Chapter VIII: Book TWO: His Love (2)

They wandered to and fro. They went upstairs. They saw the bathroom. They stood on the landing, and the unseen spaces of the house were busy with their echoes. They then entered the room that was to be Edwin's.

"Mine!" he said self-consciously.

"And I see you're having shelves fixed on both sides of the mantelpiece! You're very fond of books, aren't you?" she appealed to him.

"Yes," he said judicially.

"Aren't they wonderful things?" Her glowing eyes seemed to be expressing gratitude to Shakespeare and all his successors in the dynasty of literature.

"That shelving is between your father and me," said Edwin. "The dad doesn't know. It'll go in with the house-fittings. I don't expect the dad will ever notice it."

"Really!" She laughed, eager to join the innocent conspiracy. "Father invented an excellent dodge for shelving in the hall at our house," she added. "I'm sure he'd like you to come and see it. The dear thing's most absurdly proud of it."

"I should like to," Edwin answered diffidently.

"Would you come in some evening and see us? Mother would be delighted. We all should."

"Very kind of you." In his diffidence he was now standing on one leg.

"Could you come to-night? ... Or to-morrow night?"

"I'm afraid I couldn't come to-night, _or_ to-morrow night," he answered with firmness. A statement entirely untrue! He had no engagement; he never did have an engagement. But he was frightened, and his spirit sprang away from the idea, like a fawn at a sudden noise in the brake, and stood still.

He did not suspect that the unconscious gruffness of his tone had repulsed her. She blamed herself for a too brusque advance.

"Well, I hope some other time," she said, mild and benignant.

"Thanks! I'd like to," he replied more boldly, reassured now that he had heard again the same noise but indefinitely farther off.

She departed, but by the front door, and hatless and dignified up Trafalgar Road in the delicate sunshine to the next turning. She was less vivacious.

He hoped he had not offended her, because he wanted very much--not to go in cold blood to the famed mansion of the Orgreaves--but by some magic to find himself within it one night, at his ease, sharing in brilliant conversation. "Oh no!" he said to himself. "She's not offended. A fine girl like that isn't offended for nothing at all!" He had been invited to visit the Orgreaves! He wondered what his father would say, or think. The unexpressed basic idea of the Clayhangers was that the Clayhangers were as good as other folks, be they _who_ they might. Still, the Orgreaves were the Orgreaves... In sheer absence of mind he remounted the muddy stairs.

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THREE.

He regarded the shabbiness of his clothes; he had been preoccupied by their defects for about a quarter of an hour; now he examined them in detail, and said to himself disgusted, that really it was ridiculous for a man about to occupy a house like that to be wearing garments like those. Could he call on the Orgreaves in garments like those? His Sunday suit was not, he felt, in fact much better. It was newer, less tumbled, but scarcely better. His suits did not cost enough. Finance was at the root of the crying scandal of his career as a dandy. The financial question must be reopened and settled anew. He should attack his father. His father was extremely dependent on him now, and must be brought to see reason. (His father who had never seen reason!) But the attack must not be made with the weapon of clothes, for on that subject Darius was utterly unapproachable. Whenever Darius found himself in a conversation about clothes, he gave forth the antique and well-tried witticism that as for him he didn't mind what he wore, because if he was at home everybody knew him and it didn't matter, and if he was away from home nobody knew him and it didn't matter. And he always repeated the saying with gusto, as if it was brand-new and none could possibly have heard it before.

No, Edwin decided that he would have to found his attack on the principle of abstract justice; he would never be able to persuade his father that he lacked any detail truly needful to his happiness. To go into details would be to invite defeat.

Of course it would be a bad season in which to raise the financial question. His father would talk savagely in reply about the enormous expenses of house-building, house-furnishing, and removing,--and architects' and lawyers' fees; he would be sure to mention the rapacity of architects and lawyers. Nevertheless Edwin felt that at just this season, and no other, must the attack be offered.

Because the inauguration of the new house was to be for Edwin, in a very deep and spiritual sense, the beginning of the new life! He had settled that. The new house inspired him. It was not paradise. But it was a temple.

You of the younger generation cannot understand that--without imagination. I say that the hot-water system of the new house, simple and primitive as it was, affected and inspired Edwin like a poem. There was a cistern-room, actually a room devoted to nothing but cisterns, and the main cistern was so big that the builders had had to install it before the roof was put on, for it would never have gone through a door. This cistern, by means of a ball-tap, filled itself from the main nearly as quickly as it was emptied. Out of it grew pipes, creeping in secret downwards between inner walls of the house, penetrating everywhere. One went down to a boiler behind the kitchen-range and filled it, and as the fire that was roasting the joint heated the boiler, the water mounted again magically to the cistern-room and filled another cistern, spherical and sealed, and thence descended, on a third journeying, to the bath and to the lavatory basin in the bathroom. All this was marvellous to Edwin; it was romantic. What! A room solely for baths! And a huge painted zinc bath! Edwin had never seen such a thing. And a vast porcelain basin, with tiles all round it, in which you could splash! An endless supply of water on the first floor!

At the shop-house, every drop of water on the first floor had to be carried upstairs in jugs and buckets; and every drop of it had to be carried down again. No hot water could be obtained until it had been boiled in a vessel on the fire. Hot water had the value of champagne. To take a warm hip-bath was an immense enterprise of heating, fetching, decanting, and general derangement of the entire house; and at best the bath was not hot; it always lost its virtue on the stairs and landing. And to splash--one of the most voluptuous pleasures in life--was forbidden by the code. Mrs Nixon would actually weep at a splashing. Splashing was immoral. It was as wicked as amorous dalliance in a monastery. In the shop-house godliness was child's play compared to cleanliness.

