To return to Edwin. On that Friday afternoon of the breaking-up he was,
in the local phrase, at a loose end. That is, he had no task, no
programme, and no definite desires. Not knowing, when he started out in
the morning, whether school would formally end before or after the
dinner-hour, he had taken his dinner with him, as usual, and had eaten
it at Oldcastle. Thus, though the family dinner had not begun when he
reached home, he had no share in it, partly because he was not hungry,
and partly because he was shy about having left school. The fact that
he had left school affected him as he was affected by the wearing of a
new suit for the first time, or by the cutting of his hair after a
prolonged neglect of the barber. It inspired him with a wish to avoid
his kind, and especially his sisters, Maggie and Clara. Clara might
make some facetious remark. Edwin could never forget the Red Indian
glee with which Clara had danced round him when for the first time--and
quite unprepared for the exquisite shock--she had seen him in long
trousers. There was also his father. He wanted to have a plain talk
with his father--he knew that he would not be at peace until he had had
that talk--and yet in spite of himself he had carefully kept out of his
father's way during all the afternoon, save for a moment when, strolling
with affected nonchalance up to Darius's private desk in the shop, he
had dropped thereon his school report, and strolled off again.
Towards six o'clock he was in his bedroom, an attic with a floor very
much more spacious than its ceiling, and a window that commanded the
slope of Trafalgar Road towards Bleakridge. It had been his room, his
castle, his sanctuary, for at least ten years, since before his mother's
death of cancer. He did not know that he loved it, with all its
inconveniences and makeshifts; but he did love it, and he was jealous
for it; no one should lay a hand on it to rearrange what he had once
arranged. His sisters knew this; the middle-aged servant knew it; even
his father, with a curt laugh, would humorously acquiesce in the theory
of the sacredness of Edwin's bedroom. As for Edwin, he saw nothing
extraordinary in his attitude concerning his bedroom; and he could not
understand, and he somewhat resented, that the household should perceive
anything comic in it. He never went near his sisters' bedroom, never
wished to go near it, never thought about it.
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