Clayhanger Part 69

"Well," said she tranquilly, "how is he?" She was tying her ap.r.o.n.

"Pretty bad," Edwin answered, with affected nonchalance.

"Nurse is a bit better. I've given her three fresh poultices since midnight. You'd better go now, hadn't you?"

"All right. I've let the fire out."

"I'll tell Jane to light it. She's just making some tea for you."

He went. He did not need twice telling. As he went, carelessly throwing off the dressing-gown and picking up his boots, Darius began to pant afresh, to nerve himself instinctively afresh for another struggle.

Edwin, strong and healthy, having done nothing but watch, was completely exhausted. But Darius, weakened by disease, having fought a couple of hundred terrific and excruciating encounters, each a supreme battle, in the course of a single night, was still drawing upon the apparently inexhaustible reserves of his volition.

"I couldn't have stood that much longer," said Edwin, out on the landing.

VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

THE CHAIN BROKEN.

Shortly after eight o'clock Edwin was walking down Trafalgar Road on his way to the shop. He had bathed, and drunk some tea, and under the stimulation he felt the fact.i.tious vivacity of excessive fatigue. Rain had fallen quietly and perseveringly during the night, and though the weather was now fine the streets were thick with black mire.

Paintresses with their neat gloves and their dinner-baskets and their thin shoes were trudging to work, and young clerks and shop-a.s.sistants and the upper cla.s.ses of labour generally. Everybody was in a hurry.

The humbler ma.s.s had gone long ago. Miners had been in the earth for hours. Later, and more leisurely, the magnates would pa.s.s by.

There were carriages about. An elegant wagonette, streaming with red favours, dashed down the road behind two horses. Its cargo was a handful of clay-soiled artisans, gleeful in the naive pride of their situation, wearing red and shouting red, and hurrahing for the Conservative candidate.

"a.s.ses!" murmured Edwin, with acrid and savage disdain. "Do you think he'd drive you anywhere to-morrow?" He walked on a little, and broke forth again, all to himself: "Of course he's doing it solely in your interest, isn't he? Why doesn't he pick some of these paintresses out of the mud and give them a drive?"

He cultivated an unreasoning anger against the men who had so impressed him at the banquet. He did not try to find answers to their arguments.

He accused them stoutly of wilful blindness, of cowardice, of bullying, of Pharisaism, and of other sins. He had no wish to hear their defence.

He condemned them, and as it were ordered them to be taken away and executed. He had a profound conviction that argument was futile, and that nothing would serve but a pitched battle, in which each fighting man should go to the poll and put a cross against a name in grim silence. Argue with these gross self-satisfied fellows about the turpitude of the artisans! Why, there was scarcely one of them whose grandfather had not been an artisan! Curse their patriotism! Then he would begin bits of argument to himself, and stop them, too impatient to continue... The shilling cigars of those feasters disgusted him... In such wise his mind ran. And he was not much kinder to the artisan. If scorn could have annihilated, there would have been no proletariat left in the division... Men? Sheep rather! Letting themselves be driven up and down like that, and believing all the yarns that were spun to them!

Gaping idiots, they would swallow any mortal thing! There was simply naught that they were not stupid enough to swallow with a gla.s.s of beer.

It would serve them right if--However, that could not happen. Idiocy had limits. At least he presumed it had.

Early as it was, the number of carriages was already considerable. But he did not see one with the blue of the Labour candidate. Blue rosettes there were, but the red rosettes bore them down easily. Even dogs had been adorned with red rosettes, and nice clean infants! And on all the h.o.a.rdings were enormous red posters exhorting the shrewd common-sense potter not to be misled by paid agitators, but to plump for his true friend, for the man who was anxious to devote his entire career and goods to the welfare of the potter and the integrity of the Empire.

TWO.

"If you can give me three days off, sir," said Big James, in the majestic humility of his ap.r.o.n, "I shall take it kindly."

Edwin had gone into the composing room with the copy for a demy poster, consisting of four red words to inform the public that the true friend of the public was 'romping in.' A hundred posters were required within an hour. He had nearly refused the order, in his feverish fatigue and his disgust, but some remnant of sagacity had a.s.serted itself in him and saved him from this fatuity.

"Why?" he asked roughly. "What's up now, James?"

"My old comrade Abraham Harracles is dead, sir, at Glasgow, and I'm wishful for to attend the interment, far as it is. He was living with his daughter, and she's written to me. If you could make it convenient to spare me--"

"Of course, of course!" Edwin interrupted him hastily. In his present mood, it revolted him that a man of between fifty and sixty should be humbly asking as a favour to be allowed to fulfil a pious duty.

"I'm very much obliged to you, sir," said Big James simply, quite unaware that captious Edwin found his grat.i.tude excessive and servile.

"I'm the last now, sir, of the old glee-party," he added.

"Really!"

Big James nodded, and said quietly, "And how's the old gentleman, sir?"

Edwin shook his head.

"I'm sorry, sir," said Big James.

"I've been up with him all night," Edwin told him.

"I wonder if you'd mind dropping me a line to Glasgow, sir, if anything happens. I can give you the address. If it isn't--"

"Certainly, if you like." He tried to be nonchalant "When are you going?"

"I did think of getting to Crewe before noon, sir. As soon as I've seen to this--" He c.o.c.ked his eye at the copy for the poster.

"Oh, you needn't bother about that," said Edwin carelessly. "Go now if you want to."

"I've got time, sir. Mr Curtenty's coming for me at nine o'clock to drive me to th' polling-booth."

This was the first time that Edwin had ever heard Big James talk of his private politics. The fact was that Big James was no more anxious than Jos Curtenty and Osmond Orgreave to put himself under the iron heel of his fellow working-man.

"And what's your colour, James?" His smile was half a sneer.

"If you'll pardon me saying so, sir, I'm for Her Most Gracious," Big James answered with grave dignity.

Three journeymen, pretending to be busy, were listening with all ears from the other side of a case.

"Oh!" exclaimed Edwin, dashed. "Well, that's all right!"

He walked straight out, put on his hat, and went to the Bleakridge polling-station and voted Labour defiantly, as though with a personal grievance against the polling-clerk. He had a vote, not as lessee of the business premises, but as his father's lodger. He despised Labour; he did not care what happened to Labour. In voting for Labour, he seemed to have the same satisfaction as if from pique he had voted against it because its stupidity had incensed him.

Then, instead of returning him to the shop, his legs took him home and upstairs, and he lay down in his own room.

THREE.

He was awakened by the presence of some one at his bedside, and the whole of his body protested against the disturbance.

"I couldn't make you hear with knocking," said Dr Heve, "so I came into the room."

"h.e.l.lo, doctor, is that you?" Edwin sat up, dazed, and with a sensation of large waves pa.s.sing in slow succession through his head. "I must have dropped asleep."

"I hear you had a pretty bad night with him," the doctor remarked.