Читать книгу The Complete Clayhanger Family Novels (Clayhanger + Hilda Lessways + These Twain + The Roll Call) - Arnold Bennett - Страница 158

In the smallness of the room, sitting as it were at his feet on the sofa, surrounded and encaged by a hundred domestic objects and by the glow of the fire and the radiance of the gas, she certainly did seem to Edwin to be an organism exceedingly mysterious. He could follow with his eye every fold of her black dress, he could trace the waving of her hair, and watch the play of light in her eyes. He might have physically hurt her, he might have killed her, she was beneath his hand—and yet she was most bafflingly withdrawn, and the essence of her could not be touched nor got at. Why did she challenge him by her singular attitude? Why was she always saying such queer things to him? No other girl (he thought, in the simplicity of his inexperience) would ever talk as she talked. He wanted to test her by being rude to her. “Damn her!” he said to himself again. “Supposing I took hold of her and kissed her—I wonder what sort of a face she’d pull then!” (And a moment ago he had been appraising her as nobly beautiful! A moment ago he had been dwelling on the lovely compassion of her gesture with Mr Shushions!) This quality of daring and naughty enterprise had never before shown itself in Edwin, and he was surprised to discover in himself such impulses. But then the girl was so provocative. And somehow the sight of the girl delivered him from an excessive fear of consequences. He said to himself, “I’ll do something or I’ll say something, before I leave her to-night, just to show her!” He screwed up his resolution to the point of registering a private oath that he would indeed do or say something. Without a solemn oath he could not rely upon his valour. He knew that whatever he said or did in the nature of a bold advance would be accomplished clumsily. He knew that it would be unpleasant. He knew that inaction suited much better his instinct for tranquillity. No matter! All that was naught. She had challenged, and he had to respond. Besides, she allured... And, after her scene with him in the porch of the new house, had he not the right? ... A girl who had behaved as she did that night cannot effectively contradict herself!

“I was just reading about this strike,” she said, rustling the newspaper.

“You’ve soon got into local politics.”

“Well,” she said, “I saw a lot of the men as we were driving from the station. I should think I saw two thousand of them. So of course I was interested. I made Mr Orgreave tell me all about it. Will they win?”

“It depends on the weather.” He smiled.

She remained silent, and grave. “I see!” she said, leaning her chin on her hand. At her tone he ceased smiling. She said “I see,” and she actually had seen.

“You see,” he repeated. “If it was June instead of November! But then it isn’t June. Wages are settled every year in November. So if there is to be a strike it can only begin in November.”

“But didn’t the men ask for the time of year to be changed?”

“Yes,” he said. “But you don’t suppose the masters were going to agree to that, do you?” He sneered masculinely.

“Why not?”

“Because it gives them such a pull.”

“What a shame!” Hilda exclaimed passionately. “And what a shame it is that the masters want to make the wages depend on selling prices! Can’t they see that selling prices ought to depend on wages?”

Edwin said nothing. She had knocked suddenly out of his head all ideas of flirting, and he was trying to reassemble them.

“I suppose you’re like all the rest?” she questioned gloomily.

“How like all the rest?”

“Against the men. Mr Orgreave is, and he says your father is very strongly against them.”

“Look here,” said Edwin, with an air of resentment as to which he himself could not have decided whether it was assumed or genuine, “what earthly right have you to suppose that I’m like all the rest?”

“I’m very sorry,” she surrendered. “I knew all the time you weren’t.” With her face still bent downwards, she looked up at him, smiling sadly, smiling roguishly.

“Father’s against them,” he proceeded, somewhat deflated. And he thought of all his father’s violent invective, and of Maggie’s bland acceptance of the assumption that workmen on strike were rascals—how different the excellent simple Maggie from this feverish creature on the sofa! “Father’s against them, and most people are, because they broke the last arbitration award. But I’m not my father. If you ask me, I’ll tell you what I think—workmen on strike are always in the right; at bottom I mean. You’ve only got to look at them in a crowd together. They don’t starve themselves for fun.”

He was not sure if he was convinced of the truth of these statements; but she drew them out of him by her strange power. And when he had uttered them, they appeared fine to him.

“What does your father say to that?”

“Oh!” said Edwin uneasily. “Him—and me—we don’t argue about these things.”

“Why not?”

“Well, we don’t.”

“You aren’t ashamed of your own opinions, are you?” she demanded, with a hint in her voice that she was ready to be scornful.

“You know all the time I’m not.” He repeated the phrase of her previous confession with a certain acrimonious emphasis. “Don’t you?” he added curtly.

She remained silent.

“Don’t you?” he said more loudly. And as she offered no reply, he went on, marvelling at what was coming out of his mouth. “I’ll tell you what I am ashamed of. I’m ashamed of seeing my father lose his temper. So you know!”

She said—

“I never met anybody like you before. No, never!”

At this he really was astounded, and most exquisitely flattered.

“I might say the same of you,” he replied, sticking his chin out.

“Oh no!” she said. “I’m nothing.”

The fact was that he could not foretell their conversation even ten seconds in advance. It was full of the completely unexpected. He thought to himself, “You never know what a girl like that will say next.” But what would he say next?