And the shop-house was so dark! Edwin had never noticed how dark it was until the new house approached completion. The new house was radiant with light. It had always, for Edwin, the somewhat blinding brilliance which filled the sitting-room of the shop-house only when Duck Bank happened to be covered with fresh snow. And there was a dining-room, solely for eating, and a drawing-room. Both these names seemed `grand' to Edwin, who had never sat in any but a sitting-room. Edwin had never dined; he had merely had dinner. And, having dined, to walk ceremoniously into another room! (Odd! After all, his father was a man of tremendous initiative.) Would he and Maggie be able to do the thing naturally? Then there was the square hall--positively a room! That alone impelled him to a new life. When he thought of it all, the reception-rooms, the scientific kitchen, the vast scullery, the four large bedrooms, the bathroom, the three attics, the cistern-room murmurous with water, and the water tirelessly, inexhaustibly coursing up and down behind walls--he thrilled to fine impulses.

He took courage. He braced himself. The seriousness which he had felt on the day of leaving school revisited him. He looked back across the seven years of his life in the world, and condemned them unsparingly. He blamed no one but Edwin. He had forgiven his father for having thwarted his supreme ambition; long ago he had forgiven his father; though, curiously, he had never quite forgiven Mrs Hamps for her share in the catastrophe. He honestly thought he had recovered from the catastrophe undisfigured, even unmarked. He knew not that he would never be the same man again, and that his lightest gesture and his lightest glance were touched with the wistfulness of resignation. He had frankly accepted the fate of a printer. And in business he was convinced, despite his father's capricious complaints, that he had acquitted himself well. In all the details of the business he considered himself superior to his father. And Big James would invariably act on his secret instructions given afterwards to counteract some misguided hasty order of the old man's.

It was the emptiness of the record of his private life that he condemned. What had he done for himself? Nothing large! Nothing heroic and imposing! He had meant to pursue certain definite courses of study, to become the possessor of certain definite groups of books, to continue his drawing and painting, to practise this, that and the other, to map out all his spare time, to make rules and to keep them,--all to the great end of self-perfecting. He had said: "What does it matter whether I am an architect or a printer, so long as I improve myself to the best of my powers?" He hated young men who talked about improving themselves. He spurned the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society (which had succeeded the Debating Society--defunct through over-indulgence in early rising). Nevertheless in his heart he was far more enamoured of the idea of improvement than the worst prig of them all. He could never for long escape from the dominance of the idea. He might violently push it away, arguing that it could lead to nothing and was futile and tedious; back it would come! It had always worried him.

And yet he had accomplished nothing. His systems of reading never worked for more than a month at a time. And for several months at a time he simply squandered his spare hours, the hours that were his very own, in a sort of coma of crass stupidity, in which he seemed to be thinking of nothing whatever. He had not made any friends whom he could esteem. He had not won any sort of notice. He was remarkable for nothing. He was not happy. He was not content. He had the consciousness of being a spendthrift of time and of years... A fair quantity of miscellaneous reading--that was all he had done. He was not a student. He knew nothing about anything. He had stood still.

Thus he upbraided himself. And against this futility was his courage now braced by the inspiration of the new house, and tightened to a smarting tension by the brief interview with Janet Orgreave. He was going to do several feats at once: tackle his father, develop into a right expert on _some_ subject, pursue his painting, and--for the moment this had the chief importance--`come out of his shell.' He meant to be social, to impress himself on others, to move about, to form connections, to be Edwin Clayhanger, an individuality in the town,--to live. Why had he refused Janet's invitation? Mere silliness. The old self nauseated the new. But the next instant he sought excuses for the old self... Wait a bit! There was time yet.

He was happy in the stress of one immense and complex resolve.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER FIVE.

CLOTHES.

He heard voices below. And his soul seemed to shrink back, as if into the recesses of the shell from which it had been peeping. His soul was tremendous, in solitude; but even the rumour of society intimidated it. His father and another were walking about the ground floor; the rough voice of his father echoed upwards in all its crudity. He listened for the other voice; it was his Auntie Clara's. Darius too had taken his Saturday afternoon for a leisurely visit to the house, and somehow he must have encountered Mrs Hamps, and brought her with him to view.

Without giving himself time to dissipate his courage in reflection, he walked to the landing, and called down the stairs, "Hello, Auntie!"

Why should his tone have been self-conscious, forced? He was engaged in no crime. He had told his father where he was going, and his father had not contradicted his remark that even if both of them happened to be out together, the shop would take no harm under the sole care of Stifford for an hour in the quiet of Saturday afternoon.

Mrs Hamps replied, in her coaxing, sweet manner.

"What did ye leave th' front door open for?" his father demanded curtly, and every room in the house heard the question.

"Was it open?" he said lamely.

"Was it open! All Trafalgar Road could have walked in and made themselves at home."

Edwin stood leaning with his arms on the rail of the landing. Presently the visitors appeared at the foot of the stairs, and Darius climbed carefully, having first shaken the balustrade to make sure that it was genuine, stout, and well-founded. Mrs Hamps followed, the fripperies of her elegant bonnet trembling, and her black gown rustling. Edwin smiled at her, and she returned his smile with usurious interest. There was now a mist of grey in her fine hair.

