THE COMPLETE CLAYHANGER SERIES: Clayhanger, Hilda Lessways, These Twain & The Roll Call. Arnold Bennett
His voice left him. Thus his fear was physical as well as moral. He reflected: “Well, I expected a row, but I didn’t expect it would be as bad as this!” And once more he was completely puzzled and baffled by the enigma of his father.
Four.
He did not hold the key, and even had he held it he was too young, too inexperienced, to have used it. As with gathering passion the eyes of Darius assaulted the window-pane, Darius had a painful intense vision of that miracle, his own career. Edwin’s grand misfortune was that he was blind to the miracle. Edwin had never seen the little boy in the Bastille. But Darius saw him always, the infant who had begun life at a rope’s-end. Every hour of Darius’s present existence was really an astounding marvel to Darius. He could not read the newspaper without thinking how wonderful it was that he should be able to read the newspaper. And it was wonderful! It was wonderful that he had three different suits of clothes, none of them with a single hole. It was wonderful that he had three children, all with complete outfits of good clothes. It was wonderful that he never had to think twice about buying coal, and that he could have more food than he needed. It was wonderful that he was not living in a two-roomed cottage. He never came into his house by the side entrance without feeling proud that the door gave on to a preliminary passage and not direct into a living-room; he would never lose the idea that a lobby, however narrow, was the great distinguishing mark of wealth. It was wonderful that he had a piano, and that his girls could play it and could sing. It was wonderful that he had paid twenty-eight shillings a term for his son’s schooling, in addition to book-money. Twenty-eight shillings a term! And once a penny a week was considered enough, and twopence generous! Through sheer splendid wilful pride he had kept his son at school till the lad was sixteen, going on seventeen! Seventeen, not seven! He had had the sort of pride in his son that a man may have in an idle, elegant, and absurdly expensive woman. It even tickled him to hear his son called ‘Master Edwin,’ and then ‘Mister Edwin’; just as the fine ceremonious manners of his sister-in-law Mrs Hamps tickled him. His marriage! With all its inevitable disillusions it had been wonderful, incredible. He looked back on it as a miracle. For he had married far above him, and had proved equal to the enormously difficult situation. Never had he made a fool of himself. He often took keen pleasure in speculating upon the demeanour of his father, his mother, his little sister, could they have seen him in his purple and in his grandeur. They were all dead. And those days were fading, fading, gone, with their unutterable, intolerable shame and sadness, intolerable even in memory. And his wife dead too! All that remained was Mr Shushions.
And then his business? Darius’s pride in the achievement of his business was simply indescribable. If he had not built up that particular connexion he had built up another one whose sale had enabled him to buy it. And he was waxing yearly. His supremacy as a printer could not be challenged in Bursley. Steam! A double-windowed shop! A foreman to whom alone he paid thirty shillings a week! Four other employees! (Not to mention a domestic servant.) ... How had he done it? He did not know. Certainly he did not credit himself with brilliant faculties. He knew he was not brilliant; he knew that once or twice he had had luck. But he had the greatest confidence in his rough-hewing common sense. The large curves of his career were correctly drawn. His common sense, his slow shrewdness, had been richly justified by events. They had been pitted against foes—and look now at the little boy from the Bastille!
Five.
To Darius there was no business quite like his own. He admitted that there were businesses much bigger, but they lacked the miraculous quality that his own had. They were not sacred. His was, genuinely. Once, in his triumphant and vain early manhood he had had a fancy for bulldogs; he had bred bulldogs; and one day he had sacrificed even that great delight at the call of his business; and now no one could guess that he knew the difference between a setter and a mastiff!
It was this sacred business (perpetually adored at the secret altar in Darius’s heart), this miraculous business, and not another, that Edwin wanted to abandon, with scarcely a word; just casually!
True, Edwin had told him one night that he would like to be an architect. But Darius had attached no importance to the boyish remark. Darius had never even dreamed that Edwin would not go into the business. It would not have occurred to him to conceive such a possibility. And the boy had shown great aptitude. The boy had saved the printing office from disaster. And Darius had proved his satisfaction therein, not by words certainly, but beyond mistaking in his general demeanour towards Edwin. And after all that, a letter—mind you, a letter!—proposing with the most damnable insolent audacity that he should be an architect, because he would not be ‘happy’ in the printing business! ... An architect! Why an architect, specially? What in the name of God was there to attract in bricks and mortar? He thought the boy had gone off his head for a space. He could not think of any other explanation. He had not allowed the letter to upset him. By his armour of thick callousness, he had protected the tender places in his soul from being wounded. He had not decided how to phrase his answer to Edwin. He had not even decided whether he would say anything at all, whether it would not be more dignified and impressive to make no remark whatever to Edwin, to let him slowly perceive, by silence, what a lamentable error he had committed.
And here was the boy lightly, cheekily, talking at breakfast about ‘going in for architecture’! The armour of callousness was pierced. Darius felt the full force of the letter; and as he suffered, so he became terrible and tyrannic in his suffering. He meant to save his business, to put his business before anything. And he would have his own way. He would impose his will. And he would have treated argument as a final insult. All the heavy, obstinate, relentless force of his individuality was now channelled in one tremendous instinct.
Six.
“Well, what?” he growled savagely, as Edwin halted.
In spite of his advanced age Edwin began to cry. Yes, the tears came out of his eyes.
“And now you begin blubbing!” said his father.
“You say naught for six months—and then you start writing letters!” said his father.
“And what’s made ye settle on architecting, I’d like to be knowing?” Darius went on.
Edwin was not able to answer this question. He had never put it to himself. Assuredly he could not, at the pistol’s point, explain why he wanted to be an architect. He did not know. He announced this truth ingenuously—
“I don’t know—I—”
“I sh’d think not!” said his father. “D’ye think architecting’ll be any better than this?” ‘This’ meant printing.
“I don’t know—”
“Ye don’t know! Ye don’t know!” Darius repeated testily. His testiness was only like foam on the great wave of his resentment.
“Mr Orgreave—” Edwin began. It was unfortunate, because Darius had had a difficulty with Mr Orgreave, who was notoriously somewhat exacting in the matter of prices.
“Don’t talk to me about Mester Orgreave!” Darius almost shouted.
Edwin didn’t. He said to himself: “I am lost.”
“What’s this business o’ mine for, if it isna’ for you?” asked his father. “Architecting! There’s neither sense nor reason in it! Neither sense nor reason!”
He rose and walked out. Edwin was now sobbing. In a moment his father returned, and stood in the doorway.
“Ye’ve been doing well, I’ll say that, and I’ve shown it! I was beginning to have hopes of ye!” It was a great deal to say.
He departed.
“Perhaps if I hadn’t stopped his damned old machine from going through the floor, he’d have let me off!” Edwin muttered bitterly. “I’ve been too good, that’s what’s the matter with me!”
Seven.
He