Volume 2, Chapter 6 of Clay Hanger by Arnold Bennett This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 6, Volume 2, 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 Lake 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 silo-toe suit of clothes. He had scarcely worn the suit at all, but that afternoon his father had sent him over to Handbridge, about a large order from Bostock's. The recently established draper's 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 have 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.  No, take the armchair. I'll up-scot you late on the desk. I had no idea you were down. When did you come? Last night, last train, just a freak, you know. Part 2 They were within a foot of each other in the ebonised cubicle. Edwin's legs were swinging a few inches away from the armchair.  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 belong 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, 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? Bartz. Bartz, 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 had 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 patience 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.  He felt with pleasure that he was still older than the Sunday, and it pleased him also to be able thus to utilize 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 him. Look at who? The doctors here. He dropped his voice further. Do you know why the dad's gone to heave? Gone to heave, has he? Left or who is it? Yes, I don't say heave 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. Part 3 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 tonight. 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 peaked. 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, oh man, come on, I should 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. Stiffard 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, a friend of Janet's. Hilda Lessway's 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.  Neither of them had the least intention of disrespect towards the fine girl who was on their lips. Part 4 Edwin said to himself, Is it possible that he's 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 tonight, said the fawn in spite of Edwin. You come tonight, 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 demeanor 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 hilder 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 paltrunery. 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 aunts 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. End of Chapter 6, Volume 2. Volume 2, Chapter 7 of Clay Hanger by Arnold Bennett This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Volume 2, Chapter 7. Lane End House He was another of those impressive square halls on the other side of the suddenly open 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.   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 amably 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 proceeded him towards the door to the right. Charlie hovered behind on springs.  There seemed to him to be far more knickknacks in that hall than in the hall of his father's house. Mr. Orgreaves ingeniously contrived bookshelves were simply overlaid and smothered in knickknacks. Janet pushed at the door and the sound of the piano suddenly increased in volume. Part two. There was no cessation of the music as the three entered. As it were, beneath the music, Mrs. Orgreaves, 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 Orgreaves with lazy and distinguished good nature shaking hands. Jimmy and Johnny, now age 19 and 18 respectively, were in the room. Johnny was reading. Their blushing awkwardness in salutation and comic effects, to be curtly benevolent in the manner of clubmen, somewhat eased the tension in Edwin. They addressed him as clay-hanger. The eldest and the youngest child of the family sat at the piano in the act of performing a duet. Tom, pale, slight, nearsighted and wearing spectacles, had reached the age of 32 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. Marion aged 30 and married in London with two little babies. Marion was adored by all her brothers and sisters and most by Janet, who during the 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. Orgrieve had said that the clay hangar drawing room with its bay window was a fine apartment, but the Orgrieve drawing room had a bay window and another large window. It was twice as big as the clay hangars, 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 willful 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.  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 utmost 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. Part III For each child had its room, except Jimmy and Johnny, who shared one, and each room was the fortress of an egoism, the theatre of a separate drama, mysterious and sacred from the others. Jimmy could not remember having been in Janet's room. It was forbidden by Alicia, who was jealous of her sole right of entree. Nobody would have dreamed of violating the chamber of Jimmy and Johnny 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 Marion 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 buttered 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. Threadbear in places, and why not? The very identical Turkish 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. Threadbear, by heaven, its mere survival was magnificent. I say that it was a miraculous drawing-room. Its chairs were humanized, 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 Marianne the wife sat down to it. Marianne was one of your silly, sentimental nice things. On account of its association, 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? Nought, they were always new, they could not last. But even the newest curtains would at once submit to the influences 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. Part IV 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. Murmers 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.  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 cox 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 reccomenced. She's always nervous like that, Janet whispered kindly when anyone's here, but she doesn't like to be told. She plays splendidly, Edwin responded. Do you play? Janet shook her hand. 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.  Then he felt by the nature of the cords that the piece was closing. The music seized. 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 you may talk a bit now. It's more than our place is worth to breathe aloud while these Rubensteins are doing Beethoven. He looked at Edwin who grinned. Oh, my words, my old 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 were only at the second, it seemed, 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, Dan. 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 do you 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 Leswayes. It's 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 obscure corners of the room gray shadows gathered furtively, waiting their time. Part 5 Seeing 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 precision, drew a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked a rosewood bookcase that stood between the two windows. Jimmy winked to Johnny 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 bookbinds 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 bibelow, a curious jewel, to satisfy the lust of the eye and of the hand. He instantly condemned his own few books as being nought. 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. Pick them up at Stafford, a size as you know. It's the Wilburham 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 for this lot, asked Charlie. Tom held up one finger. Quid, Charlie wanted to be sure. Tom nodded. Cheaper's dirt, of course, said Tom. Bindings 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 savor 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. Bosch, 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 Old Castle. There's simply nothing in it. Really, Edwin Merman, 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 Mestre, Voyage autour de ma chambre, for Marx, assuredly not for pleasure. Are there any books in this style to be got on that bookstall in Hambridge Market, he inquired of Tom? Sometimes, said Tom, wiping his spectacles. Oh, yes. He 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. The voice so startled and thrilled Edwin that he almost jumped as he looked round. To Edwin it was dramatic. It was even dangerous and threatening. He had never heard a quiet voice so charged with intense emotion. Hilda Leswayes had come back to the room, and she stood near the door, her face gleaming in the dusk. She stood like an Amazonian defender of the aged poet. Edwin asked himself, can anyone be so excited as that about a book? The eyes, lips, and nostrils were a revelation to him. He could feel his heart beating. But the girl strongly repelled him. Nobody else appeared to be conscious that anything singular had occurred. Jimmy and Johnny sidled out of the room. Oh, indeed, Charlie directed his candid and yet faintly ironic smile upon Hilda Leswayes. Don't you think some of it's dullish, Teddy? Edwin blushed. Well, yes, he answered, honestly, judicial. Mrs. Orgreave wants to know when you're coming to supper, said Hilda, and left. Tom was relocking the bookcase. End of Chapter 7, Volume 2. Volume 2, Chapter 8 of Clay Hanger by Arnold Bennett. