Barras surveyed the table. No one was eating.
“Will you take a biscuit, Arthur?” he inquired firmly, with his hand on the silver lid of the squat glass barrel.
“No, thank you, father.” Arthur swallowed tremulously.
Richard filled his glass with water, held it for a moment with a steady hand. The water seemed more clear, more cold because he held it. He drank slowly.
Silence. Richard rose and went out of the room.
Arthur almost burst into tears. Why, why was his father not taking him to Tynecastle, on to-day of all days, when he wanted to be near him? Why was he not taking him to Todd’s? His father obviously had business with Adam Todd, who was a mining engineer, his father’s oldest friend; but that didn’t matter, he could have taken him surely, and let him play with Hetty. With a swelling heart he hung about the hall, which Aunt Carrie always referred to as the vestibule, staring at the pattern of black and white tiles, staring at his father’s lovely pictures on the walls, hoping against hope. Hilda had gone straight upstairs, marching to her room with a book. But it didn’t matter. There was never much feeling between Hilda and himself. She was too abrupt, severe, unreasonably passionate; she appeared always to be struggling within herself, struggling against something unseen. Though she was only seventeen, three months ago, just before the strike began, she had put her hair up. That removed her further than ever. He felt that Hilda was not lovable. She was not good-looking either. She was harsh, with an air of despising everything. She had an olive skin. She did not smell nice.
While he stood in the hall, Grace came down from the schoolroom with an apple in her hand.
“Let’s go and see Boxer,” she begged. “Do let’s go, Arthur.”
He gazed down at Grace. She was eleven years of age, a year younger, a foot shorter than himself. He envied Grace her happiness. Grace had the happiest disposition. She was a sweet, lovely, dreadfully untidy child. The crock-comb pushed lop-sidedly through her soft fair hair gave her little face a comic look of wonder. Her big blue eyes radiated an artless innocence. Even Hilda loved Grace. He had seen her, after the most violent display of temper, catch hold of Grace and hug her passionately.
Arthur considered: should he go with Grace, or should he not? He wanted to go, yet didn’t want to go. He could not make up his mind, it was always painful for him to make up his mind. He wavered. At last he shook his head.
“You go,” he said sombrely. “I’m worried about the strike.”
“Are you, Arthur?” she asked wonderingly.
He nodded; and the feeling that he was denying himself the pleasure of seeing the pony munch the apple made him even sadder than before.
When Grace had gone he stood listening. At last his father came downstairs. He carried a flat black leather case under his arm, but he took no notice of Arthur whatever, he went straight into the waiting dog-cart and was driven away.
Arthur was humiliated, broken-hearted, crushed. It was not that he minded missing Tynecastle, nor yet that he minded missing Todd’s. Hetty was nice, of course; he liked her long silky plaits, her bright smile, the warm feeling of her when, as she sometimes did, she flung her arms round him and asked him to buy her chocolate cream with his Saturday sixpence. Oh yes, he liked Hetty, he would marry her, no doubt, when he grew up. He liked her brother, too, Alan Todd; and he liked old man Todd — as Alan called his father — with his ragged, tobacco-stained moustache, the little yellow spots on his eyes and his funny scent of cloves and something else. But it did not in the least upset him not to see them. What upset him, ravaged him, tortured and killed him was this neglect — this miserable neglect from his own father.
Perhaps he wasn’t worth noticing, perhaps that really was the trouble. He was so small for his age and, he supposed, not very strong — he had heard Aunt Carrie several times: Arthur is delicate! Though Hilda had been to school in Harrogate and Grace was going soon, he, Arthur, would not go to school. He had so few friends, too, it was extraordinary how few people came to the Law. He was morbidly aware of himself as shy, sensitive, lonely. Being fair, he blushed easily, which often made him wish the ground would swallow him. He longed with all his soul for the time when he would be working with his father in the Neptune. At sixteen he would start, learning the practical side; then some classes, his certificate; and finally the wonderful day when he went into partnership with his father. Ah, that was a day to live for.
And meanwhile, with tears smarting in his eyes, he wandered aimlessly through the front door. The grounds of the Law lay before him, a fine span of lawn with a laburnum in the middle, then a paddock sloping to the dene. Two belts of trees lay upon either side, cutting off all that was unbeautiful in the view. Actually the house stood quite close to Sleescale, upon the law or hill which gave the place its name. Yet it might have been a hundred miles away for all that was seen of pit chimneys and pit dirt. It was a good stone house, square fronted, with a portico in the, Georgian style, a later addition built out behind, and a big conservatory attached. The front of the house was covered by smartly clipped ivy. Though it was completely unostentatious — how Richard hated ostentation! — everything was in the most spotless order: the lawn shaven, its edges cut as by a knife, not a weed marring the long red blaze drive. There was a great deal of white paint about, the best white paint, on gates, palings, the window sashes and woodwork of the glass house. Richard liked it so; and though he kept only one man — Bartley — there were always plenty willing to come up from the Neptune to “crible for the mester.”
Arthur’s woebegone gaze travelled down the pleasant prospect. Should he go down to Grace? He thought yes, at first, then he thought no. Desolate, he couldn’t make up his mind. Then, as usual, he left it, wandering away from the decision, wandering back into the hall. Absently, he stared at the pictures upon the walls, these pictures on which his father set such store. Every year his father would buy a picture, sometimes two, through Vincent, the big art dealer in Tynecastle, spending what seemed to Arthur — whose ears absorbed the last detail of his father’s conversation — incredible sums. Yet consciously Arthur approved this action of his father, as he approved all his father’s actions, and he approved his father’s taste as well. Yes, they really were lovely pictures, large canvases, superbly coloured. Stone, Orchardson, Watts, Leighton, Holman Hunt, oh, Holman Hunt especially. Arthur knew the names. Knew that these — as his father said — would be the old masters of the future. One in particular, The Garden Lovers, entranced him with its sweetness, it was so lovely it gave him a queer pain, a kind of longing, low down in his stomach.
Arthur frowned, hesitated, looking up and down the hall. He wanted to think, to puzzle things out about this awful strike, his father’s strange and preoccupied departure for Todd’s. Turning, he went along the passage and into the lavatory. He locked himself in. Here, at last, he was safe.
The lavatory was his retreat; the place where no one could disturb him, where he took his troubles some days and on others gave himself to his dreams. The lavatory was a lovely place to dream in. It reminded him, somehow, of a church, a cathedral aisle, for it was a tall room with a cold churchy smell and a varnished wallpaper made up of little gothic arches, he got a feeling here like when he looked at The Garden Lovers.