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Title: The Grim Smile of the Five Towns

Author: Arnold Bennett

Release Date: December, 2003 [Etext #4734]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on March 10, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG ETEXT THE GRIM SMILE OF THE FIVE ***




Produced by Charles Franks 
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.




THE GRIM SMILE OF THE FIVE TOWNS

ARNOLD BENNETT




     To my old and constant friend
             JOSEPH DAWSON
      a student profoundly versed
        in the human nature of
            the Five Towns




CONTENTS

The Lion's Share
Baby's Bath
The Silent Brothers
The Nineteenth Hat
Vera's First Christmas Adventure
The Murder of the Mandarin
Vera's Second Christmas Adventure
The Burglary
News of the Engagement
Beginning the New Year
From One Generation to Another
The Death of Simon Fuge
In a New Bottle




THE LION'S SHARE

I


In the Five Towns the following history is related by those who
know it as something side-splittingly funny--as one of the best
jokes that ever occurred in a district devoted to jokes. And I,
too, have hitherto regarded it as such. But upon my soul, now that
I come to write it down, it strikes me as being, after all, a
pretty grim tragedy. However, you shall judge, and laugh or cry as
you please.

It began in the little house of Mrs Carpole, up at Bleakridge, on
the hill between Bursley and Hanbridge. Mrs Carpole was the second
Mrs Carpole, and her husband was dead. She had a stepson, Horace,
and a son of her own, Sidney. Horace is the hero, or the villain,
of the history. On the day when the unfortunate affair began he
was nineteen years old, and a model youth. Not only was he getting
on in business, not only did he give half his evenings to the
study of the chemistry of pottery and the other half to various
secretaryships in connection with the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel
and Sunday-school, not only did he save money, not only was he a
comfort to his stepmother and a sort of uncle to Sidney, not only
was he an early riser, a total abstainer, a non-smoker, and a good
listener; but, in addition to the practice of these manifold and
rare virtues, he found time, even at that tender age, to pay his
tailor's bill promptly and to fold his trousers in the same crease
every night--so that he always looked neat and dignified. Strange
to say, he made no friends. Perhaps he was just a thought too
perfect for a district like the Five Towns; a sin or so might have
endeared him to the entire neighbourhood. Perhaps his loneliness
was due to his imperfect sense of humour, or perhaps to the dull,
unsmiling heaviness of his somewhat flat features.

Sidney was quite a different story. Sidney, to use his mother's
phrase, was a little jockey. His years were then eight. Fair-
haired and blue-eyed, as most little jockeys are, he had a smile
and a scowl that were equally effective in tyrannizing over both
his mother and Horace, and he was beloved by everybody. Women
turned to look at him in the street. Unhappily, his health was not
good. He was afflicted by a slight deafness, which, however, the
doctor said he would grow out of; the doctor predicted for him a
lusty manhood. In the meantime, he caught every disease that
happened to be about, and nearly died of each one. His latest
acquisition had been scarlet fever. Now one afternoon, after he
had 'peeled' and his room had been disinfected, and he was
beginning to walk again, Horace came home and decided that Sidney
should be brought downstairs for tea as a treat, to celebrate his
convalescence, and that he, Horace, would carry him downstairs.
Mrs Carpole was delighted with the idea, and Sidney also, except
that Sidney did not want to be carried downstairs--he wanted to
walk down.

'I think it will be better for him to walk, Horace dear,' said Mrs
Carpole, in her thin, plaintive voice. 'He can, quite well. And
you know how clumsy you are. Supposing you were to fall!'

Horace, nevertheless, in pursuance of his programme of being uncle
to Sidney, was determined to carry Sidney. And carry Sidney he
did, despite warnings and kickings. At least he carried him as far
as the turn in the steep stairs, at which point he fell, just as
his stepmother had feared, and Sidney with him. The half-brothers
arrived on the ground floor in company, but Horace, with his
eleven stone two, was on top, and the poor suffering little
convalescent lay moveless and insensible.

It took the doctor forty minutes to bring him to, and all the time
the odour of grilled herrings, which formed part of the uneaten
tea, made itself felt through the house like a Satanic comment on
the spectacle of human life. The scene was dreadful at first. The
agony then passed. There were no bruises on the boy, not a mark,
and in a couple of hours he seemed to be perfectly himself. Horace
breathed again, and thanked Heaven it was no worse. His gratitude
to Heaven was, however, slightly premature, for in the black
middle of the night poor Sidney was seized with excruciating pains
in the head, and the doctor lost four hours' sleep. These pains
returned at intervals of a few days, and naturally the child's
convalescence was retarded. Then Horace said that Airs Carpole
should take Sidney to Buxton for a fortnight, and he paid all the
expenses of the trip out of his savings. He was desolated, utterly
stricken; he said he should never forgive himself. Sidney
improved, slowly.




II


After several months, during which Horace had given up all his
limited spare time to the superintendence of the child's first
steps in knowledge, Sidney was judged to be sufficiently strong to
go to school, and it was arranged that he should attend the
Endowed School at the Wedgwood Institution. Horace accompanied him
thither on the opening day of the term--it was an inclement
morning in January--and left the young delicate sprig, apparently
joyous and content, to the care of his masters and the mercy of
his companions. But Sidney came home for dinner weeping--weeping
in spite of his new mortar-board cap, his new satchel, his new box
of compasses, and his new books. His mother kept him at home in
the afternoon, and by the evening another of those terrible
attacks had supervened. The doctor and Horace and Mrs Carpole once
more lost much precious sleep. The mysterious malady continued.
School was out of the question.

And when Sidney took the air, in charge of his mother, everybody
stopped to sympathize with him and to stroke his curls and call
him a poor dear, and also to commiserate Mrs Carpole. As for
Horace, Bursley tried to feel sorry for Horace, but it only
succeeded in showing Horace that it was hiding a sentiment of
indignation against him. Each friendly face as it passed Horace in
the street said, without words, 'There goes the youth who probably
ruined his young stepbrother's life. And through sheer obstinacy
too! He dropped the little darling in spite of warnings and
protests, and then fell on the top of him. Of course, he didn't do
it on purpose, but--'

The doctor mentioned Greatorex of Manchester, the celebrated brain
specialist. And Horace took Sidney to Manchester. They had to wait
an hour and a quarter to see Greatorex, his well-known consulting-
rooms in John Dalton Street being crowded with imperfect brains;
but their turn came at last, and they found themselves in
Greatorex's presence. Greatorex was a fat man, with the voice of a
thin man, who seemed to spend the whole of his career in the care
of his fingernails.

'Well, my little fellow,' said Greatorex, 'don't cry.' (For Sidney
was already crying.) And then to Horace, in a curt tone: 'What is
it?'

And Horace was obliged to humiliate himself and relate the
accident in detail, together with all that had subsequently
happened.

'Yes, yes, yes, yes!' Greatorex would punctuate the recital, and
when tired of 'yes' he would say 'Hum, hum, hum, hum!'

When he had said 'hum' seventy-two times he suddenly remarked that
his fee was three guineas, and told Horace to strengthen Sidney
all he could, not to work him too hard, and to bring him back in a
year's time.

Horace paid the money, Greatorex emitted a final 'hum', and then
the stepbrothers were whisked out by an expeditious footman. The
experience cost Horace over four pounds and the loss of a day's
time. And the worst was that Sidney had a violent attack that very
night.

School being impossible for him, Sidney had intermittent
instruction from professors of both sexes at home. But he learnt
practically nothing except the banjo. Horace had to buy him a
banjo: it cost the best part of a ten-pound note; still, Horace
could do no less. Sidney's stature grew rapidly; his general
health certainly improved, yet not completely; he always had a
fragile, interesting air. Moreover, his deafness did not
disappear: there were occasions when it was extremely pronounced.
And he was never quite safe from these attacks in the head. He
spent a month or six weeks each year in the expensive bracing
atmosphere of some seaside resort, and altogether he was decidedly
a heavy drain on Horace's resources. People were aware of this,
and they said that Horace ought to be happy that he was in a
position to spend money freely on his poor brother. Had not the
doctor predicted, before the catastrophe due to Horace's culpable
negligence, that Sidney would grow into a strong man, and that his
deafness would leave him? The truth was, one never knew the end of
those accidents in infancy! Further, was not Sidney's sad
condition slowly killing his mother? It was whispered about that,
since the disaster, Sidney had not been QUITE sound mentally. Was
not the mere suspicion of this enough to kill any mother?

And, as a fact, Mrs Carpole did die. She died of quinsy, doubtless
aggravated by Sidney's sad condition.

Not long afterwards Horace came into a small fortune from his
maternal grandfather. But poor Sidney did not come into any
fortune, and people somehow illogically inferred that Horace had
not behaved quite nicely in coming into a fortune while his
suffering invalid brother, whom he had so deeply harmed, came into
nothing. Even Horace had compunctions due to the visitations of a
similar idea. And with part of the fortune he bought a house with
a large garden up at Toft End, the highest hill of the hilly Five
Towns, so that Sidney might have the benefit of the air. He also
engaged a housekeeper and servants. With the remainder of the
fortune he obtained a partnership in the firm of earthenware
manufacturers for whom he had been acting as highly-paid manager.

Sidney reached the age of eighteen, and was most effective to look
upon, his bright hair being still curly, and his eyes a wondrous
blue, and his form elegant; and the question of Sidney's future
arose. His health was steadily on the up grade. The deafness had
quite disappeared. He had inclinations towards art, and had
already amused himself by painting some beautiful vases. So it was
settled that he should enter Horace's works on the art side, with
a view to becoming, ultimately, art director. Horace gave him
three pounds a week, in order that he might feel perfectly
independent, and, to the same end, Sidney paid Horace seven-and-
sixpence a week for board and lodging. But the change of life
upset the youth's health again. After only two visits to the works
he had a grave recurrence of the head-attacks, and he was solemnly
exhorted not to apply himself too closely to business. He
therefore took several half-holidays a week, and sometimes a whole
one. And even when he put in one of his full days he would arrive
at the works three hours after Horace, and restore the balance by
leaving an hour earlier. The entire town watched over him as a
mother watches over a son. The notion that he was not QUITE right
in the pate gradually died away, and everybody was thankful for
that, though it was feared an untimely grave might be his portion.




III


She was a nice girl: the nicest girl that Horace had ever met
with, because her charming niceness included a faculty of being
really serious about serious things--and yet she could be
deliciously gay. In short, she was a revelation to Horace. And her
name was Ella, and she had come one year to spend some weeks with
Mrs Penkethman, the widowed headmistress of the Wesleyan Day
School, who was her cousin. Mrs Penkethman and Ella had been
holidaying together in France; their arrival in Bursley naturally
coincided with the reopening of the school in August for the
autumn term.

Now at this period Horace was rather lonely in his large house and
garden; for Sidney, in pursuit of health, had gone off on a six
weeks' cruise round Holland, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, in one
of those Atlantic liners which, translated like Enoch without
dying, become in their old age 'steam-yachts', with fine names apt
to lead to confusion with the private yacht of the Tsar of Russia.
Horace had offered him the trip, and Horace was also paying his
weekly salary as usual.

So Horace, who had always been friendly with Mrs Penkethman, grew
now more than ever friendly with Mrs Penkethman. And Mrs
Penkethman and Ella were inseparable. The few aristocrats left in
Bursley in September remarked that Horace knew what he was about,
as it was notorious that Ella had the most solid expectations. But
as a matter of fact Horace did not know what he was about, and he
never once thought of Ella's expectations. He was simply, as they
say in Bursley, knocked silly by Ella. He honestly imagined her to
be the wonderfullest woman on the earth's surface, with her dark
eyes and her expressive sympathetic gestures, and her alterations
of seriousness and gaiety. It astounded him that a girl of twenty-
one could have thought so deeply upon life as she had. The
inexplicable thing was that she looked up to HIM. She evidently
admired HIM. He wanted to tell her that she was quite wrong about
him, much too kind in her estimate of him--that really he was a
very ordinary man indeed. But another instinct prevented him from
thus undeceiving her.

And one Saturday afternoon, the season being late September,
Horace actually got those two women up to tea in his house and
garden. He had not dared to dream of such bliss. He had hesitated
long before asking them to come, and in asking them he had blushed
and stammered: the invitation had seemed to him to savour of
audacity. But, bless you! they had accepted with apparent ecstasy.
They gave him to think that they had genuinely wanted to come. And
they came extra-specially dressed--visions, lilies of the field.
And as the day was quite warm, tea was served in the garden, and
everybody admired the view; and there was no restraint, no
awkwardness. In particular Ella talked with an ease and a
distinction that enchanted Horace, and almost made him talk with
ease and distinction too. He said to himself that, seeing he had
only known her a month, he was getting on amazingly. He said to
himself that his good luck passed belief.

Then there was a sound of cab-wheels on the other side of the
garden-wall, and presently Horace heard the housekeeper
complimenting Sidney on his good looks, and Sidney asking the
housekeeper to lend him three shillings to pay the cabman. The
golden youth had returned without the slightest warning from his
cruise. The tea trio, at the lower end of the garden, saw him
standing in the porch, tanned, curly, graceful, and young. Horace
half rose, and then sat down again. Ella stared hard.

'That must be your brother,' she said.

'Yes, that's Sid,' Horace answered; and then, calling out loudly:
'Come down here, Sid, and tell them to bring another cup and
saucer.'

'Right you are, old man,' Sidney shouted. 'You see I'm back. What!
Mrs Penkethman, is that you?' He came down the central path of the
garden like a Narcissus.

'He DOES look delicate,' said Ella under her breath to Horace.
Tears came to her eyes.

Naturally Ella knew all about Sidney. She enjoyed the entire
confidence of Mrs Penkethman, and what Mrs Penkethman didn't know
of the private history of the upper classes in Bursley did not
amount to very much.

These were nearly the last words that Ella spoke to Horace that
afternoon. The introduction was made, and Sidney slipped into the
party as comfortably as he slipped into everything, like a candle
slipping into a socket. But nevertheless Ella talked no more. She
just stared at Sidney, and listened to him. Horace was proud that
Sidney had made such an impression on her; he was glad that she
showed no aversion to Sidney, because, in the event of Horace's
marriage, where would Sidney live, if not with Horace and Horace's
wife? Still, he could have wished that Ella would continue to
display her conversational powers.

Presently, Sidney lighted a cigarette. He was of those young men
whose delicate mouths seem to have been fashioned for the nice
conduct of a cigarette. And he had a way of blowing out the smoke
that secretly ravished every feminine beholder. Horace still held
to his boyhood's principles; but he envied Sidney a little.

At the conclusion of the festivity these two women naturally could
not be permitted to walk home alone. And, naturally, also, the
four could not walk abreast on the narrow pavements. Horace went
first with Mrs Penkethman. He was mad with anxiety to appropriate
Ella, but he dared not. It would not have been quite correct; it
would have been, as they say in Bursley, too thick. Besides, there
was the question of age. Horace was over thirty, and Mrs
Penkethman was also--over thirty; whereas Sidney was twenty-one,
and so was Ella. Hence Sidney walked behind with Ella, and the
procession started in silence. Horace did not look round too
often--that would not have been quite proper--but whenever he did
look round the other couple had lagged farther and farther behind,
and Ella seemed perfectly to have recovered her speech. At length
he looked round, and lo! they had not turned the last corner; and
they arrived at Mrs Penkethman's cottage at Hillport a quarter of
an hour after their elders.




IV


The wedding cost Horace a large sum of money. You see, he could
not do less than behave handsomely by the bride, owing to his
notorious admiration for her; and of course the bridegroom needed
setting up. Horace practically furnished their home for them out
of his own pocket; it was not to be expected that Sidney should
have resources. Further, Sidney as a single man, paying seven-and-
six a week for board and lodging, could no doubt struggle along
upon three pounds weekly. But Sidney as a husband, with the nicest
girl in the world to take care of, and house-rent to pay, could
not possibly perform the same feat. Although he did no more work
at the manufactory--Horace could not have been so unbrotherly as
to demand it--Horace paid him eight pounds a week instead of
three.

And the affair cost Horace a good deal besides money. But what
could Horace do? He decidedly would not have wished to wreck the
happiness of two young and beautiful lives, even had he possessed
the power to do so. And he did not possess the power. Those two
did not consult Horace before falling in love. They merely fell in
love, and there was an end of it--and an end of Horace too! Horace
had to suffer. He did suffer.

Perhaps it was for his highest welfare that other matters came to
monopolize his mind. One sorrow drives out another. If you sit on
a pin you are apt to forget that you have the toothache. The
earthenware manufactory was not going well. Plenty of business was
being done, but not at the right prices. Crushed between the upper
and nether millstones of the McKinley Tariff and German
competition, Horace, in company with other manufacturers, was
breathing out his life's blood in the shape of capital. The truth
was that he had never had enough capital. He had heavily mortgaged
the house at Toft End in order to purchase his partners' shares in
the business and have the whole undertaking to himself, and he
profoundly regretted it. He needed every penny that he could
collect; the strictest economy was necessary if he meant to
survive the struggle. And here he was paying eight pounds a week
to a personage purely ornamental, after having squandered hundreds
in rendering that personage comfortable! The situation was
dreadful.

You may ask, Why did he not explain the situation to Sidney? Well,
partly because he was too kind, and partly because he was too
proud, and partly because Sidney would not have understood. Horace
fought on, keeping up a position in the town and hoping that
miracles would occur.

Then Ella's expectations were realized. Sidney and she had some
twenty thousand pounds to play with. And they played the most
agreeable games. But not in Bursley. No. They left Horace in
Bursley and went to Llandudno for a spell. Horace envied them, but
he saw them off at the station as an elder brother should, and
tipped the porters.

Certainly he was relieved of the formality of paying eight pounds
a week to his brother. But this did not help him much. The sad
fact was that 'things' (by which is meant fate, circumstances,
credit, and so on) had gone too far. It was no longer a question
of eight pounds a week; it was a question of final ruin.

Surely he might have borrowed money from Sidney? Sidney had no
money; the money was Ella's, and Horace could not have brought
himself to borrow money from a woman--from Ella, from a heavenly
creature who always had a soothing sympathetic word for him. That
would have been to take advantage of Ella. No, if you suggest such
a thing, you do not know Horace.

I stated in the beginning that he had no faults. He was therefore
absolutely honest. And he called his creditors together while he
could yet pay them twenty shillings in the pound. It was a noble
act, rare enough in the Five Towns and in other parts of England.
But he received no praise for it. He had only done what every man
in his position ought to do. If Horace had failed for ten times
the sum that his debts actually did amount to, and then paid two
shillings in the pound instead of twenty, he would have made a
stir in the world and been looked up to as no ordinary man of
business.

Having settled his affairs in this humdrum, idiotic manner, Horace
took a third-class return to Llandudno. Sidney and Ella were
staying at the hydro with the strange Welsh name, and he found
Sidney lolling on the sunshiny beach in front of the hydro
discoursing on the banjo to himself. When asked where his wife
was, Sidney replied that she was lying down, and was obliged to
rest as much as possible.

Horace, ashamed to trouble this domestic idyl, related his
misfortunes as airily as he could.

And Sidney said he was awfully sorry, and had no notion how
matters stood, and could he do anything for Horace? If so, Horace
might--

'No,' said Horace. 'I'm all right. I've very fortunately got an
excellent place as manager in a big new manufactory in Germany.'
(This is how we deal with German competition in the Five Towns.)

'Germany?' cried Sidney.

'Yes,' said Horace; 'and I start the day after tomorrow.'

'Well,' said Sidney, 'at any rate you'll stay the night.'

'Thanks,' said Horace, 'you're very kind. I will.'

So they went into the hydro together, Sidney caressing his
wonderful new pearl-inlaid banjo; and Horace talked in low tones
to Ella as she lay on the sofa. He convinced Ella that his
departure to Germany was the one thing he had desired all his
life, because it was not good that Ella should be startled,
shocked, or grieved.

They dined well.

But in the night Sidney had a recurrence of his old illness--a bad
attack; and Horace sat up through the dark hours, fetched the
doctor, and bought things at the chemist's. Towards morning Sidney
was better. And Horace, standing near the bed, gazed at his
stepbrother and tried in his stupid way to read the secrets
beneath that curly hair. But he had no success. He caught himself
calculating how much Sidney had cost him, at periods of his career
when he could ill spare money; and, having caught himself, he was
angry with himself for such baseness. At eight o'clock he ventured
to knock at Ella's door and explain to her that Sidney had not
been quite well. She had passed a peaceful night, for he had, of
course, refrained from disturbing her.

He was not quite sure whether Sidney had meant him to stay at the
hydro as his guest, so he demanded a bill, paid it, said good-bye,
and left for Bonn-on-the-Rhine. He was very exhausted and sleepy.
Happily the third-class carriages on the London & North-Western
are pretty comfortable. Between Chester and Crewe he had quite a
doze, and dreamed that he had married Ella after all, and that her
twenty thousand pounds had put the earthenware business on a
footing of magnificent and splendid security.




V


A few months later Horace's house and garden at Toft End were put
up to auction by arrangement with his mortgagee and his trade-
creditors. And Sidney was struck with the idea of buying the
place. The impression was that it would go cheap. Sidney said it
would be a pity to let the abode pass out of the family. Ella said
that the idea of buying it was a charming one, because in the
garden it was that she had first met her Sidney. So the place was
duly bought, and Sidney and Ella went to live there.

Several years elapsed.

Then one day little Horace was informed that his uncle Horace,
whom he had never seen, was coming to the house on a visit, and
that he must be a good boy, and polite to his uncle, and all the
usual sort of thing.

And in effect Horace the elder did arrive in the afternoon. He
found no one to meet him at the station, or at the garden gate of
the pleasaunce that had once been his, or even at the front door.
A pert parlour-maid told him that her master and mistress were
upstairs in the nursery, and that he was requested to go up. And
he went up, and to be sure Sidney met him at the top of the
stairs, banjo in hand, cigarette in mouth, smiling, easy and
elegant as usual--not a trace of physical weakness in his face or
form. And Horace was jocularly ushered into the nursery and
introduced to his nephew. Ella had changed. She was no longer
slim, and no longer gay and serious by turns. She narrowly missed
being stout, and she was continuously gay, like Sidney. The child
was also gay. Everybody was glad to see Horace, but nobody seemed
deeply interested in Horace's affairs. As a fact he had done
rather well in Germany, and had now come back to England in order
to assume a working partnership in a small potting concern at
Hanbridge. He was virtually beginning life afresh. But what
concerned Sidney and Ella was themselves and their offspring. They
talked incessantly about the infinitesimal details of their daily
existence, and the alterations which they had made, or meant to
make, in the house and garden. And occasionally Sidney thrummed a
tune on the banjo to amuse the infant. Horace had expected them to
be curious about Germany and his life in Germany. But not a bit!
He might have come in from the next street and left them only
yesterday, for all the curiosity they exhibited.

'Shall we go down to the drawing-room and have tea, eh?' said
Ella.

'Yes, let's go and kill the fatted calf,' said Sidney.

And strangely enough, inexplicably enough, Horace did feel like a
prodigal.

Sidney went off with his precious banjo, and Ella picked up sundry
belongings without which she never travelled about the house.

'You carry me down-stairs, unky?' the little nephew suggested,
with an appealing glance at his new uncle. 'No,' said Horace, 'I'm
dashed if I do!'




BABY'S BATH

I


Mrs Blackshaw had a baby. It would be an exaggeration to say that
the baby interested the entire town, Bursley being an ancient,
blase sort of borough of some thirty thousand inhabitants. Babies,
in fact, arrived in Bursley at the rate of more than a thousand
every year. Nevertheless, a few weeks after the advent of Mrs
Blackshaw's baby, when the medical officer of health reported to
the Town Council that the births for the month amounted to ninety-
five, and that the birth-rate of Bursley compared favourably with
the birth-rates of the sister towns, Hanbridge, Knype, Longshaw,
and Turnhill--when the medical officer read these memorable words
at the monthly meeting of the Council, and the Staffordshire
Signal reported them, and Mrs Blackshaw perused them, a blush of
pride spread over Mrs Blackshaw's face, and she picked up the
baby's left foot and gave it a little peck of a kiss. She could
not help feeling that the real solid foundation of that formidable
and magnificent output of babies was her baby. She could not help
feeling that she had done something for the town--had caught the
public eye.

As for the baby, except that it was decidedly superior to the
average infant in external appearance and pleasantness of
disposition, it was, in all essential characteristics, a typical
baby--that is to say, it was purely sensuous and it lived the
life of the senses. It was utterly selfish. It never thought of
anyone but itself. It honestly imagined itself to be the centre of
the created universe. It was convinced that the rest of the
universe had been brought into existence solely for the
convenience and pleasure of it--the baby. When it wanted anything
it made no secret of the fact, and it was always utterly
unscrupulous in trying to get what it wanted. If it could have
obtained the moon it would have upset all the astronomers of
Europe and made Whitaker's Almanack unsalable without a pang. It
had no god but its stomach. It never bothered its head about
higher things. It was a bully and a coward, and it treated women
as beings of a lower order than men. In a word, it was that ideal
creature, sung of the poets, from which we gradually sink and fall
away as we grow older.

At the age of six months it had quite a lot of hair, and a
charming rosy expanse at the back of its neck, caused through
lying on its back in contemplation of its own importance. It
didn't know the date of the Battle of Hastings, but it knew with
the certainty of absolute knowledge that it was master of the
house, and that the activity of the house revolved round it.

Now, the baby loved its bath. In any case its bath would have been
an affair of immense and intricate pomp; but the fact that it
loved its bath raised the interest and significance of the bath to
the nth power. The bath took place at five o'clock in the evening,
and it is not too much to say that the idea of the bath was
immanent in the very atmosphere of the house. When you have an
appointment with the dentist at five o'clock in the afternoon the
idea of the appointment is immanent in your mind from the first
moment of your awakening. Conceive that an appointment with the
dentist implies heavenly joy instead of infernal pain, and you
will have a notion of the daily state of Mrs Blackshaw and Emmie
(the nurse) with regard to the baby's bath.

Even at ten in the morning Emmie would be keeping an eye on the
kitchen fire, lest the cook might let it out. And shortly after
noon Mrs Blackshaw would be keeping an eye on the thermometer in
the bedroom where the bath occurred. From four o'clock onwards the
clocks in the house were spied on and overlooked like suspected
persons; but they were used to that, because the baby had his
sterilized milk every two hours. I have at length allowed you to
penetrate the secret of his sex.

And so at five o'clock precisely the august and exciting ceremony
began in the best bedroom. A bright fire was burning (the month
being December), and the carefully-shaded electric lights were
also burning. A large bath-towel was spread in a convenient place
on the floor, and on the towel were two chairs facing each other,
and a table. On one chair was the bath, and on the other was Mrs
Blackshaw with her sleeves rolled up, and on Mrs Blackshaw was
another towel, and on that towel was Roger (the baby). On the
table were zinc ointment, vaseline, scentless eau de Cologne,
Castile soap, and a powder-puff.

Emmie having pretty nearly filled the bath with a combination of
hot and cold waters, dropped the floating thermometer into it, and
then added more waters until the thermometer indicated the precise
temperature proper for a baby's bath. But you are not to imagine
that Mrs Blackshaw trusted a mere thermometer. No. She put her arm
in the water up to the elbow. She reckoned the sensitive skin near
the elbow was worth forty thermometers.

Emmie was chiefly an audience. Mrs Blackshaw had engaged her as a
nurse, but she could have taught a nigger-boy to do all that she
allowed the nurse to do. During the bath Mrs Blackshaw and Emmie
hated and scorned each other, despite their joy. Emmie was twice
Mrs Blackshaw's age, besides being twice her weight, and she knew
twice as much about babies as Mrs Blackshaw did. However, Mrs
Blackshaw had the terrific advantage of being the mother of that
particular infant, and she could always end an argument when she
chose, and in her own favour. It was unjust, and Emmie felt it to
be unjust; but this is not a world of justice.

Roger, though not at all precocious, was perfectly aware of the
carefully-concealed hostility between his mother and his nurse,
and often, with his usual unscrupulousness, he used it for his own
ends. He was sitting upon his mother's knees toying with the edge
of the bath, already tasting its delights in advance. Mrs
Blackshaw undressed the upper half of him, and then she laid him
on the flat of his back and undressed the lower half of him, but
keeping some wisp of a garment round his equatorial regions. And
then she washed his face with a sponge and the Castile soap, very
gently, but not half gently enough for Emmie, nor half gently
enough for Roger, for Roger looked upon this part of the business
as insulting and superfluous. He breathed hard and kicked his feet
nearly off.

'Yes, it's dreadful having our face washed, isn't it?' said Mrs
Blackshaw, with her sleeves up, and her hair by this time down.
'We don't like it, do we? Yes, yes.'

Emmie grunted, without a sound, and yet Mrs Blackshaw heard her,
and finished that face quickly and turned to the hands.

'Potato-gardens every day,' she said. 'Evzy day-day. Enough of
that, Colonel!' (For, after all, she had plenty of spirit.) 'Fat
little creases! Fat little creases! There! He likes that! There!
Feet! Feet! Feet and legs! Then our back. And then WHUP we shall
go into the bath! That's it. Kick! Kick your mother!'

And she turned him over.

'Incredible bungler!' said the eyes of the nurse. 'Can't she turn
him over neater than that?'

'Harridan!' said the eyes of Mrs Blackshaw. 'I wouldn't let you
bath him for twenty thousand pounds!'

Roger continued to breathe hard, as if his mother were a horse and
he were rubbing her down.

'Now! Zoop! Whup!' cried his mother, and having deprived him of
his final rag, she picked him up and sat him in the bath, and he
was divinely happy, and so were the women. He appeared a gross
little animal in the bath, all the tints of his flesh shimmering
under the electric light. His chest was superb, but the rolled and
creased bigness of his inordinate stomach was simply appalling,
not to mention his great thighs and calves. The truth was, he had
grown so that if he had been only a little bit bigger, he would
have burst the bath. He resembled an old man who had been steadily
eating too much for about forty years.

His two womenfolk now candidly and openly worshipped him,
forgetting sectarian differences.

And he splashed. Oh! he splashed. You see, he had learnt how to
splash, and he had certainly got an inkling that to splash was
wicked and messy. So he splashed--in his mother's face, in Emmie's
face, in the fire. He pretty well splashed the fire out. Ten
minutes before, the bedroom had been tidy, a thing of beauty. It
was now naught but a wild welter of towels, socks, binders--
peninsulas of clothes nearly surrounded by water.

Finally his mother seized him again, and, rearing his little legs
up out of the water, immersed the whole of his inflated torso
beneath the surface.

'Hallo!' she exclaimed. 'Did the water run over his mouf? Did it?'

'Angels and ministers of grace defend us! How clumsy she is!'
commented the eyes of Emmie.

'There! I fink that's about long enough for this kind of wevver,'
said the mother.

'I should think it was! There's almost a crust of ice on the water
now!' the nurse refrained from saying.

And Roger, full of regrets, was wrenched out of the bath. He had
ceased breathing hard while in the water, but he began again
immediately he emerged.

'We don't like our face wiped, do we?' said his mother on his
behalf. 'We want to go back into that bath. We like it. It's more
fun than anything that happens all day long! Eh? That old
dandruff's coming up in fine style. It's a-peeling off like
anything.'

And all the while she wiped him, patted eau de Cologne into him
with the flat of her hand, and rubbed zinc ointment into him, and
massaged him, and powdered him, and turned him over and over and
over, till he was thoroughly well basted and cooked. And he kept
on breathing hard.

Then he sneezed, amid general horror!

'I told you so!' the nurse didn't say, and she rushed to the bed
where all the idol's beautiful, clean, aired things were lying
safe from splashings, and handed a flannel shirt, about two inches
in length, to Mrs Blackshaw. And Mrs Blackshaw rolled the left
sleeve of it into a wad and stuck it over his arm, and his poor
little vaccination marks were hidden from view till next morning.
Roger protested.

'We don't like clothes, do we?' said his mother. 'We want to
tumble back into our tub. We aren't much for clothes anyway. We'se
a little Hottentot, aren't we?'

And she gradually covered him with one garment or another until
there was nothing left of him but his head and his hands and feet.
And she sat him up on her knees, so as to fasten his things
behind. And then it might have been observed that he was no longer
breathing hard, but giving vent to a sound between a laugh and a
cry, while sucking his thumb and gazing round the room.

'That's our little affected cry that we start for our milk, isn't
it?' his mother explained to him.

And he agreed that it was.

And before Emmie could fly across the room for the bottle, all
ready and waiting, his mouth, in the shape of a perfect rectangle,
had monopolized five-sixths of his face, and he was scarlet and
bellowing with impatience.

He took the bottle like a tiger his prey, and seized his mother's
hand that held the bottle, and he furiously pumped the milk into
that insatiable gulf of a stomach. But he found time to gaze about
the room too. A tear stood in each roving eye, caused by the
effort of feeding.

'Yes, that's it,' said his mother. 'Now look round and see what's
happening. Curiosity! Well, if you WILL bob your head, I can't
help it.'

'Of course you can!' the nurse didn't say.

Then he put his finger into his mouth side by side with the
bottle, and gagged himself, and choked, and gave a terrible--
excuse the word--hiccough. After which he seemed to lose interest
in the milk, and the pumping operations slackened and then ceased.

'Goosey!' whispered his mother, 'getting seepy? Is the sandman
throwing sand in your eyes? Old Sandman at it? Sh--' ... He had
gone.

Emmie took him. The women spoke in whispers. And Mrs Blackshaw,
after a day spent in being a mother, reconstituted herself a wife,
and began to beautify herself for her husband.




II


Yes, there was a Mr Blackshaw, and with Mr Blackshaw the tragedy
of the bath commences. Mr Blackshaw was a very important young
man. Indeed, it is within the mark to say that, next to his son,
he was the most important young man in Bursley. For Mr Blackshaw
was the manager of the newly opened Muncipal Electricity Works.
And the Municipal Electricity had created more excitement and
interest than anything since the 1887 Jubilee, when an ox was
roasted whole in the market-place and turned bad in the process.
Had Bursley been a Swiss village, or a French country town, or a
hamlet in Arizona, it would have had its electricity fifteen years
ago, but being only a progressive English Borough, with an annual
value of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, it struggled on with
gas till well into the twentieth century. Its great neighbour
Hanbridge had become acquainted with electricity in the nineteenth
century.

All the principal streets and squares, and every decent shop that
Hanbridge competition had left standing, and many private houses,
now lighted themselves by electricity, and the result was splendid
and glaring and coldly yellow. Mr. Blackshaw developed into the
hero of the hour. People looked at him in the street as though he
had been the discoverer and original maker of electricity. And if
the manager of the gasworks had not already committed murder, it
was because the manager of the gasworks had a right sense of what
was due to his position as vicar's churchwarden at St Peter's
Church.

But greatness has its penalties. And the chief penalty of Mr
Blackshaw's greatness was that he could not see Roger have his
nightly bath. It was impossible for Mr Blackshaw to quit his
arduous and responsible post before seven o'clock in the evening.
Later on, when things were going more smoothly, he might be able
to get away; but then, later on, his son's bath would not be so
amusing and agreeable as it then, by all reports, was. The baby
was, of course, bathed on Saturday nights, but Sunday afternoon
and evening Mr Blackshaw was obliged to spend with his invalid
mother at Longshaw. It was on the sole condition of his weekly
presence thus in her house that she had consented not to live with
the married pair. And so Mr Blackshaw could not witness Roger's
bath. He adored Roger. He understood Roger. He weighed, nursed,
and fed Roger. He was 'up' in all the newest theories of infant
rearing. In short, Roger was his passion, and he knew everything
of Roger except Roger's bath. And when his wife met him at the
front door of a night at seven-thirty and launched instantly into
a description of the wonders, delights, and excitations of Roger's
latest bath, Mr Blackshaw was ready to tear his hair with
disappointment and frustration.

'I suppose you couldn't put it off for a couple of hours one
night, May?' he suggested at supper on the evening of the
particular bath described above.

'Sidney!' protested Mrs Blackshaw, pained.

Mr Blackshaw felt that he had gone too far, and there was a
silence.

'Well!' said Mr Blackshaw at length, 'I have just made up my mind.
I'm going to see that Kid's bath, and, what's more, I'm going to
see it tomorrow. I don't care what happens.'

'But how shall you manage to get away, darling?'

'You will telephone me about a quarter of an hour before you're
ready to begin, and I'll pretend it's something very urgent, and
scoot off.'

'Well, that will be lovely, darling!' said Mrs Blackshaw. 'I WOULD
like you to see him in the bath, just once! He looks so--'

And so on.

The next day, Mr Blackshaw, that fearsome autocrat of the
Municipal Electricity Works, was saying to himself all day that at
five o'clock he was going to assist at the spectacle of his
wonderful son's bath. The prospect inspired him. So much so that
every hand on the place was doing its utmost in fear and
trembling, and the whole affair was running with the precision and
smoothness of a watch.

From four o'clock onwards, Mr Blackshaw, in the solemn,
illuminated privacy of the managerial office, safe behind glass
partitions, could no more contain his excitement. He hovered in
front of the telephone, waiting for it to ring. Then, at a quarter
to five, just when he felt he couldn't stand it any longer, and
was about to ring up his wife instead of waiting for her to ring
him up, he saw a burly shadow behind the glass door, and gave a
desolate sigh. That shadow could only be thrown by one person, and
that person was his Worship the Mayor of Bursley. His Worship
entered the private office with mayoral assurance, pulling in his
wake a stout old lady whom he introduced as his aunt from
Wolverhampton. And he calmly proposed that Mr Blackshaw should
show the mayoral aunt over the new Electricity Works!

Mr Blackshaw was sick of showing people over the Works. Moreover,
he naturally despised the Mayor. All permanent officials of
municipalities thoroughly despise their mayors (up their sleeves).
A mayor is here today and gone tomorrow, whereas a permanent
official is permanent. A mayor knows nothing about anything except
his chain and the rules of debate, and he is, further, a tedious
and meddlesome person--in the opinion of permanent officials.

So Mr Blackshaw's fury at the inept appearance of the Mayor and
the mayoral aunt at this critical juncture may be imagined. The
worst of it was, he didn't know how to refuse the Mayor.

Then the telephone-bell rang.

'Excuse me,' said Mr Blackshaw, with admirably simulated
politeness, going to the instrument. 'Are you there? Who is it?'

'It's me, darling,' came the thin voice of his wife far away at
Bleakridge. 'The water's just getting hot. We're nearly ready. Can
you come now?'

'By Jove! Wait a moment!' exclaimed Mr Blackshaw, and then turning
to his visitors, 'Did you hear that?'

'No,' said the Mayor.

'All those three new dynamos that they've got at the Hanbridge
Electricity Works have just broken down. I knew they would. I told
them they would!'

'Dear, dear!' said the Mayor of Bursley, secretly delighted by
this disaster to a disdainful rival. 'Why! They'll have the town
in darkness. What are they going to do?'

'They want me to go over at once. But, of course, I can't. At
least, I must give myself the pleasure of showing you and this
lady over our Works, first.'

'Nothing of the kind, Mr Blackshaw!' said the Mayor. 'Go at once.
Go at once. If Bursley can be of any assistance to Hanbridge in
such a crisis, I shall be only too pleased. We will come tomorrow,
won't we, auntie?'

