The Grim Smile of the Five Towns

by Arnold Bennett

  ‘Bob and I heard it in Manchester last week, and we thought it ‘ud be a bit of a lark to buy the arrangement for pianoforte duet.’

  ‘Come and listen to it,’ said Mr Brindley. ‘That is, if nobody wants any more beer.’

  IV

  The drawing-room was about twice as large as the dining-room, and it contained about four times as much furniture. Once again there were books all round the walls. A grand piano, covered with music, stood in a corner, and behind was a cabinet full of bound music.

  Mr Brindley, seated on one corner of the bench in front of the piano, cut the leaves of the Sinfonia Domestica.

  ‘It’s the devil!’ he observed.

  ‘Aye, lad!’ agreed Mr Colclough, standing over him. ‘It’s difficult.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Mr. Brindley, when he had finished cutting.

  ‘Better take your dust-coat off, hadn’t you?’ Mrs Brindley suggested to the friend. She and I were side by side on a sofa at the other end of the room.

  ‘I may as well,’ Mr Colclough admitted, and threw the long garment on to a chair. ‘Look here, Bob, my hands are stiff with steering.’

  ‘Don’t find fault with your tools,’ said Mr Brindley; ‘and sit down. No, my boy, I’m going to play the top part. Shove along.’

  ‘I want to play the top part because it’s easiest,’ Mr Colclough grumbled.

  ‘How often have I told you the top part is never easiest? Who do you suppose is going to keep this symphony together—you or me?’

  ‘Sorry I spoke.’

  They arranged themselves on the bench, and Mr Brindley turned up the lower corners of every alternate leaf of the music.

  ‘Now,’ said he. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Let her zip,’ said Mr Colclough.

  They began to play. And then the door opened, and a servant, whose white apron was starched as stiff as cardboard, came in carrying a tray of coffee and unholy liqueurs, which she deposited with a rattle on a small table near the hostess.

  ‘Curse!’ muttered Mr Brindley, and stopped.

  ‘Life’s very complex, ain’t it, Bob?’ Mr Colclough murmured.

  ‘Aye, lad.’ The host glanced round to make sure that the rattling servant had entirely gone. ‘Now start again.’

  ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute!’ cried Mrs Brindley excitedly. ‘I’m just pouring out Mr Loring’s coffee. There!’ As she handed me the cup she whispered, ‘We daren’t talk. It’s more than our place is worth.’

  The performance of the symphony proceeded. To me, who am not a performer, it sounded excessively brilliant and incomprehensible. Mr Colclough stretched his right hand to turn over the page, and fumbled it. Another stoppage.

  ‘Damn you, Ol!’ Mr Brindley exploded. ‘I wish you wouldn’t make yourself so confoundedly busy. Leave the turning to me. It takes a great artist to turn over, and you’re only a blooming chauffeur. We’ll begin again.’

  ‘Sackcloth!’ Mr Colclough whispered.

  I could not estimate the length of the symphony; but my impression was one of extreme length. Halfway through it the players both took their coats off. There was no other surcease.

  ‘What dost think of it, Bob?’ asked Mr Colclough in the weird silence that reigned after they had finished. They were standing up and putting on their coats and wiping their faces.

  ‘I think what I thought before,’ said Mr Brindley. ‘It’s childish.’

  ‘It isn’t childish,’ the other protested. ‘It’s ugly, but it isn’t childish.’

  ‘It’s childishly clever,’ Mr Brindley modified his description. He did not ask my opinion.

  ‘Coffee’s cold,’ said Mrs Brindley.

  ‘I don’t want any coffee. Give me some Chartreuse, please. Have a drop o’ green, Ol?’

  ‘A split soda ‘ud be more in my line. Besides, I’m just going to have my supper. Never mind, I’ll have a drop, missis, and chance it. I’ve never tried Chartreuse as an appetizer.’

  At this point commenced a sanguinary conflict of wills to settle whether or not I also should indulge in green Chartreuse. I was defeated. Besides the Chartreuse, I accepted a cigar. Never before or since have I been such a buck.

  ‘I must hook it,’ said Mr Colclough, picking up his dust-coat.

  ‘Not yet you don’t,’ said Mr Brindley. ‘I’ve got to get the taste of that infernal Strauss out of my mouth. We’ll play the first movement of the G minor? La-la-la—la-la-la—la-la-la-ta.’ He whistled a phrase.

