He did not hold the key, and even had he held it he was too young, too
inexperienced, to have used it. As with gathering passion the eyes of
Darius assaulted the window-pane, Darius had a painful intense vision of
that miracle, his own career. Edwin's grand misfortune was that he was
blind to the miracle. Edwin had never seen the little boy in the
Bastille. But Darius saw him always, the infant who had begun life at a
rope's-end. Every hour of Darius's present existence was really an
astounding marvel to Darius. He could not read the newspaper without
thinking how wonderful it was that he should be able to read the
newspaper. And it was wonderful! It was wonderful that he had three
different suits of clothes, none of them with a single hole. It was
wonderful that he had three children, all with complete outfits of good
clothes. It was wonderful that he never had to think twice about buying
coal, and that he could have more food than he needed. It was wonderful
that he was not living in a two-roomed cottage. He never came into his
house by the side entrance without feeling proud that the door gave on
to a preliminary passage and not direct into a living-room; he would
never lose the idea that a lobby, however narrow, was the great
distinguishing mark of wealth. It was wonderful that he had a piano,
and that his girls could play it and could sing. It was wonderful that
he had paid twenty-eight shillings a term for his son's schooling, in
addition to book-money. Twenty-eight shillings a term! And once a
penny a week was considered enough, and twopence generous! Through
sheer splendid wilful pride he had kept his son at school till the lad
was sixteen, going on seventeen! Seventeen, not seven! He had had the
sort of pride in his son that a man may have in an idle, elegant, and
absurdly expensive woman. It even tickled him to hear his son called
`Master Edwin,' and then `Mister Edwin'; just as the fine ceremonious
manners of his sister-in-law Mrs Hamps tickled him. His marriage!
With all its inevitable disillusions it had been wonderful, incredible.
He looked back on it as a miracle. For he had married far above him,
and had proved equal to the enormously difficult situation. Never had
he made a fool of himself. He often took keen pleasure in speculating
upon the demeanour of his father, his mother, his little sister, could
they have seen him in his purple and in his grandeur. They were all
dead. And those days were fading, fading, gone, with their unutterable,
intolerable shame and sadness, intolerable even in memory. And his wife
dead too! All that remained was Mr Shushions.
And then his business? Darius's pride in the achievement of his
business was simply indescribable. If he had not built up that
particular connexion he had built up another one whose sale had enabled
him to buy it. And he was waxing yearly. His supremacy as a printer
could not be challenged in Bursley. Steam! A double-windowed shop! A
foreman to whom alone he paid thirty shillings a week! Four other
employees! (Not to mention a domestic servant.) ... How had he done
it? He did not know. Certainly he did not credit himself with
brilliant faculties. He knew he was not brilliant; he knew that once or
twice he had had luck. But he had the greatest confidence in his
rough-hewing common sense. The large curves of his career were
correctly drawn. His common sense, his slow shrewdness, had been richly
justified by events. They had been pitted against foes--and look now at
the little boy from the Bastille!
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