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THE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNS AND OTHER STORIES

by

ARNOLD BENNETT

1912






BY THE SAME AUTHOR


NOVELS

A MAN FROM THE NORTH
ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS
LEONORA
A GREAT MAN
SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE
WHOM GOD HATH JOINED
BURIED ALIVE
THE OLD WIVES' TALE
THE GLIMPSE
HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND
CLAYHANGER
HILDA LESSWAYS
THE CARD

FANTASIAS

THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL
THE GATES OF WRATH
TERESA OF WATLING STREET
THE LOOT OF CITIES
HUGO
THE GHOST
THE CITY OF PLEASURE

SHORT STORIES

TALES OF THE FIVE TOWNS
THE GRIM SMILE OF THE FIVE TOWNS

BELLES-LETTRES

JOURNALISM FOR WOMEN
FAME AND FICTION
HOW TO BECOME AN AUTHOR
THE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHOR
THE REASONABLE LIFE
HOW TO LIVE ON TWENTY-FOUR HOURS A DAY
THE HUMAN MACHINE
LITERARY TASTE
THE FEAST OF ST FRIEND

DRAMA

POLITE FARCES
CUPID AND COMMON SENSE
WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS
THE HONEYMOON

(In Collaboration with EDEN PHILLPOTTS)

THE SINEWS OF WAR: A ROMANCE
THE STATUE: A ROMANCE





CONTENTS


TRAGIC

THE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNS
MIMI
THE SUPREME ILLUSION
THE LETTER AND THE LIE
THE GLIMPSE

FROLIC

JOCK-AT-A-VENTURE
THE HEROISM OF THOMAS CHADWICK
UNDER THE CLOCK
THREE EPISODES IN THE LIFE OF MR COWLISHAW, DENTIST
CATCHING THE TRAIN
THE WIDOW OF THE BALCONY
THE CAT AND CUPID
THE FORTUNE-TELLER
THE LONG-LOST UNCLE
THE TIGHT HAND
WHY THE CLOCK STOPPED
HOT POTATOES
HALF-A-SOVEREIGN
THE BLUE SUIT
THE TIGER AND THE BABY
THE REVOLVER
AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE




THE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNS




I


Mrs Brindeley looked across the lunch-table at her husband with
glinting, eager eyes, which showed that there was something unusual in
the brain behind them.

"Bob," she said, factitiously calm. "You don't know what I've just
remembered!"

"Well?" said he.

"It's only grandma's birthday to-day!"

My friend Robert Brindley, the architect, struck the table with a
violent fist, making his little boys blink, and then he said quietly:

"_The_ deuce!"

I gathered that grandmamma's birthday had been forgotten and that it was
not a festival that could be neglected with impunity. Both Mr and Mrs
Brindley had evidently a humorous appreciation of crises, contretemps,
and those collisions of circumstances which are usually called
"junctures" for short. I could have imagined either of them saying to
the other: "Here's a funny thing! The house is on fire!" And then
yielding to laughter as they ran for buckets. Mrs Brindley, in
particular, laughed now; she gazed at the table-cloth and laughed almost
silently to herself; though it appeared that their joint forgetfulness
might result in temporary estrangement from a venerable ancestor who was
also, birthdays being duly observed, a continual fount of rich presents
in specie.

Robert Brindley drew a time-table from his breast-pocket with the rapid
gesture of habit. All men of business in the Five Towns seem to carry
that time-table in their breast-pockets. Then he examined his watch
carefully.

"You'll have time to dress up your progeny and catch the 2.5. It makes
the connection at Knype for Axe."

The two little boys, aged perhaps four and six, who had been ladling the
messy contents of specially deep plates on to their bibs, dropped their
spoons and began to babble about grea'-granny, and one of them insisted
several times that he must wear his new gaiters.

"Yes," said Mrs Brindley to her husband, after reflection. "And a fine
old crowd there'll be in the train--with this football match!"

"Can't be helped!... Now, you kids, hook it upstairs to nurse."

"And what about you?" asked Mrs Brindley.

"You must tell the old lady I'm kept by business."

"I told her that last year, and you know what happened."

"Well," said Brindley. "Here Loring's just come. You don't expect me to
leave him, do you? Or have you had the beautiful idea of taking him over
to Axe to pass a pleasant Saturday afternoon with your esteemed
grandmother?"

"No," said Mrs Brindley. "Hardly that!"

"Well, then?"

The boys, having first revolved on their axes, slid down from their high
chairs as though from horses.

"Look here," I said. "You mustn't mind me. I shall be all right."

"Ha-ha!" shouted Brindley. "I seem to see you turned loose alone in this
amusing town on a winter afternoon. I seem to see you!"

"I could stop in and read," I said, eyeing the multitudinous books on
every wall of the dining-room. The house was dadoed throughout with
books.

"Rot!" said Brindley.

This was only my third visit to his home and to the Five Towns, but he
and I had already become curiously intimate. My first two visits had
been occasioned by official pilgrimages as a British Museum expert in
ceramics. The third was for a purely friendly week-end, and had no
pretext. The fact is, I was drawn to the astonishing district and its
astonishing inhabitants. The Five Towns, to me, was like the East to
those who have smelt the East: it "called."

"I'll tell you what we _could_ do," said Mrs Brindley. "We could put him
on to Dr Stirling."

"So we could!" Brindley agreed. "Wife, this is one of your bright,
intelligent days. We'll put you on to the doctor, Loring. I'll impress
on him that he must keep you constantly amused till I get back, which I
fear it won't be early. This is what we call manners, you know--to
invite a fellow-creature to travel a hundred and fifty miles to spend
two days here, and then to turn him out before he's been in the house an
hour. It's _us_, that is! But the truth of the matter is, the birthday
business might be a bit serious. It might easily cost me fifty quid and
no end of diplomacy. If you were a married man you'd know that the ten
plagues of Egypt are simply nothing in comparison with your wife's
relations. And she's over eighty, the old lady."

"_I_'ll give you ten plagues of Egypt!" Mrs Brindley menaced her spouse,
as she wafted the boys from the room. "Mr Loring, do take some more of
that cheese if you fancy it." She vanished.

Within ten minutes Brindley was conducting me to the doctor's, whose
house was on the way to the station. In its spacious porch he explained
the circumstances in six words, depositing me like a parcel. The doctor,
who had once by mysterious medicaments saved my frail organism from the
consequences of one of Brindley's Falstaffian "nights," hospitably
protested his readiness to sacrifice patients to my pleasure.

"It'll be a chance for MacIlroy," said he.

"Who's MacIlroy?" I asked.

"MacIlroy is another Scotchman," growled Brindley. "Extraordinary how
they stick together! When he wanted an assistant, do you suppose he
looked about for some one in the district, some one who understood us
and loved us and could take a hand at bridge? Not he! Off he goes to
Cupar, or somewhere, and comes back with another stage Scotchman, named
MacIlroy. Now listen here, Doc! A charge to keep you have, and mind you
keep it, or I'll never pay your confounded bill. We'll knock on the
window to-night as we come back. In the meantime you can show Loring
your etchings, and pray for me." And to me: "Here's a latchkey." With no
further ceremony he hurried away to join his wife and children at
Bleakridge Station. In such singular manner was I transferred forcibly
from host to host.




II


The doctor and I resembled each other in this: that there was no
offensive affability about either of us. Though abounding in
good-nature, we could not become intimate by a sudden act of volition.
Our conversation was difficult, unnatural, and by gusts falsely
familiar. He displayed to me his bachelor house, his etchings, a few
specimens of modern _rouge flambé_ ware made at Knype, his whisky, his
celebrated prize-winning fox-terrier Titus, the largest collection of
books in the Five Towns, and photographs of Marischal College, Aberdeen.
Then we fell flat, socially prone. Sitting in his study, with Titus
between us on the hearthrug, we knew no more what to say or do. I
regretted that Brindley's wife's grandmother should have been born on a
fifteenth of February. Brindley was a vivacious talker, he could be
trusted to talk. I, too, am a good talker--with another good talker.
With a bad talker I am just a little worse than he is. The doctor said
abruptly after a nerve-trying silence that he had forgotten a most
important call at Hanbridge, and would I care to go with him in the car?
I was and still am convinced that he was simply inventing. He wanted to
break the sinister spell by getting out of the house, and he had not the
face to suggest a sortie into the streets of the Five Towns as a
promenade of pleasure.

So we went forth, splashing warily through the rich mud and the dank
mist of Trafalgar Road, past all those strange little Indian-red houses,
and ragged empty spaces, and poster-hoardings, and rounded kilns, and
high, smoking chimneys, up hill, down hill, and up hill again,
encountering and overtaking many electric trams that dipped and rose
like ships at sea, into Crown Square, the centre of Hanbridge, the
metropolis of the Five Towns. And while the doctor paid his mysterious
call I stared around me at the large shops and the banks and the gilded
hotels. Down the radiating street-vistas I could make out the façades of
halls, theatres, chapels. Trams rumbled continually in and out of the
square. They seemed to enter casually, to hesitate a few moments as if
at a loss, and then to decide with a nonchalant clang of bells that they
might as well go off somewhere else in search of something more
interesting. They were rather like human beings who are condemned to
live for ever in a place of which they are sick beyond the
expressiveness of words.

And indeed the influence of Crown Square, with its large effects of
terra cotta, plate glass, and gold letters, all under a heavy skyscape
of drab smoke, was depressing. A few very seedy men (sharply contrasting
with the fine delicacy of costly things behind plate-glass) stood
doggedly here and there in the mud, immobilized by the gloomy
enchantment of the Square. Two of them turned to look at Stirling's
motor-car and me. They gazed fixedly for a long time, and then one said,
only his lips moving:

"Has Tommy stood thee that there quart o' beer as he promised thee?"

No reply, no response of any sort, for a further long period! Then the
other said, with grim resignation:

"Ay!"

The conversation ceased, having made a little oasis in the dismal desert
of their silent scrutiny of the car. Except for an occasional stamp of
the foot they never moved. They just doggedly and indifferently stood,
blown upon by all the nipping draughts of the square, and as it might be
sinking deeper and deeper into its dejection. As for me, instead of
desolating, the harsh disconsolateness of the scene seemed to uplift me;
I savoured it with joy, as one savours the melancholy of a tragic work
of art.

"We might go down to the _Signal_ offices and worry Buchanan a bit,"
said the doctor, cheerfully, when he came back to the car. This was the
second of his inspirations.

Buchanan, of whom I had heard, was another Scotchman and the editor of
the sole daily organ of the Five Towns, an evening newspaper cried all
day in the streets and read by the entire population. Its green sheet
appeared to be a permanent waving feature of the main thoroughfares. The
offices lay round a corner close by, and as we drew up in front of them
a crowd of tattered urchins interrupted their diversions in the sodden
road to celebrate our glorious arrival by unanimously yelling at the top
of their strident and hoarse voices:

"Hooray! Hoo--bl----dy--ray!"

Abashed, I followed my doctor into the shelter of the building, a new
edifice, capacious and considerable, but horribly faced with terra
cotta, and quite unimposing, lacking in the spectacular effect; like
nearly everything in the Five Towns, carelessly and scornfully ugly! The
mean, swinging double-doors returned to the assault when you pushed
them, and hit you viciously. In a dark, countered room marked
"Enquiries" there was nobody.

"Hi, there!" called the doctor.

A head appeared at a door.

"Mr Buchanan upstairs?"

"Yes," snapped the head, and disappeared.

Up a dark staircase we went, and at the summit were half flung back
again by another self-acting door.

In the room to which we next came an old man and a youngish one were
bent over a large, littered table, scribbling on and arranging pieces of
grey tissue paper and telegrams. Behind the old man stood a boy. Neither
of them looked up.

"Mr Buchanan in his--" the doctor began to question. "Oh! There you
are!"

The editor was standing in hat and muffler at the window, gazing out.
His age was about that of the doctor--forty or so; and like the doctor
he was rather stout and clean-shaven. Their Scotch accents mingled in
greeting, the doctor's being the more marked. Buchanan shook my hand
with a certain courtliness, indicating that he was well accustomed to
receive strangers. As an expert in small talk, however, he shone no
brighter than his visitors, and the three of us stood there by the
window awkwardly in the heaped disorder of the room, while the other two
men scratched and fidgeted with bits of paper at the soiled table.

Suddenly and savagely the old man turned on the boy:

"What the hades are you waiting there for?"

"I thought there was something else, sir."

"Sling your hook."

Buchanan winked at Stirling and me as the boy slouched off and the old
man blandly resumed his writing.

"Perhaps you'd like to look over the place?" Buchanan suggested politely
to me. "I'll come with you. It's all I'm fit for to-day.... 'Flu!" He
glanced at Stirling, and yawned.

"Ye ought to be in bed," said Stirling.

"Yes. I know. I've known it for twelve years. I shall go to bed as soon
as I get a bit of time to myself. Well, will you come? The half-time
results are beginning to come in."

A telephone-bell rang impatiently.

"You might just see what that is, boss," said the old man without
looking up.

Buchanan went to the telephone and replied into it: "Yes? What? Oh!
Myatt? Yes, he's playing.... Of course I'm sure! Good-bye." He turned to
the old man: "It's another of 'em wanting to know if Myatt is playing.
Birmingham, this time."

"Ah!" exclaimed the old man, still writing.

"It's because of the betting," Buchanan glanced at me. "The odds are on
Knype now--three to two."

"If Myatt is playing Knype have got me to thank for it," said the
doctor, surprisingly.

"You?"

"Me! He fetched me to his wife this morning. She's nearing her
confinement. False alarm. I guaranteed him at least another twelve
hours."

"Oh! So that's it, is it?" Buchanan murmured.

Both the sub-editors raised their heads.

"That's it," said the doctor.

"Some people were saying he'd quarrelled with the trainer again and was
shamming," said Buchanan. "But I didn't believe that. There's no
hanky-panky about Jos Myatt, anyhow."

I learnt in answer to my questions that a great and terrible football
match was at that moment in progress at Knype, a couple of miles away,
between the Knype Club and the Manchester Rovers. It was conveyed to me
that the importance of this match was almost national, and that the
entire district was practically holding its breath till the result
should be known. The half-time result was one goal each.

"If Knype lose," said Buchanan, explanatorily, "they'll find themselves
pushed out of the First League at the end of the season. That's a cert
... one of the oldest clubs in England! Semi-finalists for the English
Cup in '78."

"'79," corrected the elder sub-editor.

I gathered that the crisis was grave.

"And Myatt's the captain, I suppose?" said I.

"No. But he's the finest full-back in the League."

I then had a vision of Myatt as a great man. By an effort of the
imagination I perceived that the equivalent of the fate of nations
depended upon him. I recollected, now, large yellow posters on the
hoardings we had passed, with the names of Knype and of Manchester
Rovers in letters a foot high and the legend "League match at Knype"
over all. It seemed to me that the heroic name of Jos Myatt, if truly he
were the finest full-back in the League, if truly his presence or
absence affected the betting as far off as Birmingham, ought also to
have been on the posters, together with possibly his portrait. I saw Jos
Myatt as a matador, with a long ribbon of scarlet necktie down his
breast, and embroidered trousers.

"Why," said Buchanan, "if Knype drop into the Second Division they'll
never pay another dividend! It'll be all up with first-class football in
the Five Towns!"

The interests involved seemed to grow more complicated. And here I had
been in the district nearly four hours without having guessed that the
district was quivering in the tense excitement of gigantic issues! And
here was this Scotch doctor, at whose word the great Myatt would have
declined to play, never saying a syllable about the affair, until a
chance remark from Buchanan loosened his tongue. But all doctors are
strangely secretive. Secretiveness is one of their chief private
pleasures.

"Come and see the pigeons, eh?" said Buchanan.

"Pigeons?" I repeated.

"We give the results of over a hundred matches in our Football Edition,"
said Buchanan, and added: "not counting Rugby."

As we left the room two boys dodged round us into it, bearing telegrams.

In a moment we were, in the most astonishing manner, on a leaden roof of
the _Signal_ offices. High factory chimneys rose over the horizon of
slates on every side, blowing thick smoke into the general murk of the
afternoon sky, and crossing the western crimson with long pennons of
black. And out of the murk there came from afar a blue-and-white pigeon
which circled largely several times over the offices of the _Signal_. At
length it descended, and I could hear the whirr of its strong wings. The
wings ceased to beat and the pigeon slanted downwards in a curve, its
head lower than its wide tail. Then the little head gradually rose and
the tail fell; the curve had changed, the pace slackened; the pigeon was
calculating with all its brain; eyes, wings, tail and feet were being
co-ordinated to the resolution of an intricate mechanical problem. The
pinkish claws seemed to grope--and after an instant of hesitation the
thing was done, the problem solved; the pigeon, with delicious
gracefulness, had established equilibrium on the ridge of a pigeon-cote,
and folded its wings, and was peering about with strange motions of its
extremely movable head. Presently it flew down to the leads, waddled to
and fro with the ungainly gestures of a fat woman of sixty, and
disappeared into the cote. At the same moment the boy who had been
dismissed from the sub-editor's room ran forward and entered the cote by
a wire-screened door.

"Handy things, pigeons!" said the doctor as we approached to examine the
cote. Fifty or sixty pigeons were cooing and strutting in it. There was
a protest of wings as the boy seized the last arriving messenger.

"Give it here!" Buchanan ordered.

The boy handed over a thin tube of paper which he had unfastened from
the bird's leg. Buchanan unrolled it and showed it to me. I read:
"Midland Federation. Axe United, Macclesfield Town. Match abandoned
after half-hour's play owing to fog. Three forty-five."

"Three forty-five," said Buchanan, looking at his watch. "He's done the
ten miles in half an hour, roughly. Not bad. First time we tried pigeons
from as far off as Axe. Here, boy!" And he restored the paper to the
boy, who gave it to another boy, who departed with it.

"Man," said the doctor, eyeing Buchanan. "Ye'd no business out here.
Ye're not precisely a pigeon."

Down we went, one after another, by the ladder, and now we fell into the
composing-room, where Buchanan said he felt warmer. An immense, dirty,
white-washed apartment crowded with linotypes and other machines, in
front of which sat men in white aprons, tapping, tapping--gazing at
documents pinned at the level of their eyes--and tapping, tapping. A
kind of cavernous retreat in which monstrous iron growths rose out of
the floor and were met half-way by electric flowers that had their roots
in the ceiling! In this jungle there was scarcely room for us to walk.
Buchanan explained the linotypes to me. I watched, as though
romantically dreaming, the flashing descent of letter after letter, a
rain of letters into the belly of the machine; then, going round to the
back, I watched the same letters rising again in a close, slow
procession, and sorting themselves by themselves at the top in readiness
to answer again to the tapping, tapping of a man in a once-white apron.
And while I was watching all that I could somehow, by a faculty which we
have, at the same time see pigeons far overhead, arriving and arriving
out of the murk from beyond the verge of chimneys.

"Ingenious, isn't it?" said Stirling.

But I imagine that he had not the faculty by which to see the pigeons.

A reverend, bearded, spectacled man, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up
and an apron stretched over his hemispherical paunch, strolled slowly
along an alley, glancing at a galley-proof with an ingenuous air just as
if he had never seen a galley-proof before.

"It's a stick more than a column already," said he confidentially,
offering the long paper, and then gravely looking at Buchanan, with head
bent forward, not through his spectacles but over them.

The editor negligently accepted the proof, and I read a series of
titles: "Knype _v_. Manchester Rovers. Record Gate. Fifteen thousand
spectators. Two goals in twelve minutes. Myatt in form. Special Report."

Buchanan gave the slip back without a word.

"There you are!" said he to me, as another compositor near us attached a
piece of tissue paper to his machine. It was the very paper that I had
seen come out of the sky, but its contents had been enlarged and amended
by the sub-editorial pen. The man began tapping, tapping, and the
letters began to flash downwards on their way to tell a quarter of a
million people that Axe _v_. Macclesfield had been stopped by fog.

"I suppose that Knype match is over by now?" I said.

"Oh no!" said Buchanan. "The second half has scarcely begun."

"Like to go?" Stirling asked.

"Well," I said, feeling adventurous, "it's a notion, isn't it?"

"You can run Mr Loring down there in five or six minutes," said
Buchanan. "And he's probably never seen anything like it before. You
might call here as you come home and see the paper on the machines."




III


We went on the Grand Stand, which was packed with men whose eyes were
fixed, with an unconscious but intense effort, on a common object. Among
the men were a few women in furs and wraps, equally absorbed. Nobody
took any notice of us as we insinuated our way up a rickety flight of
wooden stairs, but when by misadventure we grazed a human being the
elbow of that being shoved itself automatically and fiercely outwards,
to repel. I had an impression of hats, caps, and woolly overcoats
stretched in long parallel lines, and of grimy raw planks everywhere
presenting possibly dangerous splinters, save where use had worn them
into smooth shininess. Then gradually I became aware of the vast field,
which was more brown than green. Around the field was a wide border of
infinitesimal hats and pale faces, rising in tiers, and beyond this
border fences, hoardings, chimneys, furnaces, gasometers,
telegraph-poles, houses, and dead trees. And here and there, perched in
strange perilous places, even high up towards the sombre sky, were more
human beings clinging. On the field itself, at one end of it, were a
scattered handful of doll-like figures, motionless; some had white
bodies, others red; and three were in black; all were so small and so
far off that they seemed to be mere unimportant casual incidents in
whatever recondite affair it was that was proceeding. Then a whistle
shrieked, and all these figures began simultaneously to move, and then
I saw a ball in the air. An obscure, uneasy murmuring rose from the
immense multitude like an invisible but audible vapour. The next instant
the vapour had condensed into a sudden shout. Now I saw the ball rolling
solitary in the middle of the field, and a single red doll racing
towards it; at one end was a confused group of red and white, and at the
other two white dolls, rather lonely in the expanse. The single red doll
overtook the ball and scudded along with it at his twinkling toes. A
great voice behind me bellowed with an incredible volume of sound:

"Now, Jos!"

And another voice, further away, bellowed:

"Now, Jos!"

And still more distantly the grim warning shot forth from the crowd:

"Now, Jos! Now, Jos!"

The nearer of the white dolls, as the red one approached, sprang
forward. I could see a leg. And the ball was flying back in a
magnificent curve into the skies; it passed out of my sight, and then I
heard a bump on the slates of the roof of the grand stand, and it fell
among the crowd in the stand-enclosure. But almost before the flight of
the ball had commenced, a terrific roar of relief had rolled formidably
round the field, and out of that roar, like rockets out of thick smoke,
burst acutely ecstatic cries of adoration:

"Bravo, Jos!"

"Good old Jos!"

The leg had evidently been Jos's leg. The nearer of these two white
dolls must be Jos, darling of fifteen thousand frenzied people.

Stirling punched a neighbour in the side to attract his attention.

"What's the score?" he demanded of the neighbour, who scowled and then
grinned.

"Two--one--agen uz!" The other growled.

"It'll take our b----s all their time to draw. They're playing a man
short."

"Accident?"

"No! Referee ordered him off for rough play."

Several spectators began to explain, passionately, furiously, that the
referee's action was utterly bereft of common sense and justice; and I
gathered that a less gentlemanly crowd would undoubtedly have lynched
the referee. The explanations died down, and everybody except me resumed
his fierce watch on the field.

I was recalled from the exercise of a vague curiosity upon the set,
anxious faces around me by a crashing, whooping cheer which in volume
and sincerity of joy surpassed all noises in my experience. This massive
cheer reverberated round the field like the echoes of a battleship's
broadside in a fiord. But it was human, and therefore more terrible than
guns. I instinctively thought: "If such are the symptoms of pleasure,
what must be the symptoms of pain or disappointment?" Simultaneously
with the expulsion of the unique noise the expression of the faces
changed. Eyes sparkled; teeth became prominent in enormous, uncontrolled
smiles. Ferocious satisfaction had to find vent in ferocious gestures,
wreaked either upon dead wood or upon the living tissues of
fellow-creatures. The gentle, mannerly sound of hand-clapping was a kind
of light froth on the surface of the billowy sea of heartfelt applause.
The host of the fifteen thousand might have just had their lives saved,
or their children snatched from destruction and their wives from
dishonour; they might have been preserved from bankruptcy, starvation,
prison, torture; they might have been rewarding with their impassioned
worship a band of national heroes. But it was not so. All that had
happened was that the ball had rolled into the net of the Manchester
Rovers' goal. Knype had drawn level. The reputation of the Five Towns
before the jury of expert opinion that could distinguish between
first-class football and second-class was maintained intact. I could
hear specialists around me proving that though Knype had yet five League
matches to play, its situation was safe. They pointed excitedly to a
huge hoarding at one end of the ground on which appeared names of other
clubs with changing figures. These clubs included the clubs which Knype
would have to meet before the end of the season, and the figures
indicated their fortunes on various grounds similar to this ground all
over the country. If a goal was scored in Newcastle, or in Southampton,
the very Peru of first-class football, it was registered on that board
and its possible effect on the destinies of Knype was instantly
assessed. The calculations made were dizzying.

Then a little flock of pigeons flew up and separated, under the illusion
that they were free agents and masters of the air, but really wafted
away to fixed destinations on the stupendous atmospheric waves of
still-continued cheering.

After a minute or two the ball was restarted, and the greater noise had
diminished to the sensitive uneasy murmur which responded like a
delicate instrument to the fluctuations of the game. Each feat and
manoeuvre of Knype drew generous applause in proportion to its intention
or its success, and each sleight of the Manchester Rovers, successful or
not, provoked a holy disgust. The attitude of the host had passed beyond
morality into religion.

Then, again, while my attention had lapsed from the field, a devilish, a
barbaric, and a deafening yell broke from those fifteen thousand
passionate hearts. It thrilled me; it genuinely frightened me. I
involuntarily made the motion of swallowing. After the thunderous crash
of anger from the host came the thin sound of a whistle. The game
stopped. I heard the same word repeated again and again, in divers
tones of exasperated fury:

"Foul!"

I felt that I was hemmed in by potential homicides, whose arms were
lifted in the desire of murder and whose features were changed from the
likeness of man into the corporeal form of some pure and terrible
instinct.

And I saw a long doll rise from the ground and approach a lesser doll
with threatening hands.

"Foul! Foul!"

"Go it, Jos! Knock his neck out! Jos! He tripped thee up!"

There was a prolonged gesticulatory altercation between the three black
dolls in leather leggings and several of the white and the red dolls. At
last one of the mannikins in leggings shrugged his shoulders, made a
definite gesture to the other two, and walked away towards the edge of
the field nearest the stand. It was the unprincipled referee; he had
disallowed the foul. In the protracted duel between the offending
Manchester forward and the great, honest Jos Myatt he had given another
point to the enemy. As soon as the host realized the infamy it yelled
once more in heightened fury. It seemed to surge in masses against the
thick iron railings that alone stood between the referee and death. The
discreet referee was approaching the grand stand as the least unsafe
place. In a second a handful of executioners had somehow got on to the
grass. And in the next second several policemen were in front of them,
not striking nor striving to intimidate, but heavily pushing them into
bounds.

"Get back there!" cried a few abrupt, commanding voices from the stand.

The referee stood with his hands in his pockets and his whistle in his
mouth. I think that in that moment of acutest suspense the whole of his
earthly career must have flashed before him in a phantasmagoria. And
then the crisis was past. The inherent gentlemanliness of the outraged
host had triumphed and the referee was spared.

"Served him right if they'd man-handled him!" said a spectator.

"Ay!" said another, gloomily, "ay! And th' Football Association 'ud ha'
fined us maybe a hundred quid and disqualified th' ground for the rest
o' th' season!"

"D----n th' Football Association!"

"Ay! But you canna'!"

"Now, lads! Play up, Knype! Now, lads! Give 'em hot hell!" Different
voices heartily encouraged the home team as the ball was thrown into
play.

The fouling Manchester forward immediately resumed possession of the
ball. Experience could not teach him. He parted with the ball and got it
again, twice. The devil was in him and in the ball. The devil was
driving him towards Myatt. They met. And then came a sound quite new: a
cracking sound, somewhat like the snapping of a bough, but sharper, more
decisive.

"By Jove!" exclaimed Stirling. "That's his bone!"

And instantly he was off down the staircase and I after him. But he was
not the first doctor on the field. Nothing had been unforeseen in the
wonderful organization of this enterprise. A pigeon sped away and an
official doctor and an official stretcher appeared, miraculously,
simultaneously. It was tremendous. It inspired awe in me.

"He asked for it!" I heard a man say as I hesitated on the shore of the
ocean of mud.

Then I knew that it was Manchester and not Knype that had suffered. The
confusion and hubbub were in a high degree disturbing and puzzling. But
one emotion emerged clear: pleasure. I felt it myself. I was aware of
joy in that the two sides were now levelled to ten men apiece. I was
mystically identified with the Five Towns, absorbed into their life. I
could discern on every face the conviction that a divine providence was
in this affair, that God could not be mocked. I too had this conviction.
I could discern also on every face the fear lest the referee might give
a foul against the hero Myatt, or even order him off the field, though
of course the fracture was a simple accident. I too had this fear. It
was soon dispelled by the news which swept across the entire enclosure
like a sweet smell, that the referee had adopted the theory of a simple
accident. I saw vaguely policemen, a stretcher, streaming crowds, and my
ears heard a monstrous universal babbling. And then the figure of
Stirling detached itself from the moving disorder and came to me.

"Well, Hyatt's calf was harder than the other chap's, that's all," he
said.

"Which _is_ Myatt?" I asked, for the red and the white dolls had all
vanished at close quarters, and were replaced by unrecognizably gigantic
human animals, still clad, however, in dolls' vests and dolls'
knickerbockers.

Stirling warningly jerked his head to indicate a man not ten feet away
from me. This was Myatt, the hero of the host and the darling of
populations. I gazed up at him. His mouth and his left knee were red
with blood, and he was piebald with thick patches of mud from his
tousled crown to his enormous boot. His blue eyes had a heavy, stupid,
honest glance; and of the three qualities stupidity predominated. He
seemed to be all feet, knees, hands and elbows. His head was very
small--the sole remainder of the doll in him.

A little man approached him, conscious--somewhat too obviously
conscious--of his right to approach. Myatt nodded.

"Ye'n settled _him_, seemingly, Jos!" said the little man.

"Well," said Myatt, with slow bitterness. "Hadn't he been blooming well
begging and praying for it, aw afternoon? Hadn't he now?"

The little man nodded. Then he said in a lower tone:

"How's missis, like?"

"Her's altogether yet," said Myatt. "Or I'd none ha' played!"

"I've bet Watty half-a-dollar as it inna' a lad!" said the little man.

Myatt seemed angry.

"Wilt bet me half a _quid_ as it inna' a lad?" he demanded, bending down
and scowling and sticking out his muddy chin.

"Ay!" said the little man, not blenching.

"Evens?"

"Evens."

"I'll take thee, Charlie," said Myatt, resuming his calm.

The whistle sounded. And several orders were given to clear the field.
Eight minutes had been lost over a broken leg, but Stirling said that
the referee would surely deduct them from the official time, so that
after all the game would not be shortened.

"I'll be up yon, to-morra morning," said the little man.

Myatt nodded and departed. Charlie, the little man, turned on his heel
and proudly rejoined the crowd. He had been seen of all in converse with
supreme greatness.

Stirling and I also retired; and though Jos Myatt had not even done his
doctor the honour of seeing him, neither of us, I think, was quite
without a consciousness of glory: I cannot imagine why. The rest of the
game was flat and tame. Nothing occurred. The match ended in a draw.




IV


We were swept from the football ground on a furious flood of
humanity--carried forth and flung down a slope into a large waste space
that separated the ground from the nearest streets of little reddish
houses. At the bottom of the slope, on my suggestion, we halted for a
few moments aside, while the current rushed forward and, spreading out,
inundated the whole space in one marvellous minute. The impression of
the multitude streaming from that gap in the wooden wall was like
nothing more than the impression of a burst main which only the emptying
of the reservoir will assuage. Anybody who wanted to commit suicide
might have stood in front of that gap and had his wish. He would not
have been noticed. The interminable and implacable infantry charge would
have passed unheedingly over him. A silent, preoccupied host, bent on
something else now, and perhaps teased by the inconvenient thought that
after all a draw is not as good as a win! It hurried blindly,
instinctively outwards, knees and chins protruding, hands deep in
pockets, chilled feet stamping. Occasionally someone stopped or
slackened to light a pipe, and on being curtly bunted onward by a blind
force from behind, accepted the hint as an atom accepts the law of
gravity. The fever and ecstasy were over. What fascinated the Southern
in me was the grim taciturnity, the steady stare (vacant or dreaming),
and the heavy, muffled, multitudinous tramp shaking the cindery earth.
The flood continued to rage through the gap.

Our automobile had been left at the Haycock Hotel; we went to get it,
braving the inundation. Nearly opposite the stable-yard the electric
trams started for Hanbridge, Bursley and Turnhill, and for Longshaw.
Here the crowd was less dangerous, but still very formidable--to my
eyes. Each tram as it came up was savagely assaulted, seized, crammed
and possessed, with astounding rapidity. Its steps were the western bank
of a Beresina. At a given moment the inured conductor, brandishing his
leather-shielded arm with a pitiless gesture, thrust aspirants down
into the mud and the tram rolled powerfully away. All this in silence.

After a few minutes a bicyclist swished along through the mud, taking
the far side of the road, which was comparatively free. He wore grey
trousers, heavy boots, and a dark cut-away coat, up the back of which a
line of caked mud had deposited itself. On his head was a bowler hat.

"How do, Jos?" cried a couple of boys, cheekily. And then there were a
few adult greetings of respect.

It was the hero, in haste.

"Out of it, there!" he warned impeders, between his teeth, and plugged
on with bent head.

"He keeps the Foaming Quart up at Toft End," said the doctor. "It's the
highest pub in the Five Towns. He used to be what they call a
pot-hunter, a racing bicyclist, you know. But he's got past that and
he'll soon be past football. He's thirty-four if he's a day. That's one
reason why he's so independent--that and because he's almost the only
genuine native in the team."

"Why?" I asked. "Where do they come from, then?"

"Oh!" said Stirling as he gently started the car. "The club buys 'em, up
and down the country. Four of 'em are Scots. A few years ago an Oldham
club offered Knype £500 for Myatt, a big price--more than he's worth
now! But he wouldn't go, though they guaranteed to put him into a
first-class pub--a free house. He's never cost Knype anything except his
wages and the goodwill of the Foaming Quart."

"What are his wages?"

"Don't know exactly. Not much. The Football Association fix a maximum. I
daresay about four pounds a week _Hi there! Are you deaf_?"

"Thee mind what tha'rt about!" responded a stout loiterer in our path.
"Or I'll take thy ears home for my tea, mester."

Stirling laughed.

In a few minutes we had arrived at Hanbridge, splashing all the way
between two processions that crowded either footpath. And in the middle
of the road was a third procession of trams,--tram following tram, each
gorged with passengers, frothing at the step with passengers; not the
lackadaisical trams that I had seen earlier in the afternoon in Crown
Square; a different race of trams, eager and impetuous velocities. We
reached the _Signal_ offices. No crowd of urchins to salute us this
time!

Under the earth was the machine-room of the _Signal_. It reminded me of
the bowels of a ship, so full was it of machinery. One huge machine
clattered slowly, and a folded green thing dropped strangely on to a
little iron table in front of us. Buchanan opened it, and I saw that the
broken leg was in it at length, together with a statement that in the
_Signal's_ opinion the sympathy of every true sportsman would be with
the disabled player. I began to say something to Buchanan, when suddenly
I could not hear my own voice. The great machine, with another behind
us, was working at a fabulous speed and with a fabulous clatter. All
that my startled senses could clearly disentangle was that the blue
arc-lights above us blinked occasionally, and that folded green papers
were snowing down upon the iron table far faster than the eye could
follow them. Tall lads in aprons elbowed me away and carried off the
green papers in bundles, but not more quickly than the machine shed
them. Buchanan put his lips to my ear. But I could hear nothing. I shook
my head. He smiled, and led us out from the tumult.

"Come and see the boys take them," he said at the foot of the stairs.

In a sort of hall on the ground floor was a long counter, and beyond the
counter a system of steel railings in parallel lines, so arranged that a
person entering at the public door could only reach the counter by
passing up or down each alley in succession. These steel lanes, which
absolutely ensured the triumph of right over might, were packed with
boys--the ragged urchins whom we had seen playing in the street. But not
urchins now; rather young tigers! Perhaps half a dozen had reached the
counter; the rest were massed behind, shouting and quarrelling. Through
a hole in the wall, at the level of the counter, bundles of papers shot
continuously, and were snatched up by servers, who distributed them in
smaller bundles to the hungry boys; who flung down metal discs in
exchange and fled, fled madly as though fiends were after them, through
a third door, out of the pandemonium into the darkling street. And
unceasingly the green papers appeared at the hole in the wall and
unceasingly they were plucked away and borne off by those maddened
children, whose destination was apparently Aix or Ghent, and whose wings
were their tatters.

"What are those discs?" I inquired.

"The lads have to come and buy them earlier in the day," said Buchanan.
"We haven't time to sell this edition for cash, you see."

"Well," I said as we left, "I'm very much obliged."

"What on earth for?" Buchanan asked.

"Everything," I said.

We returned through the squares of Hanbridge and by Trafalgar Road to
Stirling's house at Bleakridge. And everywhere in the deepening twilight
I could see the urchins, often hatless and sometimes scarcely shod,
scudding over the lamp-reflecting mire with sheets of wavy green, and
above the noises of traffic I could hear the shrill outcry: "_Signal_.
Football Edition. Football Edition. _Signal_." The world was being
informed of the might of Jos Myatt, and of the averting of disaster from
Knype, and of the results of over a hundred other matches--not counting
Rugby.




V


During the course of the evening, when Stirling had thoroughly
accustomed himself to the state of being in sole charge of an expert
from the British Museum, London, and the high walls round his more
private soul had yielded to my timid but constant attacks, we grew
fairly intimate. And in particular the doctor proved to me that his
reputation for persuasive raciness with patients was well founded. Yet
up to the time of dessert I might have been justified in supposing that
that much-praised "manner" in a sick-room was nothing but a provincial
legend. Such may be the influence of a quite inoffensive and shy
Londoner in the country. At half-past ten, Titus being already asleep
for the night in an arm-chair, we sat at ease over the fire in the study
telling each other stories. We had dealt with the arts, and with
medicine; now we were dealing with life, in those aspects of it which
cause men to laugh and women uneasily to wonder. Once or twice we had
mentioned the Brindleys. The hour for their arrival was come. But being
deeply comfortable and content where I was, I felt no impatience. Then
there was a tap on the window.

"That's Bobbie!" said Stirling, rising slowly from his chair. "_He_
won't refuse whisky, even if you do. I'd better get another bottle."

The tap was repeated peevishly.

"I'm coming, laddie!" Stirling protested.

He slippered out through the hall and through the surgery to the side
door, I following, and Titus sneezing and snuffing in the rear.

"I say, mester," said a heavy voice as the doctor opened the door. It
was not Brindley, but Jos Myatt. Unable to locate the bell-push in the
dark, he had characteristically attacked the sole illuminated window. He
demanded, or he commanded, very curtly, that the doctor should go up
instantly to the Foaming Quart at Toft End.

Stirling hesitated a moment.

"All right, my man," said he, calmly.

"Now?" the heavy, suspicious voice on the doorstep insisted.

"I'll be there before ye if ye don't sprint, man. I'll run up in the
car." Stirling shut the door. I heard footsteps on the gravel path
outside.

"Ye heard?" said he to me. "And what am I to do with ye?"

"I'll go with you, of course," I answered.

"I may be kept up there a while."

"I don't care," I said roisterously. "It's a pub and I'm a traveller."

Stirling's household was in bed and his assistant gone home. While he
and Titus got out the car I wrote a line for the Brindleys: "Gone with
doctor to see patient at Toft End. Don't wait up.--A.L." This we pushed
under Brindley's front door on our way forth. Very soon we were
vibrating up a steep street on the first speed of the car, and the
yellow reflections of distant furnaces began to shine over house roofs
below us. It was exhilaratingly cold, a clear and frosty night, tonic,
bracing after the enclosed warmth of the study. I was joyous, but
silently. We had quitted the kingdom of the god Pan; we were in Lucina's
realm, its consequence, where there is no laughter. We were on a
mission.

"I didn't expect this," said Stirling.

"No?" I said. "But seeing that he fetched you this morning--"

"Oh! That was only in order to be sure, for himself. His sister was
there, in charge. Seemed very capable. Knew all about everything. Until
ye get to the high social status of a clerk or a draper's assistant
people seem to manage to have their children without professional
assistance."

"Then do you think there's anything wrong?" I asked.

"I'd not be surprised."

He changed to the second speed as the car topped the first bluff. We
said no more. The night and the mission solemnized us. And gradually, as
we rose towards the purple skies, the Five Towns wrote themselves out in
fire on the irregular plain below.

"That's Hanbridge Town Hall," said Stirling, pointing to the right. "And
that's Bursley Town Hall," he said, pointing to the left. And there were
many other beacons, dominating the jewelled street-lines that faded on
the horizon into golden-tinted smoke.

The road was never quite free of houses. After occurring but sparsely
for half a mile, they thickened into a village--the suburb of Bursley
called Toft End. I saw a moving red light in front of us. It was the
reverse of Hyatt's bicycle lantern. The car stopped near the dark façade
of the inn, of which two yellow windows gleamed. Stirling, under Myatt's
shouted guidance, backed into an obscure yard under cover. The engine
ceased to throb.

"Friend of mine," he introduced me to Myatt. "By the way, Loring, pass
me my bag, will you? Mustn't forget that." Then he extinguished the
acetylene lamps, and there was no light in the yard except the ray of
the bicycle lantern which Myatt held in his hand. We groped towards the
house. Strange, every step that I take in the Five Towns seems to have
the genuine quality of an adventure!




VI


In five minutes I was of no account in the scheme of things at Toft End,
and I began to wonder why I had come. Stirling, my sole protector, had
vanished up the dark stairs of the house, following a stout, youngish
woman in a white apron, who bore a candle. Jos Myatt, behind, said to
me: "Happen you'd better go in there, mester," pointing to a half-open
door at the foot of the stairs. I went into a little room at the rear of
the bar-parlour. A good fire burned in a small old-fashioned grate, but
there was no other light. The inn was closed to customers, it being past
eleven o'clock. On a bare table I perceived a candle, and ventured to
put a match to it. I then saw almost exactly such a room as one would
expect to find at the rear of the bar-parlour of an inn on the outskirts
of an industrial town. It appeared to serve the double purpose of a
living-room and of a retreat for favoured customers. The table was
evidently one at which men drank. On a shelf was a row of bottles, more
or less empty, bearing names famous in newspaper advertisements and in
the House of Lords. The dozen chairs suggested an acute bodily
discomfort such as would only be tolerated by a sitter all of whose
sensory faculties were centred in his palate. On a broken chair in a
corner was an insecure pile of books. A smaller table was covered with a
chequered cloth on which were a few plates. Along one wall, under the
window, ran a pitch-pine sofa upholstered with a stuff slightly
dissimilar from that on the table. The mattress of the sofa was uneven
and its surface wrinkled, and old newspapers and pieces of brown paper
had been stowed away between it and the framework. The chief article of
furniture was an effective walnut bookcase, the glass doors of which
were curtained with red cloth. The window, wider than it was high, was
also curtained with red cloth. The walls, papered in a saffron tint,
bore framed advertisements and a few photographs of self-conscious
persons. The ceiling was as obscure as heaven; the floor tiled, with a
list rug in front of the steel fender.

I put my overcoat on the sofa, picked up the candle and glanced at the
books in the corner: Lavater's indestructible work, a paper-covered
_Whitaker_, the _Licensed Victuallers' Almanac, Johnny Ludlow_, the
illustrated catalogue of the Exhibition of 1856, _Cruden's Concordance_,
and seven or eight volumes of _Knight's Penny Encyclopædia_. While I was
poring on these titles I heard movements overhead--previously there had
been no sound whatever--and with guilty haste I restored the candle to
the table and placed myself negligently in front of the fire.

"Now don't let me see ye up here any more till I fetch ye!" said a
woman's distant voice--not crossly, but firmly. And then, crossly: "Be
off with ye now!"

Reluctant boots on the stairs! Jos Myatt entered to me. He did not speak
at first; nor did I. He avoided my glance. He was still wearing the
cut-away coat with the line of mud up the back. I took out my watch, not
for the sake of information, but from mere nervousness, and the sight of
the watch reminded me that it would be prudent to wind it up.

"Better not forget that," I said, winding it.

"Ay!" said he, gloomily. "It's a tip." And he wound up his watch; a
large, thick, golden one.

This watch-winding established a basis of intercourse between us.

"I hope everything is going on all right," I murmured.

"What dun ye say?" he asked.

"I say I hope everything is going on all right," I repeated louder, and
jerked my head in the direction of the stairs, to indicate the place
from which he had come.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, as if surprised. "Now what'll ye have, mester?" He
stood waiting. "It's my call to-night."

I explained to him that I never took alcohol. It was not quite true, but
it was as true as most general propositions are.

"Neither me!" he said shortly, after a pause.

"You're a teetotaller too?" I showed a little involuntary astonishment.

He put forward his chin.

"What do _you_ think?" he said confidentially and scornfully. It was
precisely as if he had said: "Do you think that anybody but a born ass
would _not_ be a teetotaller, in my position?"

I sat down on a chair.

"Take th' squab, mester," he said, pointing to the sofa. I took it.

He picked up the candle; then dropped it, and lighted a lamp which was
on the mantelpiece between his vases of blue glass. His movements were
very slow, hesitating and clumsy. Blowing out the candle, which smoked
for a long time, he went with the lamp to the bookcase. As the key of
the bookcase was in his right pocket and the lamp in his right hand he
had to change the lamp, cautiously, from hand to hand. When he opened
the cupboard I saw a rich gleam of silver from every shelf of it except
the lowest, and I could distinguish the forms of ceremonial cups with
pedestals and immense handles.

"I suppose these are your pots?" I said.

"Ay!"

He displayed to me the fruits of his manifold victories. I could see him
straining along endless cinder-paths and highroads under hot suns, his
great knees going up and down like treadles amid the plaudits and howls
of vast populations. And all that now remained of that glory was these
debased and vicious shapes, magnificently useless, grossly ugly, with
their inscriptions lost in a mess of flourishes.

"Ay!" he said again, when I had fingered the last of them.

"A very fine show indeed!" I said, resuming the sofa.

He took a penny bottle of ink and a pen out of the bookcase, and also,
from the lowest shelf, a bag of money and a long narrow account book.
Then he sat down at the table and commenced accountancy. It was clear
that he regarded his task as formidable and complex. To see him
reckoning the coins, manipulating the pen, splashing the ink, scratching
the page; to hear him whispering consecutive numbers aloud, and
muttering mysterious anathemas against the untamable naughtiness of
figures--all this was painful, and with the painfulness of a simple
exercise rendered difficult by inaptitude and incompetence. I wanted to
jump up and cry to him: "Get out of the way, man, and let me do it for
you! I can do it while you are wiping hairs from your pen on your
sleeve." I was sorry for him because he was ridiculous--and even more
grotesque than ridiculous. I felt, quite acutely, that it was a shame
that he could not be for ever the central figure of a field of mud,
kicking a ball into long and grandiose parabolas higher than gasometers,
or breaking an occasional leg, surrounded by the violent affection of
hearts whose melting-point was the exclamation, "Good old Jos!" I felt
that if he must repose his existence ought to have been so contrived
that he could repose in impassive and senseless dignity, like a mountain
watching the flight of time. The conception of him tracing symbols in a
ledger, counting shillings and sixpences, descending to arithmetic, and
suffering those humiliations which are the invariable preliminaries to
legitimate fatherhood, was shocking to a nice taste for harmonious
fitness.... What, this precious and terrific organism, this slave with a
specialty--whom distant towns had once been anxious to buy at the
prodigious figure of five hundred pounds--obliged to sit in a mean
chamber and wait silently while the woman of his choice encountered the
supreme peril! And he would "soon be past football!" He was "thirty-four
if a day!" It was the verge of senility! He was no longer worth five
hundred pounds. Perhaps even now this jointed merchandise was only worth
two hundred pounds! And "they"--the shadowy directors, who could not
kick a ball fifty feet and who would probably turn sick if they broke a
leg--"they" paid him four pounds a week for being the hero of a quarter
of a million of people! He was the chief magnet to draw fifteen thousand
sixpences and shillings of a Saturday afternoon into a company's cash
box, and here he sat splitting his head over fewer sixpences and
shillings than would fill a half-pint pot! Jos, you ought in justice to
have been José, with a thin red necktie down your breast (instead of a
line of mud up your back), and embroidered breeches on those miraculous
legs, and an income of a quarter of a million pesetas, and the
languishing acquiescence of innumerable mantillas. Every moment you were
getting older and stiffer; every moment was bringing nearer the moment
when young men would reply curtly to their doddering elders: "Jos
Myatt--who was '_e?_"

The putting away of the ledger, the ink, the pen and the money was as
exasperating as their taking out had been. Then Jos, always too large
for the room, crossed the tiled floor and mended the fire. A poker was
more suited to his capacity than a pen. He glanced about him, uncertain
and anxious, and then crept to the door near the foot of the stairs and
listened. There was no sound; and that was curious. The woman who was
bringing into the world the hero's child made no cry that reached us
below. Once or twice I had heard muffled movements not quite
overhead--somewhere above--but naught else. The doctor and Jos's sister
seemed to have retired into a sinister and dangerous mystery. I could
not dispel from my mind pictures of what they were watching and what
they were doing. The vast, cruel, fumbling clumsiness of Nature, her
lack of majesty in crises that ought to be majestic, her incurable
indignity, disgusted me, aroused my disdain, I wanted, as a philosopher
of all the cultures, to feel that the present was indeed a majestic
crisis, to be so esteemed by a superior man. I could not. Though the
crisis possibly intimidated me somewhat, yet, on behalf of Jos Myatt, I
was ashamed of it. This may be reprehensible, but it is true.

He sat down by the fire and looked at the fire. I could not attempt to
carry on a conversation with him, and to avoid the necessity for any
talk at all, I extended myself on the sofa and averted my face,
wondering once again why I had accompanied the doctor to Toft End. The
doctor was now in another, an inaccessible world. I dozed, and from my
doze I was roused by Jos Myatt going to the door on the stairs.

"Jos," said a voice. "It's a girl."

Then a silence.

I admit there was a flutter in my heart. Another soul, another formed
and unchangeable temperament, tumbled into the world! Whence?
Whither?... As for the quality of majesty--yes, if silver trumpets had
announced the advent, instead of a stout, aproned woman, the moment
could not have been more majestic in its sadness. I say "sadness," which
is the inevitable and sole effect of these eternal and banal questions,
"Whence? Whither?"

"Is her bad?" Jos whispered.

"Her's pretty bad," said the voice, but cheerily. "Bring me up another
scuttle o' coal."

When he returned to the parlour, after being again dismissed, I said to
him:

"Well, I congratulate you."

"I thank ye!" he said, and sat down. Presently I could hear him
muttering to himself, mildly: "Hell! Hell! Hell!"

I thought: "Stirling will not be very long now, and we can depart
home." I looked at my watch. It was a quarter to two. But Stirling did
not appear, nor was there any message from him or sign. I had to submit
to the predicament. As a faint chilliness from the window affected my
back I drew my overcoat up to my shoulders as a counterpane. Through a
gap between the red curtains of the window I could see a star blazing.
It passed behind the curtain with disconcerting rapidity. The universe
was swinging and whirling as usual.




VII


Sounds of knocking disturbed me. In the few seconds that elapsed before
I could realize just where I was and why I was there, the summoning
knocks were repeated. The early sun was shining through the red blind. I
sat up and straightened my hair, involuntarily composing my attitude so
that nobody who might enter the room should imagine that I had been
other than patiently wide-awake all night. The second door of the
parlour--that leading to the bar-room of the Foaming Quart--was open,
and I could see the bar itself, with shelves rising behind it and the
upright handles of a beer-engine at one end. Someone whom I could not
see was evidently unbolting and unlocking the principal entrance to the
inn. Then I heard the scraping of a creaky portal on the floor.

"Well, Jos lad!"

It was the voice of the little man, Charlie, who had spoken with Myatt
on the football field.

"Come in quick, Charlie. It's cowd [cold]," said the voice of Jos Myatt,
gloomily.

"Ay! Cowd it is, lad! It's above three mile as I've walked, and thou
knows it, Jos. Give us a quartern o' gin."

The door grated again and a bolt was drawn.

The two men passed together behind the bar, and so within my vision.
Charlie had a grey muffler round his neck; his hands were far in his
pockets and seemed to be at strain, as though trying to prevent his
upper and his lower garments from flying apart. Jos Myatt was extremely
dishevelled. In the little man's demeanour towards the big one there was
now none of the self-conscious pride in the mere fact of acquaintance
that I had noticed on the field. Clearly the two were intimate friends,
perhaps relatives. While Jos was dispensing the gin, Charlie said, in a
low tone:

"Well, what luck, Jos?"

This was the first reference, by either of them, to the crisis.

Jos deliberately finished pouring out the gin. Then he said:

"There's two on 'em, Charlie."

"Two on 'em? What mean'st tha', lad?"

"I mean as it's twins."

Charlie and I were equally startled.

"Thou never says!" he murmured, incredulous.

"Ay! One o' both sorts," said Jos.

"Thou never says!" Charlie repeated, holding his glass of gin steady in
his hand.

"One come at summat after one o'clock, and th' other between five and
six. I had for fetch old woman Eardley to help. It were more than a
handful for Susannah and th' doctor."

Astonishing, that I should have slept through these events!

"How is her?" asked Charlie, quietly, as it were casually. I think this
appearance of casualness was caused by the stoic suppression of the
symptoms of anxiety.

"Her's bad," said Jos, briefly.

"And I am na' surprised," said Charlie. And he lifted the glass.
"Well--here's luck." He sipped the gin, savouring it on his tongue like
a connoisseur, and gradually making up his mind about its quality. Then
he took another sip.

"Hast seen her?"

"I seed her for a minute, but our Susannah wouldna' let me stop i' th'
room. Her was raving like."

"Missis?"

"Ay!"

"And th' babbies--hast seen _them_?"

"Ay! But I can make nowt out of 'em. Mrs Eardley says as her's never
seen no finer."

"Doctor gone?"

"That he has na'! He's bin up there all the blessed night, in his
shirt-sleeves. I give him a stiff glass o' whisky at five o'clock and
that's all as he's had."

Charlie finished his gin. The pair stood silent.

"Well," said Charlie, striking his leg. "Swelp me bob! It fair beats me!
Twins! Who'd ha'thought it? Jos, lad, thou mayst be thankful as it isna'
triplets. Never did I think, as I was footing it up here this morning,
as it was twins I was coming to!"

"Hast got that half quid in thy pocket?"

"What half quid?" said Charlie, defensively.

"Now then. Chuck us it over!" said Jos, suddenly harsh and overbearing.

"I laid thee half quid as it 'ud be a wench," said Charlie, doggedly.

"Thou'rt a liar, Charlie!" said Jos. "Thou laidst half a quid as it
wasna' a boy."

"Nay, nay!" Charlie shook his head.

"And a boy it is!" Jos persisted.

"It being a lad _and_ a wench," said Charlie, with a judicial air, "and
me 'aving laid as it 'ud be a wench, I wins." In his accents and his
gestures I could discern the mean soul, who on principle never paid
until he was absolutely forced to pay. I could see also that Jos Myatt
knew his man.

"Thou laidst me as it wasna' a lad," Jos almost shouted. "And a lad it
is, I tell thee."

"_And_ a wench!" said Charlie; then shook his head.

The wrangle proceeded monotonously, each party repeating over and over
again the phrases of his own argument. I was very glad that Jos did not
know me to be a witness of the making of the bet; otherwise I should
assuredly have been summoned to give judgment.

"Let's call it off, then," Charlie suggested at length. "That'll settle
it. And it being twins--"

"Nay, thou old devil, I'll none call it off. Thou owes me half a quid,
and I'll have it out of thee."

"Look ye here," Charlie said more softly. "I'll tell thee what'll settle
it. Which on 'em come first, th' lad or th'wench?"

"Th' wench come first," Jos Myatt admitted, with resentful reluctance,
dully aware that defeat was awaiting him.

"Well, then! Th' wench is thy eldest child. That's law, that is. And
what was us betting about, Jos lad? Us was betting about thy eldest and
no other. I'll admit as I laid it wasna' a lad, as thou sayst. And it
_wasna'_ a lad. First come is eldest, and us was betting about eldest."

Charlie stared at the father in triumph.

Jos Myatt pushed roughly past him in the narrow space behind the bar,
and came into the parlour. Nodding to me curtly, he unlocked the
bookcase and took two crown pieces from a leathern purse which lay next
to the bag. Then he returned to the bar and banged the coins on the
counter with fury.

"Take thy brass!" he shouted angrily. "Take thy brass! But thou'rt a
damned shark, Charlie, and if anybody 'ud give me a plug o' bacca for
doing it, I'd bash thy face in."

The other sniggered contentedly as he picked up his money.

"A bet's a bet," said Charlie.

He was clearly accustomed to an occasional violence of demeanour from
Jos Myatt, and felt no fear. But he was wrong in feeling no fear. He had
not allowed, in his estimate of the situation, for the exasperated
condition of Jos Hyatt's nerves under the unique experiences of the
night.

Jos's face twisted into a hundred wrinkles and his hand seized Charlie
by the arm whose hand held the coins.

"Drop 'em!" he cried loudly, repenting his naïve honesty. "Drop 'em! Or
I'll--"

The stout woman, her apron all soiled, now came swiftly and scarce heard
into the parlour, and stood at the door leading to the bar-room.

"What's up, Susannah?" Jos demanded in a new voice.

"Well may ye ask what's up!" said the woman. "Shouting and brangling
there, ye sots!"

"What's up?" Jos demanded again, loosing Charlie's arm.

"Her's gone!" the woman feebly whimpered. "Like that!" with a vague
movement of the hand indicating suddenness. Then she burst into wild
sobs and rushed madly back whence she had come, and the sound of her
sobs diminished as she ascended the stairs, and expired altogether in
the distant shutting of a door.

The men looked at each other.

Charlie restored the crown-pieces to the counter and pushed them towards
Jos.

"Here!" he murmured faintly.

Jos flung them savagely to the ground. Another pause followed.

"As God is my witness," he exclaimed solemnly, his voice saturated with
feeling, "as God is my witness," he repeated, "I'll ne'er touch a
footba' again!"