"Oh, Edwin!" she began, breathing relief on the top stair. "What a beautiful house! Beautiful! Quite perfect! The latest of everything! Do you know what I've been thinking while your dear father has been showing me all this. So that's the bathroom! Bless us! Hot! Cold! Waste! That cupboard under the lavatory is very handy, but what a snare for a careless servant! Maggie will have to look at it every day, or it'll be used for anything and everything. You tell her what her auntie says... I was thinking--if but your mother could have seen it all!"

Father and son said nothing. Auntie Hamps sighed. She was the only person who ever referred to the late Mrs Clayhanger.

The procession moved on from room to room, Darius fingering and grunting, Mrs Hamps discovering in each detail the fine flower of utter perfection, and Edwin strolling loosely in the wake of her curls, her mantle, and her abundant black petticoats. He could detect the odour of her kid gloves; it was a peculiar odour that never escaped him, and it reminded him inevitably of his mother's funeral.

He was glad that they had not arrived during the visit of Janet Orgreave.

In due course Edwin's bedroom was reached, and here Auntie Clara's ecstasy was redoubled.

"I'm sure you're very grateful to your father, aren't you, Edwin?" she majestically assumed, when she had admired passionately the window, the door, the pattern of the hearth-tiles, and the spaciousness.

Edwin could not speak. Inquiries of this nature from Mrs Hamps paralysed the tongues of the children. They left nothing to be said. A sheepish grin, preceded by an inward mute curse, was all that Edwin could accomplish. How in heaven's name could the woman talk in that strain? His attitude towards his auntie was assuredly hardening with years.

"What's all this?" questioned his father suddenly, pointing to upright boards that had been fastened to the walls on either side of the mantelpiece, to a height of about three feet.

Then Edwin perceived the clumsiness of his tactics in remaining upstairs. He ought to have gone downstairs to meet his father and auntie, and left them to go up alone. His father was in an inquisitive mood.

"It's for shelves," he said.

"Shelves?"

"For my books. It's Mr Orgreave's idea. He says it'll cost less."

"Cost less! Mr Orgreave's got too many ideas--that's what's the matter with him. He'll idea me into the bankruptcy court if he keeps on."

Edwin would have liked to protest against the savagery of the tone, to inquire firmly why, since shelves were necessary for books and he had books, there need be such a display of ill-temper about a few feet of deal plank. The words were ready, the sentences framed in his mind. But he was silent. The door was locked on these words, but it was not Edwin who had turned the key; it was some force within him, over which he had no control.

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TWO.

"Now, now, father!" intervened Mrs Hamps. "You know you've said over and over again how glad you are he's so fond of books, and never goes out. There isn't a better boy in Bursley. That I will say, and to his face." She smiled like an angel at both of them.

"_You_ say! _You_ say!" Darius remarked curtly, trying to control himself. A few years ago he would never have used such violent demeanour in her presence.

"And how much easier these shelves will be to keep clean than a bookcase! No polishing. Just a rub, and a wipe with a damp cloth now and then. And no dirt underneath. They will do away with four corners, anyhow. That's what I think of--eh, poor Maggie! Keeping all this clean. There'll be work for two women night and day, early and late, and even then--But it's a great blessing to have water on every floor, that it is! And people aren't so particular nowadays as they used to be, I fancy. I fancy that more and more." Mrs Hamps sighed, cheerfully bearing up.

Without a pause she stepped quickly across to Edwin. He wondered what she was at. She merely straightened down the collar of his coat, which, unknown to him, had treacherously allowed itself to remain turned up behind. It had probably been thus misbehaving itself since before dinner, when he had washed.

"Now, I do like my nephew to be tidy," said Mrs Hamps affectionately. "I'm very jealous for my nephew." She caressed the shoulders of the coat, and Edwin had to stand still and submit. "Let me see, it's your birthday next month, isn't it?"

"Yes, auntie."

"Well, I know he hasn't got a lot of money. And I know his father hasn't any money to spare just now--what with all these expenses--the house--"

"Ye may well say it, sister!" Darius growled.

"I saw you the day before yesterday. My nephew didn't see me, but his auntie saw him. Oh, never mind where. And I said to myself; `I should like my only nephew to have a suit a little better than that when he goes up and down on his father's business. What a change it would be if his old auntie gave him a new suit for a birthday present this year!'"

"Oh, auntie."

She spoke in a lower voice. "You come and see me to-morrow, and I shall have a little piece of paper in an envelope waiting for you. And you must choose something really good. You've got excellent taste, we all know that. And this will be a new start for you. A new year, and a new start, and we shall see how neat and spruce you'll keep yourself in future, eh?"

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THREE.

It was insufferable. But it was fine. Who could deny that Auntie Clara was not an extraordinary, an original, and a generous woman? What a masterly reproof to both father and son! Perhaps not delicately administered. Yet Auntie Clara had lavished all the delicacy of her nature on the administering!

To Edwin, it seemed like an act of God in his favour. It seemed to set a divine seal on his resolutions. It was the most astonishing and apposite piece of luck that had ever happened to him. When he had lamely thanked the benefactor, he slipped away as soon as he could. Already he could feel the crinkling of the five-pound note in his hand. Five pounds! He had never had a suit that cost more than fifty shillings. He slipped away. A great resolve was upon him. Shillitoe closed at four o'clock on Saturday afternoons. There was just time. He hurried down Trafalgar Road in a dream. And when he had climbed Duck Bank he turned to the left, and without stopping he burst into Shillitoe's. Not from eagerness to enter Shillitoe's, but because if he had hesitated he might never have entered at all: he might have slunk away to the old undistinguished tailor in Saint Luke's Square. Shillitoe was the stylish tailor. Shillitoe made no display of goods, scorning such paltry devices. Shillitoe had wire blinds across the lower part of his window, and on the blinds, in gold, "Gentlemen's tailor and outfitter. Breeches-maker." Above the blind could be seen a few green cardboard boxes. Shillitoe made breeches for men who hunted. Shillitoe's lowest price for a suit was notoriously four guineas. Shillitoe's was the resort of the fashionable youth of the town and district. It was a terrific adventure for Edwin to enter Shillitoe's. His nervousness was painful. He seemed to have a vague idea that Shillitoe might sneer at him. However, he went in. The shop was empty. He closed the door, as he might have closed the door of a dentist's. He said to himself; "Well, I'm here!" He wondered what his father would say on hearing that he had been to Shillitoe's. And what would Clara have said, had she been at home? Then Shillitoe in person came forward from the cutting-out room and Shillitoe's tone and demeanour reassured him.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER SIX.

