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Updated: May 25, 2025
Then a fat, untidy old man appeared in the doorway of a cubicle within the shop, and Edwin Clayhanger blushed. "Father, this is Miss Lessways. Miss Lessways, my father.... She's she's come to look over the place." "How-d'ye-do, miss?" She shook hands with the tyrannic father, who was, however, despite his reputation, apparently just as nervous as the son.
He was under the obligation to say `No' to her innocent and delightful request; and yet could he say `No'? Could he bring himself to desolate her by a refusal? "The fact is, miss," he said at length, in his best manner, "Mr Clayhanger has decided to give up the new book business. I'm very sorry." Had it been another than Janet he would have assuredly said with pride: "We have decided "
The younger and bigger of the two men chatting in the doorway was Darius Clayhanger, Edwin's father, and the first printer to introduce steam into Bursley. His age was then under forty-five, but he looked more.
At last Charlie's clear, gay voice said: "It's all very well, and Victor Hugo is Victor Hugo; but you can say what you like there's a lot of this that'll bear skipping, your worships." Already she was at the doorway. In the dusk of the unlighted chamber the faces of the four Orgreaves and Clayhanger showed like pale patches on the gloom.
It was evident that before going Miss Clayhanger had inspired the servant with a full sense of the importance of Mr Clayhanger's solitary meal, and of the terrible responsibility lying upon the person in charge of it.
Then she suddenly heard, through her dream, the name of Bradlaugh again; and Edwin Clayhanger, in response to a direct question from Mr. Orgreave, was saying: "You can't help what you believe. You can't make yourself believe anything. And I don't see why you should, either. There's no virtue in believing." And Tom was crying "Hooray!" Hilda was thunderstruck.
And with the strangest ingenuous confidence she assumed that Edwin Clayhanger, too, would keep an absolute silence about it. She had therefore naught to fear, except in the privacy of his own mind. She did not blame herself it never occurred to her to do so but she rather wondered at herself, inimically, prophesying that one day her impulsiveness would throw her into some serious difficulty.
In Clayhanger and Hilda Lessways, the first two books of a trilogy which, at the time when I write, is still unfinished, Mr.
Edwin Clayhanger sat exactly opposite to Hilda, with Charlie for sponsor; and Tom's spectacles gleamed close by. Hilda, while still constrained, was conscious of pleasure in the scene, and of a certain pride in forming part of it. These prodigal and splendid persons respected and liked her, even loved her. Her recitation on the previous evening had been a triumph.
And Darius Clayhanger stood oblivious at a high window of the sacred Bank. And Edwin, who, all unconscious, owed the very fact of his existence to the doting imbecile, regarded him chiefly as a figure in a tableau, as the chance instrument of a woman's beautiful revelation. Mr Shushions's sole crime against society was that he had forgotten to die. Hilda Lessways would not return to the barrels.
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