Then there was roast goose for dinner, and Clara amused herself by making silly faces, , dangerously, under her father’s very eyes. The children feared goose for their father, whose was usually unequal to this particular bird. Like many fathers of families in the Five Towns, he had the habit of going on Saturday mornings to the butcher’s or the poulterer’s and buying Sunday’s dinner. He was a fairly good judge of a , but Maggie considered herself to be his superior in this respect. However, Darius was not prepared to learn from Maggie, and his purchases had to be accepted without criticism. At a given meal Darius would never admit that anything chosen and bought by him was not perfect; but a week afterwards, if the fact was so, he would of his own accord recall imperfections in that which he had asserted to be perfect; and he would do this without any shame, without any apparent sense of inconsistency or weakness. Edwin noticed a similar trait in other grown-up persons, and it astonished him. It astonished him especially in his father, who, despite the faults and vulgarities which his fastidious son could find in him, always impressed Edwin as a strong man, a man with the heroic quality of not caring too much what other people thought.
When Edwin saw his father take a second plateful of goose, with the deadly stuffing thereof—Darius simply could not resist it, like most dyspeptics he was somewhat greedy—he foresaw an indisposed and father for the morrow. Which prevision was supported by Clara’s pantomimic antics, and even by Maggie’s grave and restrained sigh. Still, he had sworn to write and send the letter, and he should do so. A career, a lifetime, was not to be at the mercy of a attack, surely! Such a notion offended and proportion, and he scorned it away.
Two.
The meal proceeded in silence. Darius, as in duty bound, mentioned the sermon, but neither Clara nor Edwin would have anything to do with the sermon, and Maggie had not been to . Clara and Edwin felt themselves free of till six o’clock at least, and they would not respond. And Darius from did not insist, for he had arrived at chapel unthinkably late—during the second chant—and Clara was capable of audacious remarks upon occasions. The silence grew .
And Edwin wondered what the dinner-table of the Orgreaves was like. And he could smell fresh . And he dreamed of a romantic life—he knew not what kind of life, but something different fundamentally from his own. He suddenly understood, understood with sympathy, the impulse which had made boys run away to sea. He could feel the open sea; he could feel the breath of freedom on his cheek.
He said to himself—
“Why shouldn’t I break this ghastly silence by telling father out loud here that he mustn’t forget what I told him that night in the ? I’m going to be an architect. I’m not going to be any blooming printer. I’m going to be an architect. Why haven’t I mentioned it before? Why haven’t I talked about it all the time? Because I am an ! Because there is no word for what I am! Damn it! I suppose I’m the person to choose what I’m going to be! I suppose it’s my business more than his. Besides, he can’t possibly refuse me. If I say flatly that I won’t be a printer—he’s done. This idea of writing a letter is just like me! Coward! Coward! What’s my tongue for? Can’t I talk? Isn’t he bound to listen? All I have to do is to open my mouth. He’s sitting there. I’m sitting here. He can’t eat me. I’m in my rights. Now suppose I start on it as soon as Mrs Nixon has brought the pudding and pie in?”
And he waited anxiously to see whether he indeed would be able to make a start after the departure of Mrs Nixon.
Three.
Hopeless! He could not bring himself to do it. It was strange! It was disgusting! ... No, he would be compelled to write the letter. Besides, the letter would be more effective. His father could not interrupt a letter by some loud illogical remark. Thus he salved his self-conceit. He also sought relief in reflecting upon the speeches that had been made against him in the debate. He went through them all in his mind. There was the slimy idiot from Baines’s (it was in such terms that his thoughts ran) who gloried in never having read a word of Colenso, and called the assembled company to witness that nothing should ever induce him to read such a godless author, going about in the mask of a so-called . But had any of them read Colenso, except possibly Llewellyn Roberts, who in his Welsh way would pretend ignorance and then come out with a and refer you to the exact page? Edwin himself had read very little of Colenso—and that little only because a customer had ordered the second part of the “Pentateuch” and he had stolen it for a night. Colenso was not in the Free Library... What a world! What a debate! Still, he could not help with pleasure on Mr Roberts’s on the brilliant quality of his brains. as Mr Roberts was, the man was clearly in of Edwin’s brains! Why? To be honest, Edwin had never been deeply struck by his own brain power. And yet there must be something in it!
“Of course,” he reflected , “father doesn’t show the faintest interest in the debate. Yet he knew all about it, and that I had to open it.” But he was glad that his father showed no interest in the debate. Clara had mentioned it in the presence of Maggie, with her usual intent, and Edwin had quickly shut her up.
Four.
In the afternoon, the being made uninhabitable by his father’s goose-ridden , he went out for a walk; the weather was cold and fine. When he returned his father also had gone out; the two girls were lolling in the sitting-room. An immense fire, built up by Darius, was just ripe for the beginning of decay, and the room very warm. Clara was at the window, Maggie in Darius’s chair reading a novel of Charlotte M. Yonge’s. On the table, open, was a bound volume of “The Family of Sunday Reading,” in which Clara had been “The Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family” with interest. Edwin had laughed at her absorption in the adventures of the Schönberg-Cotta family, but the fact was that he had found them rather interesting, in spite of himself, while pretending the contrary. There was an atmosphere of high effort and heroical foreign-ness about the story which something secret in him that seldom responded to the of a book; more easily would this secret something respond to a calm evening or a distant , or the silence of early morning when by chance he looked out of his window.
The volume of “The Family Treasury,” though five years old, was a recent acquisition. It had come into the house through the total of a customer who had left the loose numbers to be bound in 1869. Edwin dropped sideways on to a chair at the table, spread out his feet to the right, pitched his left elbow a long distance to the left, and, his head resting on his left hand, turned over the pages with his right hand idly. His eye caught titles such as: “The Door was Shut,” “My Mother’s Voice,” “The Heather Mother,” “The Only Treasure,” “Religion and Business,” “Hope to the End,” “The Child of our Sunday School,” “Satan’s Devices,” and “Studies of Life and Character, Hannah More.” Then he saw an article about some architecture in Rome, and he read: “In the Sistine picture there is the struggle of a great mind to reduce within the possibilities of art a subject that it. That mind would have shown itself to be greater, truer, at least, in its judgement of the of art, and more to have let it alone.” The seriousness of the whole magazine him into accepting this pronouncement for a moment, though his brief studies in various had led him to believe that the Sistine Chapel (shown in an illustration in Cazenove) was high beyond any human criticism. His elbow slid on the surface of the table, and in recovering himself he sent “The Family Treasury” on the floor, wrong side up, with a great noise. Maggie did not move. Clara turned and protested sharply against this sacrilege, and Edwin, out of caprice, informed her that her precious magazine was the most silly ‘pi’ (pious) thing that ever was. With and shocked gestures she gathered up the volume and took it out of the room.
“I say, Mag,” Edwin muttered, still leaning his head on his hand, and staring blankly at the wall.
The fire dropped a little in the grate.
“What is it?” asked Maggie, without stirring or looking up.
“Has father said anything to you about me wanting to be an architect?” He with an affectation of dreaminess............