On the Saturday afternoon of Janet Orgreave's visit to the shop, Edwin
went up to Bleakridge to inspect the house, and in particular the
coloured `lights' in the upper squares of the drawing-room and
dining-room windows. He had a key to the unpainted front door, and
having climbed over various obstacles and ascended an inclined bending
plank, he entered and stood in the square hall of the deserted, damp,
and inchoate structure.
The house was his father's only in name. In emotional fact it was
Edwin's house, because he alone was capable of possessing it by enjoying
it. To Darius, to Bursley in general, it was just a nice house, of red
brick with terra-cotta facings and red tiles, in the second-Victorian
Style, the style that had broken away from Georgian austerity and
first-Victorian stucco and smugness, and wandered off vaguely into
nothing in particular. To the plebeian in Darius it was of course
grandiose, and vast; to Edwin also, in a less degree. But to Edwin it
was not a house, it was a work of art, it was an epic poem, it was an
emanation of the soul. He did not realise this. He did not realise how
the house had informed his daily existence. All that he knew about
himself in relation to the house was that he could not keep away from
it. He went and had a look at it, nearly every morning before
breakfast, when the workmen were fresh and lyrical.
When the news came down to the younger generation that Darius had bought
land and meant to build on the land, Edwin had been profoundly moved
between apprehension and hope; his condition had been one of simple but
intense expectant excitement. He wondered what his own status would be
in the great enterprise of house-building. All depended on Mr
Orgreave. Would Mr Orgreave, of whom he had seen scarcely anything in
seven years, remember that he was intelligently interested in
architecture? Or would Mr Orgreave walk right over him and talk
exclusively to his father? He had feared, he had had a suspicion, that
Mr Orgreave was an inconstant man.
Mr Orgreave had remembered in the handsomest way. When the plans were
being discussed, Mr Orgreave with one word, a tone, a glance, had
raised Edwin to the consultative level of his father. He had let Darius
see that Edwin was in his opinion worthy to take part in discussions,
and quite privately he had let Edwin see that Darius must not be treated
too seriously. Darius, who really had no interest in ten thousand
exquisitely absorbing details, had sometimes even said, with impatience,
"Oh! Settle it how you like, with Edwin."
Edwin's own suggestions never seemed very brilliant, and Mr Orgreave
was always able to prove to him that they were inadvisable; but they
were never silly, like most of his father's. And he acquired leading
ideas that transformed his whole attitude towards architecture. For
example, he had always looked on a house as a front-wall diversified by
doors and windows, with rooms behind it. But when Mr Orgreave produced
his first notions for the new house Edwin was surprised to find that he
had not even sketched the front. He had said, "We shall be able to see
what the elevation looks like when we've decided the plan a bit." And
Edwin saw in a flash that the front of a house was merely the expression
of the inside of it, merely a result, almost accidental. And he was
astounded and disgusted that he, with his professed love of architecture
and his intermittent study of it, had not perceived this obvious truth
for himself. He never again looked at a house in the old irrational
way.
Then, when examining the preliminary sketch-plan, he had put his finger
on a square space and asked what room that was. "That isn't a room;
that's the hall," said Mr Orgreave. "But it's square!" Edwin
exclaimed. He thought that in houses (houses to be lived in) the hall
or lobby must necessarily be long and narrow. Now suddenly he saw no
reason why a hall should not be square. Mr Orgreave had made no
further remark about halls at the time, but another day, without any
preface, he re-opened the subject to Edwin, in a tone good-naturedly
informing, and when he had done Edwin could see that the shape of the
hall depended on the shape of the house, and that halls had only been
crushed and pulled into something long and narrow because the
disposition of houses absolutely demanded this ugly negation of the very
idea of a hall. Again, he had to begin to think afresh, to see afresh.
He conceived a real admiration for Osmond Orgreave; not more for his
original and yet common-sense manner of regarding things, than for his
aristocratic deportment, his equality to every situation, and his
extraordinary skill in keeping his dignity and his distance during
encounters with Darius. (At the same time, when Darius would grumble
savagely that Osmond Orgreave `was too clever by half,' Edwin could not
deny that.) Edwin's sisters got a good deal of Mr Orgreave, through
Edwin; he could never keep Mr Orgreave very long to himself. He gave
away a great deal of Mr Orgreave's wisdom without mentioning the origin
of the gift. Thus occasionally Clara would say cuttingly, "I know where
you've picked that up. You've picked that up from Mr Orgreave." The
young man Benbow to whom the infant Clara had been so queerly engaged,
also received from Edwin considerable quantities of Mr Orgreave. But
the fellow was only a decent, dull, pushing, successful ass, and quite
unable to assimilate Mr Orgreave; Edwin could never comprehend how
Clara, so extremely difficult to please, so carping and captious, could
mate herself to a fellow like Benbow. She had done so, however; they
were recently married. Edwin was glad that that was over; for it had
disturbed him in his attentions to the house.
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