 Volume 3 Chapter 3 of Clay-Hanger by Arnold Bennett Chapter 3 The Name He mustn't go near business said Mr. Alfred Heave, the doctor, coming to Edwin who was waiting in the drawing room, after a long examination of Darius. Mr. Heave was not wearing that gentle and refined smile which was so important a factor in the treatment of his patients and their families, and which he seemed to have caught from his elder brother the vicar of St. Peter's. He was a youngish man, only a few years older than Edwin himself, and Edwin's respect for his ability had limits. There were two other doctors in the town whom Edwin would have preferred, but Mr. Heave was his father's choice, notable in the successful soothing of quarrelous stomachs, and it was inevitably Mr. Heave who had been summoned. He had arrived with an apprehensive anxious air. There had been a most distinct nervousness in his voice when in replying to Edwin's question he had said, perhaps I'd better see him quite alone. Edwin had somehow got it into his head that he would be present at the interview. In shutting the dining room door upon Edwin, Mr. Heave had nodded timidly, in a curious way, highly self-conscious, and that dining room door had remained shut for half an hour. And now Mr. Heave had emerged with the same embarrassment. Whether he wants to or not, Edwin suggested with a faint smile. On no account whatever said the doctor, not answering the smile which died. They were standing together near the door. Edwin had his fingers on the handle. He wondered how he would prevent his father from going to business if his father should decide to go. But I don't think he'll be very keen on business, the doctor added. You don't? Mr. Heave slowly shook his head. One of Mr. Heave's qualities that slightly annoyed Edwin was his extraordinary discretion. But then Edwin had always regarded the discreetness of doctors as exaggerated. Why could not heave tell him at once fully and candidly what was in his mind? He had surely the right to be told. Curious. And yet far more curious than Mr. Heave's unwillingness to tell was Edwin's unwillingness to ask. He could not bring himself to demand bluntly of Heave. Well, what's the matter with him? I suppose it's shock, Edwin adventured. Mr. Heave lifted his chin. Shock may have a little to do with it, he answered doubtfully. And how long must he be kept off business? I'm afraid there's not much chance of him doing any more business, said Mr. Heave. Really? Edwin murmured? Are you sure? Quite. Edwin did not feel the full impact of this prophecy at the moment. Indeed, it appeared to him that he had known, since the previous midnight, of his father's sudden doom. It appeared to him that the first glimpse of his father after the funeral had informed him of it positively. What impressed him at the moment was the unusual dignity which characterised Mr. Heave's embarrassment. He was beginning to respect Mr. Heave. I wouldn't care to give him more than two years, said Mr. Heave, gazing at the carpet, and then lifting his eyes to Edwin's. Edwin flushed, and this time his really was startled. Of course you may care to get other advice, the doctor went on. I shall be delighted to meet a specialist, but I tell you at once my opinion. This with the gesture of candour. Oh, said Edwin, if you're sure. Strange that the doctor would not give a name to the disease. It's strange that Edwin even now could not demand the name. I suppose he's in his right mind, said Edwin. Yes, said the doctor, he's in his right mind. But he gave the reply in a tone so peculiar that the affirmative was almost as disconcerting as a negative would have been. Just rest, he wants, said Edwin. Just rest, and looking after. I'll send up some medicine. He'll like it. Mr. Heave glanced absently at his watch. I must be going. Well, Edwin opened the door. Then, with a sudden movement, Mr. Heave put out his hand. You'll come in again soon? Oh, yes. In the hall they saw Maggie about to enter the dining-room with a steaming basin. I'm going to give him this, she said, simply in a low voice. It's so long to dinner-time. By all means, said Mr. Heave, with his little formal bow. You've finished seeing him, then, doctor? He nodded. I'll be back soon, said Edwin to Maggie, taking his hat from the rack. Tell Father if he asks, I've run down to the shop. She nodded and disappeared. I'll walk down a bit of the way with you, said Mr. Heave. His trap, which was waiting at the corner, followed them down the road. Edwin could not begin to talk, and Mr. Heave kept silent. Behind him, Edwin could hear the jingling of metal on Mr. Heave's sprightly horse. After a couple of hundred yards the doctor stopped at a house door. Well, he shook hands again, and at last smiled with sad sweetness. He'll be a bit difficult to manage, you know, said Edwin. I don't think so, said the doctor. I'll let you know about the specialist, but if you're sure, the doctor waved a deprecating hand. It might have been the hand of his brother, the vicar. Part II Edwin proceeded towards the town absorbed in a vision of his father seated in the dining-room, inexpressibly melancholy, and Maggie with her white apron bending over him to offer some nice soup. It was a desolating vision, and yet he wondered why it should be. Whenever he reasoned, he was always inimical to his father. His reason asked harshly why he should be desolated, as he undoubtedly was. The prospect of freedom of release from a horrible and humiliating servitude, this prospect ought to have dazzled and uplifted him in the safe, inviolable privacy of his own heart. But it did not, what a chump the doctor was to be so uncommunicative, and he himself. By the way, he had not told Maggie. It was like her to manifest no immediate curiosity, to be content to wait. He supposed he must call at his aunts, and even at Clara's. But what should he say when they asked him why he had not asked the doctor for a name? Suddenly an approaching man whose face was vaguely familiar but with whom he had no acquaintance whatever, swerved across the footpath and stopped him. What's amiss with the old gentleman? It was astounding how news flew in the town. He's not very well, doctors ordered him a rest. Not in bed, is he? Oh, no, Edwin lightly scorned the suggestion. Well, I do hope it's nothing serious. Good morning. Part 3 Edwin was detained a long time in the shop by a sub-manager from Bostocks in Handbridge who was waiting, and who had come about an estimate for a rather considerable order. This man desired a decrease of the estimate and an increased speed in execution. He was curt. He was one business firm offering an ultimatum to another business firm. He asked Edwin whether Edwin could decide at once. Edwin said certainly using a tone that he had never used before. He decided. The man departed, and Edwin saw him spring onto the Handbridge car as it swept down the hill. The man would not have been interested in the news that Darius Clayhanger had been to business for the last time. Edwin was glad of the incident because it had preserved him from embarrassed conversation with Stifford. Two hours earlier he had called for a few moments at the shop, and even then, ere Edwin had spoken, Stifford's face showed that he knew something sinister had occurred. With a few words of instruction to Stifford, he now went through towards the workshops to speak with Big James about the Bostock order. All the workmen and apprentices were self-conscious, and Edwin could not speak naturally to Big James. When he had come to an agreement with Big James as to the execution of the order, the latter said, Would you step below a minute, Mr. Edwin? Edwin shuffled, but Big James' majestic politeness gave to his expressed wish the force of a command. Edwin proceeded Big James down the rough wooden stair to the ground floor, which was still pillared with supporting beams. Big James, with deliberate careful movements, drew the trapdoor horizontal as he descended. Might I ask, sir, if master's in a bad way he inquired with solemn and delicate calm? But he would have inquired about the weather in the same fashion. I'm afraid he is, said Edwin, glancing nervously about at the litter and the cobwebs and the naked wood and the naked earth. The vibration of a treadle machine above them put the place in a throb. Astounding! Everybody knew or guessed everything. How? Big James wagged his head and his grandiose beard, now more grey than black, and he fingered his apron. I believe in herbs, myself, said Big James, but this is softening of the brain. Well, that was it, softening of the brain, what the doctor had not told him he had learned from Big James. How it happened that Big James was in a position to tell him he could not comprehend. But he was ready now to believe that the whole town had acquired by magic the information which fate or original stupidity had kept from him alone. Softening of the brain. Perhaps I'm making too bold, sir, Big James went on. Perhaps it's not so bad as that, but I did hear. Edwin nodded confirmingly. You needn't talk about it, he murmured, indicating the first floor by an upward movement of the head. That I shall not, sir, Big James smoothly replied and proceeded in the same bland tone, and what's more never will I raise my voice in song again. James Yalad has sung his last song. There was silence. Edwin accustomed, though he was to the mildness of Big James Department, did not on the instant grasp that the man was seriously announcing a solemn resolve made under deep emotion. But as he understood tears came into Edwin's eyes and he thrilled at the swift and dramatic revelation of the compositor's feeling for his employer. Its impressiveness was overwhelming and it was humbling. Why this excess of devotion? I don't say but what he had his faults like other folks, said Big James, and far be it from me to say that you, Mr. Edwin, will not be a better master than your esteemed father. But for over twenty years I've worked for him and now he's gone, never will I lift my voice in song again. Edwin could not reply. I know what it is, said Big James, after a pause. This serri-brulf softening. You'll have trouble, Mr. Edwin. The doctor says not. You'll have trouble if you'll excuse me saying so, but it's a good thing he's got you. It's a good thing for Miss Maggie as she isn't alone with him. It's a providence, Mr. Edwin, as you're not a married man. I very nearly was married once. Edwin cried with a sudden uncontrollable outburst of feeling which staggered while it satisfied him. Why should he make such a confidence to Big James? Between his pleasure in the relief and his extreme astonishment at the confession he felt as it were lost and desperate, as if he did not care what might occur. Were you now, Big James, commented with an ever-intensified blandness? Well, sir, I say thank you. CHAPTER IV THE VICTIM OF SYMPATHY On the same evening Edwin, Albert Benbow and Darius were smoking Albert's cigarettes in the dining-room. Edwin sat at the end of a disordered supper-table. Albert was standing, had in hand, near the side-board, and Darius leaned against the mantelpiece. Nobody could have supposed from his appearance that a doctor had responsibly prophesied this man's death within two years, except for a shade of sadness upon his face he looked the same as he had looked for a decade. Though regarded