his magnificent voice and with his curious, humorous smile. And he held up a sheet of paper in his immense hand and strode majestically on towards the shop. He was another detail that struck the boy. Always Big James had addressed him as Master Edwin or Master Clayhanger. Now it was Mr. He had left school. Big James was, of course, aware of that and Big James had enough finesse and enough gentle malice to change instantly the master to Mr. Edwin was scarcely sure if Big James was not laughing at him. He could not help thinking that Big James had begun so promptly to call him Mr. because the foreman compositor expected that the son of the house would at once begin to take a share in the business. He could not help thinking that his father must have so informed Big James and all this vaguely disturbed Edwin and reminded him of his impending battle and of the complex forces marshaled against him and his hand wandering in his pockets touched that unfortunate report which stated that he had lost one place during the term. Part 6 He lingered in the blue-paved yard across which cloud shadows swept continually and then Big James came back and spectacularly ascended the flight of wooden steps to the printing-office and disappeared. Edwin knew that he must return to the shop to remove his bag or his father would assuredly reprimand him if he found it where it had been untidily left. He sidled just like an animal to the doorway and then slipped up to the counter behind the great mahogany case of artists' materials. His father and the old man were within the shop now and Edwin overheard that they were discussing a topic that had lately been rife in religious circles namely Sir Henry Thompson's ingenious device for scientifically testing the efficacy of prayer known as the prayer gauge. The scheme was to take certain hospitals and to pray for the patients in particular wards leading other wards unprayed for and then to tabulate and issue the results. Mr. Shushien's profoundly resented the employment of such a dodge the mere idea of it shocked him as being blasphemous and Darius Clayhanger differentially and feelingly agreed with him though Edwin had at least once heard his father refer to the topic with the amused and non-committal impartiality of a man who only went to chapel when he especially felt like going I've preached in the pulpits of our connection said Mr. Shushien's with solemn quavering emotion for over fifty years you know but I neg about another text if primitives had ought to do with such a flouting of the Almighty nay I'd go down to my grave dumber for God He had already been upset by news of a movement that was on foot for deferring anniversary sermons from August to September so that people should be more free to go away for a holiday and collections be more fruitful what put off God's ordinance to enable chapel members to go awaking monstrous yet September was tried in spite of Mr. Shushien's and when even September would not work satisfactorily God's ordinance was shifted boldly to May in order to catch people and their pockets well before the demoralization incident to holidays Edwin thought that his father and the mysterious old man would talk forever and timorously he exposed himself to obtain possession of his satchel hoping to escape unseen but Mr. Shushien saw him and called him and took his hand again hey my boy he said feebly shaking the hand I do pray as you'll grow up to be worthy of your father that's all as I pray for Edwin had never considered his father as an exemplar he was a just and unmerciful judge of his father against whom he had a thousand grievances and in his heart he resentfully despised Mr. Shushien's and decided again that he was a simpleton and not a very tactful one but then he saw around yellow tears slowly form in the red rim of the old man's eye and run crookedly down that wrinkled cheek and his impatient scorn expired the mere sight of him, Edwin had brought the old man to weeping and the tear was so genuine so convincing, so majestic that it induced in Edwin a blank humility he was astounded, mystified but he was also humbled he himself was never told and he never learnt the explanation of that epic tear End of Chapter 3, Volume 1 Volume 1, Chapter 4 of Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett this livery-vox recording is in the public domain Chapter 4, The Child Man The origin of the tear on the aged cheek of Mr. Shushien's went back about forty years and was embedded in the infancy of Darius Clayhanger the earliest memory of Darius Clayhanger had to do with the capital letters Q, W and S even as the first steam-printer in Bursley even as the father of a son who had received a thoroughly sound middle-class education he never noticed a capital Q, W or S without recalling the widow Susan's school where he had wonderingly learned the significance of those complicated characters the school consisted of the entire ground floor of her cottage namely one room of which the far corner was occupied by a tiny winding staircase that led to the ancient widow's bed-chamber the furniture comprised a few low forms for scholars a table and a chair and there were some brilliant coloured prints on the whitewashed walls at this school Darius acquired a knowledge of the alphabet and from the alphabet passed to reading made easy and then to the Bible he made such progress that the widow soon singled him out for honour he was allowed the high and envied privilege of raking the ashes from under the fireplace and carrying them to the ash pit which ash pit was vast and lofty being the joint production of many cottages to reach the summit of the ash pit