Part 29 (1/2)
”Oh, dad! I just want a--” Charlie objected, holding the bottle in the air above his gla.s.s.
”Charlie,” said his mother, ”do you hear your father?”
”Pa.s.s me that bottle,” Mr Orgreave repeated.
Charlie obeyed, proclaiming himself a martyr. Mr Orgreave filled his own gla.s.s, emptying the bottle, and began to sip.
”This will do me more good than you, young man,” he said. Then turning again to Edwin: ”Are you a Bradlaugh man?”
And Edwin, uplifted, said: ”All I say is--you can't help what you believe. You can't make yourself believe anything. And I don't see why you should, either. There's no virtue in believing.”
”Hooray,” cried the sedate Tom.
”No virtue in believing! Eh, Mr Edwin! Mr Edwin!”
This sad expostulation came from Mrs Orgreave.
”Don't you see what I mean?” he persisted vivaciously, reddening. But he could not express himself further.
”Hooray!” repeated Tom.
Mrs Orgreave shook her head, with grieved good-nature.
”You mustn't take mother too seriously,” said Janet, smiling. ”She only puts on that expression to keep worse things from being said. She's only pretending to be upset. Nothing could upset her, really. She's past being upset--she's been through so much--haven't you, you poor dear?”
In looking at Janet, Edwin caught the eyes of Hilda blazing on him fixedly. Her head seemed to tremble, and he glanced away. She had added nothing to the discussion. And indeed Janet herself had taken no part in the politics, content merely to advise the combatants upon their demeanour.
”So you're against me too, Edwin!” Mr Orgreave sighed with mock melancholy. ”Well, this is no place for me.” He rose, lifted Alicia and put her into his arm-chair, and then went towards the door.
”You aren't going to work, are you, Osmond?” his wife asked, turning her head.
”I am,” said he.
He disappeared amid a wailing chorus of ”Oh, dad!”
VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER NINE.
IN THE PORCH.
When the front door of the Orgreaves interposed itself that night between Edwin and a little group of gas-lit faces, he turned away towards the warm gloom of the garden in a state of happy excitement. He had left fairly early, despite protests, because he wished to give his father no excuse for a spectacular display of wrath; Edwin's desire for a tranquil existence was growing steadily. But now that he was in the open air, he did not want to go home. He wanted to be in full possession of himself, at leisure and in freedom, and to examine the treasure of his sensations. ”It's been rather quiet,” the Orgreaves had said. ”We generally have people dropping in.” Quiet! It was the least quiet evening he had ever spent.
He was intoxicated; not with wine, though he had drunk wine. A group of well-intentioned philanthropists, organised into a powerful society for combating the fearful evils of alcoholism, had seized Edwin at the age of twelve and made him bind himself with solemn childish signature and ceremonies never to taste alcohol save by doctor's orders. He thought of this pledge in the garden of the Orgreaves. ”d.a.m.ned rot!” he murmured, and dismissed the pledge from his mind as utterly unimportant, if not indeed fatuous. No remorse! The whole philosophy of asceticism inspired him, at that moment, with impatient scorn. It was the hope of pleasure that intoxicated him, the vision which he had had of the possibilities of being really interested in life. He saw new avenues toward joy, and the sight thereof made him tingle, less with the desire to be immediately at them than with the present ecstasy of contemplating them. He was conscious of actual physical tremors and agreeable smartings in his head; electric disturbances. But he did not reason; he felt. He was pa.s.sive, not active. He would not even, just then, attempt to make new plans. He was in a beat.i.tude, his mouth unaware that it was smiling.
TWO.
Behind him was the lighted house; in front the gloom of the lawn ending in shrubberies and gates, with a street-lamp beyond. And there was silence, save for the vast furnace-breathings, coming over undulating miles, which the people of the Five Towns, hearing them always, never hear. A great deal of diffused light filtered through the cloudy sky.
The warm wandering airs were humid on the cheek. He must return home.
He could not stand dreaming all the night in the garden of the Orgreaves. To his right uprose the great rectangular ma.s.s of his father's new house, entirely free of scaffolding, having all the aspect of a house inhabited. It looked enormous. He was proud of it. In such an abode, and so close to the Orgreaves, what could he not do?