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Bennett's achievement in his three principal books, the Old Wives' Tale, Clayhanger, and Hilda Lessways, has the solidity and relief the ugliness also! of Balzac, or of Stendhal; a detachment, moreover, and a coolness, which Mr. Wells lacks. These qualities may well preserve them, if "those to come" find their subject-matter sufficiently interesting.
After all Janet, with every circumstance in her favour, had not known how to conquer Edwin Clayhanger. After all she, Hilda, possessed some mysterious characteristic more potent than the elegance and the goodness of Janet Orgreave. She scorned her former self-deprecations, and reproached her own lack of faith: "I am I!" That was the summary of her mood.
Gradually her eyes accustomed themselves again to the gloom. She passed along the facade of the house until she came to the corner, where the breeze surprised her, and whence she could discern the other house and, across the indistinct hedge, the other garden. Where was Edwin Clayhanger? Was he wandering in the other garden, or had he entered the house?
And her own most secret troubles recurred to her mind. "What's that about Teddy Clayhanger?" Charlie cried out, suddenly looking up. He had caught the name in a distant conversation. Janet explained how they had seen Edwin, and went on to say that it was impossible to persuade him to call. "What rot!" said Charlie. "I bet you what you like I get him here to-morrow night."
She was not happy at the prospect of so abruptly quitting the delights of Lane End House and the vicinity of Edwin Clayhanger; she was not happy at the prospect of postponing the consideration of plans for her own existence; she was not happy at the prospect of Sarah Gailey's pessimistic complainings. She was above happiness.
It was only in this relative calm that the Clayhanger family and its dependants began to realise the intensity of the experience through which they had passed, and, in particular, the strain of waiting for events after the printing office had been abandoned by its denizens, The rumour of what had happened, and of what might have happened, had spread about the premises in an instant, and in another instant all the women had collected in the yard; even Miss Ingamells had betrayed the sacred charge of the shop.
Go and ask the name, and then tell my sister," said Edwin shortly. "Miss Clayhanger is gone out, sir." "Well, run along," he told her impatiently. He was standing anxiously near the door when she returned to the room. "Please, sir, it's a Mrs Cannon, and it's you she wants." "Show her in," he said, and to himself: "My God!"
"Father's gone to Manchester," he found opportunity to say to Clara as she was leaving. "Why aren't you doing those prizes he told you to do?" retorted Clara, and vanished, She wanted none of Edwin's superior airs. During dinner Mr Clayhanger had instructed his son to go through the Sunday school prize stock and make an inventory of it.
"Well," she said, "every day I was expecting you to call again, or to send me a note or something.... And what with one thing and another " "I dare say your time's been fully occupied," he filled up her pause. And she fancied that he spoke in a peculiar tone. She absurdly fancied that he was referring to the time which she had publicly spent with Edwin Clayhanger at the Centenary.
She was profoundly deceived in Edwin Clayhanger, so famous for his presence of mind in saving printing-shops from destruction! She did not know what he ought to have done; she made no attempt to conceive what he ought to have done. But that he ought to have done something something decisive and grandly masculine she was sure. Later, after sundry adventures, and having found Mr.
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