Clayhanger Part 67

And the Felons were so good-humoured and kindly and so free-handed, and, with it all, so boyish! They burst into praise of one another on the slenderest excuse. They ordered more champagne as carelessly as though champagne were ginger-beer (Edwin was glad that by an excess of precaution he had brought two pounds in his pocket--the scale of expenditure was staggering); and they nonchalantly smoked cigars that would have made Edwin sick. They knew all about cigars and about drinks, and they implied by their demeanour, though they never said, that a first-cla.s.s drink and a first-cla.s.s smoke were the 'good things'

of life, the ultimate rewards; the references to women were sly...

Edwin was like a demure cat among a company of splendid curly dogs.

The toasts, every one of them, called forth enthusiasm. Even in the early part of the evening much good-nature had bubbled out when, at intervals, a slim young bachelor of fifty, armed with a violent mallet, had rapped authoritatively on the table and cried: "Mr President wishes to take wine with Mr Vice," "Mr President wishes to take wine with the bachelors on the right," "Mr President wishes to take wine with the married Felons on the left," and so on till every sort and condition and geographical situation had been thus distinguished. But the toasts proper aroused displays of the most affectionate loving-kindness. Each reference to a Felon was greeted with warm cheers, and each reference touched the superlative of laudation. Every stroke of humour was noisily approved, and every exhibition of tender feeling effusively endorsed. And all the estates of the realm, and all the inst.i.tutions of the realm and of the town, and all the services of war and peace, and all the official castes were handsomely and unreservedly praised, and their health and prosperity pledged with enthusiastic fervour. The organism of the Empire was p.r.o.nounced to be essentially perfect. n.o.body of importance, from the Queen's Majesty to the 'ministers of the Established Church and other denominations,' was omitted from the certificate of supreme excellence and efficiency. And even when an alderman, proposing the toast of the 'town and trade of Bursley,'

mentioned certain disturbing symptoms in the demeanour of the lower cla.s.ses, he immediately added his earnest conviction that the 'heart of the country beat true,' and was comforted with grave applause.

Towards the end of the toast-list one of the humorous vocal quartets which were designed to relieve the seriousness of the programme, was interrupted by the formidable sound of the governed proletariat beyond the walls of the Town Hall. And Edwin's memory, making him feel very old, leapt suddenly back into another generation of male glee-singers that did not disport humorously and that would not have permitted themselves to be interrupted by the shouting of populations; and he recalled 'Loud Ocean's Roar,' and the figure of Florence Simc.o.x flitted in front of him. The proletariat was cheering somebody. The cheers died down. And in another moment the Conservative candidate burst into the room, and was followed by two of his friends (the latter in evening-dress), whom he presented to the President. The ceremonious costume impressed the President himself, for at this period of ancient history Felons dined in frock-coats or cutaways; it proved that the wearers were so accustomed to wearing evening-dress of a night that they put it on by sheer habit and inadvertence even for electioneering. The candidate only desired to shake hands with a few supporters and to a.s.sure the President that nothing but hard necessity had kept him away from the dinner. Amid inspiriting bravos and hurrahs he fled, followed by his friends, and it became known that one of these was a baronet.

After this the vote of thanks to the President scarcely escaped being an anticlimax. And several men left, including Albert Benbow, who had once or twice glanced at his watch. "She won't let you be out after half-past ten, eh, Benbow?" said jocularly a neighbour. And Albert, laughing at the joke, nevertheless looked awkward. And the neighbour perceived that he had been perhaps a trifle clumsy. Edwin, since the mysterious influence in the background was his own sister, had to share Albert's confusion. He too would have departed. But Osmond Orgreave absolutely declined to let him go, and to prevent him from going used the force which good wine gives.

FOUR.

The company divided itself into intimate groups, leaving empty white s.p.a.ces at the disordered tables. The attendants now served whisky, and more liqueurs and coffee. Those guests who knew no qualm lighted fresh cigars; a few produced beloved pipes; the others were content with cigarettes. Some one ordered a window to be opened, and then, when the fresh night air began to disturb the curtains and scatter the fumes of the banquet, some one else crept aside and furtively closed it again.

Edwin found himself with Jos Curtenty and Osmond Orgreave and a few others. He felt gay and enheartened; he felt that there was a great deal of pleasure to be had on earth with very little trouble. Politics had been broached, and he made a mild joke about the Tory candidate.

And amid the silence that followed it he mistily perceived that the remainder of the group, instead of becoming more jolly, had grown grave.

For them the political situation was serious. They did not trouble to argue against the Labour candidate. All their reasoning was based on the a.s.sumption, which n.o.body denied or questioned, that at any cost the Labour candidate must be defeated. The success of the Labour candidate was regarded as a calamity. It would jeopardise the entire social order. It would deliver into the destroying hands of an ignorant, capricious, and unscrupulous rabble all that was best in English life.

It would even mean misery for the rabble itself. The tones grew more solemn. And Edwin, astonished, saw that beneath the egotism of their success, beneath their unconscious arrogance due to the habit of authority, there was a profound and genuine patriotism and sense of duty. And he was abashed. Nevertheless, he had definitely taken sides, and out of mere self-respect he had gently to remind them of the fact.

Silence would have been cowardly.

"Then what about 'trusting to the people'?" he murmured, smiling.

"If trusting to the people means being under the thumb of the British working man, my boy," said Osmond Orgreave, "you can scratch me out, for one."

Edwin had never heard him speak so colloquially.

"I've always found 'em pretty decent," said Edwin, but lamely.

Jos Curtenty fixed him with a grim eye.

"How many hands do you employ, Mr Clayhanger?"

"Fourteen," said Edwin.

