Part 48 (1/2)

The appearance of his bedroom, and the fact that he enjoyed being in it alone, gave some ground for Maggie's first accusation. A screen hid the bed, and this screen was half covered with written papers of memoranda; roughly, it divided the room into dormitory and study. The whole chamber was occupied by Edwin's personal goods, great and small, ranged in the most careful order; it was full; in the occupation of a young man who was not precociously an old maid, it would have been littered. It was a complex and yet practical apparatus for daily use, completely organised for the production of comfort. Edwin would move about in it with the loving and a.s.sured gestures of a creator; and always he was improving its perfection. His bedroom was his pa.s.sion.

Often, during the wilderness of the day, he would think of his bedroom as of a refuge, to which in the evening he should hasten. Ascending the stairs after the meal, his heart would run on in advance of his legs, and be within the room before his hand had opened the door. And then he would close the door, as upon the whole tedious world, and turn up the gas, and light the stove with an explosive plop, and settle himself.

And in the first few minutes of reading he would with distinct, conscious pleasure, allow his attention to circle the room, dwelling upon piled and serried volumes, and delighting in orderliness and in convenience. And he would reflect: ”This is my life. This is what I shall always live for. This is the best. And why not?” It seemed to him when he was alone in his bedroom and in the night, that he had respectably well solved the problem offered to him by destiny. He insisted to himself sharply that he was not made for marriage, that he had always known marriage to be impossible for him, that what had happened was bound to have happened. For a few weeks he had lived in a fool's paradise: that was all... Fantastic scheme, mad self-deception!

In such wise he thought of his love-affair. His profound satisfaction was that none except his father knew of it, and even his father did not know how far it had gone. He felt that if the town had been aware of his jilting, he could not have borne the humiliation. To himself he had been horribly humiliated; but he had recovered in his own esteem.

It was only by very slow processes, by insensible degrees, that he had arrived at the stage of being able to say to his mirror, ”I've got over that!” And who could judge better than he? He could trace no mark of the episode in his face. Save for the detail of a moustache, it seemed to him that he had looked on precisely the same unchangeable face for a dozen years. Strange, that suffering had left no sign! Strange, that, in the months just after Hilda's marriage, no acquaintance had taken him on one side and said, ”What is the tragedy I can read on your features?”

And indeed the truth was that no one suspected. The vision of his face would remain with people long after he had pa.s.sed them in the street, or spoken to them in the shop. The charm of his sadness persisted in their memory. But they would easily explain it to themselves by saying that his face had a naturally melancholy cast--a sort of accident that had happened to him in the beginning! He had a considerable reputation, of which he was imperfectly aware, for secretiveness, timidity, gentleness, and intellectual superiority. Sundry young women thought of him wistfully when smiling upon quite other young men, and would even kiss him while kissing them, according to the notorious perversity of love.

THREE.

He was reading Swift's ”Tale of a Tub” eagerly, tasting with a palate consciously fastidious and yet catholic, the fine savour of a masterpiece. By his secret enthusiasm, which would escape from him at rare intervals in a word to a friend, he was continuing the reputation of the ”Tale of a Tub” from one century towards the next. A cla.s.sic remains a cla.s.sic only because a few hundred Edwins up and down England enjoy it so heartily that their pleasure becomes religious. Edwin, according to his programme, had no right to be amusing himself with Swift at that hour. The portly Hallam, whom he found tedious, ought to have been in his hands. But Swift had caught him and would not let him go. Herein was one of the consequences of the pocketableness of Ca.s.sell's new series. Edwin had been obliged to agree with Tom Orgreave (now a married man) that the books were not volumes for a collector; but they were so cheap, and they came from the press so often--once a week, and they could be carried so comfortably over the heart, that he could not resist most of them. His professed idea was that by their aid he could read smaller works in odd moments, at any time, thus surpa.s.sing his programme. He had not foreseen that Swift would make a breach in his programme, which was already in a bad way.

But he went on reading tranquilly, despite the damage to it; for in the immediate future shone the hope of the new life, when programmes would never be neglected. In less than a month he would be thirty years of age. At twenty, it had seemed a great age, an age of absolute maturity.

Now, he felt as young and as boyish as ever, especially before his father, and he perceived that his vague early notion about the finality of such an age as thirty had been infantile. Nevertheless, the entry into another decade presented itself to him as solemn, and he meant to signalise it by new and mightier resolutions to execute vaster programmes. He was intermittently engaged, during these weeks, in the delicious, the enchanting business of constructing the ideal programme and scheming the spare hours to ensure its achievement. He lived in a dream and illusion of ultimate perfection.

Several times, despite the spell of Swift, he glanced at his watch. The hand went from nine to ten minutes past ten. And then he thought he heard the sound for which he had been listening. He jumped up, abandoned the book with its marker, opened the window wide, and lifting the blind by its rod, put his head out. Yes, he could hear the yelling afar off, over the hill, softened by distance into something gentle and attractive.

”'Signal!' 'Signal!' Special edition! 'Signal!'” And then words incomprehensible.

It came nearer in the night.

He drew down the window, and left the room. The mere distant sound of the newsboys' voices had roused him to a pleasing excitement. He fumbled in his pockets. He had neither a halfpenny nor a penny--it was just like him--and those newsboys with their valuable tidings would not care to halt and weigh out change with a balance.

”Got a halfpenny? Quick!” he cried, running into the kitchen, where Maggie and Mrs Nixon were engaged in some calm and endless domestic occupation amid linen that hung down whitely.

”What for?” Maggie mechanically asked, feeling the while under her ap.r.o.n.

”Paper,” he said.

”At this time of night? You'll never get one at this time of night!”

she said, in her simplicity.

”Come on!”

He stamped his foot with impatience. It was absolutely astonis.h.i.+ng, the ignorance in which Maggie lived, and lived efficiently and in content.

Edwin filled the house with newspapers, and she never looked at them, never had the idea of looking at them, unless occasionally at the 'Signal' for an account of a wedding or a bazaar. In which case she would glance at the world for an instant with mild naivete, shocked by the horrible things that were apparently going on there, and in five minutes would forget all about it again. Here the whole of England, Ireland, and Scotland was at its front doors that night waiting for newsboys, and to her the night was like any other night! Yet she read many books.

”Here's a penny,” she said. ”Don't forget to give it me back.”

He ran out bareheaded. At the corner of the street somebody else was expectant. He could distinguish all the words now--

”'Signal!' Special edition! Mester Gladstone's Home Rule Bill. Full report. Gladstone's speech. Special!”

The dark running figures approached, stopping at frequent gates, and their hoa.r.s.e voices split the night. The next moment they had gone by, in a flying column, and Edwin and the other man found themselves with fluttering paper in their hands, they knew not how! It was the most unceremonious s.n.a.t.c.h-and-thrust transaction that could be imagined.

Bleakridge was silent again, and its gates closed, and the shouts were descending violently into Bursley.

”Where's father?” Maggie called out when she heard Edwin in the hall.