Little Charlie gazed up at him sadly, plaintively, for what seemed a
long while.

"It's good-bye to th' First League, then, for Knype!" he tragically
muttered, at length.




VIII


Dr Stirling drove the car very slowly back to Bursley. We glided gently
down into the populous valleys. All the stunted trees were coated with
rime, which made the sharpest contrast with their black branches and the
black mud under us. The high chimneys sent forth their black smoke
calmly and tirelessly into the fresh blue sky. Sunday had descended on
the vast landscape like a physical influence. We saw a snake of children
winding out of a dark brown Sunday school into a dark brown chapel. And
up from the valleys came all the bells of all the temples of all the
different gods of the Five Towns, chiming, clanging, ringing, each
insisting that it alone invited to the altar of the one God. And priests
and acolytes of the various cults hurried occasionally along, in silk
hats and bright neckties, and smooth coats with folded handkerchiefs
sticking out of the pockets, busy, happy and self-important, the
convinced heralds of eternal salvation: no doubt nor hesitation as to
any fundamental truth had ever entered their minds. We passed through a
long, straight street of new red houses with blue slate roofs, all gated
and gardened. Here and there a girl with her hair in pins and a rough
brown apron over a gaudy frock was stoning a front step. And half-way
down the street a man in a scarlet jersey, supported by two women in
blue bonnets, was beating a drum and crying aloud: "My friends, you may
die to-night. Where, I ask you, where--?" But he had no friends; not
even a boy heeded him. The drum continued to bang in our rear.

I enjoyed all this. All this seemed to me to be fine, seemed to throw
off the true, fine, romantic savour of life. I would have altered
nothing in it. Mean, harsh, ugly, squalid, crude, barbaric--yes, but
what an intoxicating sense in it of the organized vitality of a vast
community unconscious of itself! I would have altered nothing even in
the events of the night. I thought of the rooms at the top of the
staircase of the Foaming Quart--mysterious rooms which I had not seen
and never should see, recondite rooms from which a soul had slipped away
and into which two had come, scenes of anguish and of frustrated effort!
Historical rooms, surely! And yet not a house in the hundreds of houses
past which we slid but possessed rooms ennobled and made august by
happenings exactly as impressive in their tremendous inexplicableness.

The natural humanity of Jos Myatt and Charlie, their fashion of
comporting themselves in a sudden stress, pleased me. How else should
they have behaved? I could understand Charlie's prophetic dirge over the
ruin of the Knype Football Club. It was not that he did not feel the
tragedy in the house. He had felt it, and because he had felt it he had
uttered at random, foolishly, the first clear thought that ran into his
head.

Stirling was quiet. He appeared to be absorbed in steering, and looked
straight in front, yawning now and again. He was much more fatigued than
I was. Indeed, I had slept pretty well. He said, as we swerved into
Trafalgar Road and overtook the aristocracy on its way to chapel and
church:

"Well, ye let yeself in for a night, young man! No mistake!"

He smiled, and I smiled.

"What's going to occur up there?" I asked, indicating Toft End.

"What do you mean?"

"A man like that--left with two babies!"

"Oh!" he said. "They'll manage that all right. His sister's a widow.
She'll go and live with him. She's as fond of those infants already as
if they were her own."

We drew up at his double gates.

"Be sure ye explain to Brindley," he said, as I left him, "that it isn't
my fault ye've had a night out of bed. It was your own doing. I'm going
to get a bit of sleep now. See you this evening, Bob's asked me to
supper."

A servant was sweeping Bob Brindley's porch and the front door was open.
I went in. The sound of the piano guided me to the drawing-room.
Brindley, the morning cigarette between his lips, was playing one of
Maurice Ravel's "L'heure espagnole." He held his head back so as to keep
the smoke out of his eyes. His children in their blue jerseys were
building bricks on the carpet.

Without ceasing to play he addressed me calmly:

"You're a nice chap! Where the devil have you been?"

And one of the little boys, glancing up, said, with roguish, imitative
innocence, in his high, shrill voice:

"Where the del you been?"




MIMI

I


On a Saturday afternoon in late October Edward Coe, a satisfactory
average successful man of thirty-five, was walking slowly along the
King's Road, Brighton. A native and inhabitant of the Five Towns in the
Midlands, he had the brusque and energetic mien of the Midlands. It
could be seen that he was a stranger to the south; and, in fact, he was
now viewing for the first time the vast and glittering spectacle of the
southern pleasure city in the unique glory of her autumn season. A
spectacle to enliven any man by its mere splendour! And yet Edward Coe
was gloomy. One reason for his gloom was that he had just left a
bicycle, with a deflated back tyre, to be repaired at a shop in Preston
Street. Not perhaps an adequate reason for gloom!... Well, that depends.
He had been informed by the blue-clad repairer, after due inspection,
that the trouble was not a common puncture, but a malady of the valve
mysterious.

And the deflation was not the sole cause of his gloom. There was
another. He was on his honeymoon. Understand me--not a honeymoon of
romance, but a real honeymoon. Who that has ever been on a real
honeymoon can look back upon the adventure and faithfully say that it
was an unmixed ecstasy of joy? A honeymoon is in its nature and
consequences so solemn, so dangerous, and so pitted with startling
surprises, that the most irresponsible bridegroom, the most
light-hearted, the least in love, must have moments of grave anxiety.
And Edward Coe was far from irresponsible. Nor was he only a little in
love. Moreover, the circumstances of his marriage were peculiar, and he
had married a dark, brooding, passionate girl.

Mrs Coe was the younger of two sisters named Olive Wardle, well known in
the most desirable circles in the Five Towns. I mean those circles where
intellectual and artistic tastes are united with sound incomes and
excellent food delicately served. It will certainly be asked why two
sisters should be named Olive. The answer is that though Olive One and
Olive Two were treated as sisters, and even treated themselves as
sisters, they were not sisters. They were not even half-sisters. They
had first met at the age of nine. The father of Olive One, a widower,
had married the mother of Olive Two, a widow. Olive One was the elder by
a few months. Olive Two gradually allowed herself to be called Wardle
because it saved trouble. They got on with one another very well indeed,
especially after the death of both parents, when they became joint
mistresses, each with a separate income, of a nice house at Sneyd, the
fashionable residential village on the rim of the Five Towns. Like all
persons who live long together, they grew in many respects alike. Both
were dark, brooding and passionate, and to this deep similarity a
superficial similarity of habits and demeanour was added. Only, whereas
Olive One was rather more inclined to be the woman of the world, Olive
Two was rather more inclined to study and was particularly interested in
the theory of music.

They were sought after, naturally. And yet they had reached the age of
twenty-five before the world perceived that either of them was not
sought after in vain. The fact, obvious enough, that Pierre Emile
Vaillac had become an object of profound human interest to Olive
One--this fact excited the world, and the world would have been still
more excited had it been aware of another fact that was not at all
obvious: namely, that Pierre Emile Vaillac was the cause of a secret and
terrible breach between the two sisters. Vaillac, a widower with two
young children, Mimi and Jean, was a Frenchman, and a great authority on
the decoration of egg-shell china, who had settled in the Five Towns as
expert partner in one of the classic china firms at Longshaw. He was
undoubtedly a very attractive man.

Olive One, when the relations between herself and Vaillac were
developing into something unmistakable, had suddenly, and without
warning, accused Olive Two of poaching. It was a frightful accusation,
and a frightful scene followed it, one of those scenes that are seldom
forgiven and never forgotten. It altered their lives; but as they were
women of considerable common sense and of good breeding, each did her
best to behave afterwards as though nothing had happened.

Olive Two did not convince Olive One of her innocence, because she did
not bring forward the supreme proof of it. She was too proud--in her
brooding and her mystery--to do so. The supreme proof was that at this
time she herself was secretly engaged to be married to Edward Coe, who
had conquered her heart with unimaginable swiftness a few weeks before
she was about to sit for a musical examination at Manchester. "Let us
say nothing till after my exam," she had suggested to her betrothed.
"There will be an enormous fuss, and it will put me off, and I shall
fail, and I don't want to fail, and you don't want me to fail." He
agreed rapturously. Of course she did fail, nevertheless. But being
obstinate she said she would go in again, and they continued to make a
secret of the engagement. They found the secret delicious. Then followed
the devastating episode of Vaillac. Shortly afterwards Olive One and
Vaillac were married, and then Olive Two was alone in the nice house.
The examination was forgotten, and she hated the house. She wanted to be
married; Coe also. But nothing had been said. Difficult to announce her
engagement just then! The world would say that she had married out of
imitation, and her sister would think that she had married out of pique.
Besides, there would be the fuss, which Olive Two hated. Already the
fuss of her sister's marriage, and the effort at the wedding of
pretending that nothing had happened between them, had fatigued the
nerves of Olive Two.

Then Edward Coe had had the brilliant and seductive idea of marrying in
secret. To slip away, and then to return, saying, "We are married.
That's all!" ... Why not? No fuss! No ceremonial! The accomplished fact,
which simplifies everything!

It was, therefore, a secret honeymoon that Edward Coe was on;
delightful--but surreptitious, furtive! His mental condition may be best
described by stating that, though he was conscious of rectitude, he
somehow could not look a policeman in the face. After all, plain people
do not usually run off on secret honeymoons. Had he acted wisely?
Perhaps this question, presenting itself now and then, was the chief
cause of his improper gloom.


II


However, the spectacle of Brighton on a fine Saturday afternoon in
October had its effect on Edward Coe--the effect which it has on
everybody. Little by little it inspired him with the joy of life, and
straightened his back, and put a sparkle into his eyes. And he was
filled with the consciousness of the fact that it is a fine thing to be
well-dressed and to have loose gold in your pocket, and to eat, drink,
and smoke well; and to be among crowds of people who are well-dressed
and have loose gold in their pockets, and eat and drink and smoke well;
and to know that a magnificent woman will be waiting for you at a
certain place at a certain hour, and that upon catching sight of you
her dark orbs will take on an enchanting expression reserved for you
alone, and that she is utterly yours. In a word, he looked on the bright
side of things again. It could not ultimately matter a bilberry whether
his marriage was public or private.

He lit a cigarette gaily. He could not guess that untoward destiny was
waiting for him close by the newspaper kiosque.

A little girl was leaning against the palisade there, and gazing
somewhat restlessly about her. A quite little girl, aged, perhaps,
eleven, dressed in blue serge, with a short frock and long legs, and a
sailor hat (H.M.S. _Formidable_), and long hair down her back, and a
mild, twinkling, trustful glance. Somewhat untidy, but nevertheless the
image of grace.

She saw him first. Otherwise he might have fled. But he was right upon
her before he saw her. Indeed, he heard her before he saw her.

"Good afternoon, Mr Coe."

"Mimi!"

The Vaillacs were in Brighton! He had chosen practically the other end
of the world for his honeymoon, and lo! by some awful clumsiness of fate
the Vaillacs were at the same end! The very people from whom he wished
to conceal his honeymoon until it was over would know all about it at
the very start! Relations between the two Olives would be still more
strained and difficult! In brief, from optimism he swung violently back
to darkest pessimism. What could be worse than to be caught red-handed
in a surreptitious honeymoon?

She noticed his confusion, and he knew that she noticed it. She was a
little girl. But she was also a little woman, a little Frenchwoman, who
spoke English perfectly--and yet with a difference! They had flirted
together, she and Mr Coe. She had a new mother now, but for years she
had been without a mother, and she would receive callers at her
father's house (if he happened to be out) with a delicious imitation of
a practised hostess.

He raised his hat and shook hands and tried to play the game.

"What are you doing here, Mimi?" he asked.

"What are _you_ doing here?" she parried, laughing. And then, perceiving
his increased trouble, and that she was failing in tact, she went on
rapidly, with a screwing up of the childish shoulders and something
between a laugh and a grin: "It's my back. It seems it's not strong. And
so we've taken an ever so jolly little house for the autumn, because of
the air, you know. Didn't you know?"

No, he did not know. That was the worst of strained relations. You were
not informed of events in advance.

"Where?" he asked.

"Oh!" she said, pointing. "That way. On the road to Rottingdean. Near
the big girls' school. We came in on that lovely electric railway--along
the beach. Have you been on it, Mr Coe?"

Terrible! Rottingdean was precisely the scene of his honeymoon. The
hazard of fate was truly appalling. He and his wife might have walked
one day straight into the arms of her sister! He went hot and cold.

"And where are the others?" he asked nervously.

"Mamma"--she coloured as she used this word, so strange on her
lips--"mamma's at home. Father may come to-night. And Ada has brought us
here so that Jean can have his hair cut. He didn't want to come without
me."

"Ada?"

"Ada's a new servant. She's just gone in there again to see how long the
barber will be." Mimi indicated a barber's shop opposite. "And I'm
waiting here," she added.

"Mimi," he said, in a confidential tone, "can you keep a secret?"

She grew solemn. "Yes." She smiled seriously. "What?"

"About meeting me. Don't tell anybody you've met me to-day. See?"

"Not Jean?"

"No, not Jean. But later on you can tell--when I give you the tip. I
don't want anybody to know just now."

It was a shame. He knew it was a shame. He deliberately flattered her by
appealing to her as to a grown woman. He deliberately put a cajoling
tone into his voice. He would not have done it if Mimi had not been
Mimi--if she had been an ordinary sort of English girl. But she was
Mimi. And the temptation was very strong. She promised, gravely. He knew
that he could rely on her.

Hurrying away lest Jean and the servant might emerge from the barber's,
he remembered with compunction that he had omitted to show any curiosity
about Mimi's back.


III


The magnificent woman was to be waiting for him in the lounge of the
Royal York Hotel at a quarter to four. She was coming in to Brighton by
the Rottingdean omnibus, which function, unless the driver changes his
mind, occurs once in every two or three hours. He, being under the
necessity of telephoning to London on urgent business, had hired a
bicycle and ridden in. Despite the accident to this prehistoric machine,
he arrived at the Royal York half a minute before the Rottingdean
omnibus passed through the Old Steine and set down the magnificent woman
his wife. The sight of her stepping off the omnibus really did thrill
him. They entered the hotel together, and, accustomed though the Royal
York is to the reception of magnificent women, Olive made a sensation
therein. As for him, he could not help feeling just as though he had
eloped with her. He could not help fancying that all the brilliant
company in the lounge was murmuring under the strains of the band: "That
johnny there has certainly eloped with that splendid creature!"

"Ed," she asked, fixing her dark eyes upon him, "is anything the
matter?"

They were having tea at a little Moorish table in the huge bay window of
the lounge.

"No," he said. This was the first lie of his career as a husband. But
truly he could not bring himself to give her the awful shock of telling
her that the Vaillacs were close at hand, that their secret was
discovered, and that their peace and security depended entirely upon the
discretion of little Mimi and upon their not meeting other Vaillacs.

"Then it's having that puncture that has upset you," his wife insisted.
You see her feelings towards him were so passionate that she could not
leave him alone. She was utterly preoccupied by him.

"No," he said guiltily.

"I'm afraid you don't very much care for this place," she went on,
because she knew now that he was not telling her the truth, and that
something, indeed, was the matter.

"On the contrary," he replied, "I was informed that the finest tea and
the most perfect toast in Brighton were to be had in this lounge, and
upon my soul I feel as if I could keep on having tea here for ever and
ever amen!"

He was trying to be gay, but not very successfully.

"I don't mean just here," she said. "I mean all this south coast."

"Well--" he began judicially.

"Oh! Ed!" she implored him. "_Do_ say you don't like it!"

"Why!" he exclaimed. "Don't _you_?"

She shook her head. "I much prefer the north," she remarked.

"Well," he said, "let's go. Say Scarborough."

"You're joking," she murmured. "You adore this south coast."

"Never!" he asserted positively.

"Well, darling," she said, "if you hadn't said first that you didn't
care for it, of course I shouldn't have breathed a word--"

"Let's go to-morrow," he suggested.

"Yes." Her eyes shone.

"First train! We should have to leave Rottingdean at six o'clock a.m."

"How lovely!" she exclaimed. She was enchanted by this idea of a
capricious change of programme. It gave such a sense of freedom, of
irresponsibility, of romance!

"More toast, please," he said to the waiter, joyously.

It cost him no effort to be gay now. He could not have been sad. The
world was suddenly transformed into the best of all possible worlds. He
was saved! They were saved! Yes, he could trust Mimi. By no chance would
they be caught. They would stick in their rooms all the evening, and on
the morrow they would be away long before the Vaillacs were up. Papa and
"mamma" Vaillac were terrible for late rising. And when he had got his
magnificent Olive safe in Scarborough, or wherever their noses might
lead them, then he would tell her of the risk they had run.

They both laughed from mere irrational glee, and Edward Coe nearly
forgot to pay the bill. However, he did pay it. They departed from the
Royal York. He put his Olive into the returning Rottingdean omnibus, and
then hurried to get his repaired bicycle. He had momentarily quaked
lest Mimi and company might be in the omnibus. But they were not. They
must have left earlier, fortunately, or walked.


IV


When he was still about a mile away from Rottingdean, and the hour was
dusk, and he was walking up a hill, he caught sight of a girl leaning on
a gate that led by a long path to a house near the cliffs. It was Mimi.
She gave a cry of recognition. He did not care now--he was at ease
now--but really, with that house so close to the road and so close to
Rottingdean, he and his Olive had practically begun their honeymoon on
the summit of a volcano!

Mimi was pensive. He felt remorse at having bound her to secrecy. She
was so pensive, and so wistful, and her eyes were so loyal, that he felt
he owed her a more complete confidence.

"I'm on my honeymoon, Mimi," he said. It gave him pleasure to tell her.

"Yes," she said simply, "I saw Auntie Olive go by in the omnibus."

That was all she said. He was thunderstruck, as much by her calm
simplicity as by anything else. Children were astounding creatures.

"Did Jean see her, or anyone?" he asked.

Mimi shook her head.

Then he told her they were leaving the next morning at six.

"Shall you be in a carriage?" she inquired.

"Yes."

"Oh! Do let me come out and see you go past," she pleaded. "Nobody else
in our house will be up till hours afterwards!... Do!"

He was about to say "No," for it would mean revealing the whole affair
to his wife at once. But after an instant he said "Yes." He would not
refuse that exquisite, appealing gesture. Besides, why keep anything
whatever from Olive, even for a day?

At dinner he told his wife, and was glad to learn that she also thought
highly of Mimi and had confidence in her.




V


Mimi lay in bed in the nursery of the hired house on the way to
Rottingdean, which, considering that it was not "home," was a fairly
comfortable sort of abode. The nursery was immense, though an attic. The
white blinds of the two windows were drawn, and a fire burned in the
grate, lighting it pleasantly and behaving in a very friendly manner. At
the other end of the room, in the deep shadow, was Jean's bed.

The door opened quietly and someone came into the room and pushed the
door to without quite shutting it.

"Is that you, mamma?" Jean demanded in his shrill voice, from the
distance of the bed in the corner. His age was exactly eight.

"Yes, dear," said the new stepmother.

The menial Ada had arranged the children for the night, and now the
stepmother had come up to kiss them and be kind. She was a conscientious
young woman, full of a desire to do right, and she had determined not to
be like the traditional stepmother.

She kissed Jean, who had taken quite a fancy to her, and tickled him
agreeably, and tucked him up anew, and then moved silently across the
room to Mimi. Mimi could see her face in the twilight of the fire. A
handsome, good-natured face; yet very determined, and perhaps a little
too full of common sense. It had a responsible, somewhat grave look.
After all, these two young children were a responsibility, especially
Mimi with her back; and, moreover, Pierre Emile Vaillac had disappointed
both her and her step-children by telegraphing that he could not arrive
that night. Olive One, the bride of three months, had put on fine
raiment for nothing.

"Well, Mimi," she said in her low, vibrating voice, as she stood over
the bed, "I do hope you didn't overtire yourself this afternoon." Then
she kissed Mimi.

"Oh no, mamma!" The little girl smiled.

"It seems you waited outside the barber's while Jeannot was having his
hair cut."

"Yes, mamma. I didn't like to go in."

"Ada didn't stay with you all the time?"

"No, mamma. First of all she took Jeannot in, and then she came out to
me, and then she went in again to see how long he would be."

"I'm sorry she left you alone in the street. She ought not to have done
so, and I've told her.... The King's Road, with all kinds of people
about!"

Mimi said nothing. The new Madame Vaillac moved a little towards the
fire.

"Of course," the latter went on, "I know you're a regular little woman,
and perhaps I needn't tell you but you must never speak to anyone in the
street."

"No, mamma."

"Particularly in Brighton.... You never do, do you?"

"No, mamma."

"Good-night."

The stepmother left the room. Mimi could feel her heart beating. Then
Jean called out:

"Mimi."

She made no reply. The fact was she was too disturbed to be able to
reply.

Jean called again and then got out of bed and thudded across the room to
her bedside.

"I say, Mimi," he screeched in his insistent treble, "who _was_ it you
were talking to?"

Mimi's heart did not beat, it jumped.

"When? Where?"

"This afternoon, when I was having my hair cut."

"How do you know I was talking to anybody?"

"Ada saw you through the window of the barber's."

"When did she tell you?"

"She didn't. I heard her telling mamma."

There was a silence. Then Mimi hid her face, and Jean could hear
sobbing.

"You might tell me!" Jean insisted. He was too absorbed by his own
curiosity, and too upset by the full realization of the fact that she
had kept something from him, to be touched by her tears.

"It's a secret," she muttered into the pillow.

"You might tell me!"

"Go away, Jeannot!" she burst out hysterically.

He gave an angry lunge against the bed.

"I tell you everything; and it's not fair. _C'est pas juste!_" he said
savagely, but there were tears in his voice too. He was a creature at
once sensitive and violent, passionately attached to Mimi.

He thudded back to his bed. But even before he had reached his bed Mimi
could hear him weeping.

She gradually stilled her own sobs, and after a time Jean's ceased. And
then she guessed that Jean had gone to sleep. But Mimi did not go to
sleep. She knew that chance, and Mr Coe, and that odious new servant,
Ada, had combined to ruin her life. She saw the whole affair clearly.
Ada was officious and fussy, also secretive and given to plotting. Ada's
leading idea was that children had to be circumvented. Imagine the
detestable woman spying on her from the window, and then saying nothing
to her, but sneaking off to tell tales to her mamma! Imagine it! Mimi's
strict sense of justice could not blame her mamma. She was sure that
the new stepmother meant well by her. Her mamma had given her every
opportunity to confess, to admit of her own accord that she had been
talking to somebody in the street, and she had not confessed. On the
contrary, she had lied. Her mamma would probably say nothing more on the
matter, for she had a considerable sense of honour with children, and
would not take an unfair advantage. Having tried to obtain a confession
from Mimi by pretending that she knew nothing, and having failed, she
was not the woman to turn round and say, "Now I know all about it. So
just confess at once!" Her mamma would accept the situation, would try
to behave as if nothing had happened, and would probably even say
nothing to her father.

But Mimi knew that she was ruined for ever in her stepmother's esteem.

And she had quarrelled with Jean, which was exceedingly hateful and
exceedingly rare. And there was also the private worry of her mysterious
back. And there was another thing. The mere fact that her friend, Mr
Coe, had gone and married somebody. For long she had had a weakness for
Mr Coe. They had been intimate at times. Once, last year, in the stern
of a large sailing-boat at Morecambe, while her friends were laughing
and shouting at the prow, she and Mr Coe had had a most beautiful quiet
conversation about her thoughts on the world in general; she had stroked
his hand.... No! She had no dream whatever of growing up into a woman
and then marrying Mr Coe! Certainly not. But still, that he should have
gone and married, like that ... it was....

The fire died out into blackness, thus ceasing to be a friend. Still she
did not sleep. Was it likely that she should sleep, with the tragedy and
woe of the entire universe crushing her?




VI


Mr Edward Coe and Olive Two arose from their bed the next morning in
great spirits. Mr Coe had told both his wife and Mimi that the hour of
departure from Rottingdean would be six o'clock. But this was an
exaggeration. So far as his wife was concerned he had already found it
well to exaggerate on such matters. A little judicious exaggeration
lessened the risk of missing trains and other phenomena which cannot be
missed without confusion and disappointment.

As a fact it was already six o'clock when Edward Coe looked forth from
the bedroom window. He was completely dressed. His wife also was
completely dressed. He therefore felt quite safe about the train. The
window, which was fairly high up in the world, gave on the south-east,
so that he had a view, not only of the vast naked downs billowing away
towards Newhaven, but also of the Channel, which was calm, and upon
which little parcels of fog rested. The sky was clear overhead, of a
greenish sapphire colour, and the autumnal air bit and gnawed on the
skin like some friendly domestic animal, and invigorated like an
expensive tonic. On the dying foliage of a tree near the window millions
of precious stones hung. Cocks were boasting. Cows were expressing a
justifiable anxiety. And in the distance a small steamer was making a
great deal of smoke about nothing, as it puffed out of Newhaven harbour.

"Olive," he said.

"What is it?"

She was putting hats into the top of her trunk. She had a special
hat-box, but the hats were too large for it, and she packed minor
trifles in the hat-box, such as skirts. This was one of the details
which first indicated to an astounded Edward Coe that a woman is never
less like a man than when travelling.

"Come here," he commanded her.

She obeyed.

"Look at that," he commanded her, pointing to the scene of which the
window was the frame.

She obeyed. She also looked at him with her dark, passionate, and yet
half-mocking eyes.

"Yes," she said, "and who's going to make that trunk lock?"

She snapped her fingers at the sweet morning influences of Nature, to
which he was peculiarly sensitive. And yet he was delighted. He found it
entirely delicious that she should say, when called upon to admire
Nature: "Who's going to make that trunk lock?"

He stroked her hair.

"It's no use trying to keep your hair decent at the seaside," she
remarked, pouting exquisitely.

He explained that his hand was offering no criticism of her hair. And
then there was a knock at the bedroom door, and Olive Two jumped a
little away from her husband.

"Come in," he cried, pretending to be as bold as a lion.

However, he had forgotten that the door was locked, and he had to go and
open it.

A tray with coffee and milk and sugar and slices of bread-and-butter was
in the doorway, and behind the tray the little parlour-maid of the
little hotel. He greeted the girl and instructed her to carry the
tray to the table by the window.

"You are prompt," said Olive Two, kindly. She had got up so miraculously
early herself that she was startled to see any other woman up quite as
early. And also she was a little surprised that the parlour-maid showed
no surprise at these very unusual hours.

"Yes'm," replied the parlour-maid, wondering why Olive Two was so
excited. The parlour-maid arose at five-thirty every morning of her
life, except on special occasions, when she arose at four-thirty to
assist in pastoral affairs.

"All right, this coffee, eh?" murmured Edward Coe as he put down the
steaming cup after his first sip. They were alone again, seated opposite
each other at the small table by the window.

Olive Two nodded.

It must not be supposed that this was the one unique dreamed-of hotel in
England where the coffee is good of its own accord. No! In the matter of
coffee this hotel was just like all other hotels. Only Olive Two had
taken special precautions about that coffee. She had been into the hotel
kitchen on the previous evening about that coffee.

"By the way," she asked, "where's the sun?"

"The sun doesn't happen to be up yet," said Edward. He looked at his
diary and then at his watch. "Unless something goes wrong, you'll be
seeing it inside of three minutes."

"Do you mean to say we shall see the sun rise?" she exclaimed.

He nodded.

"Well!" cried she, absurdly gleeful, "I never heard of such a thing!"

She watched the sunrise like a child who sees for the first time the
inside of a watch. And when the sun had risen she glanced anxiously
round the disordered room.

"For heaven's sake," she muttered, "don't let's forget these
tooth-brushes!"

"You are so ridiculous," said he, "that I must kiss you."

The truth is that they were no better than two children out on an
adventure.

It was the same when down in the hotel-yard they got into the small and
decrepit victoria which was destined to take them and their luggage to
Brighton. It was the same, but more so. They were both so pleased with
themselves that their joy was bubbling continually out in manifestations
that could only be described as infantile. The mere drive through the
village, with the pony whisking his tail round corners, and the driver
steadying the perilous hat-box with his left hand, was so funny that
somehow they could not help laughing.

Then they had left the village and were climbing the exposed highroad,
with the wavy blue-green downs on the right, and the immense glittering
flat floor of the Channel on the left. And the mere sensation of being
alive almost overwhelmed them.

And further on they passed a house that stood by itself away from the
road towards the cliffs. It had a sloping garden and a small greenhouse.
The gate leading to the road was ajar, but the blinds of all the windows
were drawn, and there was no sign of life anywhere.

"That's the house," said Edward Coe, briefly.

"I might have known it," Olive Two replied. "Olive One is certainly the
worst getter-up that I ever had anything to do with, and I believe
Pierre Emile isn't much better."

"Well," said Edward, "it's no absolute proof of sluggardliness not to be
up and about at six forty-five of a morning, you know."

"I was forgetting how early it was!" said Olive Two, and yawned. The
yawn escaped her before she was aware of it. She pulled herself together
and kissed her hands mockingly, quizzically, to the house. "Good-bye,
house! Good-bye, house!"

They were saved now. They could not be caught now on their surreptitious
honeymoon. And their spirits went even higher.

"I thought you said Mimi would be waiting for us?" Olive Two remarked.

Edward Coe shrugged his shoulders. "Probably overslept herself! Or she
may have got tired of waiting. I told her six o'clock."

On the whole Olive Two was relieved that Mimi was invisible.

"It wouldn't really matter if she _did_ split on us, would it?" said the
bride.

"Not a bit," the bridegroom agreed. Now that they had safely left the
house behind them, they were both very valiant. It was as if they were
both saying: "Who cares?" The bridegroom's mood was entirely different
from his sombre apprehensiveness of the previous evening. And the early
sunshine on the dew-drops was magnificent.

But a couple of hundred yards further on, at a bend of the road, they
saw a little girl shading her eyes with her hand and gazing towards the
sun. She wore a short blue serge frock, and she had long restless legs,
and the word _Formidable_ was on her forehead, and her eyes were all
screwed up in the strong sunshine. And in her hand were flowers.

"There she is, after all!" said Edward, quickly.

Olive Two nodded. Olive Two also blushed, for Mimi was the first person
acquainted with her to see her after her marriage. She blushed because
she was now a married woman.

Mimi, who with much prudence had managed so that the meeting should not
occur exactly in front of the house, came towards the carriage. The pony
was walking up a slope. She bounded forward with her childish grace and
with the awkwardness of her long legs, and her hair loose in the breeze,
and she laughed nervously.

"Good morning, good morning," she cried. "Shall I jump on the step? Then
the horse won't have to stop."

And she jumped lightly on to the step and giggled, still nervously,
looking first at the bridegroom and then at the bride. The bridegroom
held her securely by the shoulder.

"Well, Mimi," said Olive Two, whose shyness vanished in an instant
before the shyness of the child. "This _is_ nice of you."

The two women kissed. But Mimi did not offer her cheek to the
bridegroom. He and she simply shook hands as well as they could with a
due regard for Mimi's firmness on the step.

"And who woke you up, eh?" Edward Coe demanded.

"Nobody," said Mimi; "I got up by myself, and," turning to Olive Two,
"I've made this bouquet for you, auntie. There aren't any flowers in the
fields. But I got the chrysanthemum out of the greenhouse, and put some
bits of ferns and things round it. You must excuse it being tied up with
darning wool."

She offered the bouquet diffidently, and Olive Two accepted it with a
warm smile.

"Well," said Mimi, "I don't think I'd better go any further, had I?"

There was another kiss and hand-shaking, and the next moment Mimi was
standing in the road and waving a little crumpled handkerchief to the
receding victoria, and the bride and bridegroom were cricking their
necks to respond. She waved until the carriage was out of sight, and
then she stood moveless, a blue and white spot on the green landscape,
with the morning sun and the sea behind her.

"Exactly like a little woman, isn't she?" said Edward Coe, enchanted by
the vision.

"Exactly!" Olive Two agreed. "Nice little thing! But how tired and
unwell she looks! They did well to bring her away."

"Oh!" said Edward Coe, "she probably didn't sleep well because she was
afraid of oversleeping herself. She looked perfectly all right
yesterday."




THE SUPREME ILLUSION




I


Perhaps it was because I was in a state of excited annoyance that I did
not recognize him until he came right across the large hall of the hotel
and put his hand on my shoulder.

I had arrived in Paris that afternoon, and driven to that nice,
reasonable little hotel which we all know, and whose name we all give in
confidence to all our friends; and there was no room in that hotel. Nor
in seven other haughtily-managed hotels that I visited! A kind of
archduke, who guarded the last of the seven against possible customers,
deigned to inform me that the season was at its fullest, half London
being as usual in Paris, and that the only central hotels where I had a
chance of reception were those monstrosities the Grand and the Hôtel
Terminus at the Gare St Lazare. I chose the latter, and was accorded
room 973 in the roof.

I thought my exasperations were over. But no! A magnificent porter
within the gate had just consented to get my luggage off the cab, and
was in the act of beginning to do so, when a savagely-dressed, ugly and
ageing woman, followed by a maid, rushed neurotically down the steps and
called him away to hold a parcel. He obeyed! At the same instant the
barbaric and repulsive creature's automobile, about as large as a
railway carriage, drove up and forced my frail cab down the street. I
had to wait, humiliated and helpless, the taximeter of my cab
industriously adding penny to penny, while that offensive hag installed
herself, with the help of the maid, the porter and two page-boys, in her
enormous vehicle. I should not have minded had she been young and
pretty. If she had been young and pretty she would have had the right to
be rude and domineering. But she was neither young nor pretty.
Conceivably she had once been young; pretty she could never have been.
And her eyes were hard--hard.

Hence my state of excited annoyance.

"Hullo! How goes it?" The perfect colloquial English was gently murmured
at me with a French accent as the gentle hand patted my shoulder.

"Why," I said, cast violently out of a disagreeable excitement into an
agreeable one, "I do believe you are Boissy Minor!"

I had not seen him for nearly twenty years, but I recognized in that
soft and melancholy Jewish face, with the soft moustache and the soft
beard, the wistful features of the boy of fifteen who had been my
companion at an "international" school (a clever invention for
inflicting exile upon patriots) with branches at Hastings, Dresden and
Versailles.

Soon I was telling him, not without satisfaction, that, being a dramatic
critic, and attached to a London daily paper which had decided to
flatter its readers by giving special criticisms of the more important
new French plays, I had come to Paris for the production of _Notre Dame
de la Lune_ at the Vaudeville.

And as I told him the idea occurred to me for positively the first time:

"By the way, I suppose you aren't any relation of Octave Boissy?"

I rather hoped he was; for after all, say what you like, there is a
certain pleasure in feeling that you have been to school with even a
relative of so tremendous a European celebrity as Octave Boissy--the man
who made a million and a half francs with his second play, which was
nevertheless quite a good play. All the walls of Paris were shouting his
name.

"I'm the johnny himself," he replied with timidity, naïvely proud of his
Saxon slang.

I did not give an astounded _No_! An astounded _No_! would have been
rude. Still, my fear is that I failed to conceal entirely my amazement.
I had to fight desperately against the natural human tendency to assume
that no boy with whom one has been to school can have developed into a
great man.

"Really!" I remarked, as calmly as I could, and added a shocking lie:
"Well, I'm not surprised!" And at the same time I could hear myself
saying a few days later at the office of my paper: "I met Octave Boissy
in Paris. Went to school with him, you know."

"You'd forgotten my Christian name, probably," he said.

"No, I hadn't," I answered. "Your Christian name was Minor. You never
had any other!" He smiled kindly. "But what on earth are you doing
here?"

Octave Boissy was a very wealthy man. He even looked a very wealthy man.
He was one of the darlings of success and of an absurdly luxurious
civilization. And he seemed singularly out of place in the vast, banal
foyer of the Hôtel Terminus, among the shifting, bustling crowd of
utterly ordinary, bourgeois, moderately well-off tourists and travellers
and needy touts. He ought at least to have been in a very select private
room at the Meurice or the Bristol, if in any hotel at all!

"The fact is, I'm neurasthenic," he said simply, just as if he had been
saying, "The fact is, I've got a wooden leg."

"Oh!" I laughed, determined to treat him as Boissy Minor, and not as
Octave Boissy.

"I have a morbid horror of walking in the open air. And yet I cannot
bear being in a small enclosed space, especially when it's moving. This
is extremely inconvenient. _Mais que veux-tu?... Suis comme ça!_"

"_Je te plains_" I put in, so as to return his familiar and flattering
"thou" immediately.

"I was strongly advised to go and stay in the country," he went on, with
the same serious, wistful simplicity, "and so I ordered a special saloon
carriage on the railway, so as to have as much breathing room as
possible; and I ventured from my house to this station in an auto. I
thought I could surely manage that. But I couldn't! I had a terrible
crisis on arriving at the station, and I had to sit on a luggage-truck
for four hours. I couldn't have persuaded myself to get into the saloon
carriage for a fortune! I couldn't go back home in the auto! I couldn't
walk! So I stepped into the hotel. I've been here ever since."

"But when was this?"

"Three months ago. My doctors say that in another six weeks I shall be
sufficiently recovered to leave. It is a most distressing malady. _Mais
que veux-tu?_ I have a suite in the hotel and my own servants. I walk
out here into the hall because it's so large. The hotel people do the
best they can, but of course--" He threw up his hands. His resigned,
gentle smile was at once comic and tragic to me.

"But do you mean to say you couldn't walk out of that door and go home?"
I questioned.

"Daren't!" he said, with finality. "Come to my rooms, will you, and have
some tea."

II

A little later his own valet served us with tea in a large private
drawing-room on the sixth or seventh floor, to reach which we had
climbed a thousand and one stairs; it was impossible for Octave Boissy
to use the lift, as he was convinced that he would die in it if he took
such a liberty with himself. The room was hung with modern pictures,
such as had certainly never been seen in any hotel before. Many
knick-knacks and embroideries were also obviously foreign to the hotel.

"But how have you managed to attend the rehearsals of the new play?" I
demanded.

"Oh!" said he, languidly, "I never attend any rehearsals of my plays.
Mademoiselle Lemonnier sees to all that."

"She takes the leading part in this play, doesn't she, according to the
posters?"

"She takes the leading part in all my plays," said he.

"A first-class artiste, no doubt? I've never seen her act."

"Neither have I!" said Octave Boissy. And as I now yielded frankly to my
astonishment, he added: "You see, I am not interested in the theatre.
Not only have I never attended a rehearsal, but I have never seen a
performance of any of my plays. Don't you remember that it was
engineering, above all else, that attracted me? I have a truly wonderful
engineering shop in the basement of my house in the Avenue du Bois. I
should very much have liked you to see it; but you comprehend, don't
you, that I'm just as much cut off from the Avenue du Bois as I am from
Timbuctoo. My malady is the most exasperating of all maladies."

"Well, Boissy Minor," I observed, "I suppose it has occurred to you that
your case is calculated to excite wonder in the simple breast of a
brutal Englishman."

He laughed, and I was glad that I had had the courage to reduce him
definitely to the rank of Boissy Minor.

"And not only in the breast of an Englishman!" he said. "_Mais que
veux-tu?_ One must live."

"But I should have thought you could have made a comfortable living out
of engineering. In England consulting engineers are princes."

"Oh yes!"

"And engineering might have cured your neurasthenia, if you had taken it
in sufficiently large quantities."

"It would," he agreed quietly.

"Then why the theatre, seeing that the theatre doesn't interest you?"

"In order to live," he replied. "And when I say 'live,' I mean _live_.
It is not a question of money, it is a question of _living_."

"But as you never go near the theatre--"

"I write solely for Blanche Lemonnier," he said. I was at a loss.
Perceiving this, he continued intimately: "Surely you know of my
admiration for Blanche Lemonnier?"

I shook my head.

"I have never even heard of Blanche Lemonnier, save in connection with
your plays," I said.

"She is only known in connection with my plays," he answered. "When I
met her, a dozen years ago, she was touring the provinces, playing small
parts in third-rate companies. I asked her what was her greatest
ambition, and she said that it was to be applauded as a star on the
Paris stage. I told her that I would satisfy her ambition, and that when
I had done so I hoped she would satisfy mine. That was how I began to
write plays. That was my sole reason. It is the sole reason why I keep
on writing them. If she had desired to be a figure in Society I should
have gone into politics."

"I am getting very anxious to see this lady," I said. "I feel as if I
can scarcely wait till to-night."

"She will probably be here in a few minutes," said he.

"But how did you do it?" I asked. "What was your plan of campaign?"

"After the success of my first play I wrote the second specially for
her, and I imposed her on the management. I made her a condition. The
management kicked, but I was in a position to insist. I insisted."

"It sounds simple." I laughed uneasily.

"If you are a dramatic critic," he said, "you will guess that it was not
at first quite so simple as it sounds. Of course it is simple enough
now. Blanche Lemonnier is now completely identified with my plays. She
is as well known as nearly any actress in Paris. She has the glory she
desired." He smiled curiously. "Her ambition is satisfied--so is mine."
He stopped.

"Well," I said, "I've never been so interested in any play before. And I
shall expect Mademoiselle Lemonnier to be magnificent."

"Don't expect too much," he returned calmly. "Blanche's acting is not
admired by everybody. And I cannot answer for her powers, as I've never
seen her at work."

"It's that that's so extraordinary!"

"Not a bit! I could not bear to see her on the stage. I hate the idea of
her acting in public. But it is her wish. And after all, it is not the
actress that concerns me. It is the woman. It is the woman alone who
makes my life worth living. So long as she exists and is kind to me my
neurasthenia is a matter of indifference, and I do not even trouble
about engineering."

He tried to laugh away the seriousness of his tone, but he did not quite
succeed. Hitherto I had been amused at his singular plight and his
fatalistic acceptance of it. But now I was touched.

"I'm talking very freely to you," he said.

"My dear fellow," I burst out, "do let me see her portrait."

He shook his head.

"Unfortunately her portrait is all over Paris. She likes it so. But I
prefer to have no portrait myself. My feeling is--"

At that moment the valet opened the door and we heard vivacious voices
in the corridor.

"She is here," said Octave Boissy, in a whisper suddenly dramatic. He
stood up; I also. His expression had profoundly changed. He controlled
his gestures and his attitude, but he could not control his eye. And
when I saw that glance I understood what he meant by "living." I
understood that, for him, neither fame nor artistic achievement nor
wealth had any value in his life. His life consisted in one thing only.

"_Eh bien, Blanche!_" he murmured amorously.

Blanche Lemonnier invaded the room with arrogance. She was the odious
creature whose departure in her automobile had so upset my arrival.




THE LETTER AND THE LIE


I

As he hurried from his brougham through the sombre hall to his study,
leaving his secretary far in the rear, he had already composed the first
sentence of his address to the United Chambers of Commerce of the Five
Towns; his mind was full of it; he sat down at once to his vast desk,
impatient to begin dictating. Then it was that he perceived the letter,
lodged prominently against the gold and onyx inkstand given to him on
his marriage by the Prince and Princess of Wales. The envelope was
imperfectly fastened, or not fastened at all, and the flap came apart as
he fingered it nervously.

"Dear Cloud,--This is to say good-bye, finally--"

He stopped. Fear took him at the heart, as though he had been suddenly
told by a physician that he must submit to an operation endangering his
life. And he skipped feverishly over the four pages to the signature,
"Yours sincerely, Gertrude."

The secretary entered.

"I must write one or two private letters first," he said to the
secretary. "Leave me. I'll ring."

"Yes, sir. Shall I take your overcoat?"

"No, no."

A discreet closing of the door.

"--finally. I can't stand it any longer. Cloud, I'm gone to Italy. I
shall use the villa at Florence, and trust you to leave me alone. You
must tell our friends. You can start with the Bargraves to-night. I'm
sure they'll agree with me it's for the best--"

It seemed to him that this letter was very like the sort of letter that
gets read in the Divorce Court and printed in the papers afterwards; and
he felt sick.

"--for the best. Everybody will know in a day or two, and then in
another day or two the affair will be forgotten. It's difficult to write
naturally under the circumstances, so all I'll say is that we aren't
suited to each other, Cloud. Ten years of marriage has amply proved
that, though I knew it six--seven--years ago. You haven't guessed that
you've been killing me all these years; but it is so--"

Killing her! He flushed with anger, with indignation, with innocence,
with guilt--with Heaven knew what!

"--it is so. _You've_ been living _your_ life. But what about me? In
five more years I shall be old, and I haven't begun to live. I can't
_stand_ it any longer. I can't stand this awful Five Towns district--"

Had he not urged her many a time to run up to South Audley Street for a
change, and leave him to continue his work? Nobody wanted her to be
always in Staffordshire!

"--and I can't stand _you_. That's the brutal truth. You've got on my
nerves, my poor boy, with your hurry, and your philanthropy, and your
commerce, and your seriousness. My poor nerves! And you've been too busy
to notice it. You fancied I should be content if you made love to me
absent-mindedly, _en passant_, between a political dinner and a bishop's
breakfast."

He flinched. She had stung him.

"I sting you--"

No! And he straightened himself, biting his lips!

"--I sting you! I'm rude! I'm inexcusable! People don't say these
things, not even hysterical wives to impeccable husbands, eh? I admit
it. But I was bound to tell you. You're a serious person, Cloud, and
I'm not. Still, we were both born as we are, and I've just as much
right to be unserious as you have to be serious. That's what you've
never realized. You aren't better than me; you're only different from
me. It is unfortunate that there are some aspects of the truth that you
are incapable of grasping. However, after this morning's scene--"

Scene? What scene? He remembered no scene, except that he had asked her
not to interrupt him while he was reading his letters, had asked her
quite politely, and she had left the breakfast-table. He thought she had
left because she had finished. He hadn't a notion--what nonsense!

"--this morning's scene, I decided not to 'interrupt' you any more--"

Yes. There was the word he had used--how childish she was!

"--any more in the contemplation of those aspects of the truth which you
_are_ capable of grasping. Good-bye! You're an honest man, and a
straight man, and very conscientious, and very clever, and I expect
you're doing a lot of good in the world. But your responsibilities are
too much for you. I relieve you of one, quite a minor one--your wife.
You don't want a wife. What you want is a doll that you can wind up once
a fortnight to say 'Good-morning, dear,' and 'Good-night, dear.' I think
I can manage without a husband for a very long time. I'm not so bitter
as you might guess from this letter, Cloud. But I want you thoroughly to
comprehend that it's finished between us. You can do what you like.
People can say what they like. I've had enough. I'll pay any price for
freedom. Good luck. Best wishes. I would write this letter afresh if I
thought I could do a better one.--Yours sincerely, Gertrude."

He dropped the letter, picked it up and read it again and then folded it
in his accustomed tidy manner and replaced it in the envelope. He sat
down and propped the letter against the inkstand and stared at the
address in her careless hand: "The Right Honourable Sir Cloud Malpas,
Baronet." She had written the address in full like that as a last stroke
of sarcasm. And she had not even put "Private."

He was dizzy, nearly stunned; his head rang.

Then he rose and went to the window. The high hill on which stood Malpas
Manor--the famous Rat Edge--fell away gradually to the south, and in the
distance below him, miles off, the black smoke of the Five Towns loomed
above the yellow fires of blast-furnaces. He was the demi-god of the
district, a greater landowner than even the Earl of Chell, a model
landlord, a model employer of four thousand men, a model proprietor of
seven pits and two iron foundries, a philanthropist, a religionist, the
ornamental mayor of Knype, chairman of a Board of Guardians, governor of
hospitals, president of Football Association--in short, Sir Cloud, son
of Sir Cloud and grandson of Sir Cloud.

He stared dreamily at his dominion. Scandal, then, was to touch him with
her smirching finger, him the spotless! Gertrude had fled. He had ruined
Gertrude's life! Had he? With his heavy and severe conscientiousness he
asked himself whether he was to blame in her regard. Yes, he thought he
was to blame. It stood to reason that he was to blame. Women, especially
such as Gertrude, proud, passionate, reserved, don't do these things for
nothing.

With a sigh he passed into his dressing-room and dropped on to a sofa.

She would be inflexible--he knew her. His mind dwelt on the beautiful
first days of their marriage, the tenderness and the dream! And now--!

He heard footsteps in the study; the door was opened! It was Gertrude!
He could see her in the dusk. She had returned! Why? She tripped to the
desk, leaned forward and snatched at the letter. Evidently she did not
know that he was in the house and had read it.

The tension was too painful. A sigh broke from him, as it were of
physical torture.

"Who's there?" she cried, in a startled voice. "Is that you, Cloud?"

"Yes," he breathed.

"But you're home very early!" Her voice shook.

"I'm not well, Gertrude," he replied. "I'm tired. I came in here to lie
down. Can't you do something for my head? I must have a holiday."

He heard her crunch up the letter, and then she hastened to him in the
dressing-room.

"My poor Cloud!" she said, bending over him in the mature elegance of
her thirty years. He noticed her travelling costume. "Some eau de
Cologne?"

He nodded weakly.

"We'll go away for a holiday," he said, later, as she bathed his
forehead.

The touch of her hands on his temples reminded him of forgotten
caresses. And he did really feel as though, within a quarter of an hour,
he had been through a long and dreadful illness and was now
convalescent.




II


"Then you think that after starting she thought better of it?" said Lord
Bargrave after dinner that night. "And came back?"

Lord Bargrave was Gertrude's cousin, and he and his wife sometimes came
over from Shropshire for a week-end. He sat with Sir Cloud in the
smoking-room; a man with greying hair and a youngish, equable face.

"Yes, Harry, that was it. You see, I'd just happened to put the letter
exactly where I found it. She's no notion that I've seen it."

"She's a thundering good actress!" observed Lord Bargrave, sipping some
whisky. "I knew something was up at dinner, but I didn't know it from
_her_: I knew it from you."

Sir Cloud smiled sadly.

"Well, you see, I'm supposed to be ill--at least, to be not well."

"You'd best take her away at once," said Lord Bargrave. "And don't do it
clumsily. Say you'll go away for a few days, and then gradually lengthen
it out. She mentioned Italy, you say. Well, let it be Italy. Clear out
for six months."

"But my work here?"

"D--n your work here!" said Lord Bargrave. "Do you suppose you're
indispensable here? Do you suppose the Five Towns can't manage without
you? Our caste is decayed, my boy, and silly fools like you try to
lengthen out the miserable last days of its importance by giving
yourselves airs in industrial districts! Your conscience tells you that
what the demagogues say is true--we _are_ rotters on the face of the
earth, we _are_ mediæval; and you try to drown your conscience in the
noise of philanthropic speeches. There isn't a sensible working-man in
the Five Towns who doesn't, at the bottom of his heart, assess you at
your true value--as nothing but a man with a hobby, and plenty of time
and money to ride it."

"I do not agree with you," Sir Cloud said stiffly.

"Yes, you do," said Lord Bargrave. "At the same time I admire you,
Cloud. I'm not built the same way myself, but I admire you--except in
the matter of Gertrude. There you've been wrong--of course from the
highest motives: which makes it all the worse. A man oughtn't to put
hobbies above the wife of his bosom. And, besides, she's one of _us_.
So take her away and stay away and make love to her."

"Suppose I do? Suppose I try? I must tell her!"

"Tell her what?"

"That I read the letter. I acted a lie to her this afternoon. I can't
let that lie stand between us. It would not be right."

Lord Bargrave sprang up.

"Cloud," he cried. "For heaven's sake, don't be an infernal ass. Here
you've escaped a domestic catastrophe of the first magnitude by a
miracle. You've made a sort of peace with Gertrude. She's come to her
senses. And now you want to mess up the whole show by the act of an
idiot! What if you did act a lie to her this afternoon? A very good
thing! The most sensible thing you've done for years! Let the lie stand
between you. Look at it carefully every morning when you awake. It will
help you to avoid repeating in the future the high-minded errors of the
past. See?"




III


And in Lady Bargrave's dressing-room that night Gertrude was confiding
in Lady Bargrave.

"Yes," she said, "Cloud must have come in within five minutes of my
leaving--two hours earlier than he was expected. Fortunately he went
straight to his dressing-room. Or was it unfortunately? I was half-way
to the station when it occurred to me that I hadn't fastened the
envelope! You see, I was naturally in an awfully nervous state, Minnie.
So I told Collins to turn back. Fuge, our new butler, is of an extremely
curious disposition, and I couldn't bear the idea of him prying about
and perhaps reading that letter before Cloud got it. And just as I was
picking up the letter to fasten it I heard Cloud in the next room. Oh! I
never felt so queer in all my life! The poor boy was quite unwell. I
screwed up the letter and went to him. What else could I do? And really
he was so tired and white--well, it moved me! It moved me. And when he
spoke about going away I suddenly thought: 'Why not try to make a new
start with him?' After all ..."

There was a pause.

"What did you say in the letter?" Lady Bargrave demanded. "How did you
put it?"

"I'll read it to you," said Gertrude, and she took the letter from her
corsage and began to read it. She got as far as "I can't stand this
awful Five Towns district," and then she stopped.

"Well, go on," Lady Bargrave encouraged her.

"No," said Gertrude, and she put the letter in the fire. "The fact is,"
she said, going to Lady Bargrave's chair, "it was too cruel. I hadn't
realized.... I must have been very worked-up.... One does work oneself
up.... Things seem a little different now...." She glanced at her
companion.

"Why, Gertrude, you're crying, dearest!"

"What a chance it was!" murmured Gertrude, in her tears. "What a chance!
Because, you know, if he _had_ once read it I would never have gone back
on it. I'm that sort of woman. But as it is, there's a sort of hope of a
sort of happiness, isn't there?"

"Gertrude!" It was Sir Cloud's voice, gentle and tender, outside the
door.

"Mercy on us!" exclaimed Lady Bargrave. "It's half-past one. Bargrave
will have been asleep long since."

Gertrude kissed her in silence, opened the door, and left her.




THE GLIMPSE[A]

I

When I was dying I had no fear. I was simply indifferent, partly, no
doubt, through exhaustion caused by my long illness. It was a warm
evening in August. We ought to have been at Blackpool, of course, but we
were in my house in Trafalgar Road, and the tramcars between Hanley and
Bursley were shaking the house just as usual. Perhaps not quite as
usual; for during my illness I had noticed that a sort of tiredness, a
soft, nice feeling, seems to come over everything at sunset of a hot
summer's day. This universal change affected even the tramcars, so that
they rolled up and down the hill more gently. Or it may have been merely
my imagination. Through the open windows I could see, dimly, the smoke
of the Cauldon Bar Iron Works slowly crossing the sky in front of the
sunset. Margaret sat in my grandfather's oak chair by the gas-stove.
There was only Margaret, besides the servant, in the house; the nurse
had been obliged to go back to Pirehill Infirmary for the night. I don't
know why. Moreover, it didn't matter.

[Footnote A: Some years ago the editor of _Black and White_ commissioned
me to write a story for his Christmas Number. I wrote this story. He
expressed a deep personal admiration for it, but said positively that he
would not dare to offer it to his readers. I withdrew the story, and
gave him instead a frolic tale about a dentist. (See page 136.)
Afterwards, I was glad that I had withdrawn the story, for I perceived
that its theme could only be treated adequately in a novel, I
accordingly wrote the novel, which was duly published under the same
title.--A.B.]

I began running my extraordinarily white fingers along the edge of the
sheet. I was doing this quite mechanically when I noticed a look of
alarm in Margaret's face, and I vaguely remembered that playing with the
edge of the sheet was supposed to be a trick of the dying. So I stopped,
more for Margaret's sake than for anything else. I could not move my
head much, in fact scarcely at all; hence it was difficult for me to
keep my eyes on objects that were not in my line of vision as I lay
straight on my pillows. Thus my eyes soon left Margaret's. I forgot her.
I thought about nothing. Then she came over to the bed, and looked at
me, and I smiled at her, very feebly. She smiled in return. She appeared
to me to be exceedingly strong and healthy. Six weeks before I had been
the strong and healthy one--I was in my prime, forty, and had a
tremendous appetite for business--and I had always regarded her as
fragile and delicate; and now she could have crushed me without effort!
I had an unreasonable, instinctive feeling of shame at being so weak
compared to her. I knew that I was leaving her badly off; we were both
good spenders, and all my spare profits had gone into the manufactory;
but I did not trouble about that. I was almost quite callous about that.
I thought to myself, in a confused way: "Anyhow, I shan't be here to see
it, and she'll worry through somehow!" Nor did I object to dying. It may
be imagined that I resented death at so early an age, and being cut off
in my career, and prevented from getting the full benefit of the new
china-firing oven that I had patented. Not at all! It may be imagined
that I was preoccupied with a future life, and thinking that possibly we
had given up going to chapel without sufficient reason. No! I just lay
there, submitting like a person without will or desires to the nursing
of my wife, which was all of it accurately timed by the clock.

I just lay there and watched the gradual changing of the sky, and,
faintly, heard clocks striking and the quiet swish of my wife's dress.
Once my ear would have caught the ticking of our black marble clock on
the mantelpiece; but not now--it was lost to me. I watched the gradual
changing of the sky, until the blue of the sky had darkened so that the
blackness of the smoke was merged in it. But to the left there appeared
a faint reddish glare, which showed where the furnaces were; this glare
had been invisible in daylight. I watched all that, and I waited
patiently for the last trace of silver to vanish from a high part of the
sky above where the sunset had been--and it would not. I would shut my
eyes for an age, and then open them again, and the silver was always in
the sky. The cars kept rumbling up the hill and bumping down the hill.
And there was still that soft, languid feeling over everything. And all
the heat of the day remained. Sometimes a waft of hot air moved the
white curtains. Margaret ate something off a plate. The servant stole
in. Margaret gave a gesture as though to indicate that I was asleep. But
I was not asleep. The servant went off. Twice I restrained my thin,
moist hands from playing with the edge of the sheet. Then I closed my
eyes with a kind of definite closing, as if finally admitting that I was
too exhausted to keep them open.

II

Difficult to describe my next conscious sensations, when I found I was
not in the bed! I have never described them before. You will understand
why I've never described them to my wife. I meant never to describe them
to anyone. But as you came all the way from London, Mr Myers, and seem
to understand all this sort of thing, I've made up my mind to tell you
for what it's worth. Yes, what you say about the difficulty of sticking
to the exact truth is quite correct. I feel it. Still, I don't think I
over-flatter myself in saying that I am a more than ordinarily truthful
man.

