Clayhanger, Arnold Bennett [best novels to read in english .txt] 📗

pose.

"What about money?"

"Well," said Edwin, endeavouring, and failing, to find courage to put a little sharpness into his tone, "I couldn't marry on seventeen-and-six a week, could I?"

At the age of twenty-five, at the end of nine years' experience in the management and the accountancy of a general printing and stationery business, Edwin was receiving seventeen shillings and sixpence for a sixty-five-hour week's work, the explanation being that on his father's death the whole enterprise would be his, and that all money saved was saved for him. Out of this sum he had to pay ten shillings a week to Maggie towards the cost of board and lodging, so that three half-crowns remained for his person and his soul. Thus he could expect no independence of any kind until his father's death, and he had a direct and powerful interest in his father's death. Moreover, all his future, and all unpaid reward of his labours in the past, hung hazardous on his father's goodwill. If he quarrelled with him, he might lose everything. Edwin was one of a few odd-minded persons who did not regard this arrangement as perfectly just, proper, and in accordance with sound precedent. But he was helpless. His father would tell him, and did tell him, that he had fought no struggles, suffered no hardship, had no responsibility, and that he was simply coddled from head to foot in cotton-wool.

"I say you must go your own road," said his father.

"But at this rate I should never be able to marry!"

"Do you reckon," asked Darius, with mild cold scorn, "as you getting married will make your services worth one penny more to my business?" And he waited an answer with the august calm of one who is aware that he is unanswerable. But he might with equal propriety have tied his son's hands behind him and then diverted himself by punching his head.

"I do all I can," said Edwin meekly.

"And what about getting orders?" Darius questioned grimly. "Didn't I offer you two and a half per cent on all new customers you got yourself? And how many have you got? Not one. I give you a chance to make extra money and you don't take it. Ye'd sooner go running about after girls."

This was a particular grievance of the father against the son: that the son brought no grist to the mill in the shape of new orders.

"But how can I get orders?" Edwin protested.

"How did I get 'em? How do I get 'em? Somebody has to get 'em." The old man's lips were pressed together, and he waved "The Christian News" slightly in his left hand.

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FOUR.

In a few minutes both their voices had risen. Darius, savage, stooped to replace with the shovel a large burning coal that had dropped on the tiles and was sending up a column of brown smoke.

"I tell you what I shall do," he said, controlling himself bitterly. "It's against my judgement, but I shall put you up to a pound a week at the New Year, if all goes well, of course. And it's good money, let me add."

He was entirely serious, and almost sincere. He loathed paying money over to his son. He was convinced that in an ideal world sons would toil gratis for their fathers who lodged and fed them and gifted them with the reversion of excellent businesses.

"But what good's a pound a week?" Edwin demanded, with the querulousness of one who is losing hope.

"What good's a pound a week!" Darius repeated, hurt and genuinely hurt. "Let me tell you that in my time young men married on a pound a week, and glad to! A pound a week!" He finished with a sardonic exclamation.

"I couldn't marry Miss Lessways on a pound a week," Edwin murmured, in despair, his lower lip hanging. "I thought you might perhaps be offering me a partnership by this time!" Possibly in some mad hour a thought so wild had indeed flitted through his brain.

"Did you?" rejoined Darius. And in the fearful grimness of the man's accents was concealed all his intense and egoistic sense of possessing in absolute ownership the business which the little boy out of the Bastille had practically created. Edwin did not and could not understand the fierce strength of his father's emotion concerning the business. Already in tacitly agreeing to leave Edwin the business after his own death, Darius imagined himself to be superbly benevolent.

"And then there would be house-furnishing, and so on," Edwin continued.

"What about that fifty pounds?" Darius curtly inquired.

Edwin was startled. Never since the historic scene had Darius made the slightest reference to the proceeds of the Building Society share.

"I haven't spent all of it," Edwin muttered.

Do what he would with his brain, the project of marriage and house-tenancy and a separate existence obstinately presented itself to him as fantastic and preposterous. Who was he to ask so much from destiny? He could not feel that he was a man. In his father's presence he never could feel that he was a man. He remained a boy, with no rights, moral or material.

"And if as ye say she's got money of her own--" Darius remarked, and was considerably astonished when the boy walked straight out of the room and closed the door.

It was his last grain of common sense that took Edwin in silence out of the room.