by his children as an old man he was not old, being in fact still under sixty. His grey hair was sparse, his spectacles were set upon his nose with the negligence characteristic of age, but the down-pointing moustache, which, abetted by his irregular teeth, gave him that curious facial resemblance to a seal, showed great force, and the whole of his stiff and sturdy frame showed force. His voice, if not his mouth, had largely recovered from the weakness of the morning. Moreover, the fashion in which he smoked a cigarette had somehow the effect of rejuvenating him. It was Albert who had induced him to smoke cigarettes occasionally. He was not a habitual smoker, consuming perhaps half an ounce a week of pipe tobacco, an assuredly he would never of his own accord have tried a cigarette, or Daria's cigarettes were aristocratic and finicking. They were an affectation. He smoked a cigarette with a self-consciousness which usually marks the consumption of champagne in certain strata of society. His gestures, as he examined from time to time the end of the cigarette, or audibly blew forth spreading clouds, seemed to signify that in his opinion he was going the pace, cutting a dash, and seeing life. This naivety had its charm. The three men left alone by their women were discussing politics, which then meant nothing but the subject of home rule. Daria's agreed almost eagerly with everything that Albert Ben Bowes said. Albert was a calm and utterly sound conservative. He was one of those politicians whose conviction of rightness is so strong that they cannot help condescending towards an opponent. Albert would say persuasively to liberal acquaintances, now just think a moment, and apparently sure that the only explanation of their misguided views was that they never had thought for a moment. Or he would say, surely all patriotic liberals. But one day when Edwin had said to him with a peculiar accent, surely all patriotic conservatives he had been politely offended for the rest of the evening, and Edwin and he had not mentioned politics to each other for a long time. Albert had had much influence over his father-in-law, and now Albert said after Daria's had concurred and concurred, you're one of the right sort after all, old gentleman. Throughout the evening he had spoken to Daria's in an unusually loud voice, as though it was necessary to shout to a man who had only two years to live. All I say is, said Daria's, country before party. Why, of course, Albert smiled confident and superior. Haven't I been telling you for years, you're one of us? Edwin too smiled as superiorly as he could, but unhappily not with sufficient superiority to wither Albert's smile. He said nothing, partly from timid discretion, but partly because he was preoccupied with the thought of the malignant and subtle power working secretly in his father's brain. How could the doctor tell? What was the process of softening? Did his father know in that sick brain of his that he was condemned, or did he hope to recover? Now as he leaned against the mantelpiece, protruding his body in an easy posture, he might have been any ordinary man and not a victim. He might have been a man of business relaxing after a long day of hard and successful cerebral activity. It seemed strange to Edwin that Albert could talk as he did to one whom destiny had set apart. To one whose being was the theatre of a drama so mysterious and tragic? Yet it was the proper thing for Albert to do, and Albert did it perfectly. Better than anybody, except possibly Maggie. Those women take a juice of a time putting their bonnets on, Albert exclaimed. Part 2 The women came downstairs at last. At last to Edwin's intense relief, everyone was going. Albert went into the hall to meet the women. Edwin rose and followed him. And Darius came as far as the door of the dining room. Less than twenty-four hours had passed since Edwin had begun even to suspect any sort of disaster to his father. But the previous night seemed an age away. The day had been interminable, and the evening exasperating in the highest degree. What an evening! Why had Albert and Clara and Auntie Hamps all of them come up just at supper time? At first they would not be persuaded. No, they had just called sheer accident. Nothing abnormal. And yet the whole of the demeanor of Auntie Hamps and Clara was abnormal. Maggie herself catching the infection had transformed the meal into a kind of abnormal horrible feast by serving cold beef and pickles. Flesh meat being unknown to the suppers of the clay hangers save occasionally on Sundays. Edwin could not comprehend why the visitors had come. That is to say he understood the reason quite well, but hated to admit it. They had come from a mere gluttony of curiosity. They knew all that could be known, but still they must come and gaze and indulge their lamentable hearts and repeat the same things again and again, ten million times. Auntie Hamps indeed probably knew more than Edwin did. For she had thought fit to summon Dr. Heave that very afternoon for an ailment of her own. And Clara, with an infant or so, had by remarkable coincidence, called at Mrs. Hamps' house just after the doctor left. Odious thought Edwin. These two had openly treated Darius as a martyr, speaking to him in soft and pitiful voices, urging him to eat, urging him to drink, caressing him, soothing him, humoring him, pretending to be brave and cheerful and optimistic, but with a pretence so poor, so wilfully poor, that it became an insult. When they said fulsomely, You'll be perfectly all right soon, if only you'll take care and do as the doctor says. Edwin could have risen and killed them both with hearty pleasure. They might just as well have said, You're practically in your grave. And assuredly they were not without influence on Maggie's deportment. The curious thing was, it was impossible to decide whether Darius loathed, or whether he liked, to be so treated. His face was an enigma. However, he was less gloomy. Then also the evening had necessarily been full of secret conferences. What would you? Each had to relay to privately the things that he or she knew or had heard, or had imagined. And there were questions of urgency to be discussed. For example, the question of the specialist. They were all positively agreed, Edwin found, that a specialist was unnecessary. Darius was condemned beyond hope or argument. There he sat, eating and talking in the large fine house that he had created out of nought, looking not at all like a corpse, but he was condemned. The doctor had convinced them. Besides, did not everybody know what softening of the brain was? Of course, if he thinks he would prefer to have a specialist if he has the slightest wish. This from Auntie Hamps. There was the question further of domestic service. Mrs. Nixon's niece had committed the folly of marriage. And for many months Maggie and the old servant had been managing. But with a crotchety invalid always in the house more help would be indispensable. And still further, should Darius be taken away for a period to the sea, or Buxton, or somewhere? Maggie said that nothing would make him go, and Clara agreed with her. All these matters and others had to be kept away from the central figure. They were all full of passionate interest, and they had to be debated, in tones hushed but excited, in the hall, in the kitchen, upstairs, or anywhere except in the dining room. The excuses invented by the conspiring women for quitting and entering the dining room, their fatuous air of innocent simplicity disgusted Edwin. And he became curter and curter as he noticed the new deference which even Clara practised towards him. Part 3 The adieu's word is stressing. Clara with her pale, sharp face and troubled eyes, classed Darius round the neck and almost hung on it. And Edwin thought, why doesn't she tell him straight out he's done for? Then she retired and sought her husband's arm with the conscious pride of a wife fruitful up to the limits set by nature. And then Aunty Ham shook hands with the victim. These two, of course, did not kiss. Aunty Ham spore herself bravely. Now do-do, as the doctor advises, she said patting Darius on the shoulder, and do be guided by these dear children. Edwin caught Maggie's eye and held it grimly. And you, my pet, said Aunty Ham's turning to Clara, who with Albert was now at the door. You must be getting back to your babies. It's a wonder how you managed to get away. But you're a wonderful arranger. Only don't overdo it, don't overdo it. Clara gave a fatigued smile as of one whom circumstances often forced to overdo it. They departed, Albert whistling to the night. Edwin observed again in their final glances the queer, new, ingratiating deference for himself. He bolted the door savagely. Darius was still standing at the entrance to the dining-room. And as he looked at him, Edwin thought of Big James as vow never to lift his voice in song again. Strange. It was the idea of the secret strangeness of life that was uppermost in his mind, not grief, not expectancy. In the afternoon he had been talking again to Big James, who it appeared had known intimately a case of softening of the brain. He did not identify the case. It was characteristic of him to name no names, but clearly he was familiar with the course of the disease. He had begun revelations which disconcerted Edwin, and had then stopped. And now as Edwin furtively examined his father he asked himself, will that happen to him, and that, and those still worse things that Big James did not reveal? Incredible. There he was smoking a cigarette and the clock striking ten in its daily matter-of-fact way. Darius let fall the cigarette, which Edwin picked up from the mat and offered to him. Throw it away, said Darius with a deep sigh. Going to bed Edwin asked. Darius shook his head and Edwin debated what he should do. A moment later Maggie came from the kitchen and asked. Going to bed father, again Darius shook his head. He then went slowly into the drawing room and lit the gas there. What shall you do? Leave him? Maggie whispered to Edwin in the dining room as she helped Mrs. Nixon to clear the table. I don't know, said Edwin. I shall see. In ten minutes both Maggie and Mrs. Nixon had gone to bed. Edwin hesitated in the dining room. Then he extinguished the gas there and went into the drawing room. Darius, not having lowered the blinds, was gazing out of the black window. You needn't wait down here for me, said he, a little sharply. And his tone was so sane, controlled, firm, and ordinary that Edwin could do nothing but submit to it. I'm not going to, he answered quietly. Impossible to treat a man of such demeanour like a child. End of Chapter 4 Volume 3 Volume 3 Chapter 5 of Clay Hanger by Arnold Bennett This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 5 The Slave's Fear Edwin closed the door of his bedroom with a sense of relief and of pleasure far greater than he would have admitted, or indeed could honestly have admitted for it surpassed his consciousness. The feeling recurred that he was separated from the previous evening by a tremendous expanse of time. He had been flung out of his daily habits. He had forgotten to worry over the execution of his private programs. He had forgotten even that the solemn 30th birthday was close upon him. It seemed to him as if his own egoism was lying