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.'

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.

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

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!'

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

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.

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

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