Clayhanger

by Arnold Bennett

  And withal he could uneasily ask himself, ‘Am I happy?’ Maggie did not guess that, as he bent unseeing over his precious ‘Manchester Guardian,’ he was thinking: ‘I must hold an inquisition upon my whole way of existence. I must see where I stand. If ever I am to be alive, I ought to be alive now. And I’m not at all sure whether I am.’ Maggie never put such questions to herself. She went on in placidness from hour to hour, ruffled occasionally.

  IV

  An unusual occurrence gave him the opportunity to turn over a new leaf immediately. The sounds of the front-door bell and of voices in the hall were followed by the proud entrance of Auntie Hamps herself into the dining-room.

  ‘Now don’t disturb yourselves, please,’ Mrs Hamps entreated. She often began with this phrase.

  Maggie sprang up and kissed her, somewhat effusively for Maggie, and said in a quiet, restrained tone –

  ‘Many happy returns of the day, auntie.’

  Then Edwin rose, scraping his arm-chair backwards along the floor, and shook hands with her, and said with a guilty grin –

  ‘A long life and a merry one, auntie!’

  ‘Eh!’ she exclaimed, falling back with a sigh of satisfaction into a chair by the table. ‘I’m sure everybody’s very kind. Will you believe me, those darling children of Clara’s were round at my house before eight o’clock this morning!’

  ‘Is Amy’s cough better?’ Maggie interjected, as she and Edwin sat down.

  ‘Bless ye!’ cried Auntie Hamps, ‘I was in such a fluster I forgot to ask the little toddler. But I didn’t hear her cough. I do hope it is. October’s a bad time for coughs to begin. I ought to have asked. But I’m getting an old woman.’

  ‘We were just arguing whether you were thirty-eight or thirty-nine, auntie,’ said Edwin.

  ‘What a tease he is – with his beard!’ she archly retorted. ‘Well, your old aunt is sixty this day.’

  ‘Sixty!’ the nephew and niece repeated together in astonishment.

  Auntie Hamps nodded.

  ‘You’re the finest sixty I ever saw!’ said Edwin, with unaffected admiration.

  And she was fine. The pride in her eye as she made the avowal – probably the first frank avowal of her age that had passed those lips for thirty years – was richly justified. With her clear, rosy complexion, her white regular teeth, her straight spine, her plump figure, her brilliant gaze, her rapid gestures, and that authentic hair of hers falling in Victorian curls, she offered to the world a figure that no one could regard without a physical pleasure and stimulation. And she was so shiningly correct in her black silk and black velvet, and in the massive jet at her throat, and in the slenderness of her shoe! It was useless to recall her duplicities, her mendacities, her hypocrisies, her meannesses. At any rate she could be generous at moments, and the splendour of her vitality sometimes, as now, hid all her faults. She would confess to aches and pains like other folk, bouts of rheumatism for example – but the high courage of her body would not deign to ratify such miserable statements; it haughtily repelled the touch of time; it kept at least the appearance of victory. If you did not like Auntie Hamps willingly, in her hours of bodily triumph, you had to like her unwillingly. Both Edwin and Maggie had innumerable grievances against her, but she held their allegiance, and even their warm instinctive affection, on the morning of her sixtieth birthday. She had been a lone widow ever since Edwin could remember, and yet she had continued to bloom. Nothing could desiccate nor wither her. Even her sins did not find her out. God and she remained always on the best terms, and she thrived on insincerity.

  V

  ‘There’s a little parcel for you, auntie,’ said Edwin, with a particular effort to make his voice soft and agreeable. ‘But it’s in Manchester. It won’t be here till tomorrow. My fault entirely! You know how awful I am for putting off things.’

  ‘We quite expected it would be here today,’ said the loyal Maggie, when most sisters – and Clara assuredly – would have said in an eager, sarcastic tone: ‘Yes, it’s just like Edwin, and yet I reminded him I don’t know how many times!’ (Edwin felt with satisfaction that the new leaf was already turned. He was glad that he had said ‘My fault entirely.’ He now said to himself: ‘Maggie’s all right, and so am I. I must keep this up. Perfect nonsense, people hinting that she and I can’t get on together!’)

  ‘Please, please!’ Auntie Hamps entreated. ‘Don’t talk about parcels!’ And yet they knew that if they had not talked about a parcel the ageing lady would have been seriously wounded. ‘All I want is your love. You children are all I have now. And if you knew how proud I am of you all, seeing you all so nice and good, and respected in the town, and Clara’s little darlings beginning to run about, and such strong little things. If only your poor mother—!’

  Impossible not to be impressed by those accents! Edwin and Maggie might writhe under Auntie Hamps’s phraseology; they might remember the most horrible examples of her cant. In vain! They were impressed. They had to say to themselves: ‘There’s something very decent about her, after all.’

  Auntie Hamps looked from one to the other, and at the quiet opulence of the breakfast-table, and the spacious solidities of the room. Admiration and respect were in that eye always too masculine to weep under emotion. Undoubtedly she was proud of her nephew and nieces. And had she not the right to be? The bearded Edwin, one of the chief tradesmen in the town, and so fond of books, such a reader, and so quiet in his habits! And the two girls, with nice independent fortunes: Clara so fruitful and so winning, and Maggie so dependable, so kind! Auntie Hamps had scarce anything else to wish for. Her ideals were fulfilled. Undoubtedly since the death of Darius her attitude towards his children had acquired even a certain humility.