about in scattered pieces which he must collect in the calm of this cloister and reconstruct. He wanted to resume possession of himself very slowly without violent effort. He wound up his watch. The hour was not yet half past ten. The whole exquisite night was his. He had brought with him from the shop, almost mechanically, a copy of Harper's magazine, not the copy which regularly once a month he kept from a customer during the space of 24 hours for his own uses, but a second copy which had been sent down by the wholesale agents in mistake, and which he could return when he chose. He had already seen the number, but he could not miss the chance of carefully going through it at leisure. Despite his genuine aspirations, despite his taste which was growing more and more fastidious, he found it exceedingly difficult to proceed with his regular plan of reading while there was an illustrated magazine unexplored. Besides, the name of Harper's was Auguste. To read Harper's was to acquire merit. Even the pictures in Harper's were too subtle for the uncultivated. He turned over the pages, and they all appeared to promise new and strange joys. Such preliminary moments were the most ecstatic in his life, as in the lives of many readers. He had not lost sight of the situation created by his father's illness, but he could only see it very dimly through the semi-transparent pages. Part II The latch clicked and the door opened slightly. He jumped, supposing that his father had crept upstairs, and the first thought of the slave in him was that his father had never seen the gas stove and would now infallibly notice it. But Maggie's face showed. She came in very quietly. She too had caught the conspiratorial manner. I thought you wouldn't be ready for bed just yet, she said, in mild excuse of her entry. It didn't knock for fear he might be wondering about and hear. Oh, muttered Edwin, what's up? Instinctively he resented the invasion and was alarmed for the privacy of his sacred room, although he knew that Maggie and Mrs. Nixon also had it at their mercy every day. Nobody ever came into that room while he was in it. Maggie approached the hearth. I think I ought to have a stove too, she said pleasantly. Well, why don't you, he replied? I can get it for you any time. If Clara had envied his stove she would have envied it with scoffing ranker, and he would have used sarcasm in response. Oh, no! said Maggie quickly. I don't really want one. What's up? he repeated. He could see she was hesitating. Do you know what Clara and Auntie are saying? No, what now? I should have thought they'd both said enough to last them for a few days at any rate. Did Albert say anything to you? What about? Well, both Clara and Auntie said I must tell you. Albert says he ought to make his will. They all think so. Edwin's lips curled. How do they know he hasn't made it? Has he made it? How do I know? You don't suppose he ever talks to me about his affairs, do you? Not much. Well, they meant he ought to be asked. Well, let him ask him, then. I shunt. Of course, what they say is you're the—what do I care for that, he interrupted her, so that's what you were yarning about so long in your room. I can tell you, said Maggie, they're both of them very serious about it. So's Albert, it seems. They disgust me, he said briefly. Here's the thing, isn't a day old, and they begin worrying about his will. They go slobbering all over him downstairs, and upstairs it's nothing but his will, they think about. You can't rush at a man and talk to him about his will like that. At least I can't. It's altogether too thick. I expect some people could, but I can't. Damn it, you must have some sense of decency. See? Maggie remained calm and benevolent. After a pause, she said, You see, their point is that later on he mayn't be able to make a will. Look here, he questioned amicably, meeting her eyes. What do you think? What do you think yourself? Oh, she said, I should never dream of bothering about it. I'm only telling you what— Of course you wouldn't, he exclaimed. No decent person would. Later on, perhaps, if one could put in a word casually, but not now. If he doesn't make a will, he doesn't make one. That's all. Maggie leaned against the mantelpiece. Mind you, skirt doesn't catch fire, he warned her in a murmur. I told them what you'd say, she answered his outburst perfectly unmoved. I knew what you'd say, but what they say is, It's all very well for you, you're the son, and it seems that if there isn't a will, if it's left too late, this aspect of the case had absolutely not presented itself to Edwin. If they think he muttered with cold acrimony, if they think I'm the sort of person to take the slightest advantage of being the son, well, they must think it. That's all. Besides, they can always talk to him themselves if they're so desperately anxious. You have charge of everything. Have I? And I should like to know what it's got to do with Aunty. Maggie lifted her head. Oh, Aunty and Clara, you know you can't separate them. Well, I've told you, she moved to leave. I say he stopped her with a confidential appeal, don't you agree with me? Yes, she replied simply, I think it ought to be left for a bit. Perhaps he's made it after all, let's hope so. I'm sure it will save a lot of trouble if he has. Naturally it ought to be left for a bit. Why just look at him? He might be on his blooming dying bed to hear the way some people talk. Let him mention it to me, and I'll tell him a thing or two. Maggie raised her eyebrow as she scarcely recognized Edwin. I suppose he'll be all right downstairs. Right? Of course he'll be all right, then he added in a tone less pugnacious. For, after all, it was not Maggie who had outraged his delicacy. Don't latch the door, pull it too, I'll listen out. She went silently away. Part III Searching with his body for the most comfortable deeps of the easy chair, he set himself to save a harper's. This monthly reassurance that nearly all was well with the world, and that what was wrong was not seriously wrong, waited on his knees to be accepted and to do its office. Unlike the magazines of his youth, its aim was to soothe and flatter, not to disconcert and impeach. He looked at the refined illustrations of South American capitals and of picturesque corners in Provence, and at the smooth or the rugged portraits of great statesmen and great bridges, all just as true to reality as the brilliant letterpress. And he tried to slip into the rectified and softened world offered by the magazine. He did not criticise the presentment. He did nothing so subtle as to ask himself whether, if he encountered the reality, he would recognise it from the presentment. He wanted the illusions of harper's. He desired the comfort, the distraction, and the pleasant ideal longings which they aroused. But they were a medicine which he discovered he was not in a condition to absorb, a medicine therefore useless. There was no effective medicine for his trouble. His trouble was that he objected to being disturbed. At first he had been pleasantly excited, but now he shrank away at the call to freedom, to action, to responsibility. All the slave in him protested against the knocking off of irons, and the imperative kick into the open air. He saw suddenly that in the calm of regular habit and of subjection he had arrived at something that closely resembled happiness. He wished not to lose it, knowing that it was already gone. Actually, for his own sake and quite apart from his father, he would have been ready were it possible to cancel the previous twenty-four hours. Everything was ominous, and he was wondering about lost amid menaces, why even his cherished programs of reading were smashed. Hallam! True, tonight was not a night appointed for reading, but tomorrow night was, and would he be able to read tomorrow night? No, a hundred new complications would have arisen to harass him and to dispossess him of his tranquility. Destiny was demanding from him a huge effort, unexpected and formidable, and the whole of his being weakly complained, asking to be exempted, but asking without any hope of success, for all his faculties and his desires knew that his conscience was ultimately their master. Talk to his father about making a will, eh? Besides being disgusting it was laughable. Those people did not know his father as he did. He foresaw that even in the conducting of routine business, he would have difficulties with his father over the simplest details. In particular was one indispensable preliminary to the old man's complete repose, and his first duty on the morrow would be to endeavour to arrange this preliminary with his father, but he scarcely hoped to succeed. On the portion of the mantelpiece reserved for books in actual use lay the tail of a tub, last night so enchanting, and now he had positively forgotten it. He yawned and prepared for bed. If he could not read harpers, perhaps he could read swift. Part 4 He lay in bed, the gas was out, the stove was out, and according to his custom he was reading himself to sleep by the light of a candle in a sconce attached to the bed's head. His eyes ran along line after line and down page after page, and transmitted nothing coherent to his brain. Then there were steps on the stair. His father was at last coming to bed. He was a little relieved though he had been quite prepared to go to sleep and leave his father below. Why not? The steps died at the top of the stair, but an irregular creaking continued. After a pause the door was pushed open, and after another pause the figure of his father came into view, breathing loudly. Edwin, are you asleep? Darius asked anxiously. Edwin wondered what could be the matter, but he answered with lightness. Nearly. I've not put the light out, Danyon. Happen you'd better put it out. There was in his father's voice a note of dependence upon him, of appeal to him. Funny, he thought, and said aloud, all right. He jumped up. His father thudded off deliberately to his own room, apparently relieved of a fearful oppression, but still fixed in sadness. On the previous night Edwin had extinguished the whole gas and come last to bed, and again to-night, but to-night with what a different sentiment of genuine permanent responsibility. The appealing feebleness of his father's attitude seemed to give him strength. Surely a man so weak and fallen from tyranny could not cause much trouble? Edwin now had some hope that the unavoidable preliminary to the invalid's retirement might be achieved without too much difficulty. He braced himself. End of Chapter 5 Volume 3 Volume 3 Chapter 6 of Clay Hanger by Arnold Bennett This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 6 Keys and Checks Coming up Trafalgar Road at twenty minutes past nine in the bright, astringent morning, Edwin carried by a string a little round parcel which for him contained the inspiring symbol of his new life. By mere accident he had wakened and had risen early, arriving at the shop before half-past seven. He had deliberately lifted onto his shoulders the whole burden of the shop and the printing business, and as soon as he felt its weight securely lodged he became extraordinarily animated and vigorous, even gay. He had worked with a most agreeable sense of energy until nearly nine o'clock, and then having first called at the iron mongers, had stepped into