Clayhanger

by Arnold Bennett

  IV

  The chairman began to speak at once. His function was to call upon the speakers in the order arranged, and to sum up before putting the resolution to the vote. But now he produced surprisingly a speech of his own. He reminded the meeting that in 1860 Bishop Colenso had memorialized the Archbishop of Canterbury against compelling natives who had already more than one wife to renounce polygamy as a condition to baptism in the Christian religion; he stated that, though there were young men present who were almost infants in arms at that period, he for his part could well remember all the episode, and in particular Bishop Colenso’s amazing allegation that he could find no disapproval of polygamy either in the Bible or in the writings of the Ancient Church. He also pointed out that in 1861 Bishop Colenso had argued against the doctrine of Eternal Punishment. He warned the meeting to beware of youthful indiscretions. Every one there assembled of course meant well, and believed what it was a duty to believe, but at the same time …

  ‘I shall write father a letter!’ said Edwin to himself. The idea came to him in a flash like a divine succour; and it seemed to solve all his difficulties – difficulties unconnected with the subject of debate.

  V

  The chairman went on crossing t’s and dotting i’s. And soon even Edwin perceived that the chairman was diplomatically and tactfully, yet very firmly, bent upon saving the meeting from any possibility of scandalizing itself and the Wesleyan community. Bishop Colenso must not be approved beneath those roofs. Evidently Edwin had been more persuasive than he dreamt of; and daring beyond precedent. He had meant to carry his resolution if he could, whereas, it appeared, he ought to have meant to be defeated, in the true interests of revealed religion. The chairman kept referring to his young friend the proposer’s brilliant brains, and to the grave danger that lurked in brilliant brains, and the inability of brilliant brains to atone for lack of experience. The meeting had its cue. Young man after young man arose to snub Bishop Colenso, to hope charitably that Bishop Colenso was sincere, and to insist that no Bishop Colenso should lead him to the awful abyss of polygamy, and that no Bishop Colenso should deprive him of that unique incentive to righteousness – the doctrine of an everlasting burning hell. Moses was put on his legs again as a serious historian, and the subject of the resolution utterly lost to view. The chairman then remarked that his impartial rôle forbade him to support either side, and the voting showed fourteen against one. They all sang the Doxology, and the chairman pronounced a benediction. The fourteen forgave the one, as one who knew not what he did; but their demeanour rather too patently showed that they were forgiving under difficulty; and that it would be as well that this kind of youthful temerariousness was not practised too often. Edwin, in the language of the district, was ‘sneaped.’ Wondering what on earth he after all had said to raise such an alarm, he nevertheless did not feel resentful, only very depressed – about the debate and about other things. He knew in his heart that for him attendance at the meetings of the Young Men’s Debating Society was ridiculous.

  VI

  He allowed all the rest to precede him from the room. When he was alone he smiled sheepishly, and also disdainfully; he knew that the chasm between himself and the others was a real chasm, and not a figment of his childish diffidence, as he had sometimes suspected it to be. Then he turned the gas out. A beautiful faint silver surged through the window. While the debate was in progress, the sun had been going about its business of the dawn, unperceived.

  ‘I shall write a letter!’ he kept saying to himself. ‘He’ll never let me explain myself properly if I start talking. I shall write a letter. I can write a very good letter, and he’ll be bound to take notice of it. He’ll never be able to get over my letter.’

  In the schoolyard daylight reigned. The debaters had already disappeared. Trafalgar Road and Duck Bank were empty and silent under rosy clouds. Instead of going straight home Edwin went past the Town Hall and through the Market Place to the Sytch Pottery. Astounding that he had never noticed for himself how beautiful the building was! It was a simply lovely building!

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I shall write him a letter, and this very day, too! May I be hung, drawn, and quartered if he doesn’t have to read my letter tomorrow morning!’

