If an announcement of Gordon Stansfield’s death had appeared in the Manchester Guardian, it would have appeared on the same day as the announcement of Lillian Artingstall’s. By the time Hamer got home from his first, and so painfully obscure, public appearance, Gordon was beyond recognizing him. Pneumonia carried him off the next day.
The newspaper announcement said that Lillian had died “suddenly, of a heart seizure,” and that was true so far as it went. Hawley’s cronies about the Town Hall nudged one another in the ribs, whispered in corners, and licked their chops over the stories that were going round.
The fact was that Hawley was tired of Lillian, of her airs, her gentility, her long cold nose. Damn it all, he sometimes thought to himself, it was like an icicle. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see it melt away before his eyes, drop by drop. To marry a knight’s daughter with a lot of money when he himself didn’t amount to so much: that had been all right; that had given him a kick; but it was a long time since he had got any kick out of Lillian Sugden, and he was a big enough man now to do without her and what she had stood for.
Once she had disappeared to St. Annes, he didn’t feel as bad as he had expected to. He missed Ann far more than he missed Lillian, but his work and his club made up for them both. He breakfasted at The Limes. The Artingstall diligence started with its accustomed punctuality, and then he remained in town all day, eating his lunch and dinner at the club, busy with his shops and with committee meetings at the Town Hall. This, he began to assure himself, was a happy life, the ideal life; he’d live more and more like this even when Lillian was back. Let her dribble her icicle into her own soup.
All very well; but Hawley was a gross animal with an animal’s lusts; and Hilda Popplewell was still in his house. Hilda was the girl from Blackburn who had had her share in causing Lillian’s illness. The illness itself and the arrangements for her departure to St. Annes had made Lillian not so much overlook the case of Hilda Popplewell: she had decided to postpone it. She couldn’t be bothered with Hilda at the moment. That could wait till she was back, strong.
Hilda was a big robust girl, full-breasted, with a throat like a pillar holding up a fine head crowned with a loose mass of auburn hair. She was a product of generations of artisans, proud of their skill. She had been a weaver herself. She thought it a come-down to be a servant in the Artingstall house, and so did all her relatives. They only half-guessed at the passionate and abortive affair that had driven the lusty wench to hide herself in Manchester.
Hilda would have returned to Blackburn soon enough, or gone to some other place where there was a market for her hereditary skill, if Lillian had not ordered her out of the house. It happened that Sir James Sugden was a Blackburn lad. Hilda’s grandfather and he had been half-timers in a mill together, and Hilda had heard the old man chuckle over Sir James’s grandeur. “Aye, Ah remember Jimmie Sugden wi’ ’is shirt ’angin’ out o’ the backside of ’is pants, when ’e ’ad a shirt to wear.” That was the sort of reminiscence that buzzed behind Hilda’s broad calm brow when the peevish Lillian, daughter of this Jimmie Sugden, was distilling her frigid hauteur. It was a bad day for Lillian when she put this girl’s back up, and then left her at The Limes with Hawley.
Hilda was accustomed to serve Hawley’s breakfast. When she thought the time ripe to open her attack, she went into the breakfastroom with her ridiculous white cap loose, so that she could shake it off at any moment. She shook it so that it fell into Hawley’s plate and lay there looking as stiff and formal as a gardenia. Hawley looked up, startled, to be aware of Hilda’s fair skin and of the hot blood that was blushing below its surface.
“Eh, what’s this? What’s this?” he said, picking up the cap between his blunt fingers.
“I’m sorry, sir. It’s my cap. I find it hard to make it stay on. My hair is so-so—”
“Tha’s got plenty of it, onny road,” said Hawley, looking at the coiled heavy masses.
Hilda took the cap from his hand. “I’ll go and put it on again, sir,” she said.
“Nay, don’t bother wi’ t’damned thing,” said Hawley impatiently. “They always look daft, anyway. Thee stay an’ pour out my coffee.”
Hilda thought that was very good for a beginning. She was aware of Hawley’s watching her furtively, and when he glanced at the clock and saw that he must rush for the carriage, he said: “Well, thanks, lass. Good mornin’,” which was unusual.