the bank at the top of St. Luke's Square a moment after its doors opened, and had five minutes' exciting conversation with the manager, after which the righteous hunger in his belly and the symbol in his hand he had come home to breakfast. The symbol was such as could be obtained at any iron mongers—an alarm clock. Mrs. Nixon had grown less reliable than formerly as an alarm clock. Machinery was now supplanting her. Dr. Heave came out of the house, and Dr. Heave too seemed gay with fine resolutions. The two met on the doorstep, each full of a justifiable self-satisfaction. The doctor explained that he had come thus early because Mr. Clayhanger was one of those cases upon which he could look in casually at any time. In the sunshine they talked under the porch of early rising, as men who understood the value of that art. Edwin could see that Dr. Heave's life was a series of little habits which would never allow themselves to be interfered with by any large interest, and he despised the man's womanish smile. Nevertheless his new respect for him did not weaken. He decided that he was a very decent fellow in his way, and he was more impressed than he would admit by the amount of work that the doctor had for years been doing in the morning before his intellectual superiors had sat up in bed, and he imagined that it might be even more agreeable to read in the fresh stillness of the morning than in the solitary night. Then they returned to the case of Darius, the doctor was more communicative, and they were both cheerfully matter of fact concerning it. There it was to be made the best of, and that Darius could never handle business again, and that in about two years his doom would be accomplished. These were basic facts axiomatic. The doctor had seen his patient in the garden, and he suggested that if Darius could be persuaded to interest himself in gardening, they discussed his medicine, his meals, his digestion, and the great impossible dream of taking him away, out of it all, and every now and then Dr Heave dropped some little hint as to the management of Darius. The ticking parcel drew the discreet attention of the doctor. The machine was one guaranteed to go in any position, and was much more difficult to stop than to start. It's only an alarm, said Edwin, not without self-consciousness. The doctor went tripping neatly and optimistically off towards his own breakfast. He got up earlier than his horse. Part 2 Darius was still in the garden when Edwin went to him. He had put on his daily suit, and was leisurely digging in an uncultivated patch of ground. He stuck the spade into the earth perpendicularly and deep, and when he tried to prise it up and it would not yield because of a concealed half-brick, he put his tongue between his teeth and then bit his lower lip, controlling himself, determined to get the better of the spade and the brick by persuasively humoring them. He took no notice whatever of Edwin. I see you aren't losing any time, said Edwin, who felt as though he were engaging in small talk with a stranger. Are you? Darius replied, without turning his head. I've just come up for a bit of breakfast. Everything's all right, he said. He would have liked to add, I was in the shop before 7.30, but he was too proud. After a pause he ventured, essaying the casual, I say, Father, I shall want the keys of the desk and all that. Keys of the desk, Darius muttered, leaning on the spade, as though demanding in stupefaction what on earth can you want the keys for? Well, Edwin stammered. But the proposition was too obvious to be denied. Darius left the spade to stand up by itself and stared. Got him in your pocket, Edwin inquired? Slowly Darius drew forth a heavy, glittering bunch of keys, one of the chief insignia of his dominion, and began to fumble at it. You needn't take any of them off, I expect I know which is which, said Edwin, holding out his hand. Darius hesitated and then yielded up the bunch. Thanks, said Edwin lightly. But the old man's reluctance to perform this simple and absolutely necessary act of surrender, the old man's air of having done something tremendous, these signs frightened Edwin and shook his courage for the demand compared to which the demand for the keys was not. Still the affair had to be carried through. And I say he proceeded jingling the keys about signing and endorsing checks. They tell me at the bank that if you sign a general authority to me to do it for you, that will be enough. He could not avoid looking guilty. He almost felt guilty, almost felt as if he were plotting against his father's welfare. And as he spoke his words seemed unreal and his suggestion fantastic. At the bank the plan had been simple, easy and perfectly natural. But there could be no doubt that as he had walked up Trafalgar Road, receding from the bank and approaching his father, the plan had gradually lost those attractive qualities. And now in the garden it was merely monstrous. Silent Darius resumed the spade. Well said Edwin desperately, what about it? Do you think Darius glowered upon him with heavy, desolating scorn? Do you think as I'm going to let you sign my checks for me? You're taking too much on yourself, my lad, but I tell you, you're taking too much on yourself. He began to shout menacingly. Get about your business and don't act the fool. You needn't think you're going to be God Almighty because you got up a bit earlier for once in a way and been down to the shop before breakfast? Part 3 In all his demeanor there was not the least indication of weakness. He might never have sat down on the stairs and cried. He might never have submitted feebly and perhaps gladly to the caresses of Clara and the soothings of Auntie Hamps. Impossible to convince him that he was cut off from the world. Impossible even to believe it. Was this the man that Edwin and the bank manager and the doctor and all the others had been disposing of, as though he were an automaton, accurately responsive to external suggestion? Look here. Edwin knew he ought to say, let it be clearly understood once for all, I'm the boss now. I have the authority in my pocket, and you must sign it and quick too. I shall do my best for you, but I don't mean to be bullied while I'm doing it. But he could not say it, nor could his heart emotionally feel it. He turned away sheepishly, and then he faced his father again with a distressed apologetic smile. Well then, he asked, who is going to sign checks? I am, said Darius. But you know what the doctor said, you know what you promised him. What did the doctor say? He said you weren't to do anything at all, and you said you wouldn't. What's more, you said you didn't want to. Darius sneered. I reckon I can sign checks, he said, and I reckon I can endorse checks. So it's got to that. I can't sign my own name now. I shall show some of you whether I can't sign my own name. You know it isn't simply signing them. You know if I bring checks up for you to sign you'll begin worrying about them at once. And there'll be no end to it. You'd much better shut up. It was like a clap of thunder. Edwin hesitated an instant and then went towards the house. He could hear his father muttering, whip a snapper. And I'll tell you another thing. Darius bawled across the garden. Assuredly his voice would reach the street. It was like your impudence to go to the bank like that without asking me first. They tell you at the bank. They tell you at the bank. Anything else they told you at the bank? Then a snort. Edwin was humiliated and baffled. He knew not what he could do. The situation became impossible immediately. It was faced. He felt also very resentful. And resentment was capturing him. When suddenly an idea seemed to pull him by the sleeve. All this is part of his disease. It's part of his disease that he can't see the point of a thing. And the idea was insistent. And under its insistence Edwin's resentment changed to melancholy. He said to himself that he must think of his father as a child. He blamed himself in a sort of pleasurable luxury of remorse. For all the anger which during all his life he had felt against his father. His father's unreasonableness had not been a fault but a misfortune. His father had been not a tyrant but a victim. His brain must always have been wrong. And now he was doomed. And the worst part of his doom was that he was unaware of it. And in the thought of Darius ignorantly blustering within the walled garden, in the spring sunshine, condemned, cut off, helpless at the last, pitiable at the last, there was something inexpressibly poignant. And the sunshine seemed a shame. And Edwin's youth and mental vigor seemed a shame. Nevertheless Edwin knew not what to do. Mr. Edwin said Mrs. Nixon, who was rubbing the balustrade of the stairs. You moon across him like that. She jerked her head in the direction of the garden. The garden doors stood open. If he had not felt solemn and superior he could have snapped off that head of hers. Is my breakfast ready? he asked. He hung up his hat and absently took the little parcel which he had left on the marble ledge of the umbrella-stand. End of Chapter 6 Volume 3 Volume 3 Chapter 7 of Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 7 Laid Aside The safe, since the abandonment of the business premises by the family, had stood in a corner of a small nondescript room sometimes vaguely called the safe room, between the shop and what had once been the kitchen. It was a considerable safe, and it had the room practically to itself. As Edwin unlocked it and the prodigious door swung with silent smoothness to his pool, he was aware of a very romantic feeling of exploration. He had seen the inside of the safe before. He had even opened the safe and taken something from it, under his father's orders. But he had never had leisure nor license to inspect its interior. From his boyhood had survived the notion that it must contain many marbles. In spite of himself his attitude was one of awe. The first thing that met his eye was his father's large black-bound private cash-book, which constituted the most sacred and mysterious document in the accountancy of the business. Edwin handled and kept all the books save that. At the beginning of the previous week he and Stifford had achieved the task of sending out the quarterly accounts, and of one sort or another there were some seven hundred quarterly accounts. Edwin was familiar with every detail of the printer's workbook, the daybook, the combined book colloquially called Invoice and Ledger, the bought Ledger and the shop Cashbook. But he could form no sure idea of the total dimensions and results of the business, because his father always kept the ultimate castings to himself, and never displayed his private cash-book under any circumstances. By ingenuity and perseverance Edwin might have triumphed over Darius's mania for secrecy, but he did not care to do so, perhaps pride even more than honour caused him to refrain. Now he held the book, and saw that only a portion of it was in the nature of a cash-book. The rest comprised summaries and general statements. The statement for the year 1885, so far as he could hastily decipher its meaning, showed a profit of eight hundred and twenty-one pounds. He was not surprised, and yet the sight of the figures in his father's heavy, scratchy hand was curiously impressive. His father could keep