  ‘Shall you be in tomorrow morning, auntie?’ Maggie asked, in the constrained silence that followed Mrs Hamps’s protestations.

  ‘Yes, I shall,’ said Mrs Hamps, with assurance. ‘I shall be mending curtains.’

  ‘Well, then, I shall call. About eleven.’ Maggie turned to Edwin benevolently. ‘It won’t be too soon if I pop in at the shop a little before eleven?’

  ‘No,’ said Edwin with equal benevolence. ‘It’s not often Sutton’s delivery is after ten. That’ll be all right. I’ll have it unpacked.’

  VI

  He lit a cigarette.

  ‘Have one?’ he suggested to Mrs Hamps, holding out the case.

  ‘I shall give you a rap over the knuckles in a minute,’ smiled Mrs Hamps, who was now leaning an elbow on the table, in easy intimacy. And she went on in a peculiar tone, low, mysterious, and yet full of vivacity: ‘I can’t quite make out who that little nephew is that Janet Orgreave is taking about.’

  ‘Little nephew that Janet’s taking about!’ murmured Maggie, in surprise; and to Edwin, ‘Do you know?’

  Edwin shook his head. ‘When?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, this morning,’ said Mrs Hamps. ‘I met them as I was coming up. She was on one side of the road, and the child was on the other – just opposite Howson’s. My belief is she’d lost all control over the little jockey. Oh! A regular little jockey! You could see that at once. “Now, George, come along,” she called to him. And then he shouted, “I want you to come on this side, auntie.” Of course I couldn’t stop to see it out. She was so busy with him she only just moved to me.’

  ‘George? George?’ Maggie consulted her memory. ‘How old was he, about?’

  ‘Seven or eight, I should say.’

  ‘Well, it couldn’t be one of Tom’s children. Nor Alicia’s.’

  ‘No,’ said Auntie Hamps. ‘And I always understood that the eldest daughter’s – what’s her name?’

  ‘Marian.’

  ‘Marian’s were all girls.’

  ‘I believe they are. Aren’t they, Edwin?’

  ‘How can I tell?’ said Edwin. It was a marvel to him how his auntie collected her information. Neither she nor Clara had ever been in the slightest degree familiar with the Orgreaves, and Maggie, so far as he knew, was n
ot a gossiper. He thought he perceived, however, the explanation of Mrs Hamps’s visit. She had encountered in the street a phenomenon which would not harmonize with facts of her own knowledge, and the discrepancy had disturbed her to such an extent that she had been obliged to call in search of relief. There was that, and there was also her natural inclination to show herself off on her triumphant sixtieth birthday.

  ‘Charles Orgreave isn’t married, is he?’ she inquired.

  ‘No,’ said Maggie.

  VII

  Silence fell upon this enigma of Janet’s entirely unaccountable nephew.

  ‘Charlie may be married,’ said Edwin humorously, at length. ‘You never know! It’s a funny world! I suppose you’ve seen,’ he looked particularly at his auntie, ‘that your friend Parnell’s dead?’

  She affected to be outraged.

  ‘I’ve seen that Parnell is dead,’ she rebuked him, with solemn quietness. ‘I saw it on a poster as I came up. I don’t want to be uncharitable, but it was the best thing he could do. I do hope we’ve heard the last of all this Home Rule now!’

  Like many people Mrs Hamps was apparently convinced that the explanation of Parnell’s scandalous fall and of his early death was to be found in the inherent viciousness of the Home Rule cause, and also that the circumstances of his end were a proof that Home Rule was cursed of God. She reasoned with equal power forwards and backwards. And she was so earnest and so dignified that Edwin was sneaped into silence. Once more he could not keep from his face a look that seemed to apologize for his opinions. And all the heroic and passionate grandeur of Parnell’s furious career shrivelled up to mere sordidness before the inability of one narrow-minded and ignorant but vigorous woman to appreciate its quality. Not only did Edwin feel apologetic for himself, but also for Parnell. He wished he had not tried to be funny about Parnell; he wished he had not mentioned him. The brightness of the birthday was for an instant clouded.

  ‘I don’t know what’s coming over things!’ Auntie Hamps murmured sadly, staring out of the window at the street gay with October sunshine. ‘What with that! And what with those terrible baccarat scandals. And now there’s this free education, that we ratepayers have to pay for. They’ll be giving the children of the working classes free meals next!’ she added, with remarkably intelligent anticipation.

  ‘Oh well! Never mind!’ Edwin soothed her.

  She gazed at him in loving reproach. And he felt guilty because he only went to chapel about once in two months, and even then from sheer moral cowardice.

  ‘Can you give me those measurements, Maggie?’ Mrs Hamps asked suddenly. ‘I’m on my way to Brunt’s.’