  16

  The Letter

  I

  THEN THERE WAS roast goose for dinner, and Clara amused herself by making silly facetious faces, furtively, dangerously, under her father’s very eyes. The children feared goose for their father, whose digestion was usually unequal to this particular bird. Like many fathers of families in the Five Towns, he had the habit of going forth on Saturday mornings to the butcher’s or the poulterer’s and buying Sunday’s dinner. He was a fairly good judge of a joint, but Maggie considered herself to be his superior in this respect. However, Darius was not prepared to learn from Maggie, and his purchases had to be accepted without criticism. At a given meal Darius would never admit that anything chosen and bought by him was not perfect; but a week afterwards, if the fact was so, he would of his own accord recall imperfections in that which he had asserted to be perfect; and he would do this without any shame, without any apparent sense of inconsistency or weakness. Edwin noticed a similar trait in other grown-up persons, and it astonished him. It astonished him especially in his father, who, despite the faults and vulgarities which his fastidious son could find in him, always impressed Edwin as a strong man, a man with the heroic quality of not caring too much what other people thought.

  When Edwin saw his father take a second plateful of goose, with the deadly stuffing thereof – Darius simply could not resist it, like most dyspeptics he was somewhat greedy – he foresaw an indisposed and perilous father for the morrow. Which prevision was supported by Clara’s pantomimic antics, and even by Maggie’s grave and restrained sigh. Still, he had sworn to write and send the letter, and he should do so. A career, a lifetime, was not to be at the mercy of a bilious attack, surely! Such a notion offended logic and proportion, and he scorned it away.

  II

  The meal proceeded in silence. Darius, as in duty bound, mentioned the sermon, but neither Clara nor Edwin would have anything to do with the sermon, and Maggie had not been to chapel. Clara and Edwin felt themselves free of piety till six o’clock at least, and they doggedly would not respond. And Darius from prudence did not insist, for he had arrived at chapel unthinkably late – during the second chant – and Clara was capable of audacious remarks upon occasions. The silence grew stolid.

  And Edwin wondered what the dinner-table of the Orgreaves was like. And he could smell fresh mortar. And he dreamed of a romantic life – he knew not what kind of life, but something different fundamentally from his own. He suddenly understood, understood with sympathy, the impulse which had made boys run away to sea. He could feel the open sea; he could feel the breath of freedom on his cheek.

  He said to himself –

  ‘Why shouldn’t I break this ghastly silence by telling father out loud here that he mustn’t forget what I told him that night in the attic? I’m going to be an architect. I’m not going to be any blooming printer. I’m going to be an architect. Why haven’t I mentioned it before? Why haven’t I talked about it all the time? Because I am an ass! Because there is no word for what I am! Damn it! I suppose I’m the person to choose what I’m going to be! I suppose it’s my business more than his. Besides, he can’t possibly refuse me. If I say flatly that I won’t be a printer – he’s done. This idea of writing a letter is just like me! Coward! Coward! What’s my tongue for? Can’t I talk? Isn’t he bound to listen? All I have to do is to open my mouth. He’s sitting there. I’m sitting here. He can’t eat me. I’m in my rights. Now suppose I start on it as soon as Mrs Nixon has brought the pudding and pie in?’

  And he waited anxiously to see whether he indeed would be able to make a start after the departure of Mrs Nixon.

  III

  Hopeless! He could not bring himself to do it. It was strange! It was disgusting! … No, he would be c
ompelled to write the letter. Besides, the letter would be more effective. His father could not interrupt a letter by some loud illogical remark. Thus he salved his self-conceit. He also sought relief in reflecting savagely upon the speeches that had been made against him in the debate. He went through them all in his mind. There was the slimy idiot from Baines’s (it was in such terms that his thoughts ran) who gloried in never having read a word of Colenso, and called the assembled company to witness that nothing should ever induce him to read such a godless author … going about in the mask of a so-called Bishop. But had any of them read Colenso, except possibly Llewellyn Roberts, who in his Welsh way would pretend ignorance and then come out with a quotation and refer you to the exact page? Edwin himself had read very little of Colenso – and that little only because a customer had ordered the second part of the ‘Pentateuch’ and he had stolen it for a night. Colenso was not in the Free Library … What a world! What a debate! Still, he could not help dwelling with pleasure on Mr Roberts’s insistence on the brilliant quality of his brains. Astute as Mr Roberts was, the man was clearly in awe of Edwin’s brains! Why? To be honest, Edwin had never been deeply struck by his own brain power. And yet there must be something in it!