"Do you?" exclaimed another voice, evidently surprised and impressed.

Jos Curtenty pulled at his cigar. "I wish I could make as much money as you make out of fourteen hands!" said he. "Well, I've got two hundred of 'em at my place. And I know 'em! I've known 'em for forty years and more. There's not ten of 'em as I'd trust to do an honest day's work, of their own accord... And after the row in '80, when they'd agreed to arbitration--fifteen thousand of 'em--did they accept the award, or didn't they? Tell me that, if it isn't troubling ye too much."

Only in the last phase did the irrepressible humorous card in him a.s.sert itself.

Edwin mumbled inarticulately. His mind was less occupied by politics than by the fact that in the view of all these men he had already finally and definitely taken the place of his father. But for the inquiries made at intervals during the evening, he might have supposed that Darius, lying in helpless obscurity up there at Bleak ridge, had been erased from the memory of the town.

A crony who had not hitherto spoken began to give sarcastic and apparently d.a.m.ning details of the early record of the Labour candidate.

Among other delinquencies the fellow had condoned the inexcusable rejection of the arbitrators' award long ago. And then some one said:

"h.e.l.lo! Here's Benbow back again!"

Albert, in overcoat and cap, beckoned to Edwin, who sprang up, p.r.i.c.ked into an exaggerated activity by his impatient conscience.

"It's nothing particular," said Albert at the door. "But the missus has been round to your father's to-night, and it seems the nurse has knocked up. She thought I'd perhaps better come along and tell you, in case you hadn't gone."

"Knocked up, has she?" said Edwin. "Well, it's not to be wondered at.

Nurse or no nurse, she's got no more notion of looking after herself than anybody else has. I was just going. It's only a little after eleven."

The last thing he heard on quitting the precincts of the banqueting chamber was the violent sound of the mallet. Its wielder seemed to have developed a slight affection for the senseless block of wood.

VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

AFTER THE BANQUET.

"Yes, yes," said Edwin, impatiently, in reply to some anxious remark of Maggie's, "I shall be all right with him. Don't you worry till morning."

They stood at the door of the sick-room, Edwin in an att.i.tude almost suggesting that he was pushing her out.

He had hurried home from the festival, and found the doctor just leaving and the house in a commotion. Dr Heve said mildly that he was glad Edwin had come, and he hinted that some general calming influence was needed. Nurse Shaw had developed one of the sudden abscesses in the ear which troubled her from time to time. This radiant and apparently strong creature suffered from an affection of the ear. Once her left ear had kept her in bed for six weeks, and she had arisen with the drum pierced. Since which episode there had always been the danger, when the evil recurred, of the region of the brain being contaminated through the tiny orifice in the drum. Hence, even if the acute pain which she endured had not forced her to abandon other people's maladies for the care of her own, the sense of her real peril would have done so. This masterful, tireless woman, whom no sadness nor abomination of her habitual environment could depress or daunt, lived under a menace, and was sometimes laid low, like a child. She rested now in Maggie's room, with a poultice for a pillow. A few hours previously no one in the house had guessed that she had any weakness whatever. Her collapse gave to Maggie an excellent opportunity, such as Maggie loved, to prove that she was equal to a situation. Maggie would not permit Mrs Hamps to be sent for. Nor would she permit Mrs Nixon to remain up. She was excited and very fatigued, and she meant to manage the night with the sole aid of Jane. It was even part of her plan that Edwin should go to bed as usual--poor Edwin, with all the anxieties of business upon his head! But she had not allowed for Edwin's conscience, nor foreseen what the doctor would say to him privately. Edwin had learnt from the doctor--a fact which the women had not revealed to him--that his father during the day had shown symptoms of 'Cheyne-Stokes breathing,' the final and the worst phenomenon of his disease; a phenomenon, too, interestingly rare. The doctor had done all that could be done by injections, and there was absolutely nothing else for anybody to do except watch.

"I shall come in in the night," Maggie whispered.

Behind them the patient vaguely stirred and groaned in his recess.

"You'll do no such thing," said Edwin shortly. "Get all the sleep you can."

"But Nurse has to have a fresh poultice every two hours," Maggie protested.

"Now, look here!" Edwin was cross. "Do show a little sense. Get-- all--the--sleep--you--can. We shall be having you ill next, and then there'll be a nice kettle of fish. I won't have you coming in here. I shall be perfectly all right. Now!" He gave a gesture that she should go at once.

"You won't be fit for the shop to-morrow."

"d.a.m.n the shop!"

"Well, you know where everything is." She was resigned. "If you want to make some tea--"

"All right, all right!" He forced himself to smile.

She departed, and he shut the door.

"Confounded nuisance women are!" he thought, half indulgently, as he turned towards the bed. But it was his conscience that was a confounded nuisance. He ought never to have allowed himself to be persuaded to go to the banquet. When his conscience annoyed him, it was usually Maggie who felt the repercussion.

TWO.

Darius was extremely ill. Every part of his physical organism was deranged and wearied out. His features combined the expression of intense fatigue with the sinister liveliness of an acute tragic apprehension. His failing faculties were kept horribly alert by the fear of what was going to happen to him next. So much that was appalling had already happened to him! He wanted repose; he wanted surcease; he wanted nothingness. He was too tired to move, but he was also too tired to lie still. And thus he writhed faintly on the bed; his body seemed to have that vague appearance of general movement which a mult.i.tude of insects will give to a piece of decaying matter. His skin was sick, and his hair, and his pale lips. The bed could not be kept tidy for five minutes.

"He's bad, no mistake!" thought Edwin, as he met his father's anxious and intimidated gaze. He had never seen anyone so ill. He knew now what disease could do.