Well, I was looking at the bed. I was not in the bed. I can't be
precisely sure where I was standing, but I think it was between the two
windows, half behind the crimson curtains. Anyhow, I must have been near
the windows, or I couldn't have seen the foot of the bed and the couch
that is there. I could most distinctly hear Cauldon Church clock, more
than two miles away, strike two. I was cold. Margaret was leaning over
the bed, and staring at a face that lay on the pillows. At first it did
not occur to me that this face on the pillows was my face. I had to
reason out that fact. When I had reasoned it out I tried to speak to
Margaret and tell her that she was making a mistake, gazing at that
thing there on the pillows, and that the real one was standing in the
cold by the windows. I could not speak. Then I tried to attract her
attention in other ways; but I could do nothing. Once she turned
sharply, as if startled, and looked straight at me. I strove more
frantically than ever to make signs to her; but no, I could not.
Seemingly she did not see.

Then I thought: "I'm dead! This is being dead! I've died!"

Margaret ran to the dressing-table and picked up her hand-mirror. She
rubbed it carefully on the counterpane, and then held it to the mouth
and nostrils of that face on the pillows, and then examined it under the
gas. She was very agitated; the whole of her demeanour had changed; I
scarcely recognized her. I could not help thinking that she was mad. She
put down the mirror, glanced at the clock, even glanced out of the
window (she was much closer to me than I am now to you), and then flew
back to the bed. She seized the scissors that were hanging from her
girdle, and cut a hole in the top pillow, and drew from it a flock of
down, which she carefully placed on the lips of that face. The down did
not even tremble. Then she bared the breast of the body on the bed, and
laid her ear upon the region of the heart; I could see her eyes blinking
as she listened intensely. After she had listened some time she raised
her head, with a little sob, and frantically pulled the bell-rope. I
could hear the bell; we could both hear it. There was no response;
nothing but a fearful silence. Margaret, catching her breath, rushed out
of the room. I was sick with the most awful disgust that I could not
force her to see where I was. I had been helpless before, when I lay in
the bed, but I was far more completely helpless now. Talk about the babe
unborn!

She came back with the servant, and the two women stood on either side
of the bed, gazing at that body. The servant whispered:

"They do say that if you put a full glass of water on the chest you can
tell for sure."

Margaret hesitated. However, the servant began to fill a glass of water
on the washstand, and they poised it on the chest of that body. Not the
slightest vibration troubled its surface. I was--not angry; no,
tremendously disgusted is the only term I can use--at all this flummery
with that body on the bed. It was shocking to me that they should
confuse that body with me. I thought them silly, wilfully silly. I
thought their behaviour monstrously blind. There was I, the master of
the house, standing chilled between the windows, and neither Margaret
nor the servant would take the least notice of me!

The servant said:

"I'd better run for the doctor, ma'am." And she lifted off the glass.

"What use can the doctor be?" Margaret asked. "Only spoil the poor man's
night for nothing. And he's had a lot of bad nights lately. He told me
to be--prepared."

The servant said:

"Yes, mum.. But I'd better run for him. That's what doctors is for."

As soon as the front-door banged on the excited servant, my wife fell on
that body with a loud cry, and stroked it passionately, and I could see
her tears dropping on it. She wept without any restraint. She loved me
very much; I knew that. But the fact that she loved me only increased my
horror that she should be caressing that body, which was not me at all,
which had nothing whatever to do with me, which was loathsome, vile, and
as insensible as a log to the expressions of her love. She was not
weeping over me. She was weeping over an abomination. She was all wrong,
all tragically wrong, and I could not set her right. Her woe desolated
me. We had been happy together for sixteen years. Her error desolated
me, as a painful farce. But a slow, horrible change in my own
consciousness made me forget her grief in my own increasing misery.




III


I do not suppose that the feeling which came over me is capable of being
described in human language. It can only be hinted at, not truly
conveyed. If I say that I was utterly overcome by the sensation of being
_cut off from everything_, I shall perhaps not impress you very much
with a notion of my terror. But I do not see how I can better express
myself. No one who has not been through what I have been through--it is
a pretty awful thought that all who die do probably go through it--can
possibly understand the feeling of acute and frightful loneliness that
possessed me as I stood near the windows, that wrapped me up and
enveloped me, as it were, in an icy sheet. A few people in England are
possibly in my case--they have _been_, and they have returned, like me.
They will understand, and only they. I was solitary in the universe. I
was invisible, and I was forgotten. There was my poor wife lavishing her
immense sorrow on that body on the bed, which had ceased to have any
connection with me, which was emphatically not me, and to which I felt
the strongest repugnance. I was even jealous of that lifeless,
unresponsive, decaying mass. You cannot guess how I tried to yell to my
wife to come to me and warm me with her companionship and her
sympathy--and I could accomplish nothing, not the faintest whisper.

I had no home, no shelter, no place in the world, no share in life. I
was cast out. The changeless purposes of nature had ejected me from
humanity. It was as though humanity had been a fortified city and the
gates had been shut on me, and I was wandering round and round the
unscalable smooth walls, and beating against their stone with my hands.
That is a good simile, except that I could not move. Of course if I
could have moved I should have gone to my wife. But I could not move. To
be quite exact, I could move very slightly, perhaps about an inch or two
inches, and in any direction, up or down, to left or right, backwards or
forwards; this by a great straining, fatiguing effort. I was stuck there
on the surface of the world, desolate and undone. It was the most cruel
situation that you can imagine; far worse, I think, than any conceivable
physical torture. I am perfectly sure that I would have exchanged my
state, then, for the state of no matter what human being, the most
agonized martyr, the foulest criminal. I would have given anything, made
any sacrifice, to be once more within the human pale, to feel once more
that human life was not going on without me.

There was a knocking below. My wife left that body on the bed, and came
to the window and put her head out into the nocturnal, gas-lit silence
of Trafalgar Road. She was within a foot of me--and I could do nothing.

She whispered: "Is that you, Mary?"

The voice of the servant came: "Yes, mum. The doctor's been called away
to a case. He's not likely to be back before five o'clock."

My wife said, with sad indifference: "It doesn't matter now. I'll let
you in."

She went from the room. I heard the opening and shutting of the door.
Then both women returned into the room, and talked in low voices.

My wife said: "As soon as it's light you must ..." She stopped and
corrected herself. "No, the nurse will be back at seven o'clock. She
said she would. She will attend to all that. Mary, go and get a little
rest, if you can."

"Aren't you going to put the pennies on his eyes, mum?" the servant
asked.

"Ought I?" said my wife. "I don't know much about these things."

"Oh, yes, mum. And tie his jaw up," the servant said.

_His_ eyes! _His_ jaw! I was terribly angry, in my desolation. But it
was a futile anger, though it raged through me like a storm. Could they
not understand, would they never understand, that they were grotesquely
deceived? How much longer would they continue to fuss over that body on
the bed while I, _I_, the person whom they were supposed to be sorry
for, suffered and trembled in dire need just behind them?

A ridiculous bother over pennies! There was only one penny in the house,
they decided, after searching. I knew the exact whereabouts of two
shillings worth of copper, rolled in paper in my desk in the
dining-room. It had been there for many weeks; I had brought it home
one day from the works. But they did not know. I wanted to tell them, so
as to end the awful exacerbation of my nerves. But of course I could
not. In spite of Mary's superstitious protest, my wife put a penny on
one eye and half-a-crown on the other. Mary seemed to regard this as a
desecration, or at best as unlucky. Then they bound up the jaw of that
body with one of my handkerchiefs. I thought I had never seen anything
more wantonly absurd. Their trouble in straightening the arms--the legs
were quite straight--infuriated me. I wanted to weep in my tragic
vexation. It seemed as though tears would ease me. But I could not weep.

The servant said: "You'd better come away now, mum, and rest on the sofa
in the drawing-room."

Margaret, with red-bordered, glittering eyes, answered, staring all the
while at that body: "No, Mary. It's no use. I can't leave him. I won't
leave him!"

But she wasn't thinking about me at all. There I was, neglected and
shivering, near the windows; and she would not look at me!

After an interminable palaver Margaret induced the servant to leave the
room. And she sat down on the chair nearest the bed, and began to cry
again, not troubling to wipe her eyes. She sobbed, more and more loudly,
and kept touching that body. She seized my gold watch, which hung over
the bed, and which she wound up every night, and kissed it and put it
back. Her sobs continued to increase. Then the door opened quietly, and
the servant, half-undressed, crept in, and without saying a word gently
led Margaret out of the room. Margaret's last glance was at that body.
In a moment the servant returned and extinguished the gas, and departed
again, very carefully closing the door. I was now utterly abandoned.




IV


All that had happened to me up to now was strange; but what followed was
still more strange and still less capable of being described in human
language.

I became aware that I was gradually losing the sensation of being cut
off from intercourse, at any-rate that the sensation was losing its
painfulness. I didn't seem to care, now, whether I was neglected or not.
And to be cast out from humanity grew into a matter of indifference to
me. I became aware, too, of the approach of a mysterious freedom. I was
not free, I could still move only an inch or so in any direction; but I
felt that a process of dissolving of bonds had begun. What manner of
bonds? I don't know. I felt--that was all. My indifference slowly passed
into a sad and deep pity for the world. The world seemed to me so
pathetic, so awry, so obstinate in its honest illusions, so silly in its
dishonest pretences. "Have I been content with _that_?" I thought,
staggered. And I was sorry for what I had been. I perceived that the
ideals of my life were tawdry, that even the best were poor little
things. And I perceived that it was the same with everyone, and that
even the greatest men, those men that I had so profoundly admired as of
another clay than mine, were as like the worst as one sheep was like
another sheep. Weep--because nature had ejected me from that petty
little world, with its ridiculous and conceited wrongness? What an idea!
Why, I said to myself, that world spends nearly the whole of its time in
moving physical things from one place to another. Change the position of
matter--that is all it does, all it thinks of. I remembered a statesman
who had referred to the London and North-Western Railway as being one of
the glories of England! Parcels! Parcels! Parcels, human, brute,
insensate! Nothing but parcel-moving! I smiled. And then I perceived
that I could understand and solve problems which had defied thousands of
years of human philosophy, problems which we on earth called
fundamental. And lo! They were not in the least fundamental, but were
trifles, as simple as Euclid. It was surprising that the solution of
them had not presented itself to me before! I thought: With one word,
one single word, I could enlighten the human race beyond all that it has
ever learned. Feeble-bodied, feeble-minded humanity!

And then I had a glimpse.... I was in the bedroom, near the windows, all
the time, but nevertheless I was nowhere, nowhere in space. I could feel
the roll of the earth as it turned lumberingly on its axis--a faint
shaking which did not affect me. Still, I was in the bedroom, near the
windows. And I had a glimpse.... The heralds of a new vitality swept
trumpeting through me, and a calm, intense, ineffable joy followed in
their train. I had a glimpse.... And my eyes were not dazzled. I yearned
and strained towards what I saw, towards the exceeding brightness of
undreamt companionships, hopes, perceptions, activities, and sorrows.
Yes, sorrows! But what noble sorrows they were that I felt awaited me
there! I strained at my mysterious bonds. It seemed that they were about
to break and that I should be winged away into other dimensions....

And then, I knew that they were tightening again, and the brightness
very slowly faded, and I lost faith in the gift of vision which
momentarily had enabled me to see the illusions and the littleness of
the world. And I was slowly, slowly drawn away from the window.... And
then I felt heavy weights on my eyes, and I could not move my jaw. I
shuddered convulsively, and a coin struck the floor and ran till it fell
flat. And the door swiftly opened....




V


Yes, my whole character is changed, within; though externally it may
seem the same. Externally I may seem to have resumed the affections and
the interests which occupied me before my illness and my remarkable
recovery. Yet I am different. Certainly I have lost again the strange
transcendental knowledge which was mine for a few instants. Certainly I
have descended again to the earthly level. All those magic things have
slipped away, except hope. In a sure hope, in a positive faith, I am
waiting. I am waiting for all that magic to happen to me again. I know
that the pain of loneliness, when again I shall see my own body from the
outside, will be exquisite, but--the reward! The reward! That is what is
always at the back of my mind, the source of the calm joy in which I
wait. Externally I am the successful earthenware manufacturer, happily
married, getting rich on a china-firing oven, employing a couple of
hundred workmen, etcetera, who was once given up for dead. But I am more
than that. I have seen God.




JOCK-AT-A-VENTURE

I


All this happened at a Martinmas Fair in Bursley, long ago in the
fifties, when everybody throughout the Five Towns pronounced Bursley
"Bosley" as a matter of course; in the tedious and tragic old times,
before it had been discovered that hell was a myth, and before the
invention of pleasure or even of half-holidays. Martinmas was in those
days a very important moment in the annual life of the town, for it was
at Martinmas that potters' wages were fixed for twelve months ahead, and
potters hired themselves out for that term at the best rate they could
get. Even to the present day the housewives reckon chronology by
Martinmas. They say, "It'll be seven years come Martinmas that Sal's
babby died o' convulsions." Or, "It was that year as it rained and
hailed all Martinmas." And many of them have no idea why it is
Martinmas, and not Midsummer or Whitsun, that is always on the tips of
their tongues.

The Fair was one of the two great drunken sprees of the year, the other
being the Wakes. And it was meet that it should be so, for intoxication
was a powerful aid to the signing of contracts. A sot would put his name
to anything, gloriously; and when he had signed he had signed. Thus the
beaver-hatted employers smiled at Martinmas drunkenness, and smacked it
familiarly on the back; and little boys swilled themselves into the
gutter with their elders, and felt intensely proud of the feat. These
heroic old times have gone by, never to return.

It was on the Friday before Martinmas, at dusk. In the centre of the
town, on the waste ground to the north of the "Shambles" (as the
stone-built meat market was called), and in the space between the
Shambles and the as yet unfinished new Town Hall, the showmen and the
showgirls and the showboys were titivating their booths, and cooking
their teas, and watering their horses, and polishing the brass rails of
their vans, and brushing their fancy costumes, and hammering fresh
tent-pegs into the hard ground, and lighting the first flares of the
evening, and yarning, and quarrelling, and washing--all under the sombre
purple sky, for the diversion of a small crowd of loafers, big and
little, who stood obstinately with their hands in their pockets or in
their sleeves, missing naught of the promising spectacle.

Now, in the midst of what in less than twenty-four hours would be the
Fair, was to be seen a strange and piquant sight--namely, a group of
three white-tied, broad-brimmed dissenting ministers in earnest converse
with fat Mr Snaggs, the proprietor of Snaggs's--Snaggs's being the town
theatre, a wooden erection, generally called by patrons the "Blood Tub,"
on account of its sanguinary programmes. On this occasion Mr Snaggs and
the dissenting ministers were for once in a way agreed. They all
objected to a certain feature of the Fair. It was not the roundabouts,
so crude that even an infant of to-day would despise them. It was
not the shooting-galleries, nor the cocoanut shies. It was not the
arrangements of the beersellers, which were formidably Bacchic.
It was not the boxing-booths, where adventurous youths could have
teeth knocked out and eyes smashed in free of charge. It was not the
monstrosity-booths, where misshapen and maimed creatures of both sexes
were displayed all alive and nearly nude to anybody with a penny to
spare. What Mr Snaggs and the ministers of religion objected to was the
theatre-booths, in which the mirror, more or less cracked and tarnished,
was held up to nature.

Mr Snaggs's objection was professional. He considered that he alone was
authorized to purvey drama to the town; he considered that among all
purveyors of drama he alone was respectable, the rest being upstarts,
poachers, and lewd fellows. And as the dissenting ministers gazed at Mr
Snaggs's superb moleskin waistcoat, and listened to his positive brazen
voice, they were almost convinced that the hated institution of the
theatre could be made respectable and that Mr Snaggs had so made it. At
any rate, by comparison with these flashy and flimsy booths, the Blood
Tub, rooted in the antiquity of thirty years, had a dignified, even a
reputable air--and did not Mr Snaggs give frequent performances of
Cruickshanks' _The Bottle_, a sermon against intemperance more
impressive than any sermon delivered from a pulpit in a chapel? The
dissenting ministers listened with deference as Mr Snaggs explained to
them exactly what they ought to have done, and what they had failed to
do, in order to ensure the success of their campaign against play-acting
in the Fair; a campaign which now for several years past had been
abortive--largely (it was rumoured) owing to the secret jealousy of the
Church of England.

"If ony on ye had had any gumption," Mr Snaggs was saying fearlessly to
the parsons, "ye'd ha' gone straight to th' Chief Bailiff and ye'd
ha'--Houch!" He made the peculiar exclamatory noise roughly indicated by
the last word, and spat in disgust; and without the slightest ceremony
of adieu walked ponderously away up the slope, leaving his sentence
unfinished.

"It is remarkable how Mr Snaggs flees from before my face," said a neat,
alert, pleasant voice from behind the three parsons. "And yet save that
in my unregenerate day I once knocked him off a stool in front of his
own theayter, I never did him harm nor wished him anything but good....
Gentlemen!"

A rather small, slight man of about forty, with tiny feet and hands,
and "very quick on his pins," saluted the three parsons gravely.

"Mr Smith!" one parson stiffly inclined.

"Mr Smith!" from the second.

"Brother Smith!" from the third, who was Jock Smith's own parson, being
in charge of the Bethesda in Trafalgar Road where Jock Smith worshipped
and where he had recently begun to preach as a local preacher.

Jock Smith, herbalist, shook hands with vivacity but also with
self-consciousness. He was self-conscious because he knew himself to be
one of the chief characters and attractions of the town, because he was
well aware that wherever he went people stared at him and pointed him
out to each other. And he was half proud and half ashamed of his
notoriety.

Even now a little band of ragged children had wandered after him, and,
undeterred by the presence of the parsons, were repeating among
themselves, in a low audacious monotone:

"Jock-at-a-Venture! Jock-at-a-Venture!"


II


He was the youngest of fourteen children, and when he was a month old
his mother took him to church to be christened. The rector was the
celebrated Rappey, sportsman, who (it is said) once pawned the church
Bible in order to get up a bear-baiting. Rappey asked the name of the
child, and was told by the mother that she had come to the end of her
knowledge of names, and would be obliged for a suggestion. Whereupon
Rappey began to cite all the most ludicrous names in the Bible, such as
Aholibamah, Kenaz, Iram, Baalhanan, Abiasaph, Amram, Mushi, Libni,
Nepheg, Abihu. And the mother laughed, shaking her head. And Rappey went
on: Shimi, Carmi, Jochebed. And at Jochebed the mother became
hysterical with laughter. "Jock-at-a-Venture," she had sniggered, and
Rappey, mischievously taking her at her word, christened the infant
Jock-at-a-Venture before she could protest; and the infant was stamped
for ever as peculiar.

He lived up to his name. He ran away twice, and after having been both a
sailor and a soldier, he returned home with the accomplishment of
flourishing a razor, and settled in Bursley as a barber. Immediately he
became the most notorious barber in the Five Towns, on account of his
gab and his fisticuffs. It was he who shaved the left side of the face
of an insulting lieutenant of dragoons (after the great riots of '45,
which two thousand military had not quelled), and then pitched him out
of the shop, soapsuds and all, and fought him to a finish in the Cock
Yard and flung him through the archway into the market-place with just
half a magnificent beard and moustache. It was he who introduced
hair-dyeing into Bursley. Hair-dyeing might have grown popular in the
town if one night, owing to some confusion with red ink, the Chairman of
the Bursley Burial Board had not emerged from Jock-at-a-Venture's with a
vermilion top-knot and been greeted on the pavement by his waiting wife
with the bitter words: "Thou foo!"

A little later Jock-at-a-Venture abandoned barbering and took up music,
for which he had always shown a mighty gift. He was really musical and
performed on both the piano and the cornet, not merely with his hands
and mouth, but with the whole of his agile expressive body. He made a
good living out of public-houses and tea-meetings, for none could play
the piano like Jock, were it hymns or were it jigs. His cornet was
employed in a band at Moorthorne, the mining village to the east of
Bursley, and on his nocturnal journeys to and from Moorthorne with the
beloved instrument he had had many a set-to with the marauding colliers
who made the road dangerous for cowards. One result of this connection
with Moorthorne was that a boxing club had been formed in Bursley, with
Jock as chief, for the upholding of Bursley's honour against visiting
Moorthorne colliers in Bursley's market-place.

Then came Jock's conversion to religion, a blazing affair, and his
abandonment of public-houses. As tea-meetings alone would not keep him,
he had started again in life, for the fifth or sixth time--as a
herbalist now. It was a vocation which suited his delicate hands and his
enthusiasm for humanity. At last, and quite lately, he had risen to be a
local preacher. His first two sermons had impassioned the congregations,
though there were critics to accuse him of theatricality. Accidents
happened to him sometimes. On this very afternoon of the Friday before
Martinmas an accident had happened to him. He had been playing the piano
at the rehearsal of the Grand Annual Evening Concert of the Bursley Male
Glee-Singers. The Bursley Male Glee-Singers, determined to beat records,
had got a soprano with a foreign name down from Manchester. On seeing
the shabby perky little man who was to accompany her songs the soprano
had had a moment of terrible misgiving. But as soon as Jock, with a
careful-careless glance at the music, which he had never seen before,
had played the first chords (with a "How's that for time, missis?"), she
was reassured. At the end of the song her enthusiasm for the musical
gifts of the local artist was such that she had sprung from the platform
and simply but cordially kissed him. She was a stout, feverish lady. He
liked a lady to be stout; and the kiss was pleasant and the compliment
enormous. But what a calamity for a local preacher with a naughty past
to be kissed in full rehearsal by a soprano from Manchester! He knew
that he had to live that kiss down, and to live down also the charge of
theatricality.

Here was a reason, and a very good one, why he deliberately sought the
company of parsons in the middle of the Fair-ground. He had to protect
himself against tongues.


III


"I don't know," said Jock-at-a-Venture to the parsons, gesturing with
his hands and twisting his small, elegant feet, "I don't know as I'm in
favour of stopping these play-acting folk from making a living; stopping
'em by force, that is."

He knew that he had said something shocking, something that when he
joined the group he had not in the least meant to say. He knew that
instead of protecting himself he was exposing himself to danger. But he
did not care. When, as now, he was carried away by an idea, he cared for
naught. And, moreover, he had the consciousness of being cleverer,
acuter, than any of these ministers of religion, than anybody in the
town! His sheer skill and resourcefulness in life had always borne him
safely through every difficulty--from a prize-fight to a soprano's
embrace.

"A strange doctrine, Brother Smith!" said Jock's own pastor.

The other two hummed and hawed, and brought the tips of their fingers
together.

"Nay!" said Jock, persuasively smiling. "'Stead o' bringing 'em to
starvation, bring 'em to the House o' God! Preach the gospel to 'em, and
then when ye've preached the gospel to 'em, happen they'll change their
ways o' their own accord. Or happen they'll put their play-acting to the
service o' God. If there's plays agen drink, why shouldna' there be
plays agen the devil, and _for_ Jesus Christ, our Blessed Redeemer?"

"Good day to you, brethren," said one of the parsons, and departed. Thus
only could he express his horror of Jock's sentiments.

In those days churches and chapels were not so empty that parsons had
to go forth beating up congregations. A pew was a privilege. And those
who did not frequent the means of grace had at any rate the grace to be
ashamed of not doing so. And, further, strolling players, in spite of
John Wesley's exhortations, were not considered salvable. The notion of
trying to rescue them from merited perdition was too fantastic to be
seriously entertained by serious Christians. Finally, the suggested
connection between Jesus Christ and a stage-play was really too
appalling! None but Jock-at-a-Venture would have been capable of such an
idea.

"I think, my friend--" began the second remaining minister.

"Look at that good woman there!" cried Jock-at-a-Venture, interrupting
him with a dramatic out-stretching of the right arm, as he pointed to a
very stout but comely dame, who, seated on a three-legged stool, was
calmly peeling potatoes in front of one of the more resplendent booths.
"Look at that face! Is there no virtue in it? Is there no hope for
salvation in it?"

"None," Jock's pastor replied mournfully. "That woman--her name is
Clowes--is notorious. She has eight children, and she has brought them
all up to her trade. I have made inquiries. The elder daughters are
actresses and married to play-actors, and even the youngest child is
taught to strut on the boards. Her troupe is the largest in the
Midlands."

Jock-at-a-Venture was certainly dashed by this information.

"The more reason," said he, obstinately, "for saving her!... And all
hers!"

The two ministers did not want her to be saved. They liked to think of
the theatre as being beyond the pale. They remembered the time, before
they were ordained, and after, when they had hotly desired to see the
inside of a theatre and to rub shoulders with wickedness. And they took
pleasure in the knowledge that the theatre was always there, and the
wickedness thereof, and the lost souls therein. But Jock-at-a-Venture
genuinely longed, in that ecstasy of his, for the total abolition of all
forms of sin.

"And what would you do to save her, brother?" Jock's pastor inquired
coldly.

"What would I do? I'd go and axe her to come to chapel Sunday, her and
hers. I'd axe her kindly, and I'd crack a joke with her. And I'd get
round her for the Lord's sake."

Both ministers sighed. The same thought was in their hearts, namely,
that brands plucked from the burning (such as Jock) had a disagreeable
tendency to carry piety, as they had carried sin, to the most ridiculous
and inconvenient lengths.


IV


"Those are bonny potatoes, missis!"

"Ay!" The stout woman, the upper part of whose shabby dress seemed to be
subjected to considerable strains, looked at Jock carelessly, and then,
attracted perhaps by his eager face, smiled with a certain facile
amiability.

"But by th' time they're cooked your supper'll be late, I'm reckoning."

"Them potatoes have naught to do with our supper," said Mrs Clowes.
"They're for to-morrow's dinner. There'll be no time for peeling
potatoes to-morrow. Kezia!" She shrilled the name.

A slim little girl showed herself between the heavy curtains of the main
tent of Mrs Clowes's caravanserai.

"Bring Sapphira, too!"

"Those yours?" asked Jock.

"They're mine," said Mrs Clowes. "And I've six more, not counting
grandchildren and sons-in-law like."

"No wonder you want a pailful of potatoes!" said Jock.

Kezia and Sapphira appeared in the gloom. They might have counted
sixteen years together. They were dirty, tousled, graceful and lovely.

"Twins," Jock suggested.

Mrs Clowes nodded. "Off with this pail, now! And mind you don't spill
the water. Here, Kezia! Take the knife. And bring me the other pail."

The children bore away the heavy pail, staggering, eagerly obedient. Mrs
Clowes lifted her mighty form from the stool, shook peelings from the
secret places of her endless apron, and calmly sat down again.

"Ye rule 'em with a rod of iron, missis," said Jock.

She smiled good-humouredly and shrugged her vast shoulders--no mean
physical feat.

"I keep 'em lively," she said. "There's twelve of 'em in my lot, without
th' two babbies. Someone's got to be after 'em all the time."

"And you not thirty-five, I swear!"

"Nay! Ye're wrong."

Sapphira brought the other pail, swinging it. She put it down with a
clatter of the falling handle and scurried off.

"Am I now?" Jock murmured, interested; and, as it were out of sheer
absent-mindedness, he turned the pail wrong side up, and seated himself
on it with a calm that equalled the calm of Mrs Clowes.

It was now nearly dark. The flares of the showmen were answering each
other across the Fair-ground; and presently a young man came and hung
one out above the railed platform of Mrs Clowes's booth; and Mrs Clowes
blinked. From behind the booth floated the sounds of the confused
chatter of men, girls and youngsters, together with the complaint of an
infant. A few yards away from Mrs Clowes was a truss of hay; a pony
sidled from somewhere with false innocence up to this truss, nosed it
cautiously, and then began to bite wisps from it. Occasionally a loud
but mysterious cry swept across the ground. The sky was full of mystery.
Against the sky to the west stood black and clear the silhouette of the
new Town Hall spire, a wondrous erection; and sticking out from it at
one side was the form of a gigantic angel. It was the gold angel which,
from the summit of the spire, has now watched over Bursley for half a
century, but which on that particular Friday had been lifted only
two-thirds of the way to its final home.

Jock-at-a-Venture felt deeply all the influences of the scene and of the
woman. He was one of your romantic creatures; and for him the woman was
magnificent. Her magnificence thrilled.

"And what are you going to say?" she quizzed him. "Sitting on my pail!"

Now to quiz Jock was to challenge him.

"Sitting on your pail, missis," he replied, "I'm going for to say that
you're much too handsome a woman to go down to hell in eternal
damnation."

She was taken aback, but her profession had taught her the art of quick
recovery.

"You belong to that Methody lot," she mildly sneered. "I thought I seed
you talking to them white-chokers."

"I do," said Jock.

"And I make no doubt you think yourself very clever."

"Well," he vouchsafed, "I can splice a rope, shave a head, cure a wart
or a boil, and tell a fine woman with any man in this town. Not to
mention boxing, as I've given up on account of my religion."

"I _was_ handsome once," said Mrs Clowes, with apparent, but not real,
inconsequence. "But I'm all run to fat, like. I've played Portia in my
time. But now it's as much as I can do to get through with Maria Martin
or Belladonna."

"Fat!" Jock protested. "Fat! I wouldn't have an ounce taken off ye for
fifty guineas."

He was so enthusiastic that Mrs Clowes blushed.

"What's this about hell-fire?" she questioned. "I often think of it--I'm
a lonely woman, and I often think of it."

"You lonely!" Jock protested again. "With all them childer?"

"Ay!"

There was a silence.

"See thee here, missis!" he exploded, jumping up from the pail. "Ye must
come to th' Bethesda down yon, on Sunday morning, and hear the word o'
God. It'll be the making on ye."

Mrs Clowes shook her head.

"Nay!"

"And bring yer children," he persisted.

"If it was you as was going to preach like!" she said, looking away.

"It is me as is going to preach," he answered loudly and proudly. "And
I'll preach agen any man in this town for a dollar!"

Jock was forgetting himself: an accident which often happened to him.


V


The Bethesda was crowded on Sunday morning; partly because it was
Martinmas Sunday, and partly because the preacher was Jock-at-a-Venture.
That Jock should have been appointed on the "plan" [rota of preachers]
to discourse in the principal local chapel of the Connexion at such an
important feast showed what extraordinary progress he had already made
in the appreciation of that small public of experts which aided the
parson in drawing up the quarterly plan. At the hands of the larger
public his reception was sure. Some sixteen hundred of the larger public
had crammed themselves into the chapel, and there was not an empty place
either on the ground floor or in the galleries. Even the "orchestra" (as
the "singing-seat" was then called) had visitors in addition to the
choir and the double-bass players. And not a window was open. At that
date it had not occurred to people that fresh air was not a menace to
existence. The whole congregation was sweltering, and rather enjoying
it; for in some strangely subtle manner perspiration seemed to be a help
to religious emotion. Scores of women were fanning themselves; and among
these was a very stout peony-faced woman of about forty in a gorgeous
yellow dress and a red-and-black bonnet, with a large boy and a small
girl under one arm, and a large boy and a small girl under the other
arm. The splendour of the group appeared somewhat at odds with the
penury of the "Free Seats," whither it had been conducted by a steward.

In the pulpit, dominating all, was Jock-at-a-Venture, who sweated like
the rest. He presented a rather noble aspect in his broadcloth, so
different from his careless, shabby week-day attire. His eye was
lighted; his arm raised in a compelling gesture. Pausing effectively, he
lifted a glass with his left hand and sipped. It was the signal that he
had arrived at his peroration. His perorations were famous. And this
morning everybody felt, and he himself knew, that all previous
perorations were to be surpassed. His subject was the wrath to come, and
the transient quality of human life on earth. "Yea," he announced, in
gradually-increasing thunder, "all shall go. And loike the baseless
fabric o' a vision, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the
solemn temples, the great globe itself--Yea, I say, all which it inherit
shall dissolve, and, like this insubstantial payjent faded, leave not a
rack behind."

His voice had fallen for the last words. After a dramatic silence, he
finished, in a whisper almost, and with eyebrows raised and staring gaze
directed straight at the vast woman in yellow: "We are such stuff as
drames are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep. May God
have mercy on us. Hymn 442."

The effect was terrific. Men sighed and women wept, in relief that the
strain was past. Jock was an orator; he wielded the orator's dominion.
Well he knew, and well they all knew, that not a professional preacher
in the Five Towns could play on a congregation as he did. For when Jock
was roused you could nigh see the waves of emotion sweeping across the
upturned faces of his hearers like waves across a wheatfield on a windy
day.

And this morning he had been roused.


VI


But in the vestry after the service he met enemies, in the shape and
flesh of the chapel-steward and the circuit-steward, Mr Brett and Mr
Hanks respectively. Both these important officials were local preachers,
but, unfortunately, their godliness did not protect them against the
ravages of jealousy. Neither of them could stir a congregation, nor even
fill a country chapel.

"Brother Smith," said Jabez Hanks, shutting the door of the vestry. He
was a tall man with a long, greyish beard and no moustache. "Brother
Smith, it is borne in upon me and my brother here to ask ye a question."

"Ask!" said Jock.

"Were them yer own words--about cloud-capped towers and baseless
fabrics and the like? I ask ye civilly."

"And I answer ye civilly, they were," replied Jock.

"Because I have here," said Jabez Hanks, maliciously, "Dod's _Beauties
o' Shakspere_, where I find them very same words, taken from a
stage-play called _The Tempest_."

Jock went a little pale as Jabez Hanks opened the book.

"They may be Shakspere's words too," said Jock, lightly.

"A fortnight ago, at Moorthorne Chapel, I suspected it," said Jabez.

"Suspected what?"

"Suspected ye o' quoting Shakspere in our pulpits."

"And cannot a man quote in a sermon? Why, Jabez Hanks, I've heard ye
quote Matthew Henry by the fathom."

"Ye've never heard me quote a stage-play in a pulpit, Brother Smith,"
said Jabez Hanks, majestically. "And as long as I'm chapel-steward it
wunna' be tolerated in this chapel."

"Wunna it?" Jock put in defiantly.

"It's a defiling of the Lord's temple; that's what it is!" Jabez Hanks
continued. "Ye make out as ye're against stage-plays at the Fair, and
yet ye come here and mouth 'em in a Christian pulpit. _You_ agen
stage-plays! Weren't ye seen talking by the hour to one o' them trulls,
Friday night--? And weren't ye seen peeping through th' canvas last
night? And now--"

"Now what?" Jock inquired, approaching Jabez on his springy toes, and
looking up at Jabez's great height.

Jabez took breath. "Now ye bring yer fancy women into the House o' God!
You--a servant o' Christ, you--"

Jock-at-a-Venture interrupted the sentence with his daring fist, which
seemed to lift Jabez from the ground by his chin, and then to let him
fall in a heap, as though his clothes had been a sack containing loose
bones.

"A good-day to ye, Brother Brett," said Jock, reaching for his hat, and
departing with a slam of the vestry door.

He emerged at the back of the chapel and got by "back-entries" into
Aboukir Street, up which he strolled with a fine show of tranquillity,
as far as the corner of Trafalgar Road, where stood and stands the great
Dragon Hotel. The congregations of several chapels were dispersing
slowly round about this famous corner, and Jock had to salute several of
his own audience. Then suddenly he saw Mrs Clowes and her four children
enter the tap-room door of the Dragon.

He hesitated one second and followed the variegated flotilla and its
convoy.

The tap-room was fairly full of both sexes. But among them Jock and Mrs
Clowes and her children were the only persons who had been to church or
chapel.

"Here's preacher, mother!" Kezia whispered, blushing, to Mrs Clowes.

"Eh," said Mrs Clowes, turning very amiably. "It's never you, mester! It
was that hot in that chapel we're all on us dying of thirst.... Four
gills and a pint, please!" (This to the tapster.)

"And give me a pint," said Jock, desperately.

They all sat down familiarly. That a mother should take her children
into a public-house and give them beer, and on a Sunday of all days, and
immediately after a sermon! That a local preacher should go direct from
the vestry to the gin-palace and there drink ale with a strolling
player! These phenomena were simply and totally inconceivable! And yet
Jock was in presence of them, assisting at them, positively acting in
them! And in spite of her enormities, Mrs Clowes still struck him as a
most agreeable, decent, kindly, motherly woman--quite apart from her
handsomeness. And her offspring, each hidden to the eyes behind a mug,
were a very well-behaved lot of children.

"It does me good," said Mrs Clowes, quaffing. "And ye need summat to
keep ye up in these days! We did _Belphegor_ and _The Witch_ and a
harlequinade last night. And not one of these children got to bed before
half after midnight. But I was determined to have 'em at chapel this
morning. And not sorry I am I went! Eh, mester, what a Virginius you'd
ha' made! I never heard preaching like it--not as I've heard much!"

"And you'll never hear anything like it again, missis," said Jock, "for
I've preached my last sermon."

"Nay, nay!" Mrs Clowes deprecated.

"I've preached my last sermon," said Jock again. "And if I've saved a
soul wi' it, missis...!" He looked at her steadily and then drank.

"I won't say as ye haven't," said Mrs Clowes, lowering her eyes.


VII


Rather less than a week later, on a darkening night, a van left the town
of Bursley by the Moorthorne Road on its way to Axe-in-the-Moors, which
is the metropolis of the wild wastes that cut off northern Staffordshire
from Derbyshire. This van was the last of Mrs Clowes's caravanserai, and
almost the last to leave the Fair. Owing to popular interest in the
events of Jock-at-a-Venture's public career, in whose meshes Mrs Clowes
had somehow got caught, the booth of Mrs Clowes had succeeded beyond any
other booth, and had kept open longer and burned more naphtha and taken
far more money. The other vans of the stout lady's enterprise (there
were three in all) had gone forward in advance, with all her elder
children and her children-in-law and her grandchildren, and the heavy
wood and canvas of the booth. Mrs Clowes, transacting her own business
herself, from habit, invariably brought up the rear of her procession
out of a town; and sometimes her leisurely manner of settling with the
town authorities for water, ground-space and other necessary
com-modities, left her several miles behind her tribe.

The mistress's van, though it would not compare with the glorious
vehicles that showmen put upon the road in these days, was a roomy and
dignified specimen, and about as good as money could then buy. The front
portion consisted of a parlour and kitchen combined, and at the back was
a dormitory. In the dormitory Kezia, Sapphira and the youngest of their
brothers were sleeping hard. In the parlour and kitchen sat Mrs Clowes,
warmly enveloped, holding the reins with her right hand and a shabby,
paper-covered book in her left hand. The book was the celebrated play,
_The Gamester_, and Mrs Clowes was studying therein the rôle of
Dulcibel. Not a rôle for which Mrs Clowes was physically fitted; but her
prolific daughter, Hephzibah, to whom it appertained by prescription,
could not possibly play it any longer, and would, indeed, be
incapacitated from any rôle whatever for at least a month. And the
season was not yet over; for folk were hardier in those days.

The reins stretched out from the careless hand of Mrs Clowes and
vanished through a slit between the double doors, which had been fixed
slightly open. Mrs Clowes's gaze, penetrating now and then the slit,
could see the gleam of her lamp's ray on a horse's flank. The only
sounds were the hoof-falls of the horse, the crunching of the wheels on
the wet road, the occasional rattle of a vessel in the racks when the
van happened to descend violently into a rut, and the steady murmur of
Mrs Clowes's voice rehearsing the grandiloquence of the part of
Dulcibel.

And then there was another sound, which Mrs Clowes did not notice until
it had been repeated several times; the cry of a human voice out on the
road:

"Missis!"

She opened wide the doors of the van and looked prudently forth.
Naturally, inevitably, Jock-at-a-Venture was trudging alongside, level
with the horse's tail! He stepped nimbly--he was a fine walker--but none
the less his breath came short and quick, for he had been making haste
up a steepish hill in order to overtake the van. And he carried a bundle
and a stick in his hands, and on his head a superb but heavy beaver hat.

"I'm going your way, missis," said Jock.

"Seemingly," agreed Mrs Clowes, with due caution.

"Canst gi' us a lift?" he asked.

"And welcome," she said, her face changing like a flash to suit the
words.

"Nay, ye needna' stop!" shouted Jock.

In an instant he had leapt easily up into the van, and was seated by her
side therein on the children's stool.

"That's a hat--to travel in!" observed Mrs Clowes.

Jock removed the hat, examined it lovingly and replaced it.

"I couldn't ha' left it behind," said he, with a sigh, and continued
rapidly in another voice: "Missis, we'n seen a pretty good lot o' each
other this wik, and yet ye slips off o'this'n, without saying good-bye,
nor a word about yer soul!"

Mrs Clowes heaved her enormous breast and shook the reins.

"I've had my share of trouble," she remarked mysteriously.

"Tell me about it, missis!"

And lo! in a moment, lured on by his smile, she was telling him quite
familiarly about the ailments of her younger children, the escapades of
her unmarried daughter aged fifteen, the surliness of one of her
sons-in-law, the budding dishonesty of the other, the perils of infant
life, and the need of repainting the big van and getting new pictures
for the front of the booth. Indeed, all the worries of a queen of the
road!

"And I'm so fat!" she said, "and yet I'm not forty, and shan't be for
two year--and me a grandmother!"

"I knowed it!" Jock exclaimed.

"If I wasn't such a heap o' flesh--"

"Ye're the grandest heap o' flesh as I ever set eyes on, and I'm telling
ye!" Jock interrupted her.


VIII


Then there were disconcerting sounds out in the world beyond the van.
The horse stopped. The double doors were forced open from without, and a
black figure, with white eyes in a black face, filled the doorway. The
van had passed through the mining village of Moorthorne, and this was
one of the marauding colliers on the outskirts thereof. When the
colliers had highroad business in the night they did not trouble to wash
their faces after work. The coal-dust was a positive aid to them, for it
gave them a most useful resemblance to the devil.

Jock-at-a-Venture sprang up as though launched from a catapult.

"Is it thou, Jock?" cried the collier, astounded.

"Ay, lad!" said Jock, briefly.

And caught the collier a blow under the chin that sent him flying into
the obscurity of the night. Other voices sounded in the road. Jock
rushed to the doorway, taking a pistol from his pocket. And Mrs Clowes,
all dithering like a jelly, heard shots. The horse started into a
gallop. The reins escaped from the hands of the mistress, but Jock
secured them, and lashed the horse to greater speed with the loose ends
of them.

"I've saved thee, missis!" he said later. "I give him a regular lifter
under the gob, same as I give Jabez, Sunday. But where's the sense of a
lone woman wandering about dark roads of a night wi' a pack of
childer?... Them childer 'ud ha' slept through th' battle o' Trafalgar,"
he added.

Mrs Clowes wept.

"Well may you say it!" she murmured. "And it's not the first time as
I've been set on!"

"Thou'rt nowt but a girl, for all thy flesh and thy grandchilder!" said
Jock. "Dry thy eyes, or I'll dry 'em for thee!"

She smiled in her weeping. It was an invitation to him to carry out his
threat.

And while he was drying her eyes for her, she asked:

"How far are ye going? Axe?"

"Ay! And beyond! Can I act, I ask ye? Can I fight, I ask ye? Can ye do
without me, I ask ye, you a lone woman? And yer soul, as is mine to
save?"

"But that business o' yours at Bursley?"

"Here's my bundle," he said, "and here's my best hat. And I've money and
a pistol in my pocket. The only thing I've clean forgot is my cornet;
but I'll send for it and I'll play it at my wedding. I'm
Jock-at-a-Venture."

And while the van was rumbling in the dark night across the waste and
savage moorland, and while the children were sleeping hard at the back
of the van, and while the crockery was restlessly clinking in the racks
and the lamp swaying, and while he held the reins, the thin, lithe,
greying man contrived to take into his arms the vast and amiable
creature whom he desired. And the van became a vehicle of high romance.




THE HEROISM OF THOMAS CHADWICK

I


"Have you heard about Tommy Chadwick?" one gossip asked another in
Bursley.

"No."

"He's a tram-conductor now."

This information occasioned surprise, as it was meant to do, the
expression on the faces of both gossips indicating a pleasant curiosity
as to what Tommy Chadwick would be doing next.

Thomas Chadwick was a "character" in the Five Towns, and of a somewhat
unusual sort. "Characters" in the Five Towns are generally either very
grim or very jolly, either exceptionally shrewd or exceptionally simple;
and they nearly always, in their outward aspect, depart from the
conventional. Chadwick was not thus. Aged fifty or so, he was a portly
and ceremonious man with an official gait. He had been a policeman in
his youth, and he never afterwards ceased to look like a policeman in
plain clothes. The authoritative mien of the policeman refused to quit
his face. Yet, beneath that mien, few men (of his size) were less
capable of exerting authority than Chadwick. He was, at bottom, a weak
fellow. He knew it himself, and everybody knew it. He had left the
police force because he considered that the strain was beyond his
strength. He had the constitution of a she-ass, and the calm, terrific
appetite of an elephant; but he maintained that night duty in January
was too much for him. He was then twenty-seven, with a wife and two
small girls. He abandoned the uniform with dignity. He did everything
with dignity. He looked for a situation with dignity, saw his wife and
children go hungry with dignity, and even went short himself with
dignity. He continually got fatter, waxing on misfortune. And--another
curious thing--he could always bring out, when advisable, a shining suit
of dark blue broadcloth, a clean collar and a fancy necktie. He was not
a consistent dandy, but he could be a dandy when he liked.

Of course, he had no trade. The manual skill of a policeman is useless
outside the police force. One cannot sell it in other markets. People
said that Chadwick was a fool to leave the police force. He was; but he
was a sublime and dignified fool in his idle folly. What he wanted was a
position of trust, a position where nothing would be required from him
but a display of portliness, majesty and incorruptibility. Such
positions are not easy to discover. Employers had no particular
objection to portliness, majesty and incorruptibility, but as a rule
they demanded something else into the bargain. Chadwick's first
situation after his defection from the police was that of night watchman
in an earthenware manufactory down by the canal at Shawport. He accepted
it regretfully, and he firmly declined to see the irony of fate in
forcing such a post on a man who conscientiously objected to night duty.
He did not maintain this post long, and his reasons for giving it up
were kept a dark secret. Some said that Chadwick's natural tendency to
sleep at night had been taken amiss by his master.

Thenceforward he went through transformation after transformation,
outvying the legendary chameleon. He was a tobacconist, a park-keeper, a
rent collector, a commission agent, a clerk, another clerk, still
another clerk, a sweetstuff seller, a fried fish merchant, a coal
agent, a book agent, a pawnbroker's assistant, a dog-breeder, a
door-keeper, a board-school keeper, a chapel-keeper, a turnstile man at
football matches, a coachman, a carter, a warehouseman, and a
chucker-out at the Empire Music Hall at Hanbridge. But he was nothing
long. The explanations of his changes were invariably vague, unseizable.
And his dignity remained unimpaired, together with his broadcloth. He
not only had dignity for himself, but enough left over to decorate the
calling which he happened for the moment to be practising. He was
dignified in the sale of rock-balls, and especially so in encounters
with his creditors; and his grandeur when out of a place was a model to
all unemployed.

Further, he was ever a pillar and aid of the powers. He worshipped
order, particularly the old order, and wealth and correctness. He was
ever with the strong against the weak, unless the weak happened to be an
ancient institution, in which case he would support it with all the
valour of his convictions. Needless to say, he was a very active
politician. Perhaps the activity of his politics had something to do
with the frequency of his transformations--for he would always be his
somewhat spectacular self; he would always call his soul his own, and he
would quietly accept a snub from no man.

And now he was a tram-conductor. Things had come to that.

In the old days of the steam trams, where there were only about a score
of tram-conductors and eight miles of line in all the Five Towns, the
profession of tram-conductor had still some individuality in it, and a
conductor was something more than a number. But since the British
Electric Traction Company had invaded the Five Towns, and formed a
subsidiary local company, and constructed dozens of miles of new line,
and electrified everything, and raised prices, and abolished season
tickets, and quickened services, and built hundreds of cars and engaged
hundreds of conductors--since then a tram-conductor had been naught but
an unhuman automaton in a vast machine-like organization. And passengers
no longer had their favourite conductors.

Gossips did not precisely see Thomas Chadwick as an unhuman automaton
for the punching of tickets and the ringing of bells and the ejaculation
of street names. He was never meant by nature to be part of a system.
Gossips hoped for the best. That Chadwick, at his age and with his
girth, had been able, in his extremity, to obtain a conductorship was
proof that he could bring influences to bear in high quarters. Moreover,
he was made conductor of one of two cars that ran on a little branch
line between Bursley and Moorthorne, so that to the village of
Moorthorne he was still somebody, and the chances were just one to two
that persons who travelled by car from or to Moorthorne did so under the
majestic wing of Thomas Chadwick. His manner of starting a car was
unique and stupendous. He might have been signalling "full speed ahead"
from the bridge of an Atlantic liner.


II


Chadwick's hours aboard his Atlantic liner were so long as to interfere
seriously, not only with his leisure, but with his political activities.
And this irked him the more for the reason that at that period local
politics in the Five Towns were extremely agitated and interesting.
People became politicians who had never been politicians before. The
question was, whether the Five Towns, being already one town in
practice, should not become one town in theory--indeed, the twelfth
largest town in the United Kingdom! And the district was divided into
Federationists and anti-Federationists. Chadwick was a convinced
anti-Federationist. Chadwick, with many others, pointed to the history
of Bursley, "the mother of the Five Towns," a history which spread over
a thousand years and more; and he asked whether "old Bursley" was to
lose her identity merely because Hanbridge had insolently outgrown her.
A poll was soon to be taken on the subject, and feelings were growing
hotter every day, and rosettes of different colours flowered thicker and
thicker in the streets, until nothing but a strong sense of politeness
prevented members of the opposing parties from breaking each other's
noses in St Luke's Square.

Now on a certain Tuesday afternoon in spring Tommy Chadwick's car stood
waiting, opposite the Conservative Club, to depart to Moorthorne. And
Tommy Chadwick stood in all his portliness on the platform. The driver,
a mere nobody, was of course at the front of the car. The driver held
the power, but he could not use it until Tommy Chadwick gave him
permission; and somehow Tommy's imperial attitude seemed to indicate
this important fact.

There was not a soul in the car.

Then Mrs Clayton Vernon came hurrying up the slope of Duck Bank and
signalled to Chadwick to wait for her. He gave her a wave of the arm,
kindly and yet deferential, as if to say, "Be at ease, noble dame! You
are in the hands of a man of the world, who knows what is due to your
position. This car shall stay here till you reach it, even if Thomas
Chadwick loses his situation for failing to keep time."

And Mrs Clayton Vernon puffed into the car. And Thomas Chadwick gave her
a helping hand, and raised his official cap to her with a dignified
sweep; and his glance seemed to be saying to the world, "There, you see
what happens when _I_ deign to conduct a car! Even Mrs Clayton Vernon
travels by car then." And the whole social level of the electric
tramway system was apparently uplifted, and conductors became fine,
portly court-chamberlains.

For Mrs Clayton Vernon really was a personage in the town--perhaps,
socially, the leading personage. A widow, portly as Tommy himself,
wealthy, with a family tradition behind her, and the true grand manner
in every gesture! Her entertainments at her house at Hillport were
unsurpassed, and those who had been invited to them seldom forgot to
mention the fact. Thomas, a person not easily staggered, was
nevertheless staggered to see her travelling by car to Moorthorne--even
in his car, which to him in some subtle way was not like common
cars--for she was seldom seen abroad apart from her carriage. She kept
two horses. Assuredly both horses must be laid up together, or her
coachman ill. Anyhow, there she was, in Thomas's car, splendidly dressed
in a new spring gown of flowered silk.

"Thank you," she said very sweetly to Chadwick, in acknowledgment of his
assistance.

Then three men of no particular quality mounted the car.

"How do, Tommy?" one of them carelessly greeted the august conductor.
This impertinent youth was Paul Ford, a solicitor's clerk, who often
went to Moorthorne because his employer had a branch office there, open
twice a week.

Tommy did not respond, but rather showed his displeasure. He hated to be
called Tommy, except by a few intimate coevals.

"Now then, hurry up, please!" he said coldly.

"Right oh! your majesty," said another of the men, and they all three
laughed.

What was still worse, they all three wore the Federationist rosette,
which was red to the bull in Thomas Chadwick. It was part of Tommy's
political creed that Federationists were the "rag, tag, and bob-tail" of
the town. But as he was a tram-conductor, though not an ordinary
tram-conductor, his mouth was sealed, and he could not tell his
passengers what he thought of them.

Just as he was about to pull the starting bell, Mrs Clayton Vernon
sprang up with a little "Oh, I was quite forgetting!" and almost darted
out of the car. It was not quite a dart, for she was of full habit, but
the alacrity of her movement was astonishing. She must have forgotten
something very important.

An idea in the nature of a political argument suddenly popped into
Tommy's head, and it was too much for him. He was obliged to let it out.
To the winds with that impartiality which a tram company expects from
its conductors!

"Ah!" he remarked, jerking his elbow in the direction of Mrs Clayton
Vernon and pointedly addressing his three Federationist passengers,
"she's a lady, she is! _She_ won't travel with anybody, she won't! _She
chooses her company_--_and quite right too, I say_!"

And then he started the car. He felt himself richly avenged by this
sally for the "Tommy" and the "your majesty" and the sneering laughter.

Paul Ford winked very visibly at his companions, but made no answering
remark. And Thomas Chadwick entered the interior of the car to collect
fares. In his hands this operation became a rite. His gestures seemed to
say, "No one ever appreciated the importance of the vocation of
tram-conductor until I came. We will do this business solemnly and
meticulously. Mind what money you give me, count your change, and don't
lose, destroy, or deface this indispensable ticket that I hand to you.
Do you hear the ting of my bell? It is a sign of my high office. I am
fully authorized."

When he had taken his toll he stood at the door of the car, which was
now jolting and climbing past the loop-line railway station, and
continued his address to the company about the aristocratic and
exclusive excellences of his friend Mrs Clayton Vernon. He proceeded to
explain the demerits and wickedness of federation, and to descant on the
absurdity of those who publicly wore the rosettes of the Federation
party, thus branding themselves as imbeciles and knaves; in fact, his
tongue was loosed. Although he stooped to accept the wages of a
tram-conductor, he was not going to sacrifice the great political right
of absolutely free speech.

"If I wasn't the most good-natured man on earth, Tommy Chadwick," said
Paul Ford, "I should write to the tram company to-night, and you'd get
the boot to-morrow."

"All I say is," persisted the singular conductor--"all I say is--she's a
lady, she is--a regular real lady! She chooses her company--and quite
right too! That I do say, and nobody's going to stop my mouth." His
manner was the least in the world heated.

"What's that?" asked Paul Ford, with a sudden start, not inquiring what
Thomas Chadwick's mouth was, but pointing to an object which was lying
on the seat in the corner which Mrs Clayton Vernon had too briefly
occupied.

He rose and picked up the object, which had the glitter of gold.

"Give it here," said Thomas Chadwick, commandingly. "It's none of your
business to touch findings in my car;" and he snatched the object from
Paul Ford's hands.

It was so brilliant and so obviously costly, however, that he was
somehow obliged to share the wonder of it with his passengers. The find
levelled all distinctions between them. A purse of gold chain-work, it
indiscreetly revealed that it was gorged with riches. When you shook it
the rustle of banknotes was heard, and the chink of sovereigns, and
through the meshes of the purse could be seen the white of valuable
paper and the tawny orange discs for which mankind is so ready to commit
all sorts of sin. Thomas Chadwick could not forbear to open the
contrivance, and having opened it he could not forbear to count its
contents. There were, in that purse, seven five-pound notes, fifteen
sovereigns, and half a sovereign, and the purse itself was probably
worth twelve or fifteen pounds as mere gold.

"There's some that would leave their heads behind 'em if they could!"
observed Paul Ford.

Thomas Chadwick glowered at him, as if to warn him that in the presence
of Thomas Chadwick noble dames could not be insulted with impunity.

"Didn't I say she was a lady?" said Chadwick, holding up the purse as
proof. "It's lucky it's _me_ as has laid hands on it!" he added, plainly
implying that the other occupants of the car were thieves whenever they
had the chance.

"Well," said Paul Ford, "no doubt you'll get your reward all right!"

"It's not--" Chadwick began; but at that moment the driver stopped the
car with a jerk, in obedience to a waving umbrella. The conductor, who
had not yet got what would have been his sea-legs if he had been captain
of an Atlantic liner, lurched forward, and then went out on to the
platform to greet a new fare, and his sentence was never finished.


III


That day happened to be the day of Thomas Chadwick's afternoon off; at
least, of what the tram company called an afternoon off. That is to say,
instead of ceasing work at eleven-thirty p.m. he finished at six-thirty
p.m. In the ordinary way the company housed its last Moorthorne car at
eleven-thirty (Moorthorne not being a very nocturnal village), and gave
the conductors the rest of the evening to spend exactly as they liked;
but once a week, in turn, it generously allowed them a complete
afternoon beginning at six-thirty.

Now on this afternoon, instead of going home for tea, Thomas Chadwick,
having delivered over his insignia and takings to the inspector in
Bursley market-place, rushed away towards a car bound for Hillport. A
policeman called out to him:

"Hi! Chadwick!"

"What's up?" asked Chadwick, unwillingly stopping.

"Mrs Clayton Vernon's been to the station an hour ago or hardly, about a
purse as she says she thinks she must have left in your car. I was just
coming across to tell your inspector."

"Tell him, then, my lad," said Chadwick, curtly, and hurried on towards
the Hillport car. His manner to policemen always mingled the veteran
with the comrade, and most of them indeed regarded him as an initiate of
the craft. Still, his behaviour on this occasion did somewhat surprise
the young policeman who had accosted him. And undoubtedly Thomas
Chadwick was scarcely acting according to the letter of the law. His
proper duty was to hand over all articles found in his car instantly to
the police--certainly not to keep them concealed on his person with a
view to restoring them with his own hands to their owners. But Thomas
Chadwick felt that, having once been a policeman, he was at liberty to
interpret the law to suit his own convenience. He caught the Hillport
car, and nodded the professional nod to its conductor, asking him a
technical question, and generally showing to the other passengers on the
platform that he was not as they, and that he had important official
privileges. Of course, he travelled free; and of course he stopped the
car when, its conductor being inside, two ladies signalled to it at the
bottom of Oldcastle Street. He had meant to say nothing whatever about
his treasure and his errand to the other conductor; but somehow, when
fares had been duly collected, and these two stood chatting on the
platform, the gold purse got itself into the conversation, and presently
the other conductor knew the entire history, and had even had a glimpse
of the purse itself.

Opposite the entrance to Mrs Clayton Vernon's grounds at Hillport Thomas
Chadwick slipped neatly, for all his vast bulk, off the swiftly-gliding
car. (A conductor on a car but not on duty would sooner perish by a
heavy fall than have a car stopped in order that he might descend from
it.) And Thomas Chadwick heavily crunched the gravel of the drive
leading up to Mrs Clayton Vernon's house, and imperiously rang the bell.

"Mrs Clayton Vernon in?" he officially asked the responding servant.

