It was immediately after this that the "Centenary"--mispronounced in
every manner conceivable--began to obsess the town. Superior and aloof
persons, like the Orgreaves, had for weeks heard a good deal of vague
talk about the Centenary from people whom intellectually they despised,
and had condescended to the Centenary as an amiable and excusable affair
which lacked interest for them. They were wrong. Edwin had gone
further, and had sniffed at the Centenary, to everybody except his
father. And Edwin was especially wrong. On the antepenultimate day of
June he first uneasily suspected that he had committed a fault of
appraisement. That was when his father brusquely announced that by
request of the Mayor all places of business in the town would be closed
in honour of the Centenary. It was the Centenary of the establishment
of Sunday schools.
Edwin hated Sunday schools. Nay, he venomously resented them, though
they had long ceased to incommode him. They were connected in his
memory with atrocious tedium, pietistic insincerity, and humiliating
contacts. At the bottom of his mind he still regarded them as a
malicious device of parents for wilfully harassing and persecuting
inoffensive, helpless children. And he had a particular grudge against
them because he alone of his father's offspring had been chosen for the
nauseating infliction. Why should his sisters have been spared and he
doomed? He became really impatient when Sunday schools were under
discussion, and from mere irrational annoyance he would not admit that
Sunday schools had any good qualities whatever. He knew nothing of
their history, and wished to know nothing.
Nevertheless, when the day of the Centenary dawned--and dawned in
splendour--he was compelled, even within himself, to treat Sunday
schools with more consideration. And, in fact, for two or three days
previously the gathering force of public opinion had been changing his
attitude from stern hatred to a sort of half-hearted derision. Now, the
derision was mysteriously transformed into an inimical respect. By
what? By he knew not what. By something without a name in the air
which the mind breathes. He felt it at six o'clock, ere he arose.
Lying in bed he felt it. The day was to be a festival. The shop would
not open, nor the printing office. The work of preparing for the
removal would be suspended. The way of daily life would be quite
changed. He was free--that was, nearly free. He said to himself that
of course his excited father would expect him to witness the
celebrations and to wear his best clothes, and that was a bore. But
therein he was not quite honest. For he secretly wanted to witness the
celebrations and to wear his best clothes. His curiosity was hungry.
He admitted, what many had been asserting for weeks, that the Centenary
was going to be a big thing; and his social instinct wished him to share
in the pride of it.
"It's a grand day!" exclaimed his father, cheerful and all glossy as he
looked out upon Duck Square before breakfast. "It'll be rare and hot!"
And it was a grand day; one of the dazzling spectacular blue-and-gold
days of early summer. And Maggie was in finery. And Edwin too!
Useless for him to pretend that a big thing was not afoot--and his
father in a white waistcoat! Breakfast was positively talkative, though
the conversation was naught but a repeating and repeating of what the
arrangements were, and of what everybody had decided to do. The three
lingered over breakfast, because there was no reason to hurry. And then
even Maggie left the sitting-room without a care, for though Clara was
coming for dinner Mrs Nixon could be trusted. Mrs Nixon, if she had
time, would snatch half an hour in the afternoon to see what remained to
be seen of the show. Families must eat. And if Mrs Nixon was stopped
by duty from assisting at this Centenary, she must hope to be more at
liberty for the next.
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