Mr Blackshaw addressed the telephone.

'The Mayor is here, with a lady, and I was just about to show them
over the Works, but his Worship insists that I come at once.'

'Certainly,' the Mayor put in pompously.

'Wonders will never cease,' came the thin voice of Mrs Blackshaw
through the telephone. 'It's very nice of the old thing! What's
his lady friend like?'

'Not like anything. Unique!' replied Mr Blackshaw.

'Young?' came the voice.

'Dates from the thirties,' said Mr Blackshaw. 'I'm coming.' And
rang off.

'I didn't know there was any electric machinery as old as that,'
said the mayoral aunt.

'We'll just look about us a bit,' the Mayor remarked. 'Don't lose
a moment, Mr Blackshaw.'

And Mr Blackshaw hurried off, wondering vaguely how he should
explain the lie when it was found out, but not caring much. After
all, he could easily ascribe the episode to the trick of some
practical joker.




III


He arrived at his commodious and electrically lit residence in the
very nick of time, and full to overflowing with innocent paternal
glee. Was he not about to see Roger's tub? Roger was just ready to
be carried upstairs as Mr Blackshaw's latchkey turned in the door.

'Wait a sec!' cried Mr Blackshaw to his wife, who had the child in
her arms, 'I'll carry him up.'

And he threw away his hat, stick, and overcoat and grabbed
ecstatically at the infant. And he had got perhaps halfway up the
stairs, when lo! the electric light went out. Every electric light
in the house went out.

'Great Scott!' breathed Mr Blackshaw, aghast.

He pulled aside the blind of the window at the turn of the stairs,
and peered forth. The street was as black as your hat, or nearly
so.

'Great Scott!' he repeated. 'May, get candles.'

Something had evidently gone wrong at the Works. Just his luck! He
had quitted the Works for a quarter of an hour, and the current
had failed!

Of course, the entire house was instantly in an uproar, turned
upside down, startled out of its life. But a few candles soon
calmed its transports. And at length Mr Blackshaw gained the
bedroom in safety, with the offspring of his desires comfortable
in a shawl.

'Give him to me,' said May shortly. 'I suppose you'll have to go
back to the Works at once?'

Mr Blackshaw paused, and then nerved himself; but while he was
pausing, May, glancing at the two feeble candles, remarked: 'It's
very tiresome. I'm sure I shan't be able to see properly.'

'No!' almost shouted Mr Blackshaw. 'I'll watch this kid have his
bath or I'll die for it! I don't care if all the Five Towns are in
darkness. I don't care if the Mayor's aunt has got caught in a
dynamo and is suffering horrible tortures. I've come to see this
bath business, and dashed if I don't see it!'

'Well, don't stand between the bath and the fire, dearest,' said
May coldly.

Meanwhile, Emmie, having pretty nearly filled the bath with a
combination of hot and cold waters, dropped the floating
thermometer into it, and then added more waters until the
thermometer indicated the precise temperature proper for a baby's
bath. But you are not to imagine that Mrs Blackshaw trusted a
thermometer--

She did not, however, thrust her bared arm into the water this
time. No! Roger, who never cried before his bath, was crying, was
indubitably crying. And he cried louder and louder.

'Stand where he can't see you, dearest. He isn't used to you at
bath-time,' said Mrs Blackshaw still coldly. 'Are you, my pet?
There! There!'

Mr Blackshaw effaced himself, feeling a fool. But Roger continued
to cry. He cried himself purple. He cried till the veins stood out
on his forehead and his mouth was like a map of Australia. He
cried himself into a monster of ugliness. Neither mother nor nurse
could do anything with him at all.

'I think you've upset him, dearest,' said Mrs Blackshaw even more
coldly. 'Hadn't you better go?'

'Well--' protested the father.

'I think you had better go,' said Mrs Blackshaw, adding no term of
endearment, and visibly controlling herself with difficulty.

And Mr Blackshaw went. He had to go. He went out into the
unelectric night. He headed for the Works, not because he cared
twopence, at that moment, about the accident at the Works,
whatever it was; but simply because the Works was the only place
to go to. And even outside in the dark street he could hear the
rousing accents of his progeny.

People were talking to each other as they groped about in the
road, and either making jokes at the expense of the new
Electricity Department, or frankly cursing it with true Five Towns
directness of speech. And as Mr Blackshaw went down the hill into
the town his heart was as black as the street itself with rage and
disappointment. He had made his child cry!

Someone stopped him.

'Eh, Mester Blackshaw!' said a voice, and under the voice a hand
struck a match to light a pipe. 'What's th' maning o' this eclipse
as you'm treating us to?'

Mr Blackshaw looked right through the inquirer--a way he had when
his brain was working hard. And he suddenly smiled by the light of
the match.

'That child wasn't crying because I was there,' said Mr Blackshaw
with solemn relief. 'Not at all! He was crying because he didn't
understand the candles. He isn't used to candles, and they
frightened him.'

And he began to hurry towards the Works.

At the same instant the electric light returned to Bursley. The
current was resumed.

'That's better,' said Mr Blackshaw, sighing.




THE SILENT BROTHERS

I


John and Robert Hessian, brothers, bachelors, and dressed in
mourning, sat together after supper in the parlour of their house
at the bottom of Oldcastle Street, Bursley. Maggie, the middle-
aged servant, was clearing the table.

'Leave the cloth and the coffee,' said John, the elder, 'Mr
Liversage is coming in.'

'Yes, Mr John,' said Maggie.

'Slate, Maggie,' Robert ordered laconically, with a gesture
towards the mantelpiece behind him.

'Yes, Mr Robert,' said Maggie.

She gave him a slate with slate-pencil attached, which hung on a
nail near the mantlepiece.

Robert took the slate and wrote on it: 'What is Liversage coming
about?'

And he pushed the slate across the table to John.

Whereupon John wrote on the slate: 'Don't know. He telephoned me
he wanted to see us tonight.'

And he pushed back the slate to Robert.

This singular procedure was not in the least attributable to
deafness on the part of the brothers; they were in the prime of
life, aged forty-two and thirty-nine respectively, and in complete
possession of all their faculties. It was due simply to the fact
that they had quarrelled, and would not speak to each other. The
history of their quarrel would be incredible were it not full of
that ridiculous pathetic quality known as human nature, and did
not similar things happen frequently in the manufacturing
Midlands, where the general temperament is a fearful and strange
compound of pride, obstinacy, unconquerableness, romance, and
stupidity. Yes, stupidity.

No single word had passed between the brothers in that house for
ten years. On the morning after the historical quarrel Robert had
not replied when John spoke to him. 'Well,' said John's secret
heart--and John's secret heart ought to have known better, as it
was older than its brother heart--'I'll teach him a lesson. I
won't speak until he does.' And Robert's secret heart had somehow
divined this idiotic resolution, and had said: 'We shall see.'
Maggie had been the first to notice the stubborn silence. Then
their friends noticed it, especially Mr Liversage, the solicitor,
their most intimate friend. But you are not to suppose that
anybody protested very strongly. For John and Robert were not the
kind of men with whom liberties may be taken; and, moreover,
Bursley was slightly amused--at the beginning. It assumed the
attitude of a disinterested spectator at a fight. It wondered who
would win. Of course, it called both the brothers fools, yet in a
tone somewhat sympathetic, because such a thing as had occurred to
the Hessians might well occur to any man gifted with the true
Bursley spirit. There is this to be said for a Bursley man: Having
made his bed, he will lie on it, and he will not complain.

The Hessians suffered severely by their self-imposed dumbness, but
they suffered like Stoics. Maggie also suffered, and Maggie would
not stand it. Maggie it was who had invented the slate. Indeed,
they had heard some plain truths from that stout, bustling woman.
They had not yielded, but they had accepted the slate in order to
minimize the inconvenience to Maggie, and afterwards they deigned
to make use of it for their own purposes. As for friends--friends
accustomed themselves to the status quo. There came a time when
the spectacle of two men chattering to everybody else in a
company, and not saying a word to each other, no longer appealed
to Bursley's sense of humour. The silent scenes at which Maggie
assisted every day did not, either, appeal to Maggie's sense of
humour, because she had none. So the famous feud grew into a sort
of elemental fact of Nature. It was tolerated as the weather is
tolerated. The brothers acquired pride in it; even Bursley
regarded it as an interesting municipal curiosity. The sole
imperfection in a lovely and otherwise perfect quarrel was that
John and Robert, being both employed at Roycroft's Majolica
Manufactory, the one as works manager and the other as commercial
traveller, were obliged to speak to each other occasionally in the
way of business. Artistically, this was a pity, though they did
speak very sternly and distantly. The partial truce necessitated
by Roycroft's was confined strictly to Roycroft's. And when Robert
was not on his journeys, these two tall, strong, dark, bearded men
might often be seen of a night walking separately and doggedly
down Oldcastle Street from the works, within five yards of each
other.

And no one suggested the lunatic asylum. Such is the force of
pride, of rank stupidity, and of habit.

The slate-scratching was scarcely over that evening when Mr Powell
Liversage appeared. He was a golden-haired man, with a jolly face,
lighter and shorter in structure than the two brothers. His
friendship with them dated from school-days, and it had survived
even the entrance of Liversage into a learned profession.
Liversage, who, being a bachelor like the Hessians, had many
unoccupied evenings, came to see the brothers regularly every
Saturday night, and one or other of them dropped in upon him most
Wednesdays; but this particular night was a Thursday.

'How do?' John greeted him succinctly between two puffs of a pipe.

'How do?' replied Liversage.

'How do, Pow?' Robert greeted him in turn, also between two puffs
of a pipe.

And 'How do, little 'un?' replied Liversage.

A chair was indicated to him, and he sat down, and Robert poured
out some coffee into a third cup which Maggie had brought. John
pushed away the extra special of the Staffordshire Signal, which
he had been reading.

'What's up these days?' John demanded.

'Well,' said Liversage, and both brothers noticed that he was
rather ill at ease, instead of being humorous and lightly caustic
as usual, 'the will's turned up.'

'The devil it has!' John exclaimed. 'When?'

'This afternoon.'

And then, as there was a pause, Liversage added: 'Yes, my sons,
the will's turned up.'

'But where, you cuckoo, sitting there like that?' asked Robert.
'Where?'

'It was in that registered letter addressed to your sister that
the Post Office people wouldn't hand over until we'd taken out
letters of administration.'

'Well, I'm dashed!' muttered John. 'Who'd have thought of that?
You've got the will, then?'

Liversage nodded.

The Hessians had an elder sister, Mrs Bott, widow of a colour
merchant, and Mrs Bott had died suddenly three months ago, the
night after a journey to Manchester. (Even at the funeral the
brothers had scandalized the town by not speaking to each other.)
Mrs Bott had wealth, wit, and wisdom, together with certain
peculiarities, of which one was an excessive secrecy. It was known
that she had made a will, because she had more than once notified
the fact, in a tone suggestive of highly important issues, but the
will had refused to be found. So Mr Liversage had been instructed
to take out letters of administration of the estate, which, in the
continued absence of the will, would be divided equally between
the brothers. And twelve or thirteen thousand pounds may be
compared to a financial beef-steak that cuts up very handsomely
for two persons. The carving-knife was about to descend on its
succulence, when, lo! the will!

'How came the will to be in the post?' asked Robert.

'The handwriting on the envelope was your sister's,' said
Liversage. 'And the package was posted in Manchester. Very
probably she had taken the will to Manchester to show it to a
lawyer or something of that sort, and then she was afraid of
losing it on the journey back, and so she sent it to herself by
registered post. But before it arrived, of course, she was dead.'

'That wasn't a bad scheme of poor Mary Ann's!' John commented.

'It was just like her!' said Robert, speaking pointedly to
Liversage. 'But what an odd thing!'

Now, both these men were, no doubt excusably, agonized by
curiosity to learn the contents of the will. But would either of
them be the first to express that curiosity? Never in this world!
Not for the fortune itself! To do so would scarcely have been
Bursleyish. It would certainly not have been Hessianlike. So
Liversage was obliged at length to say--

'I reckon I'd better read you the will, eh?'

The brothers nodded.

'Mind you,' said Liversage, 'it's not my will. I've had nothing to
do with it; so kindly keep your hair on. As a matter of fact, she
must have drawn it up herself. It's not drawn properly at all, but
it's witnessed all right, and it'll hold water, just as well as if
the blooming Lord Chancellor had fixed it up for her in person.'

He produced the document and read, awkwardly and self-
consciously--

'"This is my will. You are both of you extremely foolish, John and
Robert, and I've often told you so. Nobody has ever understood,
and nobody ever will understand, why you quarrelled like that over
Annie Emery. You are punishing yourselves, but you are punishing
her as well, and it isn't fair her waiting all these years. So I
give all my estate, no matter what it is, to whichever of you
marries Annie. And I hope this will teach you a lesson. You need
it more than you need my money. But you must be married within a
year of my death. And if the one that marries cares to give five
thousand pounds or so to the other, of course there's nothing to
prevent him. This is just a hint. And if you don't either of you
marry Annie within a year, then I just leave everything I have to
Miss Annie Emery (spinster), stationer and fancy-goods dealer,
Duck Bank, Bursley. She deserves something for her disappointment,
and she shall have it. Mr Liversage, solicitor, must kindly be my
executor. And I commit my soul to God, hoping for a blessed
resurrection. 20th January, 1896. Signed Mary Ann Bott, widow." As
I told you, the witnessing is in order,' Liversage finished.

'Give it here,' said John shortly, and scanned the sheet of paper.

And Robert actually walked round the table and looked over his
brother's shoulder--ample proof that he was terrifically moved.

'And do you mean to tell me that a will like that is good in law?'
exclaimed John.

'Of course it's good in law!' Liversage replied. 'Legal
phraseology is a useful thing, and it often saves trouble in the
end; but it ain't indispensable, you know.'

'Humph!' was Robert's comment as he resumed his seat and relighted
his pipe.

All three men were nervous. Each was afraid to speak, afraid even
to meet the eyes of the other two. An unmajestic silence followed.

'Well, I'll be off, I think,' Liversage remarked at length with
difficulty.

He rose.

'I say,' Robert stopped him. 'Better not say anything about this
to Miss--to Annie, eh?'

'I will say nothing,' agreed Liversage (infamously and
unprofessionally concealing the fact that he had already said
something).

And he departed.

The brothers sat in flustered meditation over the past and the
future.

Ten years before, Annie Emery had been an orphan of twenty-three,
bravely starting in business for herself amid the plaudits of the
admiring town; and John had fallen in love with her courage and
her sense and her feminine charm. But alas, as Ovid points out,
how difficult it is for a woman to please only one man! Robert
also had fallen in love with Annie. Each brother had accused the
other of underhand and unbrotherly practices in the pursuit of
Annie. Each was profoundly hurt by the accusations, and each, in
the immense fatuity of his pride, had privately sworn to prove his
innocence by having nothing more to do with Annie. Such is life!
Such is man! Such is the terrible egoism of man! And thus it was
that, for the sake of wounded pride, John and Robert not only did
not speak to one another for ten years, but they spoilt at least
one of their lives; and they behaved ignobly to Annie, who would
certainly have married either one or the other of them.

At two o'clock in the morning John pulled a coin out of his pocket
and made the gesture of tossing.

'Who shall go first!' he explained.

Robert had a queer sensation in his spine as his elder brother
spoke to him for the first time in ten years. He wanted to reply
vocally. He had a most imperious desire to reply vocally. But he
could not. Something stronger even than the desire prevented his
tongue from moving.

John tossed the coin--it was a sovereign--and covered it with his
hands.

'Tail!' Robert murmured, somewhat hoarsely.

But it was head.

Then they went to bed.




II


The side door of Miss Emery's shop was in Brick Passage, and not
in the main street, so that a man, even a man of commanding
stature and formidable appearance, might by insinuating himself
into Brick Street, off King Street, and then taking the passage
from the quieter end, arrive at it without attracting too much
attention. This course was adopted by John Hessian. From the
moment when he quitted his own house that Friday evening in June
he had been subject to the delusion that the collective eye of
Bursley was upon him. As a matter of fact, the collective eye of
Bursley is much too large and important to occupy itself
exclusively with a single individual. Bursley is not a village,
and let no one think it. Nevertheless, John was subject to the
delusion.

The shop was shut, as he knew it would be. But the curtained
window of the parlour, between the side-door and the small
shuttered side-window of the shop, gave a strange suggestion of
interesting virgin spotless domesticity within. John cast a
fearful eye on the main thoroughfare. Nobody seemed to be passing.
The chapel-keeper of the Wesleyan Chapel on the opposite side of
Trafalgar Road was refreshing the massive Corinthian portico of
that fane, and paying no regard whatever to the temple of Eros
which Miss Emery's shop had suddenly become.

So John knocked.

'I am a fool!' his thought ran as he knocked.

Because he did not know what he was about. He had won the toss,
and with it the right to approach Annie Emery before his brother.
But what then? Well, he did desire to marry her, quite as much for
herself as for his sister's fortune. But what then? How was he
going to explain the tepidity, the desertion, the long sin against
love of ten years? In short, how was he going to explain the
inexplicable? He could decidedly do nothing that evening except
make a blundering ass of himself. And how soon would Robert have
the right to come along and say HIS say? That point had not been
settled. Points so extremely delicate cannot be settled on a
slate, and he had not dared to broach it viva voce to his younger
brother. He had been too afraid of a rebuff.

He then hoped that Annie's servant would tell him that Annie was
out.

Annie, however, took him at a disadvantage by opening the door
herself.

'Well, MR HESSIAN!' she exclaimed, her face bursting into a swift
and welcoming smile.

'I was just passing,' the donkey in him blundered forth. 'And I
thought--'

However, in fifteen seconds he was on the domestic side of the
sitting-room window, and seated in the antimacassared armchair
between the fire-place and the piano, and Annie had taken his hat
and told him that her servant was out for the evening.

'But I'm disturbing your supper, Miss Emery,' he said. Flurried
though he was, he could not fail to notice the white embroidered
cloth spread diagonally on the table, and the cold meat and the
pastry and the glittering cutlery and crystal thereon.

'Not at all,' she replied. 'You haven't had supper yet, I expect?'

'No,' he said, not thinking.

'It will be nice of you to help me to eat mine,' said she.

'Oh! But really--'

But she got plates and things out of the cupboard below the
bookcase--and there he was! She would take no refusal. It was
wondrous.

'I'm awfully glad I came now,' his thought ran; I'm managing it
rather well.'

And--

'Poor Bob!'

His sole discomfort was that he could not invent a sufficiently
ingenious explanation of his call. You can't tell a woman you've
called to make love to her, and when your previous call happens to
have been ten years ago, some kind of an explanation does seem to
be demanded. Ultimately, as Annie was so very pleased to see him,
so friendly, so feminine, so equal to the occasion, he decided to
let his presence in her abode that night stand as one of those
central facts in existence that need no explanation. And they went
on talking and eating till the dusk deepened and Annie lit the gas
and drew the blind.

He watched her on the sly as she moved about the room. He decided
that she did not appear a day older. There was the same plump,
erect figure, the same neatness, the same fair skin and fair hair,
the same little nose, the same twinkle in the eye--only perhaps
the twinkle in the eye was a trifle less cruel than it used to be.
She was not a day older. (In this he was of course utterly
mistaken; she was ten years older, she was thirty-three, with ten
years of successful commercial experience behind her; she would
never be twenty-three again. Still she was a most desirable woman,
and a woman infinitely beyond his deserts.) Her air of general
capability impressed him. And with that there was mingled a
strange softness, a marvellous hint of a concealed wish to
surrender.... Well, she made him feel big and masculine--in brief,
a man.

He regretted the lost ten years. His present way of life seemed
intolerable to him. The new heaven opened its gate and gave
glimpses of paradise. After all, he felt himself well qualified
for that paradise. He felt that he had all along been a woman's
man, without knowing it.

'By Jove!' his thought ran. 'At this rate I might propose to her
in a week or two.'

And again--

'Poor old Bobbie!'

A quarter of an hour later, in some miraculous manner, they were
more intimate than they had ever been, much more intimate. He
revised his estimate of the time that must elapse before he might
propose to her. In another five minutes he was fighting hard
against a mad impulse to propose to her on the spot. And then the
fight was over, and he had lost. He proposed to her under the
rose-coloured shade of the Welsbach light.

She drew away, as though shot.

And with the rapidity of lightning, in the silence which followed,
he went back to his original criticism of himself, that he was a
fool. Naturally she would request him to leave. She would accuse
him of effrontery.

Her lips trembled. He prepared to rise.

'It's so sudden!' she said.

Bliss! Glory! Celestial joy! Her words were at least equivalent to
an absolution of his effrontery! She would accept! She would
accept! He jumped up and approached her. But she jumped up too and
retreated. He was not to win his prize so easily.

'Please sit down,' she murmured. 'I must think it over,' she said,
apparently mastering herself. 'Shall you be at chapel next Sunday
morning?'

'Yes,' he answered.

'If I am there, and if I am wearing white roses in my hat, it will
mean--' She dropped her eyes.

'Yes?' he queried.

And she nodded.

'And supposing you aren't there?'

'Then the Sunday after,' she said.

He thanked her in his Hessian style.

'I prefer that way of telling you,' she smiled demurely. 'It will
avoid the necessity for another--so much--you understand?...'

'Quite so, quite so!' he agreed. 'I quite understand.'

'And if I DO see those roses,' he went on, 'I shall take upon
myself to drop in for tea, may I?'

She paused.

'In any case, you mustn't speak to me coming out of chapel,
PLEASE.'

As he walked home down Oldcastle Street he said to himself that
the age of miracles was not past; also that, after all, he was not
so old as the tale of his years would mathematically indicate.




III


Her absence from chapel on the next Sunday disagreed with him.
However, Robert was away nearly all the week, and he had the house
to himself to dream in. It frequently happened to him to pass by
Miss Emery's shop, but he caught no glimpse of her, and though he
really was in serious need of writing-paper and envelopes, he
dared not enter. Robert returned on the Friday.

On the morning of the second Sunday, John got up early, in order
to cope with a new necktie that he had purchased in Hanbridge.
Nevertheless he found Robert afoot before him, and Robert, by some
unlucky chance, was wearing not merely a new necktie, but a new
suit of clothes. They breakfasted in their usual august silence,
and John gathered from a remark of Robert's to Maggie when she
brought in the boots that Robert meant to go to chapel. Now,
Robert, being a commercial traveller and therefore a bit of a
caution, did not attend chapel with any remarkable assiduity. And
John, in the privacy of his own mind, blamed him for having been
so clumsy as to choose that particular morning for breaking the
habits of a lifetime. Still, the presence of Robert in the pew
could not prejudicially affect John, and so there was no genuine
cause for gloominess.

After a time it became apparent that each was waiting for the
other to go. John began to get annoyed. At last he made the plunge
and went. Turning his head halfway up Oldcastle Street, opposite
the mansion which is called 'Miss Peel's', he perceived Robert
fifty yards behind. It was a glorious June day.

He blushed as he entered chapel. If he was nervous, it may be
accorded to him as excuse that the happiness of his life depended
on what he should see within the next few minutes. However, he
felt pretty sure, though it was exciting all the same.

To reach the Hessian pew he was obliged to pass Miss Emery's. And
it was empty! Robert arrived.

The organist finished the voluntary. The leading tenor of the
choir put up the number of the first hymn. The minister ascended
the staircase of the great mahogany pulpit, and prayed silently,
and arranged his papers in the leaves of the hymn-book, and
glanced about to see who was there and who was presumably still in
bed, and coughed; and then Miss Annie Emery sailed in with that
air of false calm which is worn by the experienced traveller who
catches a train by the fifth of a second. The service commenced.

John looked.

She was wearing white roses. There could be no mistake as to that.
There were about a hundred and fifty-five white roses in the
garden of her hat.

What a thrill ran through John's heart! He had won Annie, and he
had won the fortune. Yes, he would give Robert the odd five
thousand pounds. His state of mind might even lead him to make it
guineas. He heard not a word of the sermon, and throughout the
service he rose up and sat down several instants after the rest of
the congregation, because he was so absent-minded.

After service he waited for everybody else to leave, in order not
to break his promise to the divine Annie. So did Robert. This ill-
timed rudeness on Robert's part somewhat retarded the growth of a
young desire in John's heart to make friends with poor Bob. Then
he got up and left, and Robert followed.

They dined in silence, John deciding that he would begin his
overtures of friendship after he had seen Annie, and could tell
Robert that he was formally engaged. The brothers ate little. They
both improved their minds during their repast--John with the
Christian Commonwealth, and Robert with the Saturday cricket
edition of the Signal (I regret it).

Then, after pipes, they both went out for a walk, naturally not in
the same direction. The magnificence of the weather filled them
both with the joy of life. As for John, he went out for a walk
simply because he could not contain himself within the house. He
could not wait immovable till four-thirty, the hour at which he
meant to call on Annie for tea and the betrothal kiss. Therefore
he ascended to Hillport and wandered as far as Oldcastle, all in a
silk hat and a frock-coat.

It was precisely half-past four as he turned, unassumingly, from
Brick Street into Brick Passage, and so approached the side door
of Annie Emery's. And his astonishment and anger were immense when
he saw Robert, likewise in silk hat and frock-coat, penetrating
into Brick Passage from the other end.

They met, and their inflamed spirits collided.

'What's the meaning of this?' John demanded, furious; and,
simultaneously, Robert demanded: 'What in Hades are YOU doing
here?'

Only Sunday and the fine clothes and the proximity to Annie
prevented actual warfare.

'I'm calling on Annie,' said John.

'So am I,' said Robert.

'Well, you're too late,' said John.

'Oh, I'm too late, am I?' said Robert, with a disdainful laugh.
Thanks!'

'I tell you you're too late,' said John. 'You may as well know at
once that I've proposed to Annie and she's accepted me.'

'I like that! I like that!' said Robert.

'Don't shout!' said John.

'I'm not shouting,' said Robert. 'But you may as well know that
you're mistaken, my boy. It's me that's proposed to Annie and been
accepted. You must be off your chump.'

'When did you propose to her?' said John.

'On Friday, if you must know,' said Robert.

'And she accepted you at once?' said John.

'No. She said that if she was wearing white roses in her hat this
morning at chapel, that would mean she accepted,' said Robert.

'Liar!' said John.

'I suppose you'll admit she WAS wearing white roses in her hat?'
said Robert, controlling himself.

'Liar!' said John, and continued breathless: 'That was what she
said to ME. She must have told you that white roses meant a
refusal.'

'Oh no, she didn't!' said Robert, quailing secretly, but keeping
up a formidable show of courage. 'You're an old fool!' he added
vindictively.

They were both breathing hard, and staring hard at each other.

'Come away,' said John. 'Come away! We can't talk here. She may
look out of the window.'

So they went away. They walked very quickly home, and, once in the
parlour, they began to have it out. And, before they had done, the
reading of cricket news on Sunday was as nothing compared to the
desecrating iniquity which they committed. The scene was not such
as can be decently recounted. But about six o'clock Maggie
entered, and, at considerable personal risk, brought them back to
a sense of what was due to their name, the town, and the day. She
then stated that she would not remain in such a house, and she
departed.




IV


'But whatever made you do it, dearest?'

These words were addressed to Annie Emery on the glorious summer
evening which closed that glorious summer day, and they were
addressed to her by no other person than Powell Liversage. The
pair were in the garden of the house in Trafalgar Road occupied by
Mr Liversage and his mother, and they looked westwards over the
distant ridge of Hillport, where the moon was setting.

'Whatever made me do it!' repeated Annie, and the twinkle in her
eye had that charming cruelty which John had missed. 'Did they not
deserve it? Of course, I can talk to you now with perfect freedom,
can't I? Well, what do you THINK of it? Here for ten years neither
one nor the other does more than recognize me in the street, and
then all of a sudden they come down on me like that--simply
because there's a question of money. I couldn't have believed men
could be so stupid--no, I really couldn't! They're friends of
yours, Powell, I know, but--however, that's no matter. But it was
too ridiculously easy to lead them on! They'd swallow any
flattery. I just did it to see what they'd do, and I think I
arranged it pretty well. I quite expected they would call about
the same time, and then shouldn't I have given them my mind!
Unfortunately they met outside, and got very hot--I saw them from
the bedroom window--and went away.'

'You mustn't forget, my dear girl,' said Liversage, 'that it was
you they quarrelled about. I don't want to defend 'em for a
minute, but it wasn't altogether the money that sent them to you;
it was more that the money gave them an excuse for coming!'

'It was a very bad excuse, then!' said Annie.

'Agreed!' Liversage murmured.

The moon was extremely lovely and romantic against the distant
spire of Hillport Church, and its effect on the couple was just
what might have been anticipated.

'Perhaps I'm sorry,' Annie admitted at length, with a charming
grimace.

'Oh! I don't think there's anything to be SORRY about,' said
Liversage. 'But of course they'll think I've had a hand in it. You
see, I've never breathed a word to them about--about my feelings
towards you.'

'No?'

'No. It would have been rather a delicate subject, you see, with
them. And I'm sure they'll be staggered when they know that we got
engaged last night. They'll certainly say I've--er--been after
you for the--No, they won't. They're decent chaps, really; very
decent.'

'Anyhow, you may be sure, dear,' said Annie stiffly, 'that _I_
shan't rob them of their vile money! Nothing would induce me to
touch it!'

'Of course not, dearest!' said Liversage--or, rather the finer
part of him said it; the baser part somewhat regretted that vile
twelve thousand or so. (I must be truthful.)

He took her hand again.

At the same moment old Mrs Liversage came hastening down the
garden, and Liversage dropped the hand.

'Powell,' she said. 'Here's John Hessian, and he wants to see
you!'

'The dickens!' exclaimed Liversage, glancing at Annie.

'I must go,' said Annie. 'I shall go by the fields. Good night,
dear Mrs Liversage.'

'Wait ten seconds,' Liversage pleaded, 'and I'll be with you.' And
he ran off.

John, haggard and undone, was awaiting him in the drawing-room.

'Pow,' said he, 'I've had a fearful row with Bob, and I can't
possibly sleep in our house tonight. Don't talk to me. But let me
have one of the beds in your spare room, will you? There's a good
chap.'

'Why, of course, Johnnie,' said Liversage. 'Of course.'

'And I'll go right to bed now,' said John.

An hour later, after Powell Liversage had seen his affianced to
her abode and returned home, and after his mother had gone to bed,
there was a knock at the front door, and Liversage opened to
Robert Hessian.

'Look here, Pow,' said Robert, whose condition was deplorable, 'I
want to sleep here tonight. Do you mind? Fact is, I've had a devil
of a shindy with Jack, and Maggie's run off, and, anyhow, I
couldn't possibly stop in the same house with Jack tonight.'

'But what--?'

'See here,' said Robert. 'I can't talk. Just let me have a bed in
your spare room. I'm sure you mother won't mind.'

'Why, certainly,' said Liversage.

He lit a candle, escorted Robert upstairs, opened the door of the
spare room, gave the candle to Robert, pushed him in, said 'Good
night,' and shut the door.

What a night!




THE NINETEENTH HAT


A dramatic moment was about to arrive in the joint career of
Stephen Cheswardine and Vera his wife. The motor-car stood by the
side of the pavement of the Strand, Torquay, that resort of
southern wealth and fashion. The chauffeur, Felix, had gone into
the automobile shop to procure petrol. Mr Cheswardine looking
longer than ever in his long coat, was pacing the busy footpath.
Mrs Cheswardine, her beauty obscured behind a flowing brown veil,
was lolling in the tonneau, very pleased to be in the tonneau,
very pleased to be observed by all Torquay in the tonneau, very
satisfied with her husband, and with the Napier car, and
especially with Felix, now buying petrol. Suddenly Mrs Cheswardine
perceived that next door but one to the automobile shop was a
milliner's. She sat up and gazed. According to a card in the
window an 'after-season sale' was in progress that June day at the
milliner's. There were two rows of hats in the window, each hat
plainly ticketed. Mrs Cheswardine descended from the car, crossed
the pavement, and gave to the window the whole of her attention.

She sniffed at most of the hats. But one of them, of green straw,
with a large curving green wing on either side of the crown, and a
few odd bits of fluffiness here and there, pleased her. It was
Parisian. She had been to Paris--once. An 'after-season' sale at a
little shop in Torquay would not, perhaps, seem the most likely
place in the world to obtain a chic hat; it is, moreover, a
notorious fact that really chic hats cannot be got for less than
three pounds, and this hat was marked ten shillings. Nevertheless,
hats are most mysterious things. Their quality of being chic is
more often the fruit of chance than of design, particularly in
England. You never know when nor where you may light on a good
hat. Vera considered that she had lighted on one.

'They're probably duck's feathers dyed,' she said to herself. 'But
it's a darling of a hat and it will suit me to a T.'

As for the price, when once you have taken the ticket off a hat
the secret of its price is gone forever. Many a hat less smart
than this hat has been marked in Bond Street at ten guineas
instead of ten shillings. Hats are like oil-paintings--they are
worth what people will give for them.

So Vera approached her husband, and said, with an enchanting,
innocent smile--

'Lend me half-a-sovereign, will you, doggie?'

She called him doggie in those days because he was a sort of dog-
man, a sort of St Bernard, shaggy and big, with faithful eyes; and
he enjoyed being called doggie.

But on this occasion he was not to be bewitched by the enchanting
innocence of the smile nor by the endearing epithet. He refused to
relax his features.

'You aren't going to buy another hat, are you?' he asked sternly,
challengingly.

The smile disappeared from her face, and she pulled her slim young
self together.

'Yes,' she replied harshly.

The battle was definitely engaged. You may inquire why a man
financially capable of hiring a 20-24 h.p. Napier car, with a
French chauffeur named Felix, for a week or more, should grudge
his wife ten shillings for a hat. Well, you are to comprehend that
it was not a question of ten shillings, it was a question of
principle. Vera already had eighteen hats, and it had been clearly
understood between them that no more money should be spent on
attire for quite a long time. Vera was entirely in the wrong. She
knew it, and he knew it. But she wanted just that hat.

And they were on their honeymoon, you know: which enormously
intensified the poignancy of the drama. They had been married only
six days; in three days more they were to return to the Five
Towns, where Stephen was solidly established as an earthenware
manufacturer. You who have been through them are aware what
ticklish things honeymoons are, and how much depends on the
tactfulness of the more tactful of the two parties. Stephen,
thirteen years older than Vera, was the more tactful of the two
parties. He had married a beautiful and elegant woman, with vast
unexploited capacities for love in her heart. But he had married a
capricious woman, and he knew it. So far he had yielded to her
caprices, as well became him; but in the depths of his masculine
mind he had his own private notion as to the identity of the
person who should ultimately be master in their house, and he had
decided only the previous night that when the next moment for
being firm arrived, firm he would be.

And now the moment was upon him. It was their eyes that fought,
silently, bitterly. There is a great deal of bitterness in true
love.

Stephen perceived the affair broadly, in all its aspects. He was
older and much more experienced than Vera, and therefore he was
responsible for the domestic peace, and for her happiness, and for
his own, and for appearances, and for various other things. He
perceived the moral degradation which would be involved in an open
quarrel during the honeymoon. He perceived the difficulties of a
battle in the street, in such a select and prim street as the
Strand, Torquay, where the very backbone of England's
respectability goes shopping. He perceived Vera's vast ignorance
of life. He perceived her charm, and her naughtiness, and all her
defects. And he perceived, further, that, this being the first
conflict of their married existence, it was of the highest
importance that he should emerge from it the victor. To allow Vera
to triumph would gravely menace their future tranquillity and
multiply the difficulties which her adorable capriciousness would
surely cause. He could not afford to let her win. It was his duty,
not merely to himself but to her, to conquer. But, on the other
hand, he had never fully tested her powers of sheer obstinacy, her
willingness to sacrifice everything for the satisfaction of a
whim; and he feared these powers. He had a dim suspicion that Vera
was one of that innumerable class of charming persons who are
perfectly delicious and perfectly sweet so long as they have
precisely their own way--and no longer.

Vera perceived only two things. She perceived the hat--although
her back was turned towards it--and she perceived the half-
sovereign--although it was hidden in Stephen's pocket.

'But, my dear,' Stephen protested, 'you know--'

'Will you lend me half-a-sovereign?' Vera repeated, in a glacial
tone. The madness of a desired hat had seized her. She was a
changed Vera. She was not a loving woman, not a duteous young
wife, nor a reasoning creature. She was an embodied instinct for
hats.

'It was most distinctly agreed,' Stephen murmured, restraining his
anger.

Just then Felix came out of the shop, followed by a procession of
three men bearing cans of petrol. If Stephen was Napoleon and Vera
Wellington, Felix was the Blucher of this deplorable altercation.
Impossible to have a row--yes, a row--with your wife in the
presence of your chauffeur, with his French ideas of chivalry.

'Will you lend me half-a-sovereign?' Vera reiterated, in the same
glacial tone, not caring twopence for the presence of Felix.

And Stephen, by means of an interminable silver chain, drew his
sovereign-case from the profundity of his hip-pocket; it was like
drawing a bucket out of a well. And he gave Vera half-a-
sovereign; and THAT was like knotting the rope for his own
execution.

And while Felix and his three men poured gallons and gallons of
petrol into a hole under the cushions of the tonneau, Stephen
swallowed his wrath on the pavement, and Vera remained hidden in
the shop. And the men were paid and went off, and Felix took his
seat ready to start. And then Vera came out of the hat place, and
the new green hat was on her head, and the old one in a bag in her
pretty hands.

'What do you think of my new hat, Felix?' she smiled to the
favoured chauffeur; 'I hope it pleases you.'

Felix said that it did.

In these days, chauffeurs are a great race and a privileged. They
have usurped the position formerly held by military officers.
Women fawn on them, take fancies to them, and spoil them. They can
do no wrong in the eyes of the sex. Vera had taken a fancy to
Felix. Perhaps it was because he had been in a cavalry regiment;
perhaps it was merely the curve of his moustache. Who knows? And
Felix treated her as only a Frenchman can treat a pretty woman,
with a sort of daring humility, with worship--in short, with true
Gallic appreciation. Vera much enjoyed Gallic appreciation. It
ravished her to think that she was the light of poor Felix's
existence, an unattainable star for him. Of course, Stephen didn't
mind. That is to say, he didn't really mind.

The car rushed off in the direction of Exeter, homewards.

That day, by means of Felix's expert illegal driving, they got as
far as Bath; and there were no breakdowns. The domestic atmosphere
in the tonneau was slightly disturbed at the beginning of the run,
but it soon improved. Indeed, after lunch Stephen grew positively
bright and gay. At tea, which they took just outside Bristol, he
actually went so far as to praise the hat. He said that it was a
very becoming hat, and also that it was well worth the money. In a
word, he signified to Vera that their first battle had been fought
and that Vera had won, and that he meant to make the best of it
and accept the situation.

Vera was naturally charmed, and when she was charmed she was
charming. She said to herself that she had always known that she
could manage a man. The recipe for managing a man was firmness
coupled with charm. But there must be no half measures, no
hesitations. She had conquered. She saw her future life stretching
out before her like a beautiful vista. And Stephen was to be her
slave, and she would have nothing to do but to give rein to her
caprices, and charm Stephen when he happened to deserve it.