and then to fling backwards down its steep sides all assailants who challenge your supremacy was a precious joy the battles of the ash pit however were not battles of giants as no children had leisure for ash carrying after the age of seven a still greater honour accorded to Darius was permission to sit during lessons on the top most visible step of the winding stair the widow Susan having taught Darius to read brilliantly taught him to knit and he would knit stockings for his father, mother and sister at the age of seven his education being complete he was summoned into the world it is true that he could neither write nor deal with the multiplication table but there were always night schools which studious adults of seven and upwards might attend if business permitted further there was the Sunday school which Darius had joyously frequented since the age of three and which he had no intention of leaving as he grew older the Sunday school became more and more enchanting to him Sunday morning was the morning which he lived for during six days it was the morning when his hair was brushed and combed and perfumed with a delightful oil a particular fragrance he remembered throughout his life at Sunday school he was petted and caressed his success at Sunday school was shining he passed over the heads of bigger boys and at the age of six he was in a Bible class upon hearing that Darius was going out into the world the superintendent of the Sunday school, a grave, whiskered young man of perhaps thirty led him one morning out of the body of the primitive Methodist chapel which served as schoolroom, before and after chapel service up into the deserted gallery of the chapel and there seated him on a stair and knelt on the stair below him and caressed his head and called him a good boy and presented him with an old battered Bible this volume was the most valuable thing that Darius had ever possessed he ran all the way home with it half suffocated by his triumph Sunday school prizes had not then been invented the young superintendent of the Sunday school was Mr. Shushians Part 2 the man Darius was first taken to work by his mother it was the winter of 1835 January they passed through the marketplace of the town of Turnhill where they lived Turnhill lies a couple of miles north of Bursley one side of the marketplace was barricaded with stacks of coal and the other with loaves of a species of rye and straw bread this coal and these loaves were being served out by meticulous and haughty officials all invisibly braided with red tape to a crowd of shivering moaning and weeping wretches men, women and children the faces of the population of Turnhill although they were all endeavouring to make a noise they made scarcely any noise from mere lack of strength nothing could be heard under the implacable bright sky but faint ghosts of sound as though people were sighing and crying from within the vacuum of a huge glass bell the next morning at half past five Darius began his career in earnest as a mold runner to a muffin maker a muffin being not a commestible but a small plate fashioned by its maker on a mould the business of Darius was to run as hard as he could with the mould and a newly created plate adhering there too into the drying stove this stove was a room lined with shelves and having a red hot stove and stove pipe in the middle as no man of seven could reach the upper shelves a pair of steps was provided for Darius and up these he had to scamper each mould with its plate had to be leaned carefully against the wall and if the soft clay of a newborn plate was damaged Darius was knocked down the atmosphere outside the stove was chill but owing to the heat of the stove Darius was obliged to work half-naked his sweat ran down his cheeks and down his chest and down his back making white channels and lastly it soaked his hair when there were no moulds to be sprinted into the drying stove and no moulds to be carried less rapidly out Darius was engaged in clay wedging that is to say he took a piece of raw clay weighing more than himself cut it in two with a wire raised one half above his head and crashed it down with all his force upon the other half he repeated the process until the clay was thoroughly soft and even in texture at a later period it was discovered that a hydraulic machinery could perform this operation more easily and more effectually than the brawny arms of a man of seven at eight o'clock in the evening Darius was told that he had done enough for that day and that he must arrive at five sharp the next morning to light the fire before his master the muffin maker began to work when he inquired how he was to light the fire his master kicked him jovially on the thigh and suggested that he should ask another mouldrunner his master was not a bad man at heart it was said but on Tuesdays after Sunday and St. Monday masters were apt to be capricious Darius reached home at a quarter to nine having eaten nothing but bread all day somehow he had lapsed into the child again his mother took him on her knee and wrapped her sacking apron around his ragged clothes and cried over him and cried into his supper of porridge and undressed him and put him to bed but he could not sleep easily because he was afraid of being late the next morning Part 3 and the next morning wandering about the yards of the manufactory in a storm of icy sleet a little before five o'clock he learned from a more experienced companion that nobody would provide him with kindling for his fire but on the contrary everybody who happened to be on the place that that hour would unite to prevent him from getting kindling and that he must steal