Читать книгу The Complete Clayhanger Family Novels (Clayhanger + Hilda Lessways + These Twain + The Roll Call) - Arnold Bennett - Страница 143

Table of Contents

From the elevation of his barrel Edwin could survey, in the lordly and negligent manner of people on a height, all the detail of his immediate surroundings. Presently, in common with Hilda and the other aristocrats of barrels, he became aware of the increased vivacity of a scene which was passing at a little distance, near a hokey-pokey barrow. The chief actors in the affair appeared to be a young policeman, the owner of the hokey-pokey barrow, and an old man. It speedily grew into one of those episodes which, occurring on the outskirts of some episode immensely greater, draw too much attention to themselves and thereby outrage the sense of proportion residing in most plain men, and especially in most policemen.

“Give him a ha’porth o’ hokey,” said a derisive voice. “He hasn’t got a tooth in his head, but it wants no chewing, hokey does na’.” There was a general guffaw from the little rabble about the barrow.

“Aye! Give us some o’ that!” said the piping, silly voice of the old man. “But I mun’ get to that there platform, I’m telling ye. I’m telling all of ye.” He made a senile plunge against the body of the policeman, as against a moveless barricade, and then his hat was awry and it fell off, and somebody lifted it into the air with a neat kick so that it dropped on the barrow. All laughed. The old man laughed.

“Now, old sodger,” said the hot policeman curtly. “None o’ this! None o’ this! I advise ye civilly to be quiet; that’s what I advise ye. You can’t go on th’ platform without a ticket.”

“Nay!” piped the old man. “Don’t I tell ye I lost it down th’ Sytch!”

“And where’s yer rosette?”

“Never had any rosette,” the old man replied. “I’m th’ oldest Sunday-schoo’ teacher i’ th’ Five Towns. Aye! Fifty years and more since I was Super at Turnhill Primitive Sunday schoo’, and all Turnhill knows on it. And I’ve got to get on that there platform. I’m th’ oldest Sunday schoo’ teacher i’ th’ Five Towns. And I was Super—”

Two ribald youngsters intoned ‘Super, Super,’ and another person unceremoniously jammed the felt hat on the old man’s head.

“It’s nowt to me if ye was forty Supers,” said the policeman, with menacing disdain. “I’ve got my orders, and I’m not here to be knocked about. Where did ye have yer last drink?”

“No wine, no beer, nor spirituous liquors have I tasted for sixty-one years come Martinmas,” whimpered the old man. And he gave another lurch against the policeman. “My name’s Shushions!” And he repeated in a frantic treble, “My name’s Shushions!”

“Go and bury thysen, owd gaffer!” a Herculean young collier advised him.

“Why,” murmured Hilda, with a sharp frown, “that must be poor old Mr Shushions from Turnhill, and they’re guying him! You must stop it. Something must be done at once.”

She jumped down feverishly, and Edwin had to do likewise. He wondered how he should conduct himself so as to emerge creditably from the situation. He felt himself, and had always felt himself, to be the last man in the world capable of figuring with authority in a public altercation. He loathed public altercations. The name of Shushions meant nothing to him; he had forgotten it, if indeed he had ever wittingly heard it. And he did not at first recognise the old man. Descended from the barrel, he was merely an item in the loose-packed crowd. As, in the wake of Hilda, he pushed with false eagerness between stubborn shoulders, he heard the bands striking up again.