Clayhanger Part 22

FOUR.

When the house began to 'go up,' Edwin lived in an ecstasy of contemplation. I say with deliberateness an 'ecstasy.' He had seen houses go up before; he knew that houses were constructed brick by brick, beam by beam, lath by lath, tile by tile; he knew that they did not build themselves. And yet, in the vagueness of his mind, he had never imaginatively realised that a house was made with hands, and hands that could err. With its exact perpendiculars and horizontals, its geometric regularities, and its Chinese preciseness of fitting, a house had always seemed to him--again in the vagueness of his mind--as something superhuman. The commonest cornice, the most ordinary pillar of a staircase-bal.u.s.trade--could that have been accomplished in its awful perfection of line and contour by a human being? How easy to believe that it was 'not made with hands'!

But now he saw. He had to see. He saw a hole in the ground, with water at the bottom, and the next moment that hole was a cellar; not an amateur cellar, a hole that would do at a pinch for a cellar, but a professional cellar. He appreciated the brains necessary to put a brick on another brick, with just the right quant.i.ty of mortar in between. He thought the house would never get itself done--one brick at a time--and each brick cost a farthing--slow, careful; yes, and even finicking. But soon the bricklayers had to stand on plank-platforms in order to reach the raw top of the wall that was ever rising above them. The measurements, the rulings, the plumbings, the checkings! He was humbled and he was enlightened. He understood that a miracle is only the result of miraculous patience, miraculous nicety, miraculous honesty, miraculous perseverance. He understood that there was no golden and magic secret of building. It was just putting one brick on another and against another--but to a hair's breadth. It was just like anything else. For instance, printing! He saw even printing in a new light.

And when the first beams were bridged across two walls...

The funny thing was that the men's fingers were thicky and clumsy.

Never could such fingers pick up a pin! And still they would manoeuvre a hundredweight of timber to a pin's point.

FIVE.

He stood at the drawing-room bay-window (of which each large pane had been marked with the mystic sign of a white circle by triumphant glaziers), and looked across the enclosed fragment of clayey field that ultimately would be the garden. The house was at the corner of Trafalgar Road and a side-street that had lobbied cottages down its slope. The garden was oblong, with its length parallel to Trafalgar Road, and separated from the pavement only by a high wall. The upper end of the garden was blocked by the first of three new houses which Osmond Orgreave was building in a terrace. These houses had their main fronts on the street; they were quite as commodious as the Clayhangers', but much inferior in garden-s.p.a.ce; their bits of flower-plots lay behind them. And away behind their flower-plots, with double entrance-gates in another side street, stretched the grounds of Osmond Orgreave, his house in the sheltered middle thereof. He had got, cheaply, one of the older residential properties of the district, Georgian, of a recognisable style, relic of the days when manufacturers formed a cla.s.s entirely apart from their operatives; even as far back as 1880 any operative might with luck become an employer. The south-east corner of the Clayhanger garden touched the north-west corner of the domains of Orgreave; for a few feet the two gardens were actually contiguous, with naught but an old untidy thorn hedge between them; this hedge was to be replaced by a wall that would match the topmost of the lobbied cottages which bounded the view of the Clayhangers to the east.

From the bay-window Edwin could see over the hedge, and also through it, on to the croquet lawn of the Orgreaves. Croquet was then in its first avatar; nothing was more dashing than croquet. With rag-b.a.l.l.s and home-made mallets the Clayhanger children had imitated croquet in their yard in the seventies. The Orgreaves played real croquet; one of them had shone in a tournament at Buxton. Edwin noticed a figure on the gravel between the lawn and the hedge. He knew it to be Janet, by the crimson frock. But he had no notion that Janet had stationed herself in that quarter with intent to waylay him. He could not have credited her with such a purpose. Nor could his modesty have believed that he was important enough to employ the talent of the Orgreaves for agreeable chicane. The fact was that Janet had been espying him for a quarter of an hour. When at length she waved her hand to him, it did not occur to him to suppose that she was waving her hand to him; he merely wondered what peculiar thing she was doing. Then he blushed as she waved again, and he knew first from the blood in his face that Janet was making a signal, and that it was to himself that the signal was directed: his body had told his mind; this was very odd.

Of course he was obliged to go out; and he went, muttering to himself.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER FOUR.

THE TWO GARDENS.

In the full beauty of the afternoon they stood together, only the scraggy hedge between them, he on gra.s.s-tufted clay, and she on orderly gravel.

"Well," said Janet, earnestly looking at him, "how do you like the effect of that window, now it's done?"

"Very nice!" he laughed nervously. "Very nice indeed!"