nothing from him now. The interior of the safe was like a city that had capitulated. No law ran in it but his law, and he was absolute. He could commit infamies in the city and none might criticise. He turned over piles of dusty cheque, counter-foils, and old pass-books and other old books of account. He saw a linen bag crammed with four shilling pieces. Whenever Darius obtained a double flooring, he put it aside. And one or two old watches of no value. Also the title deeds of the house at Bleak Ridge, their latest parchment still white with pounce. The mortgage then had been repaid. A fact which Darius had managed on principle to conceal from his son. Then he came to the four drawers, and in some of these he discovered a number of miscellaneous share certificates with their big seals. He knew that his father had investments. It was impossible to inhabit the shop cubicle with his father and not know that. But he had no conception of their extent or their value. Always he had regarded all those matters as foreign to himself, refusing to allow curiosity in regard to them to awake. Now he was differently minded, owing to the mere physical weight in his pocket of a bunch of keys. In a hasty examination he gathered that the stock was chiefly in railways and shipping, and that it amounted to large sums. Anyhow quite a number of thousands. He was frankly astonished. How had his father's clumsy, slow intellect been able to cope with the dangerous intricacies of the stock exchange? It seemed incredible. And yet he had known quite well that his father was an investor. Of course he isn't keen on giving it all up, Edwin exclaimed, allowed suddenly. I wonder he even forked out the keys as easily as he did. The view of the safe enabled him to perform a feat which very few children ever achieve. He put himself in his father's place, and it was with benevolence, not with exasperation, that he puzzled his head to invent some device for defeating the old man's obstinacy about cheque signing. One draw was evidently not in regular use. Often in a series of draws one of them falls into the idle habit of being overlooked, slipping gradually by custom into destitute, though other draws may overflow. This draw held merely a few scraps of sample paper and a map all dusty. He drew forth the map. It was coloured, and in shaky Roman characters underneath it ran the legend, the county of Staffordshire. He seemed to recognise the map. On the back he read in his father's handwriting, drawn and coloured without help by my son Edwin aged nine. He had utterly forgotten it. He could in no detail recall the circumstances in which he had produced the wonderful map. A childish rude effort. Still rather remarkable that at the age of nine, perhaps even before he had begun to attend the old Castle Middle School, he should have chosen to do a county map instead of a map of that country beloved by all juvenile map-drawers, Ireland. He must have copied it from the map in Lewis's Gazettea of England and Wales, twenty-one years ago nearly. He might, from the peculiar effect on him, have just discovered the mummy of the boy that once had been Edwin. And his father had kept the map for over twenty years. The old cock must have been juiced proud of it once. Not that he ever said so. Edwin was sure of that. Now you needn't get sentimental, he told himself. Like Maggie he had a fearful and almost morbid horror of sentimentality, but he could not arrest the softening of his heart, as he smiled at the naivety of the map and at his father's parental simplicity. As he was closing the safe, Stifford agitated hurried into the room. Please, sir, Mr. Clayhangers in the square. I thought I'd better tell you. What, father? Yes, sir, he's standing opposite the chapel, and he keeps looking this way. I thought you'd like Edwin turned the key and ran forth stumbling as he entered the shop against the stepladder, which, with the paper boy at the summit of it, overtopped the doorway. He wondered why he should run, and why Stifford's face was so obviously apprehensive. Part II Darius Clayhanger was standing at the northeast corner of the little square, halfway up Duck Bank, at the edge of the pavement, and his gaze, hasten and feeble, seemed to be upon the shop. He merely stood there moveless, and yet the sight of him was most strangely disconcerting. Edwin, who kept within the shelter of the doorway, comprehended now the look on Stifford's face. His father had the air of ranging round about the shop in a reconnaissance, like an Indian or a wild animal, or like a domestic animal violently expelled. Edwin almost expected him to creep round by the town hall into St Luke's Square, and then to reappear stealthily at the other end of Wedgewood Street, and from a western ambush steer again at his own premises. A man coming down Duck Bank caused an instant near Darius, and with a smile spoke to him, holding out his hand. Darius gave a slight nod. The man, snubbed and confused, walked on, the smile still on his face but meaningless now and foolish. At length Darius walked up the hill, his arms stiff and out pointing as of old. Edwin got his hat and ran after him. Instead of turning to the left along the marketplace, Darius kept on farther up the hill, past the shambles towards the old playground and the vague cinder wastes, where the town ended in a few ancient cottages. It was at the playground that Edwin, going slowly and cautiously, overtook him. Hello, father, he began nervously. Where are you off to? Darius did not seem to be at all startled to see him at his side. Nevertheless he behaved in a queer fashion. Without saying a word he suddenly turned at right angles and apparently aimed himself towards the marketplace by the back of the town hall. When he had walked a few paces he stopped and looked round at Edwin, who could not decide what ought to be done. If you want to know, said Darius, with overwhelming sadness and embittered disgust, I'm going to the bank to sign that authority about checks. Oh! Edwin responded. Good! I'll go with you if you like. Happen it'll be as well, said Darius, resigning himself. They walked together in silence. The old man was beaten. The old man had surrendered unconditionally. Edwin's heart lightened as he perceived more and more clearly what this surprising victory meant. It meant that always in the future he would have the upper hand. He knew now, and Darius knew, that his father had no strength to fight, and that any semblance of fighting could be treated as bluster. Probably nobody realized as profoundly as Darius himself, his real and yet mysterious inability to assert his will against the will of another. The force of his individuality was gone. He who had meant to govern tyrannically to his final hour, to die with a powerful and grim gesture of command, had to accept the ignominy of submission. Edwin had not even insisted, had used no kind of threat. He had merely announced his will, and when the first fury had waned, Darius had found his son's will, working like a chemical agent in his defenseless mind, and had yielded. It was astounding, and always it would be thus, until the time when Edwin would say, do this, and Darius would do it, and do that, and Darius would do it, meekly, unreasoningly, anxiously. Edwin's relief was so great that it might have been mistaken for positive ecstatic happiness. His mind ranged exultingly over the future of the business. In a few years, if he chose, he could sell the business and spend the whole treasure of his time upon programs. The entire world would be his, and he could gather the fruits of every art. He would utterly belong to himself. It was a formidable thought. The atmosphere of the marketplace contained too much oxygen to be quite grateful to his lungs. In the meantime there were things he would do. He would raise Stifford's wages. Long ago they ought to have been raised, and he would see that Stifford had his dinner a full hour, which in practice Stifford had never had, and he would completely give up the sale and delivery of newspapers and weeklies, and would train the paper boy to the shop, and put Stifford in his own place, and perhaps get another clerk. It struck him hopefully that Stifford might go forth for orders. Assuredly he himself had not one quality of a commercial traveller. And most inviting prospect of all he would stock new books. He cared not whether new books were unremunerative. It should be known throughout the five towns that at Clayhangers in Bursley a selection of new books could always be seen, and if people would not buy them people must leave them. But he would have them, and so his thoughts flew. Part 3 And at the same time he was extremely sad, only less sad than his father. When he allowed his thoughts to rest for an instant on his father he was so moved that he could almost have burst into a sob. Just one terrific sob. And he would say in his mind, What a damn shame! What a damn shame! Meaning that Destiny had behaved ignoble to his father after all. Destiny had no right to deal with a man so faithlessly. Destiny should do either one thing or the other. It seemed to him that he was leading his father by a string to his humiliation. And he was ashamed, ashamed of his own dominance and of his father's craven submissiveness. Twice they were stopped by hearty and curious burgesses, and at each encounter Edwin, far more than Darius, was anxious to pretend that the harsh hand of Darius still firmly held the scepter. When they entered the shining mahogany interior of the richest bank in the five towns, hushed saved for a discreet shoveling of coins, Edwin waited for his father to speak, and Darius said not a word, but stood glumly quiescent, like a victim in a halter. The little wiry dancing cashier looked. Every clerk in the place looked. From behind the third counter in the far recesses of the bank, clerks looked over their ledgers. And they all looked in the same annoying way as at a victim in a halter. In their glance was all the pitiful gloating baseness of human nature, mingled with the little of its compassion. Everybody, of course, knew that something had happened to the successful steam-printer. Can we see Mr. Lovett, Edwin demanded curtly? He was abashed and he was resentful. The cashier jumped on all his springs into a sudden activity of deference. Presently the manager emerged from the glazed door of his room, pulling his long whiskers. Oh, Mr. Lovett, Edwin began nervously. Fathers just come along. They were swallowed up into the manager's parlour. It might have been a court of justice, or a dentist's surgery, or the cabinet of an insurance doctor, or the room at Fontainebleau when Napoleon signed his abdication. Anything but the thing it was. Happily Mr. Lovett had a manner which never varied. He had only one manner for all men and all occasions, so that Edwin was not distressed either by the deficiencies of amateur acting, or by the exhibition of another's self-conscious awkwardness. Nevertheless, when his father took the pen to write, he was obliged to look studiously at the window and inaudibly hum an air. Had he not done so, that threatening sob might have burst its way out of him. Part Four I'm going this road. Cedarius, when they were safely out of the bank pointing towards the Sitch. What for? I'm going this road. He repeated gloomily obstinate. All right, said