Hilda went to bed early that night. She told the housekeeper that she had an appalling headache and shivers. She did not get up the next day. The approach of footsteps would set her body trembling with shivers which she could marvellously induce; and as soon as she was alone again she would pull from under her pillow Miss Brandon’s Lady Audley’s Secret. She finished the book the next day, and on the third day was back on duty in the breakfast-room.
“Tha’s lookin’ none too well, lass,” said Hawley, regarding her critically; though Hilda had never looked better in her life. On leaving, he patted her big capable hand and said: “Take it easy. Don’t overdo things.”
Hilda was determined not to overdo things. She would do them very gently. It was not till a month later that she crept out of Hawley’s bedroom at four o’clock one morning, her red hair streaming down about her big shapely buttocks, and felt her way up the dark narrow stair that led to her attic.
*
Hawley was like an old fool with a new toy. He couldn’t have too much of his entrancing woman. Hilda gave him delights he had never known with Lillian. She was demanding; she flattered his virility; and it was fascinating to both of them to walk along the thin edge of danger. If Lillian had come home there and then the thing might have been nipped in the bud. But she did not come home. At Easter and in the summertime, when Lizzie Lightowler’s school was closed, Ann joined her mother at St. Annes. Hawley went over, too, for a week in the summer, pleaded an accumulation of work, and returned to Hilda. He sent Hilda away, ostensibly to spend a week with her people in Blackburn. He left with Mr. Tattersall the Manager a couple of letters to be posted one at a time, with a few days’ interval, to Lillian. There was no telephone in those days at Artingstall’s. Then with a light heart Hawley set off to join Hilda in the Lake District. It was such a honeymoon as he had not before enjoyed. Hilda knew him inside out, as Lillian had never done. They were made of the same stuff.
*
Lillian decided to come home just before Christmas. She was feeling as well as she had ever felt in her life. She wanted to have the house ready for Ann. There was no reason why the child should go back to Bradford. Lillian began to pine for life as she had known it a year ago; her own home, her own husband, her own daughter.
She had forgotten Hilda Popplewell. The girl’s burly figure and rude good looks were the first thing she saw in the hall when she came in from the carriage. Hawley was with her; he had met her at the station. She remembered this girl’s impertinence, but now it seemed a thing she could not be bothered with. It was all so long ago. She would see if Hilda had developed better manners.
It was late in the afternoon. Lillian went straight towards the drawing-room door. “Bring some tea in here, Hilda. At once,” she said, speaking over her shoulder.
She threw her hat and coat on to a chair, and sat near the fire, stretching her hands towards it. Hawley stood upright, his hands under his coat-tails, looking glum. He was aware that from this point forward his life was going to be complicated. He lacked subtlety and couldn’t see his way.
There were a number of things which Hawley couldn’t see. Lillian saw one of them at once. When Hilda came in with the tray, she gave a slight start. She stared at the girl hard. Now, indeed, she need not wait to see whether Hilda’s manners had improved. Now she could strike back for that humiliating moment nearly a year ago. She was a woman without mercy. When Hilda had put down the tray, Lillian said, as coolly as though she were asking for a glass of water: “Hilda, this is not a lying-in hospital. You’d better go and have your baby somewhere else. When are you expecting it?”
She sat up very straight in her chair, a malicious smile breaking bleakly upon the arid gentility of her face. She waited to see the girl crumple up, fling herself at her feet, beg, howl. But Hilda only stood there, a hot flush mounting her cheeks, her hands instinctively folded upon her belly as though she would defend her child from this viper. She kept a level gaze directed upon Lillian, the daughter of little Jimmie Sugden, who had run round Blackburn with his shirttail hanging out.
Lillian’s fingers drummed impatiently on the slender arms of her chair. “Well,” she said. “You don’t deny it, do you? When are you expecting it?”
Hilda’s face broke suddenly into a radiant smile. “You’d better ask its father,” she said. She jerked her head towards Hawley, turned on her heel, and left the room. She was not without humour. Ten minutes later, though she had not been summoned, she came back, bringing a jug. “I thought you might like some more hot water,” she said.
She went out once more, carrying in her mind a picture of Lillian sitting there, tight-lipped, white, her eyes black and blazing, and of Hawley prowling up and down, up and down. “They look as if they haven’t said a word to one another,” she thought.
