THE COMPLETE CLAYHANGER SERIES: Clayhanger, Hilda Lessways, These Twain & The Roll Call. Arnold Bennett
had taken him to the station, not he her. How could he hold her back from Brighton?
Three.
When they came again to the Blood Tub, she said—
“Couldn’t we just go and look in? I’ve got plenty of time, now I know exactly how I stand.”
She halted, and glanced across the road. He could only agree to the proposition. For himself, a peculiar sense of delicacy would have made it impossible for him to intrude his prosperity upon the deliberations of starving artisans on strike and stricken; and he wondered what the potters might think or say about the invasion by a woman. But he had to traverse the street with her and enter, and he had to do so with an air of masculine protectiveness. The urchins stood apart to let them in.
Snaggs’, dimly lit by a few glazed apertures in the roof, was nearly crammed by men who sat on the low benches and leaned standing against the sidewalls. In the small and tawdry proscenium, behind a worn picture of the Bay of Naples, were silhouetted the figures of the men’s leader and of several other officials. The leader was speaking in a quiet, mild voice, the other officials were seated on Windsor chairs. The smell of the place was nauseating, and yet the atmosphere was bitingly cold. The warm-wrapped visitors could see rows and rows of discoloured backs and elbows, and caps, and stringy kerchiefs. They could almost feel the contraction of thousands of muscles in an involuntary effort to squeeze out the chill from all these bodies; not a score of overcoats could be discerned in the whole theatre, and many of the jackets were thin and ragged; but the officials had overcoats. And the visitors could almost see, as it were in rays, the intense fixed glances darting from every part of the interior, and piercing the upright figure in the centre of the stage.
“Some method of compromise,” the leader was saying in his persuasive tones.
A young man sprang up furiously from the middle benches.
“To hell wi’ compromise!” he shouted in a tigerish passion. “Haven’t us had forty pound from Ameriky?”
“Order! Order!” some protested fiercely. But one voice cried: “Pitch the bastard awt, neck and crop!”
Hands clawed at the interrupter and dragged him with extreme violence to the level of the bench, where he muttered like a dying volcano. Angry growls shot up here and there, snappish, menacing, and bestial.
“It is quite true,” said the leader soothingly, “that our comrades at Trenton have collected forty pounds for us. But forty pounds would scarcely pay for a loaf of bread for one man in every ten on strike.”
There was more interruption. The dangerous growls continued in running explosions along the benches. The leader, ignoring them, turned to consult with his neighbour, and then faced his audience and called out more loudly—
“The business of the meeting is at an end.”
The entire multitude jumped up, and there was stretching of arms and stamping of feet. The men nearest to the door now perceived Edwin and Hilda, who moved backwards as before a flood. Edwin seized Hilda’s arm to hasten her.
“Lads,” bawled an old man’s voice from near the stage, “Let’s sing ‘Rock of Ages.’”
A frowning and hirsute fellow near the door, with the veins prominent on his red forehead, shouted hoarsely, “‘Rock of Ages’ be buggered!” and shifting his hands into his pockets he plunged for the street, head foremost and chin sticking out murderously. Edwin and Hilda escaped at speed and recrossed the road. The crowd came surging out of the narrow neck of the building and spread over the pavements like a sinister liquid. But from within the building came the lusty song of “Rock of Ages.”
“It’s terrible!” Hilda murmured, after a silence. “Just to see them is enough. I shall never forget what you said.”
“What was that?” he inquired. He knew what it was, but he wished to prolong the taste of her appreciation.
“That you’ve only got to see the poor things to know they’re in the right! Oh! I’ve lost my handkerchief, unless I’ve left it in your shop. It must have dropped out of my muff.”
Four.
The shop was closed. As with his latchkey he opened the private door and then stood on one side for her to precede him into the corridor that led to the back of the shop, he watched the stream of operatives scattering across Duck Bank and descending towards the Square. It was as if he and Hilda, being pursued, were escaping. And as Hilda, stopping an instant on the step, saw what he saw, her face took a troubled expression. They both went in and he shut the door.
“Turn to the left,” he said, wondering whether the big Columbia machine would be running, for her to see if she chose.
“Oh! This takes you to the shop, does it? How funny to be behind the counter!”
He thought she spoke self-consciously, in the way of small talk: which was contrary to her habit.
“Here’s my handkerchief!” she cried, with pleasure. It was on the counter, a little white wisp in the grey-sheeted gloom. Stifford must have found it on the floor and picked it up.
The idea flashed through Edwin’s head: “Did she leave her handkerchief on purpose, so that we should have to come back here?”
The only illumination of the shop was from three or four diamond-shaped holes in the upper part of as many shutters. No object was at first quite distinct. The corners were very dark. All merchandise not in drawers or on shelves was hidden in pale dust cloths. A chair wrong side up was on the fancy-counter, its back hanging over the front of the counter. Hilda had wandered behind the other counter, and Edwin was in the middle of the shop. Her face in the twilight had become more mysterious than ever. He was in a state of emotion, but he did not know to what category the emotion belonged. They were alone. Stifford had gone for the half-holiday. Darius, sickly, would certainly not come near. The printers were working as usual in their place, and the clanking whirr of a treadle-machine overhead agitated the ceiling. But nobody would enter the shop. His excitement increased, but did not define itself. There was a sudden roar in Duck Square, and then cries.
“What can that be?” Hilda asked, low.
“Some of the strikers,” he answered, and went through the doors to the letter-hole in the central shutter, lifted the flap, and looked through.
A struggle was in progress at the entrance to the Duck Inn. One man was apparently drunk; others were jeering on the skirts of the lean crowd.
“It’s some sort of a fight among them,” said Edwin loudly, so that she could hear in the shop. But at the same instant he felt the wind of the door swinging behind him, and Hilda was silently at his elbow.
“Let me look,” she said.
Assuredly her voice was trembling. He moved, as little as possible, and held the flap up for her. She bent and gazed. He could hear various noises in the Square, but she described nothing to him. After a long while she withdrew from the hole.
“A lot of them have gone into the public-house,” she said. “The others seem to be moving away. There’s a policeman. What a shame,” she burst out passionately, “that they have to drink to forget their trouble!” She made no remark upon the strangeness of starving workmen being able to pay for beer sufficient to intoxicate themselves. Nor did she comment, as a woman, on the misery of the wives and children at home in the slums and the cheap cottage-rows. She merely compassionated the men in that they were driven to brutishness. Her features showed painful pity masking disgust.
She stepped back into the shop.
“Do you know,” she began, in a new tone, “you’ve quite altered my notion of poetry—what you said as we were going up to the station.”
“Really!” He smiled nervously. He was very pleased. He would have been astounded by this speech from her, a professed devotee