They went down the Sytch Bank to the new chapel of which Mr Orgreave,
though a churchman, was the architect, in that vague quarter of the
world between Bursley and Turnhill. The roof was not on; the
scaffolding was extraordinarily interesting and confusing; they bent
their heads to pass under low portals; Edwin had the delicious smell of
new mortar; they stumbled through sand, mud, cinders and little pools;
they climbed a ladder and stepped over a large block of dressed stone,
and Mr Orgreave said--
"This is the gallery we're in, here. You see the scheme of the place
now... That hole--only a flue. Now you see what that arch carries--
they didn't like it in the plans because they thought it might be
mistaken for a church--"
Edwin was receptive.
"Of course it's a very small affair, but it'll cost less per sitting
than any other chapel in your circuit, and I fancy it'll look less like
a box of bricks." Mr Orgreave subtly smiled, and Edwin tried to equal
his subtlety. "I must show you the elevation some other time--a bit
later. What I've been after in it, is to keep it in character with the
street... Hi! Dan, there!" Now, Mr Orgreave was calling across the
hollow of the chapel to a fat man in corduroys. "Have you remembered
about those blue bricks?"
Perhaps the most captivating phenomenon of all was a little lean-to shed
with a real door evidently taken from somewhere else, and a little
stove, and a table and a chair. Here Mr Orgreave had a confabulation
with the corduroyed man, who was the builder, and they pored over
immense sheets of coloured plans that lay on the table, and Mr Orgreave
made marks and even sketches on the plans, and the fat man objected to
his instructions, and Mr Orgreave insisted, "Yes, _yes_!" And it seemed
to Edwin as though the building of the chapel stood still while Mr
Orgreave cogitated and explained; it seemed to Edwin that he was in the
creating-chamber. The atmosphere of the shed was inexpressibly romantic
to him. After the fat man had gone Mr Orgreave took a clothes-brush
off a plank that had been roughly nailed on two brackets to the wall,
and brushed Edwin's clothes, and Edwin brushed Mr Orgreave, and then
Mr Orgreave, having run his hand through the brush, lightly brushed his
hair with it. All this was part of Edwin's joy.
"Yes," he said, "I think the idea of that arch is splendid."
"You do?" said Mr Orgreave quite simply and ingenuously pleased and
interested. "You see--with the lie of the ground as it is--"
That was another point that Edwin ought to have thought of by himself--
the lie of the ground--but he had not thought of it. Mr Orgreave went
on talking. In the shop he had conveyed the idea that he was
tremendously pressed for time; now he had apparently forgotten time.
"I'm afraid I shall have to be off," said Edwin timidly. And he made a
preliminary movement as if to depart.
"And what about those specifications, young man?" asked Mr Orgreave,
drily twinkling. He unlocked a drawer in the rickety table. Edwin had
forgotten the specifications as successfully as Mr Orgreave had
forgotten time. Throughout the remainder of the day he smelt imaginary
mortar.