‘No?’ he murmured weakly. And in one small unimportant region of his mind he reflected with astonishment upon the hesitating but convincing air with which Janet had lied to him. Janet!
‘After what you’ve done,’ – she paused, and went on with unblurred clearness – ‘after what you’ve insisted on doing, I don’t want there to be any misunderstanding. I’m not a widow. My husband’s in prison. He’ll be in prison for another six or seven years. That’s all I wanted to tell you.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ he breathed. ‘I’d no idea you’d had this trouble.’ What could he say? What could anybody have said?
‘I ought to have told you at once,’ she said. ‘I ought to have told you last night.’ Another pause. ‘Then perhaps you wouldn’t have come again this morning.’
‘Yes, I should!’ he asserted eagerly. ‘If you’re in a hole, you’re in a hole. What difference could it possibly make whether you were a widow or not?’
‘Oh!’ she said. ‘The wife of a convict … you know!’
He felt that she was evading the point.
She went on: ‘It’s a good thing my three old ladies don’t know, anyhow! … I’d no chance to tell you this morning. You were too much for me.’
‘I don’t care whose wife you are!’ he muttered, as though to himself, as though resenting something said by some one who had gone away and left him. ‘If you’re in a hole, you’re in a hole.’
She turned and looked at him. His eyes fell before hers.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I’ve told you. I must go. I haven’t a moment. Good night.’ She held out her hand. ‘You don’t want me to thank you a lot, do you?’
‘That I don’t!’ he exclaimed.
‘Good night.’
‘But—’
‘I must really go.’
He rose and gave his hand. The next instant she was gone.
There was a deafening roar in his head. It was the complete destruction by earthquake of a city of dreams. A calamity which left nothing – even to be desired! A tremendous silence reigned after the event.
V
On the following evening, when from the windows of the London-to-Manchester express he saw in the gloom the high-leaping flames of the blast-furnaces that seem to guard eternally the southern frontier of the Five Towns, he felt that he had returned into daily reality out of an impossible world. Waiting for the loop-line train in the familiar tedium of Knype platform, staring at the bookstall, every item on which he knew by heart and despised, surrounded once more by local physiognomies, gestures, and accent, he thought to himself: ‘This is my lot. And if I get messing about, it only shows what a damned fool I am!’ He called himself a damned fool because Hilda had proved to have a husband; because of that he condemned the whole expedition to Brighton as a piece of idiocy. His dejection was profound and bitter. At first, after Hilda had quitted him on the Sunday night, he had tried to be cheerful, had persuaded himself indeed that he was cheerful; but gradually his spirit had sunk, beaten and miserable. He had not called at Preston Street again. Pride forbade, and the terror of being misunderstood.
And when he sat at his own table, in his own dining-room, and watched the calm incurious Maggie dispensing to him his elaborate tea-supper with slightly more fuss and more devotion than usual, his thoughts, had they been somewhat less vague, might have been summed up thus: ‘The right sort of women don’t get landed as the wives of convicts. Can you imagine such a thing happening to Maggie, for instance? Or Janet?’ (And yet Janet was in the secret! This disturbed the flow of his reflections.) Hilda was too mysterious. Now she had half disclosed yet another mystery. But what? Why was her husband a convict? Under what circumstances? For what crime? Where? Since when? He knew the answer to none of these questions. More deeply than ever was that woman embedded in enigmas.
‘What’s this parcel on the sideboard?’ Maggie inquired.
‘Oh! I want you to send it in to Janet. It’s from her particular friend, Mrs Cannon – something for the kid, I believe. I ran across her in Brighton, and she asked me if I’d bring the parcel along.’
The innocence of his manner was perfectly acted. He wondered that he could do it so well. But really there was no danger. Nobody in Bursley, or in the world, had the least suspicion of his past relations with Hilda. The only conceivable danger would have been in hiding the fact that he had met her in Brighton.
‘Of course,’ said Maggie, mildly interested. ‘I was forgetting she lived at Brighton. Well?’ and she put a few casual questions, to which Edwin casually replied.