it or expect to be thrashed before six o'clock near them a vast kiln of wear in process of firing showed a white flaming glow at each of its mouths in the black winter darkness Darius's mentor crept up to the archway of the great hovel which protected his kiln and pointed like a conspirator to the figure of the guardian fireman dozing near his monster the boy had the handle-less remains of an old spade and with it he crept into the hovel dangerously abstracted fire from one of the scorching mouths and fled therewith and the fireman never stirred then Darius to whom the mentor kindly lent his spade attempted to do the same but being inexpert woke the fireman who held him spellbound by his roaring voice and then flung him like a sack of potatoes bodily into the slush of the yard and the spade after him happily the mentor whose stove was now a light lent fire to Darius so that Darius's stove too was cheerfully burning when his master came and Darius was too excited to feel fatigue by six o'clock on Saturday night Darius had earned a shilling for his week's work but he could only possess himself of the shilling by going to a magnificent public house with his master the muffin maker this was the first time that he had ever been inside a public house the place was crowded with men women and children eating the most lovely hot rolls and drinking beer in an atmosphere exquisitely warm and behind a high counter a stout jolly man was counting piles and piles and piles of silver Darius's master in company with other boys' masters gave this stout man for sovereigns to change and it was an hour before he changed them meanwhile Darius was instructed that he must eat a roll like the rest together with cheese never had he tasted anything so luscious he had a match with his mentor as to which of them could spin out his roll the longer honestly chewing all the time and he won someone gave him half a glass of beer at half-past seven he received his shilling which consisted of a sixpony piece and four pennies and leaving the gay public house pushed his way through a crowd of tearful women with babies in their arms at the doors and went home and such was the attraction of the Sunday school that he was there the next morning with scented hair two minutes before the opening part four in about a year Darius's increasing knowledge of the world enabled him to rise in it he became a handle maker in another manufacturing and also he went about with the pride of one who could form the letters of the alphabet with a pen in his new work he had to put a bit of clay between two molds and then force the top mold onto the bottom one by means of his stomach which it was necessary to press downwards at the same time to wriggle with a peculiar movement the workman to whom he was assigned his new master attached these handles with strange rapid skill to beer mugs for Darius the labour was much lighter than that of mould-running and clay wedging and the pay was somewhat higher but there were minor disadvantages he descended by twenty steps to his toil and worked in a long cellar which never received any air except by way of the steps and a passage and never any daylight at all its sole illumination was a stove used for drying the showers and the turner's rooms were also subterranean dungeons when in full activity all these stinking cellars were full of men boys and young women working close together in a hot twilight certain boys were trained contrabandists of beer and beer came as steadily into the dungeons as though it had been laid on by a main pipe it was not honourable even on the part of a young woman to refuse beer particularly when the beer happened to arrive in the late afternoon on such occasions young men and women would often entirely omit to go home of a night and seasoned men of the world aged eight on descending into the dungeons early the next morning would have a full view of pandemonium and they would witness during the day salutary scenes of remorse and proofs of the existence of a profound belief in the homeopathic properties of beer but perhaps the worst drawback of Darius's new position was the long and irregular hours due partly to the influences of St. Monday and of the scenes above indicated but not described and partly to the fact that the employees were on piecework and entirely unhampered by grandmotherly legislation the result was that six days' work was generally done in four and as the younger the workman the earlier he had to start in the morning Darius saw scarcely enough of his bed it was not of course to be expected that a self-supporting man of the world should rigorously confine himself to an eight-hour day or even a twelve-hour day but Darius's day would sometimes stretch to eighteen and nineteen hours which on hygienic grounds could not be unreservedly defended Part 5 one Tuesday evening his master after three days of debauch ordered him to be at work at three o'clock the next morning he quickly and even eagerly agreed for he was already intimate with his master's rope lash he reached home at ten o'clock on an autumn night and went to bed and to sleep he woke up with a start in the dark there was no watch or clock in the house from which nearly all the furniture had gradually vanished but he knew it must be already after three o'clock and he sprang up and rushed out of course he had not undressed his life was too strenuous for mere formalities the stars shone above him as he ran along wondering whether after all, though late he could by unprecedented effort make the ordained number of handles before his master tumbled into the cellar at five o'clock when he had run a mile he met some