Edwin cheerfully, I'll trot around with you. He did not know whether he could safely leave his father. The old man's eyes resented his assiduity and accepted it. They passed the old Sitch pottery, the smoke of whose kilns now no longer darkened the sky. The senior partner of the firm which leased it had died, and his sons had immediately taken advantage of his absence to build a new and efficient works down by the canal-side at Shoreport. A marvel of everything save architectural dignity. Times changed. Edwin remarked on the desolation of the place and received no reply. Then the idea occurred to him that his father was bound for the Liberal Club. It was so. They both entered. In the large room two young men were amusing themselves at the billiard table which formed the chief attraction of the naked interior, and on the ledges of the tables were two glasses. The steward in an apron watched them. I, grumbled Darius, eyeing the group. That's rad, that is. That's rad. Not twelve o'clock yet. If Edwin with his father had surprised two young men drinking and playing billiards before noon in the Conservative Club, he would have been grimly pleased. He would have taken it for a further proof of the hollowness of the opposition to the great home-rule bill. But the spectacle of a couple of wasstrels in the Liberal Club annoyed and shamed him. His vague notion was that at such a moment of high crisis the two wasstrels ought to have had the decency to refrain from wasting. Well, Mr. Clayhanger said the steward in his absurd, bonny-face way. You're quite a stranger. I want my name taken off this club, said Darius shortly. You understand me? And I reckon I'm not the only one these days. The steward did, in fact, understand. He protested in a low, amiable voice while the billiard players affected not to hear. But he perfectly understood. The epidemic of resignations had already set in, and there had been talk of a Liberal Unionist club. The steward saw that the grand folly of a senile statesman was threatening his own future prospects. He smiled. But at Edwin, as they were leaving, he smiled in a quite peculiar way, and that smile clearly meant, your father goes dotty and the first thing he does is to change his politics. This was the steward's justifiable revenge. You aren't leaving us, the steward questioned Edwin in a half-whisper. Edwin shook his head. But he could have killed the steward for that nauseating, suggestive smile. The outer door swung to, cutting off the delicate click of billiard balls. At the top of Duckbank, Darius silently and without warning mounted the steps of the Conservative Club. Doubtless he knew how to lay his hand instantly on a proposer and seconder, Edwin did not follow him. Part 5 That evening conscious of responsibility and of virtue, Edwin walked up Trafalgar Road with a less gawky and more dignified mien than ever he had managed to assume before. He had not only dismissed programs of culture, he had forgotten them. After twelve hours as head of a business, they had temporarily seized to interest him. And when he passed or was overtaken by other men of affairs, he thought to himself naively in the dark. I am the equal of these men, and the image of Florence Simcox the clogged dancer floated through his mind. He found Darius alone in the drawing-room in front of an un-customary fire, garden clay still on his boots, and the Christian news under his spectacles. The Sunday before the funeral of Mr. Shushians had been so unusual and so distressing that Darius had fallen into a rear with his perusals. True, he had never been known to read the Christian news on any day but Sunday, but now every day was Sunday. Edwin nodded to him and approached the fire rubbing his hands. What's this as I hear? Darius began with melancholy softness. About Albert wanting to borrow a thousand pounds, Darius gazed at him over his spectacles. Albert wanting to borrow a thousand pounds? Edwin repeated astounded. Aye, have they said not to you? No, said Edwin. What is it? Clara and your aunt have both been at me since tea. Some tale as Albert can amalgamate into partnership with Hope and Carter's if he can put down a thousand. Then Albert said not to you? No, he hasn't, Edwin exclaimed, emphasising each word with a peculiar fierceness. Was as if he had said, I should like to catch him saying anything to me about it. He was extremely indignant. It seemed to him monstrous that those two women should thus try to snatch an advantage from his father's weakness, pitifully mean and base. He could not understand how people could bring themselves to do such things, nor how, having done them, they could ever look their fellows in the face again. Had they no shame? They would not let a day pass, but they must settle on the old man instantly like flies on a carcass. He could imagine the plottings, the hushed chatterings, the acting for the best demeanour of that cursed woman Auntie Ham's. Yes, he now cursed her, and the candid greed of his sister. You wouldn't do it, would you? Darius asked in a tone that expected a negative answer, but also with a rather plaintive appeal as though he were depending on Edwin for moral support against the formidable forces of attack. I should not, said Edwin Stoutly, touched by the strange, wistful note and by the glance, unless of course you really want to. He did not care in the least whether the money would or would not be really useful and reasonably safe. He did not care whose enmity he was risking. His sense of fair play was outraged, and he would solve it at any cost. He knew that had his father not been struck down and defenceless, these despicable people would never have dared to demand money from him. That was the only point that mattered. The relief of Darius at Edwin's attitude in the affair was painful. Hoping for sympathy from Edwin, he yet had feared in him another enemy. Now he was reassured, and he could hide his feelings no better than a child. Seemingly they can't wait till my wills opened, he murmured with a scarcely successful affectation of grimness. Made a will, have you? Edwin remarked with an elaborate casualness to imply that he had never till then given a thought to his father's will. But that, having thought of the question, he was perhaps a very little surprised that his father had indeed made a will. Darius nodded, quite benevolently. He seemed to have forgotten his deep grievance against Edwin in the matter of cheque signing. Duncalf's got it, he murmured after a moment. Duncalf was the town clerk and a solicitor. So the will was made. And he had submissively signed away all control over all monetary transactions. What more could he do except expire with a minimum of fuss? Truly Darius in the local phrase was now laid aside, and of all the symptoms of his decay, the most striking and the most tragic to Edwin, was that he showed no curiosity whatever about business. Not one single word of inquiry had he uttered. You'll want shavings at Edwin in a friendly way. Darius passed a hand over his face. He had seized years ago to shave himself and had a subscription at Dick Jones in Abercourt Street, close by the shop. Aye. Shall I send the barber up, or shall you let it grow? What do you think? Oh, as Edwin drawled, characteristically hesitating, then he remembered that he was the responsible head of the family of Clayhanger. I think you might let it grow, he decided. And when he had issued the verdict it seemed to him like a sentence of sequestration and death on his father. Let it grow. What does it matter? Such was the innuendo. You used to grow a full beard once, didn't you? He asked. Yes, said Darius. That made the situation less cruel. End of Chapter 7, Volume 3. Volume 3, Chapter 8 of Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 8 A Change of Mind One evening a year later, in earlier summer of 1887, Edwin and Mr. Osmond Orgreave were walking home together from Handbridge. When they reached the corner of the street leading to Lane End House, Osmond Orgreave said, stopping, Now you'll come with us. And he looked Edwin hard in the eyes, and there was a most flattering appeal in his voice. It was sometimes, since their eyes had met frankly, for Edwin had recently been having experience of Mr. Orgreave's methods in financial controversy, and it had not been agreeable. After an instant Edwin said heartily, Yes, I think I'll come. Of course I should like to, but I'll let you know. Tonight? Yes, tonight. I should tell my wife you're coming. Mr. Orgreave waved a hand and passed with a certain decorative gaiety down the street. His hair was now silver, and it still curled in the old places, and his gestures had apparently not aged at all. Mr. and Mrs. Orgreave were going to London for the Jubilee celebrations, so far as their family was concerned they were going alone, because Osmond had insisted humorously that he wanted a rest from his children. But he had urgently invited Edwin to accompany them. At first Edwin had instinctively replied that it was impossible. He could not leave home. He had never been to London. A journey to London presented itself to him as an immense enterprise, almost as a piece of culpable self-indulgence. And then, under the stimulus of Osmond's energetic and adventurous temperament, he had said to himself, Why not? Why shouldn't I? The arguments favoured his going. It was absurd and scandalous that he had never been to London. He ought, for his self-respect, to depart thither at once. The legend of the Jubilee, spectacular, processional, historic, touched his imagination. Whenever he thought of it his fancies or penins and causalates and charges winding through stupendous streets and somewhere in the midst the majesty of England in the frail body of a little old lady, who had had many children and one supreme misfortune. Moreover he could incidentally see Charlie. Moreover he had been suffering from a series of his customary colds and from overwork, and he had told him that he would do with a change. Moreover he had a project for buying paper in London. He had received from London overtures which seemed promising. He had never been able to buy paper quite as cheaply as Darius had bought paper, for the mere reason that he could not haggle over sixteenths of a penny with efficient ruthlessness. He simply could not do it, being somehow ashamed to do it. In Manchester where Darius had bought paper for thirty years they were imperceptibly too brutal for Edwin, in the harsh realities of a bargain. They had no sense of shame. He thought that in letters from London he detected a softer spirit. And above all he desired by accepting Mr Orgreave's invitation to show to the architect that the differences between them were really expunged from his mind. Among many confusions, in his father's flourishing but disorderly affairs, Edwin had been startled to find the Orgreave transactions. There were accounts and contra-accounts, and quantities of strangely contradictory documents. Never had a real settlement occurred between Darius and Osmond, and Osmond did not seem to want one. Edwin however with his old maid's passion for putting and keeping everything in its place insisted on one. Mr Orgreave had to meet him on his strongest point, his love of order. The process of settlement had been painful to Edwin. He had seriously marred some of his illusions. Nearly