  ‘Of course,’ he reflected sardonically, ‘father doesn’t show the faintest interest in the debate. Yet he knew all about it, and that I had to open it.’ But he was glad that his father showed no interest in the debate. Clara had mentioned it in the presence of Maggie, with her usual ironic intent, and Edwin had quickly shut her up.

  IV

  In the afternoon, the sitting-room being made uninhabitable by his father’s goose-ridden dozes, he went out for a walk; the weather was cold and fine. When he returned his father also had gone out; the two girls were lolling in the sitting-room. An immense fire, built up by Darius, was just ripe for the beginning of decay, and the room very warm. Clara was at the window, Maggie in Darius’s chair reading a novel of Charlotte M. Yonge’s. On the table, open, was a bound volume of ‘The Family Treasury of Sunday Reading,’ in which Clara had been perusing ‘The Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family’ with feverish interest. Edwin had laughed at her ingenuous absorption in the adventures of the Schönberg-Cotta family, but the fact was that he had found them rather interesting, in spite of himself, while pretending the contrary. There was an atmosphere of high obstinate effort and heroical foreignness about the story which stimulated something secret in him that seldom responded to the provocation of a book; more easily would this secret something respond to a calm evening or a distant prospect, or the silence of early morning when by chance he looked out of his window.

  The volume of ‘The Family Treasury,’ though five years old, was a recent acquisition. It had come into the house through the total disappearance of a customer who had left the loose numbers to be bound in 1869. Edwin dropped sideways on to a chair at the table, spread out his feet to the right, pitched his left elbow a long distance to the left, and, his head resting on his left hand, turned over the pages with his right hand idly. His eye caught titles such as: ‘The Door was Shut,’ ‘My Mother’s Voice,’ ‘The Heather Mother;’ ‘The Only Treasure,’ ‘Religion and Business,’ ‘Hope to the End,’ ‘The Child of our Sunday School,’ ‘Satan’s Devices,’ and ‘Studies of Christian Life and Character,’ ‘Hannah More.’ Then he saw an article about some architecture in Rome, and he read: ‘In the Sistine picture there is the struggle of a great mind to reduce within the possibilities of art a subject that transcends it. That mind would have shown itself to be greater, truer, at least, in its judgment of the capabilities of art, and more reverent to have let it alone.’ The seriousness of the whole magazine intimidated him into accepting this pronouncement for a moment, though his brief studies in various encyclopædias had led him to believe that the Sistine Chapel (shown in an illustration in Cazenove) was high beyond any human criticism. His elbow slid on the surface of the table, and in recovering himself he sent ‘The Family Treasury’ on the floor, wrong side up, with a great noise. Maggie did not move. Clara turned and protested sharply against this sacrilege, and Edwin, out of mere caprice, informed her that her precious magazine was the most stinking silly ‘pi’ [pious] thing that ever was. With haughty and shocked gestures she gathered up the volume and took it out of the room.

  ‘I say, Mag,’ Edwin muttered, still leaning his head on his hand, and staring blankly at the wall.

  The fire dropped a little in the grate.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Maggie, without stirring or looking up.

  ‘Has father said anything to you about me wanting to be an architect?’ He spoke with an affectation of dreaminess.

  ‘About you wanting to be an architect?’ repeated Maggie in surprise.

  ‘Yes,’ said Edwin. He knew perfectly well that his father would never have spoken to Maggie on such a subject. But he wanted to open a conversation.

  ‘No fear!’ said Maggie. And added in her kindest, most encouraging, elder-sisterly tone: ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh!’ He hesitated, drawling, and then he told her a great deal of what was in his mind. And she carefully put the woolmarker in her book and shut it, and listened to him. And the fire dropped and dropped, comfortably. She did not understand him; obviously she thought his desire to be an architect exceedingly odd; but she sympathized. Her attitude was soothing and fortifying. After all (he reflected) Maggie’s all right – there’s some sense in Maggie. He could ‘get on’ with Maggie. For a few moments he was happy and hopeful.

  ‘I thought I’d write him a letter,’ he said. ‘You know how he is to talk to.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘What d’ye think?’ he questioned.