They hadn’t. Presently, Lillian rose and went to her bedroom. Hawley stayed where he was, gazing at the fire. When Hilda came in to clear away the tea-things he looked at her as unhappily as a sick dog. “You’ve eaten nothing,” she whispered. “Let me get you a fresh cup.” He motioned her away, and an hour later went down to his club.
Lillian died that night, and she died farcically. When Hawley came home, sullen and morose, as though someone had done him a great wrong, she was in bed, wide awake. It was the large double bed that their respectability demanded. Lillian sat up when Hawley lit the gas. Her heart was at its old tricks again, thumping and jumping, starting and stopping. “Where are you sleeping tonight?” she asked.
“Ah’m sleeping where Ah’s always slept – in that bed,” said Hawley doggedly. He tugged off his tie, removed his collar, and laid it on the dressing-table. His coat and waistcoat were already over a chair. Somehow, he looked a lesser figure, with a bare shirtband round his neck and braces crossed on his back.
“You will not sleep here. You’ll find a bed somewhere else,” Lillian cried. She strove hard to control her voice. It wanted to rise to a scream. Her battle with it made her heart leap savagely. But Hawley was not aware of that. A little more drink than he was accustomed to take made him aware only of an immense self-pity, a determination not to be put upon. With exasperating calm, he sat down and removed his boots, that had buttons down the side, and his socks. Then he stood in his bare feet before the dressing-table and with a brush in each hand began to brush the little hair he had.
Watching his slow, deliberate movements, Lillian found each of her hands grasping the bedclothes with a rigid clutch. “Get out!” she said.
He turned towards the bed, slipped his thumbs under his braces, and jerked them off his shoulders. At that, Lillian leapt out of bed. The sense of outrage that had been simmering in her brain all night boiled over. She could feel it in one swift rush almost literally blind her. A blackness fell upon her, then cleared. She was determined to get him out of the room. She seized the first thing that came to her hand, which was the dangling braces. She did not see that Hawley had by now undone his trouser buttons.
“If you don’t get out, I’ll pull you out,” she said thickly. She heaved and heaved, trying to get him towards the door.
Hawley began to giggle. “Nay, lass, nay,” he cried. “Don’t be a fool. Tha’s pullin’ my trousers off.” He slapped feebly at her hand.
“Strike me! Strike me!” she cried, and all of a sudden collapsed, holding onto the braces. For a moment, Hawley did not realize what had happened. He stood there, a ridiculous figure, with his trousers lying round his feet and long woollen pants swathing his bow legs. At last he realized that in this cruelly farcical fashion death had come for Sir James Sugden’s genteel daughter.
*
It was a hard time for Hawley. You can’t live with a woman for the best part of twenty years, even if she is a bitch like Lillian, without feeling wounds when she is torn away. Hawley got what consolation he could out of splendid obsequies. The procession which left The Limes for the cemetery was as lengthy as a Lord Mayor’s show; and while the body was being committed to the grave a memorial service was being held in t’Owd Church. The bell tolling for that service had disturbed old Suddaby, lonely in his musty labyrinth, for Hamer was away, attending the funeral of Gordon Stansfield. Old Suddaby stuffed cotton-wool into his ears. He hated the sound of the passing bell. He was too old to hear it sentimentally.
The things said at the memorial service were reported in the Manchester Guardian, and Hawley, stiff and stocky in black, standing with his back to the dining-room fire, read them the next morning. Lillian’s perfunctory slumming had somehow got translated into a godly life devoted to good works, and rotund ecclesiastical phrases presented her to the world as a sort of holy spirit, breathing upon Hawley and sustaining this pillar of Manchester’s corporate being in its task of holding up the municipal edifice.
Hawley folded the paper open and laid it beside Ann’s plate. He did not expect she or Lizzie Lightowler, who was staying in the house, would be down to breakfast before he left for the shop. He had decreed that the Artingstall diligence should set out at the usual time. He would act in a Roman fashion. There would be black boards across the shop windows, and he had instructed Mr. Tattersall the Manager to supply to each male employee a black tie and a crape arm-band out of stock.
He had done all this, and he certainly liked what the Guardian reported. But all the same, he was raw and uncomfortable. Birley, his own brother, had not attended the funeral. “There’s another funeral on at the same time,” Birley said, “the funeral of someone I respect.”
Hawley raised his eyebrows. “There’s no call to throw stones at Lillian now she’s dead,” he said severely.
