Things sometimes fall out in a surprising way, and the removal of the
Clayhanger household from the corner of Duck Square to the heights of
Bleakridge was diversified by a circumstance which Edwin, the person
whom alone it concerned, had not in the least anticipated.
It was the Monday morning after the Centenary. Foster's largest
furniture-van, painted all over with fine pictures of the van itself
travelling by road, rail, and sea, stood loaded in front of the shop.
One van had already departed, and this second one, in its crammed
interior, on its crowded roof, on a swinging platform beneath its floor,
and on a posterior ledge supported by rusty chains, contained all that
was left of the furniture and domestic goods which Darius Clayhanger had
collected in half a century of ownership. The moral effect of Foster's
activity was always salutary, in that Foster would prove to any man how
small a space the acquisitions of a lifetime could be made to occupy
when the object was not to display but to pack them. Foster could put
all your pride on to four wheels, and Foster's driver would crack a whip
and be off with the lot of it as though it were no more than a load of
coal.
The pavement and the road were littered with straw, and the straw
straggled into the shop, and heaped itself at the open side door. One
large brass saucepan lay lorn near the doorstep, a proof that Foster was
human. For everything except that saucepan a place had been found.
That saucepan had witnessed sundry ineffectual efforts to lodge it, and
had also suffered frequent forgetfulness. A tin candlestick had taken
refuge within it, and was trusting for safety to the might of the
obstinate vessel. In the sequel, the candlestick was pitched by Edwin
on to the roof of the van, and Darius Clayhanger, coming fussily out of
the shop, threw a question at Edwin and then picked up the saucepan and
went off to Bleakridge with it, thus making sure that it would not be
forgotten, and demonstrating to the town that he, Darius, was at last
`flitting' into his grand new house. Even weighted by the saucepan, in
which Mrs Nixon had boiled hundredweights of jam, he still managed to
keep his arms slanted outwards and motionless, retaining his appearance
of a rigid body that swam smoothly along on mechanical legs. Darius,
though putting control upon himself, was in a state of high complex
emotion, partly due to apprehensiveness about the violent changing of
the habits of a quarter of a century, and partly due to nervous pride.
Maggie and Mrs Nixon had gone to the new house half an hour earlier, to
devise encampments therein for the night; for the Clayhangers would
definitely sleep no more at the corner of Duck Square; the rooms in
which they had eaten and slept and lain awake, and learnt what life and
what death was, were to be transformed into workshops and stores for an
increasing business. The premises were not abandoned empty. The shop
had to function as usual on that formidable day, and the printing had to
proceed. This had complicated the affair of the removal; but it had
helped everybody to pretend, in an adult and sedate manner, that nothing
in the least unusual was afoot.
Edwin loitered on the pavement, with his brain all tingling, and
excitedly incapable of any consecutive thought whatever. It was his
duty to wait. Two of Foster's men were across in the vaults of the
Dragon; the rest were at Bleakridge with the first and smaller van.
Only one of Foster's horses was in the dropped double-shafts, and even
he had his nose towards the van, and in a nosebag; two others were to
come down soon from Bleakridge to assist.
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