"She's _in_," said the servant. Had Thomas Chadwick been wearing his
broadcloth she would probably have added "sir."

"Well, will you please tell her that Mr Chadwick--Thomas Chadwick--wants
to speak to her?"

"Is it about the purse?" the servant questioned, suddenly brightening
into eager curiosity.

"Never you mind what it's about, miss," said Thomas Chadwick, sternly.

At the same moment Mrs Clayton Vernon's grey-curled head appeared behind
the white cap of the servant. Probably she had happened to catch some
echo of Thomas Chadwick's great rolling voice. The servant retired.

"Good-evening, m'm," said Thomas Chadwick, raising his hat airily.
"Good-evening." He beamed.

"So you did find it?" said Mrs Vernon, calmly smiling. "I felt sure it
would be all right."

"Oh, yes, m'm." He tried to persuade himself that this sublime
confidence was characteristic of great ladies, and a laudable symptom
of aristocracy. But he would have preferred her to be a little less
confident. After all, in the hands of a conductor less honourable than
himself, of a common conductor, the purse might not have been so "all
right" as all that! He would have preferred to witness the change on Mrs
Vernon's features from desperate anxiety to glad relief. After all, £50,
10s. was money, however rich you were!

"Have you got it with you?" asked Mrs Vernon.

"Yes'm," said he. "I thought I'd just step up with it myself, so as to
be sure."

"It's very good of you!"

"Not at all," said he; and he produced the purse. "I think you'll find
it as it should be."

Mrs Vernon gave him a courtly smile as she thanked him.

"I'd like ye to count it, ma'am," said Chadwick, as she showed no
intention of even opening the purse.

"If you wish it," said she, and counted her wealth and restored it to
the purse. "_Quite_ right--_quite_ right! Fifty pounds and ten
shillings," she said pleasantly. "I'm very much obliged to you,
Chadwick."

"Not at all, m'm!" He was still standing in the sheltered porch.

An idea seemed to strike Mrs Clayton Vernon.

"Would you like something to drink?" she asked.

"Well, thank ye, m'm," said Thomas.

"Maria," said Mrs Vernon, calling to someone within the house, "bring
this man a glass of beer." And she turned again to Chadwick, smitten
with another idea. "Let me see. Your eldest daughter has two little
boys, hasn't she?"

"Yes'm," said Thomas--"twins."

"I thought so. Her husband is my cook's cousin. Well, here's two
threepenny bits--one for each of them." With some trouble she extracted
the coins from a rather shabby leather purse--evidently her household
purse. She bestowed them upon the honest conductor with another grateful
and condescending smile. "I hope you don't _mind_ taking them for the
chicks," she said. "I _do_ like giving things to children. It's so much
_nicer_, isn't it?"

"Certainly, m'm."

Then the servant brought the glass of beer, and Mrs Vernon, with yet
another winning smile, and yet more thanks, left him to toss it off on
the mat, while the servant waited for the empty glass.


IV


On the following Friday afternoon young Paul Ford was again on the
Moorthorne car, and subject to the official ministrations of Thomas
Chadwick. Paul Ford was a man who never bore malice when the bearing of
malice might interfere with the gratification of his sense of humour.
Many men--perhaps most men--after being so grossly insulted by a
tram-conductor as Paul Ford had been insulted by Chadwick, would at the
next meeting have either knocked the insulter down or coldly ignored
him. But Paul Ford did neither. (In any case, Thomas Chadwick would have
wanted a deal of knocking down.) For some reason, everything that Thomas
Chadwick said gave immense amusement to Paul Ford. So the young man
commenced the conversation in the usual way:

"How do, Tommy?"

The car on this occasion was coming down from Moorthorne into Bursley,
with its usual bump and rattle of windows. As Thomas Chadwick made no
reply, Paul Ford continued:

"How much did she give you--the perfect lady, I mean?"

Paul Ford was sitting near the open door. Thomas Chadwick gazed
absently at the Town Park, with its terra-cotta fountains and terraces,
and beyond the Park, at the smoke rising from the distant furnaces of
Red Cow. He might have been lost in deep meditation upon the meanings of
life; he might have been prevented from hearing Paul Ford's question by
the tremendous noise of the car. He made no sign. Then all of a sudden
he turned almost fiercely on Paul Ford and glared at him.

"Ye want to know how much she gave me, do ye?" he demanded hotly.

"Yes," said Paul Ford.

"How much she gave me for taking her that there purse?" Tommy Chadwick
temporized.

He was obliged to temporize, because he could not quite resolve to seize
the situation and deal with it once for all in a manner favourable to
his dignity and to the ideals which he cherished.

"Yes," said Paul Ford.

"Well, I'll tell ye," said Thomas Chadwick--"though I don't know as it's
any business of yours. But, as you're so curious!... She didn't give me
anything. She asked me to have a little refreshment, like the lady she
is. But she knew better than to offer Thomas Chadwick any pecooniary
reward for giving her back something as she'd happened to drop. She's a
lady, she is!"

"Oh!" said Paul Ford. "It don't cost much, being a lady!"

"But I'll tell ye what she _did_ do," Thomas Chadwick went on, anxious,
now that he had begun so well, to bring the matter to an artistic
conclusion--"I'll tell ye what she did do. She give me a sovereign
apiece for my grandsons--my eldest daughter's twins." Then, after an
effective pause: "Ye can put that in your pipe and smoke it!... A
sovereign apiece!"

"And have you handed it over?" Paul Ford inquired mildly, after a
period of soft whistling.

"I've started two post-office savings bank accounts for 'em," said
Thomas Chadwick, with ferocity.

The talk stopped, and nothing whatever occurred until the car halted at
the railway station to take up passengers. The heart of Thomas Chadwick
gave a curious little jump when he saw Mrs Clayton Vernon coming out of
the station and towards his car. (Her horses must have been still lame
or her coachman still laid aside.) She boarded the car, smiling with a
quite particular effulgence upon Thomas Chadwick, and he greeted her
with what he imagined to be the true antique chivalry. And she sat down
in the corner opposite to Paul Ford, beaming.

When Thomas Chadwick came, with great respect, to demand her fare, she
said:

"By the way, Chadwick, it's such a short distance from the station to
the town, I think I should have walked and saved a penny. But I wanted
to speak to you. I wasn't aware, last Tuesday, that your other daughter
got married last year and now has a dear little baby. I gave you
threepenny bits each for those dear little twins. Here's another one for
the other baby, I think I ought to treat all your grandchildren
alike--otherwise your daughters might be jealous of each other"--she
smiled archly, to indicate that this passage was humorous--"and there's
no knowing what might happen!"

Mrs Clayton Vernon always enunciated her remarks in a loud and clear
voice, so that Paul Ford could not have failed to hear every word. A
faint but beatific smile concealed itself roguishly about Paul Ford's
mouth, and he looked with a rapt expression on an advertisement above
Mrs Clayton Vernon's head, which assured him that, with a certain soap,
washing-day became a pleasure.

Thomas Chadwick might have flung the threepenny bit into the road. He
might have gone off into language unseemly in a tram-conductor and a
grandfather. He might have snatched Mrs Clayton Vernon's bonnet off and
stamped on it. He might have killed Paul Ford (for it was certainly Paul
Ford with whom he was the most angry). But he did none of these things.
He said, in his best unctuous voice:

"Thank you, m'm, I'm sure!"

And, at the journey's end, when the passengers descended, he stared a
harsh stare, without winking, full in the face of Paul Ford, and he
courteously came to the aid of Mrs Clayton Vernon. He had proclaimed Mrs
Clayton Vernon to be his ideal of a true lady, and he was heroically
loyal to his ideal, a martyr to the cause he had espoused. Such a man
was not fitted to be a tram-conductor, and the Five Towns Electric
Traction Company soon discovered his unfitness--so that he was again
thrown upon the world.




UNDER THE CLOCK

I


It was one of those swift and violent marriages which occur when the
interested parties are so severely wounded by the arrow of love that
only immediate and constant mutual nursing will save them from a fatal
issue. (So they think.) Hence when Annie came from Sneyd to inhabit the
house in Birches Street, Hanbridge, which William Henry Brachett had
furnished for her, she really knew very little of William Henry save
that he was intensely lovable, and that she was intensely in love with
him. Their acquaintance extended over three months; And she knew equally
little of the manners and customs of the Five Towns. For although Sneyd
lies but a few miles from the immense seat of pottery manufacture, it is
not as the Five Towns are. It is not feverish, grimy, rude, strenuous,
Bacchic, and wicked. It is a model village, presided over by the
Countess of Chell. The people of the Five Towns go there on Thursday
afternoons (eightpence, third class return), as if they were going to
Paradise. Thus, indeed, it was that William Henry had met Annie,
daughter of a house over whose door were writ the inviting words, "Tea
and Hot Water Provided."

There were a hundred and forty-two residences in Birches Street,
Hanbridge, all alike, differing only in the degree of cleanliness of
their window-curtains. Two front doors together, and then two
bow-windows, and then two front doors again, and so on all up the street
and all down the street. Life was monotonous, but on the whole
respectable. Annie came of an economical family, and, previous to the
wedding, she had been afraid that William Henry's ideal of economy
might fall short of her own. In this she was mistaken. In fact, she was
startlingly mistaken. It was some slight shock to her to be informed by
William Henry that owing to slackness of work the honeymoon ought to be
reduced to two days. Still, she agreed to the proposal with joy. (For
her life was going to be one long honeymoon.) When they returned from
the brief honeymoon, William Henry took eight shillings from her, out of
the money he had given her, and hurried off to pay it into the Going
Away Club, and there was scarcity for a few days. This happened in
March. She had then only a vague idea of what the Going Away Club was.
But from William Henry's air, and his fear lest he might be late, she
gathered that the Going Away Club must be a very important institution.
Brachett, for a living, painted blue Japanese roses on vases at Gimson &
Nephews' works. He was nearly thirty years of age, and he had never done
anything else but paint blue Japanese roses on vases. When the demand
for blue Japanese roses on vases was keen, he could earn what is called
"good money"--that is to say, quite fifty shillings a week. But the
demand for blue Japanese roses on vases was subject to the caprices of
markets--especially Colonial markets--and then William Henry had
undesired days of leisure, and brought home less than fifty shillings,
sometimes considerably less. Still, the household over which Annie
presided was a superiorly respectable household and William Henry's
income was, week in, week out, one of the princeliest in the street; and
certainly Annie's window-curtains, and her gilt-edged Bible and
artificial flowers displayed on a small table between the
window-curtains was not to be surpassed. Further, William was "steady,"
and not quite raving mad about football matches; nor did he bet on
horses, dogs or pigeons.

Nevertheless Annie--although, mind you, extraordinarily happy--found
that her new existence, besides being monotonous, was somewhat hard,
narrow and lacking in spectacular delights. Whenever there was any
suggestion of spending more money than usual, William Henry's fierce
chin would stick out in a formidable way, and his voice would become
harsh, and in the result more money than usual was not spent. His
notion of an excursion, of a wild and costly escapade, was a walk in
Hanbridge Municipal Park and two shandy-gaffs at the Corporation
Refreshment House therein. Now, although the Hanbridge Park is a
wonderful triumph of grass-seed and terra-cotta over cinder-heaps and
shard-rucks, although it is a famous exemplar to other boroughs, it is
not precisely the Vale of Llangollen, nor the Lake District. It is the
least bit in the world tedious, and by the sarcastic has been likened to
a cemetery. And it seemed to symbolize Annie's life for her, in its
cramped and pruned and smoky regularity. She began to look upon the Five
Towns as a sort of prison from which she could never, never escape.

I say she was extraordinarily happy; and yet she was unhappy too. In a
word, she resembled all the rest of us--she had "somehow expected
something different" from what life actually gave her. She was
astonished that her William Henry seemed to be so content with things as
they were. Far, now, from any apprehension of his extravagance, she
wished secretly that he would be a little more dashing. He did not seem
to feel the truth that, though prudence is all very well, you can only
live your life once, and that when you are dead you are dead. He did not
seem to understand the value of pleasure. Few people in the Five Towns
did seem to understand the value of pleasure. He had no distractions
except his pipe. Existence was a harsh and industrious struggle, a
series of undisturbed daily habits. No change, no gaiety, no freak!
Grim, changeless monotony!

And once, in July, William Henry abandoned even his pipe for ten days.
Work, and therefore pay, had been irregular, but that was not in itself
a reason sufficient for cutting off a luxury that cost only a shilling a
week. It was the Going Away Club that swallowed up the tobacco money.
Nothing would induce William Henry to get into arrears with his payments
to that mysterious Club. He would have sacrificed not merely his pipe,
but his dinner--nay, he would have sacrificed his wife's dinner--to the
greedy maw of that Club. Annie hated the Club nearly as passionately as
she loved William Henry.

Then on the first of August (a Tuesday) William Henry came into the
house and put down twenty sovereigns in a row on the kitchen table. He
did not say much, being (to Annie's mild regret) of a secretive
disposition.

Annie had never seen so much money in a row before.

"What's that?" she said weakly.

"That?" said William Henry. "That's th' going away money."


II


A flat barrow at the door, a tin trunk and two bags on the barrow, and a
somewhat ragged boy between the handles of the barrow! The curtains
removed from the windows, and the blinds drawn! A double turn of the key
in the portal! And away they went, the ragged boy having previously spit
on his hands in order to get a grip of the barrow. Thus they arrived at
Hanbridge Railway Station, which was a tempest of traffic that Saturday
before Bank Holiday. The whole of the Five Towns appeared to be going
away. The first thing that startled Annie was that William Henry gave
the ragged boy a shilling, quite as much as the youth could have earned
in a couple of days in a regular occupation. William Henry was also
lavish with a porter. When they arrived, after a journey of ten minutes,
at Knype, where they had to change for Liverpool, he was again lavish
with a porter. And the same thing happened at Crewe, where they had to
change once more for Liverpool. They had time at Crewe for an expensive
coloured drink. On the long seething platform William Henry gave Annie
all his money to keep.

"Here, lass!" he said. "This'll be safer with you than with me."

She was flattered.

When it came in, the Liverpool train was crammed to the doors. And two
hundred people pumped themselves into it, as air is forced into a
pneumatic tyre. The entire world seemed to be going to Liverpool. It was
uncomfortable, but it was magnificent. It was joy, it was life. The
chimneys and kilns of the Five Towns were far away. And Annie, though in
a cold perspiration lest she might never see her tin trunk again, was
feverishly happy. At Liverpool William Henry demanded silver coins from
her. She had a glimpse of her trunk. Then they rattled and jolted and
whizzed in an omnibus to Prince's Landing Stage. And William Henry
demanded more coins from her. A great ship awaited them. Need it be said
that Douglas was their destination? The deck of the great ship was like
a market-place. Annie had never seen such a thing. They climbed up into
the market-place among the shouting, gesticulating crowd. There was a
real shop, at which William Henry commanded her to buy a hat-guard. The
hat-guard cost sixpence. At home sixpence was sixpence, and would buy
seven pounds of fine mealy potatoes; but here sixpence was
nothing--certainly it was not more than a halfpenny. They wandered and
found other shops. Annie could not believe that all those solid shops
and the whole market-place could move. And she was not surprised, a
little later, to see Prince's Landing Stage sliding away from the ship,
instead of the ship sliding away from Prince's Landing Stage. Then they
went underground, beneath the market-place, and Annie found marble
halls, colossal staircases, bookshops, trinket shops, highly-decorated
restaurants, glittering bars, and cushioned drawing-rooms. They had the
most exciting meal in the restaurant that Annie had ever had; also the
most expensive; the price of it indeed staggered her; still, William
Henry did not appear to mind that one meal should exceed the cost of two
days living in Birches Street. Then they went up into the market-place
again, and lo! the market-place had somehow of itself got into the
middle of the sea!

Before the end of the voyage they had tea at threepence a cup. Annie
reflected that the best "Home and Colonial" tea cost eighteenpence a
pound, and that a pound would make two hundred and twenty cups.
Similarly with the bread and butter which they ate, and the jam! But it
was glorious. Not the jam (which Annie could have bettered), but life!
Particularly as the sea was smooth! Presently she descried a piece of
chalk sticking up against the horizon, and it was Douglas lighthouse.



III


There followed six days of delirium, six days of the largest conceivable
existence. The holiday-makers stopped in a superb boarding-house on the
promenade, one of about a thousand superb boarding-houses. The day's
proceedings began at nine o'clock with a regal breakfast, partaken of at
a very long table which ran into a bow window. At nine o'clock, in all
the thousand boarding-houses, a crowd of hungry and excited men and
women sat down thus to a very long table, and consumed the same dishes,
that is to say, Manx herrings, and bacon and eggs, and jams. Everybody
ate as much as he could. William Henry was never content with less than
two herrings, two eggs, about four ounces of bacon, and as much jam as
would render a whole Board school sticky. And in four hours after that
he was ready for an enormous dinner, and so was she; and in five hours
after that they neither of them had the slightest disinclination for a
truly high and complex tea. Of course, the cost was fabulous.
Thirty-five shillings per week each. Annie would calculate that, with
thirty boarders and extras, the boarding-house was taking in money at
the rate of over forty pounds a week. She would also calculate that
about a hundred thousand herrings and ten million little bones were
swallowed in Douglas each day.

But the cost of the boarding-house was as naught. It was the flowing out
of coins between meals that deprived Annie of breath. They were always
doing something. Sailing in a boat! Rowing in a boat! Bathing! The Pier!
Sand minstrels! Excursions by brake, tram and train to Laxey, Ramsey,
Sulby Glen, Port Erin, Snaefell! Morning shows! Afternoon shows! Evening
shows! Circuses, music-halls, theatres, concerts! And then the public
balls, with those delicious tables in corners, lighted by Chinese
lanterns, where you sat down and drew strange liquids up straws. And it
all meant money. There were even places in Douglas where you couldn't
occupy a common chair for half a minute without paying for it. Each
night Annie went to bed exhausted with joy. On the second night she
counted the money in her bag, and said to William Henry:

"How much money do you think we've spent already? Just--"

"Don't tell me, lass!" he interrupted her curtly. "When I want to know,
I'll ask ye."

And on the fifth evening of this heaven he asked her:

"What'n ye got left?"

She informed him that she had five pounds and twopence left, of which
the boarding-house and tips would absorb four pounds.

"H'm!" he replied. "It's going to be a bit close."

On the seventh day they set sail. The dream was not quite over, but it
was nearly over. On the ship, when the porter had been discharged, she
had two and twopence, and William Henry had the return tickets. Still,
this poverty did not prevent William Henry from sitting down and
ordering a fine lunch for two (the sea being again smooth). Having
ordered it, he calmly told his wife that he had a sovereign in his
waistcoat pocket. A sovereign was endless riches. But it came to an end
during a long wait for the Five Towns train at Crewe. William Henry had
apparently decided to finish the holiday as he had begun it. And the two
and twopence also came to an end, as William Henry, suddenly remembering
the children of his brother, was determined to buy gifts for them on
Crewe platform. At Hanbridge man and wife had sixpence between them. And
the boy with the barrow, who had been summoned by a postcard, was not
visible. However, a cab was visible. William Henry took that cab.

"But, Will--"

"Shut up, lass!" he stopped her.

They plunged into the smoke and squalor of the Five Towns, and reached
Birches Street with pomp, while Annie wondered how William Henry would
contrive to get credit from a cabman. The entire street would certainly
gather round if there should be a scene.

"Just help us in with this trunk, wilt?" said William Henry to the
cabman. This, with sixpence in his pocket!

Then turning to his wife, he whispered:

"Lass, look under th' clock on th' mantelpiece in th' parlour. Ye'll
find six bob."

He explained to her later that prudent members of Going Away Clubs
always left money concealed behind them, as this was the sole way of
providing against a calamitous return. The pair existed on the remainder
of the six shillings and on credit for a week. William Henry became his
hard self again. The prison life was resumed. But Annie did not mind,
for she had lived for a week at the rate of a thousand a year. And in a
fortnight William Henry began grimly to pay his subscriptions to the
next year's Going Away Club.




THREE EPISODES IN THE LIFE OF MR COWLISHAW,
DENTIST

I



They all happened on the same day. And that day was a Saturday, the red
Saturday on which, in the unforgettable football match between Tottenham
Hotspur and the Hanbridge F.C. (formed regardless of expense in the
matter of professionals to take the place of the bankrupt Knype F.C.),
the referee would certainly have been murdered had not a Five Towns
crowd observed its usual miraculous self-restraint.

Mr Cowlishaw--aged twenty-four, a fair-haired bachelor with a weak
moustache--had bought the practice of the retired Mr Rapper, a dentist
of the very old school. He was not a native of the Five Towns. He came
from St Albans, and had done the deal through an advertisement in the
_Dentists' Guardian_, a weekly journal full of exciting interest to
dentists. Save such knowledge as he had gained during two preliminary
visits to the centre of the world's earthenware manufacture, he knew
nothing of the Five Towns; practically, he had everything to learn. And
one may say that the Five Towns is not a subject that can be "got up" in
a day.

His place of business--or whatever high-class dentists choose to call
it--in Crown Square was quite ready for him when he arrived on the
Friday night: specimen "uppers" and "lowers" and odd teeth shining in
their glass case, the new black-and-gold door-plate on the door, and
the electric filing apparatus which he had purchased, in the
operating-room. Nothing lacked there. But his private lodgings were not
ready; at least, they were not what he, with his finicking Albanian
notions, called ready, and, after a brief altercation with his landlady,
he went off with a bag to spend the night at the Turk's Head Hotel. The
Turk's Head is the best hotel in Hanbridge, not excepting the new Hotel
Metropole (Limited, and German-Swiss waiters). The proof of its
excellence is that the proprietor, Mr Simeon Clowes, was then the Mayor
of Hanbridge, and Mrs Clowes one of the acknowledged leaders of
Hanbridge society.

Mr Cowlishaw went to bed. He was a good sleeper; at least, he was what
is deemed a good sleeper in St Albans. He retired about eleven o'clock,
and requested one of the barmaids to instruct the boots to arouse him at
7 a.m. She faithfully promised to do so.

He had not been in bed five minutes before he heard and felt an
earthquake. This earthquake seemed to have been born towards the
north-east, in the direction of Crown Square, and the shock seemed to
pass southwards in the direction of Knype. The bed shook; the basin and
ewer rattled together like imperfect false teeth in the mouth of an
arrant coward; the walls of the hotel shook. Then silence! No cries of
alarm, no cries for help, no lamentations of ruin! Doubtless, though
earthquakes are rare in England, the whole town had been overthrown and
engulfed, and only Mr Cowlishaw's bed left standing. Conquering his
terror, Mr Cowlishaw put his head under the clothes and waited.

He had not been in bed ten minutes before he heard and felt another
earthquake. This earthquake seemed to have been born towards the
north-east, in the direction of Crown Square, and to be travelling
southwards; and Mr Cowlishaw noticed that it was accompanied by a
strange sound of heavy bumping. He sprang courageously out of bed and
rushed to the window. And it so happened that he caught the earthquake
in the very act of flight. It was one of the new cars of the Five Towns
Electric Traction Company, Limited, guaranteed to carry fifty-two
passengers. The bumping was due to the fact that the driver, by a too
violent application of the brake, had changed the form of two of its
wheels from circular to oval. Such accidents do happen, even to the
newest cars, and the inhabitants of the Five Towns laugh when they hear
a bumpy car as they laugh at _Charley's Aunt_. The car shot past,
flashing sparks from its overhead wire and flaming red and green lights
of warning, and vanished down the main thoroughfare. And gradually the
ewer and basin ceased their colloquy. The night being the night of the
29th December, and exceedingly cold, Mr Cowlishaw went back to bed.

"Well," he muttered, "this is a bit thick, this is!" (They use such
language in cathedral towns.) "However, let's hope it's the last."

It was not the last. Exactly, it was the last but twenty-three.
Regularly at intervals of five minutes the Five Towns Electric Traction
Company, Limited, sent one of their dreadful engines down the street,
apparently with the object of disintegrating all the real property in
the neighbourhood into its original bricks. At the seventeenth time Mr
Cowlishaw trembled to hear a renewal of the bump-bump-bump. It was the
oval-wheeled car, which had been to Longshaw and back. He recognized it
as an old friend. He wondered whether he must expect it to pass a third
time. However, it did not pass a third time. After several clocks in and
out of the hotel had more or less agreed on the fact that it was one
o'clock, there was a surcease of earthquakes. Mr Cowlishaw dared not
hope that earthquakes were over. He waited in strained attention during
quite half an hour, expectant of the next earthquake. But it did not
come. Earthquakes were, indeed, done with till the morrow.

It was about two o'clock when his nerves were sufficiently
tranquillized to enable him to envisage the possibility of going to
sleep. And he was just slipping, gliding, floating off when he was
brought back to realities by a terrific explosion of laughter at the
head of the stairs outside his bedroom door. The building rang like the
inside of a piano when you strike a wire directly. The explosion was
followed by low rumblings of laughter and then by a series of jolly,
hearty "Good-nights." He recognized the voices as being those of a
group of commercial travellers and two actors (of the Hanbridge Theatre
Royal's specially selected London Pantomime Company), who had been
pointed out to him with awe and joy by the aforesaid barmaid. They were
telling each other stories in the private bar, and apparently they had
been telling each other stories ever since. And the truth is that the
atmosphere of the Turk's Head, where commercial travellers and actors
forgather every night except perhaps Sundays, contains more good stories
to the cubic inch than any other resort in the county of Staffordshire.
A few seconds after the explosion there was a dropping fusillade--the
commercial travellers and the actors shutting their doors. And about
five minutes later there was another and more complicated dropping
fusillade--the commercial travellers and actors opening their doors,
depositing their boots (two to each soul), and shutting their doors.

Then silence.

And then out of the silence the terrified Mr Cowlishaw heard arising and
arising a vast and fearful breathing, as of some immense prehistoric
monster in pain. At first he thought he was asleep and dreaming. But he
was not. This gigantic sighing continued regularly, and Mr Cowlishaw had
never heard anything like it before. It banished sleep.

After about two hours of its awful uncanniness, Mr Cowlishaw caught the
sound of creeping footsteps in the corridor and fumbling noises. He got
up again. He was determined, though he should have to interrogate
burglars and assassins, to discover the meaning of that horrible
sighing. He courageously pulled his door open, and saw an aproned man
with a candle marking boots with chalk, and putting them into a box.

"I say!" said Mr Cowlishaw.

"Beg yer pardon, sir," the man whispered. "I'm getting forward with my
work so as I can go to th' fut-baw match this afternoon. I hope I didn't
wake ye, sir."

"Look here!" said Mr Cowlishaw. "What's that appalling noise that's
going on all the time?"

"Noise, sir?" whispered the man, astonished.

"Yes," Mr Cowlishaw insisted. "Like something breathing. Can't you hear
it?"

The man cocked his ears attentively. The noise veritably boomed in Mr
Cowlishaw's ears.

"Oh! _That_!" said the man at length. "That's th' blast furnaces at
Cauldon Bar Ironworks. Never heard that afore, sir? Why, it's like that
every night. Now you mention it, I _do_ hear it! It's a good couple o'
miles off, though, that is!"

Mr Cowlishaw closed his door.

At five o'clock, when he had nearly, but not quite, forgotten the
sighing, his lifelong friend, the oval-wheeled electric car, bumped and
quaked through the street, and the ewer and basin chattered together
busily, and the seismic phenomena definitely recommenced. The night was
still black, but the industrial day had dawned in the Five Towns. Long
series of carts without springs began to jolt past under the window of
Mr Cowlishaw, and then there was a regular multitudinous clacking of
clogs and boots on the pavement. A little later the air was rent by
first one steam-whistle, and then another, and then another, in divers
tones announcing that it was six o'clock, or five minutes past, or
half-past, or anything. The periodicity of earthquakes had by this time
quickened to five minutes, as at midnight. A motor-car emerged under
the archway of the hotel, and remained stationary outside with its
engine racing. And amid the earthquakes, the motor-car, the carts, the
clogs and boots, and the steam muezzins calling the faithful to work, Mr
Cowlishaw could still distinguish the tireless, monstrous sighing of the
Cauldon Bar blast furnaces. And, finally, he heard another sound. It
came from the room next to his, and, when he heard it, exhausted though
he was, exasperated though he was, he burst into laughter, so comically
did it strike him.

It was an alarm-clock going off in the next room.

And, further, when he arrived downstairs, the barmaid, sweet,
conscientious little thing, came up to him and said, "I'm so sorry, sir.
I quite forgot to tell the boots to call you!"


II


That afternoon he sat in his beautiful new surgery and waited for dental
sufferers to come to him from all quarters of the Five Towns. It needs
not to be said that nobody came. The mere fact that a new dentist has
"set up" in a district is enough to cure all the toothache for miles
around. The one martyr who might, perhaps, have paid him a visit and a
fee did not show herself. This martyr was Mrs Simeon Clowes, the
mayoress. By a curious chance, he had observed, during his short sojourn
at the Turk's Head, that the landlady thereof was obviously in pain from
her teeth, or from a particular tooth. She must certainly have informed
herself as to his name and condition, and Mr Cowlishaw thought that it
would have been a graceful act on her part to patronize him, as he had
patronized the Turk's Head. But no! Mayoresses, even the most tactful,
do not always do the right thing at the right moment.

Besides, she had doubtless gone, despite toothache, to the football
match with the Mayor, the new club being under the immediate patronage
of his Worship. All the potting world had gone to the football match.
Mr Cowlishaw would have liked to go, but it would have been madness to
quit the surgery on his opening day. So he sat and yawned, and peeped at
the crowd crowding to the match at two o'clock, and crowding back in the
gloom at four o'clock; and at a quarter past five he was reading a full
description of the carnage and the heroism in the football edition of
the _Signal_. Though Hanbridge had been defeated, it appeared from the
_Signal_ that Hanbridge was the better team, and that Rannoch, the new
Scotch centre-forward, had fought nobly for the town which had bought
him so dear.

Mr Cowlishaw was just dozing over the _Signal_ when there happened a
ring at his door. He did not precipitate himself upon the door. With
beating heart he retained his presence of mind, and said to himself that
of course it could not possibly be a client. Even dentists who bought a
practice ready-made never had a client on their first day. He heard the
attendant answer the ring, and then he heard the attendant saying, "I'll
see, sir."

It was, in fact, a patient. The servant, having asked Mr Cowlishaw if Mr
Cowlishaw was at liberty, introduced the patient to the Presence, and
the Presence trembled.

The patient was a tall, stiff, fair man of about thirty, with a tousled
head and inelegant but durable clothing. He had a drooping moustache,
which prevented Mr Cowlishaw from adding his teeth up instantly.

"Good afternoon, mister," said the patient, abruptly.

"Good afternoon," said Mr Cowlishaw. "Have you ... Can I ..."

Strange; in the dental hospital and school there had been no course of
study in the art of pattering to patients!

"It's like this," said the patient, putting his hand in his waistcoat
pocket.

"Will you kindly sit down," said Mr Cowlishaw, turning up the gas, and
pointing to the chair of chairs.

"It's like this," repeated the patient, doggedly. "You see these three
teeth?"

He displayed three very real teeth in a piece of reddened paper. As a
spectacle, they were decidedly not appetizing, but Mr Cowlishaw was
hardened.

"Really!" said Mr Cowlishaw, impartially, gazing on them.

"They're my teeth," said the patient. And thereupon he opened his mouth
wide, and displayed, not without vanity, a widowed gum. "'Ont 'eeth," he
exclaimed, keeping his mouth open and omitting preliminary consonants.

"Yes," said Mr Cowlishaw, with a dry inflection. "I saw that they were
upper incisors. How did this come about? An accident, I suppose?"

"Well," said the man, "you may call it an accident; I don't. My name's
Rannoch; centre-forward. Ye see? Were ye at the match?"

Mr Cowlishaw understood. He had no need of further explanation; he had
read it all in the _Signal_. And so the chief victim of Tottenham
Hotspur had come to him, just him! This was luck! For Rannoch was, of
course, the most celebrated man in the Five Towns, and the idol of the
populace. He might have been M.P. had he chosen.

"Dear me!" Mr Cowlishaw sympathized, and he said again, pointing more
firmly to the chair of chairs, "Will you sit down?"

"I had 'em all picked up," Mr Rannoch proceeded, ignoring the
suggestion. "Because a bit of a scheme came into my head. And that's why
I've come to you, as you're just commencing dentist. Supposing you put
these teeth on a bit of green velvet in the case in your window, with a
big card to say as they're guaranteed to be my genuine teeth, knocked
out by that blighter of a Tottenham half-back, you'll have such a crowd
as was never seen around your door. All the Five Towns'll come to see
'em. It'll be the biggest advertisement that either you or any other
dentist ever had. And you might put a little notice in the _Signal_
saying that my teeth are on view at your premises; it would only cost ye
a shilling.... I should expect ye to furnish me with new teeth for
nothing, ye see."

In his travels throughout England Mr Rannoch had lost most of his Scotch
accent, but he had not lost his Scotch skill in the art and craft of
trying to pay less than other folks for whatever he might happen to
want.

Assuredly the idea was an idea of genius. As an advertisement it would
be indeed colossal and unique. Tens of thousands would gaze spellbound
for hours at those relics of their idol, and every gazer would
inevitably be familiarized with the name and address of Mr Cowlishaw,
and with the fact that Mr Cowlishaw was dentist-in-chief to the heroical
Rannoch. Unfortunately, in dentistry there is etiquette. And the
etiquette of dentistry is as terrible, as unbending, as the etiquette of
the Court of Austria.

Mr Cowlishaw knew that he could not do this thing without sinning
against etiquette.

"I'm sorry I can't fall in with your scheme," said he, "but I can't."

"But, _man_!" protested the Scotchman, "it's the greatest scheme that
ever was."

"Yes," said Mr Cowlishaw, "but it would be unprofessional."

Mr Rannoch was himself a professional. "Oh, well," he said
sarcastically, "if you're one of those amateurs--"

"I'll put you the job in as low as possible," said Mr Cowlishaw,
persuasively.

But Scotchmen are not to be persuaded like that.

Mr Rannoch wrapped up his teeth and left.

What finally happened to those teeth Mr Cowlishaw never knew. But he
satisfied himself that they were not advertised in the _Signal_.




III


Now, just as Mr Cowlishaw was personally conducting to the door the
greatest goal-getter that the Five Towns had ever seen there happened
another ring, and thus it fell out that Mr Cowlishaw found himself in
the double difficulty of speeding his first visitor and welcoming his
second all in the same breath. It is true that the second might imagine
that the first was a client, but then the aspect of Mr Rannoch's mouth,
had it caught the eye of the second, was not reassuring. However, Mr
Rannoch's mouth happily did not catch the eye of the second.

The second was a visitor beyond Mr Cowlishaw's hopes, no other than Mrs
Simeon Clowes, landlady of the Turk's Head and Mayoress of Hanbridge; a
tall and well-built, handsome, downright woman, of something more than
fifty and something less than sixty; the mother of five married
daughters, the aunt of fourteen nephews and nieces, the grandam of
seven, or it might be eight, assorted babies; in short, a lady of vast
influence. After all, then, she had come to him! If only he could please
her, he regarded his succession to his predecessor as definitely
established and his fortune made. No person in Hanbridge with any
yearnings for style would dream, he trusted, of going to any other
dentist than the dentist patronized by Mrs Clowes.

She eyed him interrogatively and firmly. She probed into his character,
and he felt himself pierced.

"You _are_ Mr Cowlishaw?" she began.

"Good afternoon, Mrs Clowes," he replied. "Yes, I am. Can I be of
service to you?"

"That depends," she said.

He asked her to step in, and in she stepped.

"Have you had any experience in taking teeth out?" she asked in the
surgery. Her hand stroked her left cheek.

"Oh yes," he said eagerly. "But, of course, we try to avoid extraction
as much as possible."

"If you're going to talk like that," she said coldly, and even bitterly,
"I'd better go."

He wondered what she was driving at.

"Naturally," he said, summoning all his latent powers of diplomacy,
"there are cases in which extraction is unfortunately necessary."

"How many teeth have you extracted?" she inquired.

"I really couldn't say," he lied. "Very many."

"Because," she said, "you don't look as if you could say 'Bo!' to a
goose."

He observed a gleam in her eye.

"I think I can say 'Bo!' to a goose," he said. She laughed.

"Don't fancy, Mr Cowlishaw, that if I laugh I'm not in the most horrible
pain. I am. When I tell you I couldn't go with Mr Clowes to the match--"

"Will you take this seat?" he said, indicating the chair of chairs;
"then I can examine."

She obeyed. "I do hate the horrid, velvety feeling of these chairs," she
said; "it's most creepy."

"I shall have to trouble you to take your bonnet off."

So she removed her bonnet, and he took it as he might have taken his
firstborn, and laid it gently to rest on his cabinet. Then he pushed the
gas-bracket so that the light came through the large crystal sphere, and
made the Mayoress blink.

"Now," he said soothingly, "kindly open your mouth--wide."

Like all women of strong and generous character, Mrs Simeon Clowes had a
large mouth. She obediently extended it to dimensions which must be
described as august, at the same time pointing with her gloved and
chubby finger to a particular part of it.

"Yes, yes," murmured Mr Cowlishaw, assuming a tranquillity which he did
not feel. This was the first time that he had ever looked into the mouth
of a Mayoress, and the prospect troubled him.

He put his little ivory-handled mirror into that mouth and studied its
secrets.

"I see," he said, withdrawing the mirror. "Exposed nerve. Quite simple.
Merely wants stopping. When I've done with it the tooth will be as sound
as ever it was. All your other teeth are excellent."

Mrs Clowes arose violently out of the chair.

"Now just listen to me, please," she said. "I don't want any stopping; I
won't have any stopping; I want that tooth out. I've already quarrelled
with one dentist this afternoon because he refused to take it out. I
came to you because you're young, and I thought you'd be more
reasonable. Surely a body can decide whether she'll have a tooth out or
not! It's my tooth. What's a dentist for? In my young days dentists
never did anything else but take teeth out. All I wish to know is, will
you take it out or will you not?"

"It's really a pity--"

"That's my affair, isn't it?" she stopped him, and moved towards her
bonnet.

"If you insist," he said quickly, "I will extract."

"Well," she said, "if you don't call this insisting, what do you call
insisting? Let me tell you I didn't have a wink of sleep last night!"

"Neither did I, in your confounded hotel!" he nearly retorted; but
thought better of it.

The Mayoress resumed her seat, taking her gloves off.

"It's decided then?" she questioned.

"Certainly," said he. "Is your heart good?"

"Is my heart good?" she repeated. "Young man, what business is that of
yours? It's my tooth I want you to deal with, not my heart."

"I must give you gas," said Mr Cowlishaw, faintly.

"Gas!" she exclaimed. "You'll give me no gas, young man. No! My heart is
not good. I should die under gas. I couldn't bear the idea of gas. You
must take it out without gas, and you mustn't hurt me. I'm a perfect
baby, and you mustn't on any account hurt me." The moment was crucial.
Supposing that he refused--a promising career might be nipped in the
bud; would, undoubtedly, be nipped in the bud. Whereas, if he accepted
the task, the patronage of the aristocracy of Hanbridge was within his
grasp. But the tooth was colossal, monumental. He estimated the length
of its triple root at not less than 0.75 inch.

"Very well, madam," he said, for he was a brave youngster.

But he was in a panic. He felt as though he were about to lead the
charge of the Light Brigade. He wanted a stiff drink. (But dentists may
not drink.) If he failed to wrench the monument out at the first pull
the result would be absolute disaster; in an instant he would have
ruined the practice which had cost him so dear. And could he hope not to
fail with the first pull? At best he would hurt her indescribably.
However, having consented, he was obliged to go through with the affair.

He took every possible precaution. He chose his most vicious instrument.
He applied to the vicinity of the tooth the very latest substitute for
cocaine; he prepared cotton wool and warm water in a glass. And at
length, when he could delay the fatal essay no longer, he said:

"Now, I think we are ready."

"You won't hurt me?" she asked anxiously.

"Not a bit," he replied, with an admirable simulation of gaiety.

"Because if you do--"

He laughed. But it was a hysterical laugh. All his nerves were on end.
And he was very conscious of having had no sleep during the previous
night. He had a sick feeling. The room swam. He collected himself with a
terrific effort.

"When I count one," he said, "I shall take hold; when I count two you
must hold very tight to the chair; and when I count three, out it will
come."

Then he encircled her head with his left arm--brutally, as dentists
always are brutal in the thrilling crisis. "Wider!" he shouted.

And he took possession of that tooth with his fiendish contrivance of
steel.

"One--two--"

He didn't know what he was doing.

There was no three. There was a slight shriek and a thud on the floor.
Mrs Simeon Clowes jumped up and briskly rang a bell. The attendant
rushed in. The attendant saw Mrs Clowes gurgling into a handkerchief,
which she pressed to her mouth with one hand, while with the other, in
which she held her bonnet, she was fanning the face of Mr Cowlishaw. Mr
Cowlishaw had fainted from nervous excitement under fatigue. But his
unconscious hand held the forceps; and the forceps, victorious, held the
monumental tooth.

"O-o-pen the window," spluttered Mrs Clowes to the attendant. "He's gone
off; he'll come to in a minute."

She was flattered. Mr Cowlishaw was for ever endeared to Mrs Clowes by
this singular proof of her impressiveness. And a woman like that can
make the fortune of half a dozen dentists.




CATCHING THE TRAIN

I


Arthur Cotterill awoke. It was not exactly with a start that he awoke,
but rather with a swift premonition of woe and disaster. The strong,
bright glare from the patent incandescent street lamp outside, which the
lavish Corporation of Bursley kept burning at the full till long after
dawn in winter, illuminated the room (through the green blind) almost as
well as it illuminated Trafalgar Road. He clearly distinguished every
line of the form of his brother Simeon, fast and double-locked in sleep
in the next bed. He saw also the open trunk by the dressing-table in
front of the window. Then he looked at the clock on the mantelpiece, the
silent witness of the hours. And a pair of pincers seemed to clutch his
heart, and an anvil to drop on his stomach and rest heavily there,
producing an awful nausea. Why had he not looked at the clock before?
Was it possible that he had been awake even five seconds without looking
at the clock--the clock upon which it seemed that his very life, more
than his life, depended? The clock showed ten minutes to seven, and the
train went at ten minutes past. And it was quite ten minutes' walk to
the station, and he had to dress, and button those new boots, and finish
packing--and the porter from the station was late in coming for the
trunk! But perhaps the porter had already been; perhaps he had rung and
rung, and gone away in despair of making himself heard (for Mrs Hopkins
slept at the back of the house).

Something had to be done. Yet what could he do with those hard pincers
pinching his soft, yielding heart, and that terrible anvil pressing on
his stomach? He might even now, by omitting all but the stern
necessities of his toilet, and by abandoning the trunk and his brother,
just catch the train, the indispensable train. But somehow he could not
move. Yet he was indubitably awake.

"Simeon!" he cried at length, and sat up.

The younger Cotterill did not stir.

"Sim!" he cried again, and, leaning over, shook the bed.

"What's up?" Simeon demanded, broad awake in a second, and, as usual,
calm, imperturbable.

"We've missed the train! It's ten--eight--minutes to seven," said
Arthur, in a voice which combined reproach and terror. And he sprang out
of bed and began with hysteric fury to sort out his garments.

Simeon turned slowly on his side and drew a watch from under his pillow.
Putting it close to his face, Simeon could just read the dial.

"It's all right," he said. "Still, you'd better get up. It's eight
minutes to six. We've got an hour and eighteen minutes."

"What do you mean? That clock was right last night."

"Yes. But I altered it."

"When?"

"After you got into bed."

"I never saw you."

"No. But I altered it."

"Why?"

"To be on the safe side."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"If I'd told you, I might just as well have not altered it. The man who
puts a clock on and then goes gabbling all over the house about what he
has done is an ass; in fact, to call him an ass is to flatter him."

Arthur tried to be angry.

"That's all very well--" he began to grumble.

But he could not be angry. The pincers and the anvil had suddenly ceased
their torment. He was free. He was not a disgraced man. He would catch
the train easily. All would be well. All would be as the practical
Simeon had arranged that it should be. And in advancing the clock Simeon
had acted for the best. Of course, it _was_ safer to be on the safe
side! In an affair such as that in which he was engaged, he felt, and he
honestly admitted to himself, that he would have been nowhere without
Simeon.

"Light the stove first, man," Simeon enjoined him. "There's been a
change in the weather, I bet. It's as cold as the very deuce."

Yes, it was very cold. Arthur now noticed the cold. Strange--or rather
not strange--that he had not noticed it before! He lit the gas stove,
which exploded with its usual disconcerting _plop_, and a marvellously
agreeable warmth began to charm his senses. He continued his dressing as
near as possible to the source of this exquisite warmth. Then Simeon, in
his leisurely manner, arose out of bed without a word, put his feet into
slippers and lit the gas.

"I never thought of that," said Arthur, laughing nervously.

"Shows what a state you're in," said Simeon.

Simeon went to the window and peeped out into the silence of Trafalgar
Road.

"Slight mist," he observed.

Arthur felt a faint return of the pincers and anvil.

"But it will clear off," Simeon added.

Then Simeon put on a dressing-gown and padded out of the room, and
Arthur heard him knock at another door and call:

"Mrs Hopkins, Mrs Hopkins!" And then the sound of a door opening.

"She was dressed and just going downstairs," said Simeon when he
returned to their bedroom. "Breakfast ready in ten minutes. She set the
table last night. I told her to."

"Good!" Arthur murmured.

At sixteen minutes past six they were both dressed, and Simeon was
showing Arthur that Simeon alone knew how to pack a trunk. At twenty
minutes past six the trunk was packed, locked and strapped.

"What about getting the confounded thing downstairs?" Arthur asked.

"When the porter comes," said Simeon, "he and I will do that. It's too
heavy for you to handle."

At six twenty-one they were having breakfast in the little dining-room,
by the heat of another gas-stove. And Arthur felt that all was well, and
that in postponing their departure till that morning in order not to
upset the immemorial Christmas dinner of their Aunt Sarah, they had done
rightly. At half-past six they had, between them, drunk five cups of tea
and eaten four eggs, four slices of bacon, and about a pound and a half
of bread. Simeon, with what was surely an exaggeration of
imperturbability, charged his pipe, and began to smoke. They had forty
minutes in which to catch the Loop-Line train, even if it was prompt.
There would then be forty minutes to wait at Knype for the London
express, which arrived at Euston considerably before noon. After which
there would be a clear ninety minutes before the business itself--and
less than a quarter of a mile to walk! Yes, there was a rich and
generous margin for all conceivable delays and accidents.

"The porter ought to be coming," said Simeon. It was twenty minutes to
seven, and he was brushing his hat.

Now such a remark from that personification of calm, that living denial
of worry, Simeon, was decidedly unsettling to Arthur. By chance, Mrs
Hopkins came into the room just then to assure herself that the young
men whose house she kept desired nothing.

"Mrs Hopkins," Simeon asked, "you didn't forget to call at the station
last night?"

"Oh no, Mr Simeon," said she; "I saw the second porter, Merrith. He
knows me. At least, I know his mother--known her forty year--and he
promised me he wouldn't forget. Besides, he never has forgot, has he? I
told him particular to bring his barrow."

It was true the porter never had forgotten! And many times had he
transported Simeon's luggage to Bleakridge Station. Simeon did a good
deal of commercial travelling for the firm of A. & S. Cotterill, teapot
makers, Bursley. In many commercial hotels he was familiarly known as
Teapot Cotterill.

The brothers were reassured by Mrs Hopkins. There was half an hour to
the time of the train--and the station only ten minutes off. Then the
chiming clock in the hall struck the third quarter.

"That clock right?" Arthur nervously inquired, assuming his overcoat.

"It's a minute late," said Simeon, assuming _his_ overcoat.

And at that word "late," the pincers and the anvil revisited Arthur.
Even the confidence of Mrs Hopkins in the porter was shaken. Arthur
looked at Simeon, depending on him. It was imperative that they should
catch the train, and it was imperative that the trunk should catch the
train. Everything depended on a porter. Arthur felt that all his future
career, his happiness, his honour, his life depended on a porter. And,
after all, even porters at a pound a week are human. Therefore, Arthur
looked at Simeon.

Simeon walked through the kitchen into the backyard. In a shed there an
old barrow was lying. He drew out the barrow, and ticklishly wheeled it
into the house, as far as the foot of the stairs.

"Mrs Hopkins," he called. "And you too!" he glanced at Arthur.

"What are you going to do?" Arthur demanded.

"Wheel the trunk to the station myself, of course," Simeon replied. "If
we meet the porter on the way, so much the better for us ... and so much
the worse for him!" he added.


II


It was just as dark as though it had been midnight--dark and excessively
cold; not a ray of hope in the sky; not a sign of life in the street.
All Bursley, and, indeed, all the Five Towns, were sleeping off the
various consequences of Christmas on the human frame. Trafalgar Road,
with its double row of lamps, each exactly like that one in front of the
house of the Cotterills, stretched downwards into the dead heart of
Bursley, and upwards over the brow of the hill into space. And although
Arthur Cotterill knew Trafalgar Road as well as Mrs Hopkins knew the
hundred and twenty-first Psalm, the effect of the scene on him was most
uncanny. He watched Simeon persuade the loaded barrow down the step into
the tiny front garden, not daring to help him, because Simeon did not
like to be helped by clumsy people in delicate operations. Mrs Hopkins
was rapidly pouring all the goodness of her soul into his ear, when
Simeon and the barrow reached the pavement, and Simeon staggered and
recovered himself.

"Look out, Arthur," Simeon cried. "The road's like glass. It's rained in
the night, and now it's freezing. Come along."

Arthur bade adieu to Mrs Hopkins.

"Eh, Mr Arthur," said she. "Things'll be different when ye come back,
this time a month."

He said nothing. The pincers and the anvil were at him again. He thought
of falls, torn garments, broken legs.

Simeon lifted the arms of the barrow, and then dropped them.

"Have you got it?" he demanded of Arthur.

"Got what?"

"_It_."

"Yes," said Arthur, comprehending.

"Are you sure? Show it me. Better give it me. It will be safer with me."

Arthur unbuttoned his overcoat, took off his left glove, and drew from
one of his pockets a small, bright object, which shone under the street
lamp. Simeon took it silently. Then he definitely seized the arms of the
barrow, and the procession started up the street.

No time had been lost, for Simeon had an extraordinary gift of celerity.
It was eleven minutes to seven. Nevertheless, Arthur felt the pincers,
and the feel of the pincers made him look at his watch.

"See here," said Simeon, briefly. "You needn't worry. _We shall catch
that train_. We've got twenty minutes, and we shall get to the station
in nine." The exertion of wheeling the barrow over what was practically
a sheet of rough ice made him speak in short gasps.

Impossible for the pincers and the anvil to remain in face of that
assured, almost god-like tone!

"Good!" murmured Arthur. "By Jove, but it's cold though!"

"I've never been hotter in my life," said Simeon, puffing. "Except in my
hands."

"Can't I take it for a bit?"

"No, you can't," said Simeon. At the robust finality of the refusal
Arthur laughed. Then Simeon laughed. The party became gay. The pincers
and the anvil were gone for ever. Simeon turned gingerly into Pollard
Street-half-way to the station. They had but to descend Pollard Street
and climb the path across the cinder-heaps beyond, and they would be, as
it were, in harbour. In Pollard Street Simeon had the happy idea of
taking to the roadway. It was rougher, and, therefore, less dangerous,
than the pavement. At intervals he shoved the wheel of the barrow by
main force over a stone.

"Put my hat straight, will you?" he asked of Arthur, and Arthur obeyed.
It was becoming a task under the winter stars.

Then Arthur happened to notice the wheel of the barrow--its sole wheel.

"I say," he said, "what's up with that wheel?"

"It's rocky, that's what that wheel is," replied Simeon. "I hope it will
hold out."

Instead of pushing the barrow he was now holding it back, down the slant
of Pollard Street. The mist had cleared. And Arthur could see the red
gleam of a signal in the neighbourhood of the station. But now the
pincers and the anvil were at him again, for Simeon's tone was alarming.
It indicated that the wobbling wheel of the barrow might not hold out.

The catastrophe happened when they were climbing the cinder-slope and
within two hundred yards of the little station. Simeon was propelling
with all his might, and he propelled the wheel against half a brick. The
wheel collapsed. There was a splintering even of the main timbers of the
vehicle as the immense weight of the trunk crashed to the solid earth.

Simeon fell, and rose with difficulty, standing on one leg, and terribly
grimacing.

He said nothing, but consulted his watch by the aid of a fusee.

"We must carry it," Arthur suggested wildly.

"We can't carry it up here. It's much too heavy."

Arthur remembered the tremendous weight of even his share of it as they
had slid it down the stairs.

No. It could not be carried.

"Besides," said Simeon, "I've sprained my ankle, I fear." And he sat
down on the trunk.

"What are we to do?" Arthur asked tragically.

"Do? Why, it's perfectly simple! You must go without me. Anyhow, run to
the station, and try to get the porter down here with another barrow."

Man of infinite calm, of infinite resource. Though the pincers and the
anvil were horribly torturing him at that moment, Arthur could not but
admire his younger brother's astounding _sangfroid_.

And he set off.

"Here!" Simeon called him peremptorily. "Take this--in case you don't
come back."

And he handed him the small bright object.

"But I must come back. I can't possibly go without the trunk. All my
things are in it."

"I know that, man. _But perhaps you'll have to go without it_. Hurry!"

Arthur ran. He encountered the senior porter at the gate of the station.

"Where's Merrith?" he began. "He was to have--"

"Merrith's mother is dead--died at five o'clock," said the senior
porter. "And I'm here all alone."

Arthur stopped as if shot.

"Well," he recovered himself. "Lend me a barrow."

"I shall lend ye no barrow. It's against the rules. Since they
transferred our stationmaster to Clegg there's been an inspector down
here welly [well nigh] every day."

"But I must _have_ a barrow."

"I shall lend ye no barrow," said the senior porter, a brute.

A signal close to the signal-box clattered down from red to green.

"Her's signalled," said the senior porter. "Are ye travelling by her?"

Arthur had to decide in a moment. Must he or must he not abandon Simeon
and the trunk? The train, a procession of lights, could be seen in the
distance under the black sky. He gave one glance in the direction of
Simeon and the trunk, and then entered the station.

Simeon had been right. He did catch the train.

It was fortunate that there was a wide margin between the advertised
time of arrival of the Loop-Line train at Knype and the departure
therefrom of the London express. For, beyond Hanbridge, the Loop-Line
train came to a standstill, and obstinately remained at a standstill for
near upon forty minutes. Dawn began and completed itself while that
train reposed there. Things got to such a point that, despite the
intense cold, the few passengers stuck their heads out of the windows
and kept them there. Arthur suffered unspeakably. He imparted his awful
anxiety to an old man in the same compartment. And the old man said:

"They always keep the express waiting for the Loop. Moreover, you've
plenty o' time yet."

He knew that the Loop was supposed to catch the express, and that in
actual practice it did catch it. He knew that there was yet enough time.
Still, he continued to suffer. He continued to believe, at the bottom of
his heart, that on this morning, of all mornings, the Loop would not
catch the express.

However, he was wrong. The Loop caught the express, though it was a
nearish thing. He dashed down into the subterranean passage at Knype
Station, reappeared on the up-platform, ran to the fore-part of the
express, which was in and waiting, and jumped; a porter banged the door,
a guard inspired the driver by a tune on a whistle, and off went the
express. Arthur was now safe. Nothing ever happened to a North-Western
express. He was safe. He was shorn of his luggage (almost, but not
quite, indispensable) and of Simeon; but he was safe. He could not be
disgraced in the world's eye. He thought of poor, gallant,
imperturbable, sprained Simeon freezing on the trunk in the middle of
the cinder-waste.


III


The train stopped momentarily at a station which he thought to be
Lichfield. Then (out of his waking dreams) it seemed to him that
Lichfield Station had strangely grown in length, and just as the train
was drawing out he saw the word "Stafford" in immense white enamelled
letters on a blue ground. There was nobody else in the compartment. His
heart and stomach in a state of frightful torture, he sprang out of
it--not on to the line, but into the corridor (for it was a corridor
train) and into the next compartment, where were seated two men.

"Is this the London train?" he demanded, not concealing his terror.

"No, it isn't. It's the Birmingham train," said one of the men
fiercely--a sort of a Levite.

"Great heavens!" ejaculated Arthur Cotterill.

"You ought to inquire before you get into a train," said the Levite.

"The fact is," said the other man, who was perhaps a cousin of a Good
Samaritan, "the express from Manchester is split up at Knype--one part
for London, and the other part for Birmingham."

"I know that," said Arthur Cotterill.

"Ever since I can remember the London part has gone off first."

"Of course," said Arthur; "I've travelled by it lots of times."

"But they altered it only last week."

"I only just caught the train," Arthur breathed.

"Seems to me you didn't catch it," said the Levite.

"_I must be in London before two o'clock_," said Arthur, and he said it
so solemnly, he said it with so much of his immortal soul, that even the
Levite was startled out of his callous indifference.

"There are expresses from Birmingham to London that do the journey in
two hours," said he.

"Let us see," said the cousin of a Good Samaritan, kindly, opening a bag
and producing Bradshaw.

And he explained to Arthur that the train reached New Street,
Birmingham, at 10.45, and that, by a singular good fortune, a very fast
express left New Street at 11.40, and arrived at Euston at 1.45.

Arthur thanked him and retired with his pincers and anvil to his own
compartment.

He was a ruined man, a disgraced man. The loss of his trunk was now
nothing. At the best he would be over half an hour late, and it was
quite probable that he would be too late altogether. He pictured the
other people waiting, waiting for him anxiously, as minute after minute
passed, until the fatal hour struck. The whole affair was unthinkable.
Simeon's fault, of course. Simeon had convinced him that to go up to
London on Christmas Day would be absurd, whereas it was now evident that
to go up to London on Christmas Day was obviously the only prudent thing
to do. Awful!

The train to Birmingham was in an ironical mood, for it ran into New
Street to the very minute of the time-table. Thus Arthur had fifty-five
futile minutes to pass. At another time New Street, as the largest
single station in the British Empire, might have interested him. But now
it was no more interesting than Purgatory when you know where you are
ultimately going to. He sought out the telegraph-office, and
telegraphed to London--despairing, yet a manly telegram. Then he sought
out the refreshment-room, and ordered a whisky. He was just putting the
whisky to his lips when he remembered that if, after all, he did arrive
in time, the whisky would amount to a serious breach of manners. So he
put the glass down untasted, and the barmaid justifiably felt herself to
have been insulted.