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 8, The Family Supper. Now, Father, let's have a bottle of YNA. Charlie vociferously suggested. Mr. Orgreave hesitated. You'd better ask your mother. Really, Charlie, Mrs. Orgreave began. Oh, yes, Charlie cut her short. Right you are, Martha! The servant who had stood waiting for a definite command during this brief conflict of wills glanced interrogatively at Mrs. Orgreave and perceiving no clear prohibition in her face departed with a smile to get the wine. She was a servant of sound prestige and had the inexpressible privilege of smiling on duty. In her time she had fought lively battles of repartee with all the children from Charlie downwards. Janet humoured Martha and Martha humoured Mrs. Orgreave. The whole family, save absent Marian, was now gathered in the dining-room, another apartment on whose physiognomy were written in cipher the annals of the vivacious tribe. Here the curtains were drawn and all the interest of the room centred on the large white gleaming table about which the members stood or sat under the downward radiance of a chandelier. Beyond the circle illuminated by the shaded chandelier could be discerned dim forms of furniture and of pictures with a glint of high light here and there burning on the corner of some gold frame. Mr. and Mrs. Orgreave sat at either end of the table, Alicia stood by her father with one arm half round his neck, Tom sat near his mother, Janet and Hilda sat together, flanked by Jimmy and Johnny, who stood having pushed chairs away. Charlie and Edwin stood opposite. The table seemed to Edwin to be heaped with food, cold and yet rich remains of bird and beast. A large fruit pie opened, another intact, some puddings, cheese, sandwiches, raw fruit. At Janet's elbow were cups and sauces and a pot of coffee. A large glass jug of lemonade shone nearby. Plates, glasses and cutlery were strewn about irregularly. The effect upon Edwin was one of immense and careless prodigality. It intoxicated him. It made him feel that a grand profuseness was the finest thing in life. In his own home the supper consisted of cheese, bread and water, save on Sundays when cold sausages were generally added to make a feast. But the idea of the price of living as the Orgreaves lived seriously startled the prudence in him. Imagine that expense always persisting day after day, night after night. There were certainly at least four in the family who bought clothes at chiloteaux and everybody looked elaborately costly, except heald a less ways, who did not flatter the eye. But equally they all seemed quite unconscious of their costliness. Now, Charlie, darling, you must look after Mr. Edwin, said Mrs. Orgreave. She never caused us, darling, said Johnny, affecting disgust. She will as soon as you've left home, said Janet, ironically soothing. I do, I often do, Mrs. Orgreave asserted, much oftener than you deserve. Sit down, Teddy, Charlie, enjoined. Oh, I'm all right, thanks, said Edwin. Sit down, Charlie insisted, using force. Do you talk to your poor patience in that tone, Alicia inquired from the shelter of her father? Here I come down specially to see them. Charlie mused aloud as he twisted the corkscrew into the cork of the bottle, unceremoniously handed to him by Martha. And not only they don't offer to pay my fares, but they grudge me a drop of claret. He grimaced as the cork came out. And my last night, too. Hilda, this is better than coffee, as St. Paul remarked on a famous occasion, pass your glass. Charlie, his mother protested, I'll thank you to leave, St. Paul out. Charlie, your mother will be boxing your ears, if you don't mind, his father warned him. I'll not have it, said his mother, shaking her head in a fashion that she imagined to be harsh and forbidding. Part II Towards the close of the meal Mr. Orgreave said, Well, Edwin, what does your father say about Bradlow? He doesn't say much, Edwin replied. Let me see, does he call himself a liberal? He calls himself a liberal, said Edwin, shifting on his chair. Yes, he calls himself a liberal, but I'm afraid he's a regular old Tory. Edwin blushed, laughing, as half the family gave way to more or less violent mirth. Father's a regular old Tory, too, Charlie Grinned. Oh, I'm sorry, said Edwin. Yes, Father's a regular old Tory, agreed Mr. Orgreave. Don't apologize, don't apologize. I'm used to these attacks. I've been nearly kicked out of my own house once, but someone has to keep the flag flying. It was plain that Mr. Orgreave enjoyed the unloosing of the hurricane which he had brought about. Mrs. Orgreave used to say that he employed that particular tone from a naughty love of mischief. In a moment all the boys were upon him except Jimmy, who, out of sheer intellectual snobbery, as the rest of Erd supported his father. Atheistical Bradlow had been exciting the British public to disputation for a long time, and the Bradlow question happened to be acute. In that very week the Northampton member had been committed to custody for outraging parliament, and released, and it was known that Gladstone meant immediately to bring in a resolution for permitting members to affirm, instead of taking oath by appealing to a God. Then this complication of theology and politics, nothing could have been better devised to impassion and electorate, which had but two genuine interests, theology and politics. The rumour of the feverish affair had spread to the most isolated communities. People talked theology and people talked politics, who had till then only felt silently on these subjects. In loquacious families Bradlow caused dissension and division, more real perhaps than apparent, for not all Bradlow's supporters had the courage to avow themselves such. It was not easy at any rate, it was not easy in the five towns, for a timid man, in reply to the question, Are you in favour of a professed free thinker sitting in the House of Commons? To reply, yes I am. There was something shameless in that word professed. If the free thinker had been ashamed of his free thinking, if he had sought to conceal it in phrases, the implication was that the case might not have been so bad. This was what astonished Edwin, the candour with which Bradlow's position was upheld in the dining room of the Orgreaves. It was as if he were witnessing deeds of willful perilous daring. But the conversation was not confined to Bradlow, for Bradlow was not a perfect test for separating liberals and Tories. Nobody in the room, for example, was quite convinced that Mr Orgreave was Andy Bradlow. To satisfy their instincts for father-baiting, the boys had to include other topics, such as Ireland and the proposal for home rule. As for Mr Orgreave, he could and did always infuriate them by refusing to answer seriously. The fact was that this was his device for maintaining his prestige among the turbulent mob. Dignified and brilliantly clever as Osmond Orgreave had the reputation of being in the town, he was somewhat outshawning cleverness at home, and he never put the bar of his dignity between himself and his children. Thus he could only keep the upper hand by allowing hints to escape from him of the secret amusement roused in him by the comicality of the spectacle of his filial enemies. He had one great phrase which he would draw out at them with the accents of a man who is trying politely to hide his contempt. You'll learn better as you get older. Part 3 Edwin, who said little, thought the relationship between father and son utterly delightful. He had not conceived that parents and children ever were or could be on such terms. Now, what do you say, Edwin, Mr Orgreave asked? Are you a—Charlie, pass me that bottle. Charlie was helping himself to another glass of wine. The father, the two elder sons, and Edwin alone had drunk of the wine.  