Part 59 (1/2)

VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER EIGHT.

A CHANGE OF MIND.

One evening, a year later, in earliest summer of 1887, Edwin and Mr Osmond Orgreave were walking home together from Hanbridge. When they reached the corner of the street leading to Lane End House, Osmond Orgreave said, stopping--

”Now you'll come with us?” And he looked Edwin hard in the eyes, and there was a most flattering appeal in his voice. It was some time since their eyes had met frankly, for Edwin had recently been having experience of Mr Orgreave's methods in financial controversy, and it had not been agreeable.

After an instant Edwin said heartily--

”Yes, I think I'll come. Of course I should like to. But I'll let you know.”

”Tonight?”

”Yes, to-night.”

”I shall tell my wife you're coming.”

Mr Orgreave waved a hand, and pa.s.sed with a certain decorative gaiety down the street. His hair was now silvern, but it still curled in the old places, and his gestures had apparently not aged at all.

Mr and Mrs Orgreave were going to London for the Jubilee celebrations.

So far as their family was concerned, they were going alone, because Osmond had insisted humorously that he wanted a rest from his children.

But he had urgently invited Edwin to accompany them. At first Edwin had instinctively replied that it was impossible. He could not leave home.

He had never been to London; a journey to London presented itself to him as an immense enterprise, almost as a piece of culpable self-indulgence.

And then, under the stimulus of Osmond's energetic and adventurous temperament, he had said to himself, ”Why not? Why shouldn't I?”

The arguments favoured his going. It was absurd and scandalous that he had never been to London: he ought for his self-respect to depart thither at once. The legend of the Jubilee, spectacular, processional, historic, touched his imagination. Whenever he thought of it, his fancy saw pennons and corselets and chargers winding through stupendous streets, and, somewhere in the midst, the majesty of England in the frail body of a little old lady, who had had many children and one supreme misfortune. Moreover, he could incidentally see Charlie.

Moreover, he had been suffering from a series of his customary colds, and from overwork, and Heve had told him that he 'would do with a change.' Moreover, he had a project for buying paper in London: he had received, from London, overtures which seemed promising. He had never been able to buy paper quite as cheaply as Darius had bought paper, for the mere reason that he could not haggle over sixteenths of a penny with efficient ruthlessness; he simply could not do it, being somehow ashamed to do it. In Manchester, where Darius had bought paper for thirty years, they were imperceptibly too brutal for Edwin in the harsh realities of a bargain; they had no sense of shame. He thought that in letters from London he detected a softer spirit.

And above all he desired, by accepting Mr Orgreave's invitation, to show to the architect that the differences between them were really expunged from his mind. Among many confusions in his father's flouris.h.i.+ng but disorderly affairs, Edwin had been startled to find the Orgreave transactions. There were accounts and contra-accounts, and quant.i.ties of strangely contradictory doc.u.ments. Never had a real settlement occurred between Darius and Osmond. And Osmond did not seem to want one. Edwin, however, with his old-maid's pa.s.sion for putting and keeping everything in its place, insisted on one. Mr Orgreave had to meet him on his strongest point, his love of order. The process of settlement had been painful to Edwin; it had seriously marred some of his illusions. Nearly the last of the entanglements in his father's business, the Orgreave matter was straightened and closed now; and the projected escapade to London would bury it deep, might even restore agreeable illusions. And Edwin was incapable of nursing malice.

The best argument of all was that he had a right to go to London. He had earned London, by honest and severe work, and by bearing firmly the huge weight of his responsibility. So far he had offered himself no reward whatever, not even an increase of salary, not even a week of freedom or the satisfaction of a single caprice.

”I shall go, and charge it to the business,” he said to himself. He became excited about going.

TWO.

As he approached his house, he saw the elder Heve, vicar of Saint Peter's, coming away from it, a natty clerical figure in a straw hat of peculiar shape. Recently this man had called once or twice; not professionally, for Darius was neither a churchman nor a paris.h.i.+oner, but as a brother of Dr Heve's, as a friendly human being, and Darius had been flattered. The Vicar would talk about Jesus with quiet half-humorous enthusiasm. For him at any rate Christianity was grand fun. He seemed never to be solemn over his religion, like the Wesleyans. He never, with a shamed, defiant air, said, ”I am not ashamed of Christ,” like the Wesleyans. He might have known Christ slightly at Cambridge. But his relations with Christ did not make him conceited, nor condescending. And if he was concerned about the welfare of people who knew not Christ, he hid his concern in the politest manner. Edwin, after being momentarily impressed by him, was now convinced of his perfect mediocrity; the Vicar's views on literature had d.a.m.ned him eternally in the esteem of Edwin, who was still naive enough to be unable to comprehend how a man who had been to Cambridge could speak enthusiastically of ”Uncle Tom's Cabin.” Moreover, Edwin despised him for his obvious pride in being a bachelor. The Vicar would not say that a priest should be celibate, but he would, with delicacy, imply as much. Then also, for Edwin's taste, the parson was somewhat too childishly interested in the culture of cellar-mushrooms, which was his hobby. He would recount the tedious details of all his experiments to Darius, who, flattered by these attentions from the Established Church, took immense delight in the Vicar and in the sample mushrooms offered to him from time to time.

Maggie stood in the porch, which commanded the descent into Bursley; she was watching the Vicar as he receded. When Edwin appeared at the gate, she gave a little jump, and he fancied that she also blushed.

”Look here!” he exclaimed to himself, in a flash of suspicion. ”Surely she's not thinking of the Vicar! Surely Maggie isn't after all!” He did not conceive it possible that the Vicar, who had been to Cambridge and had notions about celibacy, was thinking of Maggie. ”Women are queer,” he said to himself. (For him, this generalisation from facts was quite original.) Fancy her staring after the Vicar! She must have been doing it quite unconsciously! He had supposed that her att.i.tude towards the Vicar was precisely his own. He took it for granted that the Vicar's att.i.tude was the same to both of them, based on a polite and kindly but firm recognition that there could be no genuine sympathy between him and them.

”The Vicar's just been,” said Maggie.

”Has he? ... Cheered the old man up at all?”

”Not much.” Maggie shook her head gloomily.