Clayhanger

"Have you got a Bradshaw?" she inquired, after the briefest greeting, gazing at him across the counter through her veil, as though imploring him for Bradshaw.

"I'm afraid we haven't one left," he said. "You see it's getting on for the end of the month. I could--No, I suppose you want it at once?"

"I want it now," she replied. "I'm going to London by the six express, and what I want to know is whether I can get on to Brighton to-night.

They actually haven't a Bradshaw up there," half in scorn and half in levity, "and they said you'd probably have one here. So I ran down."

"They'd be certain to have one at the Tiger," he murmured, reflecting.

"The Tiger!" Evidently she did not care for the idea of the Tiger.

"What about the railway station?"

"Yes, or the railway station. I'll go up there with you now if you like, and find out for you. I know the head porter. We're just closing. Father's at home. He's not very well."

She thanked him, relief in her voice.

In a minute he had put his hat and coat on and given instructions to Stifford, and he was climbing Duck Bank with Hilda at his side. He had forgiven her. Nay, he had forgotten her crime. The disaster, with all its despair, was sponged clean from his mind like writing off a slate, and as rapidly. It was effaced. He tried to collect his faculties and savour the new sensations. But he could not. Within him all was incoherent, wild, and distracting. Five minutes earlier, and he could not have conceived the bliss of walking with her to the station. Now he was walking with her to the station; and a.s.suredly it was bliss, and yet he did not fully taste it. Though he would not have loosed her for a million pounds, her presence gave an even crueller edge to his anxiety and apprehension. London! Brighton! Would she be that night in Brighton? He felt helpless, and desperate. And beneath all this was the throbbing of a strange, bitter joy. She asked about his cold and about his father's indisposition. She said nothing of her failure to appear on the previous day, and he knew not how to introduce it neatly: he was not in control of his intelligence.

They pa.s.sed Snaggs' Theatre, and from its green, wooden walls came the obscure sound of humanity in emotion. Before the mean and shabby portals stood a small crowd of ragged urchins. Posters printed by Darius Clayhanger made white squares on the front.

"It's a meeting of the men," said Edwin.

"They're losing, aren't they?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "I expect they are."

She asked what the building was, and he explained.

"They used to call it the Blood Tub," he said.

She s.h.i.+vered. "The Blood Tub?"

"Yes. Melodrama and murder and gore--you know."

"How horrible!" she exclaimed. "Why are people like that in the Five Towns?"

"It's our form of poetry, I suppose," he muttered, smiling at the pavement, which was surprisingly dry and clean in the feeble suns.h.i.+ne.

"I suppose it is!" she agreed heartily, after a pause.

"But you belong to the Five Towns, don't you?" he asked.

"Oh yes! I used to."

At the station the name of Bradshaw appeared to be quite unknown. But Hilda's urgency impelled them upwards from the head porter to the ticket clerk, and from the ticket clerk to the stationmaster; and at length they discovered, in

Without her relentless force, he would never have penetrated even as far as the stuffy room where the unique Bradshaw lay. It was she who had taken him to the station, not he her. How could he hold her back from Brighton?

THREE.

When they came again to the Blood Tub, she said--

"Couldn't we just go and look in? I've got plenty of time, now I know exactly how I stand."

She halted, and glanced across the road. He could only agree to the proposition. For himself, a peculiar sense of delicacy would have made it impossible for him to intrude his prosperity upon the deliberations of starving artisans on strike and stricken; and he wondered what the potters might think or say about the invasion by a woman. But he had to traverse the street with her and enter, and he had to do so with an air of masculine protectiveness. The urchins stood apart to let them in.

Snaggs', dimly lit by a few glazed apertures in the roof, was nearly crammed by men who sat on the low benches and leaned standing against the sidewalls. In the small and tawdry proscenium, behind a worn picture of the Bay of Naples, were silhouetted the figures of the men's leader and of several other officials. The leader was speaking in a quiet, mild voice, the other officials were seated on Windsor chairs.

The smell of the place was nauseating, and yet the atmosphere was bitingly cold. The warm-wrapped visitors could see rows and rows of discoloured backs and elbows, and caps, and stringy kerchiefs. They could almost feel the contraction of thousands of muscles in an involuntary effort to squeeze out the chill from all these bodies; not a score of overcoats could be discerned in the whole theatre, and many of the jackets were thin and ragged; but the officials had overcoats. And the visitors could almost see, as it were in rays, the intense fixed glances darting from every part of the interior, and piercing the upright figure in the centre of the stage.

"Some method of compromise," the leader was saying in his persuasive tones.

A young man sprang up furiously from the middle benches.

"To h.e.l.l wi' compromise!" he shouted in a tigerish pa.s.sion. "Haven't us had forty pound from Ameriky?"

"Order! Order!" some protested fiercely. But one voice cried: "Pitch the b.a.s.t.a.r.d awt, neck and crop!"

Hands clawed at the interrupter and dragged him with extreme violence to the level of the bench, where he muttered like a dying volcano. Angry growls shot up here and there, snappish, menacing, and b.e.s.t.i.a.l.

"It is quite true," said the leader soothingly, "that our comrades at Trenton have collected forty pounds for us. But forty pounds would scarcely pay for a loaf of bread for one man in every ten on strike."

There was more interruption. The dangerous growls continued in running explosions along the benches. The leader, ignoring them, turned to consult with his neighbour, and then faced his audience and called out more loudly--

"The business of the meeting is at an end."

The entire mult.i.tude jumped up, and there was stretching of arms and stamping of feet. The men nearest to the door now perceived Edwin and Hilda, who moved backwards as before a flood. Edwin seized Hilda's arm to hasten her.

"Lads," bawled an old man's voice from near the stage, "Let's sing 'Rock of Ages.'"

A frowning and hirsute fellow near the door, with the veins prominent on his red forehead, shouted hoa.r.s.ely, "'Rock of Ages' be b.u.g.g.e.red!" and s.h.i.+fting his hands into his pockets he plunged for the street, head foremost and chin sticking out murderously. Edwin and Hilda escaped at speed and recrossed the road. The crowd came surging out of the narrow neck of the building and spread over the pavements like a sinister liquid. But from within the building came the l.u.s.ty song of "Rock of Ages."

"It's terrible!" Hilda murmured, after a silence. "Just to see them is enough. I shall never forget what you said."

"What was that?" he inquired. He knew what it was, but he wished to prolong the taste of her appreciation.

"That you've only got to see the poor things to know they're in the right! Oh! I've lost my handkerchief, unless I've left it in your shop. It must have dropped out of my m.u.f.f."

FOUR.

The shop was closed. As with his latchkey he opened the private door and then stood on one side for her to precede him into the corridor that led to the back of the shop, he watched the stream of operatives scattering across Duck Bank and descending towards the Square. It was as if he and Hilda, being pursued, were escaping. And as Hilda, stopping an instant on the step, saw what he saw, her face took a troubled expression. They both went in and he shut the door.

"Turn to the left," he said, wondering whether the big Columbia machine would be running, for her to see if she chose.

"Oh! This takes you to the shop, does it? How funny to be behind the counter!"

He thought she spoke self-consciously, in the way of small talk: which was contrary to her habit.