He watched the slow formation of the Birmingham-London express. He also
watched the various clocks. For whole hours the fingers of the clocks
never budged, and even then they would show an advance of only a minute
or two.

"Is this the train for London?" he asked an inspector at 11.35.

"Can't you see?" said the inspector, brightly. As a fact, "Euston" was
written all over the train. But Arthur wanted to be sure this time.

The express departed from Birmingham with the nicest exactitude, and
covered itself with glory as far as Watford, when it ran into a mist,
and lost more than a quarter of an hour, besides ruining Arthur's
career.

Arthur arrived in London at one minute past two. He got out of the train
with no plan. The one feasible enterprise seemed to be that of suicide.

"Come on, now," said a voice--a voice that staggered Arthur. It was a
man with a crutch who spoke. It was Simeon. "Come on, quick, and don't
talk too much! To the hotel first." Simeon hobbled forward rapidly, and
somehow (he could not explain how) the anvil and pincers had left
Arthur.

"I got hold of a milk-cart with a sharpened horse, and drove to Knype.
Horse fell once, but he picked himself up again. Cost me a sovereign.
Only just caught the train. Shouldn't have caught it if they hadn't sent
off the Birmingham part before the London part. I was astonished, I can
tell you, not to find you at Euston. Went to the hotel. Found 'em all
waiting, of course, and practically weeping over a telegram from you.
However, I soon arranged things. Had to buy a crutch.... Here, boy,
lift!" They were in the hotel.

On a bed all Arthur's finest clothes were laid out. The famous trunk was
at the foot of the bed.

"Quick!"

"But look here!" Arthur remonstrated. "It's after two now."

"Well, if it is? We've got till three. I've arranged with the mandarin
chap for a quarter to three."

"I thought these things couldn't occur after two o'clock--by law."

"That's what's the matter with you," said Simeon; "you think too much.
The two o'clock law was altered years ago. Had anything to eat?" He was
helping Arthur with buttons.

"No."

"I expected not. Here! Swallow this whisky."

"Not I!" Arthur protested in a startled tone.

"Why not?"

"Because I shall have to kiss her after the ceremony."

"Bosh!" said Simeon. "Drink it. Besides, there's no kissing in a
Registry Office. You're thinking of a church. I wish you wouldn't think
so much. Here! Now the necktie, you cuckoo!"

In three minutes they were driving rapidly through the London mist
towards the other sex, and in a quarter of an hour there was one
bachelor the less in this vale of tears.




THE WIDOW OF THE BALCONY

I


They stood at the window of her boudoir in the new house which Stephen
Cheswardine had recently bought at Sneyd. The stars were pursuing their
orbits overhead in a clear dark velvet sky, except to the north, where
the industrial fires and smoke of the Five Towns had completely put them
out. But even these distant signs of rude labour had a romantic aspect,
and did not impair the general romance of the scene. Charlie had loved
her; he loved her still; and she gave him odd minutes of herself when
she could, just to keep him alive. Moreover, there was the log fire
richly crackling in the well-grate of the boudoir; there was the
feminineness of the boudoir (dimly lit), and the soft splendour of her
gown, and behind all that, pervading the house, the gay rumour of the
party. And in front of them the window-panes, and beyond the
window-panes the stars in their orbits. Doubtless it was such influences
which, despite several degrees of frost outside, gave to Charlie
Woodruff's thoughts an Italian, or Spanish, turn. He said:

"Stephen ought to have this window turned into a French window, and
build you a balcony. It could easily be done. Just the view for a
balcony. You can see Sneyd Lake from here." (You could. People were
skating on it.)

He did not add that you could see the Sneyd Golf Links from there, and
_vice versa_. I doubt if the idea occurred to him, but as he was an
active member of the Sneyd Golf Club it would certainly have presented
itself to him in due season.

"What a lovely scheme!" Vera exclaimed enthusiastically.

It appealed to her. It appealed to all that was romantic in her
bird-like soul. She did not see the links; she did not see the lake; she
just saw herself in exquisite frocks, lightly lounging on the balcony in
high summer, and dreaming of her own beauty.

"And have a striped awning," she said.

"Yes," he said. "Make Stephen do it."

"I will," she said.

At that moment Stephen came in, with his bald head and his forty years.

"I say!" he demanded. "What are you up to?"

"We were just watching the skaters," said Vera.

"And the wonders of the night," said Charlie, chuckling
characteristically. He always laughed at himself. He was a philosopher.
He and Stephen had been fast friends from infancy.

"Well, you'd just better skate downstairs," said Stephen. (No romance in
Stephen! He was netting a couple of thousand a year out of the
manufacture of toilet-sets, in all that smoke to the north. How could
you expect him to be romantic?)

"Charlie was saying how nice it would be for me to have a French window
here, and a marble balcony," Vera remarked. It had not taken her long to
think of marble. "You must do it for me, Steve."

"Bosh!" said Stephen. "That's just like you, Charlie. What an ass you
are!"

"Oh, but you _must_!" said Vera, in that tone which meant business, and
which also meant trouble for Stephen.

"_She's_ come," Stephen announced curtly, determined to put trouble off.

"Oh, has she?" cried Vera. "I thought you said she wouldn't."

"She hesitated, because she was afraid. But she's come after all,"
Stephen answered.

"What fun!" Vera murmured.

And ran off downstairs back again into the midst of the black coats and
the white toilettes and the holly-clad electricity of her Christmas
gathering.


II


The news that _she_ had come was all over the noisy house in a minute,
and it had the astonishing effect of producing what might roughly be
described as a silence. It stopped the reckless waltzing of the piano in
the drawing-room; it stopped the cackle incident to cork-pool in the
billiard-room; it even stopped a good deal of the whispering under the
Chinese lanterns beneath the stairs and in the alcove at the top of the
stairs. What it did not stop was the consumption of mince-pies and
claret-cup in the small breakfast-room; people mumbled about _her_
between munches.

_She_, having been sustained with turkey and beer in the kitchen, was
led by the backstairs up to Vera's very boudoir, that being the only
suitable room. And there she waited. She was a woman of about
forty-five; fat, unfair (in the physical sense), and untidy. Of her
hands the less said the better. She had probably never visited a
professional coiffeur in her life. Her form was straitly confined in an
atrocious dress of linsey-woolsey, and she wore an apron that was
neither white nor black. Her boots were commodious. After her meal she
was putting a hat-pin to a purpose which hat-pins do not usually serve.
She gained an honest living by painting green leaves on yellow
wash-basins in Stephen's renowned earthenware manufactory. She spoke the
dialect of the people. She had probably never heard of Christian
Science, bridge, Paquin, Panhard, Father Vaughan, the fall of consols,
osprey plumes, nor the new theology. Nobody in the house knew her name;
even Stephen had forgotten it. And yet the whole house was agog
concerning her.

The fact was that in the painting-shops of the various manufactories
where she had painted green leaves on yellow wash-basins (for in all her
life she had done little else) she possessed a reputation as a prophet,
seer, oracle, fortune-teller--what you will. Polite persons would
perhaps never have heard of her reputation, the toiling millions of the
Five Towns being of a rather secretive nature in such matters, had not
the subject of fortune-telling been made prominent in the district by
the celebrated incident of the fashionable palmist. The fashionable
palmist, having thriven enormously in Bond Street, had undertaken a tour
through the provinces and had stopped several days at Hanbridge (our
metropolis), where he had an immense vogue until the Hanbridge police
hit on the singular idea of prosecuting him for an unlawful vagabond.
Stripped of twenty pounds odd in the guise of a fine and costs, and
having narrowly missed the rigours of our county jail, that fashionable
palmist and soothsayer had returned to Bond Street full of hate and
respect for Midland justice, which fears not and has a fist like a
navvy's. The attention of the Five Towns had thus been naturally drawn
to fortune-telling in general. And it was deemed that in securing a
local celebrity (quite an amateur, and therefore, it was uncertainly
hoped, on the windy side of the law) for the diversion of his Christmas
party Stephen Cheswardine had done a stylish and original thing.

Of course no one in the house believed in fortune-telling. Oh no! But as
an amusement it was amusing. As fun, it was fun. She did her business
with tea-leaves: so the tale ran. This was not considered to be very
distinguished. A crystal, or even cards, or the anatomy of a sacrificed
fowl, would have been better than tea-leaves; tea-leaves were decidedly
lower class. And yet, despite these drawbacks, when the question arose
who should first visit the witch of Endor, there was a certain
hesitation.

"You go!"

"No, _you_ go."

"Oh! _I'm_ not going," (a superior laugh), etc.

At last it was decided that Jack Hall and Cissy Woodruff (Charlie's much
younger sister), the pair having been engaged to be married for exactly
three days, should make the first call. They ascended, blushing and
brave. In a moment Jack Hall descended alone, nervously playing with the
silk handkerchief that was lodged in his beautiful white waistcoat. The
witch of Endor had informed him that she never received the two sexes
together, and had expelled him. This incident greatly enhanced the
witch's reputation. Then Stephen happened to mention that he had heard
that the woman's mother, and her grandmother before her, had been
fortune-tellers. Somehow that statement seemed to strike everybody full
in the face; it set a seal on the authority of the witch, made her
genuine. And an uncanny feeling seemed to spread through the house as
the house waited for Cissy to reappear.

"She's very _good_," said Cissy, on emerging. "She told me all sorts of
things."

A group formed at the foot of the stairs.

"What did she tell you?"

"Well, she said I must expect a very important letter in a few days, and
much would depend on it, and next year there will be a big removal, and
a large lumbering piece of furniture, and I shall go a journey over
water. It's quite right, you know. I suppose the letter's from grandma;
I hope it is, anyway. And if we go to France--"

Thenceforward the witch without a name held continuous receptions in
the boudoir, and the boudoir gradually grew into an abode of mystery and
strangeness, hypnotizing the entire house. People went thither; people
came back; and those who had not been pictured to themselves something
very incantatory, and little by little they made up their minds to go.
Some thought the woman excellent, others said it was all rot. But none
denied that it was interesting. None could possibly deny that the
fortune-telling had killed every other diversion provided by the
hospitable Stephen and Vera (except the refreshments). The most scornful
scoffers made a concession and kindly consented to go to the boudoir.
Stephen went. Charlie went. Even the Mayor of Hanbridge went (not being
on the borough Bench that night).

But Vera would not go. A genuine fear was upon her. Christmases had
always been unlucky for her peace of mind. And she was highly
superstitious. Yet she wanted to go; she was burning to go, all the
while assuring her guests that nothing would induce her to go. The party
drew to a close, and pair by pair the revellers drove off, or walked,
into the romantic night. Then Stephen told Vera to give the woman
half-a-sovereign and let her depart, for it was late. And in paying the
half-sovereign to the woman Vera was suddenly overcome by temptation and
asked for her fortune. The woman's grimy simplicity, her smiling face,
the commonness of her teapot, her utter unlikeness to anything in the
first act of _Macbeth_, encouraged Vera to believe in her magic powers.
Vera's hand trembled as, under instructions, she tipped the tea-leaves
into the saucer.

"Ay!" said the witch, in broadest Staffordshire, running her
objectionable hand up and down the buttons of her linsey-woolsey bodice,
and gently agitating the saucer. "Theer's a widder theer." [There's a
widow there.] "Yo'll be havin' a letter, or it mit be a talligram--"

Vera wouldn't hear any more. Her one fear in life was the fear of
Stephen's death (though she _did_ console Charlie with nice smiles and
lots of _tête-à-tête)_, and here was this fiendish witch directly
foreseeing the dreadful event.


III


Every day for many days Stephen expected to have to take part in a
pitched battle about the proposed balcony. The sweet enemy, however, did
not seem to be in fighting form. It is true that she mentioned the
balcony, but she mentioned it in quite a reasonable spirit. Astounding
as the statement may appear to any personal acquaintance of Vera's, Vera
showed a capacity to perceive that there were two sides to the question.
When Stephen pointed out that balconies were unsuited to the English
climate, she almost agreed. When he said that balconies were dangerous
and that to have a safe one would necessitate the strengthening of the
wall, she merely replied, with wonderful meekness, that she only weighed
seven stone twelve. When he informed her that the breakfast-room,
already not too light, was underneath the proposed balcony, which would
further darken it, she kept an angelic silence. And when he showed her
that the view from the proposed balcony would in any case be marred by
the immense pall of Five Towns smoke to the south, she still kept an
angelic silence.

Stephen could not understand it.

Nor was this all. She became extraordinarily solicitous for his welfare,
especially in the matter of health. She wrapped him up when he went out,
and unpacked him when he came in. She cautioned him against draughts,
overwork, microbes, and dietary indiscretions. Thanks to regular boxing
exercise, his old dyspepsia had almost entirely disappeared, but this
did not prevent her from watching every mouthful that vanished under the
portals of his moustache. And she superintended his boxing too. She made
a point of being present whenever he and Charlie boxed, and she would
force Charlie to cease fighting at the oddest moments. She was flat
against having a motor-car; she compelled Stephen to drive to the
station in the four-wheeler instead of in the high dogcart. Indeed, from
the way she guarded him, he might have been the one frail life that
stood between England and anarchy.

And she was always so kind, in a rather melancholy, resigned, wistful
fashion.

No. Stephen could _not_ understand it.

There came a time when Stephen could neither understand it nor stand it.
And he tried to worm out of her her secret. But he could not. The
fascinating little liar stoutly stuck to it that nothing was the matter
with her, and that she had nothing on her mind. Stephen knew
differently. He consulted Charlie Woodruff. She had not made a confidant
of Charlie. Charlie was exactly as much in the dark as Stephen. Then
Stephen (I regret to have to say it) took to swearing. For instance, he
swore when she hid all his thin socks and so obliged him to continue
with his thick ones. And one day he swore when, in answer to his query
why she was pale, she said she didn't know.

He thus, without expecting to do so, achieved a definite climax.

For she broke out. She ceased in half a second to be pale. She gave him
with cutting candour all that had been bottled up in her entrancing
bosom. She told him that the witch had foreseen her a widow (which was
the same thing as prophesying his death), and that she had done, and was
doing, all that the ingenuity of a loving heart could suggest to keep
him alive in spite of the prediction, but that, in face of his infamous
brutality, she should do no more; that if he chose to die and leave her
a widow he might die and leave her a widow for all she cared; in brief,
that she had done with him.

When she had become relatively calm Stephen addressed her calmly, and
even ingratiatingly.

"I'm sorry," he said, and added, "but you know you did say that you were
hiding nothing from me."

"Of course," she retorted, "because I _was_." Her arguments were usually
on this high plane of logic.

"And you ought not to be so superstitious," Stephen proceeded.

"Well," said she, with truth, "one never knows." And she wiped away a
tear and showed the least hint of an inclination to kiss him. "And
anyhow my only anxiety was for you."

"Do you really believe what that woman said?" Stephen asked.

"Well," she repeated, "one never knows."

"Because if you do, I'll tell you something."

"What?" Vera demanded.

At this juncture Stephen committed an error of tactics. He might have
let her continue in the fear of his death, and thus remained on velvet
(subject to occasional outbreaks) for the rest of his life. But he gave
himself utterly away.

"She told _me_ I should live till I was ninety," said he. "So you can't
be a widow for quite half a century, and you'll be eighty yourself
then."


IV


Within twenty-four hours she was at him about the balcony.

"The summer will be lovely," she said, in reply to his argument about
climate.

"Rubbish," she said, in reply to his argument about safety.

"Who cares for your old breakfast-room?" she said, in reply to his
argument about darkness at breakfast.

"We will have trees planted on that side--big elms," she said, in reply
to his argument about the smoke of the Five Towns spoiling the view.

Whereupon Stephen definitely and clearly enunciated that he should not
build a balcony.

"Oh, but you must!" she protested.

"A balcony is quite impossible," said Stephen, with his firmest
masculinity.

"You'll see if it's impossible," said she, "_when I'm that widow_."

The curious may be interested to know that she has already begun to
plant trees.




THE CAT AND CUPID

I


The secret history of the Ebag marriage is now printed for the first
time. The Ebag family, who prefer their name to be accented on the first
syllable, once almost ruled Oldcastle, which is a clean and conceited
borough, with long historical traditions, on the very edge of the
industrial, democratic and unclean Five Towns. The Ebag family still
lives in the grateful memory of Oldcastle, for no family ever did more
to preserve the celebrated Oldcastilian superiority in social, moral and
religious matters over the vulgar Five Towns. The episodes leading to
the Ebag marriage could only have happened in Oldcastle. By which I mean
merely that they could not have happened in any of the Five Towns. In
the Five Towns that sort of thing does not occur. I don't know why, but
it doesn't. The people are too deeply interested in football, starting
prices, rates, public parks, sliding scales, excursions to Blackpool,
and municipal shindies, to concern themselves with organists as such. In
the Five Towns an organist may be a sanitary inspector or an auctioneer
on Mondays. In Oldcastle an organist is an organist, recognized as such
in the streets. No one ever heard of an organist in the Five Towns being
taken up and petted by a couple of old ladies. But this may occur at
Oldcastle. It, in fact, did.

The scandalous circumstances which led to the disappearance from the
Oldcastle scene of Mr Skerritt, the original organist of St Placid, have
no relation to the present narrative, which opens when the ladies Ebag
began to seek for a new organist. The new church of St Placid owed its
magnificent existence to the Ebag family. The apse had been given
entirely by old Caiaphas Ebag (ex-M.P., now a paralytic sufferer) at a
cost of twelve thousand pounds; and his was the original idea of
building the church. When, owing to the decline of the working man's
interest in beer, and one or two other things, Caiaphas lost nearly the
whole of his fortune, which had been gained by honest labour in mighty
speculations, he rather regretted the church; he would have preferred
twelve thousand in cash to a view of the apse from his bedroom window;
but he was man enough never to complain. He lived, after his
misfortunes, in a comparatively small house with his two daughters, Mrs
Ebag and Miss Ebag. These two ladies are the heroines of the tale.

Mrs Ebag had married her cousin, who had died. She possessed about six
hundred a year of her own. She was two years older than her sister, Miss
Ebag, a spinster. Miss Ebag was two years younger than Mrs Ebag. No
further information as to their respective ages ever leaked out. Miss
Ebag had a little money of her own from her deceased mother, and
Caiaphas had the wreck of his riches. The total income of the household
was not far short of a thousand a year, but of this quite two hundred a
year was absorbed by young Edith Ebag, Mrs Ebag's step-daughter (for Mrs
Ebag had been her husband's second choice). Edith, who was notorious as
a silly chit and spent most of her time in London and other absurd
places, formed no part of the household, though she visited it
occasionally. The household consisted of old Caiaphas, bedridden, and
his two daughters and Goldie. Goldie was the tomcat, so termed by reason
of his splendid tawniness. Goldie had more to do with the Ebag marriage
than anyone or anything, except the weathercock on the top of the
house. This may sound queer, but is as naught to the queerness about to
be unfolded.


II


It cannot be considered unnatural that Mrs and Miss Ebag, with the
assistance of the vicar, should have managed the affairs of the church.
People nicknamed them "the churchwardens," which was not quite nice,
having regard to the fact that their sole aim was the truest welfare of
the church. They and the vicar, in a friendly and effusive way, hated
each other. Sometimes they got the better of the vicar, and, less often,
he got the better of them. In the choice of a new organist they won.
Their candidate was Mr Carl Ullman, the artistic orphan.

Mr Carl Ullman is the hero of the tale. The son of one of those German
designers of earthenware who at intervals come and settle in the Five
Towns for the purpose of explaining fully to the inhabitants how
inferior England is to Germany, he had an English mother, and he himself
was violently English. He spoke English like an Englishman and German
like an Englishman. He could paint, model in clay, and play three
musical instruments, including the organ. His one failing was that he
could never earn enough to live on. It seemed as if he was always being
drawn by an invisible string towards the workhouse door. Now and then he
made half a sovereign extra by deputizing on the organ. In such manner
had he been introduced to the Ebag ladies. His romantic and gloomy
appearance had attracted them, with the result that they had asked him
to lunch after the service, and he had remained with them till the
evening service. During the visit they had learnt that his grandfather
had been Court Councillor in the Kingdom of Saxony. Afterwards they
often said to each other how ideal it would be if only Mr Skerritt
might be removed and Carl Ullman take his place. And when Mr Skerritt
actually was removed, by his own wickedness, they regarded it as almost
an answer to prayer, and successfully employed their powerful interest
on behalf of Carl. The salary was a hundred a year. Not once in his life
had Carl earned a hundred pounds in a single year. For him the situation
meant opulence. He accepted it, but calmly, gloomily. Romantic gloom was
his joy in life. He said with deep melancholy that he was sure he could
not find a convenient lodging in Oldcastle. And the ladies Ebag then
said that he must really come and spend a few days with them and Goldie
and papa until he was "suited." He said that he hated to plant himself
on people, and yielded to the request. The ladies Ebag fussed around his
dark-eyed and tranquil pessimism, and both of them instantly grew
younger--a curious but authentic phenomenon. They adored his playing,
and they were enchanted to discover that his notions about hymn tunes
agreed with theirs, and by consequence disagreed with the vicar's. In
the first week or two they scored off the vicar five times, and the
advantage of having your organist in your own house grew very apparent.
They were also greatly impressed by his gentleness with Goldie and by
his intelligent interest in serious questions.

One day Miss Ebag said timidly to her sister: "It's just six months
to-day."

"What do you mean, sister?" asked Mrs Ebag, self-consciously.

"Since Mr Ullman came."

"So it is!" said Mrs Ebag, who was just as well aware of the date as the
spinster was aware of it.

They said no more. The position was the least bit delicate. Carl had
found no lodging. He did not offer to go. They did not want him to go.
He did not offer to pay. And really he cost them nothing except
laundry, whisky and fussing. How could they suggest that he should pay?
He lived amidst them like a beautiful mystery, and all were seemingly
content. Carl was probably saving the whole of his salary, for he never
bought clothes and he did not smoke. The ladies Ebag simply did what
they liked about hymn-tunes.


III


You would have thought that no outsider would find a word to say, and
you would have been mistaken. The fact that Mrs Ebag was two years older
than Miss and Miss two years younger than Mrs Ebag; the fact that old
Caiaphas was, for strong reasons, always in the house; the fact that the
ladies were notorious cat-idolaters; the fact that the reputation of the
Ebag family was and had ever been spotless; the fact that the Ebag
family had given the apse and practically created the entire church; all
these facts added together did not prevent the outsider from finding a
word to say.

At first words were not said; but looks were looked, and coughs were
coughed. Then someone, strolling into the church of a morning while Carl
Ullman was practising, saw Miss Ebag sitting in silent ecstasy in a
corner. And a few mornings later the same someone, whose curiosity had
been excited, veritably saw Mrs Ebag in the organ-loft with Carl Ullman,
but no sign of Miss Ebag. It was at this juncture that words began to be
said.

Words! Not complete sentences! The sentences were never finished. "Of
course, it's no affair of mine, but--" "I wonder that people like the
Ebags should--" "Not that I should ever dream of hinting that--" "First
one and then the other--well!" "I'm sure that if either Mrs or Miss
Ebag had the slightest idea they'd at once--" And so on. Intangible
gossamer criticism, floating in the air!


IV


One evening--it was precisely the first of June--when a thunderstorm was
blowing up from the south-west, and scattering the smoke of the Five
Towns to the four corners of the world, and making the weathercock of
the house of the Ebags creak, the ladies Ebag and Carl Ullman sat
together as usual in the drawing-room. The French window was open, but
banged to at intervals. Carl Ullman had played the piano and the ladies
Ebag--Mrs Ebag, somewhat comfortably stout and Miss Ebag spare--were
talking very well and sensibly about the influence of music on
character. They invariably chose such subjects for conversation. Carl
was chiefly silent, but now and then, after a sip of whisky, he would
say "Yes" with impressiveness and stare gloomily out of the darkening
window. The ladies Ebag had a remarkable example of the influence of
music on character in the person of Edith Ebag. It appeared that Edith
would never play anything but waltzes--Waldteufel's for choice--and that
the foolish frivolity of her flyaway character was a direct consequence
of this habit. Carl felt sadly glad, after hearing the description of
Edith's carryings-on, that Edith had chosen to live far away.

And then the conversation languished and died with the daylight, and a
certain self-consciousness obscured the social atmosphere. For a vague
rumour of the chatter of the town had penetrated the house, and the
ladies Ebag, though they scorned chatter, were affected by it; Carl
Ullman, too. It had the customary effect of such chatter; it fixed the
thoughts of those chatted about on matters which perhaps would not
otherwise have occupied their attention.

The ladies Ebag said to themselves: "We are no longer aged nineteen. We
are moreover living with our father. If he is bedridden, what then? This
gossip connecting our names with that of Mr Ullman is worse than
baseless; it is preposterous. We assert positively that we have no
designs of any kind on Mr Ullman."

Nevertheless, by dint of thinking about that gossip, the naked idea of a
marriage with Mr Ullman soon ceased to shock them. They could gaze at it
without going into hysterics.

As for Carl, he often meditated upon his own age, which might have been
anything between thirty and forty-five, and upon the mysterious ages of
the ladies, and upon their goodness, their charm, their seriousness,
their intelligence and their sympathy with himself.

Hence the self-consciousness in the gloaming.

To create a diversion Miss Ebag walked primly to the window and cried:

"Goldie! Goldie!"

It was Goldie's bedtime. In summer he always strolled into the garden
after dinner, and he nearly always sensibly responded to the call when
his bed-hour sounded. No one would have dreamed of retiring until Goldie
was safely ensconced in his large basket under the stairs.

"Naughty Goldie!" Miss Ebag said, comprehensively, to the garden.

She went into the garden to search, and Mrs Ebag followed her, and Carl
Ullman followed Mrs Ebag. And they searched without result, until it was
black night and the threatening storm at last fell. The vision of Goldie
out in that storm desolated the ladies, and Carl Ullman displayed the
nicest feeling. At length the rain drove them in and they stood in the
drawing-room with anxious faces, while two servants, under directions
from Carl, searched the house for Goldie.

"If you please'm," stammered the housemaid, rushing rather
unconventionally into the drawing-room, "cook says she thinks Goldie
must be on the roof, in the vane."

"On the roof in the vane?" exclaimed Mrs Ebag, pale. "In the vane?"

"Yes'm."

"Whatever do you mean, Sarah?" asked Miss Ebag, even paler.

The ladies Ebag were utterly convinced that Goldie was not like other
cats, that he never went on the roof, that he never had any wish to do
anything that was not in the strictest sense gentlemanly and correct.
And if by chance he did go on the roof, it was merely to examine the
roof itself, or to enjoy the view therefrom out of gentlemanly
curiosity. So that this reference to the roof shocked them. The night
did not favour the theory of view-gazing.

"Cook says she heard the weather-vane creaking ever since she went
upstairs after dinner, and now it's stopped; and she can hear Goldie
a-myowling like anything."

"Is cook in her attic?" asked Mrs Ebag.

"Yes'm."

"Ask her to come out. Mr Ullman, will you be so very good as to come
upstairs and investigate?"

Cook, enveloped in a cloak, stood out on the second landing, while Mr
Ullman and the ladies invaded her chamber. The noise of myowling was
terrible. Mr Ullman opened the dormer window, and the rain burst in,
together with a fury of myowling. But he did not care. It lightened and
thundered. But he did not care. He procured a chair of cook's and put it
under the window and stood on it, with his back to the window, and
twisted forth his body so that he could spy up the roof. The ladies
protested that he would be wet through, but he paid no heed to them.

Then his head, dripping, returned into the room. "I've just seen by a
flash of lightning," he said in a voice of emotion. "The poor animal has
got his tail fast in the socket of the weather-vane. He must have been
whisking it about up there, and the vane turned and caught it. The vane
is jammed."

"How dreadful!" said Mrs Ebag. "Whatever can be done?"

"He'll be dead before morning," sobbed Miss Ebag.

"I shall climb up the roof and release him," said Carl Ullman, gravely.

They forbade him to do so. Then they implored him to refrain. But he was
adamant. And in their supplications there was a note of insincerity, for
their hearts bled for Goldie, and, further, they were not altogether
unwilling that Carl should prove himself a hero. And so, amid
apprehensive feminine cries of the acuteness of his danger, Carl crawled
out of the window and faced the thunder, the lightning, the rain, the
slippery roof, and the maddened cat. A group of three servants were
huddled outside the attic door.

In the attic the ladies could hear his movements on the roof, moving
higher and higher. The suspense was extreme. Then there was silence;
even the myowling had ceased. Then a clap of thunder; and then, after
that, a terrific clatter on the roof, a bounding downwards as of a great
stone, a curse, a horrid pause, and finally a terrific smashing of
foliage and cracking of wood.

Mrs Ebag sprang to the window.

"It's all right," came a calm, gloomy voice from below. "I fell into the
rhododendrons, and Goldie followed me. I'm not hurt, thank goodness!
Just my luck!"

A bell rang imperiously. It was the paralytic's bell. He had been
disturbed by these unaccustomed phenomena.

"Sister, do go to father at once," said Mrs Ebag, as they both hastened
downstairs in a state of emotion, assuredly unique in their lives.


V


Mrs Ebag met Carl and the cat as they dripped into the gas-lit
drawing-room. They presented a surprising spectacle, and they were doing
damage to the Persian carpet at the rate of about five shillings a
second; but that Carl, and the beloved creature for whom he had dared so
much, were equally unhurt appeared to be indubitable. Of course, it was
a miracle. It could not be regarded as other than a miracle. Mrs Ebag
gave vent to an exclamation in which were mingled pity, pride,
admiration and solicitude, and then remained, as it were, spellbound.
The cat escaped from those protecting arms and fled away. Instead of
following Goldie, Mrs Ebag continued to gaze at the hero.

"How can I thank you!" she whispered.

"What for?" asked Carl, with laconic gloom.

"For having saved my darling!" said Mrs Ebag. And there was passion in
her voice.

"Oh!" said Carl. "It was nothing!"

"Nothing?" Mrs Ebag repeated after him, with melting eyes, as if to
imply that, instead of being nothing, it was everything; as if to imply
that his deed must rank hereafter with the most splendid deeds of
antiquity; as if to imply that the whole affair was beyond words to
utter or gratitude to repay.

And in fact Carl himself was moved. You cannot fall from the roof of a
two-story house into a very high-class rhododendron bush, carrying a
prize cat in your arms, without being a bit shaken. And Carl was a bit
shaken, not merely physically, but morally and spiritually. He could not
deny to himself that he had after all done something rather wondrous,
which ought to be celebrated in sounding verse. He felt that he was in
an atmosphere far removed from the commonplace.

He dripped steadily on to the carpet.

"You know how dear my cat was to me," proceeded Mrs Ebag. "And you
risked your life to spare me the pain of his suffering, perhaps his
death. How thankful I am that I insisted on having those rhododendrons
planted just where they are--fifteen years ago! I never anticipated--"

She stopped. Tears came into her dowager eyes. It was obvious that she
worshipped him. She was so absorbed in his heroism that she had no
thought even for his dampness. As Carl's eyes met hers she seemed to him
to grow younger. And there came into his mind all the rumour that had
vaguely reached him coupling their names together; and also his early
dreams of love and passion and a marriage that would be one long
honeymoon. And he saw how absurd had been those early dreams. He saw
that the best chance of a felicitous marriage lay in a union of mature
and serious persons, animated by grave interests and lofty ideals. Yes,
she was older than he. But not much, not much! Not more than--how many
years? And he remembered surprising her rapt glance that very evening as
she watched him playing the piano. What had romance to do with age?
Romance could occur at any age. It was occurring now. Her soft eyes, her
portly form, exuded romance. And had not the renowned Beaconsfield
espoused a lady appreciably older than himself, and did not those
espousals achieve the ideal of bliss? In the act of saving the cat he
had not been definitely aware that it was so particularly the cat of the
household. But now, influenced by her attitude and her shining
reverence, he actually did begin to persuade himself that an
uncontrollable instinctive desire to please her and win her for his own
had moved him to undertake the perilous passage of the sloping roof.

In short, the idle chatter of the town was about to be justified. In
another moment he might have dripped into her generous arms ... had not
Miss Ebag swept into the drawing-room!

"Gracious!" gasped Miss Ebag. "The poor dear thing will have pneumonia.
Sister, you know his chest is not strong. Dear Mr Ullman, please,
please, do go and--er--change."

He did the discreet thing and went to bed, hot whisky following him on a
tray carried by the housemaid.


VI


The next morning the slightly unusual happened. It was the custom for
Carl Ullman to breakfast alone, while reading _The Staffordshire
Signal_. The ladies Ebag breakfasted mysteriously in bed. But on this
morning Carl found Miss Ebag before him in the breakfast-room. She
prosecuted minute inquiries as to his health and nerves. She went out
with him to regard the rhododendron bushes, and shuddered at the sight
of the ruin which had saved him. She said, following famous
philosophers, that Chance was merely the name we give to the effect of
laws which we cannot understand. And, upon this high level of
conversation, she poured forth his coffee and passed his toast.

It was a lovely morning after the tempest.

Goldie, all newly combed, and looking as though he had never seen a
roof, strolled pompously into the room with tail unfurled. Miss Ebag
picked the animal up and kissed it passionately.

"Darling!" she murmured, not exactly to Mr Ullman, nor yet exactly to
the cat. Then she glanced effulgently at Carl and said, "When I think
that you risked your precious life, in that awful storm, to save my poor
Goldie?... You must have guessed how dear he was to me?... No, really,
Mr Ullman, I cannot thank you properly! I can't express my--"

Her eyes were moist.

Although not young, she was two years younger. Her age was two years
less. The touch of man had never profaned her. No masculine kiss had
ever rested on that cheek, that mouth. And Carl felt that he might be
the first to cull the flower that had so long waited. He did not see,
just then, the hollow beneath her chin, the two lines of sinew that,
bounding a depression, disappeared beneath her collarette. He saw only
her soul. He guessed that she would be more malleable than the widow,
and he was sure that she was not in a position, as the widow was, to
make comparisons between husbands. Certainly there appeared to be some
confusion as to the proprietorship of this cat. Certainly he could not
have saved the cat's life for love of two different persons. But that
was beside the point. The essential thing was that he began to be glad
that he had decided nothing definite about the widow on the previous
evening.

"Darling!" said she again, with a new access of passion, kissing Goldie,
but darting a glance at Carl.

He might have put to her the momentous question, between two bites of
buttered toast, had not Mrs Ebag, at the precise instant, swum amply
into the room.

"Sister! You up!" exclaimed Miss Ebag.

"And you, sister!" retorted Mrs Ebag.


VII


It is impossible to divine what might have occurred for the delectation
of the very ancient borough of Oldcastle if that frivolous piece of
goods, Edith, had not taken it into her head to run down from London for
a few days, on the plea that London was too ridiculously hot. She was a
pretty girl, with fluffy honey-coloured hair and about thirty white
frocks. And she seemed to be quite as silly as her staid stepmother and
her prim step-aunt had said. She transformed the careful order of the
house into a wild disorder, and left a novel or so lying on the
drawing-room table between her stepmother's _Contemporary Review_ and
her step-aunt's _History of European Morals_. Her taste in music was
candidly and brazenly bad. It was a fact, as her elders had stated, that
she played nothing but waltzes. What was worse, she compelled Carl
Ullman to perform waltzes. And one day she burst into the drawing-room
when Carl was alone there, with a roll under her luscious arm, and said:

"What do you think I've found at Barrowfoot's?"

"I don't know," said Carl, gloomily smiling, and then smiling without
gloom.

"Waldteufel's waltzes arranged for four hands. You must play them with
me at once."

And he did. It was a sad spectacle to see the organist of St Placid's
galloping through a series of dances with the empty-headed Edith.

The worst was, he liked it. He knew that he ought to prefer the high
intellectual plane, the severe artistic tastes, of the elderly sisters.
But he did not. He was amazed to discover that frivolity appealed more
powerfully to his secret soul. He was also amazed to discover that his
gloom was leaving him. This vanishing of gloom gave him strange
sensations, akin to the sensations of a man who, after having worn
gaiters into middle-age, abandons them.

After the Waldteufel she began to tell him all about herself; how she
went slumming in the East End, and how jolly it was. And how she helped
in the Bloomsbury Settlement, and how jolly that was. And, later, she
said:

"You must have thought it very odd of me, Mr Ullman, not thanking you
for so bravely rescuing my poor cat; but the truth is I never heard of
it till to-day. I can't say how grateful I am. I should have loved to
see you doing it."

"Is Goldie your cat?" he feebly inquired.

"Why, of course?" she said. "Didn't you know? Of course you did! Goldie
always belonged to me. Grandpa bought him for me. But I couldn't do with
him in London, so I always leave him here for them to take care of. He
adores me. He never forgets me. He'll come to me before anyone. You must
have noticed that. I can't say how grateful I am! It was perfectly
marvellous of you! I can't help laughing, though, whenever I think what
a state mother and auntie must have been in that night!"

Strictly speaking, they hadn't a cent between them, except his hundred a
year. But he married her hair and she married his melancholy eyes; and
she was content to settle in Oldcastle, where there are almost no slums.
And her stepmother was forced by Edith to make the hundred up to four
hundred. This was rather hard on Mrs Ebag. Thus it fell out that Mrs
Ebag remained a widow, and that Miss Ebag continues a flower uncalled.
However, gossip was stifled.

In his appointed time, and in the fulness of years, Goldie died, and was
mourned. And by none was he more sincerely mourned than by the aged
bedridden Caiaphas.

"I miss my cat, I can tell ye!" said old Caiaphas pettishly to Carl, who
was sitting by his couch. "He knew his master, Goldie did! Edith did her
best to steal him from me when you married and set up house. A nice
thing considering I bought him and he never belonged to anybody but me!
Ay! I shall never have another cat like that cat."

And this is the whole truth of the affair.




THE FORTUNE TELLER

I


The prologue to this somewhat dramatic history was of the simplest. The
affair came to a climax, if one may speak metaphorically, in fire and
sword and high passion, but it began like the month of March. Mr Bostock
(a younger brother of the senior partner in the famous firm of Bostocks,
drapers, at Hanbridge) was lounging about the tennis-court attached to
his house at Hillport. Hillport has long been known as the fashionable
suburb of Bursley, and indeed as the most aristocratic quarter strictly
within the Five Towns; there certainly are richer neighbourhoods not far
off, but such neighbourhoods cannot boast that they form part of the
Five Towns--no more than Hatfield can boast that it is part of London. A
man who lives in a detached house at Hillport, with a tennis-court, may
be said to have succeeded in life. And Mr Bostock had succeeded. A
consulting engineer of marked talent, he had always worked extremely
hard and extremely long, and thus he had arrived at luxuries. The chief
of his luxuries was his daughter Florence, aged twenty-three, height
five feet exactly, as pretty and as neat as a new doll, of expensive and
obstinate habits. It was Florence who was the cause of the episode, and
I mention her father only to show where Florence stood in the world. She
ruled her father during perhaps eleven months of the year. In the
twelfth month (which was usually January--after the Christmas bills)
there would be an insurrection, conducted by the father with much spirit
for a time, but ultimately yielding to the forces of the government.
Florence had many admirers; a pretty woman, who habitually rules a rich
father, is bound to have many admirers. But she had two in particular;
her cousin, Ralph Martin, who had been apprenticed to her father, and
Adam Tellwright, a tile manufacturer at Turnhill.

These four--the father and daughter and the rivals--had been playing
tennis that Saturday afternoon. Mr Bostock, though touching on fifty,
retained a youthful athleticism; he looked and talked younger than his
years, and he loved the society of young people. If he wandered solitary
and moody about the tennis-court now, it was because he had a great deal
on his mind besides business. He had his daughter's future on his mind.

A servant with apron-strings waving like flags in the breeze came from
the house with a large loaded tea-tray, and deposited it on a wicker
table on the small lawn at the end of the ash court. The rivals were
reclining in deck chairs close to the table; the Object of Desire, all
in starched white, stood over the table and with quick delicious
movements dropped sugar and poured milk into tinkling porcelain.

"Now, father," she called briefly, without looking up, as she seized the
teapot.

He approached, gazing thoughtfully at the group. Yes, he was worried.
And everyone was secretly worried. The situation was exceedingly
delicate, fragile, breakable. Mr Bostock looked uneasily first at Adam
Tellwright, tall, spick and span, self-confident, clever, shining, with
his indubitable virtues mainly on the outside. If ever any man of
thirty-two in all this world was eligible, Adam Tellwright was.
Decidedly he had a reputation for preternaturally keen smartness in
trade, but in trade that cannot be called a defect; on the contrary, if
a man has virtues, you cannot precisely quarrel with him because they
happen to be on the outside; the principal thing is to have virtues. And
then Mr Bostock looked uneasily at Ralph Martin, heavy, short, dark,
lowering, untidy, often incomprehensible, and more often rude; with
virtues concealed as if they were secret shames. Ralph was capricious.
At moments he showed extraordinary talent as an engineer; at others he
behaved like a nincompoop. He would be rich one day; but he had a
formidable temper. The principal thing in favour of Ralph Martin was
that he and Florence had always been "something to each other." Indeed
of late years it had been begun to be understood that the match was "as
good as arranged." It was taken for granted. Then Adam Tellwright had
dropped like a bomb into the Bostock circle. He had fallen heavily and
disastrously in love with the slight Florence (whom he could have
crushed and eaten). At the start his case was regarded as hopeless, and
Ralph Martin had scorned him. But Adam Tellwright soon caused gossip to
sing a different tune, and Ralph Martin soon ceased to scorn him. Adam
undoubtedly made a profound impression on Florence Bostock. He began by
dazzling her, and then, as her eyes grew accustomed to the glare, he
gradually showed her his good qualities. Everything that skill and tact
could do Tellwright did. The same could not be said of Ralph Martin.
Most people had a vague feeling that Ralph had not been treated fairly.
Mr Bostock had this feeling. Yet why? Nothing had been settled.
Florence's heart was evidently still open to competition, and Adam
Tellwright had a perfect right to compete. Still, most people
sympathized with Ralph. But Florence did not. Young girls are like that.

Now the rivals stood about equal. No one knew how the battle would go.
Adam did not know. Ralph did not know. Florence assuredly did not know.
Mr Bostock was quite certain, of a night, that Adam would win, but the
next morning he was quite certain that his nephew would win.

No wonder that the tea-party, every member of it tremendously
preoccupied by the great battle, was not distinguished by light and
natural gaiety. Great battles cannot be talked about till they are over
and the last shot fired. And it is not to be expected that people should
be bright when each knows the others to be deeply preoccupied by a
matter which must not even be mentioned. The tea-party was
self-conscious, highly. Therefore, it ate too many cakes and chocolate,
and forgot to count its cups of tea. The conversation nearly died of
inanition several times, and at last it actually did die, and the
quartette gazed in painful silence at its corpse. Anyone who has
assisted at this kind of a tea-party will appreciate the situation. Why,
Adam Tellwright himself was out of countenance. To his honour, it was he
who first revived the corpse. A copy of the previous evening's _Signal_
was lying on an empty deck-chair. It had been out all night, and was
dampish. Tellwright picked it up, having finished his tea, and threw a
careless eye over it. He was determined to talk about something.

"By Jove!" he said. "That Balsamo johnny is coming to Hanbridge!"

"Yes, didn't you know?" said Florence, agreeably bent on resuscitating
the corpse.

"What! The palmistry man?" asked Mr Bostock, with a laugh.

"Yes." And Adam Tellwright read: "'Balsamo, the famous palmist and
reader of the future, begs to announce that he is making a tour through
the principal towns, and will visit Hanbridge on the 22nd inst.,
remaining three days. Balsamo has thousands of testimonials to the
accuracy of his predictions, and he absolutely guarantees not only to
read the past correctly, but to foretell the future. Address: 22 Machin
Street, Hanbridge. 10 to 10. Appointment advisable in order to avoid
delay.' There! He'll find himself in prison one day, that gentleman
will!"

"It's astounding what fools people are!" observed Mr Bostock.

"Yes, isn't it!" said Adam Tellwright.

"If he'd been a gipsy," said Ralph Martin, savagely, "the police would
have had him long ago." And he spoke with such grimness that he might
have been talking of Adam Tellwright.

"They say his uncle and his grandfather before him were both
thought-readers, or whatever you call it," said Florence.

"Do they?" exclaimed Mr Bostock, in a different tone.

"Oh!" exclaimed Adam, also in a different tone.

"I wonder whether that's true!" said Ralph Martin.

The rumour that Balsamo's uncle and grandfather had been readers of the
past and of the future produced of course quite an impression on the
party. But each recognized how foolish it was to allow oneself to be so
impressed in such an illogical manner. And therefore all the men burst
into violent depreciation of Balsamo and of the gulls who consulted him.
And by the time they had done with Balsamo there was very little left of
him. Anyhow, Adam Tellwright's discovery in the _Signal_ had saved the
tea-party from utter fiasco.


II


No. 22 Machin Street, Hanbridge, was next door to Bostock's vast
emporium, and exactly opposite the more exclusive, but still mighty,
establishment of Ephraim Brunt, the greatest draper in the Five Towns.
It was, therefore, in the very heart and centre of retail commerce. No
woman who respected herself could buy even a sheet of pins without
going past No. 22 Machin Street. The ground-floor was a confectioner's
shop, with a back room where tea and Berlin pancakes were served to the
_élite_ who had caught from London the fashion of drinking tea in public
places. By the side of the confectioner's was an open door and a
staircase, which led to the first floor and the other floors. A card
hung by a cord to a nail indicated that Balsamo had pitched his moving
tent for a few days on the first floor, in a suite of offices lately
occupied by a solicitor. Considering that the people who visit a palmist
are just as anxious to publish their doings as the people who visit a
pawnbroker--and no more--it might be thought that Balsamo had ill-chosen
his site. But this was not so. Balsamo, a deep student of certain sorts
of human nature, was perfectly aware that, just as necessity will force
a person to visit a pawnbroker, so will inherited superstition force a
person to visit a palmist, no matter what the inconveniences. If he had
erected a wigwam in the middle of Crown Square and people had had to
decide between not seeing him at all and running the gauntlet of a
crowd's jeering curiosity, he would still have had many clients.

Of course when you are in love you are in love. Anything may happen to
you then. Most things do happen. For example, Adam Tellwright found
himself ascending the stairs of No. 22 Machin Street at an early hour
one morning. He was, I need not say, mounting to the third floor to give
an order to the potter's modeller, who had a studio up there. Still he
stopped at the first floor, knocked at a door labelled "Balsamo,"
hesitated, and went in. I need not say that this was only fun on his
part. I need not say that he had no belief whatever in palmistry, and
was not in the least superstitious. A young man was seated at a desk, a
stylish young man. Adam Tellwright smiled, as one who expected the
stylish young man to join in the joke. But the young man did not smile.
So Adam Tellwright suddenly ceased to smile.

"Are you Mr Balsamo?" Adam inquired.

"No. I'm his secretary."

His secretary! Strange how the fact that Balsamo was guarded by a
secretary, and so stylish a secretary, affected the sagacious and
hard-headed Adam!

"You wish to see him?" the secretary demanded coldly.

"I suppose I may as well," said Adam, sheepishly.

"He is disengaged, I think. But I will make sure. Kindly sit down."

Down sat Adam, playing nervously with his hat, and intensely hoping that
no other client would come in and trap him.

"Mr Balsamo will see you," said the secretary, emerging through a double
black portière. "The fee is a guinea."

He resumed his chair and drew towards him a book of receipt forms.

A guinea!

However, Adam paid it. The receipt form said: "Received from Mr ---- the
sum of one guinea for professional assistance.--Per Balsamo, J.H.K.,"
and a long flourish. The words "one guinea" were written. Idle to deny
that this receipt form was impressive. As Adam meekly followed "J.H.K."
in to the Presence, he felt exactly as if he was being ushered into a
dentist's cabinet. He felt as though he had been caught in the wheels of
an unstoppable machine and was in vague but serious danger.

The Presence was a bold man, with a flowing light brown moustache, blue
eyes, and a vast forehead. He wore a black velvet coat, and sat at a
small table on which was a small black velvet cushion. There were two
doors to the rooms, each screened by double black portières, and beyond
a second chair and a large transparent ball, such as dentists use,
there was no other furniture.

"Better give me your hat," said the secretary, and took it from Adam,
who parted from it reluctantly, as if from his last reliable friend.
Then the portières swished together, and Adam was alone with Balsamo.

Balsamo stared at him; did not even ask him to sit down.

"Why do you come to me? You don't believe in me," said Balsamo, curtly.
"Why waste your money?"

"How can I tell whether I believe in you or not," protested Adam
Tellwright, the shrewd man of business, very lamely. "I've come to see
what you can do."

Balsamo snapped his fingers.

"Sit down then," said he, "and put your hands on this cushion.
No!--palms up!"

Balsamo gaped at them a long time, rubbing his chin. Then he rose,
adjusted the transparent glass ball so that the light came through it on
to Adam's hands, sat down again and resumed his stare.

"Do you want to know everything?" he asked.

"Yes--of course."

"Everything?"

"Yes." A trace of weakness in this affirmative.

"Well, you mustn't expect to live much after fifty-two. Look at the line
of life there." He spoke in such a casual, even antipathetic tone that
Adam was startled.

"You've had success. You will have it continuously. But you won't live
long."

"What have I to avoid?" Adam demanded.

"Can't avoid your fate. You asked me to tell you everything."

"Tell me about my past," said Adam, feebly, the final remnant of
shrewdness in him urging him to get the true measure of Balsamo before
matters grew worse.

"Your past?" Balsamo murmured. "Keep your left hand quite still,
please. You aren't married. You're in business. You've never thought of
marriage--till lately. It's not often I see a hand like yours. Your
slate is clean. Till lately you never thought of marriage."

"How lately?"

"Who can say when the idea of marriage first came to you? You couldn't
say yourself. Perhaps about three months ago. Yes--three months. I see
water--you have crossed the sea. Is all this true?"

"Yes," admitted Adam.

"You're in love, of course. Did you know you have a rival?"

"Yes." Once more Adam was startled.

"Is he fair? No, he's not fair. He's dark. Isn't he?"

"Yes."

"Ah! The woman. Uncertain, uncertain. Mind you I never undertake to
foretell anything; all I guarantee is that what I do foretell will
happen. Now, you will be married in a year or eighteen months." Balsamo
stuck his chin out with the gesture of one who imparts grave news; then
paused reflectively.

"Whom to?"

"Ah! There are two women. One fair, one dark. Which one do you prefer?"

"The dark one," Adam replied in spite of himself.

"Perhaps the fair one has not yet come into your life? No. But she will
do."

"But which shall I marry?"

"Look at that line. No, here! See how indistinct and confused it is.
Your destiny is not yet settled. Frankly, I cannot tell you with
certainty. No one can go in advance of destiny. Ah! Young man, I
sympathize with you."

"Then, really you can't tell me."

"Listen! I might help you. Yes, I might help you."

"How?"

"The others will come to me."

"What others?"

"Your rival. And the woman you love."

"And then?"

"What is not marked on your hand may be very clearly marked on theirs.
Come to me again."

"How do you know they will come? They both said they should not."

"You said you would not. But you are here. Rely on me. They will come. I
might do a great deal for you. Of course it will cost you more. One
lives in a world of money, and I sell my powers, like the rest of
mankind. I am proud to do so."

"How much will it cost?"

"Five pounds. You are free to take it or leave it, naturally."

Adam Tellwright put his hand in his pocket.

"Have the goodness to pay my secretary," Balsamo stopped him icily.

"I beg pardon," said Adam, out of countenance.

"Of course if they do not come the money will be returned. Now, before
you go, you might tell me all you know about him, and about her. All.
Omit nothing. It is not essential, but it might help me. There is a
chance that it might make things clearer than they otherwise could be.
The true palmist never refuses any aid."

And Adam thereupon went into an elaborate account of Florence Bostock
and Ralph Martin. He left out nothing, not even that Ralph had a wart on
his chin, and had once broken a leg; nor that Florence had once been
nearly drowned in a swimming-bath in London.




III


It was the same afternoon.

Balsamo stared calmly at a young dark-browed man who had entered his
sanctuary with much the same air as a village bumpkin assumes when he is
about to be shown the three-card trick on a race-course. Balsamo did not
even ask him to sit down.

"Why do you come to me? You don't believe in me," said Balsamo, curtly.
"Why waste your half-sovereign?"

Ralph Martin, not being talkative, said nothing.

"However!" Balsamo proceeded. "Sit down, please. Let me look at your
hands. Ah! yes! Do you want to know anything?"

"Yes, of course."

"Everything?"

"Certainly."

"Let me advise you, then, to give up all thoughts of that woman."

"What woman?"

"You know what woman. She is a very little woman. Once she was nearly
drowned--far from here. You've loved her for a long time. You thought it
was a certainty. And upon my soul you were justified in thinking
so--almost! Look at that line. But it isn't a certainty. Look at that
line!"

Balsamo gazed at him coldly, and Ralph Martin knew not what to do or to
say. He was astounded; he was frightened; he was desolated. He perceived
at once that palmistry was after all a terrible reality.

"Tell me some more," he murmured.

And so Balsamo told him a great deal more, including full details of a
woman far finer than Florence Bostock, whom he was destined to meet in
the following year. But Ralph Martin would have none of this new woman.
Then Balsamo said suddenly:

"She is coming. I see her coming."

"Who?"

"The little woman. She is dressed in white, with a gold-and-white
sunshade, and yellow gloves and boots, and she has a gold reticule in
her hand. Is that she?"

Ralph Martin admitted that it was she. On the other hand, Balsamo did
not admit that he had seen her an hour earlier and had made an
appointment with her.

There was a quiet knock on the door. Ralph started.

"You hear," said Balsamo, quietly, "I fear you will never win her."

"You said just now positively that I shouldn't," Ralph exclaimed.

"I did not," said Balsamo. "I would like to help you. I am very sorry
for you. It is not often I see a hand like yours. I might be able to
help you; the destiny is not yet settled."

"I'll give you anything to help me," said Ralph.

"It will be a couple of guineas," said Balsamo.

"But what guarantee have I?" Ralph asked rudely, when he had paid the
money--to Balsamo, not to the secretary. Such changes of humour were
characteristic of him.

"None!" said Balsamo, with dignity, putting the sovereigns on the table.
"But I am sorry for you. I will tell you what you can do. You can go
behind those curtains there"--he pointed to the inner door--"and listen
to all that I say."

A proposal open to moral objections! But when you are in the state that
Ralph Martin was in, and have experienced what he had just experienced,
your out-look upon morals is apt to be disturbed.




IV


"Young lady," Balsamo was saying. "Rest assured that I have not taken
five shillings from you for nothing. Your lover has a wart on his chin."

Daintiness itself sat in front of him, with her little porcelain hands
lying on the black cushion. And daintiness was astonished into
withdrawing those hands.

"Please keep your hands still," said Balsamo, firmly, and proceeded:
"But you have another lover, older, who has recently come into your
life. Fair, tall. A successful man who will always be successful. Is it
not so?"

"Yes," a little voice muttered.

"You can't make up your mind between them? Answer me."

"No."

"And you wish to learn the future. I will tell you--you will marry the
fair man. That is your destiny. And you will be very happy. You will
soon perceive the bad qualities of the one with the wart. He is a wicked
man. I need not urge you to avoid him. You will do so."

"A bad man!"

"A bad man. You see there are two sovereigns lying here. That man has
actually tried to bribe me to influence you in his favour?"

"Ralph?"

"Since you mention his Christian name, I will mention his surname. It is
written here. Martin."

"He can't have--possibly--"

Balsamo strode with offended pride to the portière, and pulled it away,
revealing Mr Ralph Martin, who for the second time that afternoon knew
not what to say or to do.

"I tell you--" Ralph began, as red as fire.

"Silence, sir! Let this teach you not to try to corrupt an honest
professional man! Surely I had amply convinced you of my powers! Take
your miserable money!" He offered the miserable money to Ralph, who
stuck his hands in his pockets, whereupon Balsamo flung the miserable
money violently on to the floor.

A deplorable scene followed, in which the presence of Balsamo did not
prevent Florence Bostock from conveying clearly to Ralph what she
thought of him. They spoke before Balsamo quite freely, as two people
will discuss maladies before a doctor. Ralph departed first; then
Florence. Then Balsamo gathered up the sovereigns. He had honestly
earned Adam's fiver, and since Ralph had refused the two pounds--"I have
seen their hands," said Balsamo the next day to Adam Tellwright. "All is
clear. In a month you will be engaged to her."

"A month?"

"A month. I regret that I had a painful scene with your rival. But of
course professional etiquette prevents me from speaking of that. Let me
repeat, in a month you will be engaged to her."

This prophecy came true. Adam Tellwright, however, did not marry
Florence Bostock. One evening, in a secluded corner at a dance, Ralph
Martin, without warning, threw his arms angrily, brutally, instinctively
round Florence's neck and kissed her. It was wrong of him. But he
conquered her. Love is like that. It hides for years, and then pops out,
and won't be denied. Florence's engagement to Adam was broken. She
married Ralph. She knew she was marrying a strange, dark-minded man of
uncertain temper, but she married him.

As for the unimpeachable Adam, he was left with nothing but the uneasy
fear that he was doomed to die at fifty-two. His wife (for he got one,
and a good one) soon cured him of that.




THE LONG-LOST UNCLE


On a recent visit to the Five Towns I was sitting with my old
schoolmaster, who, by the way, is much younger than I am after all, in
the bow window of a house overlooking that great thoroughfare, Trafalgar
Road, Bursley, when a pretty woman of twenty-eight or so passed down the
street. Now the Five Towns contains more pretty women to the square mile
than any other district in England (and this statement I am prepared to
support by either sword or pistol). But do you suppose that the
frequency of pretty women in Hanbridge, Bursley, Knype, Longshaw and
Turnhill makes them any the less remarked? Not a bit of it. Human nature
is such that even if a man should meet forty pretty women in a walk
along Trafalgar Road from Bursley to Hanbridge, he will remark them all
separately, and feel exactly forty thrills. Consequently my
ever-youthful schoolmaster said to me:

"Good-looking woman that, eh, boy? Married three weeks ago," he added.

A piece of information which took the keen edge off my interest in her.

"Really!" I said. "Who is she?"

"Married to a Scotsman named Macintyre, I fancy."

"That tells me nothing," I said. "Who was she?"

"Daughter of a man named Roden."

"Not Herbert Roden?" I demanded.

"Yes. Art director at Jacksons, Limited."

"Well, well!" I exclaimed. "So Herbert Roden's got a daughter married.
Well, well! And it seems like a week ago that he and his uncle--you
know all about that affair, of course?"

"What affair?"

"Why, the Roden affair!"