But the next morning the hat had vanished out of the bedroom of
the exclusive hotel at Bath. Vera could not believe that it had
vanished; but it had. It was not in the hat-box, nor on the couch,
nor under the couch, nor perched on a knob of the bedstead, nor in
any of the spots where it ought to have been. When she realized
that as a fact it had vanished she was cross, and on inquiring
from Stephen what trick he had played with her hat, she succeeded
in conveying to Stephen that she was cross. Stephen was still in
bed, comatose. The tone of his reply startled her.

'Look here, child,' he said, or rather snapped--he had never been
snappish before--'since you took the confounded thing off last
evening I haven't seen it and I haven't touched it, and I don't
know where it is.'

'But you must--'

'I gave in to you about the hat,' Stephen continued to snap,
'though I knew I was a fool to do so, and I consider I behaved
pretty pleasantly over it too. But I don't want any more scenes.
If you've lost it, that's not my fault.'

Such speeches took Vera very much aback. And she, too, in her
turn, now saw the dangers of a quarrel, and in this second
altercation it was Stephen who won. He said he would not even
mention the disappearance of the hat to the hotel manager. He was
sure it must be in one of Vera's trunks. And in the end Vera
performed that day's trip in another hat.

They reached the Five Towns much earlier than they had
anticipated--before lunch on the ninth day, whereas the new
servants in their new house at Bursley were only expecting them
for dinner. So Stephen had the agreeable idea of stopping the car
in front of the new Hotel Metropole at Hanbridge and lunching
there. Precisely opposite this new and luxurious caravanserai (as
they love to call it in the Five Towns) is the imposing garage and
agency where Stephen had hired the Napier car. Felix said he would
lunch hurriedly in order to transact certain business at the
garage before taking them on to Bursley. After lunch, however,
Vera caught him transacting business with a chambermaid in a
corridor. Shocking though the revelation is, it needs to be said
that Felix was kissing the chambermaid. The blow to Mrs
Cheswardine was severe. She had imagined that Felix spent all his
time in gazing up to her as an unattainable star.

She spoke to Stephen about it, in the accents of disillusion.
'What?' cried Stephen. 'Don't you know? They're engaged to be
married. Her name is Mary Callear. She used to be parlourmaid at
Uncle John's at Oldcastle. But hotels pay higher wages.'

Felix engaged to a parlourmaid! Felix, who had always seemed to
Vera a gentleman in disguise! Yes, it was indeed a blow!

But balm awaited Vera at her new home in Bursley. A parcel,
obviously containing a cardboard box, had arrived for Stephen. He
opened it, and the lost hat was inside it. Stephen read a note,
and explained that the hotel people at Bath had found it and
forwarded it. He began to praise the hat anew. He made Vera put it
on instantly, and seemed delighted. So much so that Vera went out
to the porch to say good-bye to Felix in a most forgiving frame of
mind. She forgave Felix for being engaged to the chambermaid.

And there was the chambermaid walking up the drive, quite calmly!
Felix, also quite calmly, asked Vera to excuse him, and told the
chambermaid to get into the car and sit beside him. He then
informed Vera that he had to go with the car immediately to
Oldcastle, and was taking Miss Callear with him for the run, this
being Miss Callear's weekly afternoon off. Miss Callear had come
to Bursley in the electric tram.

Vera shook with swift anger; not at Felix's information, but the
patent fact that Mary Callear was wearing a hat which was the
exact replica of the hat on Vera's own head. And Mary Callear was
seated like a duchess in the car, while Vera stood on the gravel.
And two of Vera's new servants were there to see that Vera was
wearing a hat precisely equivalent to the hat of a chambermaid!

She went abruptly into the house and sought for Stephen--as with a
sword. But Stephen was not discoverable. She ran to her elegant
new bedroom and shut herself in. She understood the plot. She had
plenty of wit. Stephen had concerted it with Felix. In spite of
Stephen's allegations of innocence, the hat had been sent
somewhere--probably to Brunt's at Hanbridge--to be copied at
express speed, and Stephen had presented the copy to Felix, in
order that Felix might present it to Mary Callear the chambermaid,
and the meeting in the front garden had been deliberately arranged
by that odious male, Stephen. Truly, she had not believed Stephen
capable of such duplicity and cruelty.

She removed the hat, gazed at it, and then tore it to pieces and
scattered the pieces on the carpet.

An hour later Stephen crept into the bedroom and beheld the
fragments, and smiled.

'Stephen,' she exclaimed, 'you're a horrid, cruel brute.' 'I know
I am,' said Stephen. 'You ought to have found that out long
since.'

'I won't love you any more. It's all over,' she sobbed. But he
just kissed her.




VERA'S FIRST CHRISTMAS ADVENTURE

I


Five days before Christmas, Cheswardine came home to his wife from
a week's sojourn in London on business. Vera, in her quality of
the best-dressed woman in Bursley, met him on the doorstep (or
thereabouts) of their charming but childless home, attired in a
teagown that would have ravished a far less impressionable male
than her husband; while he, in his quality of a prosaic and
flourishing earthenware manufacturer, pretended to take the
teagown as a matter of course, and gave her the sober, solid kiss
of a man who has been married six years and is getting used to it.

Still, the teagown had pleased him, and by certain secret symptoms
Vera knew that it had pleased him. She hoped much from that
teagown. She hoped that he had come home in a more pacific temper
than he had shown when he left her, and that she would carry her
point after all.

Now, naturally, when a husband in easy circumstances, the
possessor of a pretty and pampered wife, spends a week in London
and returns five days before Christmas, certain things are rightly
and properly to be expected from him. It would need an astounding
courage, an amazing lack of a sense of the amenity of conjugal
existence in such a husband to enable him to disappoint such
reasonable expectations. And Cheswardine, though capable of
pulling the curb very tight on the caprices of his wife, was a
highly decent fellow. He had no intention to disappoint; he knew
his duty.

So that during afternoon tea with the teagown in a cosy corner of
the great Chippendale drawing-room he began to unfasten a small
wooden case which he had brought into the house in his own hand,
opened it with considerable precaution, making a fine mess of
packing-stuff on the carpet, and gradually drew to light a pair of
vases of Venetian glass. He put them on the mantlepiece.

'There!' he said, proudly, and with a virtuous air.

They were obviously costly antique vases, exquisite in form,
exquisite in the graduated tints of their pale blue and rose.

'Seventeenth century!' he said.

'They're very nice,' Vera agreed, with a show of enthusiasm. What
are they for?'

'Your Christmas present,' Cheswardine explained, and added 'my
dear!'

'Oh, Stephen!' she murmured.

A kiss on these occasions is only just, and Cheswardine had one.

'Duveens told me they were quite unique,' he said, modestly; 'and
I believe 'em.'

You might imagine that a pair of Venetian vases of the seventeenth
century, stated by Duveens to be unique, would have satisfied a
woman who had a generous dress allowance and lacked absolutely
nothing that was essential. But Vera was not satisfied. She was,
on the contrary, profoundly disappointed. For the presence of
those vases proved that she had not carried her point. They
deprived her of hope. The unpleasantness before Cheswardine went
to London had been more or less a propos of a Christmas present.
Vera had seen in Bostock's vast emporium in the neighbouring town
of Hanbridge, a music-stool in the style known as art nouveau,
which had enslaved her fancy. She had taken her husband to see it,
and it had not enslaved her husband's fancy in the slightest
degree. It was made in light woods, and the woods were curved and
twisted as though they had recently spent seven years in a
purgatory for sinful trees. Here and there in the design onyx-
stones had been set in the wood. The seat itself was beautifully
soft. What captured Vera was chiefly the fact that it did not open
at the top, as most elaborate music-stools do, but at either side.
You pressed a button (onyx) and the panel fell down displaying
your music in little compartments ready to hand; and the eastern
moiety of the music-stool was for piano pieces, and the western
moiety for songs. In short, it was the last word of music-stools;
nothing could possibly be newer.

But Cheswardine did not like it, and did not conceal his opinion.
He argued that it would not 'go' with the Chippendale furniture,
and Vera said that all beautiful things 'went' together, and
Cheswardine admitted that they did, rather dryly. You see, they
took the matter seriously because the house was their hobby; they
were always changing its interior, which was more than they could
have done for a child, even if they had had one; and Cheswardine's
finer and soberer taste was always fighting against Vera's
predilection for the novel and the bizarre. Apart from clothes,
Vera had not much more than the taste of a mouse.

They did not quarrel in Bostock's. Indeed, they did not quarrel
anywhere; but after Vera had suggested that he might at any rate
humour her by giving her the music-stool for a Christmas present
(she seemed to think this would somehow help it to 'go' with the
Chippendale), and Cheswardine had politely but firmly declined,
there had been a certain coolness and quite six tears. Vera had
caused it to be understood that even if Cheswardine was NOT
interested in music, even if he did hate music and did call the
Broadwood ebony grand ugly, that was no reason why she should be
deprived of a pretty and original music-stool that would keep her
music tidy and that would be HERS. As for it not going with the
Chippendale, that was simply an excuse ... etc.

Hence it is not surprising that the Venetian vases of the
seventeenth century left Vera cold, and that the domestic
prospects for Christmas were a little cold.

However, Vera, with wifely and submissive tact made the best of
things; and that evening she began to decorate the hall, dining-
room, and drawing-room with holly and mistletoe. Before the pair
retired to rest, the true Christmas feeling, slightly tinged with
a tender melancholy, permeated the house, and the servants were
growing excited in advance. The servants weren't going to have a
dinner-party, with crackers and port and a table-centre unmatched
in the Five Towns; the servants weren't going to invite their
friends to an evening's jollity. The servants were merely going to
work somewhat harder and have somewhat less sleep; but such is the
magical effect of holly and mistletoe twined round picture-cords
and hung under chandeliers that the excitement of the servants was
entirely pleasurable.

And as Vera shut the bedroom door, she said, with a delightful,
forgiving smile---

'I saw a lovely cigar-cabinet at Bostock's yesterday.'

'Oh!' said Cheswardine, touched. He had no cigar-cabinet, and he
wanted one, and Vera knew that he wanted one.

And Vera slept in the sweet consciousness of her thoughtful
wifeliness.

The next morning, at breakfast, Cheswardine demanded--

'Getting pretty hard up, aren't you, Maria?'

He called her Maria when he wished to be arch.

Well,' she said, 'as a matter of fact, I am. What with the--'

And he gave her a five-pound note.

It happened so every year. He provided her with the money to buy
him a Christmas present. But it is, I hope, unnecessary to say
that the connection between her present to him and the money he
furnished was never crudely mentioned.

She made an opportunity, before he left for the works, to praise
the Venetian vases, and she insisted that he should wrap up well,
because he was showing signs of one of his bad colds.




II


In the early afternoon she went to Bostock's emporium, at
Hanbridge, to buy the cigar-cabinet and a few domestic trifles.
Bostock's is a good shop. I do not say that it has the classic and
serene dignity of Brunt's, over the way, where one orders one's
dining-room suites and one's frocks for the January dances. But it
is a good shop, and one of the chief glories of the Paris of the
Five Towns. It has frontages in three streets, and it might be
called the shop of the hundred windows. You can buy pretty nearly
anything at Bostock's, from an art nouveau music-stool up to the
highest cheese--for there is a provision department. (You can't
get cheese at Brunt's.)

Vera made her uninteresting purchases first, in the basement, and
then she went up-stairs to the special Christmas department, which
certainly was wonderful: a blaze and splendour of electric light;
a glitter of gilded iridescent toys and knick-knacks; a smiling,
excited, pushing multitude of faces, young and old; and the
cashiers in their cages gathering in money as fast as they could
lay their tired hands on it! A joyous, brilliant scene, calculated
to bring soft tears of satisfaction to the board of directors that
presided over Bostock's. It was a record Christmas for Bostock's.
The electric cars were thundering over the frozen streets of all
the Five Towns to bring customers to Bostock's. Children dreamt of
Bostock's. Fathers went to scoff and remained to pay. Brunt's was
not exactly alarmed, for nothing could alarm Brunt's; but there
was just a sort of suspicion of something in the air at Brunt's
that did not make for odious self-conceit. People seemed to become
intoxicated when they went into Bostock's, to close their heads in
a frenzy of buying.

And there the art nouveau music-stool stood in the corner, where
Vera had originally seen it! She approached it, not thinking of
the terrible danger. The compartments for music lay invitingly
open.

'Four pounds, nine and six, Mrs Cheswardine,' said a shop-walker,
who knew her.

She stopped to finger it.

Well, of course everybody is acquainted with that peculiar ecstasy
that undoubtedly does overtake you in good shops, sometimes,
especially at Christmas. I prefer to call it ecstasy rather than
intoxication, but I have heard it called even drunkenness. It is a
magnificent and overwhelming experience, like a good wine. A blind
instinct seizes your reason and throws her out of the window of
your soul, and then assumes entire control of the volitional
machinery. You listen to no arguments, you care for no
consequences. You want a thing; you must have it; you do have it.

Vera was caught unawares by this magnificent and overwhelming
experience, just as she stooped to finger the music-stool. A fig
for the cigar-cabinet! A fig for her husband's objections! After
all she was a grown-up woman (twenty-nine or thirty), and entitled
to a certain freedom. She was not and would not be a slave. It
would look perfect in the drawing-room.

'I'll take it,' she said.

'Yes, Mrs Cheswardine. A unique thing, quite unique. Penkethman!'

And Vera followed Penkethman to a cash desk and received half-a-
guinea out of a five-pound note.

'I want it carefully packed,' said Vera.

'Yes, ma'am. It will be delivered in the morning.'

She was just beginning to realize that she had been under the
sinister influence of the ecstasy, and that she had not bought the
cigar-cabinet, and that she had practically no more money, and
that Stephen's rule against credit was the strictest of all his
rules, when she caught sight of Mr Charles Woodruff buying toys,
doubtless for his nephews and nieces.

Mr Woodruff was the bachelor friend of the family. He had loved
Vera before Stephen loved her, and he was still attached to her.
Stephen and he were chums of the most advanced kind. Why! Stephen
and Vera thought nothing of bickering in front of Mr Woodruff, who
rated them both and sided with neither.

'Hello!' said Woodruff, flushing, and moving his long, clumsy
limbs when she touched him on the shoulder. 'I'm just buying a few
toys.'

She helped him to buy toys, and then he asked her to go and have
tea with him at the newly-opened Sub Rosa Tea Rooms, in Machin
Street. She agreed, and, in passing the music-stool, gave a small
parcel which she was carrying to Penkethman, and told him he might
as well put it in the music-stool. She was glad to have tea with
Charlie Woodruff. It would distract her, prevent her from
thinking. The ecstasy had almost died out, and she had a violent
desire not to think.




III


A terrible blow fell upon her the next morning. Stephen had one of
his bad colds, one of his worst. The mere cold she could have
supported with fortitude, but he was forced to remain indoors, and
his presence in the house she could not support with fortitude.
The music-stool would be sure to arrive before lunch, and he would
be there to see it arrive. The ecstasy had fully expired now, and
she had more leisure to think than she wanted. She could not
imagine what mad instinct had compelled her to buy the music-
stool. (Once out of the shop these instincts always are difficult
to imagine.) She knew that Stephen would be angry. He might
perhaps go to the length of returning the music-stool whence it
came. For, though she was a pretty and pampered woman, Stephen had
a way, in the last resort, of being master of his own house. And
she could not even placate him with the gift of a cigar-cabinet.
She could not buy a five-guinea cigar-cabinet with ten and six.
She had no other money in the world. She never had money, yet
money was always running through her fingers. Stephen treated her
generously, gave her an ample allowance, but he would under no
circumstances permit credit, nor would he pay her allowance in
advance. She had nothing to expect till the New Year.

She attended to his cold, and telephoned to the works for a clerk
to come up, and she refrained from telling Stephen that he must
have been very careless while in London, to catch a cold like
that. Her self-denial in this respect surprised Stephen, but he
put it down to the beneficent influence of Christmas and the
Venetian vases.

Bostock's pair-horse van arrived before the garden gate earlier
than her worse fears had anticipated, and Bostock's men were
evidently in a tremendous hurry that morning. In quite an
abnormally small number of seconds the wooden case containing the
fragile music-stool was lying in the inner hall, waiting to be
unpacked. Having signed the delivery-book Vera stood staring at
the accusatory package. Stephen was lounging over the dining-room
fire, perhaps dozing. She would have the thing swiftly transported
up-stairs and hidden in an attic for a time.

But just then Stephen popped out of the dining-room. Stephen's
masculine curiosity had been aroused by the advent of Bostock's
van. He had observed the incoming of the package from the window,
and he had ventured to the hall to inspect it. The event had
roused him wonderfully from the heavy torpor which a cold induces.
He wore a dressing-gown, the pockets of which bulged with
handkerchiefs.

'You oughtn't to be out here, Stephen,' said his wife.

'Nonsense!' he said. 'Why, upon my soul, this steam heat is warmer
than the dining-room fire.' Vera, silenced by the voice of truth,
could not reply.

Stephen bent his great height to inspect the package. It was an
appetizing Christmas package; straw escaped from between its ribs,
and it had an air of being filled with something at once large and
delicate.

'Oh!' observed Stephen, humorously. 'Ah! So this is it, is it? Ah!
Oh! Very good!'

And he walked round it.

How on earth had he learnt that she had bought it? She had not
mentioned the purchase to Mr Woodruff.

'Yes, Stephen,' she said timidly. 'That's it, and I hope--'

'It ought to hold a tidy few cigars, that ought,' remarked Stephen
complacently.

He took it for the cigar-cabinet!

She paused, struck. She had to make up her mind in an instant.

'Oh yes,' she murmured.

'A thousand?'

'Yes, a thousand,' she said.

'I thought so,' murmured Stephen. 'I mustn't kiss you, because
I've got a cold,' said he. 'But, all the same I'm awfully obliged,
Vera. Suppose we have it opened now, eh? Then we could decide
where it is to go, and I could put my cigars in it.'

'Oh no,' she protested. 'Oh no, Stephen! That's not fair! It
mustn't be opened before Christmas morning.'

'But I gave you my vases yesterday.'

'That's different,' she said. 'Christmas is Christmas.' 'Oh, very
well,' he yielded. 'That's all right, my dear.'

Then he began to sniff.

'There's a deuced odd smell from it,' he said.

'Perhaps it's the wood!' she faltered.

'I hope it isn't,' he said. 'I expect it's the straw. A deuced odd
smell. We'll have the thing put in the side hall, next to the
clock. It will be out of the way there. And I can come and gaze at
it when I feel depressed. Eh, Maria?' He was undoubtedly charmed
at the prospect of owning so large and precious a cigar-cabinet.

Considering that the parcel which she had given to Penkethman to
put in the music-stool comprised a half-a-pound of Bostock's very
ripest Gorgonzola cheese, bought at the cook's special request,
the smell which proceeded from the mysterious inwards of the
packing-case did not surprise Vera at all. But it disconcerted her
none the less. And she wondered how she could get the cheese out.

For thirty hours the smell from the unopened packing-case waxed in
vigour and strength. Stephen's cold grew worse and prevented him
from appreciating its full beauty, but he savoured enough of it to
induce him to compare it facetiously to the effluvium of a dead
rat, and he said several times that Bostock's really ought to use
better straw. He was frequently to be seen in the hall, gloating
over his cigar-cabinet. Once he urged Vera to have it opened and
so get rid of the straw, but she refused, and found the nerve to
tell him that he was exaggerating the odour.

She was at a loss what to do. She could not get up in the middle
of the night and unpack the package and hide its guilty secret.
Indeed, to unpack the package would bring about her ruin
instantly; for, the package unpacked, Stephen would naturally
expect to see the cigar-cabinet. And so the hours crept on to
Christmas and Vera's undoing. She gave herself a headache.

It was just thirty hours after the arrival of the package when Mr
Woodruff dropped in for tea. Stephen was asleep in the dining-
room, which apartment he particularly affected during his colds.
Woodruff was shown into the drawing-room, where Vera was having
her headache. Vera brightened. In fact, she suddenly grew very
bright. And she gave Woodruff tea, and took some herself, and
Woodruff passed an enjoyable twenty minutes.

The two Venetian vases were on the mantelpiece. Vera rose into
ecstasies about them, and called upon Charlie Woodruff to rise
too. He got up from his chair to examine the vases, which Vera had
placed close together side by side at the corner of the
mantelpiece nearest to him. Vera and Woodruff also stood close
together side by side. And just as Woodruff was about to handle
the vases, Vera knocked his arm; his arm collided with one vase;
that vase collided with the next, and both fell to earth--to the
hard, unfeeling, unyielding tiles of the hearth.




IV


They were smashed to atoms.

Vera screamed. She screamed twice, and ran out of the room.

'Stephen, Stephen!' she cried hysterically. 'Charlie has broken my
vases, both of them. It IS too bad of him. He's really too
clumsy!'

There was a terrific pother. Stephen wakened violently, and in a
moment all three were staring ineffectually at the thousand
crystal fragments on the hearth.

'But--' began Charlie Woodruff.

And that was all he did say.

He and Vera and Stephen had been friends since infancy, so she had
the right not to conceal her feelings before him; Stephen had the
same right. They both exercised it.

'But--' began Charlie again.

'Oh, never mind,' Stephen stopped him curtly. 'Accidents can't be
helped.'

'I shall get another pair,' said Woodruff.

'No, you won't,' replied Stephen. 'You can't. There isn't another
pair in the world. See?'

The two men simultaneously perceived that Vera was weeping. She
was very pretty in tears, but that did not prevent the masculine
world from feeling awkward and self-conscious. Charlie had notions
about going out and burying himself.

'Come, Vera, come,' her husband enjoined, blowing his nose with
unnecessary energy, bad as his cold was.

'I--I liked those vases more than anything you've--you've ever
given me,' Vera blubbered, charmingly, patting her eyes.

Stephen glanced at Woodruff, as who should say: 'Well, my boy, you
uncorked those tears, I'll leave you to deal with 'em. You see,
I'm an invalid in a dressing-gown. I leave you.'

And went.

'No-but-look-here-I-say,' Charlie Woodruff expostulated to Vera
when he was alone with her--he often started an expostulation with
that singular phrase. 'I'm awfully sorry. I don't know how it
happened. You must let me give you something else.'

Vera shook her head.

'No,' she said. 'I wanted Stephen awfully to give me that music-
stool that I told you about a fortnight ago. But he gave me the
vases instead, and I liked them ever so much better.'

'I shall give you the music-stool. If you wanted it a fortnight
ago, you want it now. It won't make up for the vases, of course,
but--'

'No, no,' said Vera, positively.

'Why not?'

'I do not wish you to give me anything. It wouldn't be quite
nice,' Vera insisted.

'But I give you something every Christmas.'

'Do you?' asked Vera, innocently.

'Yes, and you and Stephen give me something.'

'Besides, Stephen doesn't quite like the music-stool.'

'What's that got to do with it? You like it. I'm giving it to you,
not to him. I shall go over to Bostock's tomorrow morning and get
it.'

'I forbid you to.'

'I shall.'

Woodruff departed.

Within five minutes the Cheswardine coachman was driving off in
the dogcart to Hanbridge, with the packing-case in the back of the
cart, and a note. He brought back the cigar-cabinet. Stephen had
not stirred from the dining-room, afraid to encounter a tearful
wife. Presently his wife came into the dining-room bearing the
vast load of the cigar-cabinet in her delicate arms.

'I thought it might amuse you to fill it with your cigars--just to
pass the time,' she said.

Stephen's thought was: 'Well, women take the cake.' It was a
thought that occurs frequently to the husbands of Veras.

There was ripe Gorgonzola at dinner. Stephen met it as one meets a
person whom one fancies one has met somewhere but cannot remember
where.

The next afternoon the music-stool came, for the second time, into
the house. Charlie brought it in HIS dogcart. It was unpacked
ostentatiously by the radiant Vera. What could Stephen say in
depreciation of this gift from their oldest and best friend? As a
fact he could and did say a great deal. But he said it when he
happened to be all alone in the drawing-room, and had observed the
appalling way in which the music-stool did not 'go' with the
Chippendale.

'Look at the d--thing!' he exclaimed to himself. 'Look at it!'

However, the Christmas dinner-party was a brilliant success, and
after it Vera sat on the art nouveau music-stool and twittered
songs, and what with her being so attractive and birdlike, and
what with the Christmas feeling in the air... well, Stephen
resigned himself to the music-stool.




THE MURDER OF THE MANDARIN

I


'What's that you're saying about murder?' asked Mrs Cheswardine as
she came into the large drawing-room, carrying the supper-tray.

'Put it down here,' said her husband, referring to the supper-
tray, and pointing to a little table which stood two legs off and
two legs on the hearth-rug.

'That apron suits you immensely,' murmured Woodruff, the friend of
the family, as he stretched his long limbs into the fender towards
the fire, farther even than the long limbs of Cheswardine. Each
man occupied an easy-chair on either side of the hearth; each was
very tall, and each was forty.

Mrs Cheswardine, with a whisk infinitely graceful, set the tray on
the table, took a seat behind it on a chair that looked like a
toddling grand-nephew of the arm-chairs, and nervously smoothed
out the apron.

As a matter of fact, the apron did suit her immensely. It is
astounding, delicious, adorable, the effect of a natty little
domestic apron suddenly put on over an elaborate and costly frock,
especially when you can hear the rustle of a silk petticoat
beneath, and more especially when the apron is smoothed out by
jewelled fingers. Every man knows this. Every woman knows it. Mrs
Cheswardine knew it. In such matters Mrs Cheswardine knew exactly
what she was about. She delighted, when her husband brought
Woodruff in late of a night, as he frequently did after a turn at
the club, to prepare with her own hands--the servants being in
bed--a little snack of supper for them. Tomato sandwiches, for
instance, miraculously thin, together with champagne or Bass. The
men preferred Bass, naturally, but if Mrs Cheswardine had a fancy
for a sip of champagne out of her husband's tumbler, Bass was not
forthcoming.

Tonight it was champagne.

Woodruff opened it, as he always did, and involuntarily poured out
a libation on the hearth, as he almost always did. Good-natured,
ungainly, long-suffering men seldom achieve the art of opening
champagne.

Mrs Cheswardine tapped her pink-slippered foot impatiently.

'You're all nerves tonight,' Woodruff laughed, 'and you've made me
nervous,' And at length he got some of the champagne into a
tumbler.

'No, I'm not,' Mrs Cheswardine contradicted him.

'Yes, you are, Vera,' Woodruff insisted calmly.

She smiled. The use of that elegant Christian name, with its faint
suggestion of Russian archduchesses, had a strange effect on her,
particularly from the lips of Woodruff. She was proud of it, and
of her surname too--one of the oldest surnames in the Five Towns.
The syllables of 'Vera' invariably soothed her, like a charm.
Woodruff, and Cheswardine also, had called her Vera during the
whole of her life; and she was thirty. They had all three lived in
different houses at the top end of Trafalgar Road, Bursley.
Woodruff fell in love with her first, when she was eighteen, but
with no practical result. He was a brown-haired man, personable
despite his ungainliness, but he failed to perceive that to
worship from afar off is not the best way to capture a young woman
with large eyes and an emotional disposition. Cheswardine, who had
a black beard, simply came along and married the little thing. She
fluttered down on to his shoulders like a pigeon. She adored him,
feared him, cooed to him, worried him, and knew that there were
depths of his mind which she would never plumb. Woodruff, after
being best man, went on loving, meekly and yet philosophically,
and found his chief joy in just these suppers. The arrangement
suited Vera; and as for the husband and the hopeless admirer, they
had always been fast friends.

'I asked you what you were saying about murder,' said Vera
sharply, 'but it seems--'

'Oh! did you?' Woodruff apologized. 'I was saying that murder
isn't such an impossible thing as it appears. Anyone might commit
a murder.'

'Then you want to defend, Harrisford? Do you hear what he says,
Stephen?'

The notorious and terrible Harrisford murders were agitating the
Five Towns that November. People read, talked, and dreamt murder;
for several weeks they took murder to all their meals.

'He doesn't want to defend Harrisford at all,' said Cheswardine,
with a superior masculine air, 'and of course anyone might commit
a murder. I might.'

'Stephen! How horrid you are!' 'You might, even!' said Woodruff,
gazing at Vera.

'Charlie! Why, the blood alone--'

'There isn't always blood,' said the oracular husband.

'Listen here,' proceeded Woodruff, who read variously and enjoyed
philosophical speculation. 'Supposing that by just taking thought,
by just wishing it, an Englishman could kill a mandarin in China
and make himself rich for life, without anybody knowing anything
about it! How many mandarins do you suppose there would be left in
China at the end of a week!'

'At the end of twenty-four hours, rather,' said Cheswardine
grimly.

'Not one,' said Woodruff.

'But that's absurd,' Vera objected, disturbed. When these two men
began their philosophical discussions they always succeeded in
disturbing her. She hated to see life in a queer light. She hated
to think.

'It isn't absurd,' Woodruff replied. 'It simply shows that what
prevents wholesale murder is not the wickedness of it, but the
fear of being found out, and the general mess, and seeing the
corpse, and so on.'

Vera shuddered.

'And I'm not sure,' Woodruff proceeded, 'that murder is so very
much more wicked than lots of other things.'

'Usury, for instance,' Cheswardine put in.

'Or bigamy,' said Woodruff.

'But an Englishman COULDN'T kill a mandarin in China by just
wishing it,' said Vera, looking up.

'How do we know?' said Woodruff, in his patient voice. 'How do we
know? You remember what I was telling you about thought-
transference last week. It was in Borderland.'

Vera felt as if there was no more solid ground to stand on, and it
angered her to be plunging about in a bog.

'I think it's simply silly,' she remarked. 'No, thanks.'

She said 'No, thanks' to her husband, when he tendered his glass.

He moved the glass still closer to her lips.

'I said "No, thanks,"' she repeated dryly.

'Just a mouthful,' he urged.

'I'm not thirsty.'

'Then you'd better go to bed,' said he.

He had a habit of sending her to bed abruptly. She did not dislike
it. But she had various ways of going. Tonight it was the way of
an archduchess.




II


Woodruff, in stating that Vera was all nerves that evening, was
quite right. She was. And neither her husband nor Woodruff knew
the reason.

The reason had to do most intimately with frocks.

Vera had been married ten years. But no one would have guessed it,
to watch her girlish figure and her birdlike ways. You see, she
was the only child in the house. She often bitterly regretted the
absence of offspring to the name and honour of Cheswardine. She
envied other wives their babies. She doted on babies. She said
continually that in her deliberate opinion the proper mission of
women was babies. She was the sort of woman that regards a
cathedral as a place built especially to sit in and dream soft
domestic dreams; the sort of woman that adores music simply
because it makes her dream. And Vera's brown studies, which were
frequent, consisted chiefly of babies. But as babies amused
themselves by coming down the chimneys of all the other houses in
Bursley, and avoiding her house, she sought comfort in frocks. She
made the best of herself. And it was a good best. Her figure was
as near perfect as a woman's can be, and then there were those
fine emotional eyes, and that flutteringness of the pigeon, and an
ever-changing charm of gesture. Vera had become the best-dressed
woman in Bursley. And that is saying something. Her husband was
wealthy, with an increasing income, though, of course, as an
earthenware manufacturer, and the son and grandson of an
earthenware manufacturer, he joined heartily in the general Five
Towns lamentation that there was no longer any money to be made
out of 'pots'. He liked to have a well-dressed woman about the
house, and he allowed her an incredible allowance, the amount of
which was breathed with awe among Vera's friends; a hundred a
year, in fact. He paid it to her quarterly, by cheque. Such was
his method.

Now a ball was to be given by the members of the Ladies' Hockey
Club (or such of them as had not been maimed for life in the
pursuit of this noble pastime) on the very night after the
conversation about murder. Vera belonged to the Hockey Club (in a
purely ornamental sense), and she had procured a frock for the
ball which was calculated to crown her reputation as a mirror of
elegance. The skirt had--but no (see the columns of the
Staffordshire Signal for the 9th November, 1901). The mischief was
that the gown lacked, for its final perfection, one particular
thing, and that particular thing was separated from Vera by the
glass front of Brunt's celebrated shop at Hanbridge. Vera could
have managed without it. The gown would still have been brilliant
without it. But Vera had seen it, and she WANTED it.

Its cost was a guinea. Well, you will say, what is a guinea to a
dainty creature with a hundred a year? Let her go and buy the
article. The point is that she couldn't, because she had only six
and sevenpence left in the wide world. (And six weeks to
Christmas!) She had squandered--oh, soul above money!--twenty-five
pounds, and more than twenty-five pounds, since the 29th of
September. Well, you will say, credit, in other words, tick? No,
no, no! The giant Stephen absolutely and utterly forbade her to
procure anything whatever on credit. She was afraid of him. She
knew just how far she could go with Stephen. He was great and
terrible. Well, you will say, why couldn't she blandish and cajole
Stephen for a sovereign or so? Impossible! She had a hundred a
year on the clear understanding that it was never exceeded nor
anticipated. Well, you will discreetly hint, there are certain
devices known to housewives.... Hush! Vera had already employed
them. Six and sevenpence was not merely all that remained to her
of her dress allowance; it was all that remained to her of her
household allowance till the next Monday.

Hence her nerves.

There that poor unfortunate woman lay, with her unconscious tyrant
of a husband snoring beside her, desolately wakeful under the
night-light in the large, luxurious bedroom--three servants
sleeping overhead, champagne in the cellar, furs in the wardrobe,
valuable lace round her neck at that very instant, grand piano in
the drawing-room, horses in the stable, stuffed bear in the hall--
and her life was made a blank for want of fourteen and fivepence!
And she had nobody to confide in. How true it is that the human
soul is solitary, that content is the only true riches, and that
to be happy we must be good!

It was at that juncture of despair that she thought of mandarins.
Or rather--I may as well be frank--she had been thinking of
mandarins all the time since retiring to rest. There MIGHT be
something in Charlie's mandarin theory.... According to Charlie,
so many queer, inexplicable things happened in the world. Occult--
subliminal--astral--thoughtwaves. These expressions and many more
occurred to her as she recollected Charlie's disconcerting
conversations. There MIGHT.... One never knew.

Suddenly she thought of her husband's pockets, bulging with
silver, with gold, and with bank-notes. Tantalizing vision! No!
She could not steal. Besides, he might wake up.

And she returned to mandarins. She got herself into a very morbid
and two-o'clock-in-the-morning state of mind. Suppose it was a
dodge that DID work. (Of course, she was extremely superstitious;
we all are.) She began to reflect seriously upon China. She
remembered having heard that Chinese mandarins were very corrupt;
that they ground the faces of the poor, and put innocent victims
to the torture; in short, that they were sinful and horrid
persons, scoundrels unfit for mercy. Then she pondered upon the
remotest parts of China, regions where Europeans never could
penetrate. No doubt there was some unimportant mandarin, somewhere
in these regions, to whose district his death would be a decided
blessing, to kill whom would indeed be an act of humanity.
Probably a mandarin without wife or family; a bachelor mandarin
whom no relative would regret; or, in the alternative, a mandarin
with many wives, whose disgusting polygamy merited severe
punishment! An old mandarin already pretty nearly dead; or, in the
alternative, a young one just commencing a career of infamy!

'I'm awfully silly,' she whispered to herself. 'But still, if
there SHOULD be anything in it. And I must, I must, I must have
that thing for my dress!'

She looked again at the dim forms of her husband's clothes,
pitched anyhow on an ottoman. No! She could not stoop to theft!

So she murdered a mandarin; lying in bed there; not any particular
mandarin, a vague mandarin, the mandarin most convenient and
suitable under all the circumstances. She deliberately wished him
dead, on the off-chance of acquiring riches, or, more accurately,
because she was short of fourteen and fivepence in order to look
perfectly splendid at a ball.

In the morning when she woke up--her husband had already departed
to the works--she thought how foolish she had been in the night.
She did not feel sorry for having desired the death of a fellow-
creature. Not at all. She felt sorry because she was convinced, in
the cold light of day, that the charm would not work. Charlie's
notions were really too ridiculous, too preposterous. No! She must
reconcile herself to wearing a ball dress which was less than
perfection, and all for the want of fourteen and fivepence. And
she had more nerves than ever!

She had nerves to such an extent that when she went to unlock the
drawer of her own private toilet-table, in which her prudent and
fussy husband forced her to lock up her rings and brooches every
night, she attacked the wrong drawer--an empty unfastened drawer
that she never used. And lo! the empty drawer was not empty. There
was a sovereign lying in it!

This gave her a start, connecting the discovery, as naturally at
the first blush she did, with the mandarin.

Surely it couldn't be, after all.

Then she came to her senses. What absurdity! A coincidence, of
course, nothing else? Besides, a mere sovereign! It wasn't enough.
Charlie had said 'rich for life'. The sovereign must have lain
there for months and months, forgotten.

However, it was none the less a sovereign. She picked it up,
thanked Providence, ordered the dog-cart, and drove straight to
Brunt's. The particular thing that she acquired was an exceedingly
thin, slim, and fetching silver belt--a marvel for the money, and
the ideal waist decoration for her wonderful white muslin gown.
She bought it, and left the shop.

And as she came out of the shop, she saw a street urchin holding
out the poster of the early edition of the Signal. And she read on
the poster, in large letters: 'DEATH OF LI HUNG CHANG.' It is no
exaggeration to say that she nearly fainted. Only by the exercise
of that hard self-control, of which women alone are capable, did
she refrain from tumbling against the blue-clad breast of Adams,
the Cheswardine coachman.

She purchased the Signal with well-feigned calm, opened it and
read: 'Stop-press news. Pekin. Li Hung Chang, the celebrated
Chinese statesman, died at two o'clock this morning.--Reuter.'




III


Vera reclined on the sofa that afternoon, and the sofa was drawn
round in front of the drawing-room fire. And she wore her
fluffiest and languidest peignoir. And there was a perfume of eau
de Cologne in the apartment. Vera was having a headache; she was
having it in her grand, her official manner. Stephen had had to
lunch alone. He had been told that in all probability his
suffering wife would not be well enough to go to the ball.
Whereupon he had grunted. As a fact, Vera's headache was extremely
real, and she was very upset indeed.

The death of Li Hung Chang was heavy on her soul. Occultism was
justified of itself. The affair lay beyond coincidence. She had
always KNOWN that there was something in occultism,
supernaturalism, so-called superstitions, what not. But she had
never expected to prove the faith that was in her by such a
homicidal act on her own part. It was detestable of Charlie to
have mentioned the thing at all. He had no right to play with
fire. And as for her husband, words could give but the merest
rough outline of her resentment against Stephen. A pretty state of
things that a woman with a position such as she had to keep up
should be reduced to six and sevenpence! Stephen, no doubt,
expected her to visit the pawnshop. It would serve him right if
she did so--and he met her coming out under the three brass balls!
Did she not dress solely and wholly to please him? Not in the
least to please herself! Personally she had a mind set on higher
things, impossible aspirations. But he liked fine clothes. And it
was her duty to satisfy him. She strove to satisfy him in all
matters. She lived for him. She sacrificed herself to him
completely. And what did she get in return? Nothing! Nothing!
Nothing! All men were selfish. And women were their victims....
Stephen, with his silly bullying rules against credit and so
forth.... The worst of men was that they had no sense.

