Clayhanger. Arnold Bennett

attracted him towards the artists’ materials cabinet which stood magnificent, complicated, and complete in the middle of the shop, like a monument? His father, after one infantile disastrous raid, had absolutely forbidden any visitation of that cabinet, with its glass case of assorted paints, crayons, brushes and pencils, and its innumerable long drawers full of paper and cards and wondrous perfectly equipped boxes, and T-squares and set-squares, with a hundred other contrivances. But of course the order had now ceased to have force. Edwin had left school; and, if he was not a man, he was certainly not a boy. He began to open the drawers, at first gingerly, then boldly; after all it was no business of Miss Ingamells’s! And, to be just, Miss Ingamells made no sort of pretence that it was any business of hers. She proceeded with her own business. Edwin opened a rather large wooden water-colour box. It was marked five and sixpence. It seemed to comprise everything needed for the production of the most entrancing and majestic architectural views, and as Edwin took out its upper case and discovered still further marvellous devices and apparatus in its basement beneath, he dimly but passionately saw, in his heart, bright masterpieces that ought to be the fruit of that box. There was a key to it. He must have it. He would have given all that he possessed for it, if necessary.

      Four.

      “Miss Ingamells,” he said: and, as she did not look up immediately, “I say, Miss Ingamells! How much does father take off in the shilling to auntie when she buys anything?”

      “Don’t ask me, Master Edwin,” said Miss Ingamells; “I don’t know. How should I know?”

      “Well, then,” he muttered, “I shall pay full price for it—that’s all.” He could not wait, and he wanted to be on the safe side.

      Miss Ingamells gave him change for his half-sovereign in a strictly impartial manner, to indicate that she accepted no responsibility. And the squaring of Edwin’s shoulders conveyed to Miss Ingamells that he advised her to keep carefully within her own sphere, and not to make impertinent inquiries about the origin of the half-sovereign, which he could see intrigued her acutely. He now owned the box; it was not a box of colours, but a box of enchantment. He had had colour-boxes before, but nothing to compare with this, nothing that could have seemed magical to anybody wiser than a very small boy. Then he bought some cartridge-paper; he considered that cartridge-paper would be good enough for preliminary experiments.

      Five.

      It was while he was paying for the cartridge-paper—he being, as was indeed proper, on the customers’ side of the counter—that a heavy loutish boy in an apron entered the shop, blushing. Edwin turned away. This was Miss Ingamells’s affair.

      “If ye please, Mester Peake’s sent me. He canna come in this afternoon—he’s got a bit o’ ratting on—and will Mester Clayhanger step across to th’ Dragon to-night after eight, with that there peeper (paper) as he knows on?”

      At the name of Peake, Edwin started. He had utterly forgotten the matter.

      “Master Edwin,” said Miss Ingamells drily. “You know all about that, don’t you?” Clearly she resented that he knew all about that while she didn’t.

      “Oh! Yes,” Edwin stammered. “What did you say?” It was his first piece of real business.

      “If you please, Mester Peake sent me.” The messenger blundered through his message again word for word.

      “Very well. I’ll attend to it,” said Edwin, as nonchalantly as he could.

      Nevertheless he was at a loss what to do, simple though the situation might have seemed to a person with an experience of business longer than Edwin’s. Just as three hours previously his father had appeared to be bracing all his intellect to a problem that struck Edwin as entirely simple, so now Edwin seemed to be bracing all his intellect to another aspect of the same problem. Time, revenging his father! … What! Go across to the Dragon and in cold blood demand Mr. Enoch Peake, and then parley with Mr. Enoch Peake as one man with another! He had never been inside the Dragon. He had been brought up in the belief that the Dragon was a place of sin. The Dragon was included in the generic term—‘gin-palace,’ and quite probably in the Siamese-twin term—‘gaming-saloon.’ Moreover, to discuss business with Mr. Enoch Peake … Mr. Enoch Peake was as mysterious to Edwin as, say, a Chinese mandarin! Still, business was business, and something would have to be done. He did not know what. Ought he to go to the Dragon? His father had not foreseen the possibility of this development. He instantly decided one fundamental: he would not consult Miss Ingamells; no, nor even Maggie! There remained only Big James. He went across to see Big James, who was calmly smoking a pipe on the little landing at the top of the steps leading to the printing office.

      Big James showed no astonishment.

      “You come along o’ me to the Dragon to-night, young sir, at eight o’clock, or as soon after as makes no matter, and I’ll see as you see Mr. Enoch Peake. I shall be coming up Woodisun Bank at eight o’clock, or as soon after as makes no matter. You be waiting for me at the back gates there, and I’ll see as you see Mr. Enoch Peake.”

      “Are you going to the Dragon?”

      “Am I going to the Dragon, young sir!” exclaimed Big James, in his majestic voice.

Volume One--Chapter Nine.

       Table of Contents

      The Town.

      James Yarlett was worthy of his nickname. He stood six feet four and a half inches in height, and his girth was proportionate; he had enormous hands and feet, large features, and a magnificent long dark brown beard; owing to this beard his necktie was never seen. But the most magnificent thing about him was his bass voice, acknowledged to be the finest bass in the town, and one of the finest even in Hanbridge, where, in his earlier prime, James had lived as a ‘news comp’ on the “Staffordshire Signal.” He was now a ‘jobbing comp’ in Bursley, because Bursley was his native town and because he preferred jobbing. He made the fourth and heaviest member of the celebrated Bursley Male Glee Party, the other three being Arthur Smallrice, an old man with a striking falsetto voice, Abraham Harracles, and Jos Rawnpike (pronounced Rampick). These men were accustomed to fame, and Big James was the king of them, though the mildest. They sang at dinners, free-and-easies, concerts, and Martinmas tea-meetings. They sang for the glory, and when there was no demand for their services, they sang to themselves, for the sake of singing. Each of them was a star in some church or chapel choir. And except Arthur Smallrice, they all shared a certain elasticity of religious opinion. Big James, for example, had varied in ten years from Wesleyan, through Old Church, to Roman Catholic up at Bleakridge. It all depended on niceties in the treatment accorded to him, and on the choice of anthems. Moreover, he liked a change.

      He was what his superiors called ‘a very superior man.’ Owing to the more careful enunciation required in singing, he had lost a great deal of the Five Towns accent, and one cannot be a compositor for a quarter of a century without insensibly acquiring an education and a store of knowledge far excelling the ordinary. His manner was gentle, and perhaps somewhat pompous, as is common with very big men; but you could never be sure whether an extremely subdued humour did not underlie his pomposity. He was a bachelor, aged forty-five, and lived quietly with a married sister at the bottom of Woodisun Bank, near the National Schools. The wonder was that, with all his advantages, he had not more deeply impressed himself upon Bursley as an individuality, and not merely as a voice. But he seemed never to seek to do so. He was without ambition; and, though curiously careful sometimes about preserving his own dignity, and beyond question sensitive by temperament, he showed marked respect, and even humility, to the worldly-successful. Despite his bigness and simplicity there was something small about him which came out in odd trifling details. Thus it was characteristic of Big James to ask Edwin to be waiting for him at the back gates in Woodisun Bank when he might just as easily have met him at the side door by the closed shop in Wedgwood Street.