But he was young. Indeed to men of fifty, men just twice his age, he seemed a boy and of grief. He was so slim, and his limbs were so loose, and his hair so fair, and his gestures often so naïve, that few of the mature people who saw him daily striding up and down Trafalgar Road could have believed him to be acquainted with sorrow like their sorrows. The next morning, as it were in of these maturer people, his youth arose and fought with the in him, and, if it did not conquer, it was not defeated. On the previous night, after hours of , he had suddenly walked and gone down Oak Street, and pushed open the garden gates of the Orgreaves, and gazed at the façade of the house—not at her window, because that was at the side—and it was all dark. The Orgreaves had gone to bed: he had expected it. Even this reconnaissance had calmed him. While in the sunrise he had looked at the oval lawn of the Orgreaves’ garden, and had seen Johnnie idly kicking a football on it. Johnnie had probably spent the evening with her; and it was nothing to Johnnie! She was there, somewhere between him and Johnnie, within fifty yards of both of them, mysterious and as ever, busy at something or other. And it was to Johnnie! By the thought of all this the in him was strengthened and . Nevertheless his youth, aided by the quality of the clear dawn, still struggled sturdily against it. And he ate six times more breakfast than his suffering and insupportable father.
At half-past one—it was Thursday, and the shop closed at two o’clock—he had put on courage like a garment, and that he would see her that afternoon or night, ‘or perish in the attempt.’ And as the remembered phrase of the Sunday passed through his mind, he inwardly smiled and thought of school; and felt old and sure.
Two.
At five minutes to two, as he stood behind the eternal counter in his eternal dream, he had the inexpressible and shock of seeing her. He was shot by the vision of her as by a bullet. She came in, hurried and , full of purpose.
“Have you got a Bradshaw?” she inquired, after the briefest greeting, gazing at him across the counter through her veil, as though him for Bradshaw.
“I’m afraid we haven’t one left,” he said. “You see it’s getting on for the end of the month. I could— No, I suppose you want it at once?”
“I want it now,” she replied. “I’m going to London by the six express, and what I want to know is whether I can get on to Brighton to-night. They actually haven’t a Bradshaw up there,” half in scorn and half in , “and they said you’d probably have one here. So I ran down.”
“They’d be certain to have one at the Tiger,” he murmured, reflecting.
“The Tiger!” Evidently she did not care for the idea of the Tiger. “What about the railway station?”
“Yes, or the railway station. I’ll go up there with you now if you like, and find out for you. I know the head porter. We’re just closing. Father’s at home. He’s not very well.”
She thanked him, relief in her voice.
In a minute he had put his hat and coat on and given instructions to Stifford, and he was climbing Duck Bank with Hilda at his side. He had forgiven her. , he had forgotten her crime. The disaster, with all its despair, was sponged clean from his mind like writing off a , and as rapidly. It was . He tried to collect his and savour the new sensations. But he could not. Within him all was incoherent, wild, and distracting. Five minutes earlier, and he could not have conceived the of walking with her to the station. Now he was walking with her to the station; and assuredly it was bliss, and yet he did not taste it. Though he would not have loosed her for a million pounds, her presence gave an even crueller edge to his anxiety and . London! Brighton! Would she be that night in Brighton? He felt helpless, and desperate. And beneath all this was the of a strange, bitter joy. She asked about his cold and about his father’s indisposition. She said nothing of her failure to appear on the previous day, and he knew not how to introduce it : he was not in control of his intelligence.
They passed Snaggs’ Theatre, and from its green, wooden walls came the obscure sound of humanity in emotion. Before the mean and shabby portals stood a small crowd of . Posters printed by Darius Clayhanger made white squares on the front.
“It’s a meeting of the men,” said Edwin.
“They’re losing, aren’t they?”
He his shoulders. “I expect they are.”
She asked what the building was, and he explained.
“They used to call it the Blood Tub,” he said.
She shivered. “The Blood Tub?”
“Yes. and murder and gore—you know.”
“How horrible!” she exclaimed. “Why are people like that in the Five Towns?”
“It’s our form of poetry, I suppose,” he muttered, smiling at the pavement, which was surprisingly dry and clean in the feeble sunshine.
“I suppose it is!” she agreed , after a pause.