She put a new dose of eau de Cologne on her forehead, and leaned
on one elbow. On the mantelpiece lay the tissue parcel containing
the slim silver belt, the price of Li's death. She wanted to stick
it in the fire. And only the fact that it would not burn prevented
her savagely doing so. There was something wrong, too, with the
occultism. To receive a paltry sovereign for murdering the
greatest statesman of the Eastern hemisphere was simply grotesque.
Moreover, she had most distinctly not wanted to deprive China of a
distinguished man. She had expressly stipulated for an inferior
and insignificant mandarin, one that could be spared and that was
unknown to Reuter. She supposed she ought to have looked up China
at the Wedgwood Institution and selected a definite mandarin with
a definite place of residence. But could she be expected to go
about a murder deliberately like that?

With regard to the gross inadequacy of the fiscal return for her
deed, perhaps that was her own fault. She had not wished for more.
Her brain had been so occupied by the belt that she had wished
only for the belt. But, perhaps, on the other hand, vast wealth
was to come. Perhaps something might occur that very night. That
would be better. Yet would it be better? However rich she might
become, Stephen would coolly take charge of her riches, and dole
them out to her, and make rules for her concerning them. And
besides, Charlie would suspect her guilt. Charlie understood her,
and perused her thoughts far better than Stephen did. She would
never be able to conceal the truth from Charlie. The conversation,
the death of Li within two hours, and then a sudden fortune
accruing to her--Charlie would inevitably put two and two together
and divine her shameful secret.

The outlook was thoroughly black anyway.

She then fell asleep.

When she awoke, some considerable time afterwards, Stephen was
calling to her. It was his voice, indeed, that had aroused her.
The room was dark.

'I say, Vera,' he demanded, in a low, slightly inimical tone,
'have you taken a sovereign out of the empty drawer in your
toilet-table?'

'No,' she said quickly, without thinking.

'Ah!' he observed reflectively, 'I knew I was right.' He paused,
and added, coldly, 'If you aren't better you ought to go to bed.'

Then he left her, shutting the door with a noise that showed a
certain lack of sympathy with her headache.

She sprang up. Her first feeling was one of thankfulness that that
brief interview had occurred in darkness. So Stephen was aware of
the existence of the sovereign! The sovereign was not occult.
Possibly he had put it there. And what did he know he was 'right'
about?

She lighted the gas, and gazed at herself in the glass, realizing
that she no longer had a headache, and endeavouring to arrange her
ideas.

'What's this?' said another voice at the door. She glanced round
hastily, guiltily. It was Charlie.

'Steve telephoned me you were too ill to go to the dance,'
explained Charlie, 'so I thought I'd come and make inquiries. I
quite expected to find you in bed with a nurse and a doctor or two
at least. What is it?' He smiled.

'Nothing,' she replied. 'Only a headache. It's gone now.'

She stood against the mantelpiece, so that he should not see the
white parcel.

'That's good,' said Charlie.

There was a pause.

'Strange, Li Hung Chang dying last night, just after we had been
talking about killing mandarins,' she said. She could not keep off
the subject. It attracted her like a snake, and she approached it
in spite of the fact that she fervently wished not to approach it.

'Yes,' said Charlie. 'But Li wasn't a mandarin, you know. And he
didn't die after we had been talking about mandarins. He died
before.'

'Oh! I thought it said in the paper he died at two o'clock this
morning.'

'Two a.m. in Pekin,' Charlie answered. 'You must remember that
Pekin time is many hours earlier than our time. It lies so far
eastward.'

'Oh!' she said again.

Stephen hurried in, with a worried air.

'Ah! It's you, Charlie!'

'She isn't absolutely dying, I find,' said Charlie, turning to
Vera: 'You are going to the dance after all--aren't you?'

'I say, Vera,' Stephen interrupted, 'either you or I must have a
scene with Martha. I've always suspected that confounded
housemaid. So I put a marked sovereign in a drawer this morning,
and it was gone at lunch-time. She'd better hook it instantly. Of
course I shan't prosecute.'

'Martha!' cried Vera. 'Stephen, what on earth are you thinking of?
I wish you would leave the servants to me. If you think you can
manage this house in your spare time from the works, you are
welcome to try. But don't blame me for the consequences.' Glances
of triumph flashed in her eyes.

'But I tell you--'

'Nonsense,' said Vera. 'I took the sovereign. I saw it there and I
took it, and just to punish you, I've spent it. It's not at all
nice to lay traps for servants like that.'

'Then why did you tell me just now you hadn't taken it?' Stephen
demanded crossly.

'I didn't feel well enough to argue with you then,' Vera replied.

'You've recovered precious quick,' retorted Stephen with grimness.

'Of course, if you want to make a scene before strangers,' Vera
whimpered (poor Charlie a stranger!), 'I'll go to bed.'

Stephen knew when he was beaten.

She went to the Hockey dance, though. She and Stephen and Charlie
and his young sister, aged seventeen, all descended together to
the Town Hall in a brougham. The young girl admired Vera's belt
excessively, and looked forward to the moment when she too should
be a bewitching and captivating wife like Vera, in short, a woman
of the world, worshipped by grave, bearded men. And both the men
were under the spell of Vera's incurable charm, capricious,
surprising, exasperating, indefinable, indispensable to their
lives.

'Stupid superstitions!' reflected Vera. 'But of course I never
believed it really.'

And she cast down her eyes to gloat over the belt.




VERA'S SECOND CHRISTMAS ADVENTURE


Curious and strange things had a way of happening to Vera--
perhaps because she was an extremely feminine woman. But of all
the curious and strange things that ever did happen to Vera, this
was certainly the strangest and the most curious. It makes a
somewhat exasperating narrative, because the affair ended--or,
rather, Vera caused it to end--on a note of interrogation. The
reader may, however, draw consolation from the fact that, if he is
tormented by an unanswerable query, Vera herself was much more
tormented by precisely the same query.

Two days before Christmas, at about three o'clock in the
afternoon, just when it was getting dusk and the distant smokepall
of the Five Towns was merging in the general greyness of the
northern sky, Vera was sitting in the bow-window of the drawing-
room of Stephen Cheswardine's newly-acquired house at Sneyd; Sneyd
being the fashionable suburb of the Five Towns, graced by the near
presence of a countess. And as the slim, thirty-year-old Vera sat
there, moody (for reasons which will soon appear), in her charming
teagown, her husband drove up to the door in the dogcart, and he
was not alone. He had with him a man of vigorous and dashing
appearance, fair, far from ugly, and with a masterful face, keen
eyes, and most magnificent furs round about him. At sight of the
visitor Vera's heart did not exactly jump, but it nearly jumped.

Presently, Stephen brought his acquaintance into the drawing-
room.

"My wife," said Stephen, rubbing his hands. "Vera, this is Mr
Bittenger, of New York. He will give us the pleasure of spending
the night here."

And now Vera's little heart really did jump.

She behaved with the delicious wayward grace which she could
always command when she chose to command it. No one would have
guessed that she had not spoken to Stephen for a week.

'I'm most happy--most happy,' said Mr Bittenger, with a marked
accent and a fine complimentary air. And obviously he was most
happy. Vera had impressed him. There was nothing surprising in
that. She was in the fullness of her powers in that direction.

It is at this point--at the point of the first jumping of Vera's
heart--that the tale begins to be uncanny and disturbing. Thus
runs the explanation.

During the year Stephen had gradually grown more and more
preoccupied with the subject of his own health. The earthenware
business was very good, although, of course, manufacturers were
complaining just as usual. Trade, indeed, flourished to such an
extent that Stephen had pronounced himself to be suffering from
nervous strain and overwork. The symptoms of his malady were
chiefly connected with the assimilation of food; to be brief, it
was dyspepsia. And as Stephen had previously been one of those
favoured people who can eat anything at any hour, and arise in the
best of health the next day, Stephen was troubled. At last--about
August, when he was obliged to give up wine--he had suddenly
decided that the grimy air of the Five Towns was bad for him, and
that the household should be removed to Sneyd. And removed to
Sneyd it accordingly was. The new house was larger and more
splendid even than the Cheswardine abode at Bursley. But Vera did
not like the change. Vera preferred the town. Nevertheless, she
could not openly demur, since Stephen's health was supposed to be
at stake.

During the autumn she was tremendously bored at Sneyd. She had
practically no audience for her pretty dresses, and her friends
would not flock over from Bursley because of the difficulty of
getting home at night. Then it was that Vera had the beautiful
idea of spending Christmas in Switzerland. Someone had told her
about a certain hotel called The Bear, where, on Christmas Day,
never less than a hundred well-dressed and wealthy English people
sat down to an orthodox Christmas dinner. The notion enchanted
her. She decided, definitely, that she and Stephen should do their
Christmassing at The Bear, wherever the Bear was. And as she was
fully aware of the power of her capricious charm over Stephen, she
regarded the excursion as arranged before she had broached it to
him.

Stephen refused. He remarked bitterly that the very thought of a
mince-tart made him ill; and that he hated 'abroad'.

Vera took her defeat badly.

She pouted. She sulked. She announced that, if she was not to be
allowed to do her Christmassing at The Bear, she would not do it
anywhere. She indicated that she meant to perish miserably of
ennui in the besotted dullness of Sneyd, and that no Christmas-
party of any kind should occur in HER house. She ceased to show
interest in Stephen's health. She would not speak. In fact, she
went too far. One day, in reply to her rude silence, Stephen said:
'Very well, child, if that's your game, I'll play it with you.
Except when other people are present, not a word do I speak to you
until you have first spoken to me.'

She knew he would abide by that. He was a monster. She hated him.
She loathed him (so she said to herself).

That night, in the agony of her distress, she had dreamed a dream.
She dreamed that a stranger came to the house. The details were
vague, but the stranger had travelled many miles over water. She
could not see him distinctly, but she knew that he was quite bald.
In spite of his baldness he inspired her with sympathy. He
understood her, praised her costumes, and treated a woman as a
woman ought to be treated. Then, somehow or other, he was making
love to her, the monster Stephen being absent. She was shocked by
his making love to her, and she moved a little farther off him on
the sofa (he had sat down by her on a vague sort of sofa in a
vague sort of room); but still she was thrilled, and she could not
feel as wicked as she felt she ought to feel. Then the dream
became hazy; it became hazy at the interesting point of her answer
to the love-making. A later stage was very clear. Something was
afoot between the monster Stephen and the stranger in the dining-
room, and she was locked out of the dining-room. It was Christmas
night. She knocked frantically at the door, and at last forced it
open, and Stephen was lying in the middle of the floor; the table
had been pushed into a corner. 'I killed him quite by accident,'
said the stranger affably. And then he seized her by the hand and
ruthlessly dragged her away, away, away; and they travelled in
trains and ships and trains, and they came to a very noisy,
clanging sort of city--and Vera woke up. It had been a highly
realistic dream, and it made a deep impression on Vera.

Can one wonder that Vera's heart, being a superstitious little
heart, like all our hearts, should leap when the very next day
Stephen turned up with a completely unexpected stranger from New
York? Of course, dreams are nonsense! Of course! Still--

She did not know whether to rejoice or mourn over the fact that Mr
Bittenger was not bald. He was decidedly unbald; he had a glorious
shock of chestnut hair. That hair of his naturally destroyed any
possible connection with the dream. None the less the coincidence
was bizarre.




II


That evening, before dinner, Vera, busy in her chamber beautifying
her charms for the ravishment of men from New York, waited with
secret anxiety for the arrival of Stephen in his dressing-room.
And whereas she usually closed the door between the bedroom and
the dressing-room, on this occasion she carefully left it wide
open. Stephen came at last. And she waited, listening to his
movements in the dressing-room. Not a word! She made brusque
movements in the bedroom to attract his attention; she even
dropped a brush on the floor. Not a word! After a few moments, she
actually ventured into the dressing-room. Stephen was wiping his
face, and he glanced at her momentarily over the towel, which hid
his nose and mouth. Not a word! And how hard was the monster's
glance! She felt that Stephen was one of your absurd literal
persons. He had said that he would not speak to her until she had
first spoken to him--that was to say in private--public
performances did not count. And he would stick to his text, no
matter how deliciously she behaved.

She left the dressing-room in haste. Very well! Very well! If
Stephen wished for war, he should have it. Her grievance against
him grew into something immense. Before, it had been nothing but a
kind of two-roomed cottage. She now erected it into a town hall,
with imposing portals, and many windows and rich statuary, and
suite after suite of enormous rooms, and marble staircases, and
lifts that went up and down. She wished she had never married him.
She wished that Mr Bittenger HAD been bald.

At dinner everything went with admirable smoothness. Mr Bittenger
sat betwixt them. And utmost politeness reigned. In their quality
of well-bred hosts, they both endeavoured to keep Mr Bittenger at
his ease despite their desolating quarrel; and they entirely
succeeded. As the champagne disappeared (and it was not Stephen
that drank it), Mr Bittenger became more than at his ease. He was
buyer for an important firm of earthenware dealers in New York
(Vera had suspected as much--these hospitalities to American
buyers are an essential part of business in the Five Towns), and
he related very drolly the series of chances or mischances that
had left him stranded in England at that season so unseasonable
for buying. Vera reflected upon the series of chances or
mischances, and upon her dream of the man from over the long miles
of water. Of course, dreams are nonsense.... But still--

The conversation passed to the topic of Stephen's health, as
conversations in Stephen's house had a habit of doing. Mr
Bittenger listened with grave interest.

'I know, I know!' said Mr Bittenger. 'I used to be exactly the
same. I guess I understand how you feel--SOME! Don't I?'

'And you are cured?' Stephen demanded, eagerly, as he nibbled at
dry toast.

'You bet I'm cured!' said Mr Bittenger.

'You must tell me about that,' said Stephen, and added, 'some time
tonight.' He did not care to discuss the bewildering internal
economy of the human frame at his dinner-table. There were
details...and Mr Bittenger was in a mood that it was no
exaggeration to describe as gay.

Shortly afterwards, there arose a discussion as to their
respective ages. They coquetted for a few moments, as men
invariably will, each diffident about giving away the secret, each
asserting that the other was younger than himself.

'Well,' said Mr Bittenger to Vera, at length, 'what age should you
give me?'

'I--I should give you five years less than Stephen,' Vera replied.

'And may I ask just how old you are?' Mr Bittenger put the
question at close range to Stephen, and hit him full in the face
with it.

'I'm forty,' said Stephen.

'So am I!' said Mr Bittenger.

'Well, you don't look it,' said Stephen.

'Sure!' Mr Bittenger admitted, pleased.

'My husband's hair is turning grey,' said Vera, 'while yours--'

'Turning grey!' exclaimed Mr Bittender. 'I wish mine was. I'd give
five thousand dollars today if mine was.'

'But why--?' Vera smiled.

'Look here, my dear lady,' said Mr Bittenger, in a peculiar voice,
putting down his glass.

And with a swift movement he lifted a wig of glorious chestnut
hair from his head--just lifted it for an instant, and dropped it.
The man was utterly and completely bald.




III


Vera did nothing foolish. She neither cried, screamed, turned
deadly pale, clenched her fragile hands, bit her lips till the
blood came, smashed a wine-glass, nor fell with a dull thud
senseless to the floor. Nevertheless, she was extremely perturbed
by this astounding revelation of Mr Bittenger's. Of course, dreams
are nonsense. But still--The truth is, one tries to believe that
dreams are nonsense, and up to a certain point one may succeed in
believing. But it seemed to Vera that circumstances had passed
that point. She could not but admit, also, that if the dream went
on being fulfilled, within forty-eight hours Mr Bittenger would
have made love to her, and would have killed her husband.

She was so incensed against Stephen that she really could not
decide whether she wanted the dream to be fulfilled or not. No one
would have imagined that that soft breast could conceal a
homicidal thought. Yet so it was. That pretty and delightful
woman, wandering about in the edifice of her terrific grievance
against Stephen, could not say positively to herself that she
would not care to have Stephen killed as a punishment for his
sins.

After dinner, she found an excuse for retiring. She must think the
puzzle out in solitude. Matters were really going too far. She
allowed it to be understood that she was indisposed. Mr Bittenger
was full of sorrow and sympathy. But did Stephen show the
slightest concern? Stephen did not. She went upstairs, and she
meditated, stretched on the sofa at the foot of the bed, a rug
over her knees and the fire glinting on her face. Yes, it was her
duty as a Christian, if not as an outraged wife, to warn Stephen
that the shadow of death was creeping up behind him. He ought at
least to be warned. But how could she warn him? Clearly she could
not warn him in the presence of Mr Bittenger, the prospective
murderer. She would, therefore, have to warn him when they were
alone. And that meant that she would have to give way in the great
conjugal sulking match. No, never! It was impossible that she
should give way there! She frowned desperately at the leaping
flames, and did ultimately decide that Stephen's death was
preferable to her defeat in that contest. Of such is human nature.

After all, dreams were nonsense.

Surely Stephen would come upstairs to inquire about her health,
her indisposition? But no! He came not. And, as he continued not
to come, she went downstairs again and proclaimed that she was
better.

And then she learned that she had been worrying herself to no
purpose whatever. Mr Bittenger was leaving on the morrow, the
morrow being Christmas Eve. Stephen would drive him to Bursley in
the morning. He would go to the Five Towns Hotel to get his
baggage, and catch the Liverpool express at noon. He had booked a
passage on the Saxonia, which sailed at threethirty o'clock. Thus
he would spend his Christmas at sea; and, spending his Christmas
at sea, he could not possibly kill Stephen in the village of Sneyd
on Christmas night.

Relief! And yet a certain vague regret in the superstitious little
heart! The little heart went to bed again. And Stephen and the
stranger stayed up talking very late--doubtless about the famous
cure.

The leave-taking the next morning increased the vague regret. Mr
Bittenger was the possessor of an attractive individuality, and
Vera pondered upon its attractiveness far into the afternoon. How
nicely Mr Bittenger had thanked her for her gracious hospitality--
with what meaning he had charged the expression of his deep regret
at leaving her!

After all, dreams WERE nonsense.

She was sitting in the bow-window of the drawing-room, precisely
as she had been sitting twenty-four hours previously, when whom
should she see, striding masculinely along the drive towards the
house, but Mr Bittenger?

This time she was much more perturbed even than she had been by
the revelation of Mr Bittenger's baldness.

After all--

She uprose, the blood having rushed to her head, and retreated she
knew not whither, blindly, without a purpose. And found herself in
a little morning-room which was scarcely ever used, at the end of
the hall. She had not shut the door. And Mr Bittenger, having been
admitted by a servant, caught sight of her, and breezily entered
her retreat, clad in his magnificent furs.

And as he doffed the furs, he gaily told her what had happened.
Owing to difficulties with the Cheswardine mare on the frosty,
undulating road between Sneyd and Bursley, and owing to delays
with his baggage at the Five Towns Hotel, he had just missed the
Liverpool express, and, therefore, the steamer also. He had
returned to Stephen's manufactory. Stephen had insisted that he
should spend his Christmas with them. And, in brief, there he was.
He had walked from Bursley. Stephen, kept by business, was coming
later, and so was some of the baggage.

Mr Bittenger's face radiated joy. The loss of his twenty-guinea
passage on the Saxonia did not appear to cause him the least
regret.

And he sat down by the side of Vera.

And Vera suddenly noticed that they were on a sofa--the sofa of
her dream--and she fancied she recognized the room.

'You know, my dear lady,' said Mr Bittenger, looking her straight
in the eyes, 'I'm just GLAD I missed my steamer. It gives me a
chance to spend a Christmas in England, and in your delightful
society--your delightful society--' He gazed at her, without
adding to the sentence.

If this was not love-making on a sofa, what could be?

Mr Bittenger had certainly missed the Liverpool express on
purpose. Of that Vera was convinced. Or, if he had not missed it
on purpose, he had missed it under the dictates of the mysterious
power of the dream. Those people who chose to believe that dreams
are nonsense were at liberty to do so.




IV


So that in spite of Vera's definite proclamation that there should
be no Christmassing in her house that year, Christmassing there
emphatically was. Impossible to deny anything to Mr Bittenger! Mr
Bittenger wanted holly, the gardener supplied it. Mr Bittenger
wanted mistletoe, a bunch of it was brought home by Stephen in the
dogcart. Mr Bittenger could not conceive an English Christmas
without turkey, mince-pies, plum-pudding, and all the usual
indigestiveness. Vera, speaking in a voice which seemed somehow
not to be hers, stated that these necessaries of Christmas life
would be produced, and Stephen did not say that the very thought
of a mince-tart made him ill. Even the English weather, which, it
is notorious, has of late shown a sad disposition to imitate, and
even to surpass, in mildness the weather of the Riviera at
Christmas, decided to oblige Mr Bittenger. At nightfall on
Christmas Eve it began to snow gently, but steadily--fine, frozen
snow. And the waits, consisting of boys and girls from the
Countess of Chell's celebrated institute close by, came and sang
in the garden in the falling snow, by the light of a lantern. And
Mr Bittenger's heart was as full as it could hold of English
Christmas.

As for Vera's heart, it was full of she knew not what. Mr
Bittenger's attitude towards her grew more and more chivalrous. He
contrived to indicate that he regarded all the years he had spent
before making the acquaintance of Vera as so many years absolutely
wasted. And Stephen did not seem to care.

They retired to rest that evening up a staircase whose banisters
the industrious hands of Mr Bittenger had entwined with holly and
paper festoons, and bade each other a merry Christmas with immense
fervour; but in the conjugal chamber Stephen maintained his policy
of implacable silence. And, naturally, Vera maintained hers. Could
it be expected of her that she should yield? The fault was all
Stephen's. He ought to have taken her to The Bear, Switzerland.
Then there would have been no dream, no Mr Bittenger, and no
danger. But as things were, within twenty-four hours he would be a
dead man.

And throughout Christmas Day Vera, beneath the gaiety with which
she met the vivacious sallies of Mr Bittenger, waited in horrible
suspense for the dream to fulfil itself. Stephen alone observed
her agitated condition. Stephen said to himself: 'The quarrel is
getting on her nerves. She'll yield before she's a day older. It
will do her good. Then I'll make it up to her handsomely. But she
must yield first.'

He little knew he was standing on the edge of the precipice of
death.

The Christmas dinner succeeded admirably; and Stephen, in whom
courage was seldom lacking, ate half a mince-pie. The day was
almost over. No premature decease had so far occurred. And when
both the men said that, if Vera permitted, they would come with
her at once to the drawing-room and smoke there, Vera decided that
after all dreams were nonsense. She entered the drawing-room
first, and Mr Bittenger followed her, with Stephen behind; but
just as Stephen was crossing the mat the gardener, holding a
parcel in his hands and looking rather strange there in the hall,
spoke to him. And Stephen stopped and called to Mr Bittenger. And
the drawing-room door was closed upon Vera.

She waited, solitary, for an incredible space of time, and then,
having heard unaccustomed and violent sounds in the distance, she
could contain herself no longer, and she rang the bell.

'Louisa,' she demanded of the parlourmaid, 'where is your master?'

'Oh, ma'am,' replied Louisa, giggling--a little licence was surely
permissible to the girl on Christmas night--'Oh, ma'am, there's
such a to-do! Tinsley has just brought some boxing-gloves, and
master and Mr Bittenger have got their coats off in the dining-
room. And they've had the table pushed up by the door, and you
never saw such a set-out in all your life ma'am.'

Vera dismissed Louisa.

There it was--the dream! They were going to box. Mr Bittenger was
doubtless an expert, and she knew that Stephen was not. A chance
blow by Mr Bittenger in some vital part, and Stephen would be
lying stretched in eternal stillness in the middle of the dining-
room floor where the table ought to be! The life of the monster
was at stake! The life of the brute was in her hands! The dream
was fulfilling itself to the point of tragedy!

She jumped up and rushed to the dining-room door. It would not
open. Again, the dream!

'You can't come in,' cried Stephen, laughing. 'Wait a bit.'

She pushed against the door, working the handle.

She was about to insist upon the door being opened, when the idea
of the danger of such a proceeding occurred to her. In the dream,
when she got the door opened, her husband's death had already
happened!

Frantically she ran to the kitchen.

'Louisa,' she ordered. 'Go into the garden and tap at the dining-
room window, and tell your master that I must speak to him at once
in the drawing-room.'

And in a pitiable state of excitation, she returned to the
drawing-room.

After another interminable period of suspense, her ear caught the
sound of the opening of doors, and then Stephen came into the
drawing-room. A singular apparition! He was coatless, as Louisa
had said, and the extremities of his long arms were bulged out
with cream-coloured boxing-gloves.

She sprang at him and kissed him.

'Steve,' she said, 'are we friends?'

'I should think we were!' he replied, returning her kiss heartily.
He had won.

'What are you doing?' she asked him.

'Bittenger and I are just going to have a real round with the
gloves. It's part of his cure for my indigestion, you know. He
says there's nothing like it. I've only just been able to get
gloves. Tinsley brought them up just now. And so we sort of
thought we'd like to have a go at once.'

'Why wouldn't you let me into the dining-room?'

'My child, the table was up against the door. And I fancied,
perhaps, you wouldn't be exactly charmed, so I--'

'Stephen,' she said, in her most persuasive voice, 'will you do
something to please me?'

'What is it?'

'Will you?'

A pause.

'Yes, certainly.'

'Don't box tonight.'

'Oh--well! What will Bittenger think?'

Another pause.

'Never mind! You don't want me to box, really?'

'I don't want you to box--not tonight.' 'Agreed, my chuck!' And he
kissed her again. He could well afford to be magnanimous.

Mr Bittenger ploughed the seas alone to New York.

But supposing that Vera had not interfered, what would have
happened? That is the unanswerable query which torments the
superstitious little brain of Vera.




THE BURGLARY

I


Lady Dain said: 'Jee, if that portrait stays there much longer,
you'll just have to take me off to Pirehill one of these fine
mornings.'

Pirehill is the seat of the great local hospital; but it is also
the seat of the great local lunatic asylum; and when the
inhabitants of the Five Towns say merely 'Pirehill', they mean the
asylum.

'I do declare I can't fancy my food now-a-days,' said Lady Dain,
'and it's all that portrait!' She stared plaintively up at the
immense oil-painting which faced her as she sat at the breakfast-
table in her spacious and opulent dining-room.

Sir Jehoshaphat made no remark.

Despite Lady Dain's animadversions upon it, despite the undoubted
fact that it was generally disliked in the Five Towns, the
portrait had cost a thousand pounds (some said guineas), and
though not yet two years old it was probably worth at least
fifteen hundred in the picture market. For it was a Cressage; and
not only was it a Cressage--it was one of the finest Cressages in
existence.

It marked the summit of Sir Jehoshaphat's career. Sir
Jehoshaphat's career was, perhaps, the most successful and
brilliant in the entire social history of the Five Towns. This
famous man was the principal partner in Dain Brothers. His brother
was dead, but two of Sir Jee's sons were in the firm. Dain
Brothers were the largest manufacturers of cheap earthenware in
the district, catering chiefly for the American and Colonial
buyer. They had an extremely bad reputation for cutting prices.
They were hated by every other firm in the Five Towns, and, to
hear rival manufacturers talk, one would gather the impression
that Sir Jee had acquired a tremendous fortune by systematically
selling goods under cost. They were also hated by between eighteen
and nineteen hundred employees. But such hatred, however virulent,
had not marred the progress of Sir Jee's career.

He had meant to make a name and he had made it. The Five Towns
might laugh at his vulgar snobbishness. The Five Towns might sneer
at his calculated philanthropy. But he was, nevertheless, the
best-known man in the Five Towns, and it was precisely his
snobbishness and his philanthropy which had carried him to the
top. Moreover, he had been the first public man in the Five Towns
to gain a knighthood. The Five Towns could not deny that it was
very proud indeed of this knighthood. The means by which he had
won this distinction were neither here nor there--he had won it.
And was he not the father of his native borough? Had he not been
three times mayor of his native borough? Was not the whole
northern half of the county dotted and spangled by his
benefactions, his institutions, his endowments?

And it could not be denied that he sometimes tickled the Five
Towns as the Five Towns likes being tickled. There was, for
example, the notorious Sneyd incident. Sneyd Hall, belonging to
the Earl of Chell, lies a few miles south of the Five Towns, and
from it the pretty Countess of Chell exercises that condescending
meddlesomeness which so frequently exasperates the Five Towns. Sir
Jee had got his title by the aid of the Countess-'Interfering
Iris', as she is locally dubbed. Shortly afterwards he had
contrived to quarrel with the Countess; and the quarrel was
conducted by Sir Jee as a quarrel between equals, which delighted
the district. Sir Jee's final word in it had been to buy a sizable
tract of land near Sneyd village, just off the Sneyd estate, and
to erect thereon a mansion quite as imposing as Sneyd Hall, and
far more up to date, and to call the mansion Sneyd Castle. A
mighty stroke! Iris was furious; the Earl speechless with fury.
But they could do nothing. Naturally the Five Towns was tickled.

It was apropos of the house-warming of Sneyd Castle, also of the
completion of his third mayoralty, and of the inauguration of the
Dain Technical Institute, that the movement had been started
(primarily by a few toadies) for tendering to Sir Jee a popular
gift worthy to express the profound esteem in which he was
officially held in the Five Towns. It having been generally felt
that the gift should take the form of a portrait, a local
dilettante had suggested Cressage, and when the Five Towns had
inquired into Cressage and discovered that that genius from the
United States was celebrated throughout the civilized world, and
regarded as the equal of Velazquez (whoever Velazquez might be),
and that he had painted half the aristocracy, and that his income
was regal, the suggestion was accepted and Cressage was
approached.

Cressage haughtily consented to paint Sir Jee's portrait on his
usual conditions; namely, that the sitter should go to the little
village in Bedfordshire where Cressage had his principal studio,
and that the painting should be exhibited at the Royal Academy
before being shown anywhere else. (Cressage was an R.A., but no
one thought of putting R.A. after his name. He was so big, that
instead of the Royal Academy conferring distinction on him, he
conferred distinction on the Royal Academy.)

Sir Jee went to Bedfordshire and was rapidly painted, and he came
back gloomy. The presentation committee went to Bedfordshire later
to inspect the portrait, and they, too, came back gloomy.

Then the Academy Exhibition opened, and the portrait, showing Sir
Jee in his robe and chain and in a chair, was instantly hailed as
possibly the most glorious masterpiece of modern times. All the
critics were of one accord. The committee and Sir Jee were
reassured, but only partially, and Sir Jee rather less so than the
committee. For there was something in the enthusiastic criticism
which gravely disturbed him. An enlightened generation, thoroughly
familiar with the dazzling yearly succession of Cressage's
portraits, need not be told what this something was. One critic
wrote that Cressage displayed even more than his 'customary
astounding insight into character....' Another critic wrote that
Cressage's observation was, as usual, 'calmly and coldly hostile'.
Another referred to the 'typical provincial mayor, immortalized
for the diversion of future ages.'

Inhabitants of the Five Towns went to London to see the work for
which they had subscribed, and they saw a mean, little, old man,
with thin lips and a straggling grey beard, and shifty eyes, and
pushful snob written all over him; ridiculous in his gewgaws of
office. When you looked at the picture close to, it was a
meaningless mass of coloured smudges, but when you stood fifteen
feet away from it the portrait was absolutely lifelike, amazing,
miraculous. It was so wondrously lifelike that some of the
inhabitants of the Five Towns burst out laughing. Many people felt
sorry--not for Sir Jee--but for Lady Dain. Lady Dain was beloved
and genuinely respected. She was a simple, homely, sincere woman,
her one weakness being that she had never been able to see through
Sir Jee.

Of course, at the presentation ceremony the portrait had been
ecstatically referred to as a possession precious for ever, and
the recipient and his wife pretended to be overflowing with pure
joy in the ownership of it.

It had been hanging in the dining-room of Sneyd Castle about
sixteen months, when Lady Dain told her husband that it would
ultimately drive her into the lunatic asylum.

'Don't be silly, wife,' said Sir Jee. 'I wouldn't part with that
portrait for ten times what it cost.'

This was, to speak bluntly, a downright lie. Sir Jee secretly
hated the portrait more than anyone hated it. He would have been
almost ready to burn down Sneyd Castle in order to get rid of the
thing. But it happened that on the previous evening, in the
conversation with the magistrates' clerk, his receptive brain had
been visited by a less expensive scheme than burning down the
castle.

Lady Dain sighed.

'Are you going to town early?' she inquired.

'Yes,' he replied. 'I'm on the rota today.'

He was chairman of the borough Bench of magistrates. As he drove
into town he revolved his scheme and thought it wild and
dangerous, but still feasible.




II


On the Bench that morning Sir Jee shocked Mr Sherratt, the
magistrates' clerk, and he utterly disgusted Mr Bourne,
superintendent of the borough police. (I do not intend to name the
name of the borough--whether Bursley, Hanbridge, Knype, Longshaw,
or Turnhill. The inhabitants of the Five Towns will know without
being told; the rest of the world has no right to know.) There had
recently occurred a somewhat thrilling series of burglaries in the
district, and the burglars (a gang of them was presumed) had
escaped the solicitous attentions of the police. But on the
previous afternoon an underling of Mr Bourne's had caught a man
who was generally believed to be wholly or partly responsible for
the burglaries. The Five Towns breathed with relief and
congratulated Mr Bourne; and Mr Bourne was well pleased with
himself. The Staffordshire Signal headed the item of news, 'Smart
Capture of a Supposed Burglar'. The supposed burglar gave his name
as William Smith, and otherwise behaved in an extremely suspicious
manner.

Now, Sir Jee, sitting as chief magistrate in the police-court,
actually dismissed the charge against the man! Overruling his sole
colleague on the Bench that morning, Alderman Easton, he dismissed
the charge against William Smith, holding that the evidence for
the prosecution was insufficient to justify even a remand. No
wonder that Mr Bourne was discouraged, not to say angry. No wonder
that that pillar of the law, Mr Sherratt, was pained and shocked.
At the conclusion of the case Sir Jehoshaphat said that he would
be glad to speak with William Smith afterwards in the magistrates'
room, indicating that he sympathized with William Smith, and
wished to exercise upon William Smith his renowned philanthropy.

And so, at about noon, when the Court majestically rose, Sir Jee
retired to the magistrates' room, where the humble Alderman Easton
was discreet enough not to follow him, and awaited William Smith.
And William Smith came, guided thither by a policeman, to whom, in
parting from him, he made a rude, surreptitious gesture.

Sir Jee, seated in the arm-chair which dominates the other chairs
round the elm table in the magistrates' room, emitted a
preliminary cough.

'Smith,' he said sternly, leaning his elbows on the table, 'you
were very fortunate this morning, you know.'

And he gazed at Smith.

Smith stood near the door, cap in hand. He did not resemble a
burglar, who surely ought to be big, muscular, and masterful. He
resembled an undersized clerk who has been out of work for a long
time, but who has nevertheless found the means to eat and drink
rather plenteously. He was clothed in a very shabby navy-blue
suit, frayed at the wrists and ankles, and greasy in front. His
linen collar was brown with dirt, his fingers were dirty, his hair
was unkempt and long, and a young and lusty black beard was
sprouting on his chin. His boots were not at all pleasant.

'Yes, governor,' Smith replied, lightly, with a Manchester accent.
'And what's YOUR game?'

Sir Jee was taken aback. He, the chairman of the borough Bench,
and the leading philanthropist in the country, to be so spoken to!
But what could he do? He himself had legally established Smith's
innocence. Smith was as free as air, and had a perfect right to
adopt any tone he chose to any man he chose. And Sir Jee desired a
service from William Smith.

'I was hoping I might be of use to you,' said Sir Jehoshaphat
diplomatically.

'Well,' said Smith, 'that's all right, that is. But none of your
philanthropic dodges, you know. I don't want to lead a new life,
and I don't want to turn over a new leaf, and I don't want a
helpin' hand, nor none o' those things. And, what's more, I don't
want a situation. I've got all the situation as I need. But I
never refuse money, nor beer neither. Never did, and I'm forty
years old next month.'

'I suppose burgling doesn't pay very well, does it?' Sir Jee
boldly ventured.

William Smith laughed coarsely.

'It pays right enough,' said he. 'But I don't put my money on my
back, governor, I put it into a bit of public-house property when
I get the chance.'

'It may pay,' said Sir Jee. 'But it is wrong. It is very anti-social.'

'Is it, indeed?' Smith returned dryly. 'Anti-social, is it? Well,
I've heard it called plenty o' things in my time, but never that.
Now, I should have called it quite sociablelike, sort of making
free with strangers, and so on. However,' he added, 'I come across
a cove once as told me crime was nothing but a disease and ought
to be treated as such. I asked him for a dozen o' port, but he
never sent it.'

'Ever been caught before?' Sir Jee inquired.

'Not much!' Smith exclaimed. 'And this'll be a lesson to me, I can
tell you. Now, what are you getting at, governor? Because my
time's money, my time is.'

Sir Jee coughed once more.

'Sit down,' said Sir Jee.

And William Smith sat down opposite to him at the table, and put
his shiny elbows on the table precisely in the manner of Sir Jee's
elbows.

'Well?' he cheerfully encouraged Sir Jee.

'How would you like to commit a burglary that was not a crime?'
said Sir Jee, his shifty eyes wandering around the room. 'A
perfectly lawful burglary?'

'What ARE you getting at?' William Smith was genuinely astonished.

'At my residence, Sneyd Castle,' Sir Jee proceeded, 'there's a
large portrait of myself in the dining-room that I want to have
stolen. You understand?'

'Stolen?'

'Yes. I want to get rid of it. And I want--er--people to think
that it has been stolen.'

'Well, why don't you stop up one night and steal it yourself, and
then burn it?' William Smith suggested.

'That would be deceitful,' said Sir Jee, gravely. 'I could not
tell my friends that the portrait had been stolen if it had not
been stolen. The burglary must be entirely genuine.'

'What's the figure?' said Smith curtly.

'Figure?'

'What are you going to give me for the job?'

'GIVE you for doing the job?' Sir Jee repeated, his secret and
ineradicable meanness aroused. 'GIVE you? Why, I'm giving you the
opportunity to honestly steal a picture that's worth over a
thousand pounds--I dare say it would be worth two thousand pounds
in America--and you want to be paid into the bargain! Do you know,
my man, that people come all the way from Manchester, and even
London, to see that portrait?' He told Smith about the painting.

'Then why are you in such a stew to be rid of it?' queried the
burglar.

'That's my affair,' said Sir Jee. 'I don't like it. Lady Dain
doesn't like it. But it's a presentation portrait, and so I can't--
you see, Mr Smith?'

'And how am I going to dispose of it when I've got it?' Smith
demanded. 'You can't melt a portrait down as if it was silver. By
what you say, governor, it's known all over the blessed world.
Seems to me I might just as well try to sell the Nelson Column.'

'Oh, nonsense!' said Sir Jee. 'Nonsense. You'll sell it in America
quite easily. It'll be a fortune to you. Keep it for a year first,
and then send it to New York.'