"Father said it was," she remarked. "I do hope Mr Clayhanger will like it too!" And her voice really was charged with sympathetic hope. It was as if she would be saddened and cast down if Darius did not approve the window. It was as if she fervently wished that Darius should not be disappointed with the window. The unskilled spectator might have a.s.sumed that anxiety for the success of the window would endanger her sleep at nights. She was perfectly sincere. Her power of emotional sympathy was all-embracing and inexhaustible. If she heard that an acquaintance of one of her acquaintances had lost a relative or broken a limb, she would express genuine deep concern, with a tremor of her honest and kindly voice. And if she heard the next moment that an acquaintance of one of her acquaintances had come into five thousand pounds or affianced himself to a sister-spirit, her eyes would sparkle with heartfelt joy and her hands clasp each other in sheer delight.

"Oh!" said Edwin, touched. "It'll be all right for the dad. No fear!"

"I haven't seen it yet," she proceeded. "In fact I haven't been in your house for such a long time. But I do think it's going to be very nice.

All father's houses are so nice, aren't they?"

"Yes," said Edwin, with that sideways shake of the head that in the vocabulary of his gesture signified, not dissent, but emphatic a.s.sent.

"You ought to come and have a look at it." He could not say less.

"Do you think I could scramble through here?" she indicated the spa.r.s.e hedge.

"I-- I--"

"I know what I'll do. I'll get the steps." She walked off sedately, and came back with a small pair of steps, which she opened out on the narrow flower-bed under the hedge. Then she picked up her skirt and delicately ascended the rocking ladder till her feet were on a level with the top of the hedge. She smiled charmingly, savouring the harmless escapade, and gazing at Edwin. She put out her free hand, Edwin took it, and she jumped. The steps fell backwards, but she was safe.

"What a good thing mother didn't see me!" she laughed. Her grave, sympathetic, almost handsome face was now alive everywhere with a sort of challenging merriment. She was only pretending that it was a good thing her mother had not seen her: a delicious make-believe. Why, she was as motherly as her mother! In an instant her feet were choosing their way and carrying her with grace and stateliness across the mire of the unformed garden. She was the woman of the world, and Edwin the raw boy. The harmony and dignity of her movements charmed and intimidated Edwin. Compare her to Maggie... That she was hatless added piquancy.

TWO.

They went into the echoing bare house, crunching gravel and dry clay on the dirty, new floors. They were alone together in the house. And all the time Edwin was thinking: "I've never been through anything like this before. Never been through anything like this!" And he recalled for a second the figure of Florence Simc.o.x, the clog-dancer.

And below these images and reflections in his mind was the thought: "I haven't known what life is! I've been asleep. This is life!"

The upper squares of the drawing-room window were filled with small leaded diamond-shaped panes of many colours. It was the latest fashion in domestic glazing. The effect was at once rich and gorgeous. She liked it.

"It will be beautiful on this side in the late afternoon," she murmured.

"What a nice room!"

Their eyes met, and she transmitted to him her joy in his joy at the admirableness of the house.

He nodded. "By Jove!" he thought. "She's a splendid girl. There can't be many girls knocking about as fine as she is!"

"And when the garden's full of flowers!" she breathed in rapture. She was thinking, "Strange, nice boy! He's so romantic. All he wants is bringing out."

They wandered to and fro. They went upstairs. They saw the bathroom.

They stood on the landing, and the unseen s.p.a.ces of the house were busy with their echoes. They then entered the room that was to be Edwin's.

"Mine!" he said self-consciously.

"And I see you're having shelves fixed on both sides of the mantelpiece!

You're very fond of books, aren't you?" she appealed to him.

"Yes," he said judicially.

"Aren't they wonderful things?" Her glowing eyes seemed to be expressing grat.i.tude to Shakespeare and all his successors in the dynasty of literature.

"That shelving is between your father and me," said Edwin. "The dad doesn't know. It'll go in with the house-fittings. I don't expect the dad will ever notice it."

"Really!" She laughed, eager to join the innocent conspiracy. "Father invented an excellent dodge for shelving in the hall at our house," she added. "I'm sure he'd like you to come and see it. The dear thing's most absurdly proud of it."

"I should like to," Edwin answered diffidently.

"Would you come in some evening and see us? Mother would be delighted.

We all should."

"Very kind of you." In his diffidence he was now standing on one leg.

"Could you come to-night? ... Or to-morrow night?"

"I'm afraid I couldn't come to-night, or to-morrow night," he answered with firmness. A statement entirely untrue! He had no engagement; he never did have an engagement. But he was frightened, and his spirit sprang away from the idea, like a fawn at a sudden noise in the brake, and stood still.

He did not suspect that the unconscious gruffness of his tone had repulsed her. She blamed herself for a too brusque advance.

"Well, I hope some other time," she said, mild and benignant.