"No," said my schoolmaster.

"You don't mean to say you've never--"

Nothing pleases a wandering native of the Five Towns more than to come
back and find that he knows things concerning the Five Towns which
another man who has lived there all his life doesn't know. In ten
seconds I was digging out for my schoolmaster one of those family
histories which lie embedded in the general grey soil of the past like
lumps of quartz veined and streaked with the precious metal of passion
and glittering here and there with the crystallizations of scandal.

"You could make a story out of that," he said, when I had done talking
and he had done laughing.

"It is a story," I replied. "It doesn't want any making."

And this is just what I told him. I have added on a few explanations and
moral reflections--and changed the names.


I


Silas Roden, commonly called Si Roden--Herbert's uncle--lived in one of
those old houses at Paddock Place, at the bottom of the hill where
Hanbridge begins. Their front steps are below the level of the street,
and their backyards look out on the Granville Third Pit and the works of
the Empire Porcelain Company. 11 was Si's own house, a regular
bachelor's house, as neat as a pin, and Si was very proud of it and very
particular about it. Herbert, being an orphan, lived with his uncle. He
would be about twenty-five then, and Si fifty odd. Si had retired from
the insurance agency business, and Herbert, after a spell in a lawyer's
office, had taken to art and was in the decorating department at
Jackson's. They had got on together pretty well, had Si and Herbert, in
a grim, taciturn, Five Towns way. The historical scandal began when
Herbert wanted to marry Alice Oulsnam, an orphan like himself, employed
at a dress-maker's in Crown Square, Hanbridge.

"Thou'lt marry her if thou'st a mind," said Si to Herbert, "but I s'll
ne'er speak to thee again."

"But why, uncle?"

"That's why," said Si.

Now if you have been born in the Five Towns and been blessed with the
unique Five Towns mixture of sentimentality and solid sense, you don't
flare up and stamp out of the house when a well-to-do and childless
uncle shatters your life's dream. You dissemble. You piece the dream
together again while your uncle is looking another way. You feel that
you are capable of out-witting your uncle, and you take the earliest
opportunity of "talking it over" with Alice. Alice is sagacity itself.

Si's reasons for objecting so politely to the projected marriage were
various. In the first place he had persuaded himself that he hated
women. In the second place, though in many respects a most worthy man,
he was a selfish man, and he didn't want Herbert to leave him, because
he loathed solitude. In the third place--and here is the interesting
part--he had once had an affair with Alice's mother and had been cut
out: his one deviation into the realms of romance--and a disastrous one.
He ought to have been Alice's father, and he wasn't. It angered him,
with a cold anger, that Herbert should have chosen just Alice out of the
wealth of women in the Five Towns. Herbert was unaware of this reason at
the moment.

The youth was being driven to the conclusion that he would be compelled
to offend his uncle after all, when Alice came into two thousand two
hundred pounds from a deceased relative in Cheshire. The thought of
this apt legacy does good to my soul. I love people to come into a bit
of stuff unexpected. Herbert instantly advised her to breathe not a word
of the legacy to anyone. They were independent now, and he determined
that he would teach his uncle a lesson. He had an affection for his
uncle, but in the Five Towns you can have an affection for a person, and
be extremely and justly savage against that person, and plan cruel
revenges on that person, all at the same time.

Herbert felt that the legacy would modify Si's attitude towards the
marriage, if Si knew of it. Legacies, for some obscure and illogical
cause, do modify attitudes towards marriages. To keep a penniless
dressmaker out of one's family may be a righteous act. But to keep a
level-headed girl with two thousand odd of her own out of one's family
would be the act of an insensate fool. Therefore Herbert settled that Si
should not know of the legacy. Si should be defeated without the legacy,
or he should be made to suffer the humiliation of yielding after being
confronted with the accomplished fact of a secret marriage. Herbert was
fairly sure that he would yield, and in any case, with a couple of
thousand at his wife's back, Herbert could afford to take the risks of
war.

So Herbert, who had something of the devil in him, approached his uncle
once more, with a deceitful respect, and he was once more politely
rebuffed--as indeed he had half hoped to be. He then began his
clandestine measures--measures which culminated in him leaving the house
one autumn morning dressed in a rather stylish travelling suit.

The tramcar came down presently from Hanbridge. Not one of the swift
thunderous electrical things that now chase each other all over the Five
Towns in every direction at intervals of about thirty seconds; but the
old horse-car that ran between Hanbridge and Bursley twice an hour and
no oftener, announcing its departure by a big bell, and stopping at
toll-gates with broad eaves, and climbing hills with the aid of a
tip-horse and a boy perched on the back thereof. That was a calm and
spacious age.

Herbert boarded the car, and raised his hat rather stiffly to a nice
girl sitting in a corner. He then sat down in another corner, far away
from her. Such is the capacity of youth for chicane! For that nice girl
was exactly Alice, and her presence on the car was part of the plot.
When the car arrived at Bursley these monsters of duplicity descended
together, and went to a small public building and entered therein, and
were directed to an official and inhospitable room which was only saved
from absolute nakedness by a desk, four Windsor chairs, some
blotting-paper, pens, ink and a copy of Keats's Directory of the Five
Towns. An amiable old man received them with a perfunctory gravity, and
two acquaintances of Herbert's strolled in, blushing. The old man told
everybody to sit down, asked them questions of no spiritual import,
abruptly told them to stand up, taught them to say a few phrases, in the
tone of a person buying a ha'-porth of tin-tacks, told them to sit down,
filled a form or two, took some of Herbert's money, and told them that
that was all, and that they could go. So they went, secretly surprised.
This was the august ritual, and this the imposing theatre, provided by
the State in those far-off days for the solemnizing of the most
important act in a citizen's life. It is different now; the copy of
Keats's Directory is a much later one.

Herbert thanked his acquaintances, who, begging him not to mention it,
departed.

"Well, that's over!" breathed Herbert with a sigh of relief. "It's too
soon to go back. Let us walk round by Moorthorne."

"I should love to!" said Alice.

It was a most enjoyable walk. In the heights of Moorthorne they
gradually threw off the depressing influence of those four Windsor
chairs, and realized their bliss. They reached Paddock Place again at a
quarter to one o'clock, which, as they were a very methodical and
trustworthy pair, was precisely the moment at which they had meant to
reach it. The idea was that they should call on Si and announce to him,
respectfully: "Uncle, we think it only right to tell you that we are
married. We hope you will not take it ill, we should like to be
friends." They would then leave the old man to eat the news with his
dinner. A cab was to be at the door at one o'clock to carry them to
Knype Station, where they would partake of the wedding breakfast in the
first-class refreshment room, and afterwards catch the two-forty to
Blackpool, there to spend a honeymoon of six days.

This was the idea.

Herbert was already rehearsing in his mind the exact tone in which he
should say to Si: "Uncle, we think it only right--" when, as they
approached the house, they both saw a white envelope suspended under the
knocker of the door. It was addressed to "Mr Herbert Roden," in the
handwriting of Silas. The moment was dramatic. As they had not yet
discussed whether correspondence should be absolutely common property,
Alice looked discreetly away while Herbert read: "Dear nephew, I've gone
on for a week or two on business, and sent Jane Sarah home. Her's in
need of a holiday. You must lodge at Bratt's meantime. I've had your
things put in there, and they've gotten the keys of the house.--Yours
affly, S. Roden." Bratt's was next door but one, and Jane Sarah was the
Roden servant, aged fifty or more.

"Well, I'm--!" exclaimed Herbert.

"Well, I never!" exclaimed Alice when she had read the letter. "What's
the meaning--?"

"Don't ask me!" Herbert replied.

"Going off like this!" exclaimed Alice.

"Yes, my word!" exclaimed Herbert.

"But what are you to do?" Alice asked.

"Get the key from Bratt's, and get my box, if he hasn't had it carried
in to Bratt's already, and then wait for the cab to come."

"Just fancy him shutting you out of the house like that, and no
warning!" Alice said, shocked.

"Yes. You see he's very particular about his house. He's afraid I might
ruin it, I suppose. He's just like an old maid, you know, only a hundred
times worse." Herbert paused, as if suddenly gripped in a tremendous
conception. "I have it!" he stated positively. "I have it! I have it!"

"What?" Alice demanded.

"Suppose we spend our honeymoon here?"

"In this house?"

"In this house. It would serve him right."

Alice smiled humorously. "Then the house wouldn't get damp," she said.
"And there would be a great saving of expense. We could buy those two
easy-chairs with what we saved."

"Exactly," said Herbert. "And after all, seaside lodgings, you know....
And this house isn't so bad either."

"But if he came back and caught us?" Alice suggested.

"Well, he couldn't eat us!" said Herbert.

The clear statement of this truth emboldened Alice. "And he'd no right
to turn you out!" she said in wifely indignation.

Without another word Herbert went into Bratt's and got the keys. Then
the cab came up with Alice's luggage lashed to the roof, and the driver,
astounded, had to assist in carrying it into Si's house. He was then
dismissed, and not with a bouncing tip either. We are in the Five Towns.
He got a reasonable tip, no more. The Bratts, vastly intrigued, looked
inconspicuously on.

Herbert banged the door and faced Alice in the lobby across her chief
trunk. The honeymoon had commenced.

"We'd better get this out of the way at once," said Alice the practical.

And between them they carried it upstairs, Alice, in the intervals of
tugs, making favourable remarks about the cosiness of the abode.

"This is uncle's bedroom," said Herbert, showing the front bedroom, a
really spacious and dignified chamber full of spacious and dignified
furniture, and not a pin out of place in it.

"What a funny room!" Alice commented. "But it's very nice."

"And this is mine," said Herbert, showing the back bedroom, much
inferior in every way.

When the trunk had been carried into the front bedroom, Herbert
descended for the other things, including his own luggage; and Alice
took off her hat and jacket and calmly laid them on Silas's ample bed,
gazed into all Silas's cupboards and wardrobes that were not locked,
patted her hair in front of Silas's looking-glass, and dropped a hairpin
on Silas's floor.

She then kneeled down over her chief trunk, and the vision of her
rummaging in the trunk in his uncle's bedroom was the most beautiful
thing that Herbert had ever seen. Whether it was because the light
caught her brown hair, or because she seemed so strange there and yet so
deliciously at home, or because--Anyhow, she fished a plain white apron
out of the trunk and put it on over her grey dress. And the quick,
graceful, enchanting movements with which she put the apron on--well,
they made Herbert feel that he had only that moment begun to live. He
walked away wondering what was the matter with him. If you imagine that
he ran up to her and kissed her you imagine a vain thing; you do not
understand that complex and capricious organism, the masculine heart.

The wedding breakfast consisted of part of a leg of mutton that Jane
Sarah had told the Bratts they might have, pikelets purchased from a
street hawker, coffee, scrambled eggs, biscuits, butter, burgundy out of
the cellar, potatoes out of the cellar, cheese, sardines, and a custard
that Alice made with custard-powder. Herbert had to go out to buy the
bread, the butter, the sardines and some milk; when he returned with
these purchases, a portion of the milk being in his breast pocket, Alice
checked them, and exhibited a mild surprise that he had not done
something foolish, and told him to clear out of "her kitchen."

Her kitchen was really the back kitchen or scullery. The proper kitchen
had always been used as a dining-room. But Alice had set the table in
the parlour, at the front of the house, where food had never before been
eaten. At the first blush this struck Herbert as sacrilege; but Alice
said she didn't like the middle room, because it was dark and because
there was a china pig on the high mantelpiece; and really Herbert could
discover no reason for not eating in the parlour. So they ate in the
parlour. Before the marvellous repast was over Alice had rearranged all
the ornaments and chairs in that parlour, turned round the carpet, and
patted the window curtains into something new and strange. Herbert
frequently looked out of the window to see if his uncle was coming.

"Pity there's no dessert," said Herbert. It was three o'clock, and the
refection was drawing to a reluctant close.

"There is a dessert," said Alice. She ran upstairs, and came down with
her little black hand-bag, out of which she produced three apples and
four sponge-cakes, meant for the railway journey. Amazing woman! Yet in
resuming her seat she mistook Herbert's knee for her chair. Amazing
woman! Intoxicating mixture of sweet confidingness and unfailing
resource. And Si had wanted to prevent Herbert from marrying this pearl!

"Now I must wash up!" said she.

"I'll run out and telegraph to Jane Sarah to come back at once. I expect
she's gone to her sister's at Rat Edge. It's absurd for you to be doing
all the work like this." Thus Herbert.

"I can manage by myself till to-morrow," Alice decided briefly.

Then there was a rousing knock at the door, and Alice sprang up, as it
were, guiltily. Recovering herself with characteristic swiftness, she
went to the window and spied delicately out.

"It's Mrs Bratt," she whispered. "I'll go."

"Shall I go?" Herbert asked.

"No--I'll go," said Alice.

And she went--apron and all.

Herbert overheard the conversation.

"Oh!" Exclamation of feigned surprise from Mrs Bratt.

"Yes?" In tones of a politeness almost excessive.

"Is Mr Herbert meaning to come to our house to-night? That there
bedroom's all ready."

"I don't think so," said Alice. "I don't think so."

"Well, miss--"

"I'm Mrs Herbert Roden," said Alice, primly.

"Oh! I beg pardon, miss--Mrs, that is--I'm sure. I didn't know--"

"No," said Alice. "The wedding was this morning."

"I'm sure I wish you both much happiness, you and Mr Herbert," said Mrs
Bratt, heartily. "If I had but known--"

"Thank you," said Alice, "I'll tell my husband."

And she shut the door on the entire world.





II


One evening, after tea, by gaslight, Herbert was reading the newspaper
in the parlour at Paddock Place, when he heard a fumbling with keys at
the front door. The rain was pouring down heavily outside. He hesitated
a moment. He was a brave man, but he hesitated a moment, for he had sins
on his soul, and he knew in a flash who was the fumbler at the front
door. Then he ran into the lobby, and at the same instant the door
opened and his long-lost uncle stood before him, a living shower-bath,
of which the tap could not be turned off.

"Well, uncle," he stammered, "how are--"

"Nay, my lad," Si stopped him, refusing his hand. "I'm too wet to touch.
Get along into th' back kitchen. If I mun make a pool I'll make it
there. So thou's taken possession o' my house!"

"Yes, uncle. You see--"

They were now in the back kitchen, or scullery, where a bright fire was
burning in a small range and a great kettle of water singing over it.

"Run and get us a blanket, lad," said Si, stopping Herbert again, and
turning up the gas.

"A blanket?"

"Ay, lad! A blanket. Art struck?"

When Herbert returned with the blanket Silas was spilling mustard out of
the mustard tin into a large zinc receptacle which he had removed from
the slop-stone to a convenient place on the floor in front of the fire.
Silas then poured the boiling water from the kettle into the receptacle,
and tested the temperature with his finger.

"Blazes!" he exclaimed, shaking his finger. "Fetch us the whisky, lad."

When Herbert returned a second time, Uncle Silas was sitting on a chair
wearing merely the immense blanket, which fell gracefully in rich folds
around him to the floor. From sundry escaping jets of steam Herbert was
able to judge that the zinc bath lay concealed somewhere within the
blanket. Si's clothes were piled on the deal table.

"I hanna' gotten my feet in yet," said Si. "They're resting on th' edge.
But I'll get 'em in in a minute. Oh! Blazes! Here! Mix us a glass o'
that, hot. And then get out that clothes-horse and hang my duds on it
nigh th' fire."

Herbert obeyed, as if in a dream.

"I canna do wi' another heavy cowd [cold] at my time o' life, and
there's only one way for to stop it. There! That'll do, lad. Let's have
a look at thee."

Herbert perched himself on a corner of the table. The vivacity of Silas
astounded him.

"Thou looks older, nephew," said Silas, sipping at the whisky, and
smacking his lips grimly.

"Do I? Well, you look younger, uncle, anyhow. You've shaved your beard
off, for one thing."

"Yes, and a pretty cold it give me, too! I'd carried that beard for
twenty year."

"Then why did you cut it off?"

"Because I had to, lad. But never mind that. So thou'st taken possession
o' my house?"

"It isn't your house any longer, uncle," said Herbert, determined to get
the worst over at once.

"Not my house any longer! Us'll see whether it inna' my house any
longer."

"If you go and disappear for a twelvemonth and more, uncle, and leave no
address, you must take the consequence. I never knew till after you'd
gone that you'd mortgaged this house for four hundred pounds to Callear,
the fish-dealer."

"Who towd thee that?"

"Callear told me."

"Callear had no cause to be uneasy. I wrote him twice as his interest
'ud be all right when I come back."

"Yes, I know. But you didn't give any address. And he wanted his money
back. So he came to me."

"Wanted his money back!" cried Silas, splashing about in the hidden tub
and grimacing. "He had but just lent it me."

"Yes, but Tomkinson, his landlord, died, and he had the chance of buying
his premises from the executors. And so he wanted his money back."

"And what didst tell him, lad?"

"I told him I would take a transfer of the mort-gage."

"Thou! Hadst gotten four hundred pounds i' thy pocket, then?"

"Yes. And so I took a transfer."

"Bless us! This comes o'going away! But where didst find th' money?"

"And what's more," Herbert continued, evading the question, "as I
couldn't get my interest I gave you notice to repay, uncle, and as you
didn't repay--"

"Give me notice to repay! What the dev--? You hadna' got my address."

"I had your legal address--this house, and I left the notice for you in
the parlour. And as you didn't repay I--I took possession as mortgagee,
and now I'm--I'm foreclosing."

"Thou'rt foreclosing!"

Silas stood up in the tub, staggered, furious, sweating. He would have
stepped out of the tub and done something to Herbert had not common
prudence and the fear of the blanket falling off restrained his passion.
There was left to him only one thing to do, and he did it. He sat down
again.

"Bless us!" he repeated feebly.

"So you see," said Herbert.

"And thou'st been living here ever since--alone, wi' Jane Sarah?"

"Not exactly," Herbert replied. "With my wife."

Fully emboldened now, he related to his uncle the whole circumstances of
his marriage.

Whereupon, to his surprise, Silas laughed hilariously, hysterically, and
gulped down the remainder of the whisky.

"Where is her?" Silas demanded.

"Upstairs."

"I' my bedroom, I lay," said Silas.

Herbert nodded. "May be."

"And everything upside down!" proceeded Uncle Silas.

"No!" said Herbert. "We've put all your things in my old room."

"Have ye! Ye're too obliging, lad!" growled Silas. "And if it isn't
asking too much, where's that china pig as used to be on the
chimney-piece in th' kitchen there? Her's smashed it, eh?"

"No," said Herbert, mildly. "She's put it away in a cupboard. She didn't
like it."

"Ah! I was but wondering if ye'd foreclosed on th' pig too."

"Possibly a few things are changed," said Herbert. "But you know when a
woman takes into her head--"

"Ay, lad! Ay, lad! I know! It was th' same wi' my beard. It had for go.
Thou'st under the domination of a woman, and I can sympathize wi' thee."

Herbert gave a long, high whistle.

"So that's it?" he exclaimed. And he suddenly felt as if his uncle was
no longer an uncle but a brother.

"Yes," said Silas. "That's it. I'll tell thee. Pour some more hot water
in here. Dost remember when th' Carl Rosa Opera Company was at Theatre
Royal last year? I met her then. Her was one o' Venus's maidens i' th'
fust act o' _Tannhäuser_, and her was a bridesmaid i' _Lohengrin_, and
Siebel i' _Faust_, and a cigarette girl i' summat else. But it was in
_Tannhäuser_ as I fust saw her on the stage, and her struck me like
that." Silas clapped one damp hand violently on the other. "Miss Elsa
Venda was her stage name, but her was a widow, Mrs Parfitt, and had bin
for ten years. Seemingly her husband was of good family. Finest woman I
ever seed, nephew. And you'll say so. Her'd ha' bin a prima donna only
for jealousy. Fust time I spoke to her I thought I should ha' fallen
down. Steady with that water. Dost want for skin me alive? Yes, I
thought I should ha' fallen down. They call'n it love. You can call it
what ye'n a mind for call it. I nearly fell down."

"How did you meet her, uncle?" Herbert interposed, aware that his uncle
had not been accustomed to move in theatrical circles.

"How did I meet her? I met her by setting about to meet her. I had for
t' meet her. I got Harry Burisford, th' manager o' th' theatre thou
knowst, for t' introduce us. Then I give a supper, nephew--I give a
supper at Turk's Head, but private like."

"Was that the time when you were supposed to be at the Ratepayers'
Association every night?" Herbert asked blandly.

"It was, nephew," said Si, with equal blandness.

"Then no doubt those two visits to Manchester, afterwards--"

"Exactly," said Si. "Th' company went to Manchester and stopped there a
fortnight. I told her fair and square what I meant and what I was worth.
There was no beating about the bush wi' me. All her friends told her
she'd be a fool if she wouldn't have me. She said her'd write me yes or
no. Her didn't. Her telegraphed me from Sunderland for go and see her at
once. It was that morning as I left. I thought to be back in a couple o'
days and to tell thee as all was settled. But women! Women! Her had me
dangling after her from town to town for a week. I was determined to get
her, and get her I did, though it cost me my beard, and the best part o'
that four hundred. I married her i' Halifax, lad, and it were the best
day's work I ever did. You never seed such a woman. Big and plump--and
sing! By----! I never cared for singing afore. And her knows the world,
let me tell ye."

"You might have sent us word," said Herbert.

Silas grew reflective. "Ah!" he said. "I might--and I mightn't. I didn't
want Hanbridge chattering. I was trapesing wi' her from town to town
till her engagement was up--pretty near six months. Then us settled i'
rooms at Scarborough, and there was other things to think of. I couldn't
leave her. Her wouldna' let me. To-day was the fust free day I've had,
and so I run down to fix matters. And nice weather I've chosen! Her
aunt's spending the night wi' her."

"Then she's left the stage."

"Of course she's left th' stage. What 'ud be th' sense o' her painting
her face and screeching her chest out night after night for a crowd o'
blockheads, when I can keep her like a lady. Dost think her's a fool?
Her's the only woman wi' any sense as ever I met in all my life."

"And you want to come here and live?"

"No, us dunna! At least her dunna. Her says her hates th' Five Towns.
Her says Hanbridge is dirty and too religious for her. Says its nowt but
chapels and public-houses and pot-banks. So her ladyship wunna' come
here. No, nephew, thou shalt buy this house for six hundred, and be d--d
to thy foreclosure! And th' furniture for a hundred. It's a dead
bargain. Us'll settle at Scarborough, Liz and me. Now this water's
getting chilly. I'll nip up to thy room and find some other clothes."

"You can't go up just now," said Herbert.

"But I mun go at once, nephew. Th' water's chilly, and I've had enough
on it."

"The fact is we're using my old bedroom for a sort of a nursery, and
Alice and Jane Sarah are just giving the baby its bath."

"Babby!" cried Silas. "Shake hands, nephew. Give us thy fist. I may as
well out wi' it. I've gotten one mysen. Pour some more hot water in
here, then."




THE TIGHT HAND

I


The tight hand was Mrs Garlick's. A miser, she was not the ordinary
miser, being exceptional in the fact that her temperament was joyous.
She had reached the thirtieth year of her widowhood and the sixtieth of
her age, with cheerfulness unimpaired. The people of Bursley, when they
met her sometimes of a morning coming down into the town from her
singular house up at Toft End, would be conscious of pleasure in her
brisk gait, her slightly malicious but broad-minded smile, and her
cheerful greeting. She was always in black. She always wore one of those
nodding black bonnets which possess neither back nor front, nor any clue
of any kind to their ancient mystery. She always wore a mantle which hid
her waist and spread forth in curves over her hips; and as her skirts
stuck stiffly out, she thus had the appearance of one who had been to
sleep since 1870, and who had got up, thoroughly refreshed and bright,
into the costume of her original period. She always carried a reticule.
It was known that she suffered from dyspepsia, and this gave real value
to her reputation for cheerfulness.

Her nearness, closeness, stinginess, close-fistedness--as the quality
was variously called--was excused to her, partly because it had been at
first caused by a genuine need of severe economy (she having been "left
poorly off" by a husband who had lived "in a large way"), partly because
it inconvenienced nobody save perhaps her servant Maria, and partly
because it was so picturesque and afforded much excellent material for
gossip. Mrs Garlick's latest feat of stinginess was invariably a safe
card to play in the conversational game. Each successive feat was
regarded as funnier than the one before it.

Maria, who had a terrific respect for appearances, never disclosed her
mistress's peculiarities. It was Mrs Garlick herself who humorously
ventilated and discussed them; Mrs Garlick, being a philosopher, got
quite as much amusement as anyone out of her most striking quality.

"Is there anything interesting in the _Signal_ to-night?" she had
innocently asked one of her sons.

"No," said Sam Garlick, unthinkingly.

"Well, then," said she, "suppose I turn out the gas and we talk in the
dark?"

Soon afterwards Sam Garlick married; his mother remarked drily that she
was not surprised.

It was supposed that this feat of turning out the gas when the _Signal_
happened to fail in interest would remain unparalleled in the annals of
Five Towns skin-flintry. But in the summer after her son's marriage, Mrs
Garlick was discovered in the evening habit of pacing slowly up and down
Toft Lane. She said that she hated sitting in the dark alone, that Maria
would not have her in the kitchen, and that she saw no objection to
making harmless use of the Corporation gas by strolling to and fro under
the Corporation gas-lamps on fine nights. Compared to this feat the
previous feat was as naught. It made Mrs Garlick celebrated even as far
as Longshaw. It made the entire community proud of such an inventive
miser.

Once Mrs Garlick, before what she called her dinner, asked Maria, "Will
there be enough mutton for to-morrow?" And Maria had gloomily and firmly
said, "No." "Will there be enough if I don't have any to-day?" pursued
Mrs Garlick. And Maria had said, "Yes." "I won't have any then," said
Mrs Garlick. Maria was offended; there are some things that a servant
will not stand. She informed Mrs Garlick that if Mrs Garlick meant "to
go on going on like that" she should leave; she wouldn't stay in such a
house. In vain Mrs Garlick protested that the less she ate the better
she felt; in vain she referred to her notorious indigestion. "Either you
eats your dinner, mum, or out I clears!" Mrs Garlick offered her a rise
of £1 a year to stay. She was already, because she would stop and most
servants wouldn't, receiving £18, a high wage. She refused the
increment. Pushed by her passion for economy in mutton, Mrs Garlick then
offered her a rise of £2 a year. Maria accepted, and Mrs Garlick went
without mutton. Persons unacquainted with the psychology of
parsimoniousness may hesitate to credit this incident. But more advanced
students of humanity will believe it without difficulty. In the Five
Towns it is known to be true.


II


The supreme crisis, to which the foregoing is a mere prelude, in the
affairs of Mrs Garlick and Maria, was occasioned by the extraordinary
performances of the Mayor of Bursley. This particular mayor was invested
with the chain almost immediately upon the conclusion of a great series
of revival services in which he had conspicuously figured. He had an
earthenware manufactory half-way up the hill between Bursley and its
loftiest suburb, Toft End, and the smoke of his chimneys and kilns was
generally blown by a favourable wind against the windows of Mrs
Garlick's house, which stood by itself. Mrs Garlick made nothing of
this. In the Five Towns they think no more of smoke than the world at
large used to think of small-pox. The smoke plague is exactly as
curable as the small-pox plague. It continues to flourish, not because
smokiness is cheaper than cleanliness--it is dearer--but because a
greater nuisance than smoke is the nuisance of a change, and because
human nature in general is rather like Mrs Garlick: its notion of
economy is to pay heavily for the privilege of depriving itself of
something--mutton or cleanliness.

However, this mayor was different. He had emerged from the revival
services with a very tender conscience, and in assuming the chain of
office he assumed the duty of setting an example. It was to be no excuse
to him that in spite of bye-laws ten thousand other chimneys and kilns
were breathing out black filth all over the Five Towns. So far as he
could cure it the smoke nuisance had to be cured, or his conscience
would know the reason why! So he sat on the borough bench and fined
himself for his own smoke, and then he installed gas ovens. The town
laughed, of course, and spoke of him alternately as a rash fool, a
hypocrite, and a mere pompous ass. In a few months smoke had practically
ceased to ascend from the mayoral manufactory. The financial result to
the mayor was such as to encourage the tenderness of consciences. But
that is not the point. The point is that Mrs Garlick, re-entering her
house one autumn morning after a visit to the market, paused to look at
the windows, and then said to Maria:

"Maria, what have you to do this afternoon?"

Now Mrs Garlick well knew what Maria had to do.

"I'm going to change the curtains, mum."

"Well, you needn't," said Mrs Garlick. "It's made such a difference up
here, there being so much less smoke, that upon my word the curtains
will do another three months quite well!"

"Well, mum, I never did!" observed Maria, meaning that so shocking a
proposal was unprecedented in her experience. Yet she was thirty-five.

"Quite well!" said Mrs Garlick, gaily.

Maria said no more. But in the afternoon Mrs Garlick, hearing sounds in
the drawing-room, went into the drawing-room and discovered Maria
balanced on a pair of steps and unhooking lace curtains.

"Maria," said she, "what are you doing?"

Maria answered as busy workers usually do answer unnecessary questions
from idlers.

"I should ha' thought you could see, mum," she said tartly, insolently,
inexcusably.

One curtain was already down.

"Put that curtain back," Mrs Garlick commanded.

"I shall put no curtain back!" said Maria, grimly; her excited
respiration shook the steps. "All to save the washing of four pair o'
curtains! And you know you beat the washerwoman down to tenpence a pair
last March! Three and fo'pence, that is! For the sake o' three and
fo'pence you're willing for all Toft End to point their finger at these
'ere windows."

"Put that curtain back," Mrs Garlick repeated haughtily.

She saw that she had touched Maria in a delicate spot--her worship of
appearances. The mutton was simply nothing to these curtains.
Nevertheless, as there seemed to be some uncertainty in Maria's mind as
to who was the mistress of the house, Mrs Garlick's business was to
dispel that uncertainty. It may be said without exaggeration that she
succeeded in dispelling it. But she did not succeed in compelling Maria
to re-hang the curtain. Maria had as much force of character as Mrs
Garlick herself. The end of the scene, whose details are not
sufficiently edifying to be recounted, was that Maria went upstairs to
pack her box, and Mrs Garlick personally re-hung the curtain. One's
dignity is commonly an expensive trifle, and Mrs Garlick's dignity was
expensive. To avoid prolonging the scene she paid Maria a month's wages
in lieu of notice--£1, 13s, 4d. Then she showed her the door. Doubtless
(Mrs Garlick meditated) the girl thought she would get another rise of
wages. If so, she was finely mistaken. A nice thing if the servant is to
decide when curtains are to go to the wash! She would soon learn, when
she went into another situation, what an easy, luxurious place she had
lost by her own stupid folly! Three and fourpences might be picked up in
the street, eh? And so on.

After Maria's stormy departure Mrs Garlick regained her sense of humour
and her cheerfulness; but the inconveniences of being without Maria were
important.




III


On the second day following, Mrs Garlick received a letter from "young
Lawton," the solicitor. Young Lawton, aged over forty, was not so-called
because in the Five Towns youthfulness is supposed to extend to the
confines of forty-five, but because he had succeeded his father, known
as "old Lawton"; it is true that the latter had been dead many years.
The Five Towns, however, is not a country of change. This letter pointed
out that Maria's wages were not £1, 13s. 4d. a month, but £1, 13s. 4d. a
month plus her board and lodging, and that consequently, in lieu of a
month's notice, Maria demanded £1, 13s. 4d. plus the value of a month's
keep.

There was more in this letter than met the eye of Mrs Garlick. Young
Lawton's offices were cleaned by a certain old woman; this old woman had
a nephew; this nephew was a warehouseman at the Mayor's works, and lived
up in Toft End, and at least twice every day he passed by Mrs Garlick's
house. He was a respectful worshipper of Maria's, and it had been
exclusively on his account that Maria had insisted on changing the
historic curtains. Nobody else of the slightest importance ever passed
in front of the house, for important people have long since ceased to
live at Toft End. The subtle flattering of an unspoken love had impelled
Maria to leave her situation rather than countenance soiled curtains.
She could not bear that the warehouseman should suspect her of
tolerating even the semblances of dirt. She had permitted the
warehouseman to hear the facts of her departure from Mrs Garlick's. The
warehouseman was nobly indignant, advising an action for assault and
battery. Through his aunt's legal relations Maria had been brought into
contact with the law, and, while putting aside as inadvisable an action
for assault and battery, the lawyer had counselled a just demand for
more money. Hence the letter.

Mrs Garlick called at Lawton's office, and, Mr Lawton being out, she
told an office-boy to tell him with her compliments that she should not
pay.

Then the County Court bailiff paid her a visit, and left with her a blue
summons for £2, 8s., being four weeks of twelve shillings each.

Many house-mistresses in Bursley sympathized with Mrs Garlick when she
fought this monstrous claim. She fought it gaily, with the aid of a
solicitor. She might have won it, if the County Court Judge had not
happened to be in one of his peculiar moods--one of those moods in which
he felt himself bound to be original at all costs. He delivered a
judgment sympathizing with domestic servants in general, and with Maria
in particular. It was a lively trial. That night the _Signal_ was very
interesting. When Mrs Garlick had finished with the action she had two
and threepence change out of a five-pound note.

Moreover, she was forced to employ a charwoman--a charwoman who had made
a fine art of breaking china, of losing silver teaspoons down sinks, and
of going home of a night with vast pockets full of things that belonged
to her by only nine-tenths of the law. The charwoman ended by tumbling
through a window, smashing panes to the extent of seventeen and
elevenpence, and irreparably ripping one of the historic curtains.

Mrs Garlick then dismissed the charwoman, and sat down to count the cost
of small economics. The privilege of half-dirty curtains had involved
her in an expense of _£9, 19s._, (call it £10). It was in the afternoon.
The figure of Maria crossed the recently-repaired window. Without a
second's thought Mrs Garlick rushed out of the house.

"Maria!" she cried abruptly--with grim humour. "Come here. Come right
inside."

Maria stopped, then obeyed.

"Do you know how much you've let me in for, with your wicked,
disobedient temper?"

"I'd have you know, mum--" Maria retorted, putting her hands on the hips
and forwarding her face.

Their previous scene together was as nothing to this one in sound and
fury. But the close was peace. The next day half Bursley knew that Maria
had gone back to Mrs Garlick, and there was a facetious note about the
episode in the "Day by Day" column of the _Signal_. The truth was that
Maria and Mrs Garlick were "made for each other." Maria would not look
at the ordinary "place." The curtains, as much as remained, were sent to
the wash, but as three months had elapsed the mistress reckoned that she
had won. Still, the cleansing of the curtains had run up to appreciably
more than a sovereign per curtain.

The warehouseman did not ask for Maria's hand. The stridency of her
behaviour in court had frightened him.

Mrs Garlick's chief hobby continues to be the small economy. Happily,
owing to a rise in the value of a land and a fortunate investment, she
is in fairly well-to-do circumstances.

As she said one day to an acquaintance, "It's a good thing I can afford
to keep a tight hand on things."




WHY THE CLOCK STOPPED

I


Mr Morfe and Mary Morfe, his sister, were sitting on either side of
their drawing-room fire, on a Friday evening in November, when they
heard a ring at the front door. They both started, and showed symptoms
of nervous disturbance. They both said aloud that no doubt it was a
parcel or something of the kind that had rung at the front door. And
they both bent their eyes again on the respective books which they were
reading. Then they heard voices in the lobby--the servant's voice and
another voice--and a movement of steps over the encaustic tiles towards
the door of the drawing-room. And Miss Morfe ejaculated:

"Really!"

As though she was unwilling to believe that somebody on the other side
of that drawing-room door contemplated committing a social outrage, she
nevertheless began to fear the possibility.

In the ordinary course it is not considered outrageous to enter a
drawing-room--even at nine o'clock at night--with the permission and
encouragement of the servant in charge of portals. But the case of the
Morfes was peculiar. Mr Morfe was a bachelor aged forty-two, and looked
older. Mary Morfe was a spinster aged thirty-eight, and looked
thirty-seven. Brother and sister had kept house together for twenty
years. They were passionately and profoundly attached to each other--and
did not know it. They grumbled at each other freely, and practised no
more conversation, when they were alone, than the necessities of
existence demanded (even at meals they generally read), but still their
mutual affection was tremendous. Moreover, they were very firmly fixed
in their habits. Now one of these habits was never to entertain company
on Friday night. Friday night was their night of solemn privacy. The
explanation of this habit offers a proof of the sentimental relations
between them.

Mr Morfe was an accountant. Indeed, he was _the_ accountant in Bursley,
and perhaps he knew more secrets of the ledgers of the principal
earthenware manufacturers than some of the manufacturers did themselves.
But he did not live for accountancy. At five o'clock every evening he
was capable of absolutely forgetting it. He lived for music. He was
organist of Saint Luke's Church (with an industrious understudy--for he
did not always rise for breakfast on Sundays) and, more important, he
was conductor of the Bursley Orpheus Glee and Madrigal Club. And herein
lay the origin of those Friday nights. A glee and madrigal club
naturally comprises women as well as men; and the women are apt to be
youngish, prettyish, and somewhat fond of music. Further, the
conductorship of a choir involves many and various social encounters.
Now Mary Morfe was jealous. Though Richard Morfe ruled his choir with
whips, though his satiric tongue was a scorpion to the choir, though he
never looked twice at any woman, though she was always saying that she
wished he would marry, Mary Morfe was jealous. It was Mary Morfe who had
created the institution of the Friday night, and she had created it in
order to prove, symbolically and spectacularly, to herself, to him, and
to the world, that he and she lived for each other alone. All their
friends, every member of the choir, in fact the whole of the respectable
part of barsley, knew quite well that in the Morfes' house Friday was
sacredly Friday.

And yet a caller!

"It's a woman," murmured Mary. Until her ear had assured her of this
fact she had seemed to be more disturbed than startled by the stir in
the lobby.

And it was a woman. It was Miss Eva Harracles, one of the principal
contraltos in the glee and madrigal club. She entered richly blushing,
and excusably a little nervous and awkward. She was a tall, agreeable
creature of fewer than thirty years, dark, almost handsome, with fine
lips and eyes, and an effective large hat and a good muff. In every
physical way a marked contrast to the thin, prim, desiccated brother and
sister.

Richard Morfe flushed faintly. Mary Morfe grew more pallid.

"I really must apologize for coming in like this," said Eva, as she
shook hands cordially with Mary Morfe. She knew Mary very well indeed.
For Mary was the "librarian" of the glee and madrigal club; Mary never
missed a rehearsal, though she cared no more for music than she cared
for the National Debt. She was a perfect librarian, and very good at
unofficially prodding indolent members into a more regular attendance
too.

"Not at all!" said Mary. "We were only reading; you aren't disturbing us
in the least." Which, though polite, was a lie.

And Eva Harracles sat down between them. And brother and sister
abandoned their literature.

"I can't stop," said she, glancing at the clock immediately in front of
her eyes. "I must catch the last car for Silverhays."

"You've got twenty minutes yet," said Mr Morfe.

"Because," said Eva, "I don't want that walk from Turnhill to Silverhays
on a dark night like this."

"No, I should think not, indeed!" said Mary Morfe.

"You've got a full twenty minutes," Mr Morfe repeated. The clock showed
three minutes past nine.

The electric cars to and from the town of Turnhill were rumbling past
the very door of the Morfes every five minutes, and would continue to
do so till midnight. But Silverhays is a mining village a couple of
miles beyond Turnhill, and the service between Turnhill and Silverhays
ceases before ten o'clock. Eva's father was a colliery manager who lived
on the outskirts of Silverhays.

"I've got a piece of news," said Eva.

"Yes?" said Mary Morfe

Mr Morfe was taciturn. He stooped to nourish the fire.

"About Mr Loggerheads," said Eva, and stared straight at Mary Morfe.

"About Mr Loggerheads!" Mary Morfe echoed, and stared back at Eva. And
the atmosphere seemed to have been thrown into a strange pulsation.

Here perhaps I ought to explain that it was not the peculiarity of Mr
Loggerheads' name that produced the odd effect. Loggerheads is a local
term for a harmless plant called the knapweed _(centaurea nigra_), and
it is also the appellation of a place and of quite excellent people, and
no one regards it as even the least bit odd.

"I'm told," said Eva, "that he's going into the Hanbridge Choir!"

Mr Loggerheads was the principal tenor of the Bursley Glee and Madrigal
Club. And he was reckoned one of the finest "after-dinner tenors" in the
Five Towns. The Hanbridge Choir was a rival organization, a vast and
powerful affair that fascinated and swallowed promising singers from all
the choirs of the vicinity. The Hanbridge Choir had sung at Windsor, and
since that event there had been no holding it. All other choirs hated it
with a homicidal hatred.

"I'm told," Eva proceeded, "that the Birmingham and Sheffield Bank will
promote him to the cashiership of the Hanbridge Branch on the
understanding that he joins the Hanbridge Choir. Shows what influence
they have! And it shows how badly the Hanbridge Choir wants him."

(Mr Loggerheads was cashier of the Bursley branch of the Birmingham and
Sheffield Bank.)

"Who told you?" asked Mary Morfe, curtly.

Richard Morfe said nothing. The machinations of the manager of the
Hanbridge Choir always depressed and disgusted him into silence.

"Oh!" said Eva Harracles. "It's all about." (By which she meant that it
was in the air.) "Everyone's talking of it."

"And do they say Mr Loggerheads has accepted?" Mary demanded.

"Yes," said Eva.

"Well," said Mary, "it's not true!... A mistake!" she added.

"How do you know it isn't true?" Mr Morfe inquired doubtfully.

"Since you're so curious," said Mary, defiantly, "Mr Loggerheads told me
himself."

"When?"

"The other day."

"You never said anything to me," protested Mr Morfe.

"It didn't occur to me," Mary replied.

"Well, I'm very glad!" remarked Eva Harracles. "But I thought I ought to
let you know at once what was being said."

Mary Morfe's expression conveyed the fact that in her opinion Eva
Harracles' evening call was a vain thing, too lightly undertaken, and
conceivably lacking in the nicest discretion. Whereupon Mr Morfe was
evidently struck by the advisability of completely changing the subject.
And he did change it. He began to talk about certain difficulties in the
choral parts of Havergal Brian's _Vision of Cleopatra_, a work which he
meant the Bursley Glee and Madrigal Club to perform though it should
perish in the attempt. Growing excited, in his dry way, concerning the
merits of this composition, he rose from his easy chair and went to
search for it. Before doing so he looked at the clock, which indicated
twenty minutes past nine.

"Am I all right for time?" asked Eva.

"Yes, you're all right," said he. "If you go when that clock strikes
half-past, and take the next car down, you'll make the connection easily
at Turnhill. I'll put you into the car."

"Oh, thanks!" said Eva.

Mr Morfe kept his modern choral music beneath a broad seat under the bow
window. The music was concealed by a low curtain that ran on a rod--the
ingenious device of Mary. He stooped down to find the _Vision of
Cleopatra_, and at first he could not find it. Mary walked towards that
end of the drawing-room with a vague notion of helping him, and then Eva
did the same, and then Mary walked back, and then Mr Morfe happily put
his hand on the _Vision of Cleopatra_.

He opened the score for Eva's inspection, and began to hum passages and
to point out others, and Eva also began to hum, and they hummed in
concert, at intervals exclaiming against the wantonness with which
Havergal Brian had invented difficulties. Eva glanced at the clock.

"You're all right," Mr Morfe assured her somewhat impatiently. And he,
too, glanced at the clock: "You've still nearly ten minutes."

And proceeded with his critical and explanatory comments on the _Vision
of Cleopatra_.

He was capable of becoming almost delirious about music. Mary Morfe had
seated herself in silence.

At last Eva and Mr Morfe approached the fire and the mantelpiece again.
Mr Morfe shut up the score, dismissed his delirium, and looked at the
clock, quite prepared to see it pointing to twenty-nine and a half
minutes past nine. Instead, the clock pointed to only twenty-two
minutes past nine.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed. He went nearer.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed again rather more loudly. "I do believe that
clock's stopped!"

It had. The pendulum hung perpendicular, motionless, dead.

He was astounded. For the clock had never been known to stop. It was a
presentation clock, of the highest guaranteed quality, offered to him as
a small token of regard and esteem by the members of the Bursley Orpheus
Glee and Madrigal Club to celebrate the twelfth anniversary of his
felicitous connection with the said society. It had stood on his
mantelpiece for four years and had earned an absolutely first-class
reputation for itself. He wound it up on the last day of every month,
for it was a thirty-odd day clock, specially made by a famous local
expert; and he had not known it to vary more than ten minutes a month at
the most. And lo! it had stopped in the very middle of the month.

"Did you wind it up last time?" asked Mary.

"Of course," he snapped. He had taken out his watch and was gazing at
it. He turned to Eva. "It's twenty to ten," he said. "You've missed your
connection at Turnhill--that's a certainty. I'm very sorry."

Obviously there was only one course open to a gallant man whose clock
was to blame: namely, to accompany Eva Harracles to Turnhill by car, to
accompany her on foot to Silverhays, then to walk back to Turnhill and
come home again by car. A young woman could not be expected to perform
that bleak and perhaps dangerous journey from Turnhill to Silverhays
alone after ten o'clock at night in November. Such was the clear course.
But he dared scarcely suggest it. He dared scarcely suggest it because
of his sister. He was afraid of Mary. The names of Richard Morfe and Eva
Harracles had already been coupled in the mouth of gossip. And
naturally Eva Harracles herself could not suggest that Richard should
sally out and leave his sister alone on this night specially devoted to
sisterliness and brotherliness. And of course, Eva thought, Mary will
never, never suggest it.

But Eva was wrong there.

To the amazement of both Richard and Eva, Mary calmly said:

"Well, Dick, the least you can do now is to see Miss Harracles home.
You'll easily be able to catch the last car back from Turnhill if you
start at once. I daresay I shall go to bed."

And in three minutes Richard Morfe and Eva Harracles were being sped
into the night by Mary Morfe.

The Morfes' house was at the corner of Trafalgar Road and Beech Street.
The cars stopped at that corner in their wild course towards the town
and towards Turnhill. A car was just coming. But instead of waiting for
it Richard Morfe and Eva Harracles deliberately turned their backs on
Trafalgar Road, and hurried side by side down Beech Street. Beech Street
is a short street, and ends in a nondescript unlighted waste patch of
ground. They arrived in the gloom of this patch, safe from all human
inquisitiveness, and then Richard Morfe warmly kissed Eva Harracles in
the mathematical centre of those lips of hers. And Eva Harracles showed
no resentment of any kind, nor even shame. Yet she had been very
carefully brought up. The sight would have interested Bursley immensely;
it would have appealed strongly to Bursley's strong sense of the
piquant.... That dry old stick Dick Morfe kissing one of his contraltos
in the dark at the bottom end of Beech Street.

"Then you hadn't told her!" murmured Eva Harracles.

"No!" said Richard, with a slight hesitation. "I was just going to begin
to tell her when you called."

Another woman might have pouted to learn that her lover had exhibited
even a little cowardice in informing his family that he was engaged to
be married. But Eva did not pout. She comprehended the situation, and
the psychology of the relations between brothers and sisters. (She
herself possessed both brothers and sisters.) All the courting had been
singularly secret and odd.

"I shall tell her to-morrow morning at breakfast," said Richard, firmly.
"Unless, after all, she isn't gone to bed when I get back."

By a common impulse they now returned towards Trafalgar Road.

"I say," said Richard, "what made you call?"

"I was passing," said the beloved. "And somehow I couldn't help it. Of
course, I knew it wasn't true about Mr Loggerheads. But I had to think
of something."

Richard was in ecstasy; had never been in such ecstasy.

"I say," he said again. "I suppose _you_ didn't put your finger against
the pendulum of that clock?"

"Oh, _no_!" she replied with emphasis.

"Well, I'm jolly glad it did stop, anyway," said Richard. "What a lark,
eh?"

She agreed that the lark was ideal. They walked down the road till a car
should overtake them.

"Do you think she suspects anything?" Eva asked.

"I'll swear she doesn't," said Richard, positively. "It'll be a bit of a
startler for the old girl."

"No doubt you've heard," said Eva, haltingly, "that Mr Loggerheads has
cast eyes on Mary."

"And do you think there's anything _in_ that?" Richard questioned
sharply.

"Well," she said, "I really don't know." Meaning that she decidedly
thought that Mary _had_ been encouraging advances from Mr Loggerheads.

"Well," said Richard, superiorly, "you may just take it from me that
there's nothing in it at all.... Ha!" He laughed shortly. He knew Mary.

Then they got on a car, and tried to behave as though their being
together was a mere accident, as though they had not become engaged to
one another within the previous twenty-four hours.




II


Immediately after the departure of Richard Morfe and Eva Harracles, his
betrothed, from the front door of the former, Mr Simon Loggerheads
arrived at the same front door, and rang thereat, and was a little
surprised, and also a little unnerved, when the door opened instantly,
as if by magic. Mr Simon Loggerheads said to himself, as he saw the door
move on its hinges, that Miss Morfe must have discovered a treasure of a
servant who, when she had nothing else to do, spent her time on the
inner door-mat waiting to admit possible visitors--even on Friday night.
Nevertheless, Mr Simon Loggerheads regretted that prompt opening, as one
regrets the prompt opening of the door of a dentist.

And it was no servant who stood in front of him, under the flickering
beam of the lobby-lamp. It was Mary Morfe herself. The simple
explanation was that she had just sped her brother and Eva Harracles,
and had remained in the lobby for the purpose of ascertaining by means
of her finger whether the servant had, as usual, forgotten to dust the
tops of the picture-frames.

"Oh!" said Mr Loggerheads, when he saw Mary Morfe. For the cashier of
the Bursley branch of the Birmingham and Sheffield Bank it was not a
very able speech, but it was all he could accomplish.

And Miss Mary Morfe said:

"Oh!"

She was thirty-eight, and he was quite that (for the Bank mentioned
does not elevate its men to the august situation of cashier under less
than twenty years' service), and yet they neither of them had enough
worldliness to behave in a reasonable manner. Then Miss Morfe, to whom
it did at last occur that something must be done, produced an
invitation:

"Do come in!" And she added, "Richard has just gone out."

"Oh!" commented Mr Simon Loggerheads again. (After all, it must be
admitted that tenors as a class have never been noted for their
conversational powers.) But he was obviously more at ease, and he went
in, and Mary Morfe shut the door. At this very instant her brother and
Eva were in secret converse at the back end of Beech Street.

"Do take your coat off!" Mary suggested to Simon. Simultaneously the
servant appeared at the kitchen extremity of the lobby, and Mary thrust
her out of sight again with the cold words: "It's all right, Susan."

Mr Loggerheads took his coat off, and Mary Morfe watched him as he did
so.

He made a pretty figure. He was something of a dandy. The lapels of the
overcoat would have showed that, not to mention the correctly severe
necktie. All his clothes, in fact, had "cut and style," even to his
boots. In the Five Towns many a young man is a dandy down to the edge of
his trousers, but not down to the ground. Mr Loggerheads looked a young
man. The tranquillity of his career and the quietude of his tastes had
preserved his youthfulness. And, further, he had the air of a
successful, solid, much-respected individual. To be a cashier, though
worthy, is not to be a nabob, but a bachelor can save a lot out of over
twenty years of regular salary. And Mr Loggerheads had saved quite a
lot. And he had had opportunities of advantageously investing his
savings. Then everybody knew him, and he knew everybody. He handed out
gold at least once a week to nearly half the town, and you cannot help
venerating a man who makes a practice of handing out gold to you. And he
had thrilled thousands with the wistful beauty of his voice in "The
Sands of Dee." In a word, Simon Loggerheads was a personage, if not
talkative.

They went into the drawing-room. Mary Morfe closed the door gently.
Simon Loggerheads strolled vaguely and self-consciously up to the
fireplace, murmuring:

"So he's gone out?"

"Yes," said Mary Morfe, in confirmation of her first statement.

"I'm sorry!" said Simon Loggerheads. A statement which was absolutely
contrary to the truth. Simon Loggerheads was deeply relieved and glad
that Richard Morfe was out.

The pair, aged slightly under and slightly over forty, seemed to hover
for a fraction of a second uncertainly near each other, and then,
somehow, mysteriously, Simon Loggerheads had kissed Mary Morfe. She
blushed. He blushed. The kiss was repeated. Mary gazed up at him. Mary
could scarcely believe that he was hers. She could scarcely believe that
on the previous evening he had proposed marriage to her--rather
suddenly, so it seemed to her, but delightfully. She could comprehend
his conduct no better than her own. They two, staid, settled-down, both
of them "old maids," falling in love and behaving like lunatics! Mary, a
year ago, would have been ready to prophesy that if ever Simon
Loggerheads--at his age!--did marry, he would assuredly marry something
young, something ingenuous, something cream-and-rose, and probably
something with rich parents. For twenty years Simon Loggerheads had been
marked down for capture by the marriageable spinsters and widows, and
the mothers with daughters, of Bursley. And he had evaded capture,
despite the special temptations to which an after-dinner tenor is
necessarily subject. And now Mary Morfe had caught him--caught him,
moreover, without having had the slightest intention of catching him.
She was one of the most spinsterish spinsters in the Five Towns; and she
had often said things about men and marriage of which the recollection
now, as an affianced woman, was very disturbing to her. However, she did
not care. She did not understand how Simon Loggerheads had had the wit
to perceive that she would be an ideal wife. And she did not care. She
did not understand how, as a result of Simon Loggerheads falling in love
with her, she had fallen in love with him. And she did not care. She did
not care a fig for anything. She _was_ in love with him, and he with
her, and she was idiotically joyous, and so was he. And that was all.

On reflection, I have to admit that she did in fact care for one thing.
That one thing was the look on her brother's face when he should learn
that she, the faithful sardonic sister, having incomprehensibly become
indispensable and all in all to a bank cashier, meant to desert him. She
was afraid of that look. She trembled at the fore-vision of it.

Still, Richard had to be informed, and the world had to be informed, for
the silken dalliance between Mary and Simon had been conducted with a
discretion and a secrecy more than characteristic of their age and
dispositions. It had been arranged between the lovers that Simon should
call on that Friday evening, when he would be sure to catch Richard in
his easy chair, and should, in presence of Mary, bluntly communicate to
Richard the blunt fact.

"What's he gone out for? Anything special?" asked Simon.

Mary explained the circumstances.

"The truth is," she finished, "that girl is just throwing herself at
Dick's head. There's no doubt of it. I never saw such work!"

"Well," said Simon Loggerheads, "of course, you know, there's been a
certain amount of talk about them. Some folks say that your
brother--er--began--"

"And do you believe that?" demanded Mary.

"I don't know," said Simon. By which he meant diplomatically to convey
that he had had a narrow escape of believing it, at any rate.

"Well," said Mary, with conviction, "you may take it from me that it
isn't so. I know Dick. Eva Harracles may throw herself at his head till
there's no breath left in her body, and it'll make no difference to
Dick. Do _you_ see Dick a married man? I don't. I only wish he _would_
take it into his head to get married. It would make me much easier in my
mind. But all the same I do think it's downright wicked that a girl
should fling herself _at_ him, right _at_ him. Fancy her calling
to-night! It's the sort of thing that oughtn't to be encouraged."

"But I understood you to say that you yourself had told him to see her
home," Simon Loggerheads put in. "Isn't that encouraging her, as it
were?"

"Ah!" said Mary, with a smile. "I only suggested it to him because it
came over me all of a sudden how nice it would be to have you here all
alone! He can't be back much before twelve."

To such a remark there is but one response. A sofa is, after all, made
for two people, and the chance of the servant calling on them was small.

"And so the clock stopped!" observed Simon Loggerheads.

"Yes," said Mary. "If it hadn't been for the sheer accident of that
clock stopping, we shouldn't be sitting here on this sofa now, and Dick
would be in that chair, and you would just be beginning to tell him that
we are engaged." She sighed. "Poor Dick! What on earth will he do?"

"Strange how things happen!" Simon reflected in a low voice. "But I'm
really surprised at that clock stopping like that. It's a clock that you
ought to be able to depend on, that clock is."

He got up to inspect the timepiece. He knew all about the clock, because
he had been chairman of the presentation committee which had gone to
Manchester to buy it.

"Why!" he murmured, after he had toyed a little with the pendulum, "it
goes all right. Its tick is as right as rain."

"How odd!" responded Mary.

Simon Loggerheads set the clock by his own impeccable watch, and then
sat down again. And he drew something from his waistcoat pocket and slid
it on to Mary's finger.

Mary regarded her finger in silent ecstasy, and then breathed "How
lovely!"--not meaning her finger.

"Shall I stay till he comes back?" asked Simon.

"If I were you I shouldn't do that," said Mary. "But you can safely stay
till eleven-thirty. Then I shall go to bed. He'll be tired and short
[curt] when he gets back. I'll tell him myself to-morrow morning at
breakfast. And you might come to-morrow afternoon early, for tea."

Simon did stay till half-past eleven. He left precisely when the clock,
now convalescent, struck the half-hour. At the door Mary said to him:

"I won't have any secrets from you, Simon. It was I who stopped that
clock. I stopped it while they were bending down looking for music. I
wanted to be as sure as I could of a good excuse for me suggesting that
he ought to take her home. I just wanted to get him out of the house."

"But why?" asked Simon.

"I must leave that to you to guess," said Mary, with a hint of tartness,
but smiling.

Loggerheads and Richard Morfe met in Trafalgar Road.

"Good-night, Morfe."

"'night, Loggerheads!"

And each passed on, without having stopped.

You can picture for yourself the breakfast of the brother and sister.




HOT POTATOES

I


It was considered by certain people to be a dramatic moment in the
history of musical enterprise in the Five Towns when Mrs Swann opened
the front door of her house at Bleakridge, in the early darkness of a
November evening, and let forth her son Gilbert. Gilbert's age was
nineteen, and he was wearing evening dress, a form of raiment that had
not hitherto happened to him. Over the elegant suit was his winter
overcoat, making him bulky, and round what may be called the rim of the
overcoat was a white woollen scarf, and the sleeves of the overcoat were
finished off with white woollen gloves. Under one arm he carried a vast
inanimate form whose extremity just escaped the ground. This form was
his violoncello, fragile as a pretty woman, ungainly as a navvy, and
precious as honour. Mrs Swann looked down the street, which ended to the
east in darkness and a marl pit, and up the street, which ended to the
west in Trafalgar Road and electric cars; and she shivered, though she
had a shawl over her independent little shoulders. In the Five Towns,
and probably elsewhere, when a woman puts her head out of her front
door, she always looks first to right and then to left, like a scouting
Iroquois, and if the air nips she shivers--not because she is cold, but
merely to express herself.