“I’m throwing no stones, and I’m not going to throw posies either,” said Birley. “What I’m telling you is the truth. There’s this other funeral – a very unfashionable one – in Ancoats.”
“You never liked Lillian,” Hawley charged him flatly.
“Neither did you,” said Birley, “not as I should want to like the woman I married, anyway.”
They were standing in front of the Town Hall. Birley walked away, leaving Hawley to chew over these bitter words at leisure. He was chewing them over now, as he sat down to breakfast. Hilda came in, carrying the tray, and, to Hawley’s surprise, Ann and Lizzie came into the room behind her. Ann took the tray from Hilda’s hands. “You go,” she said. “I can look after all this.”
She put the tray on the table, and when Hilda had shut the door she said: “Really, that girl shouldn’t carry great weights like this. She’s going to have a baby.”
Hawley started up in his chair, his face purpling. “Ann!” he said. “What are you talking about? How dare you say such things?”
“Sit down, Hawley. Don’t be foolish,” said Lizzie Lightowler. “Of course the girl’s going to have a baby. It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
Hawley sat down and looked at the two women. Women – yes. This year had made a wonderful difference to Ann. There she sat with that strange hair like white lustrous silk seeming the more startling against the black of her clothes. He would have liked to see some sign of grief on her face, but she had shown no grief at Lillian’s death.
The girl had grown. She was inches taller; she was a little taller than Hawley himself; and she had a tranquillity, a perfect grip on herself, that both startled and scared him. He knew that, if he had at any time had a hold over this daughter of his, he had none now. More than ever he saw her as neither Sugden nor Artingstall, but as belonging to that dimly-remembered woman who was his mother.
She poured out his coffee, gave him eggs and bacon from under the big metal cover. She served Lizzie, and then herself. When she sat down, she took up the newspaper, glanced at what Hawley had evidently intended her to see, and then, without reading, laid the paper aside.
“Yes,” she said. “Something ought to be done about that girl. I saw her carrying a great bucket of water upstairs yesterday.”
“She looks five or six months gone,” said Lizzie.
Ann considered the matter. “Quite that, I should say.”
Hawley looked up, his eyes smouldering like an angry bull’s. “Ah don’t like such talk,” he said. “It’s not decent.”
“It’s not decent,” said Lizzie, “to have that girl carrying heavy things about. It’s not decent, and it’s not fair. I’m surprised Lillian didn’t do something about it.”
“Lillian!” The snort was out before Hawley realized its significance, its contempt, its utter loathing of Lillian. “She knew nothing about it,” he said lamely.
“Some one must have known something about it,” said Ann. Hawley got up from the table, trembling with wrath. “Don’t bait me!” he cried. “Ah’ll not have this sort o’ thing talked about in my house.”
“I’m not baiting you,” Ann said coolly. “Do be reasonable, Father. Something’s got to be done about the girl. Would you like Aunt Lizzie to speak to her?”
Hawley crashed his fist down on the mahogany. “Ah’ll not have this interference,” he cried. “Something’s got to be done, has it? Something is going to be done. Ah’m goin’ to marry ’Ilda.”
He ended up on his broadest accent, his face an angry confusion of annoyance, resolution and sudden clean relief. He had seen his way, straight and honest, at last. He walked to the fireplace, and hauled the bell-pull. When Hilda came into the room, he said: “Tell ’Aworth t’carriage isn’t goin’ this mornin’. An’ when tha’s done that, coom back ’ere. Ah want to talk to thee.”
He glared at Ann and Lizzie as though he hoped they would realize that only something cataclysmic could cancel the Artingstall diligence. Now, his glare seemed to say, you’re going to see something! Now you’re going to hear something!
Very late, the Artingstall diligence rolled towards town. Ann and Lizzie went into the drawing-room. “So that’s that,” said Lizzie. “What are you going to do about it?”
Before the two of them, Hawley had point-blank asked Hilda to marry him, and Hilda had said she would. Hilda would go away till her child was born, and the marriage would not take place for a year. It was quite a business conference, and Hilda seemed an intelligent business-like girl. Ann liked her, for both her vigour and candour, but at the same time, as Lizzie could see, she was deeply upset. It is not easy to put a bright face on adultery encountered for the first time, if the deceived person is your mother, buried yesterday.