sewage men on their rounds who in reply to his question told him that the hour's half after midnight he dared not risk a return to home and bed for within two and a half hours he must be at work he wandered aimlessly over the surface of the earth until he came to a tile-works more or less unenclosed his primitive ovens showed a glare he ventured within and in spite of himself sat down on the ground near one of those heavenly ovens and then he wanted to get up again for he could feel the strong breath of his enemy sleep but he could not get up in a state of terror he yielded himself to his enemy shame forkoured us on the part of a man now aged nine God, however, is merciful and sent to him an angel in the guise of a night-watchman who kicked him into wakefulness and off the place he ran on limping beneath the cellar systems and reached his work at half past four o'clock although he had never felt so exhausted in his long life he set to work with fury useless when his master arrived he had scarcely got through the preliminaries he dully faced his master in the narrow stifling cellar lit by candles impaled on nails and already peopled by the dim figures of boys, girls, and a few men his master was of taciturn habit and merely told him to kneel down he knelt two bigger boys turned hastily from their work to snatch a glimpse of the affair the master moved to the back of the cellar and took from a box a piece of rope, an inch thick and clogged with clay at the same moment a companion offered him in silence a tin with a slim neck out of which he drank deep it contained a pint of porter owing on loan from the previous day and the master came in due course with the rope to do just as upon the slaggard he found the lad fallen forward and breathing heavily and regularly Darius had gone to sleep he was awakened with some violence but the public opinion of the dungeon saved him from a torn shirt and a bloody back this was Darius's last day on a pot bank the next morning he and his went in procession to the Bastille as the place was called his father having been too prominent and too independent in a strike had been blacklisted by every manufacturer in the district and Darius though nine could not keep the family End of Volume 1, Chapter 4 Book 1, Chapter 5 of Clay Hanger by Arnold Bennett this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Chapter 5, Mr. Sushien's Tear Explained the Bastille was on the top of a hill about a couple of miles long and the journey thither was much lengthened by the desire of the family to avoid the main road they were all intensely ashamed Darius was ashamed to tears and did not know why even his little sister wept and had to be carried not because she was shoeless and had had nothing to eat but because she was going to the B-B-Bastille she had no notion what the place was it proved to be the largest building that Darius had ever seen and indeed it was the largest in the district they stood against its steep sides like flies against a kennel then there was rattling of key-bunches and the rasping voices of sour officials who did not inquire if they would like a meal after their stroll and they were put into a cellar and stripped and washed and dressed in other people's clothes and then separated amid tears and Darius was pitched into a large crowd of other boys all clothed like himself he now understood the reason for shame it was because he could have no distinctive clothes of his own because he had somehow lost his identity all the boys had a sullen, furtive glance and when they spoke it was in whispers in the low room where the boys were assembled there fell a silence and Darius heard someone whisper that the celebrated boy who had run away and been caught would be flogged before supper down the long room ran a long table someone brought in three candles in tin candlesticks and set them near the end of this table then someone else brought in a pickled birch rod dripping with the salt water from which it had been taken and also a small square table then came some officials and a clergyman then surpassing the rest in majesty the governor of the Bastille a terrible man the governor made a speech about the crime of running away from the Bastille and when he had spoken for a fair time the clergyman talked in the same sense and then a captured tiger dressed like a boy with darting fierce eyes was dragged in by two men and laid face down on the square table and four boys were commanded to step forward and hold tightly the four members of this tiger and his clothes having previously been removed as far as his waist his breeches were next pulled down his legs then the rod was raised and it descended swishing and blood began to flow but far more startling than the blood were the shrill screams of the tiger they were so loud and deafening that the spectators could safely converse under their shelter the boys in charge of the victim had to cling hard and grind their teeth in the effort to keep him prone as the blows succeeded each other Darius became more and more ashamed the physical spectacle did not sicken nor horrify him for he was a man of wide experience but he had never before seen flogging by lawful authority flogging in the workshop was different a private if sanguinary affair between free human beings this ritualistic and cold-blooded torture was infinitely more appalling in its humiliation the screaming refeebler then seized then the blows seized and the unconscious infant cured of being a tiger was carried away leaving a trail of red drops along the floor Part 2 after this supper was prepared on the long table and the clergyman called down upon it the blessing