"For goodness sake, keep your hands warm," Mrs Swann enjoined her son.




"Oh!" said Gilbert, with scornful lightness, as though his playing had
never suffered from cold hands, "it's quite warm to-night!" Which it was
not.

"And mind what you eat!" added his mother. "There! I can hear the car."

He hurried up the street. The electric tram slid in thunder down
Trafalgar Road, and stopped for him with a jar, and he gingerly climbed
into it, practising all precautions on behalf of his violoncello. The
car slid away again towards Bursley, making blue sparks. Mrs Swann
stared mechanically at the flickering gas in her lobby, and then closed
her front door. He was gone! The boy was gone!

Now, the people who considered the boy's departure to be a dramatic
moment in the history of musical enterprise in the Five Towns were Mrs
Swann, chiefly, and the boy, secondarily.




II


And more than the moment--the day, nay, the whole week--was dramatic in
the history of local musical enterprise.

It had occurred to somebody in Hanbridge, about a year before, that
since York, Norwich, Hereford, Gloucester, Birmingham, and even
Blackpool had their musical festivals, the Five Towns, too, ought to
have its musical festival. The Five Towns possessed a larger population
than any of these centres save Birmingham, and it was notorious for its
love of music. Choirs from the Five Towns had gone to all sorts of
places--such as Brecknock, Aberystwyth, the Crystal Palace, and even a
place called Hull--and had come back with first prizes--cups and
banners--for the singing of choruses and part-songs. There were three
(or at least two and a half) rival choirs in Hanbridge alone. Then also
the brass band contests were famously attended. In the Five Towns the
number of cornet players is scarcely exceeded by the number of
public-houses. Hence the feeling, born and fanned into lustiness at
Hanbridge, that the Five Towns owed it to its self-respect to have a
Musical Festival like the rest of the world! Men who had never heard of
Wagner, men who could not have told the difference between a sonata and
a sonnet to save their souls, men who spent all their lives in
manufacturing tea-cups or china door-knobs, were invited to guarantee
five pounds a-piece against possible loss on the festival; and they
bravely and blindly did so. The conductor of the largest Hanbridge
choir, being appointed to conduct the preliminary rehearsals of the
Festival Chorus, had an acute attack of self-importance, which, by the
way, almost ended fatally a year later.

Double-crown posters appeared magically on all the hoardings announcing
that a Festival consisting of three evening and two morning concerts
would be held in the Alexandra Hall, at Hanbridge, on the 6th, 7th and
8th November, and that the box-plan could be consulted at the principal
stationers. The Alexandra Hall contained no boxes whatever, but
"box-plan" was the phrase sacred to the occasion, and had to be used.
And the Festival more and more impregnated the air, and took the lion's
share of the columns of the _Staffordshire Signal_. Every few days the
_Signal_ reported progress, even to intimate biographical details of the
singers engaged, and of the composers to be performed, together with
analyses of the latter's works. And at last the week itself had dawned
in exhilaration and excitement. And early on the day before the opening
day John Merazzi, the renowned conductor, and Herbert Millwain, the
renowned leader of the orchestra, and the renowned orchestra itself, all
arrived from London. And finally sundry musical critics arrived from
the offices of sundry London dailies. The presence of these latter
convinced an awed population that its Festival was a real Festival, and
not a local make-believe. And it also tranquillized in some degree the
exasperating and disconcerting effect of a telegram from the capricious
Countess of Chell (who had taken six balcony seats and was the official
advertised high patroness of the Festival) announcing at the last moment
that she could not attend.


III


Mrs Swann's justification for considering (as she in fact did consider)
that her son was either the base or the apex of the splendid pyramid of
the Festival lay in the following facts:--

From earliest infancy Gilbert had been a musical prodigy, and the circle
of his fame had constantly been extending. He could play the piano with
his hands before his legs were long enough for him to play it with his
feet. That is to say, before he could use the pedals. A spectacle
formerly familiar to the delighted friends of the Swanns was Gilbert, in
a pinafore and curls, seated on a high chair topped with a large Bible
and a bound volume of the _Graphic_, playing "Home Sweet Home" with
Thalberg's variations, while his mother, standing by his side on her
right foot, put the loud pedal on or off with her left foot according to
the infant's whispered orders. He had been allowed to play from
ear--playing from ear being deemed especially marvellous--until some
expert told Mrs Swann that playing solely from ear was a practice to be
avoided if she wished her son to fulfil the promise of his babyhood.
Then he had lessons at Knype, until he began to teach his teacher. Then
he said he would learn the fiddle, and he did learn the fiddle; also
the viola. He did not pretend to play the flute, though he could. And at
school the other boys would bring him their penny or even sixpenny
whistles so that he might show them of what wonderful feats a common tin
whistle is capable.

Mr Swann was secretary for the Toft End Brickworks and Colliery Company
(Limited). Mr Swann had passed the whole of his career in the offices of
the prosperous Toft End Company, and his imagination did not move freely
beyond the company's premises. He had certainly intended that Gilbert
should follow in his steps; perhaps he meant to establish a dynasty of
Swanns, in which the secretaryship of the twenty per cent. paying
company should descend for ever from father to son. But Gilbert's
astounding facility in music had shaken even this resolve, and Gilbert
had been allowed at the age of fifteen to enter, as assistant, the shop
of Mr James Otkinson, the piano and musical instrument dealer and
musicseller, in Crown Square, Hanbridge. Here, of course, he found
himself in a musical atmosphere. Here he had at once established a
reputation for showing off the merits of a piano, a song, or a waltz, to
customers male and female. Here he had thirty pianos, seven harmoniums,
and all the new and a lot of classical music to experiment with. He
would play any "piece" at sight for the benefit of any lady in search of
a nice easy waltz or reverie. Unfortunately ladies would complain that
the pieces proved much more difficult at home than they had seemed under
the fingers of Gilbert in the shop. Here, too, he began to give lessons
on the piano. And here he satisfied his secret ambition to learn the
violoncello, Mr Otkinson having in stock a violoncello that had never
found a proper customer. His progress with the 'cello had been such that
the theatre people offered him an engagement, which his father and his
own sense of the enormous respectability of the Swanns compelled him to
refuse. But he always played in the band of the Five Towns Amateur
Operatic Society, and was beloved by its conductor as being utterly
reliable. His connection with choirs started through his merits as a
rehearsal accompanist who could keep time and make his bass chords heard
against a hundred and fifty voices. He had been appointed (_nem. con._)
rehearsal accompanist to the Festival Chorus. He knew the entire
Festival music backwards and upside down. And his modestly-expressed
desire to add his 'cello as one of the local reinforcements of the
London orchestra had been almost eagerly complied with by the Advisory
Committee.

Nor was this all. He had been invited to dinner by Mrs Clayton Vernon,
the social leader of Bursley. In the affair of the Festival Mrs Clayton
Vernon loomed larger than even she really was. And this was due to an
accident, to a sheer bit of luck on her part. She happened to be a
cousin of Mr Herbert Millwain, the leader of the orchestra down from
London. Mrs Clayton Vernon knew no more about music than she knew about
the North Pole, and cared no more. But she was Mr Millwain's cousin, and
Mr Millwain had naturally to stay at her house. And she came in her
carriage to fetch him from the band rehearsals; and, in short, anyone
might have thought from her self-satisfied demeanour (though she was a
decent sort of woman at heart) that she had at least composed "Judas
Maccabeus." It was at a band rehearsal that she had graciously commanded
Gilbert Swann to come and dine with her and Mr Millwain between the
final rehearsal and the opening concert. This invitation was, as it
were, the overflowing drop in Mrs Swann's cup. It was proof, to her,
that Mr Millwain had instantly pronounced Gilbert to be the equal of
London 'cellists, and perhaps their superior. It was proof, to her, that
Mr Millwain relied on him particularly to maintain the honour of the
band in the Festival.

Gilbert had dashed home from the final rehearsal, and his mother had
helped him with the unfamiliarities of evening dress, while he gave her
a list of all the places in the music where, as he said, the band was
"rocky," and especially the 'cellos, and a further list of all the smart
musical things that the players from London had said to him and he had
said to them. He simply knew everything from the inside. And not even
the great Merazzi, the conductor, was more familiar with the music than
he. And the ineffable Mrs Clayton Vernon had asked him to dinner with Mr
Millwain! It was indubitable to Mrs Swann that all the Festival rested
on her son's shoulders.


IV


"It's freezing, I think," said Mr Swann, when he came home at six
o'clock from his day's majestic work at Toft End. This was in the
bedroom. Mrs Swann, a comely little thing of thirty-nine, was making
herself resplendent for the inaugural solemnity of the Festival, which
began at eight. The news of the frost disturbed her.

"How annoying!" she said.

"Annoying?" he questioned blandly. "Why?"

"Now you needn't put on any of your airs, John!" she snapped. She had a
curt way with her at critical times. "You know as well as I do that I'm
thinking of Gilbert's hands.... No! you must wear your frock-coat, of
course!... All that drive from the other end of the town right to
Hanbridge in a carriage! Perhaps outside the carriage, because of the
'cello! There'll never be room for two of them and the 'cello and Mrs
Clayton Vernon in her carriage! And he can't keep his hands in his
pockets because of holding the 'cello. And he's bound to pretend he
isn't cold. He's so silly. And yet he knows perfectly well he won't do
himself justice if his hands are cold. Don't you remember last year at
the Town Hall?"

"Well," said Mr Swann, "we can't do anything; anyway, we must hope for
the best."

"That's all very well," said Mrs Swann. And it was.

Shortly afterwards, perfect in most details of her black silk, she left
the bedroom, requesting her husband to be quick, as tea was ready. And
she came into the little dining-room where the youthful servant was
poking up the fire.

"Jane," she said, "put two medium-sized potatoes in the oven to bake."

"Potatoes, mum?"

"Yes, potatoes," said Mrs Swann, tartly.

It was an idea of pure genius that had suddenly struck her; the genius
of common sense.

She somewhat hurried the tea; then rang.

"Jane," she inquired, "are those potatoes ready?"

"Potatoes?" exclaimed Mr Swann.

"Yes, hot potatoes," said Mrs Swann, tartly. "I'm going to run up with
them by car to Mrs Vernon's. I can slip them quietly over to Gil. They
keep your hands warm better than anything. Don't I remember when I was a
child! I shall leave Mrs Vernon's immediately, of course, but perhaps
you'd better give me my ticket and I will meet you at the hall. Don't
you think it's the best plan, John?"

"As you like," said Mr Swann, with the force of habit.

He was supreme in most things, but in the practical details of their
son's life and comfort she was supreme. Her decision in such matters had
never been questioned. Mr Swann had a profound belief in his wife as a
uniquely capable and energetic woman. He was tremendously loyal to her,
and he sternly inculcated the same loyalty to her in Gilbert.




V


Just as the car had stopped at the end of the street for Gilbert and his
violoncello, so--more than an hour later--it stopped for Mrs Swann and
her hot potatoes.

They were hot potatoes--nay, very hot potatoes--of a medium size,
because Mrs Swann's recollections of youth had informed her that if a
potato is too large one cannot get one's fingers well around it, and if
it is too small it cools somewhat rapidly. She had taken two, not in the
hope that Gilbert would be able to use two at once, for one cannot
properly nurse either a baby or a 'cello with two hands full of
potatoes, but rather to provide against accident. Besides, the inventive
boy might after all find a way of using both simultaneously, which would
be all the better for his playing at the concert, and hence all the
better for the success of the Musical Festival.

It never occurred to Mrs Swann that she was doing anything in the least
unusual. There she was, in her best boots, and her best dress, and her
best hat, and her sealskin mantle (not easily to be surpassed in the
town), and her muff to match (nearly), and concealed in the muff were
the two very hot potatoes. And it did not strike her that women of
fashion like herself, wives of secretaries of flourishing companies, do
not commonly go about with hot potatoes concealed on their persons. For
she was a self-confident woman, and after a decision she did not
reflect, nor did she heed minor consequences. She was always sure that
what she was doing was the right and the only thing to do. And, to give
her justice, it was; for her direct, abrupt common sense was indeed
remarkable. The act of climbing up into the car warned her that she must
be skilful in the control of these potatoes; one of them nearly fell out
of the right end of her muff as she grasped the car rail with her right
hand. She had to let go and save the potato, and begin again, while the
car waited. The conductor took her for one of those hesitating,
hysterical women who are the bane of car conductors. "Now, missis!" he
said. "Up with ye!" But she did not care what manner of woman the
conductor took her for.

The car was nearly full of people going home from their work, of people
actually going in a direction contrary to the direction of the Musical
Festival. She sat down among them, shocked by this indifference to the
Musical Festival. At the back of her head had been an idea that all the
cars for Hanbridge would be crammed to the step, and all the cars from
Hanbridge forlorn and empty. She had vaguely imagined that the thoughts
of a quarter of a million of people would that evening be centred on the
unique Musical Festival. And she was shocked also by the
conversation--not that it was in the slightest degree improper--but
because it displayed no interest whatever in the Musical Festival. And
yet there were several Festival advertisements adhering to the roof of
the car. Travellers were discussing football, soap, the weather, rates,
trade; travellers were dozing; travellers were reading about starting
prices; but not one seemed to be occupied with the Musical Festival.
"Nevertheless," she reflected with consoling pride, "if they knew that
our Gilbert was playing 'cello in the orchestra and dining at this very
moment with Mr Millwain, some of them would be fine and surprised, that
they would!" No one would ever have suspected, from her calm, careless,
proud face, that such vain and two-penny thoughts were passing through
her head. But the thoughts that do pass through the heads of even the
most common-sensed philosophers, men and women, are truly astonishing.

In four minutes she was at Bursley Town Hall, where she changed into
another car--full of people equally indifferent to the Musical
Festival--for the suburb of Hillport, where Mrs Clayton Vernon lived.

"Put me out opposite Mrs Clayton Vernon's, will you?" she said to the
conductor, and added, "you know the house?"

He nodded as if to say disdainfully in response to such a needless
question: "Do I know the house? Do I know my pocket?"

As she left the car she did catch two men discussing the Festival, but
they appeared to have no intention of attending it. They were
earthenware manufacturers. One of them raised his hat to her. And she
said to herself: "He at any rate knows how important my Gilbert is in
the Festival!"

It was at the instant she pushed open Mrs Clayton Vernon's long and
heavy garden gate, and crunched in the frosty darkness up the short
winding drive, that the notion of the peculiarity of her errand first
presented itself to her. Mrs Clayton Vernon was a relatively great lady,
living in a relatively great house; one of the few exalted or peculiar
ones who did not dine in the middle of the day like other folk. Mrs
Clayton Vernon had the grand manner. Mrs Clayton Vernon instinctively
and successfully patronized everybody. Mrs Clayton Vernon was a
personage with whom people did not joke. And lo! Mrs Swann was about to
invade her courtly and luxurious house, uninvited, unauthorized, with a
couple of hot potatoes in her muff. What would Mrs Clayton Vernon think
of hot potatoes in a muff? Of course, the Swanns were "as good as
anybody." The Swanns knelt before nobody. The Swanns were of the cream
of the town, combining commerce with art, and why should not Mrs Swann
take practical measures to keep her son's hands warm in Mrs Clayton
Vernon's cold carriage? Still, there was only one Mrs Clayton Vernon in
Bursley, and it was impossible to deny that she inspired awe, even in
the independent soul of Mrs Swann.

Mrs Swann rang the bell, reassuring herself. The next instant an
electric light miraculously came into existence outside the door,
illuminating her from head to foot. This startled her. But she said to
herself that it must be the latest dodge, and that, at any rate, it was
a very good dodge, and she began again the process of reassuring
herself. The door opened, and a prim creature stiffly starched stood
before Mrs Swann. "My word!" reflected Mrs Swann, "she must cost her
mistress a pretty penny for getting up aprons!" And she said aloud
curtly:

"Will you please tell Mr Gilbert Swann that someone wants to speak to
him a minute at the door?"

"Yes," said the servant, with pert civility. "Will you please step in?"

She had not meant to step in. She had decidedly meant not to step in,
for she had no wish to encounter Mrs Clayton Vernon; indeed, the
reverse. But she immediately perceived that in asking to speak to a
guest at the door she had socially erred. At Mrs Clayton Vernon's
refined people did not speak to refined people at the door. So she
stepped in, and the door was closed, prisoning her and her potatoes in
the imposing hall.

"I only want to see Mr Gilbert Swann," she insisted.

"Yes," said the servant. "Will you please step into the breakfast-room?
There's no one there. I will tell Mr Swann."


VI


As Mrs Swann was being led like a sheep out of the hall into an
apartment on the right, which the servant styled the breakfast-room,
another door opened, further up the hall, and Mrs Clayton Vernon
appeared. Magnificent though Mrs Swann was, the ample Mrs Clayton
Vernon, discreetly _décolletée_, was even more magnificent. Dressed as
she meant to show herself at the concert, Mrs Clayton Vernon made a
resplendent figure worthy to be the cousin of the leader of the
orchestra--and worthy even to take the place of the missing Countess of
Chell. Mrs Clayton Vernon had a lorgnon at the end of a shaft of
tortoise-shell; otherwise, a pair of eye-glasses on a stick. She had the
habit of the lorgnon; the lorgnon seldom left her, and whenever she was
in any doubt or difficulty she would raise the lorgnon to her eyes and
stare patronizingly. It was a gesture tremendously effective. She
employed it now on Mrs Swann, as who should say, "Who is this
insignificant and scarcely visible creature that has got into my noble
hall?" Mrs Swann stopped, struck into immobility by the basilisk glance.
A courageous and even a defiant woman, Mrs Swann was taken aback. She
could not possibly tell Mrs Clayton Vernon that she was the bearer of
hot potatoes to her son. She scarcely knew Mrs Clayton Vernon, had only
met her once at a bazaar! With a convulsive unconscious movement her
right hand clenched nervously within her muff and crushed the rich mealy
potato it held until the flesh of the potato was forced between the
fingers of her glove. A horrible sticky mess! That is the worst of a
high-class potato, cooked, as the Five Towns phrase it, "in its jacket."
It will burst on the least provocation. There stood Mrs Swann, her right
hand glued up with escaped potato, in the sober grandeur of Mrs Clayton
Vernon's hall, and Mrs Clayton Vernon bearing down upon her like a
Dreadnought.

Steam actually began to emerge from her muff.

"Ah!" said Mrs Clayton Vernon, inspecting Mrs Swann. "It's Mrs Swann!
How do you do, Mrs Swann?"

She seemed politely astonished, as well she might be. By a happy chance
she did not perceive the wisp of steam. She was not looking for steam.
People do not expect steam from the interior of a visitor's muff.

"Oh!" said Mrs Swann, who was really in a pitiable state. "I'm sorry to
trouble you, Mrs Clayton Vernon. But I want to speak to Gilbert for one
moment."

She then saw that Mrs Clayton Vernon's hand was graciously extended.
She could not take it with her right hand, which was fully engaged with
the extremely heated sultriness of the ruined potato. She could not
refuse it, or ignore it. She therefore offered her left hand, which Mrs
Clayton Vernon pressed with a well-bred pretence that people always
offered her their left hands.

"Nothing wrong, I do hope!" said she, gravely.

"Oh no," said Mrs Swann. "Only just a little matter which had been
forgotten. Only half a minute. I must hurry off at once as I have to
meet my husband. If I could just see Gilbert--"

"Certainly," said Mrs Clayton Vernon. "Do come into the breakfast-room,
will you? We've just finished dinner. We had it very early, of course,
for the concert. Mr Millwain--my cousin--hates to be hurried. Maria, be
good enough to ask Mr Swann to come here. Tell him that his mother
wishes to speak to him."

In the breakfast-room Mrs Swann was invited, nay commanded by Mrs
Clayton Vernon, to loosen her mantle. But she could not loosen her
mantle. She could do nothing. In clutching the potato to prevent bits of
it from falling out of the muff, she of course effected the precise
opposite of her purpose, and bits of the luscious and perfect potato
began to descend the front of her mantle. The clock struck seven, and
ages elapsed, during which Mrs Swann could not think of anything
whatever to say, but the finger of the clock somehow stuck motionless at
seven, though the pendulum plainly wagged.

"I'm not too warm," she said at length, feebly but obstinately resisting
Mrs Clayton Vernon's command. This, to speak bluntly, was an untruth.
She was too warm.

"Are you sure that nothing is the matter?" urged Mrs Clayton Vernon,
justifiably alarmed by the expression of her visitor's features. "I beg
you to confide in me if--"

"Not at all," said Mrs Swann, trying to laugh. "I'm only sorry to
disturb you. I didn't mean to disturb you."

"What on earth is that?" cried Mrs Clayton Vernon.

The other potato, escaping Mrs Swann's vigilance, had run out of the
muff and come to the carpet with a dull thud. It rolled half under Mrs
Swann's dress. Almost hysterically she put her foot on it, thus making
pulp of the second potato.

"What?" she inquired innocently.

"Didn't you hear anything? I trust it isn't a mouse! We have had them
once."

Mrs Clayton Vernon thought how brave Mrs Swann was, not to be frightened
by the word "mouse."

"I didn't hear anything," said Mrs Swann. Another untruth.

"If you aren't too warm, won't you come a little nearer the fire?"

But not for a thousand pounds would Mrs Swann have exposed the mush of
potato on the carpet under her feet. She could not conceive in what
ignominy the dreadful affair would end, but she was the kind of woman
that nails her colours to the mast.

"Dear me!" Mrs Clayton Vernon murmured. "How delicious those potatoes do
smell! I can smell them all over the house."

This was the most staggering remark that Mrs Swann had ever heard.

"Potatoes? very weakly.

"Yes," said Mrs Clayton Vernon, smiling. "I must tell you that Mr
Millwain is very nervous about getting his hands cold in driving to
Hanbridge. And he has asked me to have hot potatoes prepared. Isn't it
amusing? It seems hot potatoes are constantly used for this purpose in
winter by the pupils of the Royal College of Music, and even by the
professors. My cousin says that even a slight chilliness of the hands
interferes with his playing. So I am having potatoes done for your son
too. A delightful boy he is!"

"Really!" said Mrs Swann. "How queer! But what a good idea!"

She might have confessed then. But you do not know her if you think she
did. Gilbert came in, anxious and alarmed. Mrs Clayton Vernon left them
together. The mother explained matters to the son, and in an instant of
time the ruin of two magnificent potatoes was at the back of the fire.
Then, without saluting Mrs Clayton Vernon, Mrs Swann fled.




HALF-A-SOVEREIGN


The scene was the up-platform of Knype railway station on a summer
afternoon, and, more particularly, that part of the platform round about
the bookstall. There were three persons in the neighbourhood of the
bookstall. The first was the principal bookstall clerk, who was folding
with extraordinary rapidity copies of the special edition of the
_Staffordshire Signal_; the second was Mr Sandbach, an earthenware
manufacturer, famous throughout the Five Towns for his ingenious
invention of teapots that will pour the tea into the cup instead of all
over the table; and a very shabby man, whom Mr Sandbach did not know.
This very shabby man was quite close to the bookstall, while Mr Sandbach
stood quite ten yards away. Mr Sandbach gazed steadily at the man, but
the man, ignoring Mr Sandbach, allowed dreamy and abstracted eyes to
rest on the far distance, where a locomotive or so was impatiently
pushing and pulling waggons as an excitable mother will drag and shove
an inoffensive child. The platform as a whole was sparsely peopled; the
London train had recently departed, and the station was suffering from
the usual reaction; only a local train was signalled.

Mr Gale, a friend of Mr Sandbach's, came briskly on to the platform from
the booking-office, caught sight of Mr Sandbach, and accosted him.

"Hello, Sandbach!"

"How do, Gale?"

To a slight extent they were rivals in the field of invention. But both
had succeeded in life, and both had the alert and prosperous air of
success. Born about the same time, they stood nearly equal after forty
years of earthly endeavour.

"What are you doing here?" asked Gale, casually.

"I've come to meet someone off the Crewe train."

"And I'm going by it--to Derby," said Mr Gale. "They say it's thirteen
minutes late."

"Look here," said Mr Sandbach, taking no notice of this remark, "you see
that man there?"

"Which one--by the bookstall?"

"Yes."

"Well, what about him?"

"I bet you you can't make him move from where he is--no physical force,
of course."

Mr Gale hesitated an instant, and then his eye glistened with response
to the challenge, and he replied:

"I bet you I can."

"Well, try," said Mr Sandbach.

Mr Sandbach and Mr Gale frequently threw down the glove to each other in
this agreeable way. Either they asked conundrums, or they set test
questions, or they suggested feats. When Mr Sandbach discovered at a
Christmas party that you cannot stand with your left side close against
a wall and then lift your right leg, his first impulse was to confront
Mr Gale with the trick. When Mr Gale read in a facetious paper an
article on the lack of accurate observation in the average man,
entitled, "Do 'bus horses wear blinkers?" his opening remark to Mr
Sandbach at their next meeting was: "I say, Sandbach, do 'bus horses
wear blinkers? Answer quick!" And a phrase constantly in their mouths
was, "I'll try that on Gale;" or, "I wonder whether Sandbach knows
that?" All that was required to make their relations artistically
complete was an official referee for counting the scores. Such a basis
of friendship may seem bizarre, but it is by no means uncommon in the
Five Towns, and perhaps elsewhere.

So that when Mr Sandbach defied Mr Gale to induce the shabby man to
move from where he stood, the nostrils of the combatants twitched with
the scent of battle.

Mr Gale conceived his tactics instantly and put them into execution. He
walked along the platform some little distance, then turned, and taking
a handful of silver from his pocket, began to count it. He passed slowly
by the shabby man, almost brushing his shoulder; and, just as he passed,
he left fall half-a-crown. The half-crown rolled round in a circle and
lay down within a yard and a half of the shabby man. The shabby man
calmly glanced at the half-crown and then at Mr Gale, who, strolling on,
magnificently pretended to be unaware of his loss; and then the shabby
man resumed his dreamy stare into the distance.

"Hi!" cried Mr Sandbach after Mr Gale. "You've dropped something."

It was a great triumph for Mr Sandbach.

"I told you you wouldn't get him to move!" said Mr Sandbach, proudly,
having rejoined his friend at another part of the platform.

"What's the game?" demanded Mr Gale, frankly acknowledging by tone and
gesture that he was defeated.

"Perfectly simple," answered Mr Sandbach, condescendingly, "when you
know. I'll tell you--it's really very funny. Just as everyone was
rushing to get into the London express I heard a coin drop on the
platform, and I saw it rolling. It was half-a-sovereign. I couldn't be
sure who dropped it, but I think it was a lady. Anyhow, no one claimed
it. I was just going to pick it up when that chap came by. He saw it,
and he put his foot on it as quick as lightning, and stood still. He
didn't notice that I was after it too. So I drew back. I thought I'd
wait and see what happens."

"He looks as if he could do with half-a-sovereign," said Mr Gale.

"Yes; he's only a station loafer."

"Then why doesn't he pick up his half-sovereign and hook it?"

"Can't you see why?" said Mr Sandbach, patronizingly. "He's afraid of
the bookstall clerk catching him at it. He's afraid it's the bookstall
clerk that has dropped that half-sovereign. You wait till the bookstall
clerk finishes those papers and goes inside, and you'll see."

At this point Mr Gale made the happy involuntary movement of a man who
has suddenly thought of something really brilliant.

"Look here," said he. "You said you'd bet. But you didn't bet. I'll bet
you a level half-crown I get him to shift this time."

"But you mustn't say anything to him."

"No--of course not."

"Very well, I'll bet you."

Mr Gale walked straight up to the shabby man, drew half-a-sovereign from
his waistcoat pocket, and held it out. At the same time he pointed to
the shabby man's boots, and then in the most unmistakable way he pointed
to the exit of the platform. He said nothing, but his gestures were
expressive, and what they clearly expressed was: "I know you've got a
half-sovereign under your foot; here's another half-sovereign for you to
clear off and ask no questions."

Meanwhile the ingenious offerer of the half-sovereign was meditating
thus: "I give half-a-sovereign, but I shall gather up the other
half-sovereign, and I shall also win my bet. Net result: Half-a-crown to
the good."

The shabby man, who could not have been a fool, comprehended at once,
accepted the half-sovereign, and moved leisurely away--not, however,
without glancing at the ground which his feet had covered. The result
of the scrutiny evidently much surprised him, as it surprised, in a
degree equally violent, both Mr Gale and Mr Sandbach. For there was no
sign of half-a-sovereign under the feet of the shabby man. There was not
even nine and elevenpence there.

Mr Gale looked up very angry and Mr Sandbach looked very foolish.

"This is all very well," Mr Gale exploded in tones low and fierce. "But
I call it a swindle." And he walked, with an undecided, longing,
shrinking air, in the wake of the shabby man who had pocketed his
half-sovereign.

"I'm sure I saw him put his foot on it," said Mr Sandbach in defence of
himself (meaning, of course, the other half-sovereign), "and I've never
taken my eyes off him."

"Well, then, how do you explain it?"

"I don't explain it," said Mr Sandbach.

"I think some explanation is due to me," said Mr Gale, with a peculiar
and dangerous intonation. "If this is your notion of a practical joke."

"There was no practical joke about it at all," Mr Sandbach protested.
"If the half-sovereign has disappeared it's not my fault. I made a bet
with you, and I've lost it. Here's your half-crown."

He produced two-and-six, which Mr Gale accepted, though he had a strange
impulse to decline it with an air of offended pride.

"I'm still seven-and-six out," said Mr Gale.

"And if you are!" snapped Mr Sandbach, "you thought you'd do me down by
a trick. Offering the man ten shillings to go wasn't at all a fair way
of winning the bet, and you knew it, my boy. However, I've paid up; so
that's all right."

"All I say is," Mr Gale obstinately repeated, "if this is your notion of
a practical joke--"

"Didn't I tell you--" Mr Sandbach became icily furious.

The friendship hitherto existing between these two excellent
individuals might have been ruined and annihilated for a comparative
trifle, had not a surprising and indeed almost miraculous thing
happened, by some kind of freak of destiny, in the nick of time. Mr
Sandbach was sticking close to Mr Gale, and Mr Gale was following in the
leisurely footsteps of the very shabby man, possibly debating within
himself whether he should boldly demand the return of his
half-sovereign, when lo! a golden coin seemed to slip from the boot of
the very shabby man. It took the stone-flags of the platform with
scarcely a sound, and Mr Sandbach and Mr Gale made a simultaneous,
superb and undignified rush for it. Mr Sandbach got it. The very shabby
man passed on, passed eternally out of the lives of the other two. It
may be said that he was of too oblivious and dreamy a nature for this
world. But one must not forget that he had made a solid gain of ten
shillings.

"The soles of the fellow's boots must have been all cracks, and it must
have got lodged in one of them," cheerfully explained Mr Sandbach as he
gazed with pleasure at the coin. "I hope you believe me now. You thought
it was a plant. I hope you believe me now."

Mr Gale made no response to this remark. What Mr Gale said was:

"Don't you think that in fairness that half-sovereign belongs to me?"

"Why?" asked Mr Sandbach, bluntly.

"Well," Mr Gale began, searching about for a reason.

"You didn't find it," Mr Sandbach proceeded firmly. "You didn't see it
first. You didn't pick it up. Where do you come in?"

"I'm seven and sixpence out," said Mr Gale.

"And if I give you the coin, which I certainly shall not do, I should be
half-a-crown out."

Friendship was again jeopardized, when a second interference of fate
occurred, in the shape of a young and pretty woman who was coming from
the opposite direction and who astonished both men considerably by
stepping in front of them and barring their progress.

"Excuse me," said she, in a charming voice, but with a severe air. "But
may I ask if you have just picked up that coin?"

Mr Sandbach, after looking vaguely, as if for inspiration, at Mr Gale,
was obliged to admit that he had.

"Well," said the young lady, "if it's dated 1898, and if there's an 'A'
scratched on it, it's mine. I've lost it off my watch-chain." Mr
Sandbach examined the coin, and then handed it to her, raising his hat.
Mr Gale also raised his hat. The young lady's grateful smile was
enchanting. Both men were bachelors and invariably ready to be
interested.

"It was the first money my husband ever earned," the young lady
explained, with her thanks.

The interest of the bachelors evaporated.

"Not a profitable afternoon," said Mr Sandbach, as the train came in and
they parted.

"I think we ought to share the loss equally," said Mr Gale.

"Do you?" said Mr Sandbach. "That's like you."




THE BLUE SUIT


I was just going into my tailor's in Sackville Street, when who should
be coming out of the same establishment but Mrs Ellis! I was startled,
as any man might well have been, to see a lady emerging from my
tailor's. Of course a lady might have been to a tailor's to order a
tailor-made costume. Such an excursion would be perfectly legal and not
at all shocking. But then my tailor did not "make" for ladies. And
moreover, Mrs Ellis was not what I should call a tailor-made woman. She
belonged to the other variety--the fluffy, lacy, flowing variety. I had
made her acquaintance on one of my visits to the Five Towns. She was
indubitably elegant, but in rather a Midland manner. She was a fine
specimen of the provincial woman, and that was one of the reasons why I
liked her. Her husband was a successful earthenware manufacturer.
Occasionally he had to make long journeys--to Canada, to Australia and
New Zealand--in the interests of his business; so that she was sometimes
a grass-widow, with plenty of money to spend. Her age was about
thirty-five; bright, agreeable, shrewd, downright, energetic; a little
short and a little plump. Wherever she was, she was a centre of
interest! In default of children of her own she amused herself with the
children of her husband's sister, Mrs Carter. Mr Carter was another
successful earthenware manufacturer. Her favourite among nephews and
nieces was young Ellis Carter, a considerable local dandy and "dog."
Such was Mrs Ellis.

"Are you a widow just now?" I asked her, after we had shaken hands.

"Yes," she said. "But my husband touched at Port Said yesterday, thank
Heaven."

"Are you ordering clothes for him to wear on his arrival?" I adopted a
teasing tone.

"Can you picture Henry in a Sackville Street suit?" she laughed.

I could not. Henry's clothes usually had the appearance of having been
picked up at a Jew's.

"Then what _are_ you doing here?" I insisted.

"I came here because I remembered you saying once that this was your
tailor's," she said, "so I thought it would be a pretty good place."

Now I would not class my tailor with the half-dozen great tailors of the
world, but all the same he is indeed a, pretty good tailor.

"That's immensely flattering," I said. "But what have you been doing
with him?"

"Business," said she. "And if you want to satisfy your extraordinary
inquisitiveness any further, don't you think you'd better come right
away now and offer me some tea somewhere?"

"Splendid," I said. "Where?"

"Oh! The Hanover, of course!" she answered.

"Where's that?" I inquired.

"Don't you know the Hanover Tea-rooms in Regent Street?" she exclaimed,
staggered.

I have often noticed that metropolitan resorts which are regarded by
provincials as the very latest word of London style, are perfectly
unknown to Londoners themselves. She led me along Vigo Street to the
Hanover. It was a huge white place, with a number of little alcoves and
a large band. We installed ourselves in one of the alcoves, with
supplies of China tea and multitudinous cakes, and grew piquantly
intimate, and then she explained her visit to my tailor's. I propose to
give it here as nearly in her own words as I can.




I


I wouldn't tell you anything about it (she said) if I didn't know from
the way you talk sometimes that you are interested in _people_. I mean
any people, anywhere. Human nature! Everybody that I come across is
frightfully interesting to me. Perhaps that's why I've got so many
friends--and enemies. I _have_, you know. I just like watching people to
see what they do, and then what they'll do next. I don't seem to mind so
much whether they're good or naughty--with me it's their interestingness
that comes first. Now I suppose you don't know very much about my
nephew, Ellis Carter. Just met him once, I think, and that's all. Don't
you think he's handsome? Oh! I do. I think he's very handsome. But then
a man and a woman never do agree about what being handsome is in a man.
Ellis is only twenty, too. He has such nice curly hair, and his
eyes--haven't you noticed his eyes? His father says he's idle. But all
fathers say that of their sons. I suppose you'll admit anyhow that he's
one of the best-dressed youths in the Five Towns. Anyone might think he
got his clothes in London, but he doesn't. It seems there's a simply
marvellous tailor in Bursley, and Ellis and all his friends go to him.
His father is always grumbling at the bills, so his mother told me.
Well, when I was at their house in July, there happened to come for
Ellis one of those fiat boxes that men's tailors always pack suits in,
and so I thought I might as well show a great deal of curiosity about
it, and I did. And Ellis undid it in the breakfast-room (his father
wasn't there) and showed me a lovely blue suit. I asked him to go
upstairs and put it on. He wouldn't at first, but his sisters and I
worried him till he gave way.

He came downstairs again like Solomon in all his glory. It really was a
lovely suit. No--seriously, I'm not joking. It was a dream. He was very
shy in it. I must say men are funny. Even when they really _like_
having new clothes and cutting a figure, they simply hate putting them
on for the first time. Ellis is that way. I don't know how many suits
that boy hasn't got--sheer dandyism!--and yet he'll keep a new suit in
the house a couple of months before wearing it! Now that's the sort of
thing that I call "interesting." So curious, isn't it? Ellis wouldn't
keep that suit on. No; as soon as we'd done admiring it he disappeared
and changed it.

Now I'd gone that day to ask Ellis to escort me to Llandudno the week
after. He likes going about with his auntie, and his auntie likes to
have him. And of course she sees that it doesn't cost _him_ anything.
But his father has to be placated first. There's another funny thing!
His father is always grumbling that Ellis is absolutely no good at all
at the works, but the moment there's any question of Ellis going away
for a holiday--even if it's only a week-end--then his father turns right
round and wants to make out that Ellis is absolutely indispensable.
Well, I got over his father. I always do, naturally. And it was settled
that Ellis and I should go on the next Saturday.

I said to Ellis:

"You must be sure to bring that suit with you."

And then--will you believe me?--he stuck to it he wouldn't! Truly I was
under the impression that I could argue either Ellis or his father into
any mortal thing. But no! I couldn't argue Ellis into agreeing to bring
that suit with him to Llandudno. He said he should wear whites. He said
it was a September suit. He said that everybody wore blue at Llandudno,
and he didn't want to be mistaken for a schoolmaster! Imagine him being
mistaken for a schoolmaster! He even said there were some things I
didn't understand! I told him there was a very particular reason why I
wanted him to take that suit. And there _was_. He said:

"What is the reason?"

But I wouldn't tell him that. I wasn't going to knuckle down to him
altogether. So it ended that we didn't either of us budge. However, I
didn't mean to be beaten by a mere curly-headed boy. I can do what I
please with his mother, though she _is_ my eldest sister-in-law. And
before he started in the dogcart to meet me at the station on our way to
Llandudno she gave Ellis a bonnet-box to hand to me, and told him to
take great care of it. He handed it over to me, and I also told him to
take great care of it. Of course he became very curious to know what was
in it. I said to him:

"You may see it on the pier on Monday. In fact, I believe you will."

He said: "It's heavy for a hat."

So I informed him that hats were both heavy and large this summer.

He said, "Well, I pity you, auntie!"

Naturally it was his blue suit that was in the box. His mother had
burgled it after he'd done his packing, while he was having lunch.

I was determined he _should_ wear that suit. And I felt pretty sure that
when he saw my _reason_ for asking him to bring it he'd be glad at the
bottom of his heart that I'd brought it in spite of him. There is one
good thing about Ellis--he can see a joke against himself.... Have
another cake. Well, I will, then.... Yes, I'm coming to the reason.


II


A girl, you say? Well, of course. But you mustn't look so proud of
yourself. A body needn't be anything like so clever as you are to be
able to guess that there's a girl in it. Do you suppose I should have
imagined for a moment that it would interest you if there hadn't been a
girl in it? Not exactly! Well, it's a girl from Winnipeg. Came to
England in June with her parents. Or rather, perhaps, her parents came
with _her_. I'd never seen any of the three before--didn't know them
from Adam and Eve. But my husband had made friends with them out there
last year--great friends. And they wanted to make the acquaintance of my
husband's wife. I'd gathered from Harry that they were quite my sort....
What _is_ my sort? You know perfectly well what my sort is. There are
only two sorts of people--the decent sort and the other sort. Well, they
were doing England--you know, like Colonial people do--seriously,
leaving nothing out. By the way, their name was only "Smith," without
even a "y" in it or an "e" at the end. They wished to try a good seaside
place, so I wrote to them and suggested Llandudno as a fair specimen,
and it was arranged that we should meet there and spend at least a week
together, and afterwards they were to come to the Five Towns. I
suggested we should all stay at Hawthornden's ... Hawthornden's? Don't
you know--it's easily the best private hotel in Llandudno. Lift and a
French chef and all kinds of things; but surely you must have seen all
about it in the papers!

Now that was why I took Ellis with me. I hate travelling about alone,
especially when my husband's away. And it was particularly on account of
the girl that I stole the blue suit. But I didn't tell Ellis a word
about the girl, and I only just mentioned the father and mother--and not
even that until we were safely in the train. These young dandies are
really very nervous and timid at bottom, you know, in spite of their
airs. Ellis would walk ten miles sooner than have to meet a stranger of
the older generation. And he's just as shy about girls too. I believe
most men are, if you ask _me_.

The great encounter occurred in the hall, just before dinner. They were
late, and so were we. I tell you, we were completely outshone. I tell
you, we were not _in_ it, not anywhere near being in it! For one thing,
they were in evening-dress. Now at Hawthornden's you never dress for
dinner. There isn't a place in Llandudno where it's the exception not to
dress for dinner. They seemed rather surprised; not put out, not ashamed
of themselves for being too swagger, but just mildly disappointed with
Hawthornden's. The fact is, they didn't think much of Hawthornden's. I
learnt all manner of things during dinner. They'd been in Scotland when
I corresponded with them, but before that they'd stayed at the Ritz in
London, and at the Hotel St Regis in New York, and the something else--I
forget the name--at Chicago. I was expecting to meet "Colonials," but it
was Ellis and I who were "colonial." I could have borne it better if
they hadn't been so polite, and so anxious to hide their opinion of
Hawthornden's. The girl--oh! the girl.... Her name is Nellie. Really
very pretty. Only about eighteen, but as self-possessed as twenty-eight.
Evidently she had always been used to treating her parents as equals;
she talked quite half the time, and contradicted her mother as flatly as
Ellis contradicts me. Mr Smith didn't talk much. And Ellis didn't at
first--he was too timid and awkward--really not at all like himself.
However, Miss Nellie soon made him talk, and they got quite friendly and
curt with each other. Curious thing--Ellis never notices women's
clothes; very interested in his own, and in other men's, but not in
women's! So I expect Nellie's didn't make much impression on him. But
truly they were stylish. Much too gorgeous for a young girl--oh! you've
no idea!--but not vulgar. They'd been bought in London, in Dover Street.
Better than mine, and better than her mother's. I will say this for
her--she wore them without any self-consciousness, though she came in
for a good deal of staring. Heaven knows what they cost! I'd be afraid
to guess. But then you see the Smiths had come to England to spend
money, and--well--they were spending it. All their ideas were larger
than ours.

When dinner was over Nellie wanted to know what we could do to amuse
ourselves. Well, it was a showery night, and of course there was
nothing. Then Ellis said, in his patronizing way:

"Suppose we go and knock the balls about a bit?"

And Nellie said, "Knock the balls about a bit?"

"Yes," said Master Ellis, "billiards--you know."

All four of us went to the billiard-room. And Ellis began to knock the
balls about a bit. His father installed a billiard-table in his own
house a few years ago. The idea was to "keep the boy at home." It
didn't, of course, not a bit. Ellis is a pretty good player, but he did
nearly all his practising at his club. I've often heard his mother
regret the eighty pounds odd that that billiard-table cost.... _I_ play
a bit, you know. Nellie Smith would not try at first, and Papa Smith was
smoking a cigar and he said he couldn't do justice to a cigar and a cue
at the same time. So Ellis and I had a twenty-five up. He gave me ten
and I beat him--probably because he would keep on smoking cigarettes,
just to show Papa Smith how well he could keep the smoke out of his
eyes. Then he asked Nellie if she'd "try." She said she would if her pa
would. And she and her pa put themselves against Ellis and me.

Well, I'll cut it short. That girl, with her pink-and-white
complexion--she began right off with a break of twenty-eight. You should
have seen Ellis's face. It was the funniest thing I ever saw in my life.
I can't remember anything that ever struck me as half so funny. It seems
that they have plenty of time for billiards out in Winnipeg, and a very
high-class table. After a while Ellis saw the funniness of it too. He
made a miss and then he said:

"Will someone kindly take me out and bury me?"

That kind of speech is supposed to be very smart at his club. And the
Smiths thought it was very smart too. Nellie and her pa beat us hollow,
and then Nellie began to take her pa to task for showing off with too
much screw instead of using the natural angle!

Ellis went to bed. He was very struck by Nellie's talents. But he went
to bed. Probably he wanted to think things over, and consider how he
could be impressive with her. I should like to have broken it to him
about his blue suit, because it was Sunday the next day, and Nellie was
bound to be gorgeous for chapel and the pier, and I felt sure he'd be
really glad to have that suit--whatever he might _say_ to me. And I
wanted him to wear it too. But there was no chance for me to tell him.
He went off to bed like a streak of lightning. And usually, you know, he
simply will not go to bed. Nothing will induce him to go to bed, just as
nothing will induce him to get up. I said to myself I would send the
suit into his room early in the morning with a note. I did want him to
look his best.

And then of course there was the fire. The fire was that very night.
What?...


III


Do you actually mean to sit there and tell me you never heard about the
fire at Hawthornden's Hotel last July? Why, it was the sensation of the
season. There was over a column about it in the _Manchester Guardian_.
Everybody talked of it for weeks.... And no one ever told you that we
were in it? Half the annexe was burnt down. We were in the annexe, all
four of us. I fancy the Smiths had chosen it because the rooms in the
annexe are larger. Have you ever been in a fire?... Well, thank your
stars! We were wakened up at three o'clock. It was getting light, even.
Somehow that made it worse. The confusion--you can't imagine it. We got
out all right. Oh! there was no special danger to life and limb. But
after all we only _did_ get out just in time. And with practically
nothing but our dressing-gowns--some not even that! It's queer, in a
fire, how at first you try to save things, and keep calm, and pretend
you _are_ calm, until the thing gets hold of you. I actually began to
shovel clothes into my trunks. Somebody said we should have time for
that. Well--we hadn't. And it was a very good thing there wasn't a lift
in the annexe. It seems a lift well acts like a chimney, and half of us
might have been burnt alive.

I must say the fire-brigade was pretty good. They got the fire out very
well--very quickly in fact. We women, or most of us, had been bundled
into private parlours and things in the main part of the hotel, which
wasn't threatened, and when we knew that the fire was out we naturally
wanted to go back and see whether any of our things could be saved out
of the wreck.

Oh! what a sight it was! What a sight it was! You'd never believe that
so much damage could be done in an hour or so. Chiefly by water, of
course. All the ground floor was swimming in water. In fact there was a
river of it running across the promenade into the sea. About five-sixths
of Llandudno, dressed nohow, was on the promenade. However, policemen
kept the people outside the gates.

The firemen began bringing trunks down the stairs; they wouldn't let us
go up at first. It really was a wonderful scene, at the foot of the
stairs, lots of us paddling about in that lake, and perfectly lost to
all sense of--what shall I say?--well, correctness. I do believe most of
us had forgotten all about civilization. We wanted our things. We wanted
our things so badly that we even lost our interest in the origin of the
fire and in the question whether we should get anything out of the
insurance company. By the way, I mustn't omit to tell you that we never
saw the proprietors after the fire was out; the proprietors could only
be seen by appointment. The German and Swiss waiters had to bear the
brunt of us.

I was very lucky. I received both my trunks nearly at once. They came
sliding on a plank down those stairs. And most of my things were in them
too. I was determined to be energetic then, and to get out of all that
crowd. Do you know what I did? I simply called two men in out of the
street, and told them to shoulder my trunks into the main building of
the hotel. I defied policemen and the superintendent of the
fire-brigade. And in the main building I demanded a bedroom, and I was
told that everything would be done to accommodate me as quickly as
possible. So I went straight upstairs and told the men to follow me, and
I began knocking at every door till I found a room that wasn't occupied,
and I took possession of it, and gave the men a shilling a piece. They
seemed to expect half-a-crown, because I'd been in a fire, I suppose!
Curious ideas odd job men have! Then I dressed myself out of what was
left of my belongings and went down again.

All the people said how lucky I was, and what presence of mind I had,
and how calm and practical I was, and so on and so on. But they didn't
know that I'd been stupid enough not to give a thought to Ellis's blue
suit. One can't think of everything, and I didn't think of that. I
believe if I had thought of it, at the start, I should have taken the
bonnet-box with me at any cost.

I came across Ellis; smoking a cigarette, of course, just to show, I
suppose, that a fire was a most ordinary event to him. He was completely
dressed, like me. He had saved the whole of his belongings. He said the
Smiths were fixing themselves up in private rooms somewhere, and would
be down soon. So we moved along into the dining-room and had breakfast.
The place was full and noisy. Ellis was exceedingly facetious. He said:

"Well, auntie, did you have a pretty good night?"

Also:

"A fire is a very clumsy way of waking you up in the morning. A bell
would be much simpler, and cost less," etcetera, etcetera. And then he
said:

"A nice thing, auntie, if I'd followed your advice and brought my
beauteous new suit! It would have been bound to be burnt to a cinder.
One's best suit always is in a fire."

I ought to have told him then the trick I'd played on him, but I didn't.
I merely agreed with him in a lame sort of way that it _would_ have been
a nice thing if he'd brought his beauteous suit. I hoped that I might be
able later on to invent some good excuse, something really plausible,
for having brought along with me his newest suit unknown to him. But the
more I reflected the more I couldn't think of anything clever enough.

Then the three Smiths came in. There was some queer attire in that
dining-room, but I think that Mrs Smith won the gold medal for
queerness. All her "colonialness" had come suddenly out. They evidently
hadn't been very fortunate. But they didn't seem to mind much. They
hadn't thought very highly of the hotel before, and they accepted the
fire good-humouredly as one of the necessary drawbacks of a hotel that
wasn't quite up to their Winnipeg form. Nellie Smith was delightful. I
must say she was delightful, and she looked delightful. She was wearing
a blue-and-red striped petticoat, rather short, and a white jersey, and
over that a man's blue jacket, which fitted her pretty well. She looked
indescribably pert and charming, though the jacket was dirty and
stained.

I noticed Ellis staring and staring at that jacket....

I needn't tell you. You can see a mile off what had happened.

Ellis said in his casual way:

"Hello! Where did you pick up that affair, Miss Smith?" Meaning the
jacket.

She said she had picked it up on one of the landings, and that there was
a pair of continuations lying in a broken bonnet-box just close to it,
and that the continuations were ruined by too much water.

I could feel myself blushing redder and redder.

"In a bonnet-box, eh?" said Master Ellis.

Then he said: "Would you mind letting me look at the right-hand
breast-pocket of that jacket?"

She didn't mind in the least. He looked at the strip of white linen that
your men's tailors always stitch into that pocket with your name and
address and date, and age and weight, and I don't know what.

He said, "Thank you."

And she asked him if the jacket was his.

"Yes," he said, "but I hope you'll keep it."

Everybody said what a very curious coincidence! Ellis avoided my eyes,
and I avoided his.... Will you believe me that when we "had it out"
afterwards, he and I, that boy was seriously angry. He suspected me of a
plan "to make the best of him" during the stay with the Smiths, and he
very strongly objected to being "made the best of." His notion
apparently was that even his worst was easily good enough for my
Colonial friends, although, as he'd have said, they _had_ "simply wiped
the floor with him" in the billiard-room. Anyhow, he was furious. He
actually used the word "unwarrantable," and it was rather a long word
for a mere stripling of a nephew to use to an auntie who was paying all
his expenses. However, he's a nice enough boy at the bottom, and soon
got down off his high horse. I must tell you that Nellie Smith wore that
jacket all day, quite without any concern. These Colonials don't really
seem to mind what they wear. At any rate she didn't. She was just as
much at ease in that jacket as she had been in her gorgeousness the
evening before. And she and Ellis were walking about together all day.
The next day of course we all left. We couldn't stay, seeing the state
we were in.... Now, don't you think it's a very curious story?

Thus spake Mrs Ellis across the tea-table in an alcove at the Hanover.

"But you've not finished the story!" I explained.

"Yes, I have," she said.

"You haven't explained what you were doing at my tailor's in Sackville
Street."

"Oh!" she cried, "I was forgetting that. Well, I promised Ellis a new
suit. And as I wanted to show him that after all I had larger ideas
about tailoring than he had, I told him I knew a very good tailor's in
Sackville Street--a real West End tailor--and that if he liked he could
have his presentation suit made there. He pooh-poohed the offer at
first, and pretended that his Bursley tailor was just as good as any of
your West End tailors. But at last he accepted. You see--it meant an
authorized visit to London.... I'd been into the tailor's just now to
pay the bill. That's all."

"But even now," I said, "you haven't finished the story."

"Yes, I have," she replied again.

"What about Nellie Smith?" I demanded. "A story about a handsome girl
named Nellie, who could make a break of twenty-eight at billiards, and a
handsome dog like Ellis Carter, and a fire, and the girl wearing the
youth's jacket--it can't break off like that."

"Look here," she said, leaning a little across the table. "Did you
expect them to fall in love with each other on the spot and be engaged?
What a sentimental old thing you are, after all!"

"But haven't they seen each other since?"

"Oh yes! In London, and in Bursley too."

"And haven't they--"

"Not yet.... They may or they mayn't. You must remember this isn't the
reign of Queen Victoria.... If they _do_, I'll let you know."




THE TIGER AND THE BABY

I


George Peel and Mary, his wife, sat down to breakfast. Their only son,
Georgie, was already seated. George the younger showed an astounding
disregard for the decencies of life, and a frankly gluttonous absorption
in food which amounted to cynicism. Evidently he cared for nothing but
the satisfaction of bodily desires. Yet he was twenty-two months old,
and occupied a commanding situation in a high chair! His father and
mother were aged thirty-two and twenty-eight respectively. They both had
pale, intellectual faces; they were dressed with elegance, and their
gestures were the gestures of people accustomed to be waited upon and to
consider luxuries as necessaries. There was silver upon the table, and
the room, though small and somewhat disordered, had in it beautiful
things which had cost money. Through a doorway half-screened by a
portière could be seen a large studio peopled with heroic statuary,
plaster casts, and lumps of clay veiled in wet cloths. And on the other
side of the great window of the studio green trees waved their foliage.
The trees were in Regent's Park. Another detail to show that the Peels
had not precisely failed in life: the time was then ten-thirty o'clock!
Millions of persons in London had already been at hard work for hours.

And indeed George Peel was not merely a young sculptor of marked talent;
he was also a rising young sculptor. For instance, when you mentioned
his name in artistic circles the company signified that it knew whom
you meant, and those members of the company who had never seen his work
had to feel ashamed of themselves. Further, he had lately been awarded
the Triennial Gold Medal of the International Society, an honour that no
Englishman had previously achieved. His friends and himself had, by the
way, celebrated this dazzling event by a noble and joyous gathering in
the studio, at which famous personages had been present.

Everybody knew that George Peel, in addition to what he earned, had
important "private resources." For even rising young sculptors cannot
live luxuriously on what they gain, and you cannot eat gold medals. Nor
will gold medals pay a heavy rent or the cost of manual help in marble
cutting. All other rising young sculptors envied George Peel, and he
rather condescended to them (in his own mind) because they had to keep
up appearances by means of subterfuges, whereas there was no deception
about his large and ample existence.

On the table by Mary's plate was a letter, the sole letter. It had come
by the second post. The contents of the first post had been perused in
bed. While Mary was scraping porridge off the younger George's bib with
a spoon, and wiping porridge out of his eyes with a serviette, George
the elder gave just a glance at the letter.

"So he has written after all!" said George, in a voice that tried to be
nonchalant.

"Who?" asked Mary, although she had already seen the envelope, and knew
exactly what George meant. And her voice also was unnatural in its
attempted casualness.

"The old cock," said George, beginning to serve bacon.

"Oh!" said Mary, coming to her chair, and beginning to dispense tea.

She was dying to open the letter, yet she poured out the tea with
superhuman leisureliness, and then indicated to Georgie exactly where to
search for bits of porridge on his big plate, while George with a great
appearance of calm unfolded a newspaper. Then at length she did open the
letter. Having read it, she put her lips tighter together, nodded, and
passed the letter to George. And George read:

"DEAR MARY,--I cannot accede to your request.--Your affectionate uncle,
SAMUEL PEEL.

"_P.S._--The expenses connected with my County Council election will be
terrible. S.P."

George lifted his eyebrows, as if to indicate that in his opinion there
was no accounting for the wild stupidity of human nature, and that he as
a philosopher refused to be startled by anything whatever.

"Curt!" he muttered coldly.

Mary uneasily laughed.

"What shall you do?" she inquired.

"Without!" replied George, with a curtness that equalled Mary's uncle's.

"And what about the rent?"

"The rent will have to wait."

A brave young man! Nevertheless he saw in that moment chasms at his
feet--chasms in which he and his wife and child and his brilliant
prospects might be swallowed up. He changed the subject.

"You didn't see this cutting," he said, and passed a slip from a
newspaper gummed to a piece of green paper.

George, in his quality of rising young sculptor, received Press cuttings
from an agency. This one was from a somewhat vulgar Society journal, and
it gave, in two paragraphs, an account of the recent festivity at
George's studio. It finished with the words: "Heidsieck flowed freely."
He could not guess who had written it. No! It was not in the nicest
taste, but it furnished indubitable proof that George was still rising,
that he was a figure in the world. "What a rag!" he observed, with an
explosion of repugnance. "Read by suburban shop-girls, I suppose."


II


George had arranged his career in a quite exceptional way. It is true
that chance had served him; but then he had known how to make use of
chance to the highest advantage. The chance that had served him lay in
the facts that Mary Peel had fallen gravely in love with him, that her
sole surviving relative was a rich uncle, and that George's surname was
the same as hers and her uncle's. He had met niece and uncle in Bursley
in the Five Towns, where old Samuel Peel was a personage, and, timidly,
a patron of the arts. Having regard to his golden hair and
affection-compelling appearance, it was not surprising that Mary,
accustomed to the monotony of her uncle's house, had surrendered her
heart to him. And it was not surprising that old Peel had at once
consented to the match, and made a will in favour of Mary and her
offspring. What was surprising was that old Peel should have begun to
part with his money at once, and in large quantities, for he was not of
a very open-handed disposition.