  The women left the room together. Edwin walked idly to the window. After all, he had been perhaps wrong concerning the motive of her visit. The next moment he caught sight of Janet and the unaccountable nephew, breasting the hill from Bursley, hand in hand.

  2

  Janet’s Nephew

  I

  EDWIN WAS A fairly conspicuous object at the dining-room window. As Janet and the child drew level with the corner her eye accidentally caught Edwin’s. He nodded, smiling, and took the cigarette out of his mouth and waved it. They were old friends. He was surprised to notice that Janet blushed and became self-conscious. She returned his smile awkwardly, and then, giving a gesture to signify her intention, she came in at the gate. Which action surprised Edwin still more. With all her little freedoms of manner, Janet was essentially a woman stately and correct, and time had emphasized these qualities in her. It was not in the least like her to pay informal, capricious calls at a quarter to ten in the morning.

  He went to the front door and opened it. She was persuading the child up the tiled steps. The breeze dashed gaily into the house.

  ‘Good morning. You’re out early.’

  ‘Good morning. Yes. We’ve just been down to the post office to send off a telegram, haven’t we, George?’

  She entered the hall, the boy following, and shook hands, meeting Edwin’s gaze fairly. Her esteem for him, her confidence in him, shone in her troubled, candid eyes. She held herself proudly, mastering her curious constraint. ‘Now just see that!’ she said, pointing to a fleck of black mud on the virgin elegance of her pale brown costume. Edwin thought anew, as he had often thought, that she was a distinguished and delightful piece of goods. He never ceased to be flattered by her regard. But with harsh masculine impartiality he would not minimize to himself the increasing cleft under her chin, nor the deterioration of her once brilliant complexion.

  ‘Well, young man!’ Edwin greeted the boy with that insolent familiarity which adults permit themselves to children who are perfect strangers.

  ‘I thought I’d just run in and introduce my latest nephew to you,’ said Janet quickly, adding, ‘and then that would be over.’

  ‘Oh!’ Edwin murmured. ‘Come into the drawing-room, will you? Maggie’s upstairs.’

  They passed into the drawing-room where a servant in striped print was languidly caressing the glass of a bookcase with a duster. ‘You can leave this a bit,’ Edwin said curtly to the girl, who obsequiously acquiesced and fled, forgetting a brush on a chair.

  ‘Sit down, will you?’ Edwin urged awkwardly. ‘And which particular nephew is this? I may tell you he’s already raised a great deal of curiosity in the town.’

  Janet most unusually blushed again.

  ‘Has he?’ she replied. ‘Well, he isn’t my nephew at all really, but we pretend he is, don’t we, George? It’s cosier. This is Master George Cannon.’

  ‘Cannon? You don’t mean—’

  ‘You remember Mrs Cannon, don’t you? Hilda Lessways? Now, Georgie, come and shake hands with Mr Clayhanger.’

  But George would not.

  II

  ‘Indeed!’ Edwin exclaimed, very feebly. He knew not whether his voice was natural or unnatural. He felt as if he had received a heavy blow with a sandbag over the heart: not a symbolic, but a real physical blow. He might, standing innocent in the street, have been staggeringly assailed by a complete stranger of mild and harmless appearance, who had then passed tranquilly on. Dizzy astonishment held him, to the exclusion of any other sentiment. He might have gasped, foolish and tottering: ‘Why – what’s the meaning of this? What’s happened?’ He looked at the child uncomprehendingly, idiotically. Little by little – it seemed an age, and was in fact a few seconds – he resumed his faculties, and remembered that in order to keep a conventional self-respect he must behave in such a manner as to cause Janet to believe that her revelation of the child’s identity had in no way disturbed him. To act a friendly indifference seemed to him, then, to be the most important duty in life. And he knew not why.

  ‘I thought,’ he said in a low voice, and then he began again, ‘I thought you hadn’t been seeing anything of her, of Mrs Cannon, for a long time now.’

  The child was climbing on a chair at the window that gave on the garden, absorbed in exploration and discovery, quite ignoring the adults. Either Janet had forgotten him, or she had no hope of controlling him and was trusting to chance that the young wild stag would do nothing too dreadful.

  ‘Well,’ she admitted, ‘we haven’t.’ Her constraint recurred. Very evidently she had to be careful about what she said. There were reasons why even to Edwin she would not be frank. ‘I only brought him down from London yesterday.’

  Edwin trembled as he put the question –

  ‘Is she here too – Mrs Cannon?’

  Somehow he could only refer to Mrs Cannon as ‘her’ and ‘she.’

  ‘Oh no!’ said Janet, in a tone to indicate that there was no possibility of Mrs Cannon being in Bursley.

  He was relieved. Yes, he was glad. He felt that he could not have endured the sensation of her nearness, of her actually being in the next house. Her presence at the Orgreaves’ would have made the neighbourhood, the whole town, dangerous. It would have subjected him to the risk of meeting her suddenly at any corner. Nay, he would have been forced to go in cold blood to enco
unter her. And he knew that he could not have borne to look at her. The constraint of such an interview would have been torture too acute. Strange, that though he was absolutely innocent, though he had done naught but suffer, he should feel like a criminal, should have the criminal’s shifting downcast glance!