  ‘I should,’ said Maggie.

  ‘Then I shall!’ he exclaimed. ‘How d’ye think he’ll take it?’

  ‘Well,’ said Maggie, ‘I don’t see how he can do aught but take it all right … Depends how you put it, of course.’

  ‘Oh, you leave that to me!’ said Edwin, with eager confidence. ‘I shall put it all right. You trust me for that!’

  V

  Clara danced into the room, flowing over with infantile joy. She had been listening to part of the conversation behind the door.

  ‘So he wants to be an architect! Arch-i-tect! Architect!’ She half-sang the word in a frenzy of ridicule. She really did dance, and waved her arms. Her eyes glittered, as if in rapture. These singular manifestations of her temperament were caused solely by the strangeness of the idea of Edwin wanting to be an architect. The strange sight of him with his hair cut short or in a new neck-tie affected her in a similar manner.

  ‘Clara, go and put your pinafore on this instant!’ said Maggie. ‘You know you oughtn’t to leave it off.’

  ‘You needn’t be so hoity-toity, miss,’ Clara retorted. But she moved to obey. When she reached the door she turned again and gleefully taunted Edwin. ‘And it’s all because he went for a walk yesterday with Mr Orgreave! I know! I know! You needn’t think I didn’t see you, because I did! Arch-i-tect! Arch-i-tect!’

  She vanished, on all her springs, spitefully graceful.

  ‘You might almost think that infernal kid was right bang off her head,’ Edwin muttered crossly. (Still, it was extraordinary how that infernal kid hit on the truth.)

  Maggie began to mend the fire.

  ‘Oh, well!’ murmured Maggie, conveying to Edwin that no importance must be attached to the chit’s chittishness.

  He went up to the next flight of stairs to his attic. Dust on the table of his work-attic! Shameful dust! He had not used that attic since Christmas, on the miserable plea that winter was cold and there was no fire-place! He blamed himself for his effeminacy. Where had flown his seriousness, his elaborate plans, his high purposes? A touch of winter had frightened them away. Yes, he blamed himself mercilessly. True it was – as that infernal kid had chanted – a casual half-hour with Mr Orgreave was alone responsible for his awakening – at any rate, for his awakening at this particular moment. Still, he
was awake – that was the great fact. He was tremendously awake. He had not been asleep; he had only been half-asleep. His intention of becoming an architect had never left him. But, through weakness before his father, through a cowardly desire to avoid disturbance and postpone a crisis, he had let the weeks slide by. Now he was in a groove, in a canyon. He had to get out, and the sooner the better.

  A piece of paper, soiled, was pinned on his drawing-board; one or two sketches lay about. He turned the drawing-board over, so that he might use it for a desk on which to write the letter. But he had no habit of writing letters. In the attic was to be found neither ink, pen, paper, nor envelope. He remembered a broken quire of sermon paper in his bedroom; he had used a few sheets of it for notes on Bishop Colenso. These notes had been written in the privacy and warmth of bed, in pencil. But the letter must be done in ink; the letter was too important for pencil; assuredly his father would take exception to pencil. He descended to his sister’s room and borrowed Maggie’s ink and a pen, and took an envelope, tripping like a thief. Then he sat down to the composition of the letter; but he was obliged to stop almost immediately in order to light the lamp.

  VI

  This is what he wrote:

  ‘DEAR FATHER – I dare say you will think it queer me writing you a letter like this, but it is the best thing I can do, and I hope you will excuse me. I dare say you will remember I told you that night when you came home late from Manchester here in the attic that I wanted to be an architect. You replied that what I wanted was business experience. If you say that I have not had enough business experience yet, I agree to that, but I want it to be understood that later on, when it is the proper time, I am to be an architect. You know I am very fond of architecture, and I feel that I must be an architect. I feel I shall not be happy in the printing business because I want to be an architect. I am now nearly seventeen. Perhaps it is too soon yet for me to be apprenticed to an architect, and so I can go on learning business habits. But I just want it to be understood. I am quite sure you wish me to be happy in life, and I shan’t be happy if I am always regretting that I have not gone in for being an architect. I know I shall like architecture – Your affectionate son,