of God and enjoined the boys to be thankful and departed in company with the governor Darius who had not tasted all day could not eat the flogging had not nauseated him but the bread and the skilly revolted his pampered tastes never had he with all his experience seen nor smelt anything so foully disgusting when supper was completed a minor official interceded with the Almighty in various ways for ten minutes and at last the boys were marched upstairs to bed they all slept in one room the night also could be set down in words but must not be lest the setting down should be disastrous Darius knew that he was ruined he knew that he was a workhouse boy for evermore and that the bright freedom of sixteen hours a day in a cellar was lost to him for evermore he was now a prisoner, branded, hopeless he would never be able to withstand the influences that had closed around him and upon him he supposed that he should become desperate, become a tiger, and then part three but the following afternoon he was forcibly reclothed in his own beautiful and beloved rags and was pushed out of the Bastille and there he saw his pale father and his mother and his little sister and another man and his mother was on her knees in the cold autumn sunshine hysterically clasping the knees of the man and weeping and the man was trying to raise her and the man was weeping too Darius wept the man was Mr. Shushians somehow in a way that Darius comprehended not Mr. Shushians had saved them Mr. Shushians in a beaver tall hat and with an apron rolled round his waist under his coat escorted them back to their house into which some fresh furniture had been brought and Darius knew that a situation was waiting for his father and further Mr. Shushians by his immense mysterious power found a superb situation for Darius himself as a printer's devil all this because Mr. Shushians the superintendent of a Sunday school was emotionally interested in the queer harsh boy who had there picked up the art of writing so quickly such was the origin of the tear that ran down Mr. Shushians cheek when he beheld Edwin well nourished, well dressed and intelligent the son of Darius the successful steam printer Mr. Shushians tear was the tear of the creator looking upon his creation and marveling at it Mr. Shushians loved Darius as only the benefactor can love the benefitted he had been out of the district for over thirty years and having returned there to die the wonder of what he had accomplished by merely saving a lad from the certain perdition of a prolonged stay in the workhouse struck him blindingly in the face and dazzled him Darius had never spoken to a soul of his night in the Bastille all his infancy was his own fearful secret his life seen whole had been a miracle but none knew that except himself and Mr. Shushians assuredly Edwin never even faintly suspected it to Edwin Mr. Shushians was nothing but a feeble and tedious old man Chapter 6 of Clay Hanger by Arnold Bennett this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Chapter 6 in the House to return to Edwin on that Friday afternoon of the breaking up he was in the local phrase at a loose end that is he had no task no program and no definite desires not knowing when he started out in the morning where the school would formally end before or after the dinner hour he had taken his dinner with him as usual and had eaten it at Old Castle thus though the family dinner had not begun when he reached home he had no share in it partly because he was not hungry and partly because he was shy about having left school the fact that he had left school affected him as he was affected by the wearing of a new suit for the first time or by the cutting of his hair after a prolonged neglect of the barber it inspired him with a wish to avoid his kind and especially his sisters Maggie and Clara Clara might make some facetious remark Edwin could never forget the red Indian glee with which Clara had danced around him when for the first time and quite unprepared for the exquisite shock she had seen him in long trousers there was also his father he wanted to have a plain talk with his father he knew that he would not be at peace until he had had that talk and yet in spite of himself he had carefully kept out of his father's way during all the afternoon save for a moment when strolling with affected nonchalance up to Darius's private desk in the shop he had dropped there on his school report and strolled off again toward six o'clock he was in his bedroom an attic with a floor very much more spacious than its ceiling and a window that commanded the slope of Trafalgar Road toward Spleek Ridge it had been his room, his castle, his sanctuary for at least ten years since before his mother's death of cancer he did not know that he loved it with all its inconveniences and makeshifts but he did love it and he was jealous for it no one should lay a hand on it to rearrange what he had once arranged his sisters knew this the middle-aged servant knew it even his father with a curt laugh would humorously acquiesce in the theory of the sacredness of Edwin's bedroom as for Edwin he saw nothing extraordinary in his attitude concerning his bedroom and he could not understand and he somewhat resented that the household should perceive anything comic in it he never went near his sister's bedroom never wished to go near it never thought about it Part 2 now he sat idly on the patchwork counterpane of his bed and gazed at the sky he was feeling a little happier a little less unsettled for his stomach was empty and his mind had begun to fix itself with pleasure on the images of hot toast and jam he wanted his tea the