Oh, Dad, I just want to— Charlie objected holding the bottle in the air above his glass. Charlie said, his mother, do you hear your father? Pass me that bottle, Mr Orgreave repeated. Charlie obeyed proclaiming himself a martyr. Mr Orgreave filled his own glass, emptying the bottle, and began to sip. This will do me more good than you, young man, he said, then turning again to Edwin. Are you a Bradlow man? And Edwin, uplifted, said, all I say is, you can't help what you believe, you can't make yourself believe anything. And I don't see why you should, either. There's no virtue in believing. Hooray! cried the sedate Tom. No virtue in believing? Oh, Mr Edwin, Mr Edwin! This sad ex-postulation came from Mrs Orgreave. Don't you see what I mean? He persisted, vivaciously, reddening. But he could not express himself further. Hooray! repeated Tom.   She only puts on that expression to keep worse things from being said. She's only pretending to be upset. Nothing could upset her, really. She's past being upset. She's been through so much, haven't you, poor dear? In looking at Janet, Edwin caught the eyes of Hilda, blazing on him fixedly. Her head seemed to tremble, and he glanced away. She had added nothing to the discussion. And, indeed, Janet herself had taken no part in the politics, content merely to advise the combatants upon their demeanor. So you're against me too, Edwin, Mr Orgreave's side, with mock melancholy. Well, this is no place for me. He rose, lifted Alicia and put her into his armchair, and then went towards the door. You aren't going to work, are you, Osmond? His wife asked, turning her head. They am, said he. He disappeared amid a wailing chorus of, Oh, Dan! End of Volume 2, Chapter 8. Volume 2, Chapter 9 of Clay Hanger, by Arnold Bennett This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 9 in the porch When the front door of the Orgreaves interposed itself that night between Edwin and a little group of gas-lit faces, he turned away towards the warm gloom of the garden in a state of happy excitement. He had left fairly early, despite protests, because he wished to give his father no excuse for a spectacular display of wrath. Edwin's desire for a tranquil existence was growing steadily. But now that he was in the open air, he did not want to go home. He wanted to be in full possession of himself, at leisure, and in freedom, and to examine the treasure of his sensations. It's been rather quiet, the Orgreaves had said. We generally have people dropping in. Quiet it was the least quiet evening he had ever spent. He was intoxicated not with wine, though he had drunk wine. A group of well-intentioned philanthropists organised into a powerful society, for combating the fearful evils of alcoholism, had seized Edwin at the age of twelve, and made him bind himself with solemn, childish signature and ceremonies never to taste alcohol saved by doctor's orders. He thought of this pledge in the garden of the Orgreaves. Damned rot, he murmured, and dismissed the pledge from his mind as utterly unimportant, if not fatuous. No remorse, the whole philosophy of asceticism inspired him at that moment with impatient scorn. It was the hope of pleasure that intoxicated him, the vision which he had had of the possibilities of being really interested in life. He saw new avenues towards joy, and the sight thereof made him tingle, less with the desire to be immediately at them, than with the present ecstasy of contemplating them. He was conscious of actual physical tremors and agreeable smartings in his head, electrical disturbances. But he did not reason he felt. He was passive, not active. He would not even just then attempt to make new plans. He was in a beatitude, his mouth unaware that it was smiling.  And there was silence save for the vast furnace-breathings coming over undulating miles which the people of the five towns, hearing them always, never hear. A great deal of diffused light filtered through the cloudy sky. The warm wandering airs were humid on the cheek. He must return home. He could not stand dreaming all the night in the garden of the Orgreaves. To his right uproars the great rectangular mass of his father's new house, entirely free of scaffolding, having all the aspect of a house inhabited. It looked enormous. He was proud of it. In such an abode and so close to the Orgreaves, what could he not do? Why go to gaze on it again? There was no common sense in doing so. And yet he felt, I must have another glance at it before I go home. From his attitude towards it he might have been the creator of that house. That house was like one of his more successful drawings, when he had done a drawing that he esteemed, he was always looking at it. He would look at it before running down to breakfast, and after breakfast, instead of going straight to the shop, he would rush upstairs to have still another look at it. The act of inspection gave him pleasure. So with the house strained superficially, but the simple explanation was that for some things he had the eyes of love. Yes, in his dancing and happy brain, the impulse to revisit the house was not to be conquered. The few battered yards of hedge between his father's land and that of Mr. Orgreaves seemed more passable in the night. He crunched along the gravel, stepped carefully with noiseless foot on the flower bed, and then pushed himself right through the frail bushes, forgetting the respect due to his suit. The beginning of summer had dried the sticky clay of the new garden. Paz had already been traced on it, and trenches cut for the draining of the lawn that was to be. Edwin in the night saw the new garden finished, mellow, blooming with such blossoms as were sold in St. Luke's Market. He had scarcely ever seen flowers growing in the mass. He saw himself reclining in the garden with a rare and beautiful book in his hand, while the sound of Beethoven's music came to him through the open window of the drawing-room. Insofar as he saw Maggie at all, he saw her somehow mysteriously elegant and vivacious. He did not see his father. His fancy had little relation to reality, but this did not mar his pleasure. Then he saw himself talking over the hedge wittily to amiable and witty persons in the garden of the Orgreaves. Part 3 He had not his key to the new house, but he knew a way of getting into it through the cellar. No reason in doing so, nevertheless he must get into it, must localize his dream in it. He crouched down under the blank east wall, and feet foremost disappeared slowly as though the house was swallowing him. He stood on the stillage of the cellar and struck a match. Immense and weird the cellar, and the doorless doorway leading to the cellar steps, seemed to lead to a frightening matters. He was in the earth, in it with the smells of damp water and of bricks, and of the earth itself about him, and above him rose the house, a room over him and a room over that, and another over that, and then the chimney-cowl up in the sky. He jumped from the stillage, and went quickly to the doorway and saw the cellar steps. His heart was beating, he trembled, he was afraid, exquisitely afraid, acutely conscious of himself amid the fundamental mysteries of the universe. He reached the top of the steps as the match expired. After a moment he could distinguish the forms of things in the hall, even the main features of the pattern of the tiles. The small panes in the glazed front door, whose varied tints repeated those of the drawing-room window in daytime, now showed a uniform dull gray, lifeless. The cellar was formidable below, and the stairs curved upwards into the formidable, but he climbed them. The house seemed full of inexplicable noises, when he stopped to listen he could hear scores of different infinitesimal sounds. His spine thrilled as if a hand delicate and terrible had run down it in a caress. All the unknown of the night and of the universe was pressing upon him, but it was he alone who had created the night and the universe. He reached his room, the room in which he meant to inaugurate the new life and the endeavour towards perfection. Already after his manner he had precisely settled where the bed was to be and where the table and all the other objects of his world. There he would sit and read rare and beautiful books in the original French, and there he would sit to draw, and to the right of the hearth over bookshelves would be such and such a picture, and to the left of the hearth over bookshelves such and such another picture. Only now he could not dream in the room as he had meant to dream, because beyond the open door was the empty landing, and the well of the stairs and all the terror of the house. The terror came and mingled with the delicious sensations that had seized him in the solitude of the garden of the Orgreaves. No, never had he been so intensely alive as then. He went cautiously to the window and looked forth. Instantly the terror of the house was annihilated. It fell away, was gone. He was not alone in his fancy created universe. The reassuring illusion of reality came back like a clap of thunder. He could see a girl insinuating herself through the gap in the hedge which he had made ten minutes earlier.  