“But you belong to the Five Towns, don’t you?” he asked.
“Oh yes! I used to.”
At the station the name of Bradshaw appeared to be quite unknown. But Hilda’s urgency them from the head porter to the ticket clerk, and from the ticket clerk to the stationmaster; and at length they discovered, in a stove-heated room with a fine view of a shawd-ruck and a pithead, that on Thursday evenings there was a train from Victoria to Brighton at eleven-thirty. Hilda seemed to sigh relief, and her demeanour changed. But Edwin’s uneasiness was only . Brighton, which he had never seen, was in another hemisphere for him. It was mysterious, like her. It was part of her mystery. What could he do? His curse was that he had no initiative. Without her force, he would never have even as far as the stuffy room where the unique Bradshaw lay. It was she who had taken him to the station, not he her. How could he hold her back from Brighton?
Three.
When they came again to the Blood Tub, she said—
“Couldn’t we just go and look in? I’ve got plenty of time, now I know exactly how I stand.”
She halted, and glanced across the road. He could only agree to the proposition. For himself, a sense of would have made it impossible for him to his prosperity upon the deliberations of starving artisans on strike and stricken; and he wondered what the potters might think or say about the invasion by a woman. But he had to traverse the street with her and enter, and he had to do so with an air of masculine protectiveness. The urchins stood apart to let them in.
Snaggs’, dimly lit by a few in the roof, was nearly by men who sat on the low benches and leaned against the sidewalls. In the small and tawdry proscenium, behind a worn picture of the Bay of Naples, were the figures of the men’s leader and of several other officials. The leader was speaking in a quiet, mild voice, the other officials were seated on Windsor chairs. The smell of the place was , and yet the atmosphere was bitingly cold. The warm-wrapped visitors could see rows and rows of discoloured backs and elbows, and caps, and stringy kerchiefs. They could almost feel the of thousands of muscles in an involuntary effort to squeeze out the chill from all these bodies; not a score of overcoats could be discerned in the whole theatre, and many of the jackets were thin and ragged; but the officials had overcoats. And the visitors could almost see, as it were in rays, the intense glances from every part of the interior, and piercing the upright figure in the centre of the stage.
“Some method of compromise,” the leader was saying in his tones.
A young man sprang up furiously from the middle benches.
“To hell wi’ compromise!” he shouted in a tigerish passion. “Haven’t us had forty pound from Ameriky?”
“Order! Order!” some protested fiercely. But one voice cried: “Pitch the awt, neck and crop!”
Hands clawed at the interrupter and dragged him with extreme violence to the level of the bench, where he muttered like a dying volcano. Angry shot up here and there, snappish, menacing, and .
“It is quite true,” said the leader , “that our comrades at Trenton have collected forty pounds for us. But forty pounds would scarcely pay for a loaf of bread for one man in every ten on strike.”
There was more interruption. The dangerous growls continued in running explosions along the benches. The leader, ignoring them, turned to consult with his neighbour, and then faced his audience and called out more loudly—
“The business of the meeting is at an end.”
The entire multitude jumped up, and there was stretching of arms and stamping of feet. The men nearest to the door now perceived Edwin and Hilda, who moved as before a flood. Edwin seized Hilda’s arm to hasten her.
“Lads,” an old man’s voice from near the stage, “Let’s sing ‘Rock of Ages.’”
A frowning and fellow near the door, with the prominent on his red forehead, shouted , “‘Rock of Ages’ be buggered!” and shifting his hands into his pockets he for the street, head foremost and chin sticking out murderously. Edwin and Hilda escaped at speed and recrossed the road. The crowd came surging out of the narrow neck of the building and spread over the pavements like a liquid. But from within the building came the lusty song of “Rock of Ages.”
“It’s terrible!” Hilda murmured, after a silence. “Just to see them is enough. I shall never forget what you said.”
“What was that?” he inquired. He knew what it was, but he wished to prolong the taste of her .
“That you’ve only got to see the poor things to know they’re in the right! Oh! I’ve lost my handkerchief, unless I’ve left it in your shop. It must have dropped out of my muff.”
Four.
The shop was closed. As with his latchkey he opened the private door and then stood on one side for her to precede him into the corridor that led to the back of the shop, he watched the stream of operatives across Duck Bank and towards the S............