Miserable, despicable baseness! Did the old devil suppose that he would be capable of asking his wife to find the resources which he himself could not bring? He was to say to his wife: "I can only supply a pound a week, but as you've got money it won't matter." The mere notion outraged him so awfully that if he had stayed in the room there would have been an altercation and perhaps a permanent estrangement.

As he stood furious and impotent in the hall, he thought, with his imagination quickened by the memory of Mr Shushions: "When you're old, and I've got you"--he clenched his fists and his teeth--"when I've got you and you can't help yourself, by God it'll be my turn!"

And he meant it.

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FIVE.

He seized his overcoat and hat, and putting them on anyhow, strode out. The kitchen clock struck half-past seven as he left. Chapel-goers would soon be returning in a thin procession of twos and threes up Trafalgar Road. To avoid meeting acquaintances he turned down the side street, towards the old road which was a continuation of Aboukir Street. There he would be safe. Letting his overcoat fly open, he thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers. It was a cold night of mist. Humanity was separated from him by the semi-transparent blinds of the cottage windows, bright squares in the dark and enigmatic facades of the street. He was alone.

All along he had felt and known that this disgusting crisis would come to pass. He had hoped against it, but not with faith. And he had no remedy for it. What could he immediately and effectively do? He was convinced that his father would not yield. There were frequent occasions when his father was proof against reason, when his father seemed genuinely unable to admit the claim of justice, and this occasion was one of them. He could tell by certain peculiarities of tone and gesture. A pound a week! Assuming that he cut loose from his father, in a formal and confessed separation, he might not for a long time be in a position to earn more than a pound a week. A clerk was worth no more. And, except as responsible manager of a business, he could only go into the market as a clerk. In the Five Towns how many printing offices were there that might at some time or another be in need of a manager? Probably not one. They were all of modest importance, and directed personally by their proprietary heads. His father's was one of the largest... No! His father had nurtured and trained, in him, a helpless slave.

And how could he discuss such a humiliating question with Hilda? Could he say to Hilda: "See here, my father won't allow me more than a pound a week. What are we to do?" In what terms should he telegraph to her to-morrow?

He heard the rapid firm footsteps of a wayfarer overtaking him. He had no apprehension of being disturbed in his bitter rage. But a hand was slapped on his shoulder, and a jolly voice said--

"Now, Edwin, where's this road leading you to on a Sunday night?"

It was Osmond Orgreave who, having been tramping for exercise in the high regions beyond the Loop railway line, was just going home.

"Oh! Nowhere particular," said Edwin feebly.

"Working off Sunday dinner, eh?"

"Yes." And Edwin added casually, to prove that there was nothing singular in his mood: "Nasty night!"

"You must come in a bit," said Mr Orgreave.

"Oh no!" He shrank away.

"Now, now!" said Mr Orgreave masterfully. "You've got to come in, so you may as well give up first as last. Janet's in. She's like you and me, she's a bad lot,--hasn't been to church." He took Edwin by the arm, and they turned into Oak Street at the lower end.

Edwin continued to object, but Mr Orgreave, unable to scrutinise his face in the darkness, and not dreaming of an indiscretion, rode over his weak negatives, horse and foot, and drew him by force into the garden; and in the hall took his hat away from him and slid his overcoat from his shoulders. Mr Orgreave, having accomplished a lot of forbidden labour on that Sabbath, was playful in his hospitality.

"Prisoner! Take charge of him!" exclaimed Mr Orgreave shortly, as he pushed Edwin into the breakfast-room and shut the door from the outside. Janet was there, exquisitely welcoming, unconsciously pouring balm from her eyes. But he thought she looked graver than usual. Edwin had to enact the part of a man to whom nothing has happened. He had to behave as though his father was the kindest and most reasonable of fathers, as though Hilda wrote fully to him every day, as though he were not even engaged to Hilda. He must talk, and he scarcely knew what he was saying.

"Heard lately from Miss Lessways?" he asked lightly, or as lightly as he could. It was a splendid effort. Impossible to expect him to start upon the weather or the strike! He did the best he could.

Janet's eyes became troubled. Speaking in a low voice she said, with a glance at the door--

"I suppose you've not heard. She's married."

He did not move.

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SIX.

"Married?"

"Yes. It is rather sudden, isn't it?" Janet tried to smile, but she was exceedingly self-conscious. "To a Mr Cannon. She's known him for a very long time, I think."

"When?"

"Yesterday. I had a note this morning.