William Smith shook his head and drummed his fingers on the table;
and then quite suddenly he brightened and said--

'All right, governor. I'll take it on, just to oblige you.'

'When can you do it?' asked Sir Jee, hardly concealing his joy.
'Tonight?'

'No,' said Smith, mysteriously. 'I'm engaged tonight.'

'Well, tomorrow night?'

'Nor tomorrow. I'm engaged tomorrow too.'

'You seem to be very much engaged, my man,' Sir Jee observed.

'What do you expect?' Smith retorted. 'Business is business. I
could do it the night after tomorrow.'

'But that's Christmas Eve,' Sir Jee protested.

'What if it is Christmas Eve?' said Smith coldly. 'Would you
prefer Christmas Day? I'm engaged on Boxing Day AND the day
after.'

'Not in the Five Towns, I trust?' Sir Jee remarked.

'No,' said Smith shortly. 'The Five Towns is about sucked dry.'

The affair was arranged for Christmas Eve.

'Now,' Sir Jee suggested, 'shall I draw you a plan of the castle,
so that you can--'

William Smith's face expressed terrific scorn. 'Do you suppose,'
he said, 'as I haven't had plans o' your castle ever since it was
built? What do you take me for? I'm not a blooming excursionist,
I'm not. I'm a business man--that's what I am.'

Sir Jee was snubbed, and he agreed submissively to all William
Smith's arrangements for the innocent burglary. He perceived that
in William Smith he had stumbled on a professional of the highest
class, and this good fortune pleased him.

'There's only one thing that riles me,' said Smith, in parting,
'and that is that you'll go and say that after you'd done
everything you could for me I went and burgled your castle. And
you'll talk about the ingratitude of the lower classes. I know
you, governor!'




III


On the afternoon of the 24th of December Sir Jehoshaphat drove
home to Sneyd Castle from the principal of the three Dain
manufactories, and found Lady Dain superintending the work of
packing up trunks. He and she were to quit the castle that
afternoon in order to spend Christmas on the other side of the
Five Towns, under the roof of their eldest son, John, who had a
new house, a new wife, and a new baby (male). John was a
domineering person, and, being rather proud of his house and all
that was his, he had obstinately decided to have his own Christmas
at his own hearth. Grandpapa and Grandmamma, drawn by the
irresistible attraction of that novelty, a grandson (though Mrs
John HAD declined to have the little thing named Jehoshaphat), had
yielded to John's solicitations, and the family gathering, for the
first time in history, was not to occur round Sir Jee's mahogany.

Sir Jee, very characteristically, said nothing to Lady Dain
immediately. He allowed her to proceed with the packing of the
trunks, and then tea was served, and as the time was approaching
for the carriage to come round to take them to the station, at
last he suddenly remarked-

'I shan't be able to go with you to John's this afternoon.'

'Oh, Jee!' she exclaimed. 'Really, you are tiresome. Why couldn't
you tell me before?'

'I will come over tomorrow morning--perhaps in time for church,'
he proceeded, ignoring her demand for an explanation.

He always did ignore her demand for an explanation. Indeed, she
only asked for explanations in a mechanical and perfunctory
manner--she had long since ceased to expect them. Sir Jee had been
born like that--devious, mysterious, incalculable. And Lady Dain
accepted him as he was. She was somewhat surprised, therefore,
when he went on--

'I have some minutes of committee meetings that I really must go
carefully through and send off tonight, and you know as well as I
do that there'll be no chance of doing that at John's. I've
telegraphed to John.'

He was obviously nervous and self-conscious.

'There's no food in the house,' sighed Lady Dain. 'And the
servants are all going away except Callear, and HE can't cook your
dinner tonight. I think I'd better stay myself and look after
you.'

'You'll do no such thing,' said Sir Jee, decisively. 'As for my
dinner, anything will do for that. The servants have been promised
their holiday, to start from this evening, and they must have it.
I can manage.'

Here spoke the philanthropist with his unshakable sense of
justice.

So Lady Dain departed, anxious and worried, having previously
arranged something cold for Sir Jee in the dining-room, and
instructed Callear about boiling the water for Sir Jee's tea on
Christmas morning. Callear was the under-coachman and a useful odd
man. He it was who would drive Sir Jee to the station on Christmas
morning, and then guard the castle and the stables thereof during
the absence of the family and the other servants. Callear slept
over the stables.

And after Sir Jee had consumed his cold repast in the dining-room
the other servants went, and Sir Jee was alone in the castle,
facing the portrait.

He had managed the affair fairly well, he thought. Indeed, he had
a talent for chicane, and none knew it better than himself. It
would have been dangerous if the servants had been left in the
castle. They might have suffered from insomnia, and heard William
Smith, and interfered with the operations of William Smith. On the
other hand, Sir Jee had no intention whatever of leaving the
castle uninhabited to the mercies of William Smith. He felt that
he himself must be on the spot to see that everything went right
and that nothing went wrong. Thus, the previously-arranged scheme
for the servants' holiday fitted perfectly into his plans, and all
that he had had to do was to refuse to leave the castle till the
morrow. It was ideal.

Nevertheless, he was a little afraid of what he had done, and of
what he was going to permit William Smith to do. It was certainly
dangerous--certainly rather a wild scheme. However, the die was
cast. And within twelve hours he would be relieved of the
intolerable incubus of the portrait.

And when he thought of the humiliations which that portrait had
caused him; when he remembered the remarks of his sons concerning
it, especially John's remarks; when he recalled phrases about it
in London newspapers, he squirmed, and told himself that no scheme
for getting rid of it could be too wild and perilous. And, after
all, the burglary dodge was the only dodge, absolutely the only
conceivable practical method of disposing of the portrait--except
burning down the castle. And surely it was preferable to a
conflagration, to arson! Moreover, in case of fire at the castle
some blundering fool would be sure to cry; 'The portrait! The
portrait must be saved!' And the portrait would be saved.

He gazed at the repulsive, hateful thing. In the centre of the
lower part of the massive gold frame was the legend: 'Presented to
Sir Jehoshaphat Dain, Knight, as a mark of public esteem and
gratitude,' etc. He wondered if William Smith would steal the
frame. It was to be hoped that he would not steal the frame. In
fact, William Smith would find it very difficult to steal that
frame unless he had an accomplice or so.

'This is the last time I shall see YOU!' said Sir Jee to the
portrait.

Then he unfastened the catch of one of the windows in the dining-
room (as per contract with William Smith), turned out the electric
light, and went to bed in the deserted castle.

He went to bed, but not to sleep. It was no part of Sir Jee's
programme to sleep. He intended to listen, and he did listen.

And about two o'clock, precisely the hour which William Smith had
indicated, he fancied he heard muffled and discreet noises. Then
he was sure that he heard them. William Smith had kept his word.
Then the noises ceased for a period, and then they recommenced.
Sir Jee restrained his curiosity as long as he could, and when he
could restrain it no more he rose and silently opened his bedroom
window and put his head out into the nipping night air of
Christmas. And by good fortune he saw the vast oblong of the
picture, carefully enveloped in sheets, being passed by a couple
of dark figures through the dining-room window to the garden
outside. William Smith had a colleague, then, and he was taking
the frame as well as the canvas. Sir Jee watched the men disappear
down the avenue, and they did not reappear. Sir Jee returned to
bed.

Yes, he felt himself equal to facing it out with his family and
friends. He felt himself equal to pretending that he had no
knowledge of the burglary.

Having slept a few hours, he got up early and, half-dressed,
descended to the dining-room just to see what sort of a mess
William Smith had made.

The canvas of the portrait lay flat on the hearthrug, with the
following words written on it in chalk: 'This is no use to me.' It
was the massive gold frame that had gone.

Further, as was later discovered, all the silver had gone. Not a
spoon was left in the castle.




NEWS OF THE ENGAGEMENT


My mother never came to meet me at Bursley station when I arrived
in the Five Towns from London; much less did she come as far as
Knype station, which is the great traffic centre of the district,
the point at which one changes from the express into the local
train. She had always other things to do; she was 'preparing' for
me. So I had the little journey from Knype to Bursley, and then
the walk up Trafalgar Road, amid the familiar high chimneys and
the smoke and the clayey mud and the football posts and the
Midland accent, all by myself. And there was leisure to consider
anew how I should break to my mother the tremendous news I had for
her. I had been considering that question ever since getting into
the train at Euston, where I had said goodbye to Agnes; but in the
atmosphere of the Five Towns it seemed just slightly more
difficult; though, of course, it wasn't difficult, really.

You see, I wrote to my mother regularly every week, telling her
most of my doings. She knew all my friends by name. I dare say she
formed in her mind notions of what sort of people they were. Thus
I had frequently mentioned Agnes and her family in my letters. But
you can't write even to your mother and say in cold blood: 'I
think I am beginning to fall in love with Agnes,' 'I think Agnes
likes me,' 'I am mad on her,' 'I feel certain she likes me,' 'I
shall propose to her on such a day.' You can't do that. At least I
couldn't. Hence it had come about that on the 20th of December I
had proposed to Agnes and been accepted by Agnes, and my mother
had no suspicion that my happiness was so near. And on the 22nd,
by a previous and unalterable arrangement, I had come to spend
Christmas with my mother.

I was the only son of a widow; I was all that my mother had. And
lo! I had gone and engaged myself to a girl she had never seen,
and I had kept her in the dark! She would certainly be extremely
surprised, and she might be a little bit hurt--just at first.
Anyhow, the situation was the least in the world delicate.

I walked up the whitened front steps of my mother's little house,
just opposite where the electric cars stop, but before I could put
my hand on the bell my little plump mother, in her black silk and
her gold brooch and her auburn hair, opened to me, having
doubtless watched me down the road from the bay-window, as usual,
and she said, as usual kissing me--

'Well, Philip! How are you?'

And I said--

'Oh! I'm all right, mother. How are you?'

I perceived instantly that she was more excited than my arrival
ordinarily made her. There were tears in her smiling eyes, and she
was as nervous as a young girl. She did indeed look remarkably
young for a woman of forty-five, with twenty-five years of
widowhood and a brief but too tempestuous married life behind her.

The thought flashed across my mind: 'By some means or other she
has got wind of my engagement. But how?'

But I said nothing. I, too, was naturally rather nervous. Mothers
are kittle cattle.

'I'll tell her at supper,' I decided.

And she hovered round me, like a sea-gull round a steamer, as I
went upstairs.

There was a ring at the door. She flew, instead of letting the
servant go. It was a porter with my bag.

Just as I was coming down-stairs again there was another ring at
the door. And my mother appeared magically out of the kitchen, but
I was beforehand with her, and with a laugh I insisted on opening
the front door myself this time. A young woman stood on the step.

'Please, Mrs Dawson wants to know if Mrs Durance can kindly lend
her half-a-dozen knives and forks?'

'Eh, with pleasure,' said my mother, behind me. 'Just wait a
minute, Lucy. Come inside on the mat.'

I followed my mother into the drawing-room, where she kept her
silver in a cabinet.

'That's Mrs Dawson's new servant,' my mother whispered. 'But she
needn't think I'm going to lend her my best, because I'm not.'

'I shouldn't, if I were you,' I supported her.

And she went out with some second-best in tissue paper, and beamed
on Mrs Dawson's servant with an assumed benevolence.

'There!' she exclaimed. 'And the compliments of the season to your
mistress, Lucy.'

After that my mother disappeared into the kitchen to worry an
entirely capable servant. And I roamed about, feeling happily
excited, examining the drawing-room, in which nothing was changed
except the incandescent light and the picture postcards on the
mantelpiece. Then I wandered into the dining-room, a small room at
the back of the house, and here an immense surprise awaited me.

Supper was set for three!

'Well,' I reflected. 'Here's a nice state of affairs! Supper for
three, and she hasn't breathed a word!'

My mother was so clever in social matters, and especially in the
planning of delicious surprises, that I believed her capable even
of miracles. In some way or other she must have discovered the
state of my desires towards Agnes. She had written, or something.
She and Agnes had been plotting together by letter to startle me,
and perhaps telegraphing. Agnes had fibbed in telling me that she
could not possibly come to Bursley for Christmas; she had
delightfully fibbed. And my mother had got her concealed somewhere
in the house, or was momentarily expecting her. That explained the
tears, the nervousness, the rushes to the door.

I crept out of the dining-room, determined not to let my mother
know that I had secretly viewed the supper-table. And as I was
crossing the lobby to the drawing-room there was a third ring at
the door, and a third time my mother rushed out of the kitchen.

'By Jove!' I thought. 'Suppose it's Agnes. What a scene!'

And trembling with expectation I opened the door. It was Mr Nixon.

Now, Mr Nixon was an old friend of the family's, a man of forty-
nine or fifty, with a reputation for shrewdness and increasing
wealth. He owned a hundred and seventy-five cottages in the town,
having bought them gradually in half-dozens, and in rows; he
collected the rents himself, and attended to the repairs himself,
and was celebrated as a good landlord, and as being almost the
only man in Bursley who had made cottage property pay. He lived
alone in Commerce Street, and, though not talkative, was usually
jolly, with one or two good stories tucked away in the corners of
his memory. He was my mother's trustee, and had morally aided her
in the troublous times before my father's early death.

'Well, young man,' cried he. 'So you're back in owd Bosley!' It
amused him to speak the dialect a little occasionally.

And he brought his burly, powerful form into the lobby.

I greeted him as jovially as I could, and then he shook hands with
my mother, neither of them speaking.

'Mr Nixon is come for supper, Philip,' said my mother.

I liked Mr Nixon, but I was not too well pleased by this
information, for I wanted to talk confidentially to my mother. I
had a task before me with my mother, and here Mr Nixon was
plunging into the supper. I could not break it gently to my mother
that I was engaged to a strange young woman in the presence of Mr
Nixon. Mr Nixon had been in to supper several times during
previous visits of mine, but never on the first night.

However, I had to make the best of it. And we sat down and began
on the ham, the sausages, the eggs, the crumpets, the toast, the
jams, the mince-tarts, the Stilton, and the celery. But we none of
us ate very much, despite my little plump mother's protestations.

My suspicion was that perhaps something had gone slightly wrong
with my mother's affairs, and that Mr Nixon was taking the first
opportunity to explain things to me. But such a possibility did
not interest me, for I could easily afford to keep my mother and a
wife too. I was still preoccupied in my engagement--and surely
there is nothing astonishing in that--and I began to compose the
words in which, immediately on the departure of Mr Nixon after
supper, I would tackle my mother on the subject.

When we had reached the Stilton and celery, I intimated that I
must walk down to the post-office, as I had to dispatch a letter.

'Won't it do tomorrow, my pet?' asked my mother.

'It will not,' I said.

Imagine leaving Agnes two days without news of my safe arrival and
without assurances of my love! I had started writing the letter in
the train, near Willesden, and I finished it in the drawing-room.

'A lady in the case?' Mr Nixon called out gaily.

'Yes,' I replied with firmness.

I went forth, bought a picture postcard showing St Luke's Square,
Bursley, most untruthfully picturesque, and posted the card and
the letter to my darling Agnes. I hoped that Mr Nixon would have
departed ere my return; he had made no reference at all during
supper to my mother's affairs. But he had not departed. I found
him solitary in the drawing-room, smoking a very fine cigar.

'Where's the mater?' I demanded.

'She's just gone out of the room,' he said. 'Come and sit down.
Have a weed. I want a bit of a chat with you, Philip.'

I obeyed, taking one of the very fine cigars.

'Well, Uncle Nixon,' I encouraged him, wishing to get the chat
over because my mind was full of Agnes. I sometimes called him
uncle for fun.

'Well, my boy,' he began. 'It's no use me beating about the bush.
What do you think of me as a stepfather?'

I was struck, as they say down there, all of a heap.

'What?' I stammered. 'You don't mean to say--you and mother--?'

He nodded.

'Yes, I do, lad. Yesterday she promised as she'd marry my unworthy
self. It's been coming along for some time. But I don't expect
she's given you any hint in her letters. In fact, I know she
hasn't. It would have been rather difficult, wouldn't it? She
couldn't well have written, "My dear Philip, an old friend, Mr
Nixon, is falling in love with me and I believe I'm falling in
love with him. One of these days he'll be proposing to me." She
couldn't have written like that, could she?'

I laughed. I could not help it.

'Shake hands,' I said warmly. 'I'm delighted.'

And soon afterwards my mother sidled in, shyly.

'The lad's delighted, Sarah,' said Mr Nixon shortly.

I said nothing about my own engagement that night. I had never
thought of my mother as a woman with a future, I had never
realized that she was desirable, and that a man might desire her,
and that her lonely existence in that house was not all that she
had the right to demand from life. And I was ashamed of my
characteristic filial selfish egoism. So I decided that I would
not intrude my joys on hers until the next morning. We live and
learn.




BEGINNING THE NEW YEAR

I


We are a stolid and a taciturn race, we of the Five Towns. It may
be because we are geographically so self contained; or it may be
because we work in clay and iron; or it may merely be because it
is our nature to be stolid and taciturn. But stolid and taciturn
we are; and some of the instances of our stolidity and our
taciturnity are enough to astound. They do not, of course, astound
us natives; we laugh at them, we think they are an immense joke,
and what the outer world may think does not trouble our deep
conceit of ourselves. I have often wondered what would be the
effect, other than an effect of astonishment, on the outer world,
of one of these narratives illustrating our Five Towns
peculiarities of deportment. And I intend for the first time in
history to make such a narrative public property. I have purposely
not chosen an extreme example; just an average example. You will
see how it strikes you.

Toby Hall, once a burgess of Turnhill, the northernmost and
smallest of the Five Towns, was passing, last New Year's Eve,
through the district by train on his way from Crewe to Derby. He
lived at Derby, and he was returning from the funeral of a brother
member of the Ancient Order of Foresters at Crewe. He got out of
the train at Knype, the great railway centre of the Five Towns, to
have a glass of beer in the second-class refreshment-room. It
being New Year's Eve, the traffic was heavy and disorganized,
especially in the refreshment-room, and when Toby Hall emerged on
to the platform again the train was already on the move. Toby was
neither young nor active. His years were fifty, and on account of
the funeral he wore broadcloth and a silk hat, and his overcoat
was new and encumbering. Impossible to take a flying leap into the
train! He missed the train. And then he reflectively stroked his
short grey beard (he had no moustache, and his upper lip was very
long), and then he smoothed down his new overcoat over his rotund
form.

'Young man,' he asked a porter. 'When's next train Derby way?'

'Ain't none afore tomorrow.'

Toby went and had another glass of beer.

'D--d if I don't go to Turnhill,' he said to himself, slowly and
calmly, as he paid for the second glass of beer.

He crossed the station by the subway and waited for the loop-line
train to Turnhill. He had not set foot in the Five Towns for
three-and-twenty years, having indeed carefully and continuously
avoided it, as a man will avoid the street where his creditor
lives. But he discovered no change in Knype railway-station. And
he had a sort of pleasure in the fact that he knew his way about
it, knew where the loop-line trains started from and other
interesting little details. Even the special form of the loop-line
time-table, pasted here and there on the walls of the station, had
not varied since his youth. (We return Radicals to Parliament, but
we are proud of a railway which for fine old English conservatism
brooks no rival.)

Toby gazed around, half challengingly and half nervously--it was
conceivable that he might be recognized, or might recognize. But
no! Not a soul in the vast, swaying, preoccupied, luggage-laden
crowds gave him a glance. As for him, although he fully recognized
nobody, yet nearly every face seemed to be half-familiar. He
climbed into a second-class compartment when the train drew up,
and ten other people, all with third-class tickets, followed his
example; three persons were already seated therein. The
compartment was illuminated by one lamp, and in the Bleakridge
Tunnel this lamp expired. Everything reminded him of his youth.

In twenty minutes he was leaving Turnhill station and entering the
town. It was about nine o'clock, and colder than winters of the
period usually are. The first thing he saw was an electric tram,
and the second thing he saw was another electric tram. In Toby's
time there were no trams at Turnhill, and the then recently-
introduced steam-trams between Bursley and Longshaw, long since
superseded, were regarded as the final marvel of science as
applied to traction. And now there were electric trams at
Turnhill! The railway renewed his youth, but this darting
electricity showed him how old he was. The Town Hall, which was
brand-new when he left Turnhill, had the look of a mediaeval hotel
de ville as he examined it in the glamour of the corporation's
incandescent gas. And it was no more the sole impressive pile in
the borough. The High Street and its precincts abounded in
impressive piles. He did not know precisely what they were, but
they had the appearance of being markets, libraries, baths, and
similar haunts of luxury; one was a bank. He thought that Turnhill
High Street compared very well with Derby. He would have preferred
it to be less changed. If the High Street was thus changed,
everything would be changed, including Child Row. The sole
phenomenon that recalled his youth (except the Town Hall) was the
peculiar smell of oranges and apples floating out on the frosty
air from holly-decorated greengrocers' shops.

He passed through the Market Square, noting that sinister freak,
the Jubilee Tower, and came to Child Row. The first building on
your right as you enter Child Row from the square is the Primitive
Methodist Chapel. Yes, it was still there; Primitive Methodism had
not failed in Turnhill because Toby Hall had deserted the cause
three-and-twenty years ago! But something serious had happened to
the structure. Gradually Toby realized that its old face had been
taken out and a new one put in, the classic pillars had vanished,
and a series of Gothic arches had been substituted by way of
portico; a pretty idea, but not to Toby's liking. It was another
change, another change! He crossed the street and proceeded
downwards in the obscurity, and at length halted and peered with
his little blue eyes at a small house (one of twins) on the other
side from where he stood. That house, at any rate, was unchanged.
It was a two-storeyed house, with a semicircular fanlight over a
warped door of grained panelling. The blind of the window to the
left of the door was irradiated from within, proving habitation.

'I wonder--' ran Toby's thought. And he unhesitatingly crossed the
street again, towards it, feeling first for the depth of the
kerbstone with his umbrella. He had a particular and special
interest in that house (No. 11 it was--and is), for, four-and-
twenty years ago he had married it. II

Four-and-twenty years ago Toby Hall (I need not say that his
proper Christian name was Tobias) had married Miss Priscilla
Bratt, then a calm and self-reliant young woman of twenty-three,
and Priscilla had the house, together with a certain income, under
the will of her father. The marriage was not the result of burning
passion on either side. It was a union of two respectabilities,
and it might have succeeded as well as such unions generally do
succeed, if Priscilla had not too frequently mentioned the fact
that the house they lived in was hers. He knew that the house was
hers. The whole world was perfectly aware of the ownership of the
house, and her references to the matter amounted to a lack of
tact. Several times Toby had indicated as much. But Priscilla took
no heed. She had the hide of an alligator herself (though a
personable girl), and she assumed that her husband's hide was of
similar stuff. This assumption was justifiable, except that in
just one spot the skin of Toby was tender. He really did not care
to be reminded that he was living under his wife's roof. The
reiteration settled on his nerves like a malady. And before a year
had elapsed Priscilla had contrived to remind him once too often.
And one day he put some things in a carpet-bag, and a hat on his
head, and made for the door. The house was antique, and the front-
parlour gave directly on to the street.

'Where be going?' Priscilla asked him.

He hesitated a second, and said--

'Merica.'

And he was. In the Five Towns we are apt to end our marriages in
that laconic manner. Toby did not complain too much; he simply and
unaffectedly went. It might be imagined that the situation was a
trying one for Priscilla. Not so! Priscilla had experienced
marriage with Toby and had found it wanting. She was content to be
relieved of Toby. She had her house and her money and her self-
esteem, and also tranquillity. She accepted the solution, and
devoted her days to the cleanliness of the house.

Toby drew all the money he had out of the Bursley and Turnhill
Permanent Fifty Pounds Benefit Building Society (four shares,
nearly paid up) and set sail--in the Adriatic, which was then the
leading greyhound of the Atlantic--for New York. From New York he
went to Trenton (New Jersey), which is the Five Towns of America.
A man of his skill in handling clay on a wheel had no difficulty
whatever in wresting a good livelihood from Trenton. When he had
tarried there a year he caused a letter to be written to his wife
informing her that he was dead. He wished to be quite free; and
also (we have our feeling for justice) he wished his wife to be
quite free. It did not occur to him that he had done anything
extraordinary, either in deserting his wife or in forwarding false
news of his death. He had done the simple thing, the casual thing,
the blunt thing, the thing that necessitated the minimum of
talking. He did not intend to return to England.

However, after a few years, he did return to England. The cause of
his return is irrelevant to the history, but I may say that it
sprang from a conflict between the Five Towns temperament and the
Trenton Union of Earthenware Operatives. Such is the power of
Unions in the United States that Toby, if he wished to remain
under the Federal Flag, had either to yield or to starve. He would
not yield. He changed his name and came to England; strolled
calmly into the Crown Porcelain Works at Derby one day, and there
recommenced his career as an artificer of earthenware. He did
well. He could easily earn four pounds a week, and had no desires,
save in the direction of fly-fishing--not an expensive diversion.
He knew better than to marry. He existed quietly; and one year
trod on the heels of another, and carried him from thirty to forty
and forty to fifty, and no one found out his identity, though
there are several direct trains daily between Derby and Knype.

And now, owing to the death of a friend and a glass of beer, he
was in Child Row, crossing the street towards the house whose
ownership had caused him to quit it.

He knocked on the door with the handle of his umbrella. There was
no knocker; there never had been a knocker. III

The door opened cautiously, as such doors in the Five Towns do,
after a shooting of bolts and a loosing of chains; it opened to
the extent of about nine inches, and Toby Hall saw the face of a
middle-aged woman eyeing him.

'Is this Mrs Hall's?' he asked sternly.

'No. It ain't Mrs Hall's. It's Mrs Tansley's.'

'I thowt--'

The door opened a little wider.

'That's not you, Tobias?' said the woman unmoved.

'I reckon it is, though,' replied Toby, with a difficult smile.

'Bless us!' exclaimed the woman. The door oscillated slightly
under her hand. 'Bless us!' she repeated. And then suddenly,
'You'd happen better come in, Tobias.'

'Aye!' said Tobias.

And he entered.

'Sit ye down, do,' said his wife. 'I thowt as you were dead. They
wrote and told me so.'

'Aye!' said Tobias. 'But I am na'.'

He sat down in an arm-chair near the old-fashioned grate, with its
hobs at either side. He was acquainted with that chair, and it had
not appreciably altered since his departure. The lastingness of
furniture under fair treatment is astonishing. This chair was
uncomfortably in exactly the same spot where it had always been
uncomfortable; and the same anti-macassar was draped over its
uncompromising back. Toby put his hat on the table, and leaned his
umbrella against the chimney-piece. His overcoat he retained. Same
table; same chimney-piece; same clock and ornaments on the
chimney-piece! But a different carpet on the floor, and different
curtains before the window.

Priscilla bolted and chained the door, and then she too sat down.
Her gown was black, with a small black silk apron. And she was
stout, and she wore felt slippers and moved with the same gingerly
care as Toby himself did. She looked fully her years. Her thin
lips were firmer than ever. It was indeed Priscilla.

'Well, well!' she murmured.

But her capacity for wonder was nearly exhausted.

'Aye!' said Toby, with an air that was meant to be quasi-humorous.
He warmed his hands at the fire, and then rubbed them over the
front of his calves, leaning forward.

'So ye've come back?' said Priscilla.

'Aye!' concurred Toby.

There was a pause.

'Cold weather we're having,' he muttered.

'It's seasonable,' Priscilla pointed out.

Her glance rested on a sprig of holly that was tied under the gas-
chandelier, unique relic of Christmas in the apartment.

Another pause. It would be hazardous to guess what their feelings
were; perhaps their feelings were scarcely anything at all.

'And what be the news?' Toby inquired, with what passes in the
Five Towns for geniality.

'News?' she repeated, as if not immediately grasping the
significance of the question. 'I don't know as there's any news,
nothing partic'ler, that is.'

Hung on the wall near the chimney-piece was a photograph of a
girl. It was an excellent likeness to Priscilla, as she was in
Toby's pre-Trenton days. How young and fresh the creature looked;
so simple, so inexperienced! It startled Toby.

'I don't remember that,' he said.

'What?'

'That!' And he jerked his elbow towards the photograph.

'Oh! THAT! That's my daughter,' said Priscilla.

'Bless us!' said Toby in turn.

'I married Job Tansley,' Priscilla continued. 'He died four years
ago last Knype Wakes Monday. HER'S married'--indicating the
photograph--'her married young Gibson last September.'

'Well, well!' murmured Toby.

Another pause.

There was a shuffling on the pavement outside, and some children
began to sing about shepherds and flocks.

'Oh, bother them childer,' said Priscilla. 'I must send 'em off.'

She got up.

'Here! Give 'em a penny,' Toby suggested, holding out a penny.

'Yes, and then they'll tell others, and I shan't have a moment's
peace all night!' Priscilla grumbled.

However, she bestowed the penny, cutting the song off abruptly in
the middle. And she bolted and chained the door and sat down
again.

Another pause.

'Well, well!' said Priscilla.

'Aye!' Toby agreed. 'Good coal that!'

'Fourteen shilling a ton!'

Another pause, and a longer.

'Is Ned Walklate still at th' Rose and Crown?' Toby asked.

'For aught I know he is,' said Priscilla.

'I'll just step round there,' said Toby, picking up his hat and
rising.

As he was manoeuvring the door-chain, Priscilla said--

'You're forgetting your umbrella, Tobias.'

'No,' he answered. 'I hanna' forgotten it. I'm coming back.'

Their eyes met, charged with meaning.

'That'll be all right,' she said. 'Well, well!'

'Aye!'

And he stepped round to Ned Walklate's.




FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER

I


It is the greatest mistake in the world to imagine that, because
the Five Towns is an industrial district, devoted to the
manufacture of cups and saucers, marbles and door-knobs, therefore
there is no luxury in it.

A writer, not yet deceased, who spent two nights there, and wrote
four hundred pages about it, has committed herself to the
assertion that there are no private carriages in its streets--
only perambulators and tramcars.

That writer's reputation is ruined in the Five Towns. For the Five
Towns, although continually complaining of bad times, is immensely
wealthy, as well as immensely poor--a country of contrasts,
indeed--and private carriages, if they do not abound, exist at any
rate in sufficient numbers.

Nay, more, automobiles of the most expensive French and English
makes fly dashingly along its hilly roads and scatter in profusion
the rich black mud thereof.

On a Saturday afternoon in last spring, such an automobile stood
outside the garden entrance of Bleakridge House, just halfway
between Hanbridge and Bursley. It belonged to young Harold Etches,
of Etches, Limited, the great porcelain manufacturers.

It was a 20 h.p. Panhard, and was worth over a thousand pounds as
it stood there, throbbing, and Harold was proud of it.

He was also proud of his young wife, Maud, who, clad in several
hundred pounds' worth of furs, had taken her seat next to the
steering-wheel, and was waiting for Harold to mount by her side.
The united ages of this handsome and gay couple came to less than
forty-five.

And they owned the motor-car, and Bleakridge House with its ten
bedrooms, and another house at Llandudno, and a controlling
interest in Etches, Limited, that brought them in seven or eight
thousand a year. They were a pretty tidy example of what the Five
Towns can do when it tries to be wealthy.

At that moment, when Harold was climbing into the car, a shabby
old man who was walking down the road, followed by a boy carrying
a carpet-bag, stopped suddenly and touched Harold on the shoulder.

'Bless us!' exclaimed the old man. And the boy and the carpet-bag
halted behind him.

'What? Uncle Dan?' said Harold.

'Uncle Dan!' cried Maud, springing up with an enchanting smile.
'Why, it's ages since--'

'And what d'ye reckon ye'n gotten here?' demanded the old man.

'It's my new car,' Harold explained.

'And ca'st drive it, lad?' asked the old man.

'I should think I could!' said Harold confidently.

'H'm!' commented the old man, and then he shook hands, and
thoroughly scrutinized Maud.

Now, this is the sort of thing that can only be seen and
appreciated in a district like the Five Towns, where families
spring into splendour out of nothing in the course of a couple of
generations, and as often as not sink back again into nothing in
the course of two generations more.

The Etches family is among the best known and the widest spread in
the Five Towns. It originated in three brothers, of whom Daniel
was the youngest. Daniel never married; the other two did. Daniel
was not very fond of money; the other two were, and they founded
the glorious firm of Etches. Harold was the grandson of one
brother, and Maud was the Granddaughter of the other.
Consequently, they both stood in the same relation to Dan, who was
their great-uncle--addressed as uncle 'for short'.

There is a good deal of snobbery in the Five Towns, but it does
not exist between relatives. The relatives in danger of suffering
by it would never stand it. Besides, although Dan's income did not
exceed two hundred a year, he was really richer than his
grandnephew, since Dan lived on half his income, whereas Harold,
aided by Maud, lived on all of his.

Consequently, despite the vast difference in their stations,
clothes, and manners, Daniel and his young relatives met as
equals. It would have been amusing to see anyone--even the
Countess of Chell, who patronized the entire district--attempt to
patronize Dan.

In his time he had been the greatest pigeon-fancier in the
country.

'So you're paying a visit to Bursley, uncle?' said Maud.

'Aye!' Dan replied. 'I'm back i' owd Bosley. Sarah--my
housekeeper, thou know'st--'

'Not dead?'

'No. Her inna' dead; but her sister's dead, and I've give her a
week's play [holiday], and come away. Rat Edge'll see nowt o' me
this side Easter.'

Rat Edge was the name of the village, five miles off, which Dan
had honoured in his declining years.

'And where are you going to now?' asked Harold.

'I'm going to owd Sam Shawn's, by th' owd church, to beg a bed.'

'But you'll stop with us, of course?' said Harold.

'Nay, lad,' said Dan.

'Oh yes, uncle,' Maud insisted.

'Nay, lass,' said Dan.

'Indeed, you will, uncle,' said Maud positively. 'If you don't,
I'll never speak to you again.'

She had a charming fire in her eyes, had Maud.

Daniel, the old bachelor, yielded at once, but in his own style.

'I'll try it for a night, lass,' said he.

Thus it occurred that the carpet-bag was carried into Bleakridge
House, and that after some delay Harold and Maud carried off Uncle
Dan with them in the car. He sat in the luxurious tonneau behind,
and Maud had quitted her husband in order to join him. Possibly
she liked the humorous wrinkles round his grey eyes. Or it may
have been the eyes themselves. And yet Dan was nearer seventy than
sixty.

The car passed everything on the road; it seemed to be overtaking
electric trams all the time.

'So ye'n been married a year?' said Uncle Dan, smiling at Maud.

'Oh yes; a year and three days. We're quite used to it.'

'Us'n be in h-ll in a minute, wench!' exclaimed Dan, calmly
changing the topic, as Harold swung the car within an inch of a
brewer's dray, and skidded slightly in the process. No anti-
skidding device would operate in that generous, oozy mud.

And, as a matter of fact, they were in Hanbridge the next minute--
Hanbridge, the centre of the religions, the pleasures, and the
vices of the Five Towns.

'Bless us!' said the old man. 'It's fifteen year and more since I
were here.'

'Harold,' said Maud, 'let's stop at the Piccadilly Cafe and have
some tea.'

'Cafe?' asked Dan. 'What be that?'

'It's a kind of a pub.' Harold threw the explanation over his
shoulder as he brought the car up with swift dexterity in front of
the Misses Callear's newly opened afternoon tea-rooms.

'Oh, well, if it's a pub,' said Uncle Dan, 'I dunna' object.'

He frankly admitted, on entering, that he had never before seen a
pub full of little tables and white cloths, and flowers, and young
women, and silver teapots, and cake-stands. And though he did pour
his tea into his saucer, he was sufficiently at home there to
address the younger Miss Callear as 'young woman', and to inform
her that her beverage was lacking in Orange Pekoe. And the Misses
Callear, who conferred a favour on their customers in serving
them, didn't like it.

He became reminiscent.

'Aye!' he said, 'when I left th' Five Towns fifty-two years sin'
to go weaving i' Derbyshire wi' my mother's brother, tay were ten
shilling a pun'. Us had it when us were sick--which wasna' often.
We worked too hard for be sick. Hafe past five i' th' morning till
eight of a night, and then Saturday afternoon walk ten mile to
Glossop with a week's work on ye' back, and home again wi' th'
brass.

'They've lost th' habit of work now-a-days, seemingly,' he went
on, as the car moved off once more, but slowly, because of the
vast crowds emerging from the Knype football ground. 'It's
football, Saturday; bands of a Sunday; football, Monday; ill i'
bed and getting round, Tuesday; do a bit o' work Wednesday;
football, Thursday; draw wages Friday night; and football,
Saturday. And wages higher than ever. It's that as beats me--
wages higher than ever--

'Ye canna' smoke with any comfort i' these cars,' he added, when
Harold had got clear of the crowds and was letting out. He
regretfully put his pipe in his pocket.

Harold skirted the whole length of the Five Towns from south to
north, at an average rate of perhaps thirty miles an hour; and
quite soon the party found itself on the outer side of Turnhill,
and descending the terrible Clough Bank, three miles long, and of
a steepness resembling the steepness of the side of a house.

The car had warmed to its business, and Harold took them down that
declivity in a manner which startled even Maud, who long ago had
resigned herself to the fact that she was tied for life to a young
man for whom the word 'danger' had no meaning.

At the bottom they had a swerve skid; but as there was plenty of
room for eccentricities, nothing happened except that the car
tried to climb the hill again.

'Well, if I'd known,' observed Uncle Dan, 'if I'd guessed as you
were reservin' this treat for th' owd uncle, I'd ha' walked.'

The Etches blood in him was pretty cool, but his nerve had had a
shaking.

Then Harold could not restart the car. The engine had stopped of
its own accord, and, though Harold lavished much physical force on
the magic handle in front, nothing would budge. Maud and the old
man got down, the latter with relief.

'Stuck, eh?' said Dan. 'No steam?'

'That's it!' Harold cried, slapping his leg. 'What an ass I am!
She wants petrol, that's all. Maud, pass a couple of cans. They're
under the seat there, behind. No; on the left, child.'

However, there was no petrol on the car.

'That's that cursed Durand' (Durand being the new chauffeur--
French, to match the car). 'I told him not to forget. Last thing I
said to the fool! Maud, I shall chuck that chap!'

'Can't we do anything?' asked Maud stiffly, putting her lips
together.

'We can walk back to Turnhill and buy some petrol, some of us!'
snapped Harold. 'That's what we can do!'

'Sithee,' said Uncle Dan. 'There's the Plume o' Feathers half-a-
mile back. Th' landlord's a friend o' mine. I can borrow his mare
and trap, and drive to Turnhill and fetch some o' thy petrol, as
thou calls it.'

'It's awfully good of you, uncle.'

'Nay, lad, I'm doing it for please mysen. But Maud mun come wi'
me. Give us th' money for th' petrol, as thou calls it.'

'Then I must stay here alone?' Harold complained.

'Seemingly,' the old man agreed.

After a few words on pigeons, and a glass of beer, Dan had no
difficulty whatever in borrowing his friend's white mare and black
trap. He himself helped in the harnessing. Just as he was driving
triumphantly away, with that delicious vision Maud on his left
hand and a stable-boy behind, he reined the mare in.