manner in which he glanced at his old silver watch proved that he wished only that before six o'clock struck he could settle upon the necessary changes in his bedroom a beautiful schooner which for over a year with all sales spread had awaited the breeze in a low dark corner to the right of the window would assuredly have to be dismissed to the small empty attic once that schooner had thrilled him the slight rake of its masts and the knotted reality of its rigging had thrilled him and to navigate it had promised the most delicious sensations conceivable now one moment it was a toy as silly as a doll and the next moment it thrilled him once more and he could believe again its promises of bliss and then he knew that it was forever a vain toy and he was sad and his sadness was pleasure he had already stacked most of his school books in the other attic he would need a table and a lamp he knew not for what precise purpose but a table and a lamp were necessary to the continuance of his self-respect the only question was should he remodel his bedroom or should he demand the other attic and plant his flag in it and rule over it in addition to his bedroom had he the initiative and the energy to carry out such an enterprise he was not able to make up his mind and moreover he could not decide anything until after that plain talk with his father his sister Clara's high voice sounded outside on the landing or halfway up the attic stairs Edwin, Edwin what's up? he called in answer rising with a nervous start the door of the room was unlatched your mighty mysterious in your bedroom said Clara's voice behind the door come in, come in, why don't you come in? he replied with good-natured impatience but somehow he could not speak in a natural tone the mere fact that he had left school that day and that the world awaited him and that everybody in the house knew this rendered him self-conscious part three Clara entered with a curious side-long movement half-winning and half-serpentine she was aged 14, a very fair and very slight girl with a thin face and thin lips extraordinarily slender hands in general appearance fragile she wore a semicircular comb on the crown of her head and her abundant hair hung over her shoulders in two tight pigtails Edwin considered that Clara was harsh and capricious he had much fault to find with her but nevertheless the sight of her usually affected him pleasurably of course without his knowing it and he never for long sat definitely an adverse judgment upon her her gestures had a charm for him which he felt but did not realize and this charm was similar to his own charm but nothing would have so surprised him as to learn that he himself had any charm at all he would have laughed and been ashamed to hear that his gestures and the play of his features had an ingratiating awkward and wistful grace he would have tried to cure that Father wants you, said Clara, her hand on the handle of the thin attic door hung with odd garments Edwin's heart fell instantly and all the agreeable images of tea vanished from his mind his father must have read the school report and perceived that Edwin had been beaten by Charlie Orgreave a boy younger than himself Did he send you up for me? Edwin asked No, said Clara frowning, but I heard him calling out for you all over so Maggie told me to run up not that I expect any thanks she put her head forward a little the episode and Clara's tone showed clearly the nature and force of the paternal authority in the house it was an authority with the gift of getting its commands anticipated All right, I'm coming, said Edwin, superiorly I know what you want, Clara said teasingly as she turned towards the passage what do I want? You want the empty attic all to yourself and a fine state it would be in a month, my word How do you know I want the empty attic? Edwin repelled the onslaught but he was considerably taken aback it was a mystery to him how those girls and Clara in particular got wind of his ideas before he had even formulated them definitely to himself it was also a mystery to him how they could be so tremendously interested in matters which did not concern them You never mind, Clara jived with a smile that was malicious but charmingly malicious I know she had merely seen him staring into the empty attic and from that brief spectacle she had, by divination, constructed all his plans Part 4 The clay hangers sitting room which served as both dining room and drawing room according to the more primitive practices of those days was over one half of the shop and looked on duck square owing to its northern aspect it scarcely ever saw the sun the furniture followed the universal fashion of horse hair mahogany and wool embroidery there was a piano with a high back fretted wood over silk pleated in rays from the centre a bookcase whose lower part was a cupboard a sofa and a large leather easy chair which did not match the rest of the room this easy chair had its back to the window and its front legs a little towards the fireplace so that Mr. Clayhanger could read his newspaper with facility in daytime at night the light fell a little awkwardly from the central chandelier and Mr. Clayhanger, if he happened to be reading would continually shift his chair an inch or two to left or right backwards or forwards and would also continually glance up at the chandelier as if accusing it of not doing its best a common sight in the sitting room was Mr. Clayhanger balanced on a chair the table having been pushed away screwing the newest burner into the chandelier when he was seated in his easy chair the piano could not be played because there was not sufficient space for the