He wondered whether if she happened to glance upwards she would be able to see him. He stood away a little from the window, but as in the safer position he could no longer distinguish her, he came again close to the glass. After all there could be no risk of her seeing him. And if she did see him the fright would be hers, not his. Having passed through the hedge she stopped, bent down, leaning backward and to one side, and lifted the hem of her skirt to examine it. Possibly it was torn, then she dropped it. By that black tight skirt and by something in her walk he knew she was hilder. He could not decipher her features. She moved towards the new house very slowly, as if she had emerged for an aimless nocturnal stroll. Strange and disquieting creature, he peered as far as he could leftwards to see the west wall of Lane End House. In a window of the upper floor a light burned. The family had doubtless gone to bed or were going. And she had wandered forth solitary and was trespassing in his garden. Cheek! If ever he got an opportunity he should mysteriously tease her on the subject of illegal night excursions. Yes, he should be very witty and ironic. Nothing but cheek. He was confirmed in his hostility to her. She had no charm, and yet the entire Ogre family was apparently infatuated about her. Her interruption on behalf of Victor Hugo seemed to be savage. Girls ought not to use that ruthless tone.  She was less feminine than masculine. Her hair was not like a girl's hair. She still came on until the projecting roof of the bay window beneath him hid her from sight. He would have opened his window and leaned out to glimpse her, could he have done so without noise. Where was she? In the garden porch? She did not reappear. She might be capable of getting into the house. She might even then actually be getting into the house.  Supposing that she was in the habit of surreptitiously visiting the house and had found a key to fit one of the doors. Or supposing that she could push up a window. She would doubtless mount the stairs and trap him. Absurd these speculations as absurd as a nightmare. But they influenced his conduct. He felt himself forced to provide against the wildest hazards. Abruptly he departed from the bedroom and descended the stairs, stamping, clumping with all possible noise. In addition he whistled. This was to warn her to fly. He stopped in the hall until she had had time to fly, and then he lit a match as a signal which surely no carelessness could miss. He could have gone direct by the front door into the street, so leaving her to her odd self. But instead he drew back the slip-catch of the garden door and opened it, self-consciously humming a tune. She was within the porch. She turned deliberately to look at him. He could feel his heartbeats, his cheeks burned, and yet he was chilled. Who's there? he asked. But he did not succeed to his own satisfaction in acting alarmed surprise. Me! said Hilda, challengingly, rudely. Oh! he murmured at a loss. Did you want me? Did anyone want me? Yes, she said. I just wanted to ask you something, she paused. He could not see her scarling, but it seemed to him that she must be. He remembered that she had rather thick eyebrows, and that when she brought them nearer together by a frown, they made almost one continuous line, the effect of which was not attractive. Did you know I was in here? Yes, that's my bedroom window over there. I've left the gas up. And I saw you get through the hedge so I came down.   I knew you'd got into the house by the light. But I only struck a match a second ago, he protested. Excuse me, she said coldly. I saw a light quite five minutes ago. Oh, yes, he apologized. I remember when I came up the cellar steps. I dare say you think it's very queer of me, she continued. Not at all, he said quickly. Yes, you do, she bitterly insisted. But I want to know, did you mean it when you said, you know at supper, that there's no virtue in believing? Did I say there was no virtue in believing, he stammeringly demanded? Of course you did, she remonstrated. Do you mean to say you can say a thing like that and then forget about it? If it's true, it's one of the most wonderful things that were ever said. And that's why I wanted to know if you meant it, or whether you were only saying it because it sounded clever. That's what they're always doing in that house, you know, being clever? Her tone was invariably harsh. Yes, he said simply I meant it, why? You did? Her voice seemed to search for insincerity. Well, thank you, that's all, it may mean a new life to me. I'm always trying to believe, always, aren't you? I don't know, you mumble, but how do you mean? Well, you know, she said as if impatiently smashing his pretence of not understanding her, but perhaps you do believe. He thought he detected scorn for a facile believer. No, he said, I don't, and it doesn't worry you.  No, he said. Don't you ever think about it? No, not often. Charlie does. Has he told you? So she talks to the Sunday too, he reflectant. Yes, but of course I quite see why it doesn't worry you, if you honestly think there's no virtue in believing. Well, said Edwin, is there? The more he looked at it through her eyes, the more wonderful profundities he discovered in that remark of his, which at the time of uttering it had appeared to him a simple platitude. It went exceedingly deep in many directions. I hope you're right, she replied. Her voice shook. Part 5 There was silence. To ease the strain of his self-consciousness, Edwin stepped down from the stone floor of the porch to the garden. He felt rain, and he noticed that the sky was very much darker. By Jove, he said, it's beginning to rain, I do believe. I thought it wouldn't, she answered. A squall of wind suddenly surged rustling through the high trees in the garden of the Orgreaves, and the next instant threw a handful of wild raindrops on his cheek. You'd better stand against the other wall, he suggested. You'll catch it there, if it keeps on. She obeyed. He returned to the porch, but remained in the exposed portion of it. Better come here, she said, indicating somehow her side. Oh, I'm all right. You needn't be afraid of me, she snapped. He grinned awkwardly, but said nothing, for he could not express his secret resentment. He considered the girl to be of exceedingly unpleasant manners. Would you mind telling me the time, she asked? He took out his watch, but peer as he might, he could not discern the position of the hands. Half a second, he said, and struck a match. The match was blown out before he could look at the dial, but by its momentary flash he saw Hilda pressed against the wall. Her lips were tight, her eyes blazing, her hands clenched. She frowned, she was pale, and especially pale by contrast with the black of her plain austere dress. If you'll come into the house, he said, I can get a light there. The door was ajar. No thanks, she declined. It doesn't really matter what time it is, does it? Good night. He divined that she was offering her hand. He clasped it blindly in the dark. He could not refuse to shake hands. Her hand gave his a feverish and lingering squeeze, which was like a contradicting message in the dark night, as though she was sending through her hand a secret denial of her spoken accents and her frown. He forgot to answer her good night.  Yes, only six yards off on the other side of the boundary wall was the public road. And he, standing hidden there in the porch with this girl, whom he had seen for the first time that evening. It was the male cart rushing to connipe. She did not move. She had said good night and shaken hands, and yet she remained. They stood speechless. Then without warning, after perhaps a minute that seemed like ten minutes, she walked away slowly into the rain. And as she did so, Edwin could just see her straightening her spine and throwing back her shoulders with a proud gesture. I say Miss Leswayes, he called in a low voice, but he had no notion of what he wanted to say. Only her departure had unlocked his throat. She made no sign. Again he grinned awkwardly, a little ashamed of her, and a little ashamed of himself because neither had behaved as woman or man of the world. After a short interval he followed in her steps, as far as the gap in the hedge which he did not find easily. There was no sign of her. The gas burned serenely in her bedroom, and the window was open.  