The explanation of old Samuel Peel's generosity was due to his being a
cousin of the Peels of Bursley, the great eighteenth-century family of
earthenware manufacturers. The main branch had died out, the notorious
Carlotta Peel having expired shockingly in Paris, and another young
descendant, Matthew, having been forced under a will to alter his name
to Peel-Swynnerton. So that only the distant cousin, Samuel Peel, was
left, and he was a bachelor with no prospect of ever being anything
else. Now Samuel had made a fortune of his own, and he considered that
all the honour and all the historical splendours of the Peel family were
concentrated in himself. And he tried to be worthy of them. He tried to
restore the family traditions. For this he became a benefactor to his
native town, a patron of the arts, and a candidate for the Staffordshire
County Council. And when Mary set her young mind on a young man of parts
and of ambition, and bearing by hazard the very same name of Peel, old
Samuel Peel said to himself: "The old family name will not die out. It
ought to be more magnificent than ever." He said this also to George
Peel.

Whereupon George Peel talked to him persuasively and sensibly about the
risks and the prizes of the sculptor's career. He explained just how
extremely ambitious he was, and all that he had already done, and all
that he intended to do. And he convinced his uncle-in-law that young
sculptors were tremendously handicapped in an expensive and difficult
profession by poverty or at least narrowness of means. He convinced his
uncle-in-law that the best manner of succeeding was to begin at the top,
to try for only the highest things, to sell nothing cheaply, to be
haughty with dealers and connoisseurs, and to cut a figure in the very
centre of the art-world of London. George was a good talker, and all
that he said was perfectly true. And his uncle was dazzled by the
immediate prospect of new fame for the ancient family of Peel. And in
the end old Samuel promised to give George and Mary five hundred a year,
so that George, as a sculptor, might begin at the top and "succeed like
success." And George went off with his bride to London, whence he had
come. And the old man thought he had done a very noble and a very
wonderful thing, which, indeed, he had.

This had occurred when George was twenty-five.

Matters fell out rather as George had predicted. The youth almost at
once obtained a commission for three hundred pounds' worth of symbolic
statues for the front of the central offices of the Order of Rechabites,
which particularly pleased his uncle, because Samuel Peel was a strong
temperance man. And George got one or two other commissions.

Being extravagant was to George Peel the same thing as "putting all the
profits into the business" is to a manufacturer. He was extravagant and
ostentatious on principle, and by far-sighted policy--or, at least, he
thought that he was.

And thus the world's rumours multiplied his success, and many persons
said and believed that he was making quite two thousand a year, and
would be an A.R.A. before he was grey-haired. But George always related
the true facts to his uncle-in-law; he even made them out to be much
less satisfactory than they really were. His favourite phrase in letters
to his uncle was that he was "building," "building"--not houses, but his
future reputation and success.

Then commissions fell off or grew intermittent, or were refused as being
unworthy of George's dignity. And then young Georgie arrived, with his
insatiable appetites and his vociferous need of doctors, nurses,
perambulators, nurseries, and lacy garments. And all the time young
George's father kept his head high and continued to be extravagant by
far-sighted policy. And the five hundred a year kept coming in regularly
by quarterly instalments. Many a tight morning George nearly decided
that Mary must write to her uncle and ask for a little supplementary
estimate. But he never did decide, partly because he was afraid, and
partly from sheer pride. (According to his original statements to his
uncle-in-law, seven years earlier, he ought at this epoch to have been
in an assured position with a genuine income of thousands.)

But the state of trade worsened, and he had a cheque dishonoured. And
then he won the Triennial Gold Medal. And then at length he did arrange
with Mary that she should write to old Samuel and roundly ask him for an
extra couple of hundred. They composed the letter together; and they
stated the reasons so well, and convinced themselves so completely of
the righteousness of their cause, that for a few moments they looked on
the two hundred as already in hand. Hence the Heidsieck night. But on
the morrow of the Heidsieck night they thought differently. And George
was gloomy. He felt humiliated by the necessity of the application to
his uncle--the first he had ever made. And he feared the result.

His fears were justified.


III


They were far more than justified. Three mornings after the first
letter, to which she had made no reply, Mary received a second. It ran:

"DEAR MARY,--And what is more, I shall henceforth pay you three hundred
instead of five hundred a year. If George has not made a position for
himself it is quite time he had. The Gold Medal must make a lot of
difference to him. And if necessary you must economize. I am sure there
is room for economy in your household. Champagne, for instance.--Your
affectionate uncle, SAMUEL PEEL.

"_P.S._--I am, of course, acting in your best interests.

"S.P."

This letter infuriated George, so much so that George the younger,
observing strange symptoms on his father's face, and strange sounds
issuing from his father's mouth, stopped eating in order to give the
whole of his attention to them.

"Champagne! What's he driving at?" exclaimed George, glaring at Mary as
though it was Mary who had written the letter.

"I expect he's been reading that paper," said Mary.

"Do you mean to say," George asked scornfully, "that your uncle reads a
rag like that? I thought all _his_ lot looked down on worldliness."

"So they do," said Mary. "But somehow they like reading about it. I
believe uncle has read it every week for twenty years."

"Well, why didn't you tell me?"

"The other morning?"

"Yes."

"Oh, I didn't want to worry you. What good would it have done?"

"What good would it have done!" George repeated in accents of terrible
disdain, as though the good that it would have done was obvious to the
lowest intelligence. (Yet he knew quite well that it would have done no
good at all.) "Georgie, take that spoon out of your sleeve."

And Georgie, usually disobedient, took the porridge-laden spoon out of
his sleeve and glanced at his mother for moral protection. His mother
merely wiped him rather roughly. Georgie thought, once more, that he
never in this world should understand grown-up people. And the recurring
thought made him cry gently.

George lapsed into savage meditation. During all the seven years of his
married life he had somehow supposed himself to be superior, as a man,
to his struggling rivals. He had regarded them with easy toleration, as
from a height. And now he saw himself tumbling down among them,
humiliated. Everything seemed unreal to him then. The studio and the
breakfast-room were solid; the waving trees in Regent's Park were
solid; the rich knick-knacks and beautiful furniture and excellent food
and fine clothes were all solid enough; but they seemed most
disconcertingly unreal. One letter from old Samuel had made them
tremble, and the second had reduced them to illusions, or delusions.
Even George's reputation as a rising sculptor appeared utterly
fallacious. What rendered him savage was the awful injustice of Samuel.
Samuel had no right whatever to play him such a trick. It was, in a way,
worse than if Samuel had cut off the allowance altogether, for in that
case he could at any rate have gone majestically to Samuel and said:
"Your niece and her child are starving." But with a minimum of three
hundred a year for their support three people cannot possibly starve.

"Ring the bell and have this kid taken out," said he.

Whereupon Georgie yelled.

Kate came, a starched white-and-blue young thing of sixteen.

"Kate," said George, autocratically, "take baby."

"Yes, sir," said Kate, with respectful obedience. The girl had no notion
that she was not real to her master, or that her master was saying to
himself: "I ought not to be ordering human beings about like this. I
can't pay their wages. I ought to be starving in a garret."

When George and Mary were alone, George said: "Look here! Does he mean
it?"

"You may depend he means it. It's so like him. Me asking for that £200
must have upset him. And then seeing that about Heidsieck in the
paper--he'd make up his mind all of a sudden--I know him so well."

"H'm!" snorted George. "I shall make my mind up all of a sudden, too!"

"What shall you do?"

"There's one thing I shan't do," said George.

"And that is, stop here. Do you realize, my girl, that we shall be
absolutely up a gum-tree?"

"I should have thought you would be able--"

"Absolute gum-tree!" George interrupted her. "Simply can't keep the shop
open! To-morrow, my child, we go down to Bursley."

"Who?"

"You, me, and the infant."

"And what about the servants?"

"Send 'em home."

"But we can't descend on uncle like that without notice, and him full of
his election! Besides, he's cross."

"We shan't descend on him."

"Then where shall you go?"

"We shall put up at the Tiger," said George, impressively.

"The Tiger?" gasped Mary.

George had meant to stagger, and he had staggered.

"The Tiger," he iterated.

"With Georgie?"

"With Georgie."

"But what will uncle say? I shouldn't be surprised if uncle has never
been in the Tiger in his life. You know his views--"

"I don't care twopence for your uncle," said George, again implicitly
blaming Mary for the peculiarities of her uncle's character.
"Something's got to be done, and I'm going to do it."


IV


Two days later, at about ten o'clock in the morning, Samuel Peel, J.P.,
entered the market-place, Bursley, from the top of Oldcastle Street. He
had walked down, as usual, from his dignified residence at Hillport. It
was his day for the Bench, and he had, moreover, a lot of complicated
election business. On a dozen hoardings between Hillport and Bursley
market-place blazed the red letters of his posters inviting the faithful
to vote for Peel, whose family had been identified with the district for
a century and a half. He was pleased with these posters, and with the
progress of canvassing. A slight and not a tall man, with a feeble grey
beard and a bald head, he was yet a highly-respected figure in the town.
He had imposed himself upon the town by regular habits, strict morals, a
reasonable philanthropy, and a successful career. He had, despite
natural disadvantages, upheld on high the great name of Peel. So that he
entered the town on that fine morning with a certain conquering
jauntiness. And citizens saluted him with respect and he responded with
benignity.

And as, nearly opposite that celebrated hotel, the Tiger, he was about
to cross over to the eastern porch of the Town Hall, he saw a
golden-haired man approaching him with a perambulator. And the sight
made him pause involuntarily. It was a strange sight. Then he recognized
his nephew-in-law. And he blanched, partly from excessive astonishment,
but partly from fear.

"How do, uncle?" said George, nonchalantly, as though he had parted from
him on the previous evening. "Just hang on to this pram a sec., will
you?" And, pushing the perambulator towards Samuel Peel, J.P., George
swiftly fled, and, for the perfection of his uncle-in-law's amazement,
disappeared into the Tiger.

Then the occupant of the perambulator began to weep.

The figure of Samuel Peel, dressed as a Justice of the Peace should be
dressed for the Bench, in a frock-coat and a ceremonious necktie, and
(of course) spats over his spotless boots; the figure of Samuel Peel,
the wrinkled and dry bachelor (who never in his life had held a saucepan
of infant's food over a gas-jet in the middle of the night), this figure
staring horror-struck through spectacles at the loud contents of the
perambulator, soon excited attention in the market-place of Bursley. And
Mr Peel perceived the attention.

He guessed that the babe was Mary's babe, though he was quite incapable
of recognizing it. And he could not imagine what George was doing with
it (and the perambulator) in Bursley, nor why he had vanished so swiftly
into the Tiger, nor why he had not come out again. The whole situation
was in the acutest degree mysterious. It was also in the acutest degree
amazing. Samuel Peel had no facility in baby-talk, so, to tranquillize
Georgie, he attempted soothing strokes or pats on such portions of
Georgie's skin as were exposed. Whereupon Georgie shrieked, and even
dogs stood still and lifted noses inquiringly.

Then Jos Curtenty, very ancient but still a wag, passed by, and said:

"Hello, Mr Peel. Truth will out. And yet who'd ha' suspected you o'
being secretly married!"

Samuel Peel could not take offence, because Jos Curtenty, besides being
old and an alderman, and an ex-Mayor, was an important member of his
election committee. Of course such a friendly joke from an incurable
joker like Jos Curtenty was all right; but supposing enemies began to
joke on similar lines--how he might be prejudiced at the polls! It was
absurd, totally absurd, to conceive Samuel Peel in any other relation
than that of an uncle to a baby; yet the more absurd a slander the more
eagerly it was believed, and a slander once started could never be
overtaken.

What on earth was George Peel doing in Bursley with that baby? Why had
he not announced his arrival? Where was the baby's mother? Where was
their luggage? Why, in the name of reason, had George vanished so
swiftly into the Tiger, and what in the name of decency and sobriety was
he doing in the Tiger such a prodigious time?

It occurred to him that possibly George had written to him and the
letter had miscarried.

But in that case, where had they slept the previous night? They could
not have come down from London that morning; it was too early.

Little Georgie persevered in the production of yells that might have
been heard as far as the Wesleyan Chapel, and certainly as far as the
Conservative Club.

Then Mr Duncalf, the Town Clerk, went by, from his private office,
towards the Town Hall, and saw the singular spectacle of the public man
and the perambulator. Mr Duncalf, too, was a bachelor.

"So you've come down to see 'em," said Mr Duncalf, gruffly, pretending
that the baby was not there.

"See whom?"

"Well, your niece and her husband, of course."

"Where are they?" asked Mr Peel, without having; sufficiently considered
the consequences of his question.

"Aren't they in the Tiger?" said Mr Duncalf. "They put up there
yesterday afternoon, anyhow. But naturally you know that."

He departed, nodding. The baby's extraordinary noise incommoded him and
seemed somehow to make him blush if he stood near it.

Mr Peel did not gasp. It is at least two centuries since men gasped from
astonishment. Nevertheless, Mr Duncalf with those careless words had
simply knocked the breath out of him. Never, never would he have
guessed, even in the wildest surmise, that Mary and her husband and
child would sleep at the Tiger! The thought unmanned him. What! A baby
at the Tiger!

Let it not be imagined for a moment that the Tiger is not an utterly
respectable hotel. It is, always was, always will be. Not the faintest
slur had ever been cast upon its licence. Still, it had a bar and a
barmaid, and indubitably people drank at the bar. When a prominent man
took to drink (as prominent men sometimes did), people would say, "He's
always nipping into the Tiger!" Or, "You'll see him at the Tiger before
eleven o'clock in the morning!" Hence to Samuel Peel, total abstainer
and temperance reformer, the Tiger, despite its vast respectability and
the reputation of its eighteen-penny ordinary, was a place of sin, a
place of contamination; briefly, a "gin palace," if not a
"gaming-saloon." On principle, Samuel Peel (as his niece suspected) had
never set foot in the Tiger. The thought that his great-nephew and his
niece had actually slept there horrified him.

And further and worse; what would people say about Samuel Peel's
relatives having to stop at the Tiger, while Samuel Peel's large house
up at Hillport was practically empty? Would they not deduce family
quarrels, feuds, scandals? The situation was appalling.

He glanced about, but he did not look high enough to see that George was
watching him from a second-floor window of the Tiger, and he could not
hear Mary imploring George: "Do for goodness sake go back to him."
Ladies passed along the pavement, stifling their curiosity. At the back
of the Town Hall there began to collect the usual crowd of idlers who
interest themselves in the sittings of the police-court.

Then Georgie, bored with weeping, dropped off into slumber. Samuel Peel
saw that he could not, with dignity, lift the perambulator up the steps
into the porch of the Tiger, and so he began to wheel it cautiously down
the side-entrance into the Tiger yard. And in the yard he met George,
just emerging from the side-door on whose lamp is written the word
"Billiards."

"So sorry to have troubled you, uncle. But the wife's unwell, and I'd
forgotten something. Asleep, is he?"

George spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, with no hint whatever that he
bore ill-will against Samuel Peel for having robbed him of two hundred
a year. And Samuel felt as though he had robbed George of two hundred a
year.

"But--but," asked Samuel, "what are you doing here?"

"We're stopping here," said George. "I've come down to look out for some
work--modelling, or anything I can get hold of. I shall begin a round of
the manufacturers this afternoon. We shall stay here till I can find
furnished rooms, or a cheap house. It's all up with sculpture now, you
know."

"Why! I thought you were doing excellently. That medal--"

"Yes. In reputation. But it was just now that I wanted money for a big
job, and--and--well, I couldn't have it. So there you are. Seven years
wasted. But, of course, it was better to cut the loss. I never pretend
that things aren't what they are. Mind you, I'm not blaming you, uncle.
You're no doubt hard up like other people."

"But--but," Samuel began stammering again. "Why didn't you come straight
to me--instead of here?"

George put on a confidential look.

"The fact is," said he, "Mary wouldn't. She's vexed. You know how women
are. They never understand things--especially money."

"Vexed with me?"

"Yes."

"But why?" Again Samuel felt like a culprit.

"I fancy it must be something you said in your letter concerning
champagne."

"It was only what I read about you in a paper."

"I suppose so. But she thinks you meant it to insult her. She thinks you
must have known perfectly well that we simply asked the reporter to put
champagne in because it looks well--seems very flourishing, you know."

"I must see Mary," said Samuel. "Of course the idea of you staying on
here is perfectly ridiculous, perfectly ridiculous. What do you suppose
people will say?"

"I'd like you-to-see her," said George. "I wish you would. You may be
able to do what I can't. You'll find her in Room 14. She's all dressed.
But I warn you she's in a fine state."

"You'd better come too," said Samuel.

George lifted Georgie out of the perambulator.

"Here," said George. "Suppose you carry him to her."

Samuel hesitated, and yielded. And the strange procession started
upstairs.

In two hours a cab was taking all the Peels to Hillport.

In two days George and his family were returning to London, sure of the
continuance of five hundred a year, and with a gift of two hundred
supplementary cash.

But it was long before Bursley ceased to talk of George Peel and his
family putting up at the Tiger. And it was still longer before the
barmaid ceased to describe to her favourite customers the incredible
spectacle of Samuel Peel, J.P., stumbling up the stairs of the Tiger
with an infant in his arms.




THE REVOLVER


When friends observed his occasional limp, Alderman Keats would say,
with an air of false casualness, "Oh, a touch of the gout."

And after a year or two, the limp having increased in frequency and
become almost lameness, he would say, "My gout!"

He also acquired the use of the word "twinge." A scowl of torture would
pass across his face, and then he would murmur, "Twinge."

He was proud of having the gout, "the rich man's disease." Alderman
Keats had begun life in Hanbridge as a grocer's assistant, a very simple
person indeed. At forty-eight he was wealthy, and an alderman. It is
something to be alderman of a town of sixty thousand inhabitants. It was
at the age of forty-five that he had first consulted his doctor as to
certain capricious pains, which the doctor had diagnosed as gout. The
diagnosis had enchanted him, though he tried to hide his pleasure,
pretending to be angry and depressed. It seemed to Alderman Keats a mark
of distinction to be afflicted with the gout. Quite against the doctor's
orders he purchased a stock of port, and began to drink it steadily. He
was determined that there should be no mistake about his gout; he was
determined to have the gout properly and fully. Indulgence in port made
him somewhat rubicund and "portly,"--he who had once been a pale little
counter-jumper; and by means of shooting-coats, tight gaiters, and the
right shape of hat he turned himself into a passable imitation of the
fine old English gentleman. His tone altered, too, and instead of being
uniformly diplomatic, it varied abruptly between a sort of Cheeryble
philanthropy and a sort of Wellingtonian ferocity. During an attack of
gout he was terrible in the house, and the oaths that he "rapped out" in
the drawing-room could be heard in the kitchen and further. Nobody
minded, however, for everyone shared in the glory of his gout, and
cheerfully understood that a furious temper was inseparable from gout.
Alderman Keats succeeded once in being genuinely laid up with gout. He
then invited acquaintances to come and solace him in misfortune, and his
acquaintances discovered him with one swathed leg horizontal on a chair
in front of his arm-chair, and twinging and swearing like anything, in
the very manner of an eighteenth-century squire. And even in that plight
he would insist on a glass of port, "to cheat the doctor."

He had two boys, aged sixteen and twelve, and he would allow both of
them to drink wine in the evening, saying they must learn to "carry
their liquor like gentlemen." When the lad of twelve calmly ordered the
new parlour-maid to bring him the maraschino, Alderman Keats thought
that that was a great joke.

Quickly he developed into the acknowledged champion of all ancient
English characteristics, customs, prejudices and ideals.

It was this habit of mind that led to the revolver.

He saw the revolver _prominent_ in the window of Stetton's, the
pawnbroker in Crown Square, and the notion suddenly occurred to him that
a fine old English gentleman could not be considered complete without a
revolver. He bought the weapon, which Stetton guaranteed to be
first-rate and fatal, and which was, in fact, pretty good. It seemed to
the alderman bright, complex and heavy. He had imagined a revolver to be
smaller and lighter; but then he had never handled an instrument more
dangerous than a razor. He hesitated about going to his cousin's, Joe
Keats, the ironmonger; Joe Keats always laughed at him as if he were a
farce; Joe would not be ceremonious, and could not be corrected because
he was a relative and of equal age with the alderman. But he was obliged
to go to Joe Keats, as Joe made a speciality of cartridges. In
Hanbridge, people who wanted cartridges went as a matter of course to
Joe's. So Alderman Keats strolled with grand casualness into Joe's, and
said:

"I say, Joe, I want some cartridges."

"What for?" the thin Joe asked.

"A barker," the alderman replied, pleased with this word, and producing
the revolver.

"Well," said Joe, "you don't mean to say you're going about with that
thing in your pocket, you?"

"Why not?"

"Oh! No reason why not! But you ought to be preceded by a chap with a
red flag, you know, same as a steam-roller."

And the alderman, ignoring this, remarked with curt haughtiness:

"Every man ought to have a revolver."

Then he went to his tailor and had a right-hand hip-pocket put into all
his breeches.

Soon afterwards, walking down Slippery Lane, near the Big Pits,
notoriously a haunt of mischief, he had an encounter with a collier who
was drunk enough to be insulting and sober enough to be dangerous. In
relating the affair afterwards Alderman Keats said:

"Fortunately I had my revolver. And I soon whipped it out, I can tell
you."

"And are you really never without your revolver?" he was asked.

"Never!"

"And it's always loaded?"

"Always! What's the good of a revolver if it isn't loaded?"

Thus he became known as the man who never went out without a loaded
revolver in his pocket. The revolver indubitably impressed people; it
seemed to match the gout. People grew to understand that evil-doers had
better look out for themselves if they meant to disturb Alderman Keats,
with his gout, and his revolver all ready to be whipped out.

One day Brindley, the architect from Bursley, who knew more about music
than revolvers, called to advise the alderman concerning some projected
alterations to his stabling--alterations not necessitated by the
purchase of a motor-car, for motor-cars were not old English. And
somehow, while they were in the stable-yard, the revolver got into the
conversation, and Brindley said: "I should like to see you hit
something. You'll scarcely believe me, but I've never seen a revolver
fired--not with shot in it, I mean."

Alderman Keats smiled bluffly.

"I've been told it's difficult enough to hit even a door with a
revolver," said Brindley.

"You see that keyhole," said the alderman, startlingly, pointing to a
worn rusty keyhole in the middle of the vast double-doors of the
carriage-house.

Brindley admitted that he did see it.

The next moment there was an explosion, and the alderman glanced at the
smoking revolver, blew on it suspiciously, and put it back into his
celebrated hip-pocket.

Brindley, whom the explosion had intimidated, examined the double-doors,
and found no mark.

"Where did you hit?" he inquired.

"Through the keyhole," said the alderman, after a pause. He opened the
doors, and showed half a load of straw in the dusk behind them.

"The bullet's imbedded in there," said he.

"Well," said Brindley, "that's not so bad, that isn't."

"There aren't five men in the Five Towns who could do that," the
alderman said.

And as he said it he looked, with his legs spread apart, and his
short-tailed coat, and his general bluff sturdiness, almost as old
English as he could have desired to look. Except that his face had paled
somewhat. Mr Brindley thought that that transient pallor had been caused
by legitimate pride in high-class revolver-shooting. But he was wrong.
It had been caused by simple fear. The facts of the matter were that
Alderman Keats had never before dared to fire the revolver, and that the
infernal noise and the jar on his hand (which had held the weapon too
loosely) had given him what is known in the Five Towns as a fearful
start. He had offered to shoot on the spur of the moment, without due
reflection, and he had fired as a woman might have fired. It was a piece
of the most heavenly good fortune that he had put the bullet through the
keyhole. Indeed, at first he was inclined to believe that marksmanship
must be less difficult than it was reported to be, for his aim had been
entirely casual. In saying to Brindley, "You see that keyhole," he had
merely been boasting in a jocular style. However, when Brindley left,
Brindley carried with him the alderman's reputation as a perfect Wild
West shot.

The alderman had it in mind to practise revolver-shooting seriously,
until the Keats coachman made a discovery later in the day. The coachman
slept over the carriage-house, and on going up the ladder to put on his
celluloid collar he perceived a hole in his ceiling and some plaster on
his bit of carpet. The window had been open all day. The alderman had
not only failed to get the keyhole, he had not only failed to get the
double-doors, he had failed to hit any part whatever of the ground
floor!

And this unsettled the alderman. This proved to the alderman that the
active use of a revolver incurred serious perils. It proved to him that
nearly anything might happen with a revolver. He might aim at a
lamp-post and hit the town hall clock; he might mark down a burglar and
destroy the wife of his affections. There were no limits to what could
occur. And so he resolved never to shoot any more. He would still carry
the revolver; but for his old English gentlemanliness he would rely less
on that than on the gout.

But the whole town (by which I mean the councillors and the leading
manufacturers and tradesmen and their sons) had now an interest in the
revolver, for Brindley, the architect, had spoken of that which he had
seen with his own eyes. Some people accepted the alderman without demur
as a great and terrible shot; but others talked about a fluke; and a
very small minority mentioned that there was such a thing as blank
cartridge. It was the monstrous slander of this minority that induced
the alderman to stand up morally for his revolver and to continue
talking about it. He suppressed the truth about the damaged ceiling; he
deliberately allowed the public to go on believing, with Brindley, that
he had aimed at the keyhole and really gone through it, and his
conscience was not at all disturbed. But that wicked traducers should
hint that he had been using blank cartridge made him furiously
indignant, and also exacerbated his gout. And he called on his cousin
Joe to prove that he had never spent a penny on blank cartridge.

It was a pity that he dragged the sardonic Joe back into the affair. Joe
observed to him that for a man in regular revolver practice he was
buying precious few cartridges; and so he had to lay in a stock. Now he
dared not employ these cartridges; and yet he wished to make a noise
with his revolver in order to convince the neighbourhood that he was in
steady practice. Nor dare he buy blank cartridges from Joe. It was not
safe to buy blank cartridges anywhere in the Five Towns, so easily does
news travel there, and so easily are reputations blown. Hence it
happened that Alderman Keats went as far as Crewe specially to buy blank
cartridge, and he drowned the ball cartridge secretly in the Birches
Pond. To such lengths may a timid man be driven in order to preserve and
foster the renown of being a dog of the old sort. All kinds of persons
used to hear the barking of the alderman's revolver in his stable-yard,
and the cumulative effect of these noises wore down calumny and
incredulity. And, of course, having once begun to practise, the alderman
could not decently cease. The absurd situation endured. And a coral reef
of ball cartridges might have appeared on the surface of Birches Pond
had it not been for the visit (at enormous expense) of Hagentodt's ten
tigers to the Hanbridge Empire.

This visit, epoch-making in the history of music-hall enterprise in the
Five Towns, coincided with the annual venison feast of a society known
as Ye Ancient Corporation of Hanbridge, which society had no connection
whatever with the real rate-levying corporation, but was a piece of
elaborate machinery for dinner-eating. Alderman Keats, naturally, was
prominent in the affair of the venison feast. Nobody was better fitted
than he to be in the chair at such a solemnity, and in the chair he was,
and therein did wonderful things. In putting the loyal toasts he spoke
for half an hour concerning the King's diplomacy, with a reference to
royal gout; which was at least unusual. And then, when the feast was far
advanced, he uprose, ignoring the toast list, and called upon the
assembled company to drink to Old England and Old Port for ever, and a
fig for gout! And after this, amid a genial informality, the
conversation of a knot of cronies at the Chair end of the table deviated
to the noble art of self-defence, and so to revolvers. And the alderman,
jolly but still aldermanic, produced his revolver, proving that it went
even with his dress-suit.

"Look here," said one. "Is it loaded?"

"Of course," said the alderman.

"Ball cartridge?"

"Of course," said the alderman.

"Well, would you mind putting it back in your pocket--with all this wine
and whisky about--"

The alderman complied, proud.

He was limping goutily home with the Vice, at something after midnight,
when, as they passed the stage-door of the Empire, both men were aware
of fearsome sounds within the building. And the stage-door was ajar.
Being personages of great importance, they entered into the interior
gloom and collided with the watchman, who was rushing out.

"Is that you, Alderman Keats?" exclaimed the watchman. "Thank Heaven!"

The alderman then learnt that two of Hagentodt's Bengal tigers were
having an altercation about a lady, and that it looked like a duel to
the death. (Yet one would have supposed that after two performances, at
eight-thirty and ten-thirty respectively, those tigers would have been
too tired and bored to quarrel about anything whatever.) The watchman
had already fetched Hagentodt from his hotel, but Hagentodt's revolver
was missing--could not be found anywhere, and the rivals were in such a
state of fury that even the unique Hagentodt would not enter their cage
without a revolver. Meanwhile invaluable tigers were being mutually
destructive, and the watchman was just off to the police-station to
borrow a revolver.

The roaring grew terrific.

"Have you got your revolver, Alderman Keats?" asked the watchman.

"No," said the alderman, "I haven't."

"Oh!" said the Vice. "I thought I saw you showing it to your cousin and
some others."

At the same moment Joe and some others, equally attracted by the
roaring, strolled in.

The alderman hesitated.

"Yes, of course; I was forgetting."

"If you'll lend it to the professor a minute or so?" said the watchman.

The alderman pulled it out of his pocket, and hesitatingly handed it to
the watchman, and the watchman was turning hurriedly away with it when
the alderman said nervously:

"I'm not sure if it's loaded."

"Well, you're a nice chap!" Joe Keats put in.

"I forget," muttered the alderman.

"We'll soon see," said the watchman, who was accustomed to revolvers.
And he opened it. "Yes," glancing into it, "it's loaded right enough."

And turned away again towards the sound of the awful roaring.

"I say," the alderman cried, "I'm afraid it's only blank cartridge."

He might have saved his reputation by allowing the unique Hagentodt to
risk his life with a useless revolver. But he had a conscience. A clear
conscience was his sole compensation as he faced the sardonic laughter
which Joe led and which finished off his reputation as a dog of the old
sort. The annoying thing was that his noble self-sacrifice was useless,
for immediately afterwards the roaring ceased, Hagentodt having
separated the combatants by means of a burning newspaper at the end of a
stick. And the curious thing was that Alderman Keats never again
mentioned his gout.




AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE

I


James Peake and his wife, and Enoch Lovatt, his wife's half-sister's
husband, and Randolph Sneyd, the architect, were just finishing the
usual Saturday night game of solo whist in the drawing-room of Peake's
large new residence at Hillport, that unique suburb of Bursley. Ella
Peake, twenty-year-old daughter of the house, sat reading in an
arm-chair by the fire which blazed in the patent radiating grate. Peake
himself was banker, and he paid out silver and coppers at the rate of
sixpence a dozen for the brass counters handed to him by his wife and
Randolph Sneyd.

"I've made summat on you to-night, Lovatt," said Peake, with his broad
easy laugh, as he reckoned up Lovatt's counters. Enoch Lovatt's
principles and the prominence of his position at the Bursley Wesleyan
Chapel, though they did not prevent him from playing cards at his
sister-in-law's house, absolutely forbade that he should play for money,
and so it was always understood that the banker of the party should be
his financier, supplying him with counters and taking the chances of
gain or loss. By this kindly and ingenious arrangement Enoch Lovatt was
enabled to live at peace with his conscience while gratifying that
instinct for worldliness which the weekly visit to Peake's always
aroused from its seven-day slumber into a brief activity.

"Six shillings on my own; five and fourpence on you," said Peake.
"Lovatt, we've had a good night; no mistake." He laughed again, took
out his knife, and cut a fresh cigar.

"You don't think of your poor wife," said Mrs Peake, "who's lost over
three shillings," and she nudged Randolph Sneyd.

"Here, Nan," Peake answered quickly. "You shall have the lot." He
dropped the eleven and fourpence into the kitty-shell, and pushed it
across the table to her.

"Thank you, James," said Mrs Peake. "Ella, your father's given me eleven
and fourpence."

"Oh, father!" The long girl by the fire jumped up, suddenly alert. "Do
give me half-a-crown. You've no conception how hard up I am."

"You're a grasping little vixen, that's what you are. Come and give me a
light." He gazed affectionately at her smiling flushed face and tangled
hair.

When she had lighted his cigar, Ella furtively introduced her thin
fingers into his waistcoat-pocket, where he usually kept a reserve of
money against a possible failure of his trouser-pockets.

"May I?" she questioned, drawing out a coin. It was a four-shilling
piece.

"No. Get away."

"I'll give you change."

"Oh! take it," he yielded, "and begone with ye, and ring for something
to drink."

"You are a duck, pa!" she said, kissing him. The other two men smiled.

"Let's have a tune now, Ella," said Peake, after she had rung the bell.
The girl dutifully sat down to the piano and sang "The Children's Home."
It was a song which always touched her father's heart.

Peake was in one of those moods at once gay and serene which are
possible only to successful middle-aged men who have consistently worked
hard without permitting the faculty for pleasure to deteriorate through
disuse. He was devoted to his colliery, and his commercial acuteness
was scarcely surpassed in the Five Towns, but he had always found time
to amuse himself; and at fifty-two, with a clear eye and a perfect
digestion, his appreciation of good food, good wine, a good cigar, a
fine horse, and a pretty woman was unimpaired. On this night his
happiness was special; he had returned in the afternoon from a week's
visit to London, and he was glad to get back again. He loved his wife
and adored his daughter, in his own way, and he enjoyed the feminized
domestic atmosphere of his fine new house with exactly the same zest as,
on another evening, he might have enjoyed the blue haze of the
billiard-room at the Conservative Club. The interior of the drawing-room
realized very well Peake's ideals. It was large, with two magnificent
windows, practicably comfortable, and unpretentious. Peake despised, or
rather he ignored, the aesthetic crazes which had run through
fashionable Hillport like an infectious fever, ruthlessly decimating its
turned and twisted mahogany and its floriferous carpets and wall-papers.
That the soft thick pile under his feet would wear for twenty years, and
that the Welsbach incandescent mantles on the chandelier saved thirty
per cent, in gas-bills while increasing the light by fifty per cent.: it
was these and similar facts which were uppermost in his mind as he gazed
round that room, in which every object spoke of solid, unassuming luxury
and represented the best value to be obtained for money spent. He
desired, of a Saturday night, nothing better than such a room, a couple
of packs of cards, and the presence of wife and child and his two
life-long friends, Sneyd and Lovatt--safe men both. After cards were
over--and on Lovatt's account play ceased at ten o'clock--they would
discuss Bursley and Bursley folk with a shrewd sagacity and an intimate
and complete knowledge of circumstance not to be found in combination
anywhere outside a small industrial town. To listen to Sneyd and Mrs
Peake, when each sought to distance the other in tracing a genealogy,
was to learn the history of a whole community and the secret springs of
the actions which constituted its evolution.

"Haven't you any news for me?" asked Peake, during a pause in the talk.
At the same moment the door opened and Mrs Lovatt entered. "Eh, Auntie
Lovatt," he went on, greeting her, "we'd given ye up." Mrs Lovatt
usually visited the Peakes on Saturday evenings, but she came later than
her husband.

"Eh, but I was bound to come and see you to-night, Uncle Peake, after
your visit to the great city. Well, you're looking bonny." She shook
hands with him warmly, her face beaming goodwill, and then she kissed
her half-sister and Ella, and told Sneyd that she had seen him that
morning in the market-place.

Mrs Peake and Mrs Lovatt differed remarkably in character and
appearance, though this did not prevent them from being passionately
attached to one another. Mrs Lovatt was small, and rather plain; content
to be her husband's wife, she had no activities beyond her own home. Mrs
Peake was tall, and strikingly handsome in spite of her fifty years,
with a brilliant complexion and hair still raven black; her energy was
exhaustless, and her spirit indomitable; she was the moving force of the
Wesleyan Sunday School, and there was not a man in England who could
have driven her against her will. She had a fortune of her own. Enoch
Lovatt treated her with the respect due to an equal who had more than
once proved herself capable of insisting on independence and equal
rights in the most pugnacious manner.

"Well, auntie," said Peake, "I've won eleven and fourpence to-night, and
my wife's collared it all from me." He laughed with glee.

"Eh, you should be ashamed!" said Mrs Lovatt, embracing the company in a
glance of reproof which rested last on Enoch Lovatt. She was a
Methodist of the strictest, and her husband happened to be chapel
steward. "If I had my way with those cards I'd soon play with them; I'd
play with them at the back of the fire. Now you were asking for news
when I came in, Uncle Peake. Have they told you about the new organ?
We're quite full of it at our house."

"No," said Peake, "they haven't."

"What!" she cried reproachfully. "You haven't told him, Enoch--nor you,
Nan?"

"Upon my word it never entered my head," said Mrs Peake.

"Well, Uncle Peake," Mrs Lovatt began, "we're going to have a new organ
for the Conference."

"Not before it's wanted," said Peake. "I do like a bit of good music at
service, and Best himself couldn't make anything of that old wheezer
we've got now."

"Is that the reason we see you so seldom at chapel?" Mrs Lovatt asked
tartly.

"I was there last Sunday morning."

"And before that, Uncle Peake?" She smiled sweetly on him.

Peake was one of the worldlings who, in a religious sense, existed
precariously on the fringe of the Methodist Society. He rented a pew,
and he was never remiss in despatching his wife and daughter to occupy
it. He imagined that his belief in the faith of his fathers was
unshaken, but any reference to souls and salvation made him exceedingly
restless and uncomfortable. He could not conceive himself crowned and
harping in Paradise, and yet he vaguely surmised that in the last result
he would arrive at that place and state, wafted thither by the prayers
of his womenkind. Logical in all else, he was utterly illogical in his
attitude towards the spiritual--an attitude which amounted to this: "Let
a sleeping dog lie, but the animal isn't asleep and means mischief."

He smiled meditatively at Mrs Lovatt's question, and turned it aside
with another.

"What about this organ?"

"It's going to cost nine hundred pounds," continued Mrs Lovatt, "and
Titus Blackhurst has arranged it all. It was built for a hall in
Birmingham, but the manufacturers have somehow got it on their hands.
Young Titus the organist has been over to see it, and he says it's a
bargain. The affair was all arranged as quick as you please at the
Trustees' meeting last Monday. Titus Blackhurst said he would give a
hundred pounds if eight others would do the same within a fortnight--it
must be settled at once. As Enoch said to me afterwards, it seemed, as
soon as Mr Blackhurst had made his speech, that we _must_ have that
organ. We really couldn't forshame to show up with the old one again at
_this_ Conference--don't you remember the funny speech the President
made about it at the last Conference, eleven years ago? Of course he was
very polite and nice with his sarcasm, but I'm sure he meant us to take
the hint. Now, would you believe, seven out of those eight subscriptions
were promised by Wednesday morning! I think that was just splendid!"

"Well, well!" exclaimed Peake, genuinely amazed at this proof of
religious vitality. "Who are the subscribers?"

"I'm one," said Enoch Lovatt, quietly, but with unconcealed pride.

"And I'm another," said Mrs Lovatt. "Bless you, I should have been
ashamed of myself if I hadn't responded to such an appeal. You may say
what you like about Titus Blackhurst--I know there's a good many that
don't like him--but he's a real good sort. I'm sure he's the best Sunday
School superintendent we ever had. Then there's Mr Clayton-Vernon, and
Alderman Sutton, and young Henry Mynors and--"

"And Eardley Brothers--they're giving a hundred apiece," put in Lovatt,
glancing at Randolph Sneyd.

"I wish they'd pay their debts first," said Peake, with sudden
savageness.

"They're all right, I suppose?" said Sneyd, interested, and leaning over
towards Peake.

"Oh, they're all _right_," Peake said testily. "At least, I hope so,"
and he gave a short, grim laugh. "But they're uncommon slow payers. I
sent 'em in an account for coal only last week--three hundred and fifty
pound. Well, auntie, who's the ninth subscriber?"

"Ah, that's the point," said Enoch Lovatt. "The ninth isn't
forthcoming."

Mrs Lovatt looked straight at her sister's husband. "We want you to be
the ninth," she said.

"Me!" He laughed heartily, perceiving a broad humour in the suggestion.

"Oh, but I mean it," Mrs Lovatt insisted earnestly. "Your name was
mentioned at the trustees' meeting, wasn't it, Enoch?"

"Yes," said Lovatt, "it was."

"And dost mean to say as they thought as I 'ud give 'em a hundred pound
towards th' new organ?" said Peake, dropping into dialect.

"Why not?" returned Mrs Lovatt, her spirit roused. "I shall. Enoch will.
Why not you?"

"Oh, you're different. You're _in_ it."

"You can't deny that you're one of the richest pew-holders in the
chapel. What's a hundred pound to you? Nothing, is it, Mr Sneyd? When Mr
Copinger, our superintendent minister, mentioned it to me yesterday, I
told him I was sure you would consent."

"You did?"

"I did," she said boldly.

"Well, I shanna'."

Like many warm-hearted, impulsive and generous men, James Peake did not
care that his generosity should be too positively assumed. To take it
for granted was the surest way of extinguishing it. The pity was that
Mrs Lovatt, in the haste of her zeal for the amelioration of divine
worship at Bursley Chapel, had overlooked this fact. Peake's manner was
final. His wife threw a swift glance at Ella, who stood behind her
father's chair, and received a message back that she too had discerned
finality in the tone.

Sneyd got up, and walking slowly to the fireplace emitted the casual
remark: "Yes, you will, Peake."

He was a man of considerable education, and though in neither force nor
astuteness was he the equal of James Peake, it often pleased him to
adopt towards his friend a philosophic pose--the pose of a seer, of one
far removed from the trivial disputes in which the colliery-owner was
frequently concerned.

"Yes, you will, Peake," he repeated.

"I shanna', Sneyd."

"I can read you like a book, Peake." This was a favourite phrase of
Sneyd's, which Peake never heard without a faint secret annoyance. "At
the bottom of your mind you mean to give that hundred. It's your duty to
do so, and you will. You'll let them persuade you."

"I'll bet thee a shilling I don't."

"Done!"

"Ssh!" murmured Mrs Lovatt, "I'm ashamed of both of you, betting on such
a subject--or on any subject," she added. "And Ella here too!"

"It's a bet, Sneyd," said Peake, doggedly, and then turned to Lovatt.
"What do you say about this, Enoch?"

But Enoch Lovatt, self-trained to find safety in the middle, kept that
neutral and diplomatic silence which invariably marked his demeanour in
the presence of an argument.

"Now, Nan, you'll talk to James," said Mrs Lovatt, when they all stood
at the front-door bidding good-night.

"Nay, I've nothing to do with it," Mrs Peake replied, as quickly as at
dinner she might have set down a very hot plate. In some women profound
affection exists side by side with a nervous dread lest that affection
should seem to possess the least influence over its object.




II


Peake dismissed from his mind as grotesque the suggestion that he should
contribute a hundred pounds to the organ fund; it revolted his sense of
the fitness of things; the next morning he had entirely forgotten it.
But two days afterwards, when he was finishing his midday dinner with a
piece of Cheshire cheese, his wife said:

"James, have you thought anything more about that organ affair?" She
gave a timid little laugh.

He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, holding a morsel of cheese
on the end of his knife; then he ate the cheese in silence.

"Nan," he said at length, rather deliberately, "have they been trying to
come round you? Because it won't work. Upon my soul I don't know what
some people are dreaming of. I tell you I never was more surprised i' my
life than when your sister made that suggestion. I'll give 'em a guinea
towards their blooming organ if that's any use to 'em. Ella, go and see
if the horse is ready."

"Yes, father."

He felt genuinely aggrieved.

"If they'd get a new organist," he remarked, with ferocious satire, five
minutes later, as he lit a cigar, "and a new choir--I could see summat
in that."

In another minute he was driving at a fine pace towards his colliery at
Toft End. The horse, with swift instinct, had understood that to-day its
master was not in the mood for badinage.

Half-way down the hill into Shawport he overtook a lady walking very
slowly.

"Mrs Sutton!" he shouted in astonishment, and when he had finished with
the tense frown which involuntarily accompanied the effort of stopping
the horse dead within its own length, his face softened into a beautiful
smile. "How's this?" he questioned.

"Our mare's gone lame," Mrs Sutton answered, "and as I'm bound to get
about I'm bound to walk."

He descended instantly from the dogcart. "Climb up," he said, "and tell
me where you want to go to."

"Nay, nay."

"Climb up," he repeated, and he helped her into the dogcart.

"Well," she said, laughing, "what must be, must. I was trudging home,
and I hope it isn't out of your way."

"It isn't," he said; "I'm for Toft End, and I should have driven up
Trafalgar Road anyhow."

Mrs Sutton was one of James Peake's ideals. He worshipped this small
frail woman of fifty-five, whose soft eyes were the mirror of as candid
a soul as was ever prisoned in Staffordshire clay. More than forty years
ago he had gone to school with her, and the remembrance of having kissed
the pale girl when she was crying over a broken slate was still vivid in
his mind. For nearly half a century she had remained to him exactly that
same ethereal girl. The sole thing about her that puzzled him was that
she should have found anything attractive in the man whom she allowed to
marry her--Alderman Sutton. In all else he regarded her as an angel.
And to many another, besides James Peake, it seemed that Sarah Sutton
wore robes of light. She was a creature born to be the succour of
misery, the balm of distress. She would have soothed the two thieves on
Calvary. Led on by the bounteous instinct of a divine, all-embracing
sympathy, the intrepid spirit within her continually forced its fragile
physical mechanism into an activity which appeared almost supernatural.
According to every rule of medicine she should have been dead long
since; but she lived--by volition. It was to the credit of Bursley that
the whole town recognized in Sarah Sutton the treasure it held.

"I wanted to see you," Mrs Sutton said, after they had exchanged various
inquiries.

"What about?"

"Mrs Lovatt was telling me yesterday you hadn't made up your mind about
that organ subscription." They were ascending the steepest part of
Oldcastle Street, and Peake lowered the reins and let the horse into a
walk.

"Now look here, Mrs Sutton," he began, with passionate frankness, "I can
talk to you. You know me; you know I'm not one of their set, as it were.
Of course I've got a pew and all that; but you know as well as I do that
I don't belong to the chapel lot. Why should they ask me? Why should
they come to me? Why should I give all that sum?"

"Why?" she repeated the word, smiling. "You're a generous man; you've
felt the pleasure of giving. I always think of you as one of the most
generous men in the town. I'm sure you've often realized what a really
splendid thing it is to be able to give. D'you know, it comes over me
sometimes like a perfect shock that if I couldn't give--something,
do--something, I shouldn't be able to live; I would be obliged to go to
bed and die right off."

"Ah!" he murmured, and then paused. "We aren't all like you, Mrs
Sutton. I wish to God we were. But seriously, I'm not for giving that
hundred; it's against my grain, and that's flat--you'll excuse me
speaking plain."

"I like it," she said quickly. "Then I know where I am."

"No," he reiterated firmly, "I'm not for giving that hundred."

"Then I'm bound to say I'm sorry," she returned kindly. "The whole
scheme will be ruined, for it's one of those schemes that can only be
carried out in a particular way--if they aren't done on the inspiration
of the moment they're not done at all. Not that I care so much for the
organ itself. It's the idea that was so grand. Fancy--nine hundred
pounds all in a minute; such a thing was never known in Bursley Chapel
before!"

"Well," said Peake, "I guess when it comes to the pinch they'll find
someone else instead of me."

"They won't; there isn't another man who could afford it and trade so
bad."

Peake was silent; but he was inflexible. Not even Mrs Sutton could make
the suggestion of this subscription seem other than grossly unfair to
him, an imposition on his good-nature.

"Think it over," she said abruptly, after he had assisted her to alight
at the top of Trafalgar Road. "Think it over, to oblige me."

"I'd do anything to oblige you," he replied. "But I'll tell you
this"--he put his mouth to her ear and whispered, half-smiling at the
confession. "You call me a generous man, but whenever that organ's
mentioned I feel just like a miser--yes, as hard as a miser. Good-bye!
I'm very glad to have had the pleasure of driving you up." He beamed on
her as the horse shot forward.




III


This was on Tuesday. During the next few days Peake went through a novel
and very disturbing experience. He gradually became conscious of the
power of that mysterious and all-but-irresistible moral force which is
called public opinion. His own public of friends and acquaintances
connected with the chapel seemed to be, for some inexplicable reason,
against him on the question of the organ subscription. They visited him,
even to the Rev. Mr Copinger (whom he heartily admired as having
"nothing of the parson" about him), and argued quietly, rather severely,
and then left him with the assurance that they relied on his sense of
what was proper. He was amazed and secretly indignant at this combined
attack. He thought it cowardly, unscrupulous; it resembled brigandage.
He felt most acutely that no one had any right to demand from him that
hundred pounds, and that they who did so transgressed one of those
unwritten laws which govern social intercourse. Yet these transgressors
were his friends, people who had earned his respect in years long past
and kept it through all the intricate situations arising out of daily
contact. They could defy him to withdraw his respect now; and, without
knowing it, they did. He was left brooding, pained, bewildered. The
explanation was simply this: he had failed to perceive that the
grandiose idea of the ninefold organ fund had seized, fired, and
obsessed the imaginations of the Wesleyan community, and that under the
unwonted poetic stimulus they were capable of acting quite differently
from their ordinary selves.

Peake was perplexed, he felt that he was weakening; but, being a man of
resourceful obstinacy, he was by no means defeated. On Friday morning he
told his wife that he should go to see a customer at Blackpool about a
contract, and probably remain at the seaside for the week-end.
Accustomed to these sudden movements, she packed his bag without
questioning, and he set off for Knype station in the dogcart. Once
behind the horse he felt safe, he could breathe again. The customer at
Blackpool was merely an excuse to enable him to escape from the circle
of undue influence. Ardently desiring to be in the train and on the
other side of Crewe, he pulled up at his little order-office in the
market-place to give some instructions. As he did so his clerk, Vodrey,
came rushing out and saw him.

"I have just telephoned to your house, sir," the clerk said excitedly.
"They told me you were driving to Knype and so I was coming after you in
a cab."

"Why, what's up now?"

"Eardley Brothers have called their creditors together."

"_What_?"

"I've just had a circular-letter from them, sir."

Peake stared at Vodrey, and then took two steps forward, stamping his
feet.

"The devil!" he exclaimed, with passionate ferocity. "The devil!"

Other men of business, besides James Peake, made similar exclamations
that morning; for the collapse of Eardley Brothers, the great
earthenware manufacturers, who were chiefly responsible for the ruinous
cutting of prices in the American and Colonial markets, was no ordinary
trade fiasco. Bursley was staggered, especially when it learnt that the
Bank, the inaccessible and autocratic Bank, was an unsecured creditor
for twelve thousand pounds.

Peake abandoned the Blackpool customer and drove off to consult his
lawyer at Hanbridge; he stood to lose three hundred and fifty pounds, a
matter sufficiently disconcerting. Yet, in another part of his mind, he
felt strangely serene and happy, for he was sure now of winning his bet
of one shilling with Randolph Sneyd. In the first place, the failure of
Eardleys would annihilate the organ scheme, and in the second place no
one would have the audacity to ask him for a subscription of a hundred
pounds when it was known that he would be a heavy sufferer in the
Eardley bankruptcy.

Later in the day he happened to meet one of the Eardleys, and at once
launched into a stream of that hot invective of which he was a master.
And all the while he was conscious of a certain hypocrisy in his
attitude of violence; he could not dismiss the notion that the Eardleys
had put him under an obligation by failing precisely at this juncture.


IV


On the Saturday evening only Sneyd and Mrs Lovatt came up to Hillport,
Enoch Lovatt being away from home. Therefore there were no cards; they
talked of the Eardley affair.

"You'll have to manage with the old organ now," was one of the first
things that Peake said to Mrs Lovatt, after he had recited his own woe.
He smiled grimly as he said it.

"I don't see why," Sneyd remarked. It was not true; he saw perfectly;
but he enjoyed the rousing of Jim Peake into a warm altercation.

"Not at all," said Mrs Lovatt, proudly. "We shall have the organ, I'm
sure. There was an urgency committee meeting last night. Titus
Blackhurst has most generously given another hundred; he said it would
be a shame if the bankruptcy of professed Methodists was allowed to
prejudice the interests of the chapel. And the organ-makers have taken
fifty pounds off their price. Now, who do you think has given another
fifty? Mr Copinger! He stood up last night, Mr Blackhurst told me this
morning, and he said, 'Friends, I've only seventy pounds in the world,
but I'll give fifty pounds towards this organ.' There! What do you think
of that? Isn't he a grand fellow?"

"He is a grand fellow," said Peake, with emphasis, reflecting that the
total income of the minister could not exceed three hundred a year.

"So you see you'll _have_ to give your hundred," Mrs Lovatt continued.
"You can't do otherwise after that."

There was a pause.

"I won't give it," said Peake. "I've said I won't, and I won't."

He could think of no argument. To repeat that Eardley's bankruptcy would
cost him dear seemed trivial. Nevertheless, the absence of any plausible
argument served only to steel his resolution.

At that moment the servant opened the door.

"Mr Titus Blackhurst, senior, to see you, sir."

Peake and his wife looked at one another in amazement, and Sneyd laughed
quietly.

"He told me he should come up," Mrs Lovatt explained.

"Show him into the breakfast-room, Clara," said Mrs Peake to the
servant.

Peake frowned angrily as he crossed the hall, but as he opened the
breakfast-room door he contrived to straighten out his face into a
semblance of urbanity. Though he could have enjoyed accelerating the
passage of his visitor into the street, there were excellent commercial
reasons why he should adopt a less strenuous means towards the end which
he had determined to gain.

"Glad to see you, Mr Blackhurst," he began, a little awkwardly.

"You know, I suppose, what I've come for, Mr Peake," said the old man,
in that rich, deep, oily voice of which Mrs Lovatt, in one of those
graphic phrases that came to her sometimes, had once remarked that it
must have been "well basted in the cooking."

"I suppose I do," Peake answered diffidently.

Mr Blackhurst took off a wrinkled black glove, stroked his grey beard,
and started on a long account of the inception and progress of the organ
scheme. Peake listened and was drawn into an admission that it was a
good scheme and deserved to succeed. Mr Blackhurst then went on to make
plain that it was in danger of utterly collapsing, that only one man of
"our Methodist friends" could save it, and that both Mrs Sutton and Mrs
Lovatt had advised him to come and make a personal appeal to that man.

Peake knew of old, and in other affairs, the wily diplomatic skill of
this Sunday School superintendent, and when Mr Blackhurst paused he
collected himself for an effort which should conclude the episode at a
stroke.

"The fact is," he said, "I've decided that I can't help you. It's no
good beating about the bush, and so I tell you this at once. Mind you,
Mr Blackhurst, if there's anyone in Bursley that I should have liked to
oblige, it's you. We've had business dealings, you and me, for many
years now, and I fancy we know one another. I've the highest respect for
you, and if you'll excuse me saying so, I think you've some respect for
me. My rule is always to be candid. I say what I mean and I mean what I
say; and so, as I've quite made up my mind, I let you know straight off.
I can't do it. I simply _can't_ do it."

"Of course if you put it that way, if you _can't_--"

"I do put it that way, Mr Blackhurst," Peake continued quickly, warming
himself into eloquence as he perceived the most effective line to
pursue. "I admire your open-handedness. It's an example to us all. I
wish I could imitate it. But I mustn't. I'm not one o' them as rushes
out and promises a hundred pound before they've looked at their profit
and loss account. Eardleys, for example. By the way, I'm pleased to hear
from Sneyd that you aren't let in there. I'm one of the flats. Three
hundred and fifty pound--that's my bit; I'm told they won't pay six
shillings in the pound. Isn't that a warning? What right had they to go
offering their hundred pound apiece to your organ fund?"

"It was very wrong," said Mr Blackhurst, severely, "and what's more, it
brings discredit on the Methodist society."

"True!" agreed Peake, and then, leaning over confidentially, he spoke in
a different voice: "If you ask me, I don't mind saying that I think that
magnificent subscription o' theirs was a deliberate and fraudulent
attempt to inspire pressing creditors with fresh confidence. That's what
I think. I call it monstrous."

Mr Blackhurst nodded slowly, as though meditating upon profound truths
ably expressed.

"Well," Peake resumed, "I'm not one of that sort. If I can afford to
give, I give; but not otherwise. How do I know how I stand? I needn't
tell you, Mr Blackhurst, that trade in this district is in a very queer
state--a very queer state indeed. Outside yourself, and Lovatt, and one
or two more, is there a single manufacturer in Bursley that knows how he
stands? Is there one of them that knows whether he's making money or
losing it? Look at prices; can they go lower? And secret discounts; can
they go higher? And all this affects the colliery-owners. I shouldn't
like to tell you the total of my book-debts; I don't even care to think
of it. And suppose there's a colliers' strike--as there's bound to be
sooner or later--where shall we be then?"

Mr Blackhurst nodded once more, while Peake, intoxicated by his own
rhetoric, began actually to imagine that his commercial condition was
indeed perilous.

"I've had several very severe losses lately," he went on. "You know I
was in that newspaper company; that was a heavy drain; I've done with
newspapers for ever more. I was a fool, but calling myself a fool won't
bring back what I've lost. It's got to be faced. Then there's that new
shaft I sunk last year. What with floodings, and flaws in the seam, that
shaft alone is running me into a loss of six pound a week at this very
moment, and has been for weeks."

"Dear me!" exclaimed Mr Blackhurst, sympathetically.

"Yes! Six pound a week! And that isn't all"--he had entirely forgotten
the immediate object of Mr Blackhurst's visit--"that isn't all. I've got
a big lawsuit coming on with the railway company. Goodness knows how
that will end! If I lose it ... well!"

"Mr Peake," said the old man, with quiet firmness, "if things are as bad
as you say we will have a word of prayer."

He knelt down and forthwith commenced to intercede with God on behalf of
this luckless colliery-owner, his business, his family, his soul.

Peake jumped like a shot rabbit, reddening to the neck with
stupefaction, excruciating sheepishness and annoyance. Never in the
whole course of his life had he been caught in such an ineffable
predicament. He strode to and fro in futile speechless rage and shame.
The situation was intolerable. He felt that at no matter what cost he
must get Titus Blackhurst up from his knees. He approached him, meaning
to put a hand on his shoulder, but dared not do so. Inarticulate sounds
escaped from his throat, and then at last he burst out:

"Stop that, stop that! I canna stand it. Here, I'll give ye a cheque
for a hundred. I'll write it now."

When Mr Blackhurst had departed he rang for a brandy-and-soda, and then,
after an interval, returned to the drawing-room.

"Sneyd," he said, trying to laugh, "here's your shilling. I've lost."

"There!" exclaimed Mrs Lovatt. "Didn't I say that Mr Copinger's example
would do it? Eh, James! Bless you!"