'Give us a couple o' penny smokes, matey,' he said to the
landlord, and lit one.

The mare could go, and Dan could make her go, and she did go. And
the whole turn-out looked extremely dashing when, ultimately, it
dashed into the glare of the acetylene lamps which the deserted
Harold had lighted on his car.

The red end of a penny smoke in the gloom of twilight looks
exactly as well as the red end of an Havana. Moreover, the mare
caracolled ornamentally in the rays of the acetylene, and the
stable-boy had to skip down quick and hold her head.

'How much didst say this traction-engine had cost thee?' Dan
asked, while Harold was pouring the indispensable fluid into the
tank.

'Not far off twelve hundred,' answered Harold lightly. 'Keep that
cigar away from here.'

'Fifteen pun' ud buy this mare,' Dan announced to the road.

'Now, all aboard!' Harold commanded at length. 'How much shall I
give to the boy for the horse and trap, uncle?'

'Nothing,' said Dan. 'I havena' finished wi' that mare yet. Didst
think I was going to trust mysen i' that thing o' yours again?
I'll meet thee at Bleakridge, lad.'

'And I think I'll go with uncle too, Harold,' said Maud.

Whereupon they both got into the trap.

Harold stared at them, astounded.

'But I say--' he protested, beginning to be angry.

Uncle Dan drove away like the wind, and the stable-boy had all he
could do to clamber up behind.




II


Now, at dinner-time that night, in the dining-room of the
commodious and well-appointed mansion of the youngest and richest
of the Etches, Uncle Dan stood waiting and waiting for his host
and hostess to appear. He was wearing a Turkish tasselled smoking-
cap to cover his baldness, and he had taken off his jacket and put
on his light, loose overcoat instead of it, since that was a
comfortable habit of his.

He sent one of the two parlourmaids upstairs for his carpet
slippers out of the carpet-bag, and he passed part of the time in
changing his boots for his slippers in front of the fire. Then at
length, just as a maid was staggering out under the load of those
enormous boots, Harold appeared, very correct, but alone.

'Awfully sorry to keep you waiting, uncle,' said Harold, 'but Maud
isn't well. She isn't coming down tonight.'

'What's up wi' Maud?'

'Oh, goodness knows!' responded Harold gloomily. 'She's not well--
that's all.'

'H'm!' said Dan. 'Well, let's peck a bit.'

So they sat down and began to peck a bit, aided by the two maids.
Dan pecked with prodigious enthusiasm, but Harold was not in good
pecking form. And as the dinner progressed, and Harold sent dish
after dish up to his wife, and his wife returned dish after dish
untouched, Harold's gloom communicated itself to the house in
general.

One felt that if one had penetrated to the farthest corner of the
farthest attic, a little parcel of spiritual gloom would have
already arrived there. The sense of disaster was in the abode. The
cook was prophesying like anything in the kitchen. Durand in the
garage was meditating upon such of his master's pithy remarks as
he had been able to understand.

When the dinner was over, and the coffee and liqueurs and cigars
had been served, and the two maids had left the dining-room, Dan
turned to his grandnephew and said--

'There's things as has changed since my time, lad, but human
nature inna' one on em.'

'What do you mean, uncle?' Harold asked awkwardly, self-
consciously.

'I mean as thou'rt a dashed foo'!'

'Why?'

'But thou'lt get better o' that,' said Dan.

Harold smiled sheepishly.

'I don't know what you're driving at, uncle,' said he.

'Yes, thou dost, lad. Thou'st been and quarrelled wi' Maud. And I
say thou'rt a dashed foo'!'

'As a matter of fact--' Harold stammered.

'And ye've never quarrelled afore. This is th' fust time. And so
thou'st under th' impression that th' world's come to an end.
Well, th' fust quarrel were bound to come sooner or later.'

'It isn't really a quarrel--it's about nothing--'

'I know--I know,' Dan broke in. 'They always are. As for it not
being a quarrel, lad, call it a picnic if thou'st a mind. But
heir's sulking upstairs, and thou'rt sulking down here.'

'She was cross about the petrol,' said Harold, glad to relieve his
mind. 'I hadn't a notion she was cross till I went up into the
bedroom. Not a notion! I explained to her it wasn't my fault. I
argued it out with her very calmly. I did my best to reason with
her--'

'Listen here, young 'un,' Dan interrupted him. 'How old art?'

'Twenty-three.'

'Thou may'st live another fifty years. If thou'st a mind to spend
'em i' peace, thoud'st better give up reasoning wi' women. Give it
up right now! It's worse nor drink, as a habit. Kiss 'em, cuddle
'em, beat 'em. But dunna' reason wi' 'em.'

'What should you have done in my place?' Harold asked.

'I should ha' told Maud her was quite right.'

'But she wasn't.'

'Then I should ha' winked at mysen i' th' glass,' continued Dan,
'and kissed her.'

'That's all very well--'

'Naturally,' said Dan, 'her wanted to show off that car i' front
o' me. That was but natural. And her was vexed when it went
wrong.'

'But I told her--I explained to her.'

'Her's a handsome little wench,' Dan proceeded. 'And a good heart.
But thou'st got ten times her brains, lad, and thou ought'st to
ha' given in.'

'But I can't always be--'

'It's allus them as gives in as has their own way. I remember her
grandfather--he was th' eldest o' us--he quarrelled wi' his wife
afore they'd been married a week, and she raced him all over th'
town wi' a besom--'

'With a besom, uncle?' exclaimed Harold, shocked at these family
disclosures.

'Wi' a besom,' said Dan. That come o' reasoning wi' a woman. It
taught him a lesson, I can tell thee. And afterwards he always
said as nowt was worth a quarrel--NOWT! And it isna'.'

'I don't think Maud will race me all over the town with a besom,'
Harold remarked reflectively.

'There's worse things nor that,' said Dan. 'Look thee here, get
out o' th' house for a' 'our. Go to th' Conservative Club, and
then come back. Dost understand?'

'But what--'

'Hook it, lad!' said Dan curtly.

And just as Harold was leaving the room, like a school-boy, he
called him in again.

'I havena' told thee, Harold, as I'm subject to attacks. I'm
getting up in years. I go off like. It isna' fits, but I go off.
And if it should happen while I'm here, dunna' be alarmed.'

'What are we to do?'

'Do nothing. I come round in a minute or two. Whatever ye do,
dunna' give me brandy. It might kill me--so th' doctor says. I'm
only telling thee in case.'

'Well, I hope you won't have an attack,' said Harold.

'It's a hundred to one I dunna',' said Dan.

And Harold departed.

Soon afterwards Uncle Dan wandered into a kitchen full of
servants.

'Show me th' missis's bedroom, one on ye,' he said to the crowd.

And presently he was knocking at Maud's door.

'Maudie!'

'Who is it?' came a voice.

'It's thy owd uncle. Can'st spare a minute?'

Maud appeared at the door, smiling, and arrayed in a peignoir.

'HE'S gone out,' said Dan, implying scorn of the person who had
gone out. 'Wilt come down-stairs?'

'Where's he gone to?' Maud demanded.

She didn't even pretend she was ill.

'Th' Club,' said Dan.

And in about a hundred seconds or so he had her in the drawing-
room, and she was actually pouring out gin for him. She looked
ravishing in that peignoir, especially as she was munching an
apple, and balancing herself on the arm of a chair.

'So he's been quarrelling with ye, Maud?' Dan began.

'No; not quarrelling, uncle.'

'Well, call it what ye'n a mind,' said Dan. 'Call it a prayer-
meeting. I didn't notice as ye came down for supper--dinner, as ye
call it.'

'It was like this, uncle,' she said. 'Poor Harry was very angry
with himself about that petrol. Of course, he wanted the car to go
well while you were in it; and he came up-stairs and grumbled at
me for leaving him all alone and driving home with you.'

'Oh, did he?' exclaimed Dan.

'Yes. I explained to him that of course I couldn't leave you all
alone. Then he got hot. I kept quite calm. I reasoned it out with
him as quietly as I could--'

'Maudie, Maudie,' protested the old man, 'thou'rt th' prettiest
wench i' this town, though I AM thy great-uncle, and thou'st got
plenty o' brains--a sight more than that husband o' thine.'

'Do you think so, uncle?'

'Aye, but thou hasna' made use o' 'em tonight. Thou'rt a foolish
wench, wench. At thy time o' life, and after a year o' th' married
state, thou ought'st to know better than reason wi' a man in a
temper.'

'But, really, uncle, it was so absurd of Harold, wasn't it?'

'Aye!' said Dan. 'But why didst-na' give in and kiss him, and
smack his face for him?'

'There was nothing to give in about, uncle.'

'There never is,' said Dan. 'There never is. That's the point.
Still, thou'rt nigh crying, wench.'

'I'm not, uncle,' she contradicted, the tears falling on to the
apple.

'And Harold's using bad language all up Trafalgar Road, I lay,'
Dan added.

'It was all Harold's fault,' said Maud.

'Why, in course it were Harold's fault. But nowt's worth a
quarrel, my dear--NOWT. I remember Harold's grandfeyther--he were
th' second of us, your grandfeyther were the eldest, and I were
the youngest--I remember Harold's grandfeyther chasing his wife
all over th' town wi' a besom a week after they were married.'

'With a besom!' murmured Maud, pained and forgetting to cry.
'Harold's grandfather, not mine?'

'Wi' a besom,' Dan repeated, nodding. 'They never quarrelled
again--ne'er again. Th' old woman allus said after that as
quarrels were for fools. And her was right.'

'I don't see Harold chasing me across Bursley with a besom,' said
Maud primly. 'But what you say is quite right, you dear old uncle.
Men are queer--I mean husbands. You can't argue with them. You'd
much better give in--'

'And have your own way after all.'

'And perhaps Harold was--'

Harold's step could be heard in the hall.

'Oh, dear!' cried Maud. 'What shall I do?'

'I'm not feeling very well,' whispered Uncle Dan weakly. 'I have
these 'ere attacks sometimes. There's only one thing as'll do me
any good--brandy.'

And his head fell over one side of the chair, and he looked
precisely like a corpse.

'Maud, what are you doing?' almost shouted Harold, when he came
into the room.

She was putting a liqueur-glass to Uncle Dan's lips.

'Oh, Harold,' she cried, 'uncle's had an attack of some sort. I'm
giving him some brandy.'

'But you mustn't give him brandy,' said Harold authoritatively to
her.

'But I MUST give him brandy,' said Maud. 'He told me that brandy
was the only thing to save him.'

'Nonsense, child!' Harold persisted. 'Uncle told ME all about
these attacks. They're perfectly harmless so long as he doesn't
have brandy. The doctors have warned him that brandy will be
fatal.'

'Harold, you are absolutely mistaken. Don't you understand that
uncle has only this minute told me that he MUST have brandy?'

And she again approached the glass to the pale lips of the old
man. His tasselled Turkish smoking-cap had fallen to the floor,
and the hemisphere of his bald head glittered under the gas.

'Maud, I forbid you!' And Harold put a hand on the glass. 'It's a
matter of life and death. You must have misunderstood uncle.'

'It was you who misunderstood uncle,' said Maud. 'Of course, if
you mean to prevent me by brute force--'

They both paused and glanced at Daniel, and then at each other.

'Perhaps you are right, dearest,' said Harold, in a new tone.

'No, dearest,' said Maud, also in a new tone. 'I expect you are
right. I must have misunderstood.'

'No, no, Maud. Give him the brandy by all means. I've no doubt
you're right.'

'But if you think I'd better not give it him--'

'But I would prefer you to give it him, dearest. It isn't likely
you would be mistaken in a thing like that.'

'I would prefer to be guided by you, dearest,' said Maud.

So they went on for several minutes, each giving way to the other
in the most angelic manner.

'AND MEANTIME I'M SUPPOSED TO BE DYING, AM I?' roared Uncle Dan,
suddenly sitting up. 'You'd let th' old uncle peg out while you
practise his precepts! A nice pair you make! I thought for see
which on ye' ud' give way to th' other, but I didna' anticipate as
both on ye 'ud be ready to sacrifice my life for th' sake o'
domestic peace.'

'But, uncle,' they both said later, amid the universal and yet
rather shamefaced peace rejoicings, 'you said nothing was worth a
quarrel.'

'And I was right,' answered Dan; 'I was right. Th' Divorce Court
is full o' fools as have begun married life by trying to convince
the other fool, instead o' humouring him--or her. Kiss us, Maud.'




THE DEATH OF SIMON FUGE


It was in the train that I learnt of his death. Although a very
greedy eater of literature, I can only enjoy reading when I have
little time for reading. Give me three hours of absolute leisure,
with nothing to do but read, and I instantly become almost
incapable of the act. So it is always on railway journeys, and so
it was that evening. I was in the middle of Wordsworth's
Excursion; I positively gloated over it, wondering why I should
have allowed a mere rumour that it was dull to prevent me from
consuming it earlier in my life. But do you suppose I could
continue with Wordsworth in the train? I could not. I stared out
of the windows; I calculated the speed of the train by my watch; I
thought of my future and my past; I drew forth my hopes, examined
them, polished them, and put them back again; I forgave myself for
my sins; and I dreamed of the exciting conquest of a beautiful and
brilliant woman that I should one day achieve. In short, I did
everything that men habitually do under such circumstances. The
Gazette was lying folded on the seat beside me: one of the two
London evening papers that a man of taste may peruse without
humiliating himself. How appetizing a morsel, this sheet new and
smooth from the press, this sheet written by an ironic,
understanding, small band of men for just a few thousand persons
like me, ruthlessly scornful of the big circulations and the idols
of the people! If the Gazette and its sole rival ceased to appear,
I do believe that my existence and many similar existences would
wear a different colour. Could one dine alone in Jermyn Street or
Panton Street without this fine piquant evening commentary on the
gross newspapers of the morning? (Now you perceive what sort of a
man I am, and you guess, rightly, that my age is between thirty
and forty.) But the train had stopped at Rugby and started again,
and more than half of my journey was accomplished, ere at length I
picked up the Gazette, and opened it with the false calm of a
drunkard who has sworn that he will not wet his lips before a
certain hour. For, well knowing from experience that I should
suffer acute ennui in the train, I had, when buying the Gazette at
Euston, taken oath that I would not even glance at it till after
Rugby; it is always the final hour of these railway journeys that
is the nethermost hell.

The second thing that I saw in the Gazette (the first was of
course the 'Entremets' column of wit, humour, and parody, very
uneven in its excellence) was the death of Simon Fuge. There was
nearly a column about it, signed with initials, and the subheading
of the article ran, 'Sudden death of a great painter'. That was
characteristic of the Gazette. That Simon Fuge was indeed a great
painter is now admitted by most dilettantes, though denied by a
few. But to the great public he was not one of the few great
names. To the great public he was just a medium name. Ten to one
that in speaking of him to a plain person you would feel compelled
to add: 'The painter, you know,' and the plain person would
respond: 'Oh yes,' falsely pretending that he was perfectly
familiar with the name. Simon Fuge had many friends on the press,
and it was solely owing to the loyalty of these friends in the
matter of obituary notices that the great public heard more of
Simon Fuge in the week after his death than it had heard of him
during the thirty-five years of his life. It may be asked: Why, if
he had so many and such loyal friends on the press, these friends
did not take measures to establish his reputation before he died?
The answer is that editors will not allow journalists to praise a
living artist much in excess of the esteem in which the public
holds him; they are timid. But when a misunderstood artist is dead
the editors will put no limit on laudation. I am not on the press,
but it happens that I know the world.

Of all the obituary notices of Simon Fuge, the Gazette's was the
first. Somehow the Gazette had obtained exclusive news of the
little event, and some one high up on the Gazette's staff had a
very exalted notion indeed of Fuge, and must have known him
personally. Fuge received his deserts as a painter in that column
of print. He was compared to Sorolla y Bastida for vitality; the
morbidezza of his flesh-tints was stated to be unrivalled even by
--I forget the name, painting is not my speciality. The writer
blandly inquired why examples of Fuge's work were to be seen in
the Luxembourg, at Vienna, at Florence, at Dresden; and not, for
instance, at the Tate Gallery, or in the Chantrey collection. The
writer also inquired, with equal blandness, why a painter who had
been on the hanging committee of the Societe Nationale des Beaux
Arts at Paris should not have been found worthy to be even an
A.R.A. in London. In brief, old England 'caught it', as occurred
somewhere or other most nights in the columns of the Gazette. Fuge
also received his deserts as a man. And the Gazette did not
conceal that he had not been a man after the heart of the British
public. He had been too romantically and intensely alive for that.
The writer gave a little penportrait of him. It was very good,
recalling his tricks of manner, his unforgettable eyes, and his
amazing skill in talking about himself and really interesting
everybody in himself. There was a special reference to one of
Fuge's most dramatic recitals--a narration of a night spent in a
boat on Ham Lake with two beautiful girls, sisters, natives of the
Five Towns, where Fuge was born. Said the obituarist: 'Those two
wonderful creatures who played so large a part in Simon Fuge's
life.'

This death was a shock to me. It took away my ennui for the rest
of the journey. I too had known Simon Fuge. That is to say, I had
met him once, at a soiree, and on that single occasion, as luck
had it, he had favoured the company with the very narration to
which the Gazette contributor referred. I remembered well the
burning brilliance of his blue-black eyes, his touching assurance
that all of us were necessarily interested in his adventures, and
the extremely graphic and convincing way in which he reconstituted
for us the nocturnal scene on Ham Lake--the two sisters, the boat,
the rustle of trees, the lights on shore, and his own difficulty
in managing the oars, one of which he lost for half-an-hour and
found again. It was by such details as that about the oar that,
with a tint of humour, he added realism to the romantic quality of
his tales. He seemed to have no reticences concerning himself.
Decidedly he allowed things to be understood...! Yes, his was a
romantic figure, the figure of one to whom every day, and every
hour of the day, was coloured by the violence of his passion for
existence. His pictures had often an unearthly beauty, but for him
they were nothing but faithful renderings of what he saw.

My mind dwelt on those two beautiful sisters. Those two beautiful
sisters appealed to me more than anything else in the Gazette's
obituary. Surely--Simon Fuge had obviously been a man whose
emotional susceptibility and virile impulsiveness must have opened
the door for him to multifarious amours--but surely he had not
made himself indispensable to both sisters simultaneously. Surely
even he had not so far forgotten that Ham Lake was in the middle
of a country called England, and not the ornamental water in the
Bois de Boulogne! And yet.... The delicious possibility of
ineffable indiscretions on the part of Simon Fuge monopolized my
mind till the train stopped at Knype, and I descended.
Nevertheless, I think I am a serious and fairly insular
Englishman. It is truly astonishing how a serious person can be
obsessed by trifles that, to speak mildly, do not merit sustained
attention.

I wondered where Ham Lake was. I knew merely that it lay somewhere
in the environs of the Five Towns. What put fuel on the fire of my
interest in the private affairs of the dead painter was the
slightly curious coincidence that on the evening of the news of
his death I should be travelling to the Five Towns--and for the
first time in my life. Here I was at Knype, which, as I had
gathered from Bradshaw, and from my acquaintance Brindley, was the
traffic centre of the Five Towns.




II


My knowledge of industrial districts amounted to nothing. Born in
Devonshire, educated at Cambridge, and fulfilling my destiny as
curator of a certain department of antiquities at the British
Museum, I had never been brought into contact with the vast
constructive material activities of Lancashire, Yorkshire, and
Staffordshire. I had but passed through them occasionally on my
way to Scotland, scorning their necessary grime with the perhaps
too facile disdain of the clean-faced southerner, who is apt to
forget that coal cannot walk up unaided out of the mine, and that
the basin in which he washes his beautiful purity can only be
manufactured amid conditions highly repellent. Well, my
impressions of the platform of Knype station were unfavourable.
There was dirt in the air; I could feel it at once on my skin. And
the scene was shabby, undignified, and rude. I use the word 'rude'
in all its senses. What I saw was a pushing, exclamatory, ill-
dressed, determined crowd, each member of which was bent on the
realization of his own desires by the least ceremonious means. If
an item of this throng wished to get past me, he made me instantly
aware of his wish by abruptly changing my position in infinite
space; it was not possible to misconstrue his meaning. So much
crude force and naked will-to-live I had not before set eyes on.
In truth, I felt myself to be a very brittle, delicate bit of
intellectual machinery in the midst of all these physical
manifestations. Yet I am a tallish man, and these potters appeared
to me to be undersized, and somewhat thin too! But what elbows!
What glaring egoistic eyes! What terrible decisiveness in action!

'Now then, get in if ye're going!' said a red-haired porter to me
curtly.

'I'm not going. I've just got out,' I replied.

'Well, then, why dunna' ye stand out o' th' wee and let them get
in as wants to?'

Unable to offer a coherent answer to this crushing demand, I stood
out of the way. In the light of further knowledge I now surmise
that that porter was a very friendly and sociable porter. But at
the moment I really believed that, taking me for the least
admirable and necessary of God's creatures, he meant to convey his
opinion to me for my own good. I glanced up at the lighted windows
of the train, and saw the composed, careless faces of haughty
persons who were going direct from London to Manchester, and to
whom the Five Towns was nothing but a delay. I envied them. I
wanted to return to the shelter of the train. When it left, I
fancied that my last link with civilization was broken. Then
another train puffed in, and it was simply taken by assault in a
fraction of time, to an incomprehensible bawling of friendly
sociable porters. Season-ticket holders at Finsbury Park think
they know how to possess themselves of a train; they are deceived.
So this is where Simon Fuge came from (I reflected)! The devil it
is (I reflected)! I tried to conceive what the invaders of the
train would exclaim if confronted by one of Simon Fuge's pictures.
I could imagine only one word, and that a monosyllable, that would
meet the case of their sentiments. And his dalliance, his
tangential nocturnal deviations in gondolas with exquisite twin
odalisques! There did not seem to be much room for amorous
elegance in the lives of these invaders. And his death! What would
they say of his death? Upon my soul, as I stood on that dirty
platform, in a milieu of advertisements of soap, boots, and
aperients, I began to believe that Simon Fuge never had lived,
that he was a mere illusion of his friends and his small public.
All that I saw around me was a violent negation of Simon Fuge,
that entity of rare, fine, exotic sensibilities, that perfectly
mad gourmet of sensations, that exotic seer of beauty.

I caught sight of my acquaintance and host, Mr Robert Brindley,
coming towards me on the platform. Hitherto I had only met him in
London, when, as chairman of the committee of management of the
Wedgwood Institution and School of Art at Bursley, he had called
on me at the British Museum for advice as to loan exhibits. He was
then dressed like a self-respecting tourist. Now, although an
architect by profession, he appeared to be anxious to be mistaken
for a sporting squire. He wore very baggy knickerbockers, and
leggings, and a cap. This raiment was apparently the agreed
uniform of the easy classes in the Five Towns; for in the crowd I
had noticed several such consciously superior figures among the
artisans. Mr Brindley, like most of the people in the station, had
a slightly pinched and chilled air, as though that morning he had
by inadvertence omitted to don those garments which are not seen.
He also, like most of the people there, but not to the same
extent, had a somewhat suspicious and narrowly shrewd regard, as
who should say: 'If any person thinks he can get the better of me
by a trick, let him try--that's all.' But the moment his eye
encountered mine, this expression vanished from his face, and he
gave me a candid smile.

'I hope you're well,' he said gravely, squeezing my hand in a sort
of vice that he carried at the end of his right arm.

I reassured him.

'Oh, I'm all right,' he said, in response to the expression of my
hopes.

It was a relief to me to see him. He took charge of me. I felt, as
it were, safe in his arms. I perceived that, unaided and
unprotected, I should never have succeeded in reaching Bursley
from Knype.

A whistle sounded.

'Better get in,' he suggested; and then in a tone of absolute
command: 'Give me your bag.'

I obeyed. He opened the door of a first-class carriage.

'I'm travelling second,' I explained.

'Never mind. Get in.'

In his tones was a kindly exasperation.

I got in; he followed. The train moved.

'Ah!' breathed Mr Brindley, blowing out much air and falling like
a sack of coal into a corner seat. He was a thin man, aged about
thirty, with brown eyes, and a short blonde beard.

Conversation was at first difficult. Personally I am not a
bubbling fount of gay nothings when I find myself alone with a
comparative stranger. My drawbridge goes up as if by magic, my
postern is closed, and I peer cautiously through the narrow slits
of my turret to estimate the chances of peril. Nor was Mr Brindley
offensively affable. However, we struggled into a kind of chatter.
I had come to the Five Towns, on behalf of the British Museum, to
inspect and appraise, with a view to purchase by the nation, some
huge slip-decorated dishes, excessively curious according to
photographs, which had been discovered in the cellars of the
Conservative Club at Bursley. Having shared in the negotiations
for my visit, Mr Brindley had invited me to spend the night at his
house. We were able to talk about all this. And when we had talked
about all this we were able to talk about the singular scenery of
coal dust, potsherds, flame and steam, through which the train
wound its way. It was squalid ugliness, but it was squalid
ugliness on a scale so vast and overpowering that it became
sublime. Great furnaces gleamed red in the twilight, and their
fires were reflected in horrible black canals; processions of
heavy vapour drifted in all directions across the sky, over what
acres of mean and miserable brown architecture! The air was alive
with the most extraordinary, weird, gigantic sounds. I do not
think the Five Towns will ever be described: Dante lived too soon.
As for the erratic and exquisite genius, Simon Fuge, and his
odalisques reclining on silken cushions on the enchanted bosom of
a lake--I could no longer conjure them up even faintly in my mind.

'I suppose you know Simon Fuge is dead?' I remarked, in a pause.

'No! Is he?' said Mr Brindley, with interest. 'Is it in the
paper?'

He did not seem to be quite sure that it would be in the paper.

'Here it is,' said I, and I passed him the Gazette.

'Ha!' he exclaimed explosively. This 'Ha!' was entirely different
from his 'Ah!' Something shot across his eyes, something
incredibly rapid--too rapid for a wink; yet it could only be
called a wink. It was the most subtle transmission of the beyond-
speech that I have ever known any man accomplish, and it endeared
Mr Brindley to me. But I knew not its significance.

'What do they think of Fuge down here?' I asked.

'I don't expect they think of him,' said my host.

He pulled a pouch and a packet of cigarette papers from his
pocket.

'Have one of mine,' I suggested, hastily producing my case.

He did not even glance at its contents.

'No, thanks,' he said curtly.

I named my brand.

'My dear sir,' he said, with a return to his kindly exasperation,
'no cigarette that is not fresh made can be called a cigarette.' I
stood corrected. 'You may pay as much as you like, but you can
never buy cigarettes as good as I can make out of an ounce of
fresh B.D.V. tobacco. Can you roll one?' I had to admit that I
could not, I who in Bloomsbury was accepted as an authority on
cigarettes as well as on porcelain. 'I'll roll you one, and you
shall try it.'

He did so.

I gathered from his solemnity that cigarettes counted in the life
of Mr Brindley. He could not take cigarettes other than seriously.
The worst of it was that he was quite right. The cigarette which
he constructed for me out of his wretched B.D.V. tobacco was
adorable, and I have made my own cigarettes ever since. You will
find B.D.V. tobacco all over the haunts frequented by us of the
Museum now-a-days, solely owing to the expertise of Mr Brindley. A
terribly capable and positive man! He KNEW, and he knew that he
knew.

He said nothing further as to Simon Fuge. Apparently he had
forgotten the decease.

'Do you often see the Gazette?' I asked, perhaps in the hope of
attracting him back to Fuge.

'No,' he said; 'the musical criticism is too rotten.'

Involuntarily I bridled. It was startling, and it was not
agreeable, to have one's favourite organ so abruptly condemned by
a provincial architect in knickerbockers and a cap, in the midst
of all that industrial ugliness. What could the Five Towns know
about art? Yet here was this fellow condemning the Gazette on
artistic grounds. I offered no defence, because he was right--
again. But I did not like it.

'Do you ever see the Manchester Guardian?' he questioned, carrying
the war into my camp.

'No,' I said.

'Pity!' he ejaculated.

'I've often heard that it's a very good paper,' I said politely.

'It isn't a very good paper,' he laid me low. 'It's the best paper
in the world. Try it for a month--it gets to Euston at half-past
eight--and then tell me what you think.'

I saw that I must pull myself together. I had glided into the Five
Towns in a mood of gentle, wise condescension. I saw that it would
be as well, for my own honour and safety, to put on another mood
as quickly as possible, otherwise I might be left for dead on the
field. Certainly the fellow was provincial, curt, even brutal in
his despisal of diplomacy. Certainly he exaggerated the importance
of cigarettes in the great secular scheme of evolution. But he was
a man; he was a very tonic dose. I thought it would be safer to
assume that he knew everything, and that the British Museum knew
very little. Yet at the British Museum he had been quite
different, quite deferential and rather timid. Still, I liked him.
I liked his eyes.

The train stopped at an incredible station situated in the centre
of a rolling desert whose surface consisted of broken pots and
cinders. I expect no one to believe this.

'Here we are,' said he blithely. 'No, give me the bag. Porter!'

His summons to the solitary porter was like a clap of thunder.




III


He lived in a low, blackish-crimson heavy-browed house at the
corner of a street along which electric cars were continually
thundering. There was a thin cream of mud on the pavements and
about two inches of mud in the roadway, rich, nourishing mud like
Indian ink half-mixed. The prospect of carrying a pound or so of
that unique mud into a civilized house affrighted me, but Mr
Brindley opened his door with his latchkey and entered the abode
as unconcernedly as if some fair repentent had cleansed his feet
with her tresses.

'Don't worry too much about the dirt,' he said. 'You're in
Bursley.'

The house seemed much larger inside than out. A gas-jet burnt in
the hall, and sombre portieres gave large mysterious hints of
rooms. I could hear, in the distance, the noise of frizzling over
a fire, and of a child crying. Then a tall, straight, wellmade,
energetic woman appeared like a conjuring trick from behind a
portiere.

'How do you do, Mr Loring?' she greeted me, smiling. 'So glad to
meet you.'

'My wife,' Mr Brindley explained gravely.

'Now, I may as well tell you now, Bob,' said she, still smiling at
me. 'Bobbie's got a sore throat and it may be mumps; the chimney's
been on fire and we're going to be summoned; and you owe me
sixpence.'

'Why do I owe you sixpence?'

'Because Annie's had her baby and it's a girl.'

'That's all right. Supper ready?'

'Supper is waiting for you.'

She laughed. 'Whenever I have anything to tell my husband, I
always tell him at ONCE!' she said. 'No matter who's there.' She
pronounced 'once' with a wholehearted enthusiasm for its vowel
sound that I have never heard equalled elsewhere, and also with a
very magnified 'w' at the beginning of it. Often when I hear the
word 'once' pronounced in less downright parts of the world, I
remember how they pronounce it in the Five Towns, and there rises
up before me a complete picture of the district, its atmosphere,
its spirit.

Mr Brindley led me to a large bathroom that had a faint odour of
warm linen. In addition to a lot of assorted white babyclothes
there were millions of towels in that bathroom. He turned on a tap
and the place was instantly full of steam from a jet of boiling
water.

'Now, then,' he said, 'you can start.'

As he showed no intention of leaving me, I did start. 'Mind you
don't scald yourself,' he warned me, 'that water's HOT.' While I
was washing, he prepared to wash. I suddenly felt as if I had been
intimate with him and his wife for about ten years.

'So this is Bursley!' I murmured, taking my mouth out of a towel.

'Bosley, we call it,' he said. 'Do you know the limerick--"There
was a young woman of Bosley"?'

'No.'

He intoned the local limerick. It was excellently good; not meet
for a mixed company, but a genuine delight to the true amateur.
One good limerick deserves another. It happened that I knew a
number of the unprinted Rossetti limericks, precious things, not
at all easy to get at. I detailed them to Mr Brindley, and I do
not exaggerate when I say that I impressed him. I recovered all
the ground I had lost upon cigarettes and newspapers. He
appreciated those limericks with a juster taste than I should have
expected. So, afterwards, did his friends. My belief is that I am
to this day known and revered in Bursley, not as Loring the
porcelain expert from the British Museum, but as the man who
first, as it were, brought the good news of the Rossetti limericks
from Ghent to Aix.

'Now, Bob,' an amicable voice shrieked femininely up from the
ground-floor, 'am I to send the soup to the bathroom or are you
coming down?'

A limerick will make a man forget even his dinner.

Mr Brindley performed once more with his eyes that something that
was, not a wink, but a wink unutterably refined and spiritualized.
This time I comprehended its import. Its import was to the effect
that women are women.

We descended, Mr Brindley still in his knickerbockers.

'This way,' he said, drawing aside a portiere. Mrs Brindley, as we
entered the room, was trotting a male infant round and round a
table charged with everything digestible and indigestible. She
handed the child, who was in its nightdress, to a maid.

'Say good night to father.'

'Good ni', faver,' the interesting creature piped.

'By-bye, sonny,' said the father, stooping to tickle. 'I suppose,'
he added, when maid and infant had gone, 'if one's going to have
mumps, they may as well all have it together.'

'Oh, of course,' the mother agreed cheerfully. 'I shall stick them
all into a room.'

'How many children have you?' I inquired with polite curiosity.

'Three,' she said; 'that's the eldest that you've seen.'

What chiefly struck me about Mrs Brindley was her serene air of
capableness, of having a self-confidence which experience had
richly justified. I could see that she must be an extremely
sensible mother. And yet she had quite another aspect too--how
shall I explain it?--as though she had only had children in her
spare time.

We sat down. The room was lighted by four candles, on the table. I
am rather short-sighted, and so I did not immediately notice that
there were low book-cases all round the walls. Why the presence of
these book-cases should have caused me a certain astonishment I do
not know, but it did. I thought of Knype station, and the scenery,
and then the other little station, and the desert of pots and
cinders, and the mud in the road and on the pavement and in the
hall, and the baby-linen in the bathroom, and three children all
down with mumps, and Mr Brindley's cap and knickerbockers and
cigarettes; and somehow the books--I soon saw there were at least
a thousand of them, and not circulating-library books, either, but
BOOKS--well, they administered a little shock to me.

To Mr Brindley's right hand was a bottle of Bass and a corkscrew.

'Beer!' he exclaimed, with solemn ecstasy, with an ecstasy gross
and luscious. And, drawing the cork, he poured out a glass, with
fine skill in the management of froth, and pushed it towards me.

'No, thanks,' I said.

'No beer!' he murmured, with benevolent, puzzled disdain.
'Whisky?'

'No, thanks,' I said. 'Water.'

'_I_ know what Mr Loring would like,' said Mrs Brindley, jumping
up. 'I KNOW what Mr Loring would like.' She opened a cupboard and
came back to the table with a bottle, which she planted in front
of me. 'Wouldn't you, Mr Loring?'

It was a bottle of mercurey, a wine which has given me many
dreadful dawns, but which I have never known how to refuse.

'I should,' I admitted; 'but it's very bad for me.'

'Nonsense!' said she. She looked at her husband in triumph.

'Beer!' repeated Mr Brindley with undiminished ecstasy, and drank
about two-thirds of a glass at one try. Then he wiped the froth
from his moustache. 'Ah!' he breathed low and soft. 'Beer!'

They called the meal supper. The term is inadequate. No term that
I can think of would be adequate. Of its kind the thing was
perfect. Mrs Brindley knew that it was perfect. Mr Brindley also
knew that it was perfect. There were prawns in aspic. I don't know
why I should single out that dish, except that it seemed strange
to me to have crossed the desert of pots and cinders in order to
encounter prawns in aspic. Mr Brindley ate more cold roast beef
than I had ever seen any man eat before, and more pickled walnuts.
It is true that the cold roast beef transcended all the cold roast
beef of my experience. Mrs Brindley regaled herself largely on
trifle, which Mr Brindley would not approach, preferring a most
glorious Stilton cheese. I lost touch, temporarily, with the
intellectual life. It was Mr Brindley who recalled me to it.

'Jane,' he said. (This was at the beef and pickles stage.)

No answer.

'Jane!'

Mrs Brindley turned to me. 'My name is not Jane,' she said,
laughing, and making a moue simultaneously. 'He only calls me that
to annoy me. I told him I wouldn't answer to it, and I won't. He
thinks I shall give in because we've got "company"! But I won't
treat you as "company", Mr Loring, and I shall expect you to take
my side. What dreadful weather we're having, aren't we?'

'Dreadful!' I joined in the game.

'Jane!'

'Did you have a comfortable journey down?'

'Yes, thank you.'

'Well, then, Mary!' Mr Brindley yielded.

'Thank you very much, Mr Loring, for your kind assistance,' said
his wife. 'Yes, dearest?'

Mr Brindley glanced at me over his second glass of beer.

'If those confounded kids are going to have mumps,' he addressed
his words apparendy into the interior of the glass, 'it probably
means the doctor, and the doctor means money, and I shan't be able
to afford the Hortulus Animoe.'

I opened my ears.

'My husband goes stark staring mad sometimes,' said Mrs Brindley
to me. 'It lasts for a week or so, and pretty nearly lands us in
the workhouse. This time it's the Hortulus Animoe. Do you know
what it is? I don't.'

'No,' I said, and the prestige of the British Museum trembled.
Then I had a vague recollection. 'There's an illuminated
manuscript of that name in the Imperial Library of Vienna, isn't
there?'

'You've got it in one,' said Mr Brindley. 'Wife, pass those
walnuts.'

'You aren't by any chance buying it?' I laughed.

'No,' he said. 'A Johnny at Utrecht is issuing a facsimile of it,
with all the hundred odd miniatures in colour. It will be the
finest thing in reproduction ever done. Only seventy-five copies
for England.'

'How much?' I asked.

'Well,' said he, with a preliminary look at his wife,'thirty-three
pounds.'

'Thirty-three POUNDS!' she screamed. 'You never told me.'

'My wife never will understand,' said Mr Brindley, 'that complete
confidence between two human beings is impossible.'

'I shall go out as a milliner, that's all,' Mrs Brindley returned.
'Remember, the Dictionary of National Biography isn't paid for
yet.'

'I'm glad I forgot that, otherwise I shouldn't have ordered the
Hortulus.'

'You've not ORDERED it?'

'Yes, I have. It'll be here tomorrow--at least the first part
will.'

Mrs Brindley affected to fall back dying in her chair.

'Quite mad!' she complained to me. 'Quite mad. It's a hopeless
case.'

But obviously she was very proud of the incurable lunatic.

'But you're a book-collector!' I exclaimed, so struck by these
feats of extravagance in a modest house that I did not conceal my
amazement.

'Did you think I collected postage-stamps?' the husband retorted.
'No, _I_'m not a book-collector, but our doctor is. He has a few
books, if you like. Still, I wouldn't swop him; he's much too fond
of fashionable novels.'

'You know you're always up his place,' said the wife; 'and I
wonder what _I_ should do if it wasn't for the doctor's novels!'
The doctor was evidently a favourite of hers.

'I'm not always up at his place,' the husband contradicted. 'You
know perfectly well I never go there before midnight. And HE knows
perfectly well that I only go because he has the best whisky in
the town. By the way, I wonder whether he knows that Simon Fuge is
dead. He's got one of his etchings. I'll go up.'