The rain had apparently seized. Part 6 Well, that's an eye-opener, that is, he murmured, and thereby expressed the situation, of all the damned impudence. He somewhat overstated his feelings because he was posing a little to himself, an accident that sooner or later happens to every man. And she'll go back and make out to Master Tom that she's just had a stroll in the garden—garden indeed— and yet they're all so fearfully stuck on her.  And he murmured aloud, So that's how they carry on, is it? He meant, of course, women. He was very genuinely astounded. But the chief of all his acute sensations in that moment was pride, sheer pride. He thought what ninety-nine men out of a hundred would have thought in such circumstances? She's taken a fancy to me. Useless to call him a conceited coxcomb, from disgust that he did not conform to a sentimentally idealistic standard. He thought, She's taken a fancy to me, and he was not a conceited coxcomb. He exalted in the thought. Nothing had ever before so startled and uplifted him. He constituted the supreme experience of his career as a human being. The delightful and stimulating experience of his evening in the house of the Orgreaves sank into unimportance by the side of it. The new avenues towards joy which had been revealed to him appeared now to be quite unexciting paths. He took them for granted. And he forgot the high and serious mood of complex emotion in which he had entered the new house. Music and the exotic flavours of a foreign language seemed a little thing, in comparison with the feverish hand clasp of the girl whom he so peculiarly disliked. The lifeless hand which he had taken in the drawing-room of the Orgreaves could not be the same hand as that which had closed intimately on his under the porch. She must have two right hands. An even more base than his coxcombry, he despised her because it was he, Edwin, to whom she had taken a fancy. He had not sufficient self-confidence to justify her fancy in his own eyes. His argument actually was that no girl worth having could have taken a fancy to him at sight. Thus he condemned her for her faith in him, as for his historic remark about belief. Well, there might or might not be something in that. Perhaps there was something in it. One instant he admired it, and the next he judged it glib and superficial. Moreover, he had conceivably absorbed it from a book. But even if it were an original epigrammatic pearl, was that an adequate reason for her following him to an empty house at dead of night? Of course, an overwhelming passion might justify such behaviour. He could recall cases in literature. Yes, he had got so far as to envisage the possibility of overwhelming passion. Then all these speculations disconcertingly vanished, and Hilda presented herself to his mind as a girl intensely religious, who would shrink from no unconventionality in the pursuit of truth. He did not much care for this theory of Hilda, nor did it convince him. Imagine marrying a girl like that, he said to himself disdainfully, and he made a catalogue of her defects of person and of character. She was severe, satiric, merciless. And I suppose, if I were to put my finger up, thus ran on his despicable ideas. Janet all grieved now. Janet had every quality that he could desire that he could even think of. Janet was bomb. You needn't be afraid that unpleasant girl had said, and he had only been able to grin in reply. Still pride, intense masculine pride. There was one thing he had liked about her, that straightening of the spine and setting back of the shoulders as she left him. She had in her some tinge of the heroic. He quitted the garden, and as soon as he was in the street he remembered that he had not pulled to the garden door of the house. Dashed the confounded thing he exploded returning. But he was not really annoyed. He would not have been really annoyed, even if he had had to return from halfway down Trafalgar Road. Everything was a trifle, save that a girl had run after him under such romantic circumstances. The circumstances were not strictly romantic, but they so seemed to him. Going home he did not meet a soul. Only in the middle distance of one of the lower side streets he aspired a policeman. Trafalgar Road was a solitude of bright and forlorn gas lamps and dark, excluding facades. Suddenly he came to the corner of Wedgwood Street. He had started from Bleak Ridge. He had arrived at home. The interval between these two events was a perfect blank, save for the policeman. He could not recall having walked all the way down the road, and as he put the key into the door he was not in the least disturbed by the thought that his father might not have gone to bed. He went upstairs with a certain swaggering clatter as who should say to all sleepers and bullies, you be damned, I don't care for any of you, something's happened to me. And he mused if anybody had told me this afternoon that before midnight I should— CHAPTER X THE CENTINARY It was immediately after this that the centenary, mispronounced in every manner conceivable, began to obsess the town. Superior and aloof persons like the Orgreaves had for weeks heard a good deal of vague talk about the centenary from people whom intellectually they despised, and had come descended to the centenary as an amiable and excusable affair which lacked interest for them. They were wrong. Edwin had gone further, and had sniffed at the centenary to everyone except his father, and Edwin was especially wrong. On the antipenultimate day of June he first uneasily suspected that he had committed a fault of appraisement. That was when his father briskly announced that by request of the mayor or places of business in the town would be closed in honour of the centenary. It was the centenary of the establishment of Sunday schools. Edwin hated Sunday schools. Nay, he venomously resented them, though they had long ceased to incommode him. They were connected in his memory with atrocious tedium, peatistic insincerity, and humiliating contacts. At the bottom of his mind he still regarded them as a malicious device of parents, for wilfully harassing and persecuting inoffensive, helpless children. And he had a particular grudge against them because he alone of his father's offspring had been chosen for the nauseating inflection. Why should his sisters have been spared and he doomed? He became really impatient when Sunday schools were under discussion, and from mere irrational annoyance he would not admit that Sunday schools had any good qualities whatever. He knew nothing of their history and wished to know nothing. Nevertheless, when the day of the centenary dawned and dawned in splendour, he was compelled, even within himself, to treat Sunday schools with more consideration. And in fact, for two or three days previously the gathering force of public opinion had been changing his attitude from stern hatred to a sort of half-hearted derision. Now the derision was mysteriously transformed into an inimical respect. By what? By he knew not what. By something without a name in the air which the mind breathes. He felt it at six o'clock air he arose. Lying in bed he felt it. The day was to be a festival. The shop would not open, nor the printing office. The work of preparing for the removal would be suspended. The way of daily life would be quite changed. He was free, that was nearly free. He said to himself that of course his excited father would expect him to witness the celebrations and to wear his best clothes, and that was a bore. But therein he was not quite honest, for he secretly wanted to witness the celebrations and to wear his best clothes. His curiosity was hungry. He admitted what many had been asserting for weeks, that the centenary was going to be a big thing, and his social instinct wished him to share in the pride of it. It's a grand day, exclaimed his father, cheerful and all-glossy as he looked out on duck square before breakfast. It'll be rare and hot. And it was a grand day. One of the dazzling spectacular blue and gold days of early summer, and Maggie was in finery, and Edwin too, useless for him to pretend that a big thing was not a foot, and his father in a white waistcoat. Breakfast was positively talkative, though the conversation was nought but a repeating and repeating of what the arrangements were and of what everybody had decided to do. The three lingered over breakfast because there was no reason to hurry. And then even Maggie left the