Читать книгу CLAYHANGER - Arnold Bennett - Страница 6

He began to outline a scheme, in which perpendicular expectoration figured, for accurately deciding the winner, and a complicated argument might have ensued about this, had it not soon become apparent that Edwin’s boat was going to be handsomely beaten, despite the joyous efforts of the little child. The horse that would die but would not give up, was only saved from total subsidence at every step by his indomitable if aged spirit. Edwin handed over the ten marbles even before the other boat had arrived at the bridge.

“Here,” he said. “And you may as well have these, too,” adding five more to the ten, all he possessed. They were not the paltry marble of today, plaything of infants, but the majestic “rinker,” black with white spots, the king of marbles in an era when whole populations practised the game. Edwin looked at them half regretfully as they lay in the Sunday’s hands. They seemed prodigious wealth in those hands, and he felt somewhat as a condemned man might feel who bequeaths his jewels on the scaffold. Then there was a rattle, and a tumour grew out larger on the Sunday’s thigh.

The winning boat, long preceded by its horse, crawled under the bridge and passed northwards to the sea, laden with crates of earthenware. And then the loser, with the little girl’s father and mother and her brothers and sisters, and her kitchen, drawing-room, and bedroom, and her smoking chimney and her memories and all that was hers, in the stern of it, slid beneath the boys’ down-turned faces while the whip cracked away beyond the bridge. They could see, between the whitened tarpaulins, that the deep belly of the craft was filled with clay.

“Where does that there clay come from?” asked Edwin. For not merely was he honestly struck by a sudden new curiosity, but it was meet for him to behave like a man now, and to ask manly questions.

“Runcorn,” said the Sunday scornfully. “Can’t you see it painted all over the boat?”

“Why do they bring clay all the way from Runcorn?”

“They don’t bring it from Runcorn. They bring it from Cornwall. It comes round by sea—see?” He laughed.

“Who told you?” Edwin roughly demanded.

“Anybody knows that!” said the Sunday grandly, but always maintaining his gay smile.

“Seems devilish funny to me,” Edwin murmured, after reflection, “that they should bring clay all that roundabout way just to make crocks of it here. Why should they choose just this place to make crocks in? I always understood—”

“Oh! Come on!” the Sunday cut him short. “It’s blessed well one o’clock and after!”