Part 28 (2/2)

”Oh! I'm all right, thanks,” said Edwin.

”Sit down!” Charlie insisted, using force.

”Do you talk to your poor patients in that tone?” Alicia inquired, from the shelter of her father.

”Here I come down specially to see them,” Charlie mused aloud, as he twisted the corkscrew into the cork of the bottle, unceremoniously handed to him by Martha, ”and not only they don't offer to pay my fares, but they grudge me a drop of claret! Plupp!” He grimaced as the cork came out. ”And my last night, too! Hilda, this is better than coffee, as Saint Paul remarked on a famous occasion. Pa.s.s your gla.s.s.”

”Charlie!” his mother protested. ”I'll thank you to leave Saint Paul out.”

”Charlie! Your mother will be boxing your ears if you don't mind,” his father warned him.

”I'll not have it!” said his mother, shaking her head in a fas.h.i.+on that she imagined to be harsh and forbidding.

TWO.

Towards the close of the meal, Mr Orgreave said--

”Well, Edwin, what does your father say about Bradlaugh?”

”He doesn't say much,” Edwin replied.

”Let me see, does he call himself a Liberal?”

”He calls himself a Liberal,” said Edwin, s.h.i.+fting on his chair. ”Yes, he calls himself a Liberal. But I'm afraid he's a regular old Tory.”

Edwin blushed, laughing, as half the family gave way to more or less violent mirth.

”Father's a regular old Tory too,” Charlie grinned.

”Oh! I'm sorry,” said Edwin.

”Yes, father's a regular old Tory,” agreed Mr Orgreave. ”Don't apologise! Don't apologise! I'm used to these attacks. I've been nearly kicked out of my own house once. But some one has to keep the flag flying.”

It was plain that Mr Orgreave enjoyed the unloosing of the hurricane which he had brought about. Mrs Orgreave used to say that he employed that particular tone from a naughty love of mischief. In a moment all the boys were upon him, except Jimmie, who, out of sheer intellectual sn.o.bbery, as the rest averred, supported his father. Atheistical Bradlaugh had been exciting the British public to disputation for a long time, and the Bradlaugh question happened then to be acute. In that very week the Northampton member had been committed to custody for outraging Parliament, and released. And it was known that Gladstone meant immediately to bring in a resolution for permitting members to affirm, instead of taking oath by appealing to a G.o.d. Than this complication of theology and politics nothing could have been better devised to impa.s.sion an electorate which had but two genuine interests-- theology and politics. The rumour of the feverish affair had spread to the most isolated communities. People talked theology, and people talked politics, who had till then only felt silently on these subjects.

In loquacious families Bradlaugh caused dissension and division, more real perhaps than apparent, for not all Bradlaugh's supporters had the courage to avow themselves such. It was not easy, at any rate it was not easy in the Five Towns, for a timid man in reply to the question, ”Are you in favour of a professed Freethinker sitting in the House of Commons?” to reply, ”Yes, I am.” There was something shameless in that word 'professed.' If the Freethinker had been ashamed of his freethinking, if he had sought to conceal it in phrases,--the implication was that the case might not have been so bad. This was what astonished Edwin: the candour with which Bradlaugh's position was upheld in the dining-room of the Orgreaves. It was as if he were witnessing deeds of wilful perilous daring.

But the conversation was not confined to Bradlaugh, for Bradlaugh was not a perfect test for separating Liberals and Tories. n.o.body in the room, for example, was quite convinced that Mr Orgreave was anti-Bradlaugh. To satisfy their instincts for father-baiting, the boys had to include other topics, such as Ireland and the proposal for Home Rule. As for Mr Orgreave, he could and did always infuriate them by refusing to answer seriously. The fact was that this was his device for maintaining his prestige among the turbulent mob. Dignified and brilliantly clever as Osmond Orgreave had the reputation of being in the town, he was somehow outshone in cleverness at home, and he never put the bar of his dignity between himself and his children. Thus he could only keep the upper hand by allowing hints to escape from him of the secret amus.e.m.e.nt roused in him by the comicality of the spectacle of his filial enemies. He had one great phrase, which he would drawl out at them with the accents of a man who is trying politely to hide his contempt: ”You'll learn better as you get older.”

THREE.

Edwin, who said little, thought the relations.h.i.+p between father and sons utterly delightful. He had not conceived that parents and children ever were or could be on such terms.

”Now what do you say, Edwin?” Mr Orgreave asked. ”Are you a--Charlie, pa.s.s me that bottle.”

Charlie was helping himself to another gla.s.s of wine. The father, the two elder sons, and Edwin alone had drunk of the wine. Edwin had never tasted wine in his life, and the effect of half a gla.s.s on him was very agreeable and strange.

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