Clayhanger Part 82

"It's when things move like that--horizontal!" George explained, p.r.o.nouncing the word carefully.

Edwin felt that there was no end to the surpa.s.sing strangeness of this boy. One moment he was aged six, and the next he was talking about horizontality.

"Why? What do you mean?"

"I don't know!" George sighed. "But somehow--" Then, with fresh vivacity: "I tell you--when Auntie Janet comes to wake me up in the morning the cat comes in too, with its tail up in the air--you know!"

Edwin nodded. "Well, when I'm lying in bed I can't see the cat, but I can see the top of its tail sailing along the edge of the bed. But if I sit up I can see all the cat, and that spoils it, so I don't sit up at first."

The child was eager for Edwin to understand his pleasure in horizontal motion that had no apparent cause, like the tip of a cat's tail on the horizon of a bed, or the roof of a tram-car on the horizon of the wall.

And Edwin was eager to understand, and almost persuaded himself that he did understand; but he could not be sure. A marvellous child-- disconcerting! He had a feeling of inferiority to the child, because the child had seen beauty where he had not dreamed of seeing it.

"Want a swing," he suggested, "before I have to go off to business?"

THREE.

When it occurred to him that he had had as much violent physical exercise as was good for his years, and that he had left his books in disarray, and that his business demanded him, Edwin apologetically announced that he must depart, and the child admitted that Aunt Janet was probably waiting to give him his lessons.

"Are you going back the way you came? You'd better. It's always best,"

said Edwin.

"Is it?"

"Yes."

He lifted and pushed the writhing form on to the wall, dislodging a jar, which crashed dully on the ground.

"Auntie Janet told me I could have them to do what I liked with. So I break them," said George, "when they don't break themselves!"

"I bet she never told you to put them on this wall," said Edwin.

"No, she didn't. But it was the best place for aiming. And she told me it didn't matter how many crocks I broke, because they make crocks here.

Do they, really?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because there's clay here," said Edwin glibly.

"Where?"

"Oh! Round about."

"White, like that?" exclaimed George eagerly, handling a teapot without a spout. He looked at Edwin: "Will you take me to see it? I should like to see white ground."

"Well," said Edwin, more cautiously, "the clay they get about here isn't exactly white."

"Then do they make it white?"

"As a matter of fact the white clay comes from a long way off--Cornwall, for instance."

"Then why do they make the things here?" George persisted; with the annoying obstinacy of his years. He had turned the teapot upside down.

"This was made here. It's got 'Bursley' on it. Auntie Janet showed me."

Edwin was caught. He saw himself punished for that intellectual sloth which leads adults to fob children off with any kind of a slipshod, dishonestly simplified explanation of phenomena whose adequate explanation presents difficulty. He remembered how nearly twenty years earlier he had puzzled over the same question and for a long time had not found the answer.

"I'll tell you how it is," he said, determined to be conscientious.

"It's like this--" He had to pause. Queer, how hard it was to state the thing coherently! "It's like this. In the old days they used to make crocks anyhow, very rough, out of any old clay. And crocks were first made here because the people found common yellow clay, and the coal to burn it with, lying close together in the ground. You see how handy it was for them."

"Then the old crocks were yellow?"

"More or less. Then people got more particular, you see, and when white clay was found somewhere else they had it brought here, because everybody was used to making crocks here, and they had all the works and the tools they wanted, and the coal too. Very important, the coal!

Much easier to bring the clay to the people and the works, than cart off all the people--and their families, don't forget--and so on, to the clay, and build fresh works into the bargain... That's why. Now are you sure you see?"

George ignored the question. "I suppose they used up all the yellow clay there was here, long ago?"

"Not much!" said Edwin. "And they never will! You don't know what a sagger is, I reckon?"

"What is a sagger?"

"Well, I can't stop to tell you all that now. But I will some time.

They make saggers out of the yellow clay."

"Will you show me the yellow clay?"

"Yes, and some saggers too."

"When?"

"I don't know. As soon as I can."

"Will you to-morrow?"

To-morrow happened to be Thursday. It was not Edwin's free afternoon, but it was an afternoon to which a sort of licence attached. He yielded to the ruthless egotism of the child.

"All right!" he said.

"You won't forget?"

"You can rely on me. Ask your auntie if you may go, and if she says you may, be ready for me to pull you up over the wall here, about three o'clock."

"Auntie will have to let me go," said George, in a savage tone, as Edwin helped him to slip down into the garden of the Orgreaves. Edwin went off to business with a singular consciousness of virtue, and with pride in his successful manner of taming wayward children, and with a very strong new interest in the immediate future.

VOLUME FOUR, CHAPTER EIGHT.