JANET LOSES HER BET.

Accident--that is to say, a chance somewhat more fortuitous than the common hazards which we group together and call existence--pushed Edwin into the next stage of his career. As, on one afternoon in late June, he was turning the corner of Trafalgar Road to enter the shop, he surprisingly encountered Charlie Orgreave, whom he had not seen for several years. And when he saw this figure, at once fashionably and carelessly dressed, his first thought was one of deep satisfaction that he was wearing his new Shillitoe suit of clothes. He had scarcely worn the suit at all, but that afternoon his father had sent him over to Hanbridge about a large order from Bostocks, the recently established drapers there whose extravagant advertising had shocked and pained the commerce of the Five Towns. Darius had told him to `titivate himself,' a most startling injunction from Darius, and thus the new costly suit had been, as it were, officially blessed and henceforth could not be condemned.

"How do, Teddy?" Charlie greeted him. "I've just been in to see you at your shop."

Edwin paused.

"Hello! The Sunday!" he said quietly. And he kept thinking, as his eyes noted details of Charlie's raiment, "It's a bit of luck I've got these clothes on." And he was in fact rather sorry that Charlie probably paid no real attention to clothes. The new suit had caused Edwin to look at everybody's clothes, had caused him to walk differently, and to put his shoulders back, and to change the style of his collars; had made a different man of Edwin.

"Come in, will you?" Edwin suggested.

They went into the shop together. Stifford smiled at them both, as if to felicitate them on the chance which had brought them together.

"Come in here," said Edwin, indicating the small office.

"The lion's den, eh?" observed the Sunday.

He, as much as Edwin, was a little tongue-tied and nervous.

"Sit down, will you?" said Edwin, shutting the door. "No, take the arm-chair. I'll absquatulate on the desk. I'd no idea you were down. When did you come?"

"Last night, last train. Just a freak, you know."

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TWO.

They were within a foot of each other in the ebonised cubicle. Edwin's legs were swinging a few inches away from the arm-chair. His hat was at the back of his head, and Charlie's hat was at the back of Charlie's head. This was their sole point of resemblance. As Edwin surreptitiously examined the youth who had once been his intimate friend, he experienced the half-sneering awe of the provincial for the provincial who has become a Londoner. Charlie was changed; even his accent was changed. He and Edwin belonged to utterly different worlds now. They seldom saw the same scenes or thought the same things. But of course they were obliged by loyalty to the past to pretend that nothing was changed.

"You've not altered much," said Edwin.

And indeed, when Charlie smiled, he was almost precisely the old Sunday, despite his metropolitan mannerisms. And there was nothing whatever in his figure or deportment to show that he had lived for several years in France and could chatter in a language whose verbs had four conjugations. After all, he was less formidable than Edwin might have anticipated.

"_You_ have, anyhow," said Charlie.

Edwin grinned self-consciously.

"I suppose you've got this place practically in your own hands now," said Charlie. "I wish _I_ was on my own, I can tell you that."

An instinctive gesture from Edwin made Charlie lower his voice in the middle of a sentence. The cubicle had the appearance, but not the reality, of being private.

"Don't you make any mistake," Edwin murmured. He, who depended on his aunt's generosity for clothes, the practical ruler of the place! Still he was glad that Charlie supposed that he ruled, even though the supposition might be mere small-talk. "You're in that hospital, aren't you?"

"Bart's."

"Bart's, is it? Yes, I remember. I expect you aren't thinking of settling down here?"

Charlie was about to reply in accents of disdain: "Not me!" But his natural politeness stayed his tongue. "I hardly think so," he said. "Too much competition here. So there is everywhere, for the matter of that." The disillusions of the young doctor were already upon Charlie. And yet people may be found who will assert that in those days there was no competition, that competition has been invented during the past ten years.

"_You_ needn't worry about competition," said Edwin.

"Why not?"

"Why not, man! Nothing could ever stop you from getting patients--with that smile! You'll simply walk straight into anything you want."

"You think so?" Charlie affected an ironic incredulity, but he was pleased. He had met the same theory in London.

"Well, you didn't suppose degrees and things had anything to do with it, did you?" said Edwin, smiling a little superiorly. He felt, with pleasure, that he was still older than the Sunday; and it pleased him also to be able thus to utilise ideas which he had formed from observation but which by diffidence and lack of opportunity he had never expressed. "All a patient wants is to be smiled at in the right way," he continued, growing bolder. "Just look at 'em!"

"Look at who?"

"The doctors here." He dropped his voice further. "Do you know why the dad's gone to Heve?"

"Gone to Heve, has he? Left old Who-is-it?"

"Yes. I don't say Heve isn't clever, but it's his look that does the trick for him."

"You seem to go about noticing things. Any charge?"