  Mr Colclough obediently sat down again to the piano.

  The Mozart was like an idyll after a farcical melodrama. They played it with an astounding delicacy. Through the latter half of the movement I could hear Mr Brindley breathing regularly and heavily through his nose, exactly as though he were being hypnotized. I had a tickling sensation in the small of my back, a sure sign of emotion in me. The atmosphere was changed.

  ‘What a heavenly thing!’ I exclaimed enthusiastically, when they had finished.

  Mr Brindley looked at me sharply, and just nodded in silence. Well, good night, Ol.’

  ‘I say,’ said Mr Colclough; ‘if you’ve nothing doing later on, bring Mr Loring round to my place. Will you come, Mr Loring? Do! Us’ll have a drink.’

  These Five Towns people certainly had a simple, sincere way of offering hospitality that was quite irresistible. One could see that hospitality was among their chief and keenest pleasures.

  We all went to the front door to see Mr Colclough depart homewards in his automobile. The two great acetylene head-lights sent long glaring shafts of light down the side street. Mr Colclough, throwing the score of the Sinfonia Domestica into the tonneau of the immense car, put on a pair of gloves and began to circulate round the machine, tapping here, screwing there, as chauffeurs will. Then he bent down in front to start the engine.

  ‘By the way, Ol,’ Mr Brindley shouted from the doorway, ‘it seems Simon Fuge is dead.’

  We could see the man’s stooping form between the two head-lights. He turned his head towards the house.

  ‘Who the dagger is Simon Fuge?’ he inquired. ‘There’s about five thousand Fuges in th’ Five Towns.’

  ‘Oh! I thought you knew him.’

  ‘I might, and I mightn’t. It’s not one o’ them Fuge brothers saggar-makers at Longshaw, is it?’

  ‘No, It’s—’

  Mr Colclough had succeeded in starting his engine, and the air was rent with gun-shots. He jumped lightly into the driver’s seat.

  ‘Well, see you later,’ he cried, and was off, persuading the enormous beast under him to describe a semicircle in the narrow street backing, forcing forward, and backing again, to the accompaniment of the continuous fusillade. At length he got away, drew up within two feet of an electric tram that slid bumping down the main street, and vanished round the corner. A little ragged boy passed, crying, ‘Signal, extra,’ and Mr Brindley hailed him.

  ‘What IS Mr Colclough?’ I asked in the drawing-room.

  ‘Manufacturer—sanitary ware,’ said Mr Brindley. ‘He’s got one of the best businesses in Hanbridge. I wish I’d half his income. Never buys a book, you know.’

  ‘He seems to play the piano very well.’

  ‘Well, as to that, he doesn’t what you may call PLAY, but he’s the best sight-reader in this district, bar me. I never met his equal. When you come across any one who can read a thing like the Domestic Symphony right off and never miss his place, you might send me a telegram. Colclough’s got a Steinway. Wish I had.’

  Mrs Brindley had been looking through the Signal.

  ‘I don’t see anything about Simon Fuge here,’ said she.

  ‘Oh, nonsense!’ said her husband. ‘Buchanan’s sure to have got something in about it. Let’s look.’

  He received the paper from his wife, but failed to discover in it a word concerning the death of Simon Fuge.

  ‘Dashed if I don’t ring Buchanan up and ask him what he means! Here’s a paper with an absolute monopoly in the district, and brings in about f
ive thousand a year clear to somebody, and it doesn’t give the news! There never is anything but advertisements and sporting results in the blessed thing.’

  He rushed to his telephone, which was in the hall. Or rather, he did not rush; he went extremely quickly, with aggressive footsteps that seemed to symbolize just retribution. We could hear him at the telephone.

  ‘Hello! No. Yes. Is that you, Buchanan? Well, I want Mr Buchanan. Is that you, Buchanan? Yes, I’m all right. What in thunder do you mean by having nothing in tonight about Simon Fuge’s death? Eh? Yes, the Gazette. Well, I suppose you aren’t Scotch for nothing. Why the devil couldn’t you stop in Scotland and edit papers there?’ Then a laugh. ‘I see. Yes. What did you think of those cigars? Oh! See you at the dinner. Ta-ta.’ A final ring.

