The Grim Smile of the Five Towns

by Arnold Bennett

  Toby went and had another glass of beer.

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

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

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

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there were no trams at Turnhill, and the then recently-introduced steam-trams between Bursley and Longshaw, long since superseded, were regarded as the final marvel of science as applied to traction.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

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

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

  II

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

  ‘Where be going?’ Priscilla asked him.

  He hesitated a second, and said—

  ‘Merica.’

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

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

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

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

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

  III

  The door opened cautiously, as such doors in the Five Towns do, after a shooting o
f 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 armchair 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 antimacassar was draped over its uncompromising back. Toby put his hat on the table, and leaned his umbrella against the chimney-piece. His overcoat he retained. Same table; same chimney-piece; same clock and ornaments on the chimney-piece! But a different carpet on the floor, and different curtains before the window.

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

  ‘Well, well!’ she murmured.

  But her capacity for wonder was nearly exhausted.

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

  ‘So ye’ve come back?’ said Priscilla.

  ‘Aye!’ concurred Toby.

  There was a pause.

  ‘Cold weather we’re having,’ he muttered.

  ‘It’s seasonable,’ Priscilla pointed out.

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘I don’t remember that,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That!’ And he jerked his elbow towards the photograph.

  ‘Oh! THAT! That’s my daughter,’ said Priscilla.

  ‘Bless us!’ said Toby in turn.

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

  ‘Well, well!’ murmured Toby.

  Another pause.

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

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

  She got up.

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

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

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

  Another pause.

  ‘Well, well!’ said Priscilla.

  ‘Aye!’ Toby agreed. ‘Good coal that!’

  ‘Fourteen shilling a ton!’

  Another pause, and a longer.

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

  ‘For aught I know he is,’ said Priscilla.

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

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

  ‘You’re forgetting your umbrella, Tobias.’

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

  Their eyes met, charged with meaning.

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

  ‘Aye!’

  And he stepped round to Ned Walklate’s.

  FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER

  I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘What? Uncle Dan?’ said Harold.

  ‘Uncle Dan!’ cried Maud, springing up with an enchanting smile. ‘Why, it’s ages since—’

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

  ‘It’s my new car,’ Harold explained.

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

  ‘I should think I could!’ said Harold confidently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Aye!’ Dan replied. ‘I’m back i’ owd Bosley. Sarah—my housekeeper, thou know’st—’

  ‘Not dead?’

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

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

  ‘And where are you going to now?’ asked Harold.

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

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

  ‘Nay, lad,’ said Dan.

  ‘Oh yes, uncle,’ Maud insisted.

  ‘Nay, lass,’ said Dan.

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

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

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

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

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