Edwin blushed and laughed. Their nervousness was dissipated. Each was reassured of the old basis of `decency' in the other.

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THREE.

"Look here," said Charlie. "I can't stop now."

"Hold on a bit."

"I only called to tell you that you've simply _got_ to come up to-night."

"Come up where?"

"To our place. You've simply _got_ to."

The secret fact was that Edwin had once more been under discussion in the house of the Orgreaves. And Osmond Orgreave had lent Janet a shilling so that she might bet Charlie a shilling that he would not succeed in bringing Edwin to the house. The understanding was that if Janet won, her father was to take sixpence of the gain. Janet herself had failed to lure Edwin into the house. He was so easy to approach and so difficult to catch. Janet was slightly piqued.

As for Edwin, he was postponing the execution of all his good resolutions until he should be installed in the new house. He could not achieve highly difficult tasks under conditions of expectancy and derangement. The whole Clayhanger premises were in a suppressed state of being packed up. In a week the removal would occur. Until the removal was over and the new order was established Edwin felt that he could still conscientiously allow his timidity to govern him, and so he had remained in his shell. The sole herald of the new order was the new suit.

"Oh! I can't come--not to-night."

"Why not?"

"We're so busy."

"Bosh to that!"

"Some other night."

"No. I'm going back to-morrow. Must. Now look here, old man, come on. I shall be very disappointed if you don't."

Edwin wondered why he could not accept and be done with it, instead of persisting in a sequence of insincere and even lying hesitations. But he could not.

"That's all right," said Charlie, as if clinching the affair. Then he lowered his voice to a scarce audible confidential whisper. "Fine girl staying up there just now!" His eyes sparkled.

"Oh! At your place?" Edwin adopted the same cautious tone. Stifford, outside, strained his ears--in vain. The magic word `girl' had in an instant thrown the shop into agitation. The shop was no longer provincial; it became a part of the universal.

"Yes. Haven't you seen her about?"

"No. Who is she?"

"Oh! Friend of Janet's. Hilda Lessways, her name is. I don't know much of her myself."

"Bit of all right, is she?" Edwin tried in a whisper to be a man of vast experience and settled views. He tried to whisper as though he whispered about women every day of his life. He thought that these Londoners were terrific on the subject of women, and he did his best to reach their level. He succeeded so well that Charlie, who, as a man, knew more of London than of the provinces, thought that after all London was nothing in comparison to the seeming-quiet provinces. Charlie leaned back in his chair, drew down the corners of his mouth, nodded his head knowingly, and then quite spoiled the desired effect of doggishness by his delightfully candid smile. Neither of them had the least intention of disrespect towards the fine girl who was on their lips.

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FOUR.

Edwin said to himself: "Is it possible that he has come down specially to see this Hilda?" He thought enviously of Charlie as a free bird of the air.

"What's she like?" Edwin inquired.

"You come up and see," Charlie retorted.

"Not to-night," said the fawn, in spite of Edwin.

"You come to-night, or I perish in the attempt," said Charlie, in his natural voice. This phrase from their school-days made them both laugh again. They were now apparently as intimate as ever they had been.

"All right," said Edwin. "I'll come."

"Sure?"

"Yes."

"Come for a sort of supper at eight."

"Oh!" Edwin drew back. "Supper? I didn't--Suppose I come after supper for a bit?"

"Suppose you don't!" Charlie snorted, sticking his chin out. "I'm off now. Must."

They stood a moment together at the door of the shop, in the declining warmth of the summer afternoon, mutually satisfied.

"So-long!"

"So-long!"

The Sunday elegantly departed. Edwin had given his word, and he felt as he might have felt had surgeons just tied him to the operating-table. Nevertheless he was not ill-pleased with his own demeanour in front of Charlie. And he liked Charlie as much as ever. He should rely on Charlie as a support during this adventure into the worldly regions peopled by fine girls. He pictured this Hilda as being more romantic and strange than Janet Orgreave; he pictured her as mysteriously superior. And he was afraid of his own image of her.

At tea in the dismantled sitting-room, though he was going out to supper, he ate quite as much tea as usual, from sheer poltroonery. He said as casually as he could--

"By the way, Charlie Orgreave called this afternoon."

"Did he?" said Maggie.

"He's off back to London to-morrow. He would have me slip up there to-night to see him."

"And shall you?"

"I think so," said Edwin, with an appearance of indecision. "I may as well."

It was the first time that there had ever been question of him visiting a private house, except his aunt's, at night. To him the moment marked an epoch, the inception of freedom; but the phlegmatic Maggie showed no sign of excitement--("Clara would have gone into a fit!" he reflected)-- and his father only asked a casual question about Charlie.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER SEVEN.

LANE END HOUSE.

Here was another of those impressive square halls, on the other side of the suddenly opened door of Lane End House. But Edwin was now getting accustomed to square halls. Nevertheless he quaked as he stood on the threshold. An absurd young man! He wondered whether he would ever experience the sensation of feeling authentically grown-up. Behind him in the summer twilight lay the large oval lawn, and the gates which once had doubtless marked the end of Manor Lane--now Oak Street. And actually he had an impulse to rush back upon his steps, and bring on himself eternal shame. The servant, however, primly held him with her eyes alone, and he submitted to her sway.

"Mr Charles in?" he inquired glumly, affecting nonchalance.

The servant bowed her head with a certain condescending deference, as who should say: "Do not let us pretend that they are not expecting you."

A door to the right opened. Janet was revealed, and, behind her, Charlie. Both were laughing. There was a sound of a piano. As soon as Charlie caught sight of Edwin he exclaimed to Janet--

"Where's my bob?"