  ‘The real truth is, he wanted some advice as to the tone of his obituary notice,’ said Mr Brindley, coming back into the drawing-room. ‘He’s got it, seemingly. He says he’s writing it now, for tomorrow. He didn’t put in the mere news of the death, because it was exclusive to the Gazette, and he’s been having some difficulty with the Gazette lately. As he says, tomorrow afternoon will be quite soon enough for the Five Towns. It isn’t as if Simon Fuge was a cricket match. So now you see how the wheels go round, Mr Loring.’

  He sat down to the piano and began to play softly the Castle motive from the Nibelung’s Ring. He kept repeating it in different keys.

  ‘What about the mumps, wife?’ he asked Mrs Brindley, who had been out of the room and now returned.

  ‘Oh! I don’t think it is mumps,’ she replied. ‘They’re all asleep.’

  ‘Good!’ he murmured, still playing the Castle motive.

  ‘Talking of Simon Fuge,’ I said determined to satisfy my curiosity, ‘who WERE the two sisters?’

  ‘What two sisters?’

  ‘That he spent the night in the boat with, on Ilam Lake.’

  ‘Was that in the Gazette? I didn’t read all the article.’

  He changed abruptly into the Sword motive, which he gave with a violent flourish, and then he left the piano. ‘I do beg you not to wake my children,’ said his wife.

  ‘Your children must get used to my piano,’ said he. ‘Now, then, what about these two sisters?’

  I pulled the Gazette from my pocket and handed it to him. He read aloud the passage describing the magic night on the lake.

  ‘I don’t know who they were,’ he said. ‘Probably something tasty from the Hanbridge Empire.’

  We both observed a faint, amused smile on the face of Mrs Brindley, the smile of a woman who has suddenly discovered in her brain a piece of knowledge rare and piquant.

  ‘I can guess who they were,’ she said. ‘In fact, I’m sure.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Annie Brett and—you know who.’

  ‘What, down at the Tiger?’

  ‘Certainly. Hush!’ Mrs Brindley ran to the door and, opening it, listened. The faint, fretful cry of a child reached us. ‘There! You’ve done it! I told you you would!’

  She disappeared. Mr Brindley whistled.

  ‘And who is Annie Brett?’ I inquired.

  ‘Look here,’ said he, with a peculiar inflection. ‘Would you like to see her?’

  ‘I should,’ I said with decision.

  ‘Well, come on, then. We’ll go down to the Tiger and have a drop of something.’

  ‘And the other sister?’ I asked.

  ‘The other sister is Mrs Oliver Colclough,’ he answered. ‘Curious, ain’t it?’

  Again there was that swift, scarcely perceptible phenomenon in his eyes.

  V

  We stood at the corner of the side-street and the main road, and down the main road a vast, white rectangular cube of bright light came plunging—its head rising and dipping—at express speed, and with a formidable roar. Mr Brindley imperiously raised his stick; the extraordinary box of light stopped as if by a miracle, and we jumped into it, having splashed through mud, and it plunged off again—bump, bump, bump—into the town of Bursley. As Mr Brindley passed into the interior of the car, he said laconically to two men who were smoking on the platform—

  ‘How do, Jim? How do, Jo?’

  And they responded laconically—

  ‘How do, Bob?’

  ‘How do, Bob?’

  We sat down. Mr Brindley pointed to the condition of the floor.

  ‘Cheerful, isn’t it?’ he observed to me, shouting above the din of vibrating glass.

  Our fellow-passengers were few and unromantic, perhaps half-a-dozen altogether on the long, shiny, yellow seats of the car, each apparently lost in gloomy reverie.

  ‘It’s the advertisements and notices in these cars that are the joy of the super-man like you and me,’ shouted Mr Brindley. ‘Look there, “Passengers are requested not to spit on the floor.” Simply an encouragement to lie on the seats and spit on the ceiling, isn’t it? “Wear only Noble’s wonderful boots.” Suppose we did! Unless they came well up above the waist we should be prosecuted. But there’s no sense of humour in this district.’

  Greengrocers’ shops and public-houses were now flying past the windows of the car. It began to climb a hill, and then halted.

  ‘Here we are!’ ejaculated Mr Brindley.

  And he was out of the car almost before I had risen.

  We strolled along a quiet street, and came to a large building with many large lighted windows, evidently some result of public effort.

  ‘What’s that place?’ I demanded.

  ‘That’s the Wedgwood Institution.’

  ‘Oh! So that’s the Wedgwood Institution, is it?’

