The Grim Smile of the Five Towns

by Arnold Bennett

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

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

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

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

  They met, and their inflamed spirits collided.

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

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

  ‘I’m calling on Annie,’ said John.

  ‘So am I,’ said Robert.

  ‘Well, you’re too late,’ said John.

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

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

  ‘I like that! I like that!’ said Robert.

  ‘Don’t shout!’ said John.

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

  ‘When did you propose to her?’ said John.

  ‘On Friday, if you must know,’ said Robert.

  ‘And she accepted you at once?’ said John.

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

  ‘Liar!’ said John.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  IV

  ‘But whatever made you do it, dearest?’

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

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

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

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

  ‘Agreed!’ Liversage murmured.

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

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

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

  ‘No?’

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

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

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

  He took her hand again.

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

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

  ‘The dickens!’ exclaimed Liversage, glancing at Annie.

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

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

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

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

  ‘Why, of course, Johnnie,’ said Liversage. ‘Of course.’

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

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

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

  ‘But what—?’

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

  ‘Why, certainly,’ said Liversage.

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

  What a night!

  THE NINETEENTH HAT

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Lend me half-a-sovereign, will you, doggie?’

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

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

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

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

  ‘Yes,’ she replied harshly.

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘But, my dear,’ Stephen protested, ‘you know—’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Felix said that it did.

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

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

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

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

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