"Charlie!" she protested, checking her laughter.

"Why! What have I said?" Charlie inquired, with mock innocence, perceiving that he had been indiscreet, and trying to remedy his rash mistake. "Surely I can say `bob'!"

Edwin understood nothing of this brief passage. Janet, ignoring Charlie and dismissing the servant with an imperceptible sign, advanced to the visitor. She was dressed in white, and Edwin considered her to be extraordinarily graceful, dignified, sweet, and welcoming. There was a peculiar charm in the way in which her skirts half-reluctantly followed her along the carpet, causing beautiful curves of drapery from the waist. And her smile was so warm and so sincere! For the moment she really felt that Edwin's presence in the house satisfied the keenest of her desires, and of course her face generously expressed what she felt.

"Well, Miss Orgreave," Edwin grinned. "Here I am, you see!"

"And we're delighted," said Janet simply, taking his hand. She might have amiably teased him about the protracted difficulties of getting him. She might have hinted an agreeable petulance against the fact that the brother had succeeded where the sister had failed. Her sisterly manner to Charlie a little earlier had perhaps shown flashes of such thoughts in her mind. But no. In the presence of Edwin, Janet's extreme good-nature forgot everything save that he was there, a stranger to be received and cherished.

"Here! Give us that tile," said Charlie.

"Beautiful evening," Edwin observed.

"Oh! Isn't it!" breathed Janet, in ecstasy, and gazed from the front door into the western sky. "We were out on the lawn, but mother said it was damp. It wasn't," she laughed. "But if you think it's damp, it is damp, isn't it? Will you come and see mother? Charlie, you can leave the front door open."

Edwin said to himself that she had all the attractiveness of a girl and of a woman. She preceded him towards the door to the right. Charlie hovered behind, on springs. Edwin, nervously pulling out his handkerchief and putting it back, had a confused vision of the hall full of little pictures, plates, stools, rugs, and old sword-sheaths. There seemed to him to be far more knick-knacks in that hall than in the whole of his father's house; Mr Orgreave's ingeniously contrived bookshelves were simply overlaid and smothered in knick-knacks. Janet pushed at the door, and the sound of the piano suddenly increased in volume.

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TWO.

There was no cessation of the music as the three entered. As it were beneath the music, Mrs Orgreave, a stout and faded calm lady, greeted him kindly: "Mr Edwin!" She was shorter than Janet, but Edwin could see Janet in her movements and in her full lips. "Well, Edwin!" said Osmond Orgreave with lazy and distinguished good-nature, shaking hands. Jimmie and Johnnie, now aged nineteen and eighteen respectively, were in the room; Johnnie was reading; their blushing awkwardness in salutation and comic efforts to be curtly benevolent in the manner of clubmen somewhat eased the tension in Edwin. They addressed him as `Clayhanger.' The eldest and the youngest child of the family sat at the piano in the act of performing a duet. Tom, pale, slight, near-sighted and wearing spectacles, had reached the age of thirty-two, and was junior partner in a firm of solicitors at Hanbridge; Bursley seldom saw him. Alicia had the delightful gawkiness of twelve years. One only of the seven children was missing. Marian, aged thirty, and married in London, with two little babies; Marian was adored by all her brothers and sisters, and most by Janet, who, during visits of the married sister, fell back with worshipping joy into her original situation of second daughter.

Edwin, Charles, and Janet sat down on a sofa. It was not until after a moment that Edwin noticed an ugly young woman who sat behind the players and turned over the pages of music for them. "Surely that can't be his wonderful Hilda!" Edwin thought. In the excitement of arrival he had forgotten the advertised Hilda. Was that she? The girl could be no other. Edwin made the reflection that all men make: "Well, it's astonishing what other fellows like!" And, having put down Charlie several points in his esteem, he forgot Hilda.

Evidently loud and sustained conversation was not expected nor desired while the music lasted. And Edwin was glad of this. It enabled him to get his breath and his bearings in what was to him really a tremendous ordeal. And in fact he was much more agitated than even he imagined. The room itself abashed him.

Everybody, including Mr Orgreave, had said that the Clayhanger drawing-room with its bay-window was a fine apartment. But the Orgreave drawing-room had a bay-window and another large window; it was twice as big as the Clayhangers' and of an interesting irregular shape. Although there were in it two unoccupied expanses of carpet, it nevertheless contained what seemed to Edwin immense quantities of furniture of all sorts. Easy-chairs were common, and everywhere. Several bookcases rose to the low ceiling; dozens and dozens of pictures hid the walls; each corner had its little society of objects; cushions and candlesticks abounded; the piano was a grand, and Edwin was astounded to see another piano, a small upright, in the farther distance; there were even two fireplaces, with two mirrors, two clocks, two sets of ornaments, and two embroidered screens. The general effect was of extraordinary lavish profusion--of wilful, splendid, careless extravagance.

Yet the arm of the sofa on which Edwin leaned was threadbare in two different places. The room was faded and worn, like its mistress. Like its mistress it seemed to exhale a silent and calm authority, based on historic tradition.

