The Clayhanger Trilogy: Clayhanger, Hilda Lessways & These Twain (Complete Edition). Bennett Arnold
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Janet and Edwin, near the cabinet of artists’ materials. Janet, after her manner at once frank and reassuring, examined Edwin; she had come on purpose to examine him. She had never been able to decide whether or not he was good-looking, and she could not decide now. But she liked the appeal in his eyes. She did not say to herself that there was an appeal in his eyes; she said that there was ‘something in his eyes.’ Also he was moderately tall and he was slim. She said to herself that he must be very well shaped. Beginning at the bottom, his boots were clumsy, his trousers were baggy and even shiny, and they had transverse creases, not to be seen in the trousers of her own menkind; his waistcoat showed plainly the forms of every article in the pockets thereof—watch, penknife, pencil, etcetera, it was obvious that he never emptied his pockets at night; his collar was bluish-white instead of white, and its size was monstrous; his jacket had ‘worked up’ at the back of his neck, completely hiding his collar there; the side-pockets of his jacket were weighted and bulged with mysterious goods; his fair hair was rough but not curly; he had a moustache so trifling that one could not be sure whether it was a moustache or whether he had been too busy to think of shaving. Janet received all these facts into her brain, and then carelessly let them all slip out again, in her preoccupation with his eyes. She said they were sad eyes. The mouth, too, was somewhat sad (she thought), but there was a drawing down of the corners of it that seemed to make gentle fun of its sadness. Janet, perhaps out of her good-nature, liked his restless, awkward movements and the gesture of his hands, of which the articulations were too prominent, and the finger-nails too short.
“Tom reads rather a lot of poetry,” said Janet. “That’s my eldest brother.”
“That might justify you,” said Edwin doubtfully.
They both laughed. And as with Janet, so with Edwin, when he laughed, all the kindest and honestest part of him seemed to rise into his face.
“But if you don’t supply new books any more?”
“Oh!” Edwin stuttered, blushing slightly. “That’s nothing. I shall be very pleased to get it for you specially, Miss Orgreave. It’s father that decided—only last month—that the new book business was more trouble than it’s worth. It was—in a way; but I’m sorry, myself, we’ve given it up, poor as it was. Of course there are no book-buyers in this town, especially now old Lawton’s dead. But still, what with one thing or another, there was generally some book on order, and I used to see them. Of course there’s no money in it. But still... Father says that people buy less books than they used to—but he’s wrong there.” Edwin spoke with calm certainty. “I’ve shown him he’s wrong by our order-book, but he wouldn’t see it.” Edwin smiled, with a general mild indulgence for fathers.
“Well,” said Janet, “I’ll ask Tom first.”
“No trouble whatever to us to order it for you, I assure you. I can get it down by return of post.”
“It’s very good of you,” said Janet, genuinely persuading herself for the moment that Edwin was quite exceeding the usual bounds of complaisance.
She moved to depart.
“Father told me to tell you if I saw you that the glazing will be all finished this morning,” said she.
“Up yonder?” Edwin jerked his head to indicate the south.
And Janet delicately confirmed his assumption with a slight declension of her waving hat.
“Oh! Good!” Edwin murmured.
Janet held out her hand, to be wrung again, and assured him of her gratitude for his offer of taking trouble about the book; and he assured her that it would not be trouble but pleasure. He accompanied her to the doorway.
“I think I must come up and have a look at that glazing this afternoon,” he said, as she stood on the pavement.
She nodded, smiling benevolence and appreciation, and departed round the corner in the soft sunshine.
Edwin put on a stern, casual expression for the benefit of Stifford, as who should say: “What a trial these frivolous girls are to a man immersed in affairs!” But Stifford was not deceived. Safe within his lair, Edwin was conscious of quite a disturbing glow. He smiled to himself—a little self-consciously, though alone. Then he scribbled down in pencil “Light of Asia. Miss J. Orgreave.”
Chapter 2.
Father and Son After Seven Years.
Darius came heavily, and breathing heavily, into the little office.
“Now as all this racketing’s over,” he said crossly—he meant by ‘racketing’ the general election which had just put the Liberal party into power—“I’ll thank ye to see as all that red and blue ink is cleaned off the rollers and slabs, and the types cleaned too. I’ve told ’em ten times if I’ve told ’em once, but as far as I can make out, they’ve done naught to it yet.”
Edwin grunted without looking up.
His father was now a fattish man, and he had aged quite as much as Edwin. Some of his scanty hair was white; the rest was grey. White hair sprouted about his ears; gold gleamed in his mouth; and a pair of spectacles hung insecurely balanced half-way down his nose; his waistcoat seemed to be stretched tightly over a perfectly smooth hemisphere. He had an air of somewhat gross and prosperous untidiness. Except for the teeth, his bodily frame appeared to have fallen into disrepair, as though he had ceased to be interested in it, as though he had been using it for a long time as a mere makeshift lodging. And this impression was more marked at table; he ate exactly as if throwing food to a wild animal concealed somewhere within the hemisphere, an animal which was never seen, but which rumbled threateningly from time to time in its dark dungeon.
Of all this, Edwin had definitely noticed nothing save that his father was ‘getting stouter.’ To Edwin, Darius was exactly the same father, and for Darius, Edwin was still aged sixteen. They both of them went on living on the assumption that the world had stood still in those seven years between 1873 and 1880. If they had been asked what had happened during those seven years, they would have answered: “Oh, nothing particular!”
But the world had been whizzing ceaselessly from one miracle into another. Board schools had been opened in Bursley, wondrous affairs, with ventilation; indeed ventilation had been discovered. A Jew had been made Master of the Rolls: a spectacle at which England shivered, and then, perceiving no sign of disaster, shrugged its shoulders. Irish members had taught the House of Commons how to talk for twenty-four hours without a pause. The wages of the agricultural labourer had sprung into the air and leaped over the twelve shilling bar into regions of opulence. Moody and Sankey had found and conquered England for Christ. Landseer and Livingstone had died, and the provinces could not decide whether “Dignity and Impudence” or the penetration of Africa was the more interesting feat. Herbert Spencer had published his “Study of Sociology”; Matthew Arnold his “Literature and Dogma”; and Frederic Farrar his Life of his Lord; but here the provinces had no difficulty in deciding, for they had only heard of the last. Every effort had been made to explain by persuasion and by force to the working man that trade unions were inimical to his true welfare, and none had succeeded, so stupid was he. The British Army had been employed to put reason into the noddle of a town called Northampton which was furious because an atheist had not been elected to Parliament. Pullman cars, “The Pirates of Penzance,” Henry Irving’s “Hamlet,” spelling-bees, and Captain Webb’s channel swim had all proved that there were novelties under the sun. Bishops, archbishops, and dissenting ministers had met at Lambeth to inspect the progress of irreligious thought, with intent to arrest it. Princes and dukes had conspired to inaugurate the most singular scheme that ever was, the Kyrle Society,—for bringing beauty home to the people by means of decorative art, gardening, and music. The Bulgarian Atrocities had served to give new life to all penny gaffs and blood-tubs. The “Eurydice” and the “Princess Alice” had foundered in order to demonstrate the uncertainty