'Who's Simon Fuge?' asked Mrs Brindley.

'Don't you remember old Fuge that kept the Blue Bell at Cauldon?'

'What? Simple Simon?'

'Yes. Well, his son.'

'Oh! I remember. He ran away from home once, didn't he, and his
mother had a port-wine stain on her left cheek? Oh, of course. I
remember him perfectly. He came down to the Five Towns some years
ago for his aunt's funeral. So he's dead. Who told you?'

'Mr Loring.'

'Did you know him?' she glanced at me.

'I scarcely knew him,' said I. 'I saw it in the paper.'

'What, the Signal?'

'The Signal's the local rag,' Mr Brindley interpolated. 'No. It's
in the Gazette.'

'The Birmingham Gazette?'

'No, bright creature--the Gazette,' said Mr Brindley.

'Oh!' She seemed puzzled.

'Didn't you know he was a painter?' the husband condescendingly
catechized.

'I knew he used to teach at the Hanbridge School of Art,' said Mrs
Brindley stoutly. 'Mother wouldn't let me go there because of
that. Then he got the sack.'

'Poor defenceless thing! How old were you?'

'Seventeen, I expect.'

'I'm much obliged to your mother.'

'Where did he die?' Mrs Brindley demanded.

'At San Remo,' I answered. 'Seems queer him dying at San Remo in
September, doesn't it?'

'Why?'

'San Remo is a winter place. No one ever goes there before
December.'

'Oh, is it?' the lady murmured negligently. 'Then that would be
just like Simon Fuge. _I_ was never afraid of him,' she added, in
a defiant tone, and with a delicious inconsequence that choked her
husband in the midst of a draught of beer.

'You can laugh,' she said sturdily.

At that moment there was heard a series of loud explosive sounds
in the street. They continued for a few seconds apparently just
outside the dining-room window. Then they stopped, and the noise
of the bumping electric cars resumed its sway over the ear.

'That's Oliver!' said Mr Brindley, looking at his watch. 'He must
have come from Manchester in an hour and a half. He's a terror.'

'Glass! Quick!' Mrs Brindley exclaimed. She sprang to the
sideboard, and seized a tumbler, which Mr Brindley filled from a
second bottle of Bass. When the door of the room opened she was
standing close to it, laughing, with the full, frothing glass in
her hand.

A tall, thin man, rather younger than Mr Brindley and his wife,
entered. He wore a long dust-coat and leggings, and he carried a
motorist's cap in a great hand. No one spoke; but little puffs of
laughter escaped all Mrs Brindley's efforts to imprison her mirth.
Then the visitor took the glass with a magnificent broad smile,
and said, in a rich and heavy Midland voice--

'Here's to moy wife's husband!'

And drained the nectar.

'Feel better now, don't you?' Mrs Brindley inquired.

'Aye, Mrs Bob, I do!' was the reply. 'How do, Bob?'

'How do?' responded my host laconically. And then with gravity:
'Mr Loring--Mr Oliver Colclough--thinks he knows something about
music.'

'Glad to meet you, sir,' said Mr Colclough, shaking hands with me.
He had a most attractively candid smile, but he was so long and
lanky that he seemed to pervade the room like an omnipresence.

'Sit down and have a bit of cheese, Oliver,' said Mrs Brindley, as
she herself sat down.

'No, thanks, Mrs Bob. I must be getting towards home.'

He leaned on her chair.

'Trifle, then?'

'No, thanks.'

'Machine going all right?'

'Like oil. Never stopped th' engine once.'

'Did you get the Sinfonia Domestica, Ol?' Mr Brindley inquired.

'Didn't I say as I should get it, Bob?'

'You SAID you would.'

'Well, I've got it.'

'In Manchester?'

'Of course.'

Mr Brindley's face shone with desire and Mr Oliver Colclough's
face shone with triumph.

'Where is it?'

'In the hall.'

'My hall?'

'Aye!'

'We'll play it, Ol.'

'No, really, Bob! I can't stop now. I promised the wife--'

'We'll PLAY it, Ol! You'd no business to make promises. Besides,
suppose you'd had a puncture!'

'I expect you've heard Strauss's Sinfonia Domestica, Mr Loring, up
in the village?' Mr Colclough addressed me. He had surrendered to
the stronger will.

'In London?' I said. 'No. But I've heard of it.'

'Bob and I heard it in Manchester last week, and we thought it 'ud
be a bit of a lark to buy the arrangement for pianoforte duet.'

'Come and listen to it,' said Mr Brindley. 'That is, if nobody
wants any more beer.'




IV


The drawing-room was about twice as large as the dining-room, and
it contained about four times as much furniture. Once again there
were books all round the walls. A grand piano, covered with music,
stood in a corner, and behind was a cabinet full of bound music.

Mr Brindley, seated on one corner of the bench in front of the
piano, cut the leaves of the Sinfonia Domestica.

'It's the devil!' he observed.

'Aye, lad!' agreed Mr Colclough, standing over him. 'It's
difficult.'

'Come on,' said Mr. Brindley, when he had finished cutting.

'Better take your dust-coat off, hadn't you?' Mrs Brindley
suggested to the friend. She and I were side by side on a sofa at
the other end of the room.

'I may as well,' Mr Colclough admitted, and threw the long garment
on to a chair. 'Look here, Bob, my hands are stiff with steering.'

'Don't find fault with your tools,' said Mr Brindley; 'and sit
down. No, my boy, I'm going to play the top part. Shove along.'

'I want to play the top part because it's easiest,' Mr Colclough
grumbled.

'How often have I told you the top part is never easiest? Who do
you suppose is going to keep this symphony together--you or me?'

'Sorry I spoke.'

They arranged themselves on the bench, and Mr Brindley turned up
the lower corners of every alternate leaf of the music.

'Now,' said he. 'Ready?'

'Let her zip,' said Mr Colclough.

They began to play. And then the door opened, and a servant, whose
white apron was starched as stiff as cardboard, came in carrying a
tray of coffee and unholy liqueurs, which she deposited with a
rattle on a small table near the hostess.

'Curse!' muttered Mr Brindley, and stopped.

'Life's very complex, ain't it, Bob?' Mr Colclough murmured.

'Aye, lad.' The host glanced round to make sure that the rattling
servant had entirely gone. 'Now start again.'

'Wait a minute, wait a minute!' cried Mrs Brindley excitedly. 'I'm
just pouring out Mr Loring's coffee. There!' As she handed me the
cup she whispered, 'We daren't talk. It's more than our place is
worth.'

The performance of the symphony proceeded. To me, who am not a
performer, it sounded excessively brilliant and incomprehensible.
Mr Colclough stretched his right hand to turn over the page, and
fumbled it. Another stoppage.

'Damn you, Ol!' Mr Brindley exploded. 'I wish you wouldn't make
yourself so confoundedly busy. Leave the turning to me. It takes a
great artist to turn over, and you're only a blooming chauffeur.
We'll begin again.'

'Sackcloth!' Mr Colclough whispered.

I could not estimate the length of the symphony; but my impression
was one of extreme length. Halfway through it the players both
took their coats off. There was no other surcease.

'What dost think of it, Bob?' asked Mr Colclough in the weird
silence that reigned after they had finished. They were standing
up and putting on their coats and wiping their faces.

'I think what I thought before,' said Mr Brindley. 'It's
childish.'

'It isn't childish,' the other protested. 'It's ugly, but it isn't
childish.'

'It's childishly clever,' Mr Brindley modified his description. He
did not ask my opinion.

'Coffee's cold,' said Mrs Brindley.

'I don't want any coffee. Give me some Chartreuse, please. Have a
drop o' green, Ol?'

'A split soda 'ud be more in my line. Besides, I'm just going to
have my supper. Never mind, I'll have a drop, missis, and chance
it. I've never tried Chartreuse as an appetizer.'

At this point commenced a sanguinary conflict of wills to settle
whether or not I also should indulge in green Chartreuse. I was
defeated. Besides the Chartreuse, I accepted a cigar. Never before
or since have I been such a buck.

'I must hook it,' said Mr Colclough, picking up his dust-coat.

'Not yet you don't,' said Mr Brindley. 'I've got to get the taste
of that infernal Strauss out of my mouth. We'll play the first
movement of the G minor? La-la-la--la-la-la--la-la-la-ta.' He
whistled a phrase.

Mr Colclough obediently sat down again to the piano.

The Mozart was like an idyll after a farcical melodrama. They
played it with an astounding delicacy. Through the latter half of
the movement I could hear Mr Brindley breathing regularly and
heavily through his nose, exactly as though he were being
hypnotized. I had a tickling sensation in the small of my back, a
sure sign of emotion in me. The atmosphere was changed.

'What a heavenly thing!' I exclaimed enthusiastically, when they
had finished.

Mr Brindley looked at me sharply, and just nodded in silence.
Well, good night, Ol.'

'I say,' said Mr Colclough; 'if you've nothing doing later on,
bring Mr Loring round to my place. Will you come, Mr Loring? Do!
Us'll have a drink.'

These Five Towns people certainly had a simple, sincere way of
offering hospitality that was quite irresistible. One could see
that hospitality was among their chief and keenest pleasures.

We all went to the front door to see Mr Colclough depart homewards
in his automobile. The two great acetylene head-lights sent long
glaring shafts of light down the side street. Mr Colclough,
throwing the score of the Sinfonia Domestica into the tonneau of
the immense car, put on a pair of gloves and began to circulate
round the machine, tapping here, screwing there, as chauffeurs
will. Then he bent down in front to start the engine.

'By the way, Ol,' Mr Brindley shouted from the doorway, 'it seems
Simon Fuge is dead.'

We could see the man's stooping form between the two head-lights.
He turned his head towards the house.

'Who the dagger is Simon Fuge?' he inquired. 'There's about five
thousand Fuges in th' Five Towns.'

'Oh! I thought you knew him.'

'I might, and I mightn't. It's not one o' them Fuge brothers
saggar-makers at Longshaw, is it?'

'No, It's--'

Mr Colclough had succeeded in starting his engine, and the air was
rent with gun-shots. He jumped lightly into the driver's seat.

'Well, see you later,' he cried, and was off, persuading the
enormous beast under him to describe a semicircle in the narrow
street backing, forcing forward, and backing again, to the
accompaniment of the continuous fusillade. At length he got away,
drew up within two feet of an electric tram that slid bumping down
the main street, and vanished round the corner. A little ragged
boy passed, crying, 'Signal, extra,' and Mr Brindley hailed him.

'What IS Mr Colclough?' I asked in the drawing-room.

'Manufacturer--sanitary ware,' said Mr Brindley. 'He's got one of
the best businesses in Hanbridge. I wish I'd half his income.
Never buys a book, you know.'

'He seems to play the piano very well.'

'Well, as to that, he doesn't what you may call PLAY, but he's the
best sight-reader in this district, bar me. I never met his equal.
When you come across any one who can read a thing like the
Domestic Symphony right off and never miss his place, you might
send me a telegram. Colclough's got a Steinway. Wish I had.'

Mrs Brindley had been looking through the Signal.

'I don't see anything about Simon Fuge here,' said she.

'Oh, nonsense!' said her husband. 'Buchanan's sure to have got
something in about it. Let's look.'

He received the paper from his wife, but failed to discover in it
a word concerning the death of Simon Fuge.

'Dashed if I don't ring Buchanan up and ask him what he means!
Here's a paper with an absolute monopoly in the district, and
brings in about five thousand a year clear to somebody, and it
doesn't give the news! There never is anything but advertisements
and sporting results in the blessed thing.'

He rushed to his telephone, which was in the hall. Or rather, he
did not rush; he went extremely quickly, with aggressive footsteps
that seemed to symbolize just retribution. We could hear him at
the telephone.

'Hello! No. Yes. Is that you, Buchanan? Well, I want Mr Buchanan.
Is that you, Buchanan? Yes, I'm all right. What in thunder do you
mean by having nothing in tonight about Simon Fuge's death? Eh?
Yes, the Gazette. Well, I suppose you aren't Scotch for nothing.
Why the devil couldn't you stop in Scotland and edit papers
there?' Then a laugh. 'I see. Yes. What did you think of those
cigars? Oh! See you at the dinner. Ta-ta.' A final ring.

'The real truth is, he wanted some advice as to the tone of his
obituary notice,' said Mr Brindley, coming back into the drawing-
room. 'He's got it, seemingly. He says he's writing it now, for
tomorrow. He didn't put in the mere news of the death, because it
was exclusive to the Gazette, and he's been having some difficulty
with the Gazette lately. As he says, tomorrow afternoon will be
quite soon enough for the Five Towns. It isn't as if Simon Fuge
was a cricket match. So now you see how the wheels go round, Mr
Loring.'

He sat down to the piano and began to play softly the Castle
motive from the Nibelung's Ring. He kept repeating it in different
keys.

'What about the mumps, wife?' he asked Mrs Brindley, who had been
out of the room and now returned.

'Oh! I don't think it is mumps,' she replied. 'They're all
asleep.'

'Good!' he murmured, still playing the Castle motive.

'Talking of Simon Fuge,' I said determined to satisfy my
curiosity, 'who WERE the two sisters?'

'What two sisters?'

'That he spent the night in the boat with, on Ilam Lake.'

'Was that in the Gazette? I didn't read all the article.'

He changed abruptly into the Sword motive, which he gave with a
violent flourish, and then he left the piano. 'I do beg you not to
wake my children,' said his wife.

'Your children must get used to my piano,' said he. 'Now, then,
what about these two sisters?'

I pulled the Gazette from my pocket and handed it to him. He read
aloud the passage describing the magic night on the lake.

'_I_ don't know who they were,' he said. 'Probably something tasty
from the Hanbridge Empire.'

We both observed a faint, amused smile on the face of Mrs
Brindley, the smile of a woman who has suddenly discovered in her
brain a piece of knowledge rare and piquant.

'I can guess who they were,' she said. 'In fact, I'm sure.'

'Who?'

'Annie Brett and--you know who.'

'What, down at the Tiger?'

'Certainly. Hush!' Mrs Brindley ran to the door and, opening it,
listened. The faint, fretful cry of a child reached us. 'There!
You've done it! I told you you would!'

She disappeared. Mr Brindley whistled.

'And who is Annie Brett?' I inquired.

'Look here,' said he, with a peculiar inflection. 'Would you like
to see her?'

'I should,' I said with decision.

'Well, come on, then. We'll go down to the Tiger and have a drop
of something.'

'And the other sister?' I asked.

'The other sister is Mrs Oliver Colclough,' he answered. 'Curious,
ain't it?'

Again there was that swift, scarcely perceptible phenomenon in his
eyes.




V


We stood at the corner of the side-street and the main road, and
down the main road a vast, white rectangular cube of bright light
came plunging--its head rising and dipping--at express speed, and
with a formidable roar. Mr Brindley imperiously raised his stick;
the extraordinary box of light stopped as if by a miracle, and we
jumped into it, having splashed through mud, and it plunged off
again--bump, bump, bump--into the town of Bursley. As Mr Brindley
passed into the interior of the car, he said laconically to two
men who were smoking on the platform--

'How do, Jim? How do, Jo?'

And they responded laconically--

'How do, Bob?'

'How do, Bob?'

We sat down. Mr Brindley pointed to the condition of the floor.

'Cheerful, isn't it?' he observed to me, shouting above the din of
vibrating glass.

Our fellow-passengers were few and unromantic, perhaps halfa-dozen
altogether on the long, shiny, yellow seats of the car, each
apparently lost in gloomy reverie.

'It's the advertisements and notices in these cars that are the
joy of the super-man like you and me,' shouted Mr Brindley. 'Look
there, "Passengers are requested not to spit on the floor." Simply
an encouragement to lie on the seats and spit on the ceiling,
isn't it? "Wear only Noble's wonderful boots." Suppose we did!
Unless they came well up above the waist we should be prosecuted.
But there's no sense of humour in this district.'

Greengrocers' shops and public-houses were now flying past the
windows of the car. It began to climb a hill, and then halted.

'Here we are!' ejaculated Mr Brindley.

And he was out of the car almost before I had risen.

We strolled along a quiet street, and came to a large building
with many large lighted windows, evidently some result of public
effort.

'What's that place?' I demanded.

'That's the Wedgwood Institution.'

'Oh! So that's the Wedgwood Institution, is it?'

'Yes. Commonly called the Wedgwood. Museum, reading-room, public
library--dirtiest books in the world, I mean physically--art
school, science school. I've never explained to you why I'm
chairman of the Management Committee, have I? Well, it's because
the Institution is meant to foster the arts, and I happen to know
nothing about 'em. I needn't tell you that architecture,
literature, and music are not arts within the meaning of the act.
Not much! Like to come in and see the museum for a minute? You'll
have to see it in your official capacity tomorrow.'

We crossed the road, and entered an imposing portico. Just as we
did so a thick stream of slouching men began to descend the steps,
like a waterfall of treacle. Mr Brindley they appeared to see, but
evidently I made no impression on their retinas. They bore down
the steps, hands deep in pockets, sweeping over me like Fate. Even
when I bounced off one of them to a lower step, he showed by no
sign that the fact of my existence had reached his consciousness--
simply bore irresistibly downwards. The crowd was absolutely
silent. At last I gained the entrance hall.

'It's closing-time for the reading room,' said Mr Brindley.

'I'm glad I survived it,' I said.

'The truth is,' said he, 'that people who can't look after
themselves don't flourish in these latitudes. But you'll be
acclimatized by tomorrow. See that?'

He pointed to an alabaster tablet on which was engraved a record
of the historical certainty that Mr Gladstone opened the
Institution in 1868, also an extract from the speech which he
delivered on that occasion.

'What do you THINK of Gladstone down here?' I demanded.

'In my official capacity I think that these deathless words are
the last utterance of wisdom on the subject of the influence of
the liberal arts on life. And I should advise you, in your
official capacity, to think the same, unless you happen to have a
fancy for having your teeth knocked down your throat.'

'I see,' I said, not sure how to take him.

'Lest you should go away with the idea that you have been visiting
a rude and barbaric people, I'd better explain that that was a
joke. As a matter of fact, we're rather enlightened here. The only
man who stands a chance of getting his teeth knocked down his
throat here is the ingenious person who started the celebrated
legend of the man-and-dog fight at Hanbridge. It's a long time
ago, a very long time ago; but his grey hairs won't save him from
horrible tortures if we catch him. We don't mind being called
immoral, we're above a bit flattered when London newspapers come
out with shocking details of debauchery in the Five Towns, but we
pride ourselves on our manners. I say, Aked!' His voice rose
commandingly, threateningly, to an old bent, spectacled man who
was ascending a broad white staircase in front of us.

'Sir!' The man turned.

'Don't turn the lights out yet in the museum.'

'No, sir! Are you coming up?' The accents were slow and tremulous.

'Yes. I have a gentleman here from the British Museum who wants to
look round.'

The oldish man came deliberately down the steps, and approached
us. Then his gaze, beginning at my waist, gradually rose to my
hat.

'From the British Museum?' he drawled. 'I'm sure I'm very glad to
meet you, sir. I'm sure it's a very great honour.'

He held out a wrinkled hand, which I shook.

'Mr Aked,' said Mr Brindley, by way of introduction. 'Been
caretaker here for pretty near forty years.'

'Ever since it opened, sir,' said Aked.

We went up the white stone stairway, rather a grandiose
construction for a little industrial town. It divided itself into
doubling curving flights at the first landing, and its walls were
covered with pictures and designs. The museum itself, a series of
three communicating rooms, was about as large as a pocket-
handkerchief.

'Quite small,' I said.

I gave my impression candidly, because I had already judged Mr
Brindley to be the rare and precious individual who is worthy of
the high honour of frankness.

'Do you think so?' he demanded quickly. I had shocked him, that
was clear. His tone was unmistakable; it indicated an instinctive,
involuntary protest. But he recovered himself in a flash. 'That's
jealousy,' he laughed. 'All you British Museum people are the
same.' Then he added, with an unsuccessful attempt to convince me
that he meant what he was saying: 'Of course it is small. It's
nothing, simply nothing.'

Yes, I had unwittingly found the joint in the armour of this
extraordinary Midland personage. With all his irony, with all his
violent humour, with all his just and unprejudiced perceptions, he
had a tenderness for the Institution of which he was the dictator.
He loved it. He could laugh like a god at everything in the Five
Towns except this one thing. He would try to force himself to
regard even this with the same lofty detachment, but he could not
do it naturally.

I stopped at a case of Wedgwood ware, marked 'Perkins Collection.'

'By Jove!' I exclaimed, pointing to a vase. 'What a body!'

He was enchanted by my enthusiasm.

'Funny you should have hit on that,' said he. 'Old Daddy Perkins
always called it his ewe-lamb.'

Thus spoken, the name of the greatest authority on Wedgwood ware
that Europe has ever known curiously impressed me.

'I suppose you knew him?' I questioned.

'Considering that I was one of the pall-bearers at his funeral,
and caught the champion cold of my life!'

'What sort of a man was he?'

'Outside Wedgwood ware he wasn't any sort of a man. He was that
scourge of society, a philanthropist,' said Mr Brindley. 'He was
an upright citizen, and two thousand people followed him to his
grave. I'm an upright citizen, but I have no hope that two
thousand people will follow me to my grave.'

'You never know what may happen,' I observed, smiling.

'No.' He shook his head. 'If you undermine the moral character of
your fellow-citizens by a long course of unbridled miscellaneous
philanthropy, you can have a funeral procession as long as you
like, at the rate of about forty shillings a foot. But you'll
never touch the great heart of the enlightened public of these
boroughs in any other way. Do you imagine anyone cared a twopenny
damn for Perkins's Wedgwood ware?'

'It's like that everywhere,' I said.

'I suppose it is,' he assented unwillingly.

Who can tell what was passing in the breast of Mr Brindley? I
could not. At least I could not tell with any precision. I could
only gather, vaguely, that what he considered the wrong-
headedness, the blindness, the lack of true perception, of his
public was beginning to produce in his individuality a faint trace
of permanent soreness. I regretted it. And I showed my sympathy
with him by asking questions about the design and construction of
the museum (a late addition to the Institution), of which I
happened to know that he had been the architect.

He at once became interested and interesting. Although he perhaps
insisted a little too much on the difficulties which occur when
original talent encounters stupidity, he did, as he walked me up
and down, contrive to convey to me a notion of the creative
processes of the architect in a way that was in my experience
entirely novel. He was impressing me anew, and I was wondering
whether he was unique of his kind or whether there existed
regiments of him in this strange parcel of England.

'Now, you see this girder,' he said, looking upwards.

That's surely something of Fuge's, isn't it?' I asked, indicating
a small picture in a corner, after he had finished his explanation
of the functions of the girder.

As on the walls of the staircase and corridors, so on the walls
here, there were many paintings, drawings, and engravings. And of
course the best were here in the museum. The least uninteresting
items of the collection were, speaking generally, reproductions in
monotint of celebrated works, and a few second--or third-rate loan
pictures from South Kensington. Aside from such matters I had
noticed nothing but the usual local trivialities, gifts from one
citizen or another, travel-jottings of some art-master, careful
daubs of apt students without a sense of humour. The aspect of the
place was exactly the customary aspect of the small provincial
museum, as I have seen it in half-a-hundred towns that are not
among 'the great towns'. It had the terrible trite 'museum'
aspect, the aspect that brings woe and desolation to the heart of
the stoutest visitor, and which seems to form part of the
purgatorio of Bank-holidays, wide mouths, and stiff clothes. The
movement for opening museums on Sundays is the most natural
movement that could be conceived. For if ever a resort was
invented and fore-ordained to chime with the true spirit of the
British sabbath, that resort is the average museum. I ought to
know. I do know.

But there was the incomparable Wedgwood ware, and there was the
little picture by Simon Fuge. I am not going to lose my sense of
perspective concerning Simon Fuge. He was not the greatest painter
that ever lived, or even of his time. He had, I am ready to
believe, very grave limitations. But he was a painter by himself,
as all fine painters are. He had his own vision. He was Unique. He
was exclusively preoccupied with the beauty and the romance of the
authentic. The little picture showed all this. It was a painting,
unfinished, of a girl standing at a door and evidently hesitating
whether to open the door or not: a very young girl, very thin,
with long legs in black stockings, and short, white, untidy frock;
thin bare arms; the head thrown on one side, and the hands raised,
and one foot raised, in a wonderful childish gesture--the gesture
of an undecided fox-terrier. The face was an infant's face,
utterly innocent; and yet Simon Fuge had somehow caught in that
face a glimpse of all the future of the woman that the girl was to
be, he had displayed with exquisite insolence the essential
naughtiness of his vision of things. The thing was not much more
than a sketch; it was a happy accident, perhaps, in some day's
work of Simon Fuge's. But it was genius. When once you had yielded
to it, there was no other picture in the room. It killed
everything else. But, wherever it had found itself, nothing could
have killed IT. Its success was undeniable, indestructible. And it
glowed sombrely there on the wall, a few splashes of colour on a
morsel of canvas, and it was Simon Fuge's unconscious, proud
challenge to the Five Towns. It WAS Simon Fuge, at any rate all of
Simon Fuge that was worth having, masterful, imperishable. And not
merely was it his challenge, it was his scorn, his aristocratic
disdain, his positive assurance that in the battle between them he
had annihilated the Five Towns. It hung there in the very midst
thereof, calmly and contemptuously waiting for the acknowledgement
of his victory.

'Which?' said Mr Brindley.

That one.'

'Yes, I fancy it is,' he negligently agreed. 'Yes, it is.'

'It's not signed,' I remarked.

'It ought to be,' said Mr Brindley; then laughed, 'Too late now!'

'How did it get here?'

'Don't know. Oh! I think Mr Perkins won it in a raffle at a
bazaar, and then hung it here. He did as he liked here, you know.'

I was just going to become vocal in its praise, when Mr Brindley
said--

'That thing under it is a photograph of a drinking-cup for which
one of our pupils won a national scholarship last year!'

Mr Aked appeared in the distance.

'I fancy the old boy wants to be off to bed,' Mr Brindley
whispered kindly.

So we left the Wedgwood Institution. I began to talk to Mr
Brindley about music. The barbaric attitude of the Five Towns
towards great music was the theme of some very lively
animadversions on his part.




VI


The Tiger was very conveniently close to the Wedgwood Institution.
The Tiger had a 'yard', one of those long, shapeless expanses of
the planet, partly paved with uneven cobbles and partly
unsophisticated planet, without which no provincial hotel can call
itself respectable. We came into it from the hinterland through a
wooden doorway in a brick wall. Far off I could see one light
burning. We were in the centre of Bursley, the gold angel of its
Town Hall rose handsomely over the roof of the hotel in the
diffused moonlight, but we might have been in the purlieus of some
dubious establishment on the confines of a great seaport, where
anything may happen. The yard was so deserted, so mysterious, so
shut in, so silent, that, really, infamous characters ought to
have rushed out at us from the obscurity of shadows, and felled us
to the earth with no other attendant phenomenon than a low groan.
There are places where one seems to feel how thin and brittle is
the crust of law and order. Why one should be conscious of this in
the precincts of such a house as the Tiger, which I was given to
understand is as respectable as the parish church, I do not know.
But I have experienced a similar feeling in the yards of other
provincial hotels that were also as correct as parish churches. We
passed a dim fly, with its shafts slanting forlornly to the
ground, and a wheelbarrow. Both looked as though they had been
abandoned for ever. Then we came to the lamp, which illuminated a
door, and on the door was a notice: 'Private Bar. Billiards.'

I am not a frequenter of convivial haunts. I should not dare to
penetrate alone into a private bar; when I do enter a private bar
it is invariably under the august protection of an habitue, and it
is invariably with the idea that at last I am going to see life.
Often has this illusion been shattered, but each time it perfectly
renewed itself. So I followed the bold Mr Brindley into the
private bar of the Tiger.

It was a small and low room. I instinctively stooped, though there
was no necessity for me to stoop. The bar had no peculiarity. It
can be described in a breath: Three perpendicular planes. Back
plane, bottles arranged exactly like books on bookshelves; middle
plane, the upper halves of two women dressed in tight black; front
plane, a counter, dotted with glasses, and having strange areas of
zinc. Reckon all that as the stage, and the rest of the room as
auditorium. But the stage of a private bar is more mysterious than
the stage of a theatre. You are closer to it, and yet it is far
less approachable. The edge of the counter is more sacred than the
footlights. Impossible to imagine yourself leaping over it.
Impossible to imagine yourself in that cloistered place behind it.
Impossible to imagine how the priestesses got themselves into that
place, or that they ever leave it. They are always there; they are
always the same. You may go into a theatre when it is empty and
dark; but did you ever go into a private bar that was empty and
dark? A private bar is as eternal as the hills, as changeless as
the monomania of a madman, as mysterious as sorcery. Always the
same order of bottles, the same tinkling, the same popping, the
same time-tables, and the same realistic pictures of frothing
champagne on the walls, the same advertisements on the same ash-
trays on the counter, the same odour that wipes your face like a
towel the instant you enter; and the same smiles, the same
gestures, the same black fabric stretched to tension over the same
impressive mammiferous phenomena of the same inexplicable
creatures who apparently never eat and never sleep, imprisoned for
life in the hallowed and mystic hollow between the bottles and the
zinc.

In a tone almost inaudible in its discretion, Mr Brindley let fall
to me as he went in--

This is she.'

She was not quite the ordinary barmaid. Nor, as I learnt
afterwards, was she considered to be the ordinary barmaid. She was
something midway in importance between the wife of the new
proprietor and the younger woman who stood beside her in the
cloister talking to a being that resembled a commercial traveller.
It was the younger woman who was the ordinary barmaid; she had
bright hair, and the bright vacant stupidity which, in my narrow
experience, barmaids so often catch like an infectious disease
from their clients. But Annie Brett was different. I can best
explain how she impressed me by saying that she had the mien of a
handsome married woman of forty with a coquettish and
superficially emotional past, but also with a daughter who is just
going into long skirts. I have known one or two such women. They
have been beautiful; they are still handsome at a distance of
twelve feet. They are rather effusive; they think they know life,
when as a fact their instinctive repugnance for any form of truth
has prevented them from acquiring even the rudiments of the
knowledge of life. They are secretly preoccupied by the burning
question of obesity. They flatter, and they will pay any price for
flattery. They are never sincere, not even with themselves; they
never, during the whole of their existence, utter a sincere word,
even in anger they coldly exaggerate. They are always frothing at
the mouth with ecstasy. They adore everything, including God; go
to church carrying a prayer-book and hymn-book in separate
volumes, and absolutely fawn on the daughter. They are stylish--
and impenetrable. But there is something about them very wistful
and tragic.

In another social stratum, Miss Annie Brett might have been such a
woman. Without doubt nature had intended her for the role. She
was just a little ample, with broad shoulders and a large head and
a lot of dark chestnut hair; a large mouth, and large teeth. She
had earrings, a brooch, and several rings; also a neat originality
of cuffs that would not have been permitted to an ordinary
barmaid. As for her face, there were crow's-feet, and a mole
(which had selected with infinite skill a site on her chin), and a
general degeneracy of complexion; but it was an effective face.
The little thing of twenty-three or so by her side had all the
cruel advantages of youth and was not ugly; but she was 'killed'
by Annie Brett. Miss Brett had a maternal bust. Indeed, something
of the maternal resided in all of her that was visible above the
zinc. She must have been about forty; that is to say, apparently
older than the late Simon Fuge. Nevertheless, I could conceive
her, even now, speciously picturesque in a boat at midnight on a
moonstruck water. Had she been on the stage she would have been
looking forward to ingenue parts for another five years yet--such
was her durable sort of effectiveness. Yes, she indubitably
belonged to the ornamental half of the universe.

'So this is one of them!' I said to myself.

I tried to be philosophical; but at heart I was profoundly
disappointed. I did not know what I had expected; but I had not
expected THAT. I was well aware that a thing written always takes
on a quality which does not justly appertain to it. I had not
expected, therefore, to see an odalisque, a houri, an ideal toy or
the remains of an ideal toy; I had not expected any kind of
obvious brilliancy, nor a subtle charm that would haunt my memory
for evermore. On the other hand, I had not expected the banal, the
perfectly commonplace. And I think that Miss Annie Brett was the
most banal person that it has pleased Fate to send into my life. I
knew that instantly. She was a condemnation of Simon Fuge. SHE,
one of the 'wonderful creatures who had played so large a part' in
the career of Simon Fuge! Sapristi! Still, she WAS one of the
wonderful creatures, etc. She HAD floated o'er the bosom of the
lake with a great artist. She HAD received his homage. She HAD
stirred his feelings. She HAD shared with him the magic of the
night. I might decry her as I would; she had known how to cast a
spell over him--she and the other one! Something there in her
which had captured him and, seemingly, held him captive.

'Good-EVENING, Mr Brindley,' she expanded. 'You're quite a
stranger.' And she embraced me also in the largeness of her
welcome.

'It just happens,' said Mr Brindley, 'that I was here last night.
But you weren't.'

'Were you now!' she exclaimed, as though learning a novel fact of
the most passionate interest. The truth is, I had to leave the bar
to Miss Slaney last night. Mrs Moorcroft was ill--and the baby
only six weeks old, you know--and I wouldn't leave her. No, I
wouldn't.'

It was plain that in Miss Annie Brett's opinion there was only one
really capable intelligence in the Tiger. This glimpse of her
capability, this out-leaping of the latent maternal in her,
completely destroyed for the moment my vision of her afloat on the
bosom of the lake.

'I see,' said Mr Brindley kindly. Then he turned to me with
characteristic abruptness. 'Well, give it a name, Mr Loring.'

Such is my simplicity that I did not immediately comprehend his
meaning. For a fraction of a second I thought of the baby. Then I
perceived that he was merely employing one of the sacred phrases,
sanctified by centuries of usage, of the private bar. I had
already drunk mercurey, green Chartreuse, and coffee. I had a
violent desire not to drink anything more. I knew my deplorable
tomorrows. Still, I would have drunk hot milk, cold water, soda
water, or tea. Why should I not have had what I did not object to
having? Herein lies another mystery of the private bar. One could
surely order tea or milk or soda water from a woman who left
everything to tend a mother with a six-weeks-old baby! But no. One
could not. As Miss Annie Brett smiled at me pointedly, and rubbed
her ringed hands, and kept on smiling with her terrific mechanical
effusiveness, I lost all my self control; I would have resigned
myself to a hundred horrible tomorrows under the omnipotent,
inexplicable influence of the private bar. I ejaculated, as though
to the manner born--

'Irish.'

It proved to have been rather clever of me, showing as it did a
due regard for convention combined with a pretty idiosyncrasy. Mr
Brindley was clearly taken aback. The idea struck him as a new
one. He reflected, and then enthusiastically exclaimed--

'Dashed if I don't have Irish too!'

And Miss Brett, delighted by this unexpected note of Irish in the
long, long symphony of Scotch, charged our glasses with gusto. I
sipped, death in my heart, and rakishness in my face and gesture.
Mr Brindley raised his glass respectfully to Miss Annie Brett, and
I did the same. Those two were evidently good friends.

She led the conversation with hard, accustomed ease. When I say
'hard' I do not in the least mean unsympathetic. But her
sympathetic quality was toughened by excessive usage, like the
hand of a charwoman. She spoke of the vagaries of the Town Hall
clock, the health of Mr Brindley's children, the price of coal,
the incidence of the annual wakes, the bankruptcy of the draper
next door, and her own sciatica, all in the same tone of metallic
tender solicitude. Mr Brindley adopted an entirely serious
attitude towards her. If I had met him there and nowhere else I
should have taken him for a dignified mediocrity, little better
than a fool, but with just enough discretion not to give himself
away. I said nothing. I was shy. I always am shy in a bar. Out of
her cold, cold roving eye Miss Brett watched me, trying to add me
up and not succeeding. She must have perceived, however, that I
was not like a fish in water.

There was a pause in the talk, due, I think, to Miss Annie Brett's
preoccupation with what was going on between Miss Slaney, the
ordinary barmaid, and her commercial traveller. The commercial
traveller, if he was one, was reading something from a newspaper
to Miss Slaney in an indistinct murmur, and with laughter in his
voice.

'By the way,' said Mr Brindley, 'you used to know Simon Fuge,
didn't you?'

'Old Simon Fuge!' said Miss Brett. 'Yes; after the brewery company
took the Blue Bell at Cauldon over from him, I used to be there.
He would come in sometimes. Such a nice queer old man!'

'I mean the son,' said Mr Brindley.

'Oh yes,' she answered. 'I knew young Mr Simon too.' A slight
hesitation, and then: 'Of course!' Another hesitation. 'Why?'

'Nothing,' said Mr Brindley. 'Only he's dead.'

'You don't mean to say he's dead?' she exclaimed.

'Day before yesterday, in Italy,' said Mr Brindley ruthlessly.

Miss Annie Brett's manner certainly changed. It seemed almost to
become natural and unecstatic.

'I suppose it will be in the papers?' she ventured.

'It's in the London paper.'

'Well I never!' she muttered.

'A long time, I should think, since he was in this part of the
world,' said Mr Brindley. 'When did YOU last see him?'

He was exceedingly skilful, I considered.

She put the back of her hand over her mouth, and bending her head
slightly and lowering her eyelids, gazed reflectively at the
counter.

'It was once when a lot of us went to Ilam,' she answered quietly.
'The St Luke's lot, YOU know.'

'Oh!' cried Mr Brindley, apparently startled. 'The St Luke's lot?'

'Yes.'

'How came he to go with you?'

'He didn't go with us. He was there--stopping there, I suppose.'

'Why, I believe I remember hearing something about that,' said Mr
Brindley cunningly. 'Didn't he take you out in a boat?'

A very faint dark crimson spread over the face of Miss Annie
Brett. It could not be called a blush, but it was as like a blush
as was possible to her. The phenomenon, as I could see from his
eyes, gave Mr Brindley another shock.

'Yes,' she replied. 'Sally was there as well.'

Then a silence, during which the commercial traveller could be
heard reading from the newspaper.

'When was that?' gently asked Mr Brindley.

'Don't ask ME when it was, Mr Brindley,' she answered nervously.
'It's ever so long ago. What did he die of?'

'Don't know.'

Miss Annie Brett opened her mouth to speak, and did not speak.
There were tears in her reddened eyes. I felt very awkward, and I
think that Mr Brindley also felt awkward. But I was glad. Those
moist eyes caused me a thrill. There was after all some humanity
in Miss Annie Brett. Yes, she had after all floated on the bosom
of the lake with Simon Fuge. The least romantic of persons, she
had yet felt romance. If she had touched Simon Fuge, Simon Fuge
had touched her. She had memories. Once she had lived. I pictured
her younger. I sought in her face the soft remains of
youthfulness. I invented languishing poses for her in the boat. My
imagination was equal to the task of seeing her as Simon Fuge saw
her. I did so see her. I recalled Simon Fuge's excited description
of the long night in the boat, and I could reconstitute the night
from end to end. And there the identical creature stood before me,
the creature who had set fire to Simon Fuge, one of the 'wonderful
creatures' of the Gazette, ageing, hardened, banal, but
momentarily restored to the empire of romance by those unshed,
glittering tears. As an experience it was worth having.