sitting-room without a care, for though Clara was coming for dinner, Mrs. Nixon could be trusted. Mrs. Nixon, if she had time, would snatch half an hour in the afternoon to see what remained to be seen of the show. Families must eat. And if Mrs. Nixon was stopped by duty from assisting at this centenary, she must hope to be more at liberty for the next. Part II At nine o'clock in a most delicious mood of idleness, Edwin strolled into the shop. His father had taken down one shutter from the doorway and slanted it carelessly against another on the pavement. A blind man or a drunkard might have stumbled against it and knocked it over. The letters had been hastily opened. Edwin could see them lying in disorder on the desk in the little office. The dust sheets thought the day was Sunday. He stood in the narrow aperture and looked forth. Duck Square was a shimmer of sunshine. The dragon and the duck and the other public house at the top corner seemed, as usual, stolidly confident in the thirst of populations. But the borough dining rooms next door, but one to the corner of Duck Square and Wedgewood Street, were not as usual. The cart of Doi the Butcher had halted Leiden in front of the borough dining rooms. And the anxious proprietor attended by his two little daughters, aproned and sleeved for hard work in imitation of their stout, perspiring mother, was accepting unusual joints from it. Ticklish weather for meat. You could see that from the man's gestures. Even on ordinary days those low-ceiling dining rooms stretching far back from the street in a complicated vista of interiors were apt to be crowded, for the quality of the eight-penny dinner could be relied upon. Edwin imagined what a stifling, deafening, inferno of culinary odours and clatter they would be at one o'clock—at two o'clock. Three hokey-pokey ice-cream hand-carts, one after another, turned the corner of Trafalgar Road and passed in front of him along Wedgewood Street. Three. The men pushing them, one in Italian, seemed to wear nothing but shirt and trousers, with a straw hat above and vague slippers below. The steam-cart lumbered up out of the valley of the road and climbed duck-bank, throwing its enormous shadow to the left.  An irregular current of finery was setting into the gates of the Wesleyan school-yard at the top of the bank, and ceremoniously bedecked individuals of all ages hurried in this direction and in that, some with wide handkerchiefs over flowered hats, a few beneath parasols. All the town's store of Sunday clothes was in use.  Hornbrokers had full tills and empty shops for twenty-four hours. Then a procession appeared out of Moor Thorn Road, from behind the Wesleyan Chapelkeeper's house, and as it appeared it burst into music. First a purple banner upheld on crimson poles with gilded lance-points, then a brass band in full note, and then children, children, children, little, middling, and big. As the procession curved down into Jafalga Road, it grew in stature, until, towards the end of it, the children were as tall as the adults, who walked fussily as hens, proudly as peacocks on its flank. And last came a railway lorry on which dozens of tiny infants had been penned, and the horses of the lorry were ribboned, and their mains and tails tightly plattered. On that grand day they could not be allowed to protect themselves against flies. They were sacrificial animals. A power not himself drew Edwin to the edge of the pavement. He could read on the immense banner, Moor Thorn St John's Sunday Score. These then were church folk, and indeed the next moment he described a curate among the peacocks, the procession made another curve into Wedgwood Street, on its way to the supreme rendezvous in St Luke's Square. The band blared, the crimson cheeks of the trumpeters sucked in and out, the drum man leaned backwards to balance his burden, and banged. Every soul of the variegated company, big and little, was in a perspiration. The staggering bearers of the purple banner who held the great poles in leaven sockets slung from the shoulders, and their acolytes before and behind who kept the banner upright by straining at crimson halyards, sweated most of all. Every foot was grey with dust, and the dark trousers of boys and men showed dust. The steamy whiff of humanity struck Edwin's nostrils. Up hill and down dale the procession had already walked over two miles, yet it was alert, joyous, and expectant, a chattering procession. From the lorry rose a continuous faint shriek of infantile voices. Edwin was saddened as by pathos. I believe that as he gazed at the procession waggling away along Wedgwood Street, he saw Sunday schools in a new light. And that was the opening of the day. There were to be dozens of such processions, some would start only in the town itself, but others were coming from the villages like Red Cow, five sultry miles off. Part III A young woman under a sunshade came slowly along Wedgwood Street. She was wearing a certain discreet amount of finery, but her clothes did not fit well. And a thin mantle was arranged so as to lessen as much as possible the obviousness of the fact that she was about to become a mother. The expression of her face was discontented and capcious. Edwin did not see her until she was close upon him, and then he immediately became self-conscious and awkward. Hello, Clara! he greeted her with his instinctive, warm, transient smile, holding out his hand sheepishly. It was a most extraordinary and amazing thing that he could never regard the ceremony of shaking hands with a relative as other than an affectation of punctilio. Happily he was not wearing his hat. Had it been on his head he would never have taken it off, and yet would have cursed himself for not doing so. We are grand, exclaimed Clara, limply taking his hand and dropping it as an article of no interest. In her voice there was still some echo of former sprightliness. The old Clara in her had not till that moment beheld the smart and novel curves of Edwin's shillito suit, and the satiric cry came unbidden from her heart. Edwin gave an uneasy laugh which was merely the outlet for his disgust. Not that he was especially disgusted with Clara, for indeed marriage had assuaged a little latidiousness of some of her mannerisms, even if it had taken away from her charm. He was disgusted more comprehensively by the tradition universal in his class and in most classes according to which relatives could not be formally polite to one another. He obeyed the tradition as slavishly as anyone, but often said to himself that he would violate the sacred rule if only he could count on a suitable response. He knew that he could not count on a suitable response, and he had no mind to be in the excruciating position of one who, having started God Save the Queen at a meeting, finds himself alone in the song. Why could not he and Clara behave together as, for instance, he and Janet Orgrieve would behave together, with dignity, with worldliness, with mutual deference? But no, it was impossible and would ever be so. They had been too brutally intimate, and the result was irremediable. She's got no room to talk about personal appearance anyway, he thought sardonically. There was another extraordinary and amazing thing. He was ashamed of her condition. He could not help the feeling. In vain, he said to himself that her condition was natural and proper. In vain he remembered the remark of the sage that a young woman in her condition was the most beautiful sight in the world. He was ashamed of it, and he did not think it beautiful, he thought it ugly. It worried him. What, his sister? Other men's sisters yes, but his? He forgot that he himself had been born. He could scarcely bear to look at Clara. Her face was thin and changed in colour. Her eyes were unnaturally lustrous and large, bold and fatigued. She looked ill, really ill, and she was incredibly unornamental. And this was she whom he could remember as a graceful child. And it was all perfectly correct and even laudable. So much so that young Clara undoubtedly looked down now, as from a superior height, upon both himself and Maggie. Where's father, she asked?  