Things sometimes fall out in a surprising way, and the removal of the Clayhanger household from the corner of Duck Square to the heights of Bleakridge was by a circumstance which Edwin, the person whom alone it concerned, had not in the least anticipated.
It was the Monday morning after the Centenary. Foster’s largest furniture-van, painted all over with fine pictures of the van itself travelling by road, rail, and sea, stood loaded in front of the shop. One van had already departed, and this second one, in its interior, on its crowded roof, on a swinging platform beneath its floor, and on a posterior supported by chains, contained all that was left of the furniture and domestic goods which Darius Clayhanger had collected in half a century of ownership. The moral effect of Foster’s activity was always salutary, in that Foster would prove to any man how small a space the acquisitions of a lifetime could be made to occupy when the object was not to display but to pack them. Foster could put all your pride on to four wheels, and Foster’s driver would crack a whip and be off with the lot of it as though it were no more than a load of coal.
The pavement and the road were littered with straw, and the straw straggled into the shop, and heaped itself at the open side door. One large saucepan lay lorn near the doorstep, a proof that Foster was human. For everything except that saucepan a place had been found. That saucepan had witnessed ineffectual efforts to it, and had also suffered frequent forgetfulness. A tin candlestick had taken refuge within it, and was trusting for safety to the might of the . In the sequel, the candlestick was pitched by Edwin on to the roof of the van, and Darius Clayhanger, coming out of the shop, threw a question at Edwin and then picked up the saucepan and went off to Bleakridge with it, thus making sure that it would not be forgotten, and demonstrating to the town that he, Darius, was at last ‘flitting’ into his grand new house. Even weighted by the saucepan, in which Mrs Nixon had boiled hundredweights of jam, he still managed to keep his arms and motionless, retaining his appearance of a body that swam along on mechanical legs. Darius, though putting control upon himself, was in a state of high complex emotion, partly due to about the violent changing of the habits of a quarter of a century, and partly due to nervous pride.
Maggie and Mrs Nixon had gone to the new house half an hour earlier, to devise encampments therein for the night; for the Clayhangers would definitely sleep no more at the corner of Duck Square; the rooms in which they had eaten and slept and lain awake, and learnt what life and what death was, were to be transformed into workshops and stores for an increasing business. The were not abandoned empty. The shop had to function as usual on that formidable day, and the printing had to proceed. This had complicated the affair of the removal; but it had helped everybody to pretend, in an adult and manner, that nothing in the least unusual was afoot.
Edwin loitered on the pavement, with his brain all , and excitedly of any thought whatever. It was his duty to wait. Two of Foster’s men were across in the of the Dragon; the rest were at Bleakridge with the first and smaller van. Only one of Foster’s horses was in the dropped double-shafts, and even he had his nose towards the van, and in a nosebag; two others were to come down soon from Bleakridge to assist.
Two.
A tall, thin, grey-bearded man crossed Trafalgar Road from Aboukir Street. He was very tall and very thin, and the of his walk was that the knees were never quite straightened, so that his height was really greater even than it seemed. His dark suit and his boots and hat were neat. You could be sure at once that he was a person of habits. He stopped when, out of the corner of his eye, whose gaze was always parallel to the direction of his feet, he glimpsed Edwin. his course, he went close to Edwin, and, addressing the vacant air immediately over Edwin’s , he said in a mysterious, whisper—“when are you coming in for that money?”
He as though he was anxious to avoid, by a perfect air of , arousing the suspicions of some emissary of the Russian secret police.
Edwin started. “Oh!” he exclaimed. “Is it ready?”
“Yes. Waiting.”
“Are you going to your office now?”
“Yes.”
Edwin hesitated. “It won’t take a minute, I suppose. I’ll slip along in two jiffs. I’ll be there almost as soon as you are.”
“Bring a receipt stamp,” said the man, and resumed his way.
