Clayhanger. Arnold Bennett

‘called away,’ or had ‘had to go away,’ or was ‘kept somewhere,’ the details were out of deference allowed to remain in mystery, respected by curiosity … ‘Father-business.’ … All business was sacred. He himself had inculcated this attitude.

      In a short silence the sound of the bell that the carman rang before the tram started for Hanbridge floated in through the open window.

      “There’s the tram!” observed Auntie Clara, apparently with warm and special interest in the phenomena of the tram. Then another little silence.

      “Auntie,” said Clara, writhing about youthfully on her chair.

      “Can’t ye sit still a bit?” the father asked, interrupting her roughly, but with good humour. “Ye’ll be falling off th’ chair in a minute.”

      Clara blushed swiftly, and stopped.

      “Yes, love?” Auntie Clara encouraged her. It was as if Auntie Clara had said: “Your dear father is of course quite right, more than right, to insist on your sitting properly at table. However, do not take the correction too much to heart. I sympathise with all your difficulties.”

      “I was only going to ask you,” Clara went on, in a weaker, stammering voice, “if you knew that Edwin’s left school to-day.” Her archness had deserted her.

      “Mischievous little thing!” thought Edwin. “Why must she deliberately go and draw attention to that?” And he too blushed, feeling as if he owed an apology to the company for having left school.

      “Oh yes!” said Auntie Clara with eager benevolence. “I’ve got something to say about that to my nephew.”

      Mr. Clayhanger searched in a pocket of his alpaca, and drew forth an open envelope.

      “Here’s the lad’s report, auntie,” said he. “Happen ye’d like to look at it.”

      “I should indeed!” she replied fervently. “I’m sure it’s a very good one.”

      Four.

      She took the paper, and assumed her spectacles.

      “Conduct—Excellent,” she read, poring with enthusiasm over the document. And she read again: “Conduct—Excellent.” Then she went down the list of subjects, declaiming the number of marks for each; and at the end she read: “Position in class next term: Third. Splendid, Eddy!” she exclaimed.

      “I thought you were second,” said Clara, in her sharp manner.

      Edwin blushed again, and hesitated.

      “Eh? What’s that? What’s that?” his father demanded. “I didn’t notice that. Third?”

      “Charlie Orgreave beat me in the examination,” Edwin muttered.

      “Well, that’s a pretty how d’ye do!” said his father. “Going down one! Ye ought to ha’ been first instead o’ third. And would ha’ been, happen, if ye’d pegged at it.”

      “Now I won’t have that! I won’t have it!” Auntie Clara protested, laughingly showing her fine teeth and gazing first at Darius, and then at Edwin, from under her spectacles, her head being thrown back and the curls hanging far behind. “No one shall say that Edwin doesn’t work, not even his father, while his auntie’s about! Because I know he does work! And besides, he hasn’t gone down. It says, ‘position next term’—not this term. You were still second to-day, weren’t you, my boy?”

      “I suppose so. Yes,” Edwin answered, pulling himself together.

      “Well! There you are!” Auntie Clara’s voice rang triumphantly. She was opening her purse. “And there you are!” she repeated, popping half a sovereign down in front of him. “That’s a little present from your auntie on your leaving school.”

      “Oh, auntie!” he cried feebly.

      “Oh!” cried Clara, genuinely startled.

      Mrs. Hamps was sometimes thus astoundingly munificent. It was she who had given the schooner to Edwin. And her presents of elaborately enveloped and costly toilet soap on the birthdays of the children, and at Christmas, were massive. Yet Clara always maintained that she was the meanest old thing imaginable. And Maggie had once said that she knew that Auntie Clara made her servant eat dripping instead of butter. To give inferior food to a servant was to Maggie the unforgivable in parsimony.

      “Well,” Mr. Clayhanger warningly inquired, “what do you say to your aunt?”

      “Thank you, auntie,” Edwin sheepishly responded, fingering the coin.

      It was a princely sum. And she had stuck up for him famously in the matter of the report. Strange that his father should not have read the report with sufficient attention to remark the fall to third place! Anyway, that aspect of the affair was now safely over, and it seemed to him that he had not lost much prestige by it. He would still be able to argue with his father on terms not too unequal, he hoped.

      Five.

      As the tea drew to an end, and the plates of toast, bread and butter, and tea-cake grew emptier, and the slop-basin filled, and only Maggie’s flowers remained fresh and immaculate amid the untidy débris of the meal; and as Edwin and Clara became gradually indifferent to jam, and then inimical to it; and as the sounds of the street took on the softer quality of summer evening, and the first filmy shades of twilight gathered imperceptibly in the corners of the room, and Mr. Clayhanger performed the eructations which signified that he had had enough; so Mrs. Hamps prepared herself for one of her classic outbursts of feeling.

      “Well!” she said at last, putting her spoon to the left of her cup as a final indication that seriously she would drink no more. And she gave a great sigh. “School over! And the only son going out into the world! How time flies!” And she gave another great sigh, implying an immense melancholy due to this vision of the reality of things. Then she remembered her courage, and the device of leaning hard, and all her philosophy.

      “But it’s all for the best!” she broke forth in a new brave tone. “Everything is ordered for the best. We must never forget that! And I’m quite sure that Edwin will be a very great credit to us all, with help from above.”

      She proceeded powerfully in this strain. She brought in God, Christ, and even the Holy Spirit. She mentioned the dangers of the world, and the disguises of the devil, and the unspeakable advantages of a good home, and the special goodness of Mr. Clayhanger and of Maggie, yes, and of her little Clara; and the pride which they all had in Edwin, and the unique opportunities which he had of doing good, by example, and also, soon, by precept, for others younger than himself would begin to look up to him; and again her personal pride in him, and her sure faith in him; and what a solemn hour it was …

      Nothing could stop her. The girls loathed these exhibitions. Maggie always looked at the table during their progress, and she felt as though she had done something wrong and was ashamed of it. Clara not merely felt like a criminal—she felt like an unrepentant criminal; she blushed, she glanced nervously about the room, and all the time she repeated steadily in her heart a highly obscene word which she had heard at school. This unspoken word, hurled soundlessly but savagely at her aunt in that innocent heart, afforded much comfort to Clara in the affliction. Even Edwin, who was more lenient in all ways than his sisters, profoundly deplored these moralisings of his aunt. They filled him with a desire to run fast and far, to be alone at sea, or to be deep somewhere in the bosom of the earth. He could not understand this side of his auntie’s individuality. But there was no delivery from Mrs. Hamps. The only person who could possibly have delivered them seemed to enjoy the sinister thraldom. Mr. Clayhanger listened with appreciative and admiring nods; he appeared to be quite sincere. And Edwin could not understand his father either. “How simple father must be!” he thought vaguely. Whereas Clara fatalistically dismissed her father’s attitude as only one more of the preposterously unreasonable phenomena which she was constantly meeting in life;