Читать книгу Clayhanger - Arnold Bennett - Страница 67

Darius advanced into the attic.

“What about that matter of Enoch Peake’s?” he asked, hoping and fearing, really anxious for his son. He defended himself against probable disappointment by preparing to lapse into savage paternal pessimism and disgust at the futility of an offspring nursed in luxury.

“Oh! It’s all right,” said Edwin eagerly. “Mr. Peake sent word he couldn’t come, and he wanted you to go across to the Dragon this evening. So I went instead.” It sounded dashingly capable.

He finished the recital, and added that of course Big James had not been able to proceed with the job.

“And where’s the proof?” demanded Darius. His relief expressed itself in a superficial surliness; but Edwin was not deceived. As his father gazed mechanically at the proof that Edwin produced hurriedly from his pocket, he added with a negligent air—

“There was a free-and-easy on at the Dragon, father.”

“Was there?” muttered Darius.

Edwin saw that whatever danger had existed was now over.

“And I suppose,” said Darius, with assumed grimness, “if I hadn’t happened to ha’ seen a light from th’ bottom o’ th’ attic stairs I should never have known aught about all this here?” He indicated the cleansed attic, the table, the lamp, and the apparatus of art.

“Oh yes, you would, father!” Edwin reassured him.

Darius came nearer. They were close together, Edwin twisted on the cane-chair, and his father almost over him. The lamp smelt, and gave off a stuffy warmth; the open window, through which came a wandering air, was a black oblong; the triangular side walls of the dormer shut them intimately in; the house slept.

“What art up to?”

The tone was benignant. Edwin had not been ordered abruptly off to bed, with a reprimand for late hours and silly proceedings generally. He sought the reason in vain. One reason was that Darius Clayhanger had made a grand bargain at Manchester in the purchase of a second-hand printing machine.

“I’m copying this,” he replied slowly, and then all the details tumbled rashly out of his mouth, one after the other. “Oh, father! I found this book in the shop, packed away on a top shelf, and I want to borrow it. I only want to borrow it. And I’ve bought this paint-box, out of auntie’s half-sovereign. I paid Miss Ingamells the full price … I thought I’d have a go at some of these architecture things.”

Darius glared at the copy.

“Humph!”

“It’s only just started, you know.”

“Them prize books—have ye done all that?”

“Yes, father.”

“And put all the prices down, as I told ye?”

“Yes, father.”

Then a pause. Edwin’s heart was beating hard.

“I want to do some of these architecture things,” he repeated. No remark from his father. Then he said, fastening his gaze intensely on the table: “You know, father, what I should really like to be—I should like to be an architect.”

It was out. He had said it.

“Should ye?” said his father, who attached no importance of any kind to this avowal of a preference. “Well, what you want is a bit o’ business training for a start, I’m thinking.”

“Oh, of course!” Edwin concurred, with pathetic eagerness, and added a piece of information for his father: “I’m only sixteen, aren’t I?”

“Sixteen ought to ha’ been in bed this two hours and more. Off with ye!”

Edwin retired in an extraordinary state of relief and happiness.