‘You look tired,’ she said later.
He astonished her by admitting that he was. According to all precedent her statement ought to have drawn forth a quick contradiction.
The sad image of Hilda would not be dismissed. He had to carry it about with him everywhere, and it was heavy enough to fatigue a stronger than Edwin Clayhanger. The pathos of her situation overwhelmed him, argue as he might about the immunity of ‘the right sort of women’ from a certain sort of disaster. On the Tuesday he sent her a post-office order for twenty pounds. It rather more than made up the agreed sum of a hundred pounds. She returned it, saying she did not need it. ‘Little fool!’ he said. He was not surprised. He was, however, very much surprised, a few weeks later, to receive from Hilda her own cheque for eighty pounds odd! More mystery! An absolutely incredible woman! Whence had she obtained that eighty pounds? Needless to say, she offered no explanation. He abandoned all conjecture. But he could not abandon the image. And first Auntie Hamps said, and then Clara, and then even Maggie admitted that Edwin was sticking too close to business and needed a change, needed rousing. Auntie Hamps urged openly that a wife ought to be found for him. But in a few days the great talkers of the family, Auntie Hamps and Clara, had grown accustomed to Edwin’s state, and some new topic supervened.
7
The Wall
I
ONE MORNING – TOWARDS the end of November – Edwin, attended by Maggie, was rearranging books in the drawing-room after breakfast when there came a startling loud tap at the large central pane of the window. Both of them jumped.
‘Who’s throwing?’ Edwin exclaimed.
‘I expect it’s that boy,’ said Maggie, almost angrily.
‘Not Georgie?’
‘Yes. I wish you’d go and stop him. You’ve no idea what a tiresome little thing he is. And so rough too!’
This attitude of Maggie towards the mysterious nephew was a surprise for Edwin. She had never grumbled about him before. In fact they had seen little of him. For a fortnight he had not been abroad, and the rumour ran that he was unwell, that he was ‘not so strong as he ought to be.’ And now Maggie suddenly charged him with a whole series of misdoings! But it was Maggie’s way to keep unpleasant things from Edwin for a time, in order to save her important brother from being worried, and then in a moment of tension to fling them full in his face, like a wet clout.
‘What’s he been up to?’ Edwin inquired for details.
‘Oh! I don’t know,’ answered Maggie vaguely. At the same instant came another startling blow on the window. ‘There!’ Maggie cried, in triumph, as if saying: ‘That’s what he’s been up to!’ After all, the windows were Maggie’s own windows.
Edwin left on the sofa a whole pile of books that he was sorting, and went out into the garden. On the top of the wall separating him from the Orgreaves a row of damaged earthenware objects – jugs and jars chiefly – at once caught his eye. He witnessed the smashing of one of them and then he ran to the wall, and taking a spring, rested on it with his arms, his toes pushed into crevices. Young George, with hand outstretched to throw, in the garden of the Orgreaves, seemed rather diverted by this apparition.
‘Hello!’ said Edwin. ‘What are you up to?’
‘I’m practising breaking crocks,’ said the child. That he had acquired the local word gave Edwin pleasure.
‘Yes, but do you know you’re practising breaking my windows too? When you aim too high you simply can’t
miss one of my windows.’
George’s face was troubled, as he examined the facts, which had hitherto escaped his attention, that there was a whole world of consequences on the other side of the wall, and that a missile which did not prove its existence against either the wall or a crock had not necessarily ceased to exist. Edwin watched the face with a new joy, as though looking at some wonder of nature under a microscope. It seemed to him that he now saw vividly why children were interesting.
‘I can’t see any windows from here,’ said George, in defence.
‘If you climb up here you’ll see them all right.’
‘Yes, but I can’t climb up. I’ve tried to, a lot of times. Even when I stood on my toes on this stump I could only just reach to put the crocks on the top.’
‘What did you want to get on the wall for?’
‘I wanted to see that swing of yours.’
‘Well,’ said Edwin, laughing, ‘if you could remember the swing why couldn’t you remember the windows?’
