Clayhanger Part 18

He looked back on it as a miracle. For he had married far above him, and had proved equal to the enormously difficult situation. Never had he made a fool of himself. He often took keen pleasure in speculating upon the demeanour of his father, his mother, his little sister, could they have seen him in his purple and in his grandeur. They were all dead. And those days were fading, fading, gone, with their unutterable, intolerable shame and sadness, intolerable even in memory. And his wife dead too! All that remained was Mr Shushions.

And then his business? Darius's pride in the achievement of his business was simply indescribable. If he had not built up that particular connexion he had built up another one whose sale had enabled him to buy it. And he was waxing yearly. His supremacy as a printer could not be challenged in Bursley. Steam! A double-windowed shop! A foreman to whom alone he paid thirty shillings a week! Four other employees! (Not to mention a domestic servant.) ... How had he done it? He did not know. Certainly he did not credit himself with brilliant faculties. He knew he was not brilliant; he knew that once or twice he had had luck. But he had the greatest confidence in his rough-hewing common sense. The large curves of his career were correctly drawn. His common sense, his slow shrewdness, had been richly justified by events. They had been pitted against foes--and look now at the little boy from the Bastille!

FIVE.

To Darius there was no business quite like his own. He admitted that there were businesses much bigger, but they lacked the miraculous quality that his own had. They were not sacred. His was, genuinely.

Once, in his triumphant and vain early manhood he had had a fancy for bulldogs; he had bred bulldogs; and one day he had sacrificed even that great delight at the call of his business; and now no one could guess that he knew the difference between a setter and a mastiff!

It was this sacred business (perpetually adored at the secret altar in Darius's heart), this miraculous business, and not another, that Edwin wanted to abandon, with scarcely a word; just casually!

True, Edwin had told him one night that he would like to be an architect. But Darius had attached no importance to the boyish remark.

Darius had never even dreamed that Edwin would not go into the business.

It would not have occurred to him to conceive such a possibility. And the boy had shown great apt.i.tude. The boy had saved the printing office from disaster. And Darius had proved his satisfaction therein, not by words certainly, but beyond mistaking in his general demeanour towards Edwin. And after all that, a letter--mind you, a letter!--proposing with the most d.a.m.nable insolent audacity that he should be an architect, because he would not be 'happy' in the printing business! ... An architect! Why an architect, specially? What in the name of G.o.d was there to attract in bricks and mortar? He thought the boy had gone off his head for a s.p.a.ce. He could not think of any other explanation. He had not allowed the letter to upset him. By his armour of thick callousness, he had protected the tender places in his soul from being wounded. He had not decided how to phrase his answer to Edwin. He had not even decided whether he would say anything at all, whether it would not be more dignified and impressive to make no remark whatever to Edwin, to let him slowly perceive, by silence, what a lamentable error he had committed.

And here was the boy lightly, cheekily, talking at breakfast about 'going in for architecture'! The armour of callousness was pierced.

Darius felt the full force of the letter; and as he suffered, so he became terrible and tyrannic in his suffering. He meant to save his business, to put his business before anything. And he would have his own way. He would impose his will. And he would have treated argument as a final insult. All the heavy, obstinate, relentless force of his individuality was now channelled in one tremendous instinct.

SIX.

"Well, what?" he growled savagely, as Edwin halted.

In spite of his advanced age Edwin began to cry. Yes, the tears came out of his eyes.

"And now you begin blubbing!" said his father.

"You say naught for six months--and then you start writing letters!"

said his father.

"And what's made ye settle on architecting, I'd like to be knowing?"

Darius went on.

Edwin was not able to answer this question. He had never put it to himself. a.s.suredly he could not, at the pistol's point, explain why he wanted to be an architect. He did not know. He announced this truth ingenuously--

"I don't know--I--"

"I sh'd think not!" said his father. "D'ye think architecting'll be any better than this?" 'This' meant printing.