He was the secretary of the Bursley and Turnhill Permanent 50 pounds Benefit Building Society, one of the most solid institutions of the district. And he had been its secretary for decades. No stories of the of other secretaries of societies, no as to the of the system of the more famous Starr-Bowkett Building Societies, ever bred a doubt in Bursley or Turnhill of the eternal soundness of the Bursley and Turnhill Permanent 50 pounds Benefit Building Society. You could acquire a share in it by an entrance fee of one shilling, and then you paid eighteen-pence per week for ten years, making something less than 40 pounds, and then, after an inactive period of three months, the Society gave you 50 pounds, and you began therewith to build a house, if you wanted a house, and, if you were , you instantly took out another share. You could have as many shares as you chose. Though the Society was chiefly nourished by respectable artisans with stiff chins, nobody in the district would have considered membership to be beneath him. The Society was an admirable device for strengthening an impulse towards , because, once you had put yourself into its , it would stand no nonsense. Prosperous tradesmen would push their children into it, and even themselves. This was what had happened to Edwin in the dark past, before he had left school. Edwin had regarded the trick with at first, because, except the opening half crown, his father had paid the for him until he left school and became a wage-earner. Thereafter he had regarded it as simple madness.
His whole life seemed to be nothing but a of Friday evenings on which he went to the Society’s office, between seven and nine, to ‘pay the Club.’ The social origin of any family in Bursley might have been by the detail whether it referred to the Society as the ‘Building Society’ or as ‘the Club.’ Artisans called it the Club, because it did resemble an old-fashioned benefit club. Edwin had invariably heard it called ‘Club’ at home, and he called it ‘Club,’ and he did not know why.
Three.
On ten thousand Friday evenings, as it seemed to him, he had gone into the gas-lit office with the wire-blinds, in the Cock Yard. And the procedure never . Behind a large table sat two gentlemen, the secretary and a subordinate, who was, however, older than the secretary. They had enormous in front of them, and at the lower corners of the immense pages was a transverse , like a mountain range on the left and like a valley on the right, caused by secretarial thumbs in turning over. On the table were also large metal inkstands and wooden money-coffers. The two officials both wore spectacles, and they both looked above their spectacles when they talked to members across the table. They spoke in low tones; they smiled with the most politeness; they never wasted words. They counted money with and efficient gestures, ringing gold with the of judges to human emotions. They wrote in the ledgers, and on the membership-cards, in a hand astoundingly regular and flourished; the pages of the ledgers had the mystic charm of ancient manuscripts, and the finality of decrees of fate. the scribes never made mistakes, but sometimes they would whisper in , and one, without leaning his body, would run a finger across the of the other; their fingers knew intimately the geography of the ledgers, and moved as though they could have found a desired name, date, or number, in the dark. The whole ceremony was impressive. It really did impress Edwin, as he would wait his turn among the three or four proud and respectable members that the going and coming seemed always to leave in the room. The modest blue-yellow gas, the vast table and ledgers, and the two sober heads behind; the polite murmurings, the of leaves, the chink of money, the smooth sound of elegant pens: all this made something not merely impressive, but beautiful; something that had a true if narrow dignity; something that ministered to an ideal if a low one.
But Edwin had regarded the operation as a complete loss of the money whose payment it involved. Ten years! It was an ! And even then his father would have some suggestion for useless the unimaginable fifty pounds! Meanwhile the weekly of eighteenpence from his income was an strain. And then one night the secretary had told him that he was entering on his last month. If he had any genuine interest in money, he would have known for himself; but he did not. And then the payments had ceased. He had said nothing to his father.
And now the share had matured, and there was the unimaginable sum waiting for him! He got his hat and a stamp, and hurried to the Cock Yard. The secretary, in his private room now, gave him five notes as though the notes had been but tissue paper, and he accepted them in the same manner. The secretary asked him if he meant to take out another share, and from sheer moral he said that he did mean to do so; and he did so, on the spot. And in less than ten minutes he was back at the shop. Nothing had happened there. The other horses had not come down from Bleakridge, and the men had not come out of the Dragon. But he had fifty pounds in his pocket, and it was his. A quarter of an hour earlier he could not have............