George shook his head at Edwin’s stupidity, and looked at the ground. ‘A swing isn’t windows,’ he said. Then he glanced up with a diffident smile: ‘I’ve often been wanting to come and see you.’
Edwin was tremendously flattered. If he had made a conquest, the child by this frank admission had made a greater.
‘Then why didn’t you come?’
‘I couldn’t, by myself. Besides, my back hasn’t been well. Did they tell you?’
George was so naturally serious that Edwin decided to be serious too.
‘I did hear something about it,’ he replied, with the grave confidential tone that he would have used to a man of his own age. This treatment was evidently appreciated by George, and always afterwards Edwin conversed with him as with an equal, forbearing from facetiousness.
Damp though it was, Edwin twisted himself round and sat on the wall next to the crocks, and bent over the boy beneath, who gazed with upturned face.
‘Why didn’t you ask Auntie Janet to bring you?’
‘I don’t generally ask for things that I really want,’ said the boy, with a peculiar glance.
‘I see,’ said Edwin, with an air of comprehension. He did not, however, comprehend. He only felt that the boy was wonderful. Imagine the boy saying that! He bent lower. ‘Come on up,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a hand. Stick your feet into that nick there.’
II
In an instant George was standing on the wall, light as fluff. Edwin held him by the legs, and his hand was on Edwin’s cap. The feel of the boy was delightful; he was so lithe and so yielding, and yet firm. And his glance was so trustful and admiring. ‘Rough!’ thought Edwin, remembering Maggie’s adjective. ‘He isn’t a bit rough! Unruly? Well, I dare say he can be unruly if he cares to be. It all depends how you handle him.’ Thus Edwin reflected in the pride of conquest, holding close to the boy, and savouring intimately his charm. Even the boy’s slightness attracted him. Difficult to believe that he was nine years old! His body was indeed backward. So too, it appeared, was his education. And yet was there not the wisdom of centuries in ‘I don’t generally ask for things that I really want’?
Suddenly the boy wriggled, and gave a sound of joy that was almost a yell. ‘Look!’ he cried.
The covered top of the steam-car could just be seen gliding along above the high wall that separated Edwin’s garden from the street.
‘Yes,’ Edwin agreed. ‘Funny, isn’t it?’ But he considered that such glee at such a trifle was really more characteristic of six or seven than of nine years. George’s face was transformed by ecstasy.
‘It’s when things move like that – horizontal!’ George explained, pronouncing the word carefully.
Edwin felt that there was no end to the surpassing strangeness of this boy. One moment he was aged six, and the next he was talking about horizontality.
‘Why? What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know!’ George sighed. ‘But somehow …’ Then, with fresh vivacity: ‘I tell you – when Auntie Janet comes to wake me up in the morning the cat comes in too, with its tail up in the air – you know!’ Edwin nodded. ‘Well, when I’m lying in bed I can’t see the cat, but I can see the top of its tail sailing along the edge of the bed. But if I sit up I can see all the cat, and that spoils it, so I don’t sit up at first.’
The child was eager for Edwin to understand his pleasure in horizontal motion that had no apparent cause, like the tip of a cat’s tail on the horizon of a bed, or the roof of a tramcar on the horizon of the wall. And Edwin was eager to understand, and almost persuaded himself that he did understand; but he could not be sure. A marvellous child – disconcerting! He had a feeling of inferiority to the child, because the child had seen beauty where he had not dreamed of seeing it.
‘Want a swing,’ he suggested, ‘before I have to go off to business?’
III
When it occurred to him that he had had as much violent physical exercise as was good for his years, and that he had left his books in disarray, and that his business demanded him, Edwin apologetically announced that he must depart, and the child admitted that Aunt Janet was probably waiting to give him his lessons.
‘Are you going back the way you came? You’d better. It’s always best,’ said Edwin.
‘Is it?’
‘Yes.’
He lifted and pushed the writhing form on to the wall, dislodging a jar, which crashed dully on the ground.
‘Auntie Janet told me I could have them to do what I liked with. So I break them,’ said George, ‘when they don’t break themselves!’
