Читать книгу Clayhanger - Arnold Bennett - Страница 83

“I’ve just seen Barlow,” said Darius confidentially to Edwin. Barlow was the baker. “He’s been here afore his rounds. He’s willing to sublet me his storeroom—so that’ll be all right! Eh?”

“Yes,” said Edwin, seeing that his approval was being sought for.

“We must fix that machine plumb again.”

“I suppose the floor’s as firm as rocks now?” Edwin suggested.

“Eh! Bless ye! Yes!” said his father, with a trace of kindly impatience.

The policy of makeshift was to continue. The floor having been stayed with oak, the easiest thing and the least immediately expensive thing was to leave matters as they were. When the baker’s stores were cleared from his warehouse, Darius could use the spaces between the pillars for lumber of his own; and he could either knock an entrance-way through the wall in the yard, or he could open the nailed-down trap door and patch the ancient stairway within; or he could do nothing—it would only mean walking out into Woodisun Bank and up the alley each time he wanted access to his lumber!

And yet, after the second cracking sound on the previous day, he had been ready to vow to rent an entirely new and common-sense printing office somewhere else—if only he should be saved from disaster that once! But he had not quite vowed. And, in any case, a vow to oneself is not a vow to the Virgin. He had escaped from a danger, and the recurrence of the particular danger was impossible. Why then commit follies of prudence, when the existing arrangement of things ‘would do’?