CLAYHANGER. Arnold Bennett

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СКАЧАТЬ a manner friendly but serious, a manner that assumed everything, a manner that begged the question, unconscious even that there was a question—

      “I shall be out the better part o’ tomorrow. I want ye to be sure to be in the shop all afternoon—I’ll tell you what for downstairs.” It was characteristic of him thus to make a mystery of business in front of the women.

      Edwin felt the net closing about him. Then he thought of one of those ‘posers’ which often present themselves to youths of his age.

      “But tomorrow’s Saturday,” he said, perhaps perkily. “What about the Bible class?”

      Six months previously a young minister of the Wesleyan Circuit, to whom Heaven had denied both a sense of humour and a sense of honour, had committed the infamy of starting a Bible class for big boys on Saturday afternoons. This outrage had appalled and disgusted the boyhood of Wesleyanism in Bursley. Their afternoon for games, their only fair afternoon in the desert of the week, to be filched from them and used against them for such an odious purpose as a Bible class! Not only Sunday school on Sunday afternoon, but a Bible class on Saturday afternoon! It was incredible. It was unbearable. It was gross tyranny, and nothing else. Nevertheless the young minister had his way, by dint of meanly calling upon parents and invoking their help. The scurvy worm actually got together a class of twelve to fifteen boys, to the end of securing their eternal welfare. And they had to attend the class, though they swore they never would, and they had to sing hymns, and they had to kneel and listen to prayers, and they had to listen to the most intolerable tedium, and to take notes of it. All this, while the sun was shining, or the rain was raining, on fields and streets and open spaces and ponds!

      Edwin had been trapped in the snare. His father, after only three words from the young minister, had yielded up his son like a burnt sacrifice— and with a casual nonchalance that utterly confounded Edwin. In vain Edwin had pointed out to his elders that a Saturday afternoon of confinement must be bad for his health. His attention had been directed to his eternal health. In vain he had pointed out that on wet Saturday afternoons he frequently worked at his home-lessons, which therefore might suffer under the regime of a Bible class. His attention had been directed to the peace which passeth understanding. So he had been beaten, and was secretly twitted by Clara as an abject victim. Hence it was with a keen and peculiar feeling of triumph, of hopelessly cornering the inscrutable generation which a few months ago had cornered him, that he demanded, perhaps perkily: “What about the Bible class?”

      “There’ll be no more Bible classing,” said his father, with a mild but slightly sardonic smile, as who should say: “I’m ready to make all allowances for youth; but I must get you to understand, as gently as I can, that you can’t keep on going to Bible classes for ever and ever.”

      Mrs Hamps said—

      “It won’t be as if you were at school. But I do hope you won’t neglect to study your Bible. Eh, but I do hope you’ll always find time for that, to your dying day!”

      “Oh—but I say—” Edwin began, and stopped.

      He was beaten by the mere effrontery of the replies. His father and his aunt (the latter of whom at any rate was a firm and confessed religionist, who had been responsible for converting Mr Clayhanger from Primitive Methodism to Wesleyan Methodism) did not trouble to defend their new position by argument. They made no effort to reconcile it with their position of a few months back, when the importance of heavenly welfare far exceeded the importance of any conceivable earthly welfare. The fact was that they had no argument. If God took precedence of knowledge and of health, he took precedence of a peddling shop! That was unanswerable.

      Eight.

      Edwin was dashed. His faith in humanity was dashed. These elders were not sincere. And as Mrs Hamps continued to embroider the original theme of her exhortation about the Bible, Edwin looked at her stealthily, and the doubt crossed his mind whether that majestic and vital woman was ever sincere about anything, even to herself—whether the whole of her daily existence, from her getting-up to her down-lying, was not a grandiose pretence.

      Not that he had the least desire to cling to the Bible class, even as an alternative to the shop! No! He was much relieved to be rid of the Bible class. What overset him was the crude illogicality of the new decree, and the shameless tacit admission of previous insincerity.

      Two hours later, as he stood idly at the window of his bedroom, watching the gas lamps of Trafalgar Road wax brighter in the last glooms of twilight, he was still occupied with the sham and the unreason and the lack of scruple suddenly revealed in the life of the elder generation. Unconsciously imitating a trick of his father’s when annoyed but calm, he nodded his head several times, and with his tongue against his teeth made the noise which in writing is represented by ‘tut-tut.’ Yet somehow he had always known that it would be so. At bottom, he was only pretending to himself to be shocked and outraged.

      His plans were no further advanced; indeed they were put back, for this Saturday afternoon vigil in the shop would be in some sort a symbolic temporary defeat for him. Why had he not spoken out clearly? Why was he always like a baby in presence of his father? The future was all askew for him. He had forgotten his tremendous serious resolves. The touch of the half-sovereign in his pocket, however, was comforting in a universe of discomfort.

      Chapter Eight.

      In the Shop.

      Table of Contents

      “Here, lad!” said his father to Edwin, as soon as he had scraped up the last crumbs of cheese from his plate at the end of dinner on the following day.

      Edwin rose obediently and followed him out of the room. Having waited at the top of the stairs until his father had reached the foot, he leaned forward as far as he could with one hand on the rail and the other pressing against the wall, swooped down to the mat at the bottom, without touching a single step on the way, and made a rocket-like noise with his mouth, He had no other manner of descending the staircase, unless he happened to be in disgrace. His father went straight to the desk in the corner behind the account-book window, assumed his spectacles, and lifted the lid of the desk.

      “Here!” he said, in a low voice. “Mr Enoch Peake is stepping in this afternoon to look at this here.” He displayed the proof—an unusually elaborate wedding card, which announced the marriage of Mr Enoch Peake with Mrs Louisa Loggerheads. “Ye know him as I mean?”

      “Yes,” said Edwin, “The stout man. The Cocknage Gardens man.”

      “That’s him. Well ye’ll tell him I’ve been called away. Tell him who ye are. Not but what he’ll know. Tell him I think it might be better”—Darius’s thick finger ran along a line of print—“if we put—‘widow of the late Simon Loggerheads Esquire,’ instead of—‘Esq.’ See? Otherwise it’s all right. Tell him I say as otherwise it’s all right. And ask him if he’ll have it printed in silver, and how many he wants, and show him this sample envelope. Now, d’ye understand?”

      “Yes,” said Edwin, in a tone to convey, not disrespectfully, that there was nothing to understand. Curious, how his father had the air of bracing all his intellect as if to a problem!

      “Then ye’ll take it to Big James, and he can start Chawner on it. Th’ job’s promised for Monday forenoon.”

      “Will Big James be working?” asked Edwin, for it was Saturday СКАЧАТЬ