She could not speak, and we did not. I heard the commercial
traveller reading: '"The motion was therefore carried by twenty-
five votes to nineteen, and the Countess of Chell promised that
the whole question of the employment of barmaids should be raised
at the next meeting of the B.W.T.S." There! what do you think of
that?'

Miss Annie Brett moved quickly towards the commercial traveller.

Til tell you what _I_ think of it,' she said, with ecstatic
resentment. 'I think it's just shameful! Why should the Countess
of Chell want to rob a lot of respectable young ladies of their
living? I can tell you they're just as respectable as the Countess
of Chell is--yes, and perhaps more, by all accounts. I think
people do well to call her "Interfering Iris". When she's robbed
them of their living, what does she expect them to do? Is she
going to keep them? Then what does she expect them to do?'

The commercial traveller was inept enough to offer a jocular
reply, and then he found himself involved in the morass of 'the
whole question'. He, and we also, were obliged to hear in immense
detail Miss Annie Brett's complete notions of the movement for the
abolition of barmaids. The subject was heavy on her mind, and she
lifted it off. Simon Fuge was relinquished; he dropped like a
stone into the pool of forgetfulness. And yet, strange as it
seems, she was assuredly not sincere in the expression of her
views on the question of barmaids. She held no real views. She
merely persuaded herself that she held them. When the commercial
traveller, who was devoid of sense, pointed out that it was not
proposed to rob anybody of a livelihood, and that existent
barmaids would be permitted to continue to grace the counters of
their adoption, she grew frostily vicious. The commercial
traveller decided to retire and play billiards. Mr Brindley and I
in our turn departed. I was extremely disappointed by this sequel.

'Ah!' breathed Mr Brindley when we were outside, in front of the
Town Hall. 'She was quite right about that clock.'

After that we turned silently into a long illuminated street which
rose gently. The boxes of light were flashing up and down it, but
otherwise it seemed to be quite deserted. Mr Brindley filled a
pipe and lit it as he walked. The way in which that man kept the
match alight in a fresh breeze made me envious. I could conceive
myself rivalling his exploits in cigarette-making, the purchase of
rare books, the interpretation of music, even (for a wager) the
drinking of beer, but I knew that I should never be able to keep a
match alight in a breeze. He threw the match into the mud, and in
the mud it continued miraculously to burn with a large flame, as
though still under his magic dominion. There are some things that
baffle the reasoning faculty. 'Well,' I said, 'she must have been
a pretty woman once.'

'"Pretty," by God!' he replied, 'she was beautiful. She was
considered the finest piece in Hanbridge at one time. And let me
tell you we're supposed to have more than our share of good looks
in the Five Towns.'

'What--the women, you mean?'

'Yes.'

'And she never married?'

'No.'

'Nor--anything?'

'Oh no,' he said carelessly.

'But you don't mean to tell me she's never--' I was just going to
exclaim, but I did not, I said: 'And it's her sister who is Mrs
Colclough?'

'Yes.' He seemed to be either meditative or disinclined to talk.
However, my friends have sometimes hinted to me that when my
curiosity is really aroused, I am capable of indiscretions.

'So one sister rattles about in an expensive motor-car, and the
other serves behind a bar!' I observed.

He glanced at me.

'I expect it's a bit difficult for you to understand,' he
answered; 'but you must remember you're in a democratic district.
You told me once you knew Exeter. Well, this isn't a cathedral
town. It's about a century in front of any cathedral town in the
world. Why, my good sir, there's practically no such thing as
class distinction here. Both my grandfathers were working potters.
Colclough's father was a joiner who finished up as a builder. If
Colclough makes money and chooses to go to Paris and get the best
motor-car he can, why in Hades shouldn't his wife ride in it? If
he is fond of music and can play like the devil, that isn't his
sister-in-law's fault, is it? His wife was a dressmaker, at least
she was a dressmaker's assistant. If she suits him, what's the
matter?'

'But I never suggested--'

'Excuse me,' he stopped me, speaking with careful and slightly
exaggerated calmness, 'I think you did. If the difference in the
situations of the two sisters didn't strike you as very
extraordinary, what did you mean?'

'And isn't it extraordinary?' I demanded.

'It wouldn't be considered so in any reasonable society,' he
insisted. 'The fact is, my good sir, you haven't yet quite got rid
of Exeter. I do believe this place will do you good. Why, damn it!
Colclough didn't marry both sisters. You think he might keep the
other sister? Well, he might. But suppose his wife had half-a-
dozen sisters, should he keep them all! I can tell you we're just
like the rest of the world, we find no difficulty whatever in
spending all the money we make. I dare say Colclough would be
ready enough to keep his sister-in-law. I've never asked him. But
I'm perfectly certain that his sister-in-law wouldn't be kept. Not
much! You don't know these women down here, my good sir. She's
earned her living at one thing or another all her life, and I
reckon she'll keep on earning it till she drops. She is, without
exception, the most exasperating female I ever came across, and
that's saying something; but I will give her THAT credit: she's
mighty independent.'

'How exasperating?' I asked, surprised to hear this from him.

'_I_ don't know. But she is. If she was my wife I should kill her
one night. Don't you know what I mean?'

'Yes, I quite agree with you,' I said. 'But you seemed to be
awfully good friends with her.'

'No use being anything else. No woman that it ever pleased
Providence to construct is going to frighten me away from the
draught Burton that you can get at the Tiger. Besides, she can't
help it. She was born like that.'

'She TALKS quite ordinarily,' I remarked.

'Oh! It isn't what she says, particularly. It's HER. Either you
like her or you don't like her. Now Colclough thinks she's all
right. In fact, he admires her.'

'There's one thing,' I said, 'she jolly nearly cried tonight.'

'Purely mechanical!' said Mr Brindley with cruel curtness.

What seemed to me singular was that the relations which had
existed between Miss Annie Brett and Simon Fuge appeared to have
no interest whatever for Mr Brindley. He had not even referred to
them.

'You were just beginning to draw her out,' I ventured.

'No,' he replied; 'I thought I'd just see what she'd say. No one
ever did draw that woman out.'

I had completely lost my vision of her in the boat, but somehow
that declaration of his, 'no one ever did draw that woman out',
partially restored the vision to me. It seemed to invest her with
agreeable mystery.

'And the other sister--Mrs Colclough?' I questioned.

'I'm taking you to see her as fast as I can,' he answered. His
tone implied further: 'I've just humoured one of your whims, now
for the other.'

'But tell me something about her.'

'She's the best bridge-player--woman, that is--in Bursley. But she
will only play every other night for fear the habit should get
hold of her. There you've got her.'

'Younger than Miss Brett?'

'Younger,' said Mr Brindley. 'She isn't the same sort of person,
is she?'

'She is not,' said Mr Brindley. And his tone implied: 'Thank God
for it!'

Very soon afterwards, at the top of a hill, he drew me into the
garden of a large house which stood back from the road.




VII


It was quite a different sort of house from Mr Brindley's. One
felt that immediately on entering the hall, which was extensive.
There was far more money and considerably less taste at large in
that house than in the other. I noticed carved furniture that must
have been bought with a coarse and a generous hand; and on the
walls a diptych by Marcus Stone portraying the course of true love
clingingly draped. It was just like Exeter or Onslow Square. But
the middle-aged servant who received us struck at once the same
note as had sounded so agreeably at Mr Brindley's. She seemed
positively glad to see us; our arrival seemed to afford her a
peculiar and violent pleasure, as though the hospitality which we
were about to accept was in some degree hers too. She robbed us of
our hats with ecstasy.

Then Mr Colclough appeared.

'Delighted you've come, Mr Loring!' he said, shaking my hand
again. He said it with fervour. He obviously was delighted. The
exercise of hospitality was clearly the chief joy of his life; at
least, if he had a greater it must have been something where
keenness was excessive beyond the point of pleasure, as some joys
are. 'How do, Bob? Your missis has just come.' He was still in his
motoring clothes.

Mr Brindley, observing my gaze transiently on the Marcus Stones,
said: 'I know what you're looking for; you're looking for "Saul's
Soul's Awakening". We don't keep it in the window; you'll see it
inside.'

'Bob's always rotting me about my pictures,' Mr Colclough smiled
indulgently. He seemed big enough to eat his friend, and his rich,
heavy voice rolled like thunder about the hall. 'Come along in,
will you?'

'Half-a-second, Ol,' Mr Brindley called in a conspiratorial tone,
and, turning to me: Tell him THE Limerick. You know.'

'The one about the hayrick?'

Mr Brindley nodded.

There were three heads close together for a space of twenty
seconds or so, and then a fearful explosion happened--the unique,
tremendous laughter of Mr Colclough, which went off like a charge
of melinite and staggered the furniture.

'Now, now!' a feminine voice protested from an unseen interior.

I was taken to the drawing-room, an immense apartment with an
immense piano black as midnight in it. At the further end two
women were seated close together in conversation, and I distinctly
heard the name 'Fuge'. One of them was Mrs Brindley, in a hat. The
other, a very big and stout woman, in an elaborate crimson garment
that resembled a teagown, rose and came to meet me with extended
hand.

'My wife--Mr Loring,' said Mr Oliver Colclough.

'So glad to meet you,' she said, beaming on me with all her
husband's pleasure. 'Come and sit between Mrs Brindley and me,
near the window, and keep us in order. Don't you find it very
close? There are at least a hundred cats in the garden.'

One instantly perceived that ceremonial stiffness could not exist
in the same atmosphere with Mrs Oliver Colclough. During the whole
time I spent in her house there was never the slightest pause in
the conversation. Mrs Oliver Colclough prevented nobody from
talking, but she would gladly use up every odd remnant of time
that was not employed by others. No scrap was too small for her.

'So this is the other one!' I said to myself. 'Well, give me this
one!'

Certainly there was a resemblance between the two, in the general
formation of the face, and the shape of the shoulders; but it is
astonishing that two sisters can differ as these did, with a
profound and vital difference. In Mrs Colclough there was no
coquetterie, no trace of that more-than-half-suspicious challenge
to a man that one feels always in the type to which her sister
belonged. The notorious battle of the sexes was assuredly carried
on by her in a spirit of frank muscular gaiety--she could, I am
sure, do her share of fighting. Put her in a boat on the bosom of
the lake under starlight, and she would not by a gesture, a tone,
a glance, convey mysterious nothings to you, a male. She would not
be subtly changed by the sensuous influences of the situation; she
would always be the same plump and earthly piece of candour. Even
if she were in love with you, she would not convey mysterious
nothings in such circumstances. If she were in love with you she
would most clearly convey unmysterious and solid somethings. I was
convinced that the contributing cause to the presence of the late
Simon Fuge in the boat on Ilam Lake on the historic night was
Annie the superior barmaid, and not Sally of the automobile. But
Mrs Colclough, if not beautiful, was a very agreeable creation.
Her amplitude gave at first sight an exaggerated impression of her
age; but this departed after more careful inspection. She could
not have been more than thirty. She was very dark, with plenteous
and untidy black hair, thick eyebrows, and a slight moustache. Her
eyes were very vivacious, and her gestures, despite that bulk,
quick and graceful. She was happy; her ideals were satisfied; it
was probably happiness that had made her stout. Her massiveness
was apparently no grief to her; she had fallen into the
carelessness which is too often the pitfall of women who, being
stout, are content.

'How do, missis?' Mr Brindley greeted her, and to his wife, 'How
do, missis? But, look here, bright star, this gadding about is all
very well, but what about those precious kids of yours? None of
'em dead yet, I hope.'

'Don't be silly, Bob.'

'I've been over to your house,' Mrs Colclough put in. 'Of course
it isn't mumps. The child's as right as rain. So I brought Mary
back with me.'

'Well,' said Mr Brindley, 'for a woman who's never had any
children your knowledge of children beggars description. What you
aren't sure you know about them isn't knowledge. However--'

'Listen,' Mrs Colclough replied, with a delightful throwingdown of
the glove. 'I'll bet you a level sovereign that child hasn't got
the mumps. So there! And Oliver will guarantee to pay you.'

'Aye!' said Mr Colclough; 'I'll back my wife any day.'

'Don't bet, Bob,' Mrs Brindley enjoined her husband excitedly in
her high treble.

'I won't,' said Mr Brindley.

'Now let's sit down.' Mrs Colclough addressed me with particular,
confidential grace.

We three exactly filled the sofa. I have often sat between two
women, but never with such calm, unreserved, unapprehensive
comfortableness as I experienced between Mrs Colclough and Mrs
Brindley. It was just as if I had known them for years.

'You'll make a mess of that, Ol,' said Mr Brindley.

The other two men were at some distance, in front of a table, on
which were two champagne bottles and five glasses, and a plate of
cakes. 'Well,' I said to myself, 'I'm not going to have any
champagne, anyhow. Mercurey! Green Chartreuse! Irish whisky! And
then champagne! And a morning's hard work tomorrow! No!'

Plop! A cork flew up and bounced against the ceiling.

Mr Colclough carefully emptied the bottle into the glasses, of
which Mr Brindley seized two and advanced with one in either hand
for the women. It was the host who offered a glass to me.

'No, thanks very much, I really can't,' I said in a very firm
tone.

My tone was so firm that it startled them. They glanced at each
other with alarmed eyes, like simple people confronted by an
inexplicable phenomenon. 'But look here, mister!' said Mr
Colclough, pained, 'we've got this out specially for you. You
don't suppose this is our usual tipple, do you?'

I yielded. I could do no less than sacrifice myself to their
enchanting instinctive kindness of heart. 'I shall be dead
tomorrow,' I said to myself; 'but I shall have lived tonight.'
They were relieved, but I saw that I had given them a shock from
which they could not instantaneously recover. Therefore I began
with a long pull, to reassure them.

'Mrs Brindley has been telling me that Simon Fuge is dead,' said
Mrs Colclough brightly, as though Mrs Brindley had been telling
her that the price of mutton had gone down.

I perceived that those two had been talking over Simon Fuge, after
their fashion.

'Oh yes,' I responded.

'Have you got that newspaper in your pocket, Mr Loring?' asked Mrs
Brindley.

I had.

'No,' I said, feeling in my pockets; 'I must have left it at your
house.'

'Well,' she said, 'that's strange. I looked for it to show it to
Mrs Colclough, but I couldn't see it.'

This was not surprising. I did not want Mrs Colclough to read the
journalistic obituary until she had given me her own obituary of
Fuge.

'It must be somewhere about,' I said; and to Mrs Colclough: 'I
suppose you knew him pretty well?'

'Oh, bless you, no! I only met him once.'

'At Ilam?'

'Yes. What are you going to do, Oliver?'

Her husband was opening the piano.

'Bob and I are just going to have another smack at that Brahms.'

'You don't expect us to listen, do you?'

'I expect you to do what pleases you, missis,' said he. 'I should
be a bigger fool than I am if I expected anything else.' Then he
smiled at me. 'No! Just go on talking. Ol and I'll drown you easy
enough. Quite short! Back in five minutes.'

The two men placed each his wine-glass on the space on the piano
designed for a candlestick, lighted cigars, and sat down to play.

'Yes,' Mrs Colclough resumed, in a lower, more confidential tone,
to the accompaniment of the music. 'You see, there was a whole
party of us there, and Mr Fuge was staying at the hotel, and of
course he knew several of us.'

'And he took you out in a boat?'

'Me and Annie? Yes. Just as it was getting dusk he came up to us
and asked us if we'd go for a row. Eh, I can hear him asking us
now! I asked him if he could row, and he was quite angry. So we
went, to quieten him.' She paused, and then laughed.

'Sally!' Mrs Brindley protested. 'You know he's dead!'

'Yes.' She admitted the rightness of the protest. 'But I can't
help it. I was just thinking how he got his feet wet in pushing
the boat off.' She laughed again. 'When we were safely off,
someone came down to the shore and shouted to Mr Fuge to bring the
boat back. You know his quick way of talking.' (Here she began to
imitate Fuge.) '"I've quarrelled with the man this boat belongs
to. Awful feud! Fact is, I'm in a hostile country here!" And a lot
more like that. It seemed he had quarrelled with everybody in
Ilam. He wasn't sure if the landlord of the hotel would let him
sleep there again. He told us all about all his quarrels, until he
dropped one of the oars. I shall never forget how funny he looked
in the moonlight when he dropped the oar. "There, that's your
fault!" he said. "You make me talk too much about myself, and I
get excited." He kept striking matches to look for the oar, and
turning the boat round and round with the other oar. "Last match!"
he said. "We shall never see land tonight." Then he found the oar
again. He considered we were saved. Then he began to tell us about
his aunt. "You know I'd no business to be here. I came down from
London for my aunt's funeral, and here I am in a boat at night
with two pretty girls!" He said the funeral had taught him one
thing, and that was that black neckties were the only possible
sort of necktie. He said the greatest worry of his life had always
been neckties; but he wouldn't have to worry any more, and so his
aunt hadn't died for nothing. I assure you he kept on talking
about neckties. I assure you, Mr Loring, I went to sleep--at least
I dozed--and when I woke up he was still talking about neckties.
But then his feet began to get cold. I suppose it was because they
were wet. The way he grumbled about his feet being cold! I
remember he turned his coat collar up. He wanted to get on shore
and walk, but he'd taken us a long way up the lake by that time,
and he saw we were absolutely lost. So he put the oars in the boat
and stood up and stamped his feet. It might have upset the boat.'

'How did it end?' I inquired.

'Well, Annie and I caught the train, but only just. You see it was
a special train, so they kept it for us, otherwise we should have
been in a nice fix.'

'So you have special trains in these parts?'

'Why, of course! It was the annual outing of the teachers of St
Luke's Sunday School and their friends, you see. So we had a
special train.'

At this point the duettists came to the end of a movement, and Mr
Brindley leaned over to us from his stool, glass in hand.

'The railway company practically owns Ilam,' he explained, 'and so
they run it for all they're worth. They made the lake, to feed the
canals, when they bought the canals from the canal company. It's
an artificial lake, and the railway runs alongside it. A very good
scheme of the company's. They started out to make Ilam a popular
resort, and they've made it a popular resort, what with special
trains and things. But try to get a special train to any other
place on their rotten system, and you'll soon see!'

'How big is the lake?' I asked.

'How long is it, Ol?' he demanded of Colclough. 'A couple of
miles?'

'Not it! About a mile. Adagio!'

They proceeded with Brahms.

'He ran with you all the way to the station, didn't he?' Mrs
Brindley suggested to Mrs Colclough.

'I should just say he did!' Mrs Colclough concurred. 'He wanted to
get warm, and then he was awfully afraid lest we should miss it.'

'I thought you were on the lake practically all night!' I
exclaimed.

'All night! Well, I don't know what you call all night. But I was
back in Bursley before eleven o'clock, I'm sure.'

I then contrived to discover the Gazette in an unsearched pocket,
and I gave it to Mrs Colclough to read. Mrs Brindley looked over
her shoulder.

There was no slightest movement of depreciation on Mrs Colclough's
part. She amiably smiled as she perused the GAZETTE'S version of
Fuge's version of the lake episode. Here was the attitude of the
woman whose soul is like crystal. It seems to me that most women
would have blushed, or dissented, or simulated anger, or failed to
conceal vanity. But Mrs Coclough might have been reading a fairy
tale, for any emotion she displayed.

'Yes,' she said blandly; 'from the things Annie used to tell me
about him sometimes, I should say that was just how he WOULD talk.
They seem to have thought quite a lot of him in London, then?'

'Oh, rather!' I said. 'I suppose your sister knew him pretty
well?'

'Annie? I don't know. She knew him.'

I distinctly observed a certain self-consciousness in Mrs
Colclough as she made this reply. Mrs Brindley had risen and with
wifely attentiveness was turning over the music page for her
husband.




VIII


Soon afterwards, for me, the night began to grow fantastic; it
took on the colour of a gigantic adventure. I do not suppose that
either Mr Brindley or Mr Colclough, or the other person who
presently arrived, regarded it as anything but a pleasant
conviviality, but to a man of my constitution and habits it was an
almost incredible occurrence. The other person was the book-
collecting doctor. He arrived with a discreet tap on the window at
midnight, to spend the evening. Mrs Brindley had gone home and Mrs
Colclough had gone to bed. The book-collecting doctor refused
champagne; he was, in fact, very rude to champagne in general. He
had whisky. And those astonishing individuals, Messieurs Brindley
and Colclough, secretly convinced of the justice of the attack on
champagne, had whisky too. And that still most astonishing
individual, Loring of the B.M., joined them. It was the hour of
limericks. Limericks were demanded for the diversion of the
doctor, and I furnished them. We then listened to the tale of the
doctor's experiences that day amid the sturdy, natural-minded
population of a muling village not far from Bursley. Seldom have I
had such a bath in the pure fluid of human nature. All sense of
time was lost. I lived in an eternity. I could not suggest to my
host that we should depart. I could, however, decline more whisky.
And I could, given the chance, discourse with gay despair
concerning the miserable wreck that I should be on the morrow in
consequence of this high living. I asked them how I could be
expected, in such a state, to judge delicate points of expertise
in earthenware. I gave them a brief sketch of my customary
evening, and left them to compare it with that evening. The doctor
perceived that I was serious. He gazed at me with pity, as if to
say: 'Poor frail southern organism! It ought to be in bed, with
nothing inside it but tea!' What he did actually say was: 'You
come round to my place, I'll soon put you right!' 'Can you stop me
from having a headache tomorrow?' I eagerly asked. 'I think so,'
he said with calm northern confidence.

At some later hour Mr Brindley and I 'went round'. Mr Colclough
would not come. He bade me good-bye, as his wife had done, with
the most extraordinary kindness, the most genuine sorrow at
quitting me, the most genuine pleasure in the hope of seeing me
again.

'There are three thousand books in this room!' I said to myself,
as I stood in the doctor's electrically lit library.

'What price this for a dog?' Mr Brindley drew my attention to an
aristocratic fox-terrier that lay on the hearth. 'Well, Titus! Is
it sleepy? Well, well! How many firsts has he won, doctor?'

'Six,' said the doctor. 'I'll just fix you up, to begin with,' he
turned to me.

After I had been duly fixed up ('This'll help you to sleep, and
THIS'll placate your "god",' said the doctor), I saw to my intense
surprise that another 'evening' was to be instantly superimposed
on the 'evening' at Mr Colclough's. The doctor and Mr Brindley
carefully and deliberately lighted long cigars, and sank deeply
into immense arm-chairs; and so I imitated them as well as I could
in my feeble southern way. We talked books. We just simply
enumerated books without end, praising or damning them, and
arranged authors in neat pews, like cattle in classes at an
agricultural show. No pastime is more agreeable to people who have
the book disease, and none more quickly fleets the hours, and none
is more delightfully futile.

Ages elapsed, and suddenly, like a gun discharging, Mr Brindley
said--

'We must go!'

Of all things that happened this was the most astonishing.

We did go.

'By the way, doc.,' said Mr Brindley, in the doctor's wide porch,
'I forgot to tell you that Simon Fuge is dead.'

'Is he?' said the doctor.

'Yes. You've got a couple of his etchings, haven't you?'

'No,' said the doctor. 'I had. But I sold them several months
ago.'

'Oh!' said Mr Brindley negligently; 'I didn't know. Well, so
long!'

We had a few hundred yards to walk down the silent, wide street,
where the gas-lamps were burning with the strange, endless
patience that gas-lamps have. The stillness of a provincial town
at night is quite different from that of London; we might have
been the only persons alive in England.

Except for a feeling of unreality, a feeling that the natural
order of things had been disturbed by some necromancer, I was
perfectly well the same morning at breakfast, as the doctor had
predicted I should be. When I expressed to Mr Brindley my
stupefaction at this happy sequel, he showed a polite but careless
inability to follow my line of thought. It appeared that he was
always well at breakfast, even when he did stay up 'a little later
than usual'. It appeared further that he always breakfasted at a
quarter to nine, and read the Manchester Guardian during the meal,
to which his wife did or did not descend--according to the moods
of the nursery; and that he reached his office at a quarter to
ten. That morning the mood of the nursery was apparently
unpropitious. He and I were alone. I begged him not to pretermit
his GUARDIAN, but to examine it and give me the news. He agreed,
scarcely unwilling.

'There's a paragraph in the London correspondence about Fuge,' he
announced from behind the paper.

'What do they say about him?'

'Nothing particular.'

'Now I want to ask you something,' I said.

I had been thinking a good deal about the sisters and Simon Fuge.
And in spite of everything that I had heard--in spite even of the
facts that the lake had been dug by a railway company, and that
the excursion to the lake had been an excursion of Sunday-school
teachers and their friends--I was still haunted by certain notions
concerning Simon Fuge and Annie Brett. Annie Brett's flush, her
unshed tears; and the self-consciousness shown by Mrs Colclough
when I had pointedly mentioned her sister's name in connection
with Simon Fuge's: these were surely indications! And then the
doctor's recitals of manners in the immediate neighbourhood of
Bursley went to support my theory that even in Staffordshire life
was very much life.

'What?' demanded Mr Brindley.

'Was Miss Brett ever Simon Fuge's mistress?'

At that moment Mrs Brindley, miraculously fresh and smiling,
entered the room.

'Wife,' said Mr Brindley, without giving her time to greet me,
'what do you think he's just asked me?'

'_I_ don't know.'

'He's just asked me if Annie Brett was ever Simon Fuge's
mistress.'

She sank into a chair.

'Annie BRETT?' She began to laugh gently. 'Oh! Mr Loring, you
really are too funny!' She yielded to her emotions. It may be said
that she laughed as they can laugh in the Five Towns. She cried.
She had to wipe away the tears of laughter.

'What on earth made you think so?' she inquired, after recovery.

'I--had an idea,' I said lamely. 'He always made out that one of
those two sisters was so much to him, and I knew it couldn't be
Mrs Colclough.'

'Well,' she said, 'ask anybody down here, ANY-body! And see what
they'll say.'

'No,' Mr Brindley put in, 'don't go about asking ANY-body. You
might get yourself disliked. But you may take it it isn't true.'

'Most certainly,' his wife concurred with seriousness.

'We reckon to know something about Simon Fuge down here,' Mr
Brindley added. 'Also about the famous Annie.'

'He must have flirted with her a good bit, anyhow,' I said.

'Oh, FLIRT!' ejaculated Mr Brindley.

I had a sudden dazzling vision of the great truth that the people
of the Five Towns have no particular use for half-measures in any
department of life. So I accepted the final judgement with
meekness.




IX


I returned to London that evening, my work done, and the
muncipality happily flattered by my judgement of the slip-
decorated dishes. Mr Brindley had found time to meet me at the
midday meal, and he had left his office earlier than usual in
order to help me to drink his wife's afternoon tea. About an hour
later he picked up my little bag, and said that he should
accompany me to the little station in the midst of the desert of
cinders and broken crockery, and even see me as far as Knype,
where I had to take the London express. No, there are no half-
measures in the Five Towns. Mrs Brindley stood on her doorstep,
with her eldest infant on her shoulders, and waved us off. The
infant cried, expressing his own and his mother's grief at losing
a guest. It seems as if people are born hospitable in the Five
Towns.

We had not walked more than a hundred yards up the road when a
motor-car thundered down upon us from the opposite direction. It
was Mr Colclough's, and Mr Colclough was driving it. Mr Brindley
stopped his friend with the authoritative gesture of a policeman.

'Where are you going, Ol?'

'Home, lad. Sorry you're leaving us so soon, Mr Loring.'

'You're mistaken, my boy,' said Mr Brindley. 'You're just going to
run us down to Knype station, first.'

'I must look slippy, then,' said Mr Colclough.

'You can look as slippy as you like,' said Mr Brindley.

In another fifteen seconds we were in the car, and it had turned
round, and was speeding towards Knype. A feverish journey! We
passed electric cars every minute, and for three miles were
continually twisting round the tails of ponderous, creaking, and
excessively deliberate carts that dropped a trail of small coal,
or huge barrels on wheels that dripped something like the finest
Devonshire cream, or brewer's drays that left nothing behind them
save a luscious odour of malt. It was a breathless slither over
unctuous black mud through a long winding canon of brown-red
houses and shops, with a glimpse here and there of a grey-green
park, a canal, or a football field.

'I daredn't hurry,' said Mr Colclough, setting us down at the
station. 'I was afraid of a skid.' He had not spoken during the
transit.

'Don't put on side, Ol,' said Mr Brindley. 'What time did you get
up this morning?'

'Eight o'clock, lad. I was at th' works at nine.'

He flew off to escape my thanks, and Mr Brindley and I went into
the station. Owing to the celerity of the automobile we had half-
an-hour to wait. We spent it chiefly at the bookstall. While we
were there the extra-special edition of the STAFFORDSHIRE SIGNAL,
affectionately termed 'the local rag' by its readers, arrived, and
we watched a newsboy affix its poster to a board. The poster ran
thus--

HANBRIDGE RATES LIVELY MEETING

            --

KNYPE F.C. NEW CENTRE--FORWARD

            --

ALL--WINNERS AND S.P.

Now, close by this poster was the poster of the DAILY TELEGRAPH,
and among the items offered by the DAILY TELEGRAPH was: 'Death of
Simon Fuge'. I could not forbear pointing out to Mr Brindley the
difference between the two posters. A conversation ensued; and
amid the rumbling of trains and the rough stir of the platform we
got back again to Simon Fuge, and Mr Brindley's tone gradually
grew, if not acrid, a little impatient.

'After all,' he said, 'rates are rates, especially in Hanbridge.
And let me tell you that last season Knype Football Club jolly
nearly got thrown out of the First League. The constitution of the
team for this next season--why, damn it, it's a question of
national importance! You don't understand these things. If Knype
Football Club was put into the League Second Division, ten
thousand homes would go into mourning. Who the devil was Simon
Fuge?'

They joke with such extraordinary seriousness in the Five Towns
that one is somehow bound to pretend that they are not joking. So
I replied--

'He was a great artist. And this is his native district. Surely
you ought to be proud of him!'

'He may have been a great artist,' said Mr Brindley, 'or he may
not. But for us he was simply a man who came of a family that had
a bad reputation for talking too much and acting the goat!'

'Well,' I said, We shall see--in fifty years.'

'That's just what we shan't,' said he. 'We shall be where Simon
Fuge is--dead! However, perhaps we are proud of him. But you don't
expect us to show it, do you? That's not our style.'

He performed the quasi-winking phenomenon with his eyes. It was
his final exhibition of it to me.

'A strange place!' I reflected, as I ate my dinner in the dining-
car, with the pressure of Mr Brindley's steely clasp still
affecting my right hand, and the rich, honest cordiality of his au
revoir in my heart. 'A place that is passing strange!'

And I thought further: He may have been a boaster, and a
chatterer, and a man who suffered from cold feet at the wrong
moments! And the Five Towns may have got the better of him, now.
But that portrait of the little girl in the Wedgwood Institution
is waiting there, right in the middle of the Five Towns. And one
day the Five Towns will have to 'give it best'. They can say what
they like! ... What eyes the fellow had, when he was in the right
company!




IN A NEW BOTTLE


Commercial travellers are rather like bees; they take the seed of
a good story from one district and deposit it in another.

Thus several localities, imperfectly righteous, have within recent
years appropriated this story to their own annals. I once met an
old herbalist from Wigan-Wigan of all places in beautiful
England!--who positively asserted that the episode occurred just
outside the London and North-Western main line station at Wigan.
This old herbalist was no judge of the value of evidence. An
undertaker from Hull told me flatly, little knowing who I was and
where I came from, that he was the undertaker concerned in the
episode. This undertaker was a liar. I use this term because there
is no other word in the language which accurately expresses my
meaning. Of persons who have taken the trouble to come over from
the United States in order to inform me that the affair happened
at Harper's Ferry, Poughkeepsie, Syracuse, Allegheny,
Indianapolis, Columbus, Charlotte, Tabernacle, Alliance, Wheeling,
Lynchburg, and Chicago it would be unbecoming to speak--they are
best left to silence themselves by mutual recrimination. The fact
is that the authentic scene of the affair was a third-class
railway carriage belonging to the North Staffordshire Railway
Company, and rolling on that company's loop-line between Longshaw
and Hanbridge. The undertaker is now dead--it is a disturbing
truth that even undertakers die sometimes--and since his widow has
given me permission to mention his name, I shall mention his name.
It was Edward Till. Of course everybody in the Five Towns knows
who the undertaker was, and if anybody in the Five Towns should
ever chance to come across this book, I offer him my excuses for
having brought coals to Newcastle.

Mr Till used to be a fairly well-known figure in Hanbridge, which
is the centre of undertaking, as it is of everything else, in the
Five Towns. He was in a small but a successful way of business,
had one leg a trifle shorter than the other (which slightly
deteriorated the majesty of his demeanour on solemn occasions),
played the fiddle, kept rabbits, and was of a forgetful
disposition. It was possibly this forgetful disposition which had
prevented him from rising into a large way of business. All
admired his personal character and tempered geniality; but there
are some things that will not bear forgetting. However, the story
touches but lightly that side of his individuality.

One morning Mr Till had to go to Longshaw to fetch a baby's coffin
which had been ordered under the mistaken impression that a
certain baby was dead. This baby, I may mention, was the hero of
the celebrated scare of Longshaw about the danger of being buried
alive. The little thing had apparently passed away; and, what is
more, an inquest had been held on it and its parents had been
censured by the jury for criminal carelessness in overlaying it;
and it was within five minutes of being nailed up, when it opened
its eyes! You may imagine the enormous sensation that there was in
the Five Towns. One doctor lost his reputation, naturally. He
emigrated to the Continent, and now, practising at Lucerne in the
summer and Mentone in the winter, charges fifteen shillings a
visit (instead of three and six at Longshaw) for informing people
who have nothing the matter with them that they must take care of
themselves. The parents of the astonished baby moved the heaven
and earth of the Five Towns to force the coroner to withdraw the
stigma of the jury's censure; but they did not succeed, not even
with the impassioned aid of two London halfpenny dailies.

To resume, Mr Till had to go to Longshaw. Now, unless you possess
a most minute knowledge of your native country, you are probably
not aware that in Aynsley Street, Longshaw, there is a provision
dealer whose reputation for cheeses would be national and supreme
if the whole of England thought as the Five Towns thinks.

'Teddy,' Mrs Till said, as Mr Till was starting, 'you might as
well bring back with you a pound of Gorgonzola.' (Be it noted that
I had the details of the conversation from the lady herself.)

'Yes,' said he enthusiastically, 'I will.'

'Don't go and forget it,' she enjoined him.

'No,' he said. 'I'll tie a knot in my handkerchief.'

'A lot of good that'll do!' she observed. 'You'd tied a knot in
your handkerchief when you forgot that Councillor Barker's wife's
funeral was altered from Tuesday to Monday.'

'Ah!' he replied. 'But now I've got a bad cold.'

'So you have!' she agreed, reassured.

He tied the knot in his handkerchief and went.

Thanks to his cold he did not pass the cheesemonger's without
entering.

He adored Gorgonzola, and he reckoned that he knew a bit of good
Gorgonzola when he met with it. Moreover, he and the cheesemonger
were old friends, he having buried three of the cheesemonger's
children. He emerged from the cheesemonger's with a pound of the
perfectest Gorgonzola that ever greeted the senses.

The abode of the censured parents was close by, and also close to
the station. He obtained the coffin without parley, and told the
mother, who showed him the remarkable child with pride, that under
the circumstances he should make no charge at all. It was a
ridiculously small coffin. He was quite accustomed to coffins.
Hence he did the natural thing. He tucked the little coffin under
one arm, and, dangling the cheese (neat in brown paper and string)
from the other hand, he hastened to the station. With his
unmatched legs he must have made a somewhat noticeable figure.

A loop-line train was waiting, and he got into it, put the cheese
on the rack in a corner, and the coffin next to it, assured
himself that he had not mislaid his return ticket, and sat down
under his baggage. It was the slackest time of day, and, as the
train started at Longshaw, there were very few passengers. He had
the compartment to himself.

He was just giving way to one of those moods of vague and pleasant
meditation which are perhaps the chief joy of such a temperament,
when he suddenly sprang up as if in fear. And fear had in fact
seized him. Suppose he forgot those belongings on the rack?
Suppose, sublimely careless, he descended from the train and left
them there? What a calamity! And similar misadventures had
happened to him before. It was the cheese that disquieted him. No
one would be sufficiently unprincipled to steal the coffin, and he
would ultimately recover it at the lost luggage office, babies'
coffins not abounding on the North Staffordshire Railway. But the
cheese! He would never see the cheese again! No integrity would be
able to withstand the blandishments of that cheese. Moreover, his
wife would be saddened. And for her he had a sincere and profound
affection.

His act of precaution was to lift the coffin down from the rack,
and place it on the seat beside him, and then to put the parcel of
cheese on the coffin. He surveyed the cheese on the coffin; he
surveyed it with the critical and experienced eye of an
undertaker, and he decided that, if anyone else got into the
carriage, it would not look quite decent, quite becoming--in a
word, quite nice. A coffin is a coffin, and people's feelings have
to be considered.

So he whipped off the lid of the coffin, stuck the cheese inside,
and popped the lid on again. And he kept his hand on the coffin
that he might not forget it. When the train halted at Knype, Mr
Till was glad that he had put the cheese inside, for another
passenger got into the compartment. And it was a clergyman. He
recognized the clergyman, though the clergyman did not recognize
him. It was the Reverend Claud ffolliott, famous throughout the
Five Towns as the man who begins his name with a small letter,
doesn't smoke, of course doesn't drink, but goes to football
matches, has an average of eighteen at cricket, and makes a very
pretty show with the gloves, in spite of his thirty-eight years;
celibate, very High, very natty and learned about vestments,
terrific at sick couches and funerals. Mr Till inwardly trembled
to think what the Reverend Claud ffolliott might have said had he
seen the cheese reposing in the coffin, though the coffin was
empty.

The parson, whose mind was apparently occupied, dropped into the
nearest corner, which chanced to be the corner farthest away from
Mr Till. He then instantly opened a copy of The Church Times and
began to read it, and the train went forward. The parson sniffed,
absently, as if he had been dozing and a fly had tickled his nose.
Shortly afterwards he sniffed again, but without looking up from
his perusals. He sniffed a third time, and glanced over the top
edge of THE CHURCH TIMES at Mr Till. Calmed by the innocuous
aspect of Mr Till, he bent once more to the paper. But after an
interval he was sniffing furiously. He glanced at the window; it
was open. Finally he lowered The CHURCH TIMES, as who should say:
'I am a long-suffering man, but really this phenomenon which
assaults my nostrils must be seriously inquired into.'

Then it was that he caught sight of the coffin, with Mr Till's
hand caressing it, and Mr Till all in black and carrying a
funereal expression. He straightened himself, pulled himself
together on account of his cloth, and said to Mr Till in his most
majestic and sympathetic graveside voice--

'Ah! my dear friend, I see that you have suffered a sad, sad
bereavement.'

That rich, resonant voice was positively thrilling when it
addressed hopeless grief. Mr Till did not know what to say, nor
where to look.

'You have, however, one thing to be thankful for, very thankful
for,' said the parson after a pause, 'you may be sure the poor
thing is not in a trance.'






End of Project Gutenberg's The Grim Smile of the Five Towns, by Arnold Bennett

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