the last of the entanglements in his father's business, the Orgreave matter was straightened and closed now, and the projected escapade to London would bury it deep, might even restore agreeable illusions. And Edwin was incapable of nursing malice. The best argument of all was that he had a right to go to London. He had earned London by honest and severe work, and by bearing firmly the huge weight of his responsibility. So far he had offered himself no reward whatever, not even an increase in salary, not even a week of freedom or the satisfaction of a single caprice. I shall go and charge it to the business, he said to himself. He became excited about going. Part 2 As he approached his house he saw the elder heave, vicar of St. Peter's coming away from it, a natty clerical figure in a straw hat of peculiar shape. Recently this man had called once or twice. Not professionally, for Darius was neither a churchman nor a parishioner, but as a brother of Dr. Heave's, as a friendly human being, and Darius had been flattered. The vicar would talk about Jesus with quite half-humorous enthusiasm, or him at any rate Christianity was grand fun. He seemed never to be solemn over his religion, like the Wesleyans. He never, with a shame-defined air, said, I'm not ashamed of Christ, like the Wesleyans. He might have known Christ slightly at Cambridge, but his relations with Christ did not make him conceited nor condescending. And if he was concerned about the welfare of people who knew not Christ, he hid his concern in the politest manner. Edwin, after being momentarily impressed by him, was now convinced of his perfect mediocrity. The vicar's views on literature had damned him eternally in the esteem of Edwin, who was still naive enough to be unable to comprehend how a man who had been to Cambridge could speak enthusiastically of Uncle Tom's cabin. Moreover Edwin despised him for his obvious pride in being a bachelor. The vicar would not say that a priest should be celibate, but he would, with delicacy, imply as much. Then also for Edwin's taste the parson was somewhat too childishly interested in the culture of cellar mushrooms, which was his hobby. He would recount the tedious details of all his experiments to Darius, who, flattered by these attentions from the established church, took immense delight in the vicar, and in the sample mushrooms offered to him from time to time. Maggie stood in the porch which commanded the descent into Bursley. She was watching the vicar as he receded. When Edwin appeared at the gate she gave a little jump, and he fancied that she also blushed. Look here he exclaimed to himself in a flash of suspicion. Surely she's not thinking of the vicar. Surely Maggie isn't after all. He did not conceive it possible that the vicar who had been to Cambridge and had notions about celibacy was thinking of Maggie. Women are queer, he said to himself. For him this generalization from facts was quite original. Fancy her staring after the vicar, she must have been doing it quite unconsciously. He had supposed that her attitude towards the vicar was precisely his own. He took it for granted that the vicar's attitude was the same to both of them, based on a polite and kindly but firm recognition that there could be no genuine sympathy between him and them. The vicar's just been, said Maggie. Has he? Cheered the old man up at all? Not much. Maggie shook her head gloomily. Edwin's conscience seemed to be getting ready to hint that he ought not to go to London. I say, Maggie, said quietly as he inserted his stick in the umbrella stand. She stopped on her way upstairs and then approached him. Mr. Orgreaves wants me to go to London with him and Mrs. Orgreave. He explained the whole project to her. She said at once, eagerly, benevolently, Of course you ought to go. It'll do you all the good in the world. I shall be all right here. Clara and Albert will come for Jubilee Day anyhow. And haven't you driven it late? The day after tomorrow, isn't it? Mr. Heave was only saying just now that the hotels were all crammed. Well, you know what Orgreave is. I expect he'll look after all that. You go, Maggie, and join him. Wowned upset him. Edwin nodded vaguely to wherever Darius might be. Can't be helped if it does, she replied calmly. Well then, I'm dashed if I don't go. What about my collars? Part three. Those three, Darius, Maggie, and Edwin, sat down to tea in silence. The window was open and the weather very warm and gay. During the previous twelve months they had sat down to hundreds of such meals. Save for a few brief periods of cheerfulness, Darius had steadily grown more taciturn, heavy, and melancholy. In the winter he had, of course, abandoned his attempts to divert himself by gardening, attempts at the best half-hearted and feeble, and he had not resumed them in the spring. Less than half a year previously he had often walked across the fields to hillport and back or up the gradual slopes to the height of Toft End. He never went townwards, had not once visited the Conservative Club. But now he could not even be persuaded to leave the garden. An old wicker armchair had been placed at the end of the garden, and he would set out for that armchair as upon a journey, and, having reached it, would sink into it with a huge sigh, and repose before bracing himself to the effort of return. And now it seemed marvellous that he had ever had the legs to get to hillport and to Toft End. He existed in a stupa of dull reflection, from pride pretending to read and not reading, or pretending to listen and not listening, and occasionally making a remark which was inapposite but which had to be humid. And as the weeks passed, his children's manner of humoring him became increasingly perfunctory, and their movements in putting right the negligence of his attire increasingly brusque. Vainly they tried to remember in time that he was a victim and not a criminal. They would remember after the careless remark and after the court gesture when it was too late. His malady obsessed them. It was in the air of the house, omnipresent, it weighed upon them, corroding the nerve and exasperating the spirit. Now and then, when Darius had vented a burst of irrational anger, they would say to each other with casual bitterness that really he was too annoying. Once when his demeanour towards the new servant had strongly suggested that he thought her name was Bathsheba, Mrs. Nixon herself had flown out at him, and there had been a scene which the doctor had soothed by discreet professional explanations. Maggie's difficulty was that he was always there, always on the spot. To be free of him she must leave the house, and Maggie was not fond of leaving the house. Edwin meant to inform him briefly of his intention to go to London, but such was the power of habit that he hesitated. He could not bring himself to announce directly this audacious and unprecedented act of freedom, though he knew that his father was as helpless as a child in his hands. Instead he began to talk about the renewal of the lease of the premises in Duck Square, as to which it would be necessary to give notice to the landlord at the end of the month. I've been thinking I'll have it made out in my own name, he said. It'll save you signing and so on. This in itself was a proposal sufficiently startling, and he would not have been surprised at a violent instinctive protest from Darius. But Darius seemed not to heed. Then both Edwin and Maggie noticed that he was trying to hold a sausage firm on his plate with his knife and to cut it with his fork. No, no, Father said Maggie gently, not like that. He looked up puzzled and then bent himself again to the plate. The whole of his faculties seemed to be absorbed in a great effort to resolve the complicated problem of the plate, the sausage, the knife, and the fork. You've got the knife in the wrong hands, said Edwin impatiently, as to a wilful child. Darius stared at the knife and at the fork, and he then sighed, and his sigh meant, this business is beyond me. Then he endeavoured to substitute the knife for the fork, but he could not. C said Edwin leaning over like this. He took the knife, but Darius would not lose it. No, leave go, he ordered. Leave go. How can I show you if you don't leave go? Darius dropped both knife and fork with a clatter. Edwin put the knife into his right hand and the fork into his left, but in a moment they were wrong again. At first Edwin could not believe that his father was not indulging deliberately in naughtiness. Shall I cut it up for you, father? Maggie asked in a mild, persuasive tone. Darius pushed the plate towards her. When she had cut up the sausage, she said, there you are. I'll keep the knife, then you can't get mixed up. And Darius ate the sausage with the fork alone. His intelligence had failed to master the original problem presented to it. He ate steadily for a few moments, and then the tears began to roll down his cheek, and he ate no more. This incident so simple, so unexpected, and so dramatic, caused the most acute distress, and its effect was disconcerting in the highest degree. It reminded everybody that what Darius suffered from was softening of the brain. For long he had been a prisoner in the house and garden. For long he had been almost mute, and now, just after a visit which usually acted on him as a tonic, he had begun to lose the skill to feed himself. Little by little he was demonstrating by his slow declension from it the wonder of the standard of efficiency maintained by the normal human being. Edwin and Maggie avoided one another, even in their glances. Each affected the philosophical, seeking to diminish the significance of the episode, but neither succeeded. Of the two years allotted to Darius, one had gone. What would the second be? Part 4 In his bedroom after tea Edwin fought against the gloomy influence, but uselessly. The inherent and appalling sadness of existence enveloped and chilled him. He gazed at the rows of his books. He had done no regular reading of late. Why read? He gazed at the screen in front of his bed covered with neat memoranda. How futile. Why go to London? He would only have to come back from London. And then he said, resistingly, I will go to London. But as he said it aloud he knew well that he would not go. His conscience would not allow him to depart. He could not leave Maggie alone with his father. He yielded to his conscience, unkindly, reluctantly, with no warm gust of unselfishness. He yielded because he could not outrage his abstract sense of justice. From the window he perceived Maggie and Janet Orgreave talking together over the low separating wall. And he remembered a word of Janet's to the effect that she and Maggie were becoming quite friendly, and that Maggie was splendid. Suddenly he went downstairs into the garden. They were talking in attitudes of intimacy, and both were grave and mature, and both had a little cleft under the chin. Their pale frocks harmonized in the evening light. As he approached Maggie burst into a girlish laugh. Not really, she murmured, with the vivacity of a young girl. He knew not what they were discussing, nor did he care. What interested him, what startled him, was the youthful gesture and tone of Maggie. It pleased and touched him to discover another Maggie in the Maggie of the household. Those two women had put on for a moment