Standing by the fireplace, Ann could feel her knees trembling. She sat down, and looked across at Lizzie. “It’s just a year ago,” she said, with a smile on the edge of tears, “that Mother put me over her knee and thrashed me, and Father as good as turned me out of the house for spending about twenty minutes talking to a poor boy. And now I’m to have a girl not much older than I am, of the same class as this boy, for my new mother. It doesn’t seem to make sense.”
This was the first Lizzie had heard of the thrashing. She said nothing about that, and let Ann run on. “I like Hilda. There’s no nonsense about her. But I can’t like the relationship. You see that, don’t you? It’s impossible. She can’t be more than five years older than I am. As a friend, as a companion, I could get on with her; but as a mother, why—”
“I know what’s worrying you,” said Lizzie. “You can’t stay here now. I agree with you. It would be an impossible situation, for you and Hilda. And you’re wondering what you can do.”
“What can I do? Father won’t go on paying for me to stay with you any longer.”
“And would you like that very much?”
“Like it? Dear Aunt Lizzie – if you knew how happy I’ve been for the last year!”
“So have I been, and why can’t we go on being happy?”
Ann’s woebegone face brightened. “That would be lovely! But he won’t pay you. And how do we know he’ll let me go, anyway? I’m his child. I’m still young. He can do as he pleases.”
“As to pay, we shan’t quarrel about that. Did you ever think what a lonely old thing I was, my dear, before you came? Not so much as a cat to purr round my feet. And as to Hawley’s letting you go – well, I think he’ll listen to Hilda if he won’t listen to us. D’you think she’ll want you about? Not on your life, my dear. I’m sure she likes you, and I’m sure she’d hate to have you for a daughter. If you’ll disappear for half-an-hour, Hilda and I will soon come to see what needs to be done. And while you’re in Manchester, why don’t you visit that nice man Birley? I don’t think your father can very well object now.”
*
It was very necessary, Birley Artingstall thought, to cheer up these two young men. Arnold Ryerson had managed to get a few days’ holiday for Christmas. He and John, Birley and Mr. Wilder, had all come back together from Gordon Stansfield’s funeral, packed together in a four-wheeler cab. The two boys got out in front of Hamer’s house, and before the cab drove on with Birley and the minister, Birley put his head out of the window and said: “Can you two come and see me tomorrow night? Seven o’clock?”
Arnold said: “Thank you, Mr. Artingstall,” and Hamer, who was mute with misery, merely nodded. They stood watching the cab till it was out of sight, and Birley, keeping his head stuck out of the window, noted the difference that a year had wrought. Arnold no longer overtopped his friend: they were of a height, and Hamer carried himself better. He stood straight as a lamp-post, his head set proudly on his shoulders, alongside his pale companion.
Poor young chaps, Birley thought, as he prepared to receive them the next evening, they had a tough time ahead, the pair of them. He drew the curtains, mended the fire, and opened out his gate-legged table. He put on the table-cloth and laid three places. He enjoyed doing this. It was not often he had company. He surveyed the room with some complacency: the little white bust of Wesley, the engraving of the death of Wesley on the wall, the books in their gay leather covers. He allowed his thoughts to stray for a moment to his brother Hawley, to Hawley’s sumptuous home, and to Hawley’s dead wife. Well, he reflected, he wouldn’t swap with Hawley, not anyhow, not with Lillian alive or with Lillian dead. This was his idea of a home: this quiet room, this old leather chair in which he could smoke his pipe and read and re-read John Wesley’s Journal, and cogitate on an occasional stupendous twist to his prayer-meeting petitions. “Be still,” Birley murmured to himself, “and know that I am God.” Birley liked being still. That was the trouble with Hawley, always had been: big shops, rich women, corporation committees, magistrates’ bench: anything except a minute in which he could listen to his own heart beating. “Teach us, O Heavenly Father,” Birley tried over, “to listen always for Thee, whether Thou speakest with the still small voice or soundest the blast which shall herald Thy coming to sway the sceptre of universal dominion.”
A thump of the knocker made him start. He pulled an old heavy watch out of his pocket. It could not be the boys: they were not due for half an hour. He turned up the gas at the head of his stairway and went down to the street door. Ann threw her arms round his neck and kissed him.