And the room was historic; it had been the theatre of history. For twenty-five years--ever since Tom was seven--it had witnessed the adventurous domestic career of the Orgreaves, so quiet superficially, so exciting in reality. It was the drawing-room of a man who had consistently used immense powers of industry for the satisfaction of his prodigal instincts; it was the drawing-room of a woman whose placidity no danger could disturb, and who cared for nothing if only her husband was amused. Spend and gain! And, for a change, gain and spend! That was the method. Work till sheer exhaustion beat you. Plan, scheme, devise! Satisfy your curiosity and your other instincts! Experiment! Accept risks! Buy first, order first, pledge yourself first; and then split your head in order to pay and to redeem! When chance aids you to accumulate, let the pile grow, out of mere perversity, and then scatter it royally! Play heartily! Play with the same intentness as you work! Live to the uttermost instant and to the last flicker of energy! Such was the spirit of Osmond Orgreave, and the spirit which reigned in the house generally, if not in every room of the house.

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THREE.

For each child had its room--except Jimmie and Johnnie, who shared one. And each room was the fortress of an egoism, the theatre of a separate drama, mysterious, and sacred from the others. Jimmie could not remember having been in Janet's room--it was forbidden by Alicia, who was jealous of her sole right of entree--and nobody would have dreamed of violating the chamber of Jimmie and Johnnie to discover the origin of peculiar noises that puzzled the household at seven o'clock in the morning. As for Tom's castle--it was a legend to the younger children; it was supposed to be wondrous.

All the children had always cost money, and a great deal of money, until Marian had left the family in deep gloom for her absence, and Tom, with a final wrench of a vast sum from the willing but wincing father, had settled into a remunerative profession. Tom was now keeping himself and repaying the weakened parent. The rest cost more and more every year as their minds and bodies budded and flowered. It was endless, it was staggering, it would not bear thinking about. The long and varied chronicle of it was somehow written on the drawing-room as well as on the faces of the father and mother--on the drawing-room which had the same dignified, childlike, indefatigable, invincible, jolly expression as its owners. Threadbare in places? And why not? The very identical Turkey carpet at which Edwin gazed in his self-consciousness--on that carpet Janet the queenly and mature had sprawled as an infant while her mother, a fresh previous Janet of less than thirty, had cooed and said incomprehensible foolishness to her. Tom was patriarchal because he had vague memories of an earlier drawing-room, misted in far antiquity. Threadbare? By heaven, its mere survival was magnificent! I say that it was a miraculous drawing-room. Its chairs were humanised. Its little cottage piano that nobody ever opened now unless Tom had gone mad on something for two pianos, because it was so impossibly tinny--the cottage piano could humanly recall the touch of a perfect baby when Marian the wife sat down to it. Marian was one of your silly sentimental nice things; on account of its associations, she really preferred the cottage piano to the grand. The two carpets were both resigned, grim old humanities, used to dirty heels, and not caring, or pretending not to care. What did the curtains know of history? Naught. They were always new; they could not last. But even the newest curtains would at once submit to the influence of the room, and take on something of its physiognomy, and help to express its comfortableness. You could not hang a week in front of one of those windows without being subtly informed by the tradition of adventurous happiness that presided over the room. It was that: a drawing-room in which a man and a woman, and boys and girls, had been on the whole happy, if often apprehensive.

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FOUR.

The music began to engage Edwin's attention. It was music of a kind quite novel to him. Most of it had no meaning for him, but at intervals some fragment detached itself from the mass, and stood out beautiful. It was as if he were gazing at a stage in gloom, but lighted momentarily by fleeting rays that revealed a lovely detail and were bafflingly cut off. Occasionally he thought he noticed a recurrence of the same fragment. Murmurs came from behind the piano. He looked cautiously. Alicia was making faces of alarm and annoyance. She whispered: "Oh dear! ... It's no use! ... We're all wrong, I'm sure!" Tom kept his eyes on the page in front of him, doggedly playing. Then Edwin was conscious of dissonances. And then the music stopped.

"Now, Alicia," her father protested mildly, "you mustn't be nervous."

"Nervous!" exclaimed Alicia. "Tom's just as nervous as I am! So _he_ needn't talk." She was as red as a cock's crest.

Tom was not talking. He pointed several times violently to a place on Alicia's half of the open book--she was playing the bass part. "There! There!" The music recommenced.

"She's always nervous like that," Janet whispered kindly, "when any one's here. But she doesn't like to be told."

"She plays splendidly," Edwin responded. "Do you play?"

Janet shook her head.

"Yes, she does," Charlie whispered.

"Keep on, darling. You're at the end now." Edwin heard a low, stern voice. That must be the voice of Hilda. A second later, he looked across, and surprised her glance, which was intensely fixed on himself. She dropped her eyes quickly; he also.

Then he felt by the nature of the chords that the piece was closing. The music ceased. Mr Orgreave clapped his hands. "Bravo! Bravo!"

"Why," cried Charlie to the performers, "you weren't within ten bars of each other!" And Edwin wondered how Charlie could tell that. As for him, he did not know enough of music to be able to turn over the pages for others. He felt himself to be an ignoramus among a company of brilliant experts.

"Well," said Mr Orgreave, "I suppose we may talk a bit now. It's more than our place is worth to breathe aloud while these Rubinsteins are doing Beethoven!" He looked at Edwin, who grinned.

"Oh! My word!" smiled Mrs Orgreave, supporting her hand.

"Beethoven, is it?" Edwin muttered. He was acquainted only with the name, and had never heard it pronounced as Mr Orgreave pronounced it.

"One symphony a night!" Mr Orgreave said, with irony. "And we're only at the second, it seems. Seven more to come. What do you think of that, Edwin?"

"Very fine!"

"Let's have the `Lost Chord,' Janet," Mr Orgreave suggested.

There was a protesting chorus of "Oh, dad!"

"Very well! Very well!" the father murmured, acting humility. "I'm snubbed!"