"I don't know--"

"Ye don't know! Ye don't know!" Darius repeated testily. His testiness was only like foam on the great wave of his resentment.

"Mr Orgreave--" Edwin began. It was unfortunate, because Darius had had a difficulty with Mr Orgreave, who was notoriously somewhat exacting in the matter of prices.

"Don't talk to me about Mester Orgreave!" Darius almost shouted.

Edwin didn't. He said to himself: "I am lost."

"What's this business o' mine for, if it isna' for you?" asked his father. "Architecting! There's neither sense nor reason in it!

Neither sense nor reason!"

He rose and walked out. Edwin was now sobbing. In a moment his father returned, and stood in the doorway.

"Ye've been doing well, I'll say that, and I've shown it! I was beginning to have hopes of ye!" It was a great deal to say.

He departed.

"Perhaps if I hadn't stopped his d.a.m.ned old machine from going through the floor, he'd have let me off!" Edwin muttered bitterly. "I've been too good, that's what's the matter with me!"

SEVEN.

He saw how fantastic was the whole structure of his hopes. He wondered that he had ever conceived it even wildly possible that his father would consent to architecture as a career! To ask it was to ask absurdly too much of fate. He demolished, with a violent and resentful impulse, the structure of his hopes; stamped on it angrily. He was beaten. What could he do? He could do nothing against his father. He could no more change his father than the course of a river. He was beaten. He saw his case in its true light.

Mrs Nixon entered to clear the table. He turned away to hide his face, and strode pa.s.sionately off. Two hours elapsed before he appeared in the shop. n.o.body asked for him, but Mrs Nixon knew he was in the attic. At noon, Maggie, with a peculiar look, told him that Auntie Hamps had called and that he was to go and have dinner with her at one o'clock, and that his father consented. Obviously, Maggie knew the facts of the day. He was perturbed at the prospect of the visit. But he was glad; he thought he could not have lived through a dinner at the same table as Clara. He guessed that his auntie had been made aware of the situation and wished to talk to him.

EIGHT.

"Your father came to see me in such a state last night!" said Auntie Hamps, after she had dealt with his frightful cold.

Edwin was astonished by the news. Then after all his father had been afraid! ... After all perhaps he had yielded too soon! If he had held out... If he had not been a baby! ... But it was too late. The incident was now closed.

Mrs Hamps was kind, but unusually firm in her tone; which reached a sort of benevolent severity.

"Your father had such high hopes of you. Has--I should say. He couldn't imagine what on earth possessed you to write such a letter.

And I'm sure I can't. I hope you're sorry. If you'd seen your father last night you would be, I'm sure."

"But look here, auntie," Edwin defended himself, sneezing and wiping his nose; and he spoke of his desire. Surely he was ent.i.tled to ask, to suggest! A son could not be expected to be exactly like his father.

And so on.

No! no! She brushed all that aside. She scarcely listened to it.

"But think of the business! And just think of your father's feelings!"

Edwin spoke no more. He saw that she was absolutely incapable of putting herself in his place. He could not have explained her att.i.tude by saying that she had the vast unconscious cruelty which always goes with a perfect lack of imagination; but this was the explanation. He left her, saddened by the obvious conclusion that his auntie, whom he had always supported against his sisters, was part author of his undoing. She had undoubtedly much strengthened his father against him.

He had a gleam of suspicion that his sisters had been right, and he wrong, about Mrs Hamps. Wonderful, the cruel ruthless insight of girls--into some things!

NINE.

Not till Sat.u.r.day did the atmosphere of the Clayhanger household resume the normal. But earlier than that Edwin had already lost his resentment. It disappeared with his cold. He could not continue to bear ill-will. He accepted his destiny of immense disappointment. He shouldered it. You may call him weak or you may call him strong.

Maggie said nothing to him of the great affair. What could she have said? And the affair was so great that even Clara did not dare to exercise upon it her peculiar faculties of ridicule. It abashed her by its magnitude.