  ‘Yes. Commonly called the Wedgwood. Museum, reading-room, public library—dirtiest books in the world, I mean physically—art school, science school. I’ve never explained to you why I’m chairman of the Management Committee, have I? Well, it’s because the Institution is meant to foster the arts, and I happen to know nothing about ‘em. I needn’t tell you that architecture, literature, and music are not arts within the meaning of the act. Not much! Like to come in and see the museum for a minute? You’ll have to see it in your official capacity tomorrow.’

  We crossed the road, and entered an imposing portico. Just as we did so a thick stream of slouching men began to descend the steps, like a waterfall of treacle. Mr Brindley they appeared to see, but evidently I made no impression on their retinas. They bore down the steps, hands deep in pockets, sweeping over me like Fate. Even when I bounced off one of them to a lower step, he showed by no sign that the fact of my existence had reached his consciousness—simply bore irresistibly downwards. The crowd was absolutely silent. At last I gained the entrance hall.

  ‘It’s closing-time for the reading room,’ said Mr Brindley.

  ‘I’m glad I survived it,’ I said.

  ‘The truth is,’ said he, ‘that people who can’t look after themselves don’t flourish in these latitudes. But you’ll be acclimatized by tomorrow. See that?’

  He pointed to an alabaster tablet on which was engraved a record of the historical certainty that Mr Gladstone opened the Institution in 1868, also an extract from the speech which he delivered on that occasion.

  ‘What do you THINK of Gladstone down here?’ I demanded.

  ‘In my official capacity I think that these deathless words are the last utterance of wisdom on the subject of the influence of the liberal arts on life. And I should advise you, in your official capacity, to think the same, unless you happen to have a fancy for having your teeth knocked down your throat.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, not sure how to take him.

  ‘Lest you should go away with the idea that you have been visiting a rude and barbaric people, I’d better explain that that was a joke. As a matter of fact, we’re rather enlightened here. The only man who stands a chance of getting his teeth knocked down his throat here is the ingenious person who started the celebrated legend of the man-and-dog fight at Hanbridge. It’s a long time ago, a very long time ago; but his grey hairs won’t sa
ve him from horrible tortures if we catch him. We don’t mind being called immoral, we’re above a bit flattered when London newspapers come out with shocking details of debauchery in the Five Towns, but we pride ourselves on our manners. I say, Aked!’ His voice rose commandingly, threateningly, to an old bent, spectacled man who was ascending a broad white staircase in front of us.

  ‘Sir!’ The man turned.

  ‘Don’t turn the lights out yet in the museum.’

  ‘No, sir! Are you coming up?’ The accents were slow and tremulous.

  ‘Yes. I have a gentleman here from the British Museum who wants to look round.’

  The oldish man came deliberately down the steps, and approached us. Then his gaze, beginning at my waist, gradually rose to my hat.

  ‘From the British Museum?’ he drawled. ‘I’m sure I’m very glad to meet you, sir. I’m sure it’s a very great honour.’

  He held out a wrinkled hand, which I shook.

  ‘Mr Aked,’ said Mr Brindley, by way of introduction. ‘Been caretaker here for pretty near forty years.’

  ‘Ever since it opened, sir,’ said Aked.

  We went up the white stone stairway, rather a grandiose construction for a little industrial town. It divided itself into doubling curving flights at the first landing, and its walls were covered with pictures and designs. The museum itself, a series of three communicating rooms, was about as large as a pocket-handkerchief.

  ‘Quite small,’ I said.

  I gave my impression candidly, because I had already judged Mr Brindley to be the rare and precious individual who is worthy of the high honour of frankness.

  ‘Do you think so?’ he demanded quickly. I had shocked him, that was clear. His tone was unmistakable; it indicated an instinctive, involuntary protest. But he recovered himself in a flash. ‘That’s jealousy,’ he laughed. ‘All you British Museum people are the same.’ Then he added, with an unsuccessful attempt to convince me that he meant what he was saying: ‘Of course it is small. It’s nothing, simply nothing.’

  Yes, I had unwittingly found the joint in the armour of this extraordinary Midland personage. With all his irony, with all his violent humour, with all his just and unprejudiced perceptions, he had a tenderness for the Institution of which he was the dictator. He loved it. He could laugh like a god at everything in the Five Towns except this one thing. He would try to force himself to regard even this with the same lofty detachment, but he could not do it naturally.