“Well, lass!” he exclaimed, holding her away from him and surveying her against the blear background of Great Ancoats Street. “You’ve grown out of all recognition. Come in. How did you get here?” He stood aside to give her a way to the stairs, then looked out again into the street, expecting to see Haworth disappearing with the victoria.
“I walked,” Ann said, and added with a laugh: “But don’t be afraid. There’ll be no dreadful consequences this time. I called at the shop. Father knows all about it.”
“And he let you come?” Birley asked with wonder, following her up the stairs.
Ann felt it was not her business to tell Birley what had happened that morning to change her relationship to her father. She merely said: “Yes; he let me come. I told him that no doubt you would take me to some civilized part of the town and see me into a cab.”
“Aye, I’ll do that, lass,” said Birley. “Here, give me your hat and sit you down.”
She took off her hat but did not sit down. Birley looked at her with admiration – so tall and fair and self-possessed. “I don’t know what’s come over you,” he said. “A year ago – that’s when you were here last – you were a slip of a thing, and now, well, I dunno—”
She laughed happily. “Just growing up, Uncle Birley – growing up, and learning all sorts of things, and meeting all sorts of people, and being happy for a year. That’s all it is.”
“Well, you’ll make a fine eyeful for these two young men,” said Birley. “And that’s a funny thing – I hadn’t thought of that. A year ago you went to their party, and now here you are coming to mine, and the same two youngsters are just about due.”
“What! Arnold Ryerson? But I see a lot of him in Bradford.”
“Aye, he told me something about that. Well, I’ve asked him here tonight, and young John Shawcross-Hamer, as he fancies to call himself.”
“That’s the boy who had a birthday.”
“That’s the one, and you gave him your hair ribbon for a present.”
Ann knitted her brows in an effort at recollection. “Did I? It’s quite gone out of my mind. So much else happened that night. I don’t remember a bit what he looks like.”
“It’d be no use remembering, lass. He’s changed as much as you. And you’re both in the same boat. His stepfather died the same day as your mother. Now I’d better put another place for you. There they are. Wait here. I won’t be a minute.”
He ran happily down the stairs, seized the boys by the arm, and took them with him along the street. “Come on,” he said. “Only three doors down. Mrs. Sibbles.”
“What about her?” Arnold asked.
“She’s cooking for me,” said Birley. “All very well mucking along on my own, so long as I’m on my own. But this is a special occasion.” He banged a knocker, pushed a door that was ajar, and yelled: “Mrs. Sibbles!”
“Come on in, Mr. Artingstall,” a voice answered. “It’s all packed and waiting.”
The three pushed on down Mrs. Sibbles’s passage and into Mrs. Sibbles’s kitchen, which was filled with an appetizing smell. There was a large basket on the table. “That’s t’steak and kidney pie,” said Mrs. Sibbles, pointing to a white cloth wrapping at one end of the basket, “and that’s veges. Ah’ve put ’em all in one dish. You’ll ’ave to sort ’em out. An’ ’ere in t’middle’s Christmas puddin’. Boiled for twenty-four hours, that ’ave, in t’kitchen copper. An’ ’ere’s a bit of ’olly to stick in t’top.”
They marched back to Birley’s house with the basket. Birley shut the door and put the basket behind it. “Now, lads,” he said, “we’ll take one each, and make a procession of it.”
He stuck the holly behind his ear, himself took the Christmas pudding, and commanded Arnold to take the vegetable dish and Hamer the steak and kidney pie. He thumped heavily up the stairs to announce his presence, and shouted: “Open! Open!”
Ann stood behind the door. The boys did not see her until, following Birley with heavy rhythmic stampings, they had passed round the table and laid down their burdens. Then Arnold exclaimed: “Why, Miss Artingstall—!” and Birley, twiddling the sprig of holly in his fingers and watching that encounter, was aware that the boy’s face lit up, and that Ann, though he had warned her whom to expect, advanced and took Arnold’s hand with a sudden brightening of the glance, a slow deepening of colour.
“Now, sit down,” he said. “You all know one another. You do remember my niece Ann, don’t you, John?”