Oh, somewhere about. I expect he'll be along in a minute. Albert coming? He followed her into the shop. Albert? She protested, shocked. Albert come? Possibly come to one o'clock. Didn't you know he's one of the principal stewards in St. Luke's Square? He says we aren't to wait dinner for him if he isn't prompt. Oh, Edwin replied and put the sunshade on the counter. Clara sat down heavily on a chair and began to fan herself with a handkerchief. In spite of the heat of exercise her face was of a pallid yellow. I suppose you're going to stay here all morning, Edwin inquired. Well said Clara, you don't see me walking up and down the streets all morning, do you? Albert said I was to be sure and go upstairs at once and not move. He said there'd be plenty to see for a long time yet from the sitting-room window, and then afterwards I could lie down. Albert said, Albert said, Clara's intonation of this frequent phrase always jarred on Edwin. It implied that Albert was the supreme fount of wisdom and authority in Bursley, whereas to Edwin Albert was in fact a mere, tedious, self-important manufacturer in a small way, with whom he had no ideas in common. A decent fellow at bottom, the fastidious Edwin was bound to admit to himself by reason of slight glimpses which he had had of Albert's uncouth good nature, but peatistic, overbearing, and without humour. Where's Maggie? Clara demanded. I think she's putting her things on, said Edwin. But didn't she understand I was coming early? Clara's voice was quarrelous and she frown. I don't know, said Edwin. He felt that if they remained together for hours he and Clara would never rise above this plane of conversation, personal, factual, perfectly devoid of wide interest. They would never reach an exchange of general ideas they never had done. He did not think that Clara had any general ideas. I hear you're getting frightfully thick with the all-greaves Clara observed with a malicious accent and smile, as if to imply he was getting frightfully above himself, and simultaneously that the all-greaves were after all no better than other people. Who told you that? He walked towards the doorway uneasily. The worst was that he could not successfully pretend that these sisterly attacks were lost on him. Never mind who told me, said Clara, her voice took on a sudden charming roguish quality, and he could hear again the girl of fourteen. His heart at once softened to her. The impartial and unmoved spectator that sat somewhere in Edwin, as in everybody who possesses artistic sensibility, watching his secret life as from a conning tower, thought how strange this was. He stared out into the street, and then a face appeared at the aperture left by the removed shutter. It was Janet all-greaves, and it hesitated. Edwin gave a nervous start. Part IV Janet was all in white again, and her sunshade was white with regular circular holes in it, to let through spots of sunlight which flecked her face. Edwin had not recovered from the blow of her apparition just at that moment when he saw Hilda Leswayes beyond her. Hilda was slate-colored and had a black sunshade. His heart began to thump. It might have been a dramatic and dangerous crisis that had suddenly come about, and to Edwin the situation did in fact present itself as critical. His sister behind and these two so different girls in front, yet there was nothing critical in it whatsoever. He shook hands, as in a dream, wondering what he should do, trying to summon out of himself the man of the world. Do come in, he urged them, hoping they would refuse. Oh no, we mustn't come in, said Janet, smiling gratefully. Hilda did not smile. She had not even smiled in shaking hands, and she had shaken hands without conviction. Edwin heard a hurried step in the shop and then the voice of Maggie, maternal and protective, in a low exclamation of surprise. You dear, and then the sound of a smacking kiss and Clara's voice, thin, weak and confiding. Yes, I've come. Come upstairs, do, said Maggie imploringly. Come and be comfortable. Then steps seizing to be heard as the sisters left the shop at the back. The solicitude of Maggie for Clara during the last few months had seemed wonderful to Edwin, as also Clara's occasional childlike acceptance of it. But you must come in, he said more boldly to the visitors, asking himself whether either Janet or Hilda had caught sight of his sisters in the gloom of the shop. They entered, Hilda stiffly. Each with the same gesture closed her parasol before passing through the slit between the shutters into the deep shade. But whereas Janet smiled with pleasant anticipation as though she was going into heaven, Hilda wringled her forehead when her parasol would not subside at the first touch. Janet talked of the centenary, said they had decided only that morning to come down into the town and see whatever was to be seen, said with an angelic air of apologizing to the centenary that up at Lane End House they had certainly been underestimating its importance and its interest as a spectacle, said that it was most astonishing to see all the shops closed. An Edwin interjected vague replies pulling the chair out of the little ebonized cubicle so that they could both sit down, and Hilda remained silent. And Edwin's thoughts were diving darkly beneath Janet's chatter as in a deep sea beneath light waves. He heard and answered Janet with a minor part of his being that functioned automatically. She's a caution reflected the main Edwin, obsessed in secret by Hilda Lesway's. Who could have guessed by looking at her that only three evenings before she had followed him in the night to question him to squeeze his hand and to be rude to him? Did Janet know? Did anyone? No. He felt sure that he and she had the knowledge of that interview to themselves. She sat down glum almost glowering. She was no more worldly than Maggie and Clara were worldly. Then they she had no more skill to be sociable, and in appearance she was scarcely more stylish. But she was not as they, and it was useless vindictively to disparage her by pretending that she was. She could be passionate concerning Victor Hugo. She was capable of disturbing herself about the abstract question of belief. He had not heard her utter a single word in the way of common girlish conversation. The doubt again entered his mind whether indeed her visit to the porch of the new house had been due to a genuine interest in abstract questions, and not to a fancy for himself. Yes, he reflected that must have been it. In two days his pride in the affair had lost its first acuteness, though it had continued to brighten every moment of his life, and though he had not seized to regret that he had no intimate friend, to whom he could recount it in solemn and delicious intimacy. Now philosophically he stamped on his pride as on a fire, and he effected to be relieved at the decision that the girl had been moved by naught but a sort of fanaticism. But he was not relieved by the decision. The decision itself was not genuine. He still clung to the notion that she had followed him for himself. He preferred that she should have taken a fancy to him, even though he discovered no charm in her, no beauty, no solace, nothing but matter for repulsion. He wanted her to think of him in spite of his distaste for her, to think of him hopelessly.  And he was, but he did not care.  His pride fled up again, and instead of stamping he blew on it.  You think you can play with me, but you can't. He was as violent against her as if she had done him an injury instead of having squeezed his hand in the dark. Was it not injurious to have snapped at him when he refused her invitation to stand by her against the wall in the porch? You needn't be afraid. Janet would never had said such a thing. If only she resembled Janet. During all this private soliloquizing Edwin's mien of mild nervousness never hardened to betray his ferocity.  The paper boy arrayed richly, slipped apologetically into the shop. He had certain packets to take out for delivery, and he was late. Edwin nodded to him distantly. The conversation languished. Then the head of Mr. Orgrieve appeared in the aperture. The architect seemed amused. Edwin could not understand how he had ever stood in awe of Mr. Orgrieve, who, with all his distinction and expansiveness, was the most companiable person in the world.  Do you know Mr. Edwin he poo-pooed us coming down? He said he was far too busy for such childish things as centenaries. And look at him! Mr. Orgrieves, whose suit, hat, and neck-tie were a harmony of elegant greys, smiled with paternal ease and swung his cane. Come along now, don't let's miss anything. Come along.  