the charming, chattering silliness of schoolgirls. He joined them. On the lawn of the Orgreaves, Alicia was battling fiercely at Tennis with an elegant young man whose name he did not know. Croquet was deposed. Tennis reigned. Even Alicia's occasional she'll cry had a mournful quality in the languishing beauty of the evening. I wish you'd tell your father I shan't be able to go tomorrow, Edwin said to Janet. But he's told all of us you're going, Janet exclaimed. Shouldn't you go, Maggie questioned, Lowell? No, he murmured, glancing at Janet, he added. It won't do for me to go. What a pity Janet breathed. Maggie did not say, Oh, but you ought to, there's no reason, whatever, that you shouldn't. By her silence she contradicted the philosophic nonchalance of her demeanor during the latter part of the meal. Chapter 9 The Ox Edwin walked idly down Trafalgar Road in the hot morning sunshine of Jubilee Day. He had left his father tearfully sentimentalizing about the queen. She's a goodan, then a sob. Never was one like her, another sob. No, and never will be again. Then a gush of tears on the newspaper, which the old man laboriously scanned for details of the official programme in London. He had not for months read the newspaper with such a determined effort to understand. Indeed, since the beginning of his illness, no subject except mushroom culture had interested him so much as the Jubilee. Each time he looked at the sky from his shady seat in the garden, he had thanked God that it was a fine day, as he might have thanked him for deliverance from a grave personal disaster. Except for a few poor flags there was no sign of gaiety in Trafalgar Road. The street, the town, and the hearts of those who remained in it were wrapped in the desolating sadness which envelops the provinces when a supreme spectacular national rejoicing is centralised in London. All those who possessed the freedom, the energy, and the money had gone to London to witness a site that, as everyone said to everyone, would be unique, and would remain unique forever, and yet perhaps less to witness it than to be able to recount to their grandchildren that they had witnessed it. Many more were visiting nearer holiday resorts for a day or two days. Those who remained the poor, the spiritless, the afflicted, and the captive, felt with mournful keenness the shame of their utter provinciality envying the crowds in London with a bitter envy, and picturing London as the paradise of fashion and splendour. It was from sheer aimless disgust that Edwin went down for Trafalgar Road. He might as easily have gone up. Having arrived in the town, a wilderness of shut shops, he gazed a moment at his own, and then entered it by the side door. He had not else to do. Had he chosen he could have spent the whole day in reading, or he might have taken again to his long-neglected watercolours, but it was not in him to put himself to the trouble of seeking contentment. He preferred to wallow in utter desolation, thinking of all the unpleasant things that had ever happened to him, and occasionally conjecturing what he would have been doing at a given moment, had he accompanied the jolly, the distinguished, and the enterprising Osmond Orgreave to London. He passed into the shop sufficiently illuminated by the white rays that struck through the diamond holes in the shutters. The morning's letters, a sparse company, lay for lawn on the floor. He picked them up and pitched them down in the cubicle. Then he went into the cubicle, and with the negligent gesture of long habit, unlocked a part of the desk, the part which had once been his father's privacy, and of which he had demanded the key more than a year ago. It was all now under his absolute dominion. He could do exactly as he pleased with a commercial apparatus that brought in some eight hundred pounds a year net. He was the unquestioned regent, and yet he told himself that he was no happier than when a slave. He drew forth his books of account and began to piece figures together on backs of envelopes, using a shorthand of accounts such as a principle we'll use when he is impatient, and not particular to a few pounds. A little wasp of curiosity was teasing Edwin, and to quicken it a comparison was necessary between the result of the first six months of that year and the first six months of the previous year. True, June had not quite expired, but most of the quarterly accounts were ready, and he could form a trustworthy estimate. Was he, with his scorn of his father, his brains, his orderliness, doing better or worse than his father in the business? At the election of 1886 there had been considerably fewer orders than was customary at elections. He had done nothing whatever for the Tories, but that was a point that affected neither period of six months. Sundry customers had assuredly been lost. On the other hand, Stifford's travelling had seemed to be very satisfactory. Nor could it be argued that money had been dropped on the new book business, because he had not yet inaugurated the new book business, preferring to wait. He was afraid that his father might, after all, astoundingly walk in one day and see new books on the counter and rage. He had stopped the supplying of newspapers and would deign to nothing lower than a sixpony magazine, but the profit on newspapers was negligible. The totals ought surely to compare in a manner favourable to himself, for he had been extremely and unremittingly conscientious. Nevertheless, he was afraid. He was afraid because he knew vaguely and still deeply that he could neither buy nor sell as well as his father. It was not a question of brains, it was a question of individuality. A sense of honour, of fairness, a temperamental generosity, a hatred of meanness often prevented him from pushing a bargain to the nimmet. He could not bring himself to haggle desperately. And even when price was not the main difficulty he could not talk to a customer or to a person whose customer he was, with the same rough, gruff, cajoling, bullying skill as his father. He could not, by taking thought, do what his father had done naturally by the mere blind exercise of instinct. His father, with all his clumsiness and his unscientific methods, had a certain quality, unceasable, unanalysable, and Edwin had not that quality. He caught himself in the rapid calculating, giving himself the benefit of every doubt. Somehow he could not help it childish as it was, and even so he could see or he could feel that the comparison was not going to be favourable to the region. It grew plainer that the volume of business had barely been maintained, and it was glaringly evident that the expenses, especially wages, had sensibly increased. He abandoned the figures not quite finished, partly from weary disgust, and partly because Big James most astonishingly walked into the shop from the back. He was really quite glad to encounter Big James, a fellow creature. Part 2 Seeing the door open, sir, said Big James cheerfully through the narrow doorway of the cubicle, I stepped in to see as it was no one unlawful. Did I leave the side door open? It was surprising, even to himself how forgetful he was at times, he with his mania for ornilliness. Big James was in his best clothes and seemed with his indestructible blandness to be perfectly happy. I was just strolling up to have a look at the ox he added. Oh, said Edwin, are they cooking it? They should be, sir, but my fear is it may turn in this weather. I'll come out with you, said Edwin, enlivened. He locked the desk and hurriedly straightened a few things, and then they went out together by Wedgewood Street, and the cockyard up to the marketplace. No breeze moved and the heat was tremendous, and there at the foot of the Town Hall Tower, and in its scanty shadow, a dead ox slung by its legs from an iron construction, was frizzling over a great primitive fire. The vast flanks of the animal, all rich yellows and browns, streamed with grease some of which fell noisily on the almost invisible flames, while the rest was ingeniously caught in a system of runnels. The spectacle was obscene, nauseating to the eye, the nose, and the ear, and it powerfully recalled to Edwin the legends of the Spanish Inquisition. He speculated whether he would ever be able to touch beef again. Above the tortured and insulted corpse the air quivered in large waves. Mr. Doy, the leading butcher of Bursley and now chief executioner, regarded with anxiety the operation which had been entrusted to him, and occasionally gave instructions to Amir Midon. Roundabouts stood a few privileged persons whom pride helped to bear the double heat, and farther off on the pavements a thin-scattered crowd. The sublime spectacle of an ox roasted whole had not sufficed to keep the townsmen in the town. Even the sages who had conceived and commanded this peculiar solemnity for celebrating the dubity of a queen and empress had not stayed in the borough to see it enacted, though some of them were to return in time to watch the devouring of the animal by the aged poor at a ceremonial feast in the evening. It's a grand sight, said Big James, with simple enthusiasm. A grand sight, real old English, and I wish her well. He meant the queen and empress. Then suddenly in a different tone sniffing the air. I doubt it's turned. I'll step across and ask Mr. Doy. He stepped across and came back with the news that the greater portion of the ox, despite every precaution, had in fact very annoyingly turned, and that the remainder of the carcass was in serious danger. What'll the old people say he demanded sadly? But it's a grand sight, turned or not. Edwin stared and stared in a sort of sinister fascination. He thought that he might stare for ever. At length, up to ages of honoree, he loosed himself from the spell with an effort and glanced at Big James. And what are you going to do with yourself today, James? Big James smiled. I'm going to take my walks abroad, sir. It's seldom as I get about in the town nowadays. Well, I must be off. I'd like you to give my respects to the old gentleman, sir. Edwin nodded and departed very slowly and idly towards Trafalgar Road and Bleak Ridge. He pulled his straw hat over his forehead to avoid the sun, and then he pushed it backwards to his neck to avoid the sun. The odor of the shriveling ox remained with him. It was in his nostrils for several days. His heart grew blacker with intense gloom. And the contentment of Big James at the prospect of just strolling about the damnable dead town for the rest of the day surpassed his comprehension. He abandoned himself to misery voluptuously. The afternoon and evening stretched before him an arid and appalling Sahara. The benbows and their babes and auntie-hamps were coming for dinner and tea to cheer up grandfather. He pictured the repasts with savage gloating detestation. Burnt ox and more burnt ox and the false odious brightness of a family determined to be mutually helpful and inspiring. Since his refusal to abet the project of Elone to Albert, Clara had been secretly hostile under her superficial sisterliness, and auntie-hamps had often assured him, in a manner extraordinarily exasperating, that she was convinced he had acted conscientiously for the best. Strange thought that after eight hours of these people and of his father he would still be alive. End of chapter 9 volume 3