Hamer remembered the occasion rather than the girl. He remembered a number of people signing their names in a book, and he remembered a girl, with a sudden whim, giving him a hair-ribbon. He had put it in the box which contained the ribbon, tied round a curl, that the Old Warrior had carried away from the field of Peterloo. He had not opened the box since. He had not opened his memory of the girl. He would not have recognized this one. She seemed, standing there in black, so tall before Birley’s fireplace, woman rather than girl. He shook hands with her nervously. He wasn’t used to girls. Harriet Wilder was the only girl he knew.
Ann did not remember him. She remembered a pale thin boy. This boy was not pale and thin. His eyes were large and beautiful under his broad brow and Gordon’s death had deepened the habitual gravity of his bearing. But he stood with his head up and his shoulders back, with an elasticity and resilience in the carriage of his body that made it impossible for her to think of the poor rough clothes he was wearing. She smiled at him, holding his hand for a moment. “No,” she said. “I wouldn’t have remembered you.”
Birley put the Christmas pudding on the hearth, and piled an extra log upon a fire already sufficiently hospitable. “Now then, sit down, all of you,” he commanded again. “But first of all, shove the sausage down to that door, John.”
Hamer did so, and came to the table where the others were already seated. He stood with his hands resting on the back of his chair, and looked down into the three faces. “I wonder,” he said, “whether you’d mind calling me Hamer?”
“Good Lord, lad, whatever for?” Birley demanded.
“Well,” said Hamer, continuing to stand, and smiling down upon them all with an air of sweet reasonableness, “it is my name, you know.”
“Aye, but no one’s used it, so far as I know.”
“Well, I’m starting a sort of new life now – on my own. It’s just a fancy of mine – if you don’t mind.”
“Sit down,” said Birley. “It’s nowt worth arguing about while the pie gets cold. It’s a queer idea, but perhaps there’s something in it. Aye – Hamer Shawcross. It’s not a bad name.”
Hamer slid into his chair, as Birley took up a knife and plunged it into the brown crust of the pie. The rich steam rushed forth and Birley sniffed with gusto. Then he laid down the knife and looked reproachfully at Hamer. “Look at that now,” he said. “You standing there speechifying: you’ve made me forget the Almighty.”
But Birley was always equal to converse with the Almighty, and as the three young people bowed their heads, he covered his false step with his resonant opening words. “This savour of a sweet-smelling sacrifice, a God, which Thou has put it into our hearts to cause to ascend to Thee, comes from the devotion of these Thy humble servants who now beseech Thee to bless this food to our use, that we may strive among men to hasten the day which shall see the glory of Thy coming to wield the sceptre of universal dominion.”
He raised his bony old Viking head and glanced round the table with a humorous twinkle in his eyes, as much as to say that he had got out of that pretty neatly. Then he took up the knife again and deftly removed the first segment of crust. His nostrils flared above the savour of the sweet-smelling sacrifice, and, looking almost beatified by his own hospitable happiness, he passed the plate down the table to where Ann sat with the vegetable dish before her.
“We must do this every Christmas, Uncle Birley,” she cried, when they were all served and eating with unconcealed relish. “That is, if I happen to be in Manchester.”
“You’ll be in Manchester,” said Arnold. “But shall I be? I may not always be able to get a Christmas holiday.”
“Neither may I,” Ann answered.
“But you’re staying in Manchester, now – that – that—” Arnold stammered over the words – “now that your mother’s dead.”
Ann shook her head. “No, I’m going back with Aunt Lizzie,” she said; and Birley saw again how Arnold’s face could not tell a lie about the joy this affirmation brought him.
“How do you get on, lad, in Bradford?” he asked. “You’ve been there a year now, and we don’t hear much about what you do.”
“It’s what he’s going to do that matters,” Ann broke in, and when Birley looked inquiringly at Arnold, the boy coloured and murmured: “Oh, that’s just an idea of Mrs. Lightowler’s. She’s got in with a lot of people who meet and talk politics.”
He left it at that, and Ann took up the story: “I don’t know how Aunt Lizzie has the nerve to be under Father’s roof. He’d die if he knew what a Radical she was.”
Birley cocked a questioning eye, and she said: “She’s one of those who believe that working people will have to have their own members in the House of Commons. Now they get elected as Liberals and try to do what they can. She thinks that’s nonsense, and that they’ll have to form their own party. She takes Arnold about with her to meetings of these people, and he’s spoken once or twice.”
“So have you,” said Arnold; and the two laughed, as though caught in a conspiracy.