Did you ever see such a child, murmur Janet, adoring him? Edwin turned to the paper boy. Just find my father before you go, he commanded. Tell him I've gone, and ask him if you are to put the shutter up. The paper boy respectfully promised obedience, and Edwin was glad that the forbidding Hilda was there to witness his authority. Janet went out first, Hilda hesitated, and Edwin, having taken his hat from its hook in the cubicle, stood attending her at the aperture. He was sorry that he could not run upstairs for a walking stick. At last she seemed to decide to leave, yet left with apparent reluctance. Edwin followed, giving a final glance at the boy who was tying a parcel hurriedly. Mr. Orgrieve and his daughter were ten yards off, arm in arm. Edwin fell into step with Hilda less ways. Janet looked round, and smiled, and beckoned. I wonder, said Edwin, to himself, what the devil's going to happen now? I'll take my oath she stayed behind on purpose. Well, this swaggering audacity was within. Without, even a skilled observer could have seen nothing but a faint, sheepish smile, and his heart was thumping again. End of volume 2 chapter 10 volume 2 chapter 11 of Clayhanger by Arnold Bennett this LibriVox recording is in the public domain chapter 11 the bottom of the square another procession that of the old church Sunday school came up with standards floating and drums beating out of the steepness of Woodison bank and turned into Wedgewood Street which thence forward was loosely thronged by procession and sightseers. The importance of the festival was now quite manifest, for at the end of the street could be seen St. Luke's Square massed with human beings in movement. Osmond Orgrieve and his daughter were lost to view in the brave crowd, but after a little Edwin distinctly saw Janet Sunshade leave Wedgewood Street at the corner of the Wedgewood Institution and bob slowly into the Cockyard which was a narrow thoroughfare leading to the marketplace and the town hall and so to the top of St. Luke's Square. He said nothing and kept straight on along Wedgewood Street past the covered market. I hope you didn't catch cold in the rain the other night, he remarked, grimly as he thought. I should have thought it would have been you who were more likely to catch cold, Hilda replied in her curt manner. She looked in front of her, the words seemed to him to carry a double meaning. Suddenly she moved her head, glanced full at him for an instant and glanced behind her. Where are they, she inquired. The others, aren't they in front? They must be somewhere about. Unless she also had marked their deviation into the Cockyard, why had she glanced behind her in asking where they were? She knew as well as he that they had started in front. He could only deduce that she had been as willing as himself to lose Mr. Orgrieve and Janet. Just then an acquaintance raised his hat to Edwin in acknowledgment of the lady's presence and he responded with pride. Whatever his private attitude to Hilda, he was undeniably proud to be seen in the streets with a disdainful, aloof girl unknown to the town. It was an experience entirely new to him, and it flattered him. He desired to look long at her face to examine her expression, to make up his mind about her, but he could not because they were walking side by side. The sole manifestation of her that he could judge was her voice. It was a remarkable voice, rather deep, with a sort of chiseled intonation. The cadence of it fell on the ear softly and yet ruthlessly, and when she had finished speaking you became aware of silence as after a solemn utterance of destiny. What she happened to have been saying seemed to be immaterial to the effect, which was physical, vibratory. At the border of St. Luke's Square, junction of eight streets, true centre of the town's traffic and the sole rectangular open space enclosed completely by shops, they found a line of constables which yielded only two processions and to the bearers of special rosettes. The square, as it was called by those who inhabited it, had been chosen for the historic scene of the day because of its preeminent claim and suitability. The least of its advantages, its slope, from the top of which it could be easily dominated by a speaker on a platform, would alone have secured for it the honours of the centenary. As the police cordon closed on the procession from the old church, definitely dividing the spectators from the spectacle, it grew clear that the spectators were in the main a shabby lot, persons without any social standing, unkempt idlers good for nothing's wastrels, clay, white and pot-girls, who had to work even on that day, and who had run out for a few moments in their flannel aprons to stare, and a few score ragamuffins whose parents were too poor or too careless to make them superficially presentable enough to figure in a procession. Nearly the whole respectability of the town was either fussily marshalling processions or gazing down at them in comfort from the multitudinous open windows of the square. The leads over the projecting windows of Baines, the chief drapers, were crowded with members of the ruling caste. And even within the square it could be seen between the towering backs of Constables that the spectacle itself was chiefly made up of indigence bedecked. The thousands of perspiring children, penned like sheep and driven to and fro like sheep by anxious and official rosettes, nearly all had the air of poverty decently putting the best face on itself. They were nearly all beneath their vague sense of importance, wistful with the resigned fatalism of the young and of the governed. They knew not precisely why they were there, but merely that they had been commended to be there, and that they were hot and thirsty, and that for weeks they had been learning hymns by heart for this occasion, and that the occasion was glorious. Many of the rosettes themselves had a poor driven look. None of these bought suits at chili-toes nor millinery at Baines. None of them gave orders for printing, nor had preferences in the form of ledges, nor held views on Victor Hugo, nor drank wine, nor yearned for perfection in the art of social intercourse. To Edwin, who was just beginning to touch the planes of worldliness and of dilettantism in art, to Edwin with the mysterious and haughty creature at his elbow, they seemed to have no more in common with himself and her than animals had. And he wondered by virtue of what decree he, in the chili-toes suit, and the grand house waiting for him up at Bleak Ridge, had been lifted up to splendid ease above the squalid and pitiful human welter. Part 3 Such musings were scarcely more than subconscious in him. He stood now a few inches behind Hilda, and above these thoughts and beneath the stir and strident glitter and noise of the crawling ant-heap his mind was intensely occupied with Hilda's ear and her nostril. He could watch her now at leisure, for the changeful interest of the scene made conversation unnecessary and even inept.  What a nostril! Every curve of her features seemed to express a fine arrogant acrimony and harsh trochulance. At any rate, she was not half alive. She was alive in every particle of herself. She gave off antipathies as a liquid gives off vapour. Moods passed across her intent face like a wind over a field. Apparently she was so rapt as to be unaware that her sunshade was not screening her. Sadness prevailed among her moods. The mild Edwin said secretly, By Jove, if I had you to myself, my lady, I'd soon teach you a thing or two. He was quite sincere, too. His glance roving discovered Mrs. Hamps above him ten feet over his head at the corner of the Baines balcony. He flushed, for he perceived that she must have been waiting to catch him. She was at her most stately and most radiant, wonderful in lavender, and she poured out on him the full opulence of a proud recognition. Everybody should be made aware that Mrs. Hamps was greeting her adored nephew, who was with a lady friend of the Orgreaves. She leaned slightly from her cane chair. Isn't it a beautiful sight, she cried. Her voice sounded thin and weak against the complex din of the square. He nodded, smiling. Oh, I think it's a beautiful sight, she cried once more ecstatic. People turned to see whom she was addressing. But though he nodded again he did not think it was a beautiful sight. He thought it was a disconcerting sight, a sight vexatious and troublesome, and he was in no way tranquilized by the reflection that every town in England had the same sight to show at that hour. And moreover, anticipating their next interview, he could in fancy plainly hear his Aunt Clara saying, with hopeless longing, benignancy, Oh, Edwin, how I do wish I could have seen you in the square bearing your part. Hilda seemed to be oblivious of Mrs. Hamps' ejaculations, but immediately afterwards she straightened her back with a gesture that Edwin knew, and staring into his eyes said as it were resentfully, well, they evidently aren't here, and looked with scorn among the sightseers. It was clear that the crowd contained nobody of the rank and stamp of the Orgreaves. They may have gone up to the Cockyard, if you know where that is, said Edwin. Well, don't you think we'd better find them somehow?