Tom had now strolled across the room, smiling to himself, and looking at the carpet, in an effort to behave as one who had done nothing in particular.

"How d'ye do, Clayhanger?" He greeted Edwin, and grasped his hand in a feverish clutch. "You must excuse us. We aren't used to audiences. That's the worst of being rotten amateurs."

Edwin rose. "Oh!" he deprecated. He had never spoken to Tom Orgreave before, but Tom seemed ready to treat him at once as an established acquaintance.

Then Alicia had to come forward and shake hands. She could not get a word out.

"Now, baby!" Charlie teased her.

She tossed her mane, and found refuge by her mother's side. Mrs Orgreave caressed the mane into order.

"This is Miss Lessways. Hilda--Mr Edwin Clayhanger." Janet drew the dark girl towards her as the latter hovered uncertainly in the middle of the room, her face forced into the look of elaborate negligence conventionally assumed by every self-respecting person who waits to be introduced. She took Edwin's hand limply, and failed to meet his glance. Her features did not soften. Edwin was confirmed in the impression of her obdurate ugliness. He just noticed her olive skin and black eyes and hair. She was absolutely different in type from any of the Clayhangers. The next instant she and Charlie were talking together.

Edwin felt the surprised relief of one who has plunged into the sea and discovers himself fairly buoyant on the threatening waves.

"Janet," asked Mrs Orgreave, "will supper be ready?"

In the obscurer corners of the room grey shadows gathered furtively, waiting their time.

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FIVE.

"Seen my latest, Charlie?" asked Tom, in his thin voice.

"No, what is it?" Charlie replied. The younger brother was flattered by this proof of esteem from the elder, but he did his best by casualness of tone to prevent the fact from transpiring.

All the youths were now standing in a group in the middle of the drawing-room. Their faces showed pale and more distinct than their bodies in the darkening twilight. Mrs Orgreave, her husband, and the girls had gone into the dining-room.

Tom Orgreave, with the gestures of a precisian, drew a bunch of keys from his pocket, and unlocked a rosewood bookcase that stood between the two windows. Jimmie winked to Johnnie, and included Edwin in the fellowship of the wink, which meant that Tom was more comic than Tom thought, with his locked bookcases and his simple vanities of a collector. Tom collected books. As Edwin gazed at the bookcase he perceived that it was filled mainly with rich bindings. And suddenly all his own book-buying seemed to him petty and pitiful. He saw books in a new aspect. He had need of no instruction, of no explanation. The amorous care with which Tom drew a volume from the bookcase was enough in itself to enlighten Edwin completely. He saw that a book might be more than reading matter, might be a bibelot, a curious jewel, to satisfy the lust of the eye and of the hand. He instantly condemned his own few books as being naught; he was ashamed of them. Each book in that bookcase was a separate treasure.

"See this, my boy?" said Tom, handing to Charlie a calf-bound volume, with a crest on the sides. "Six volumes. Picked them up at Stafford-- Assizes, you know. It's the Wilbraham crest. I never knew they'd been selling their library."

Charlie accepted the book with respect. Its edges were gilt, and the paper thin and soft. Edwin looked over his shoulder, and saw the title-page of Victor Hugo's "Notre-Dame de Paris," in French. The volume had a most romantic, foreign, even exotic air. Edwin desired it fervently, or something that might rank equal with it.

"How much did they stick you for this lot?" asked Charlie.

Tom held up one finger.

"Quid?" Charlie wanted to be sure. Tom nodded.

"Cheap as dirt, of course!" said Tom. "Binding's worth more than that. Look at the other volumes. Look at them!"

"Pity it's only a second edition," said Charlie.

"Well, damn it, man! One can't have everything."

Charlie passed the volume to Edwin, who fingered it with the strangest delight. Was it possible that this exquisitely delicate and uncustomary treasure, which seemed to exhale all the charm of France and the savour of her history, had been found at Stafford? He had been to Stafford himself. He had read "Notre-Dame" himself, but in English, out of a common book like any common book--not out of a bibelot.

"You've read it, of course, Clayhanger?" Tom said.

"Oh!" Edwin answered humbly. "Only in a translation." Yet there was a certain falseness in his humility, for he was proud of having read the work. What sort of a duffer would he have appeared had he been obliged to reply `No'?

"You ought to read French _in_ French," said Tom, kindly authoritative.

"Can't," said Edwin.

"Bosh!" Charlie cried. "You were always spiffing in French. You could simply knock spots off me."

"And do you read French in French, the Sunday?" Edwin asked.

"Well," said Charlie, "I must say it was Thomas put me up to it. You simply begin to read, that's all. What you don't understand, you miss. But you soon understand. You can always look at a dictionary if you feel like it. I usually don't."

"I'm sure _you_ could read French easily in a month," said Tom. "They always gave a good grounding at Oldcastle. There's simply nothing in it."

"Really!" Edwin murmured, relinquishing the book. "I must have a shot, I never thought of it." And he never thought of reading French for pleasure. He had construed Xavier de Maistre's "Voyage autour de ma Chambre" for marks, assuredly not for pleasure. "Are there any books in this style to be got on that bookstall in Hanbridge Market?" he inquired of Tom.

"Sometimes," said Tom, wiping his spectacles. "Oh yes!"

It was astounding to Edwin how blind he had been to the romance of existence in the Five Towns.

"It's all very well," observed Charlie reflectively, fingering one or two of the other volumes--"it's all very well, and Victor Hugo is Victor Hugo; but you can say what you like--there's a lot of this that'll bear skipping, your worships."

"Not a line!" said a passionate, vibrating voice.