“Well, bless my soul,” Birley cried. “I never heard the like. Working people have their own members? I’ve always voted Liberal. I think we’re safe enough in Mr. Gladstone’s hands. I can’t take this seriously.”
“Oh, it’s serious enough,” said Arnold quietly. “It’ll come.”
“Well, it’s,... no topic for a Christmas dinner,” Birley asserted, and Hamer said, surprisingly: “Perhaps it’s a better topic where there are no Christmas dinners.”
“Three of you, eh?” Birley looked comically threatening. “I hereby ban this topic,” he cried, striking the haft of a knife sharply on the table. “Ann, side the plates, and bring on the pudding.”
He poured the brandy, struck a match, and looked with childlike pleasure at the brown globe before him trembling with blue liquid fire. “Look at that!” he cried. “That’s a pleasanter matter for Christmas consideration. And when we’ve eaten it, we’ll sing some carols.”
They did. They piled all the dishes on to the table in the kitchen and left them there. They sat round the fire, and Birley and Arnold Ryerson lit pipes – Arnold rather self-consciously. For a moment they were quiet. Birley had put out the gas; there was no light save the firelight that fell ruddily on their faces, no sound but the sound of the flames, wrenching themselves with little tearing noises from the gross contact with the coal. Death was raw and vivid in all their minds, and for two of them the future was grey with uncertainty; but, sitting there quietly together, they felt tranquil and content, understanding one another, liking one another, comforting one another. As though their silence had been a prayer, Birley suddenly broke it with a hearty “Amen!” Then he said: “Now, let’s have the carols.”
Carols, to Birley, were hymns. They sang hymn after hymn, and presently Birley said: “Now the grandest one of all – Number 133 – ‘Let earth and heaven combine.’ Charles Wesley. Ah! There was no one like Charles when it came to writing a hymn – not even John.”
Birley didn’t need a book in his hand to know that the hymn’s number was 133. He could give you the number of any hymn in the Methodist Hymn Book or the chapter and verse of any Bible quotation. The hymn has a grand tune, and Birley led them energetically to the attack:
Let earth and heaven combine,
Angels and men agree,
To praise in songs divine
The incarnate deity:
Our God contracted to a span,
Incomprehensibly made man.
They sang it through to the end:
Then shall His love be fully showed,
And man shall then be lost in God.
Birley leaned back in his chair and laid on the table alongside him the pipe with which he had been conducting the singing. In the fireshine his eyes were glistening. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s it. You young people have all been talking about reforming this and reforming that. Well, it’s all there in two lines. When men love one another, all the reforms will be over. There’s no other way.”
He got up and lit the gas. Arnold Ryerson rose, too. “I’m glad we sang those hymns,” he said. “I don’t agree with Robert Owen about religion or marriage. He didn’t believe in either.”
Arnold looked very young and naive, standing there making his solemn affirmation, with the unaccustomed pipe in his hand. Ann laughed at him merrily. “You and your Robert Owen!” she said. “It was Robert Owen, as much as anything, that got me sent into exile a year ago.”
“Are you sorry?” Birley asked.
“No, indeed,” she said. “The last year has been worth all the rest of my life put together.” She put on her hat and coat and took up her muff. “Now, you must keep your promise, and see me safely into a cab.”
Birley prepared to go with her. “You boys stay here,” he said. “I’ll not be long, and there’ll be plenty to go on talking about when I get back.”
The boys stood listening as the young eager footsteps and the old careful ones sounded together on the hollow stairs. They heard the door bang. Then Arnold, his face shining, turned to Hamer and asked with childlike enthusiasm: “What d’you think of her?”
Hamer grunted a non-committal answer and turned to rummage among Birley’s few books. Arnold went into the kitchen. “Come along, Hamer,” he shouted. “Let’s tackle the old man’s washing-up before he gets back.”
Hamer did not want to do the washing-up, but he smiled at hearing that name for the first time on Arnold’s lips. They took off their coats, rolled up their sleeves, and went to it.
In the street, Ann put her hand upon Birley’s arm, and he patted it comfortingly. “Uncle Birley,” she asked, “what do you make of that boy Hamer Shawcross?”
“Make of him? Why, my dear, it’s difficult to make anything of him just yet. So far, he’s hardly known that he’s born, but now he’s going to find out.”