‘I bet she never told you to put them on this wall,’ said Edwin.
‘No, she didn’t. But it was the best place for aiming. And she told me it didn’t matter how many crocks I broke, because they make crocks here. Do they really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because there’s clay here,’ said Edwin glibly.
‘Where?’
‘Oh! Round about.’
‘White, like that?’ exclaimed George eagerly, handling a teapot without a spout. He looked at Edwin: ‘Will you take me to see it? I should like to see white ground.’
‘Well,’ said Edwin, more cautiously, ‘the clay they get about here isn’t exactly white.’
‘Then do they make it white?’
‘As a matter of fact the white clay comes from a long way off – Cornwall, for instance.’
‘Then why do they make the things here?’ George persisted, with the annoying obstinacy of his years. He had turned the teapot upside down. ‘This was made here. It’s got “Bursley” on it. Auntie Janet showed me.’
Edwin was caught. He saw himself punished for that intellectual sloth which leads adults to fob children off with any kind of a slipshod, dishonestly simplified explanation of phenomena whose adequate explanation presents difficulty. He remembered how nearly twenty years earlier he had puzzled over the same question and for a long time had not found the answer.
‘I’ll tell you how it is,’ he said, determined to be conscientious. ‘It’s like this—’ He had to pause. Queer, how hard it was to state the thing coherently! ‘It’s like this. In the old days they used to make crocks anyhow, very rough, out of any old clay. And crocks were first made here because the people found common yellow clay, and the coal to burn it with, lying close together in the ground. You see how handy it was for them.’
‘Then the old crocks were yellow?’
‘More or less. Then people got more particular, you see, and when white clay was found somewhere else they had it brought here, because everybody was used to making crocks here, and they had all the works and the tools they wanted, and the coal too. Very important, the coal! Much easier to bring the clay to the people and the works, than cart off all the people – and their families, don’t forget – and so on, to the clay, and build fresh works into the bargain … That’s why. Now are you sure you see?’
George ignored the question. ‘I suppos
e they used up all the yellow clay there was here, long ago?’
‘Not much!’ said Edwin. ‘And they never will! You don’t know what a sagger is, I reckon?’
‘What is a sagger?’
‘Well, I can’t stop to tell you all that now. But I will some time. They make saggers out of the yellow clay.’
‘Will you show me the yellow clay?’
‘Yes, and some saggers too.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t know. As soon as I can.’
‘Will you tomorrow?’
Tomorrow happened to be Thursday. It was not Edwin’s free afternoon, but it was an afternoon to which a sort of licence attached. He yielded to the ruthless egotism of the child.
‘All right!’ he said.
‘You won’t forget?’
‘You can rely on me. Ask your auntie if you may go, and if she says you may, be ready for me to pull you up over the wall here, about three o’clock.’
‘Auntie will have to let me go,’ said George, in a savage tone, as Edwin helped him to slip down into the garden of the Orgreaves. Edwin went off to business with a singular consciousness of virtue, and with pride in his successful manner of taming wayward children, and with a very strong new interest in the immediate future.
8
The Friendship
I
THE NEXT AFTERNOON George’s invincible energy took both himself and the great bearded man, Edwin, to a certain spot on the hollow confines of the town towards Turnhill, where there were several pits of marl and clay. They stared in silence at a vast ochreous-coloured glistening cavity in the ground, on the high edges of which grew tufts of grass amid shards and broken bottles. In the bottom of the pit were laid planks, and along the planks men with pieces of string tied tight round their legs beneath the knees drew large barrows full or empty, sometimes insecurely over pools of yellow water into which the plank sagged under their weight, and sometimes over little hillocks and through little defiles formed in the basin of the mine. They seemed to have no aim. The whole cavity had a sticky look which at first amused George, but on the whole he was not interested, and Edwin gathered that the clay-pit in some mysterious way fell short of expectations. A mineral line of railway which, near by, ambled at random like a pioneer over rough country, was much more successful than the pit in winning his approval.