stool between the piano and his chair nor could the fire be made up without disturbing him because the Japan call box was on the same side of the hearth rug as the chair thus when the fire languished and Mr. Clayhanger neglected it the children had either to ask permission to step over his legs or suggest that he should attend to the fire himself occasionally when he was in one of his gay moods he would humorously impede the efforts of the firemaker with his feet and if the firemaker was Clara or Edwin the child would tickle him which brought him to his senses and forced him to shout none of that, none of that the position of Mr. Clayhanger's easy chair a detail apparently trifling was in reality a strongly influencing factor in the family life for it meant that the father's presence obsessed the room and it could not be altered for it depended on the window the window was too small to be quite efficient when the children reflected upon the history of their childhood they saw one important aspect of it as a long series of detached hours spent in the sitting room in a state of desire to do something that could not be done without disturbing father and in a state of indecision whether or not to disturb him if by chance it sometimes occurred he chose to sit on the sofa which was unobtrusive in the corner away from the window between the fireplace and the door the room was instantly changed into something larger, freer and less inconvenient Part 5 as the owl was approaching six Edwin on the way downstairs looked in at the sitting room for his father but Darius was not there where's father he demanded I don't know I'm sure said Maggie at the sewing machine Maggie was age 20, dark, rather stout with an expression at once benevolent and worried she rarely seemed to belong to the same generation as her brother and sister she consorted on equal terms with married women and talked seriously of the same things as they did Mr. Clayhanger treated her somewhat differently from the other two yet though he would often bid them except her authority he would now and then impair that authority by roughly dressing her down at the meal table she was a capable girl, she had much less firmness and much more good nature than she seemed to have she could not assert herself adequately she managed very well indeed she had done wonders in filling the place of the mother who had died when Clara was four and Edwin six and she herself only ten responsibility, apprehension and strained effort had printed their marks on her features but the majority of acquaintances were more impressed by her good intention than by her capacity they would call her a nice thing the discerning minority while saying with admiring conviction that she was a very fine girl would regret that somehow she had not the faculty of making the best of herself of putting her best foot foremost and would they not heartily stand up for her with the superficial majority a thin gray haired dreamy eyed woman hurried into the room bearing a noisy tray and followed by Clara with a white cloth this was Mrs. Nixon the domestic staff of the Clayhanger household for years Clara and Mrs. Nixon swept Maggie's sewing materials from the corner of the table onto a chair put Maggie's flower glasses onto the ledge of the bookcase folded up the green cloth and began rapidly to lay the tea simultaneously Maggie glancing at the clock closed up her sewing machine and deposited her work in a basket Clara leaving the table stooped to pick up the bits of cotton and white stuff that littered the carpet the clock struck six now Sharpie she exclaimed curtly to Edwin who stood hesitatingly with his hands in his pockets can't you help Maggie to push that sewing machine into the corner what on earth's up he inquired vaguely but starting forward to help Maggie she'll be here in a minute said Maggie almost under her breath as she fitted on the cover of the sewing machine who asked Edwin oh Aunty I'd forgotten it was her night as if anyone could forget Mermin Clara with sarcastic unbelief by this time the table was completely set Part 6 Edwin wondered mildly as he often wondered at the extremely bitter tone in which Clara always referred to their Aunt Clara Hamps when Mrs. Hamps was not there even Maggie's private attitude to Aunty Clara was scarcely more Christian Mrs. Hamps was the widowed younger sister of their mother and she had taken a certain share in the supervision of Darius Clayhanger's domestic affairs after the death of Mrs. Clayhanger this latter fact might account partially but not wholly for the intense and steady dislike in which she was held by Maggie, Clara and Mrs. Nixon Clara hated her own name because she had been called after her Aunty Mr. Clayhanger got on excellently with his sister-in-law he thought highly of her and was indeed proud to have her for a relative in their father's presence the girls never showed their dislike of Mrs. Hamps it was a secret pleasure shared between them and Mrs. Nixon and only disclosed to Edwin because the girls were indifferent to what Edwin might think they casually despised him for somehow liking his Aunty for not seeing through her wiles but they could count on his loyalty to themselves are you ready for tea or aren't you? Clara asked him she frequently spoke to him as if she was the elder instead of the younger yes he said well I must find father he went off but he did not find his father in the shop and after a few futile minutes he returned upstairs Mrs. Nixon preceded him carrying the tea urn and she told him that his father had sent word into the kitchen that they were not to wait tea for him End of chapter 6 volume 1