It was with a conscience uneasy that Edwin shut the front door one night
a month later, and issued out into Trafalgar Road. Since the arrival of
Nurse Shaw, Darius had not risen from his bed, and the household had
come to accept him as bed-ridden and the nurse as a permanency. The
sick-room was the centre of the house, and Maggie and Edwin and the
servants lived, as it were, in a camp round about it, their days
uncomfortably passing in suspense, in expectation of developments which
tarried. "How is he this morning?" "Much the same." "How is he this
evening?" "Much the same." These phrases had grown familiar and
tedious. But for three days Darius had been noticeably worse, and the
demeanour of Nurse Shaw had altered, and she had taken less sleep and
less exercise. Osmond Orgreave had even called in person to inquire
after the invalid, doubtless moved by Janet to accomplish this
formality, for he could not have been without news. Janet was
constantly in the house, helping Maggie; and Alicia also sometimes.
Since her engagement, Alicia had been striving to prove that she
appreciated the gravity of existence.
Still, despite the change in the patient's condition, everybody had
insisted that Edwin should go to the annual dinner of the Society for
the Prosecution of Felons, to which he had been duly elected with
flattering dispatch. Why should he not go? Why should he not enjoy
himself? What could he do if he stayed at home? Would not the change
be good for him? At most the absence would be for a few hours, and if
he could absent himself during ten hours for business, surely for
healthful distraction he might absent himself during five hours! Maggie
grew elder-sisterly at the last moment of decision, and told him he must
go, and that if he didn't she should be angry. When he asked her `What
about _her_ health? What about _her_ needing a change?' she said curtly
that that had nothing to do with it.
He went. The persuaders were helped by his own desire. And in spite of
his conscience, when he was fairly in the street he drew a sigh of
relief, and deliberately turned his heart towards gaiety. It seemed
inexpressibly pathetic that his father was lying behind those
just-lighted blinds above, and would never again breathe the open air,
never again glide along those pavements with his arms fixed and slightly
outwards. But Edwin was determined to listen to reason and not to be
morbid.
The streets were lively with the red and the blue colours of politics.
The Liberal member for the Parliamentary borough of Hanbridge, which
included Bursley, had died very suddenly, and the seat was being
disputed by the previously defeated Conservative candidate and a new
Labour candidate officially adopted by the Liberal party. The Tories
had sworn not to be beaten again in the defence of the integrity of the
Empire. And though they had the difficult and delicate task of
persuading a large industrial constituency that an industrial
representative would not further industrial interests, and that they
alone were actuated by unselfish love for the people, yet they had made
enormous progress in a very brief period, and publicans were jubilant
and bars sloppy.
The aspect of the affair that did not quite please the Society for the
Prosecution of Felons was that the polling had been fixed for the day
after its annual dinner instead of the day before. Powerful efforts had
been made `in the proper quarter' to get the date conveniently arranged,
but without success; after all, the seat of authority was Hanbridge and
not Bursley. Hanbridge, sadly failing to appreciate the importance of
Bursley's Felonry, had suggested that the feast might be moved a couple
of days. The Felonry refused. If its dinner clashed with the supreme
night of the campaign, so much the worse for the campaign! Moreover,
the excitement of the campaign would at any rate give zest to the
dinner.
Ere he reached Duck Bank, the vivacity of the town, loosed after the
day's labour to an evening's orgy of oratory and horseplay and beer, had
communicated itself to Edwin. He was most distinctly aware of pleasure
in the sight of the Tory candidate driving past, at a pace to overtake
steam-cars, in a coach-and-four, with amateur postilions and an
orchestra of horns. The spectacle, and the speed of it, somehow
thrilled him, and for an instant made him want to vote Tory. A
procession of illuminated carts, bearing white potters apparently
engaged in the handicraft which the Labour candidate had practised in
humbler days, also pleased him, but pleased him less. As he passed up
Duck Bank the Labour candidate himself was raising loud enthusiastic
cheers from a railway lorry in Duck Square, and Edwin's spirits went
even higher, and he elbowed through the laughing, joking throng with
fraternal good-humour, feeling that an election was in itself a grand
thing, apart from its result, and apart from the profit which it brought
to steam-printers.
In the porch of the Town Hall, a man turned from an eagerly-smiling
group of hungry Felons and, straightening his face, asked with quiet
concern, "How's your father?" Edwin shook his head. "Pretty bad," he
answered. "Is he?" murmured the other sadly. And Edwin suddenly saw
his father again behind the blind, irrevocably prone.
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