The Complete Five Towns Collections. Bennett Arnold
and a loosing of chains; it opened to the extent of about nine inches, and Toby Hall saw the face of a middle-aged woman eyeing him.
'Is this Mrs Hall's?' he asked sternly.
'No. It ain't Mrs Hall's. It's Mrs Tansley's.'
'I thowt—'
The door opened a little wider.
'That's not you, Tobias?' said the woman unmoved.
'I reckon it is, though,' replied Toby, with a difficult smile.
'Bless us!' exclaimed the woman. The door oscillated slightly under her hand. 'Bless us!' she repeated. And then suddenly, 'You'd happen better come in, Tobias.'
'Aye!' said Tobias.
And he entered.
'Sit ye down, do,' said his wife. 'I thowt as you were dead. They wrote and told me so.'
'Aye!' said Tobias. 'But I am na'.'
He sat down in an arm-chair near the old-fashioned grate, with its hobs at either side. He was acquainted with that chair, and it had not appreciably altered since his departure. The lastingness of furniture under fair treatment is astonishing. This chair was uncomfortably in exactly the same spot where it had always been uncomfortable; and the same anti-macassar was draped over its uncompromising back. Toby put his hat on the table, and leaned his umbrella against the chimney-piece. His overcoat he retained. Same table; same chimney-piece; same clock and ornaments on the chimney-piece! But a different carpet on the floor, and different curtains before the window.
Priscilla bolted and chained the door, and then she too sat down. Her gown was black, with a small black silk apron. And she was stout, and she wore felt slippers and moved with the same gingerly care as Toby himself did. She looked fully her years. Her thin lips were firmer than ever. It was indeed Priscilla.
'Well, well!' she murmured.
But her capacity for wonder was nearly exhausted.
'Aye!' said Toby, with an air that was meant to be quasi-humorous. He warmed his hands at the fire, and then rubbed them over the front of his calves, leaning forward.
'So ye've come back?' said Priscilla.
'Aye!' concurred Toby.
There was a pause.
'Cold weather we're having,' he muttered.
'It's seasonable,' Priscilla pointed out.
Her glance rested on a sprig of holly that was tied under the gas-chandelier, unique relic of Christmas in the apartment.
Another pause. It would be hazardous to guess what their feelings were; perhaps their feelings were scarcely anything at all.
'And what be the news?' Toby inquired, with what passes in the Five Towns for geniality.
'News?' she repeated, as if not immediately grasping the significance of the question. 'I don't know as there's any news, nothing partic'ler, that is.'
Hung on the wall near the chimney-piece was a photograph of a girl. It was an excellent likeness to Priscilla, as she was in Toby's pre-Trenton days. How young and fresh the creature looked; so simple, so inexperienced! It startled Toby.
'I don't remember that,' he said.
'What?'
'That!' And he jerked his elbow towards the photograph.
'Oh! THAT! That's my daughter,' said Priscilla.
'Bless us!' said Toby in turn.
'I married Job Tansley,' Priscilla continued. 'He died four years ago last Knype Wakes Monday. HER'S married'—indicating the photograph—'her married young Gibson last September.'
'Well, well!' murmured Toby.
Another pause.
There was a shuffling on the pavement outside, and some children began to sing about shepherds and flocks.
'Oh, bother them childer,' said Priscilla. 'I must send 'em off.'
She got up.
'Here! Give 'em a penny,' Toby suggested, holding out a penny.
'Yes, and then they'll tell others, and I shan't have a moment's peace all night!' Priscilla grumbled.
However, she bestowed the penny, cutting the song off abruptly in the middle. And she bolted and chained the door and sat down again.
Another pause.
'Well, well!' said Priscilla.
'Aye!' Toby agreed. 'Good coal that!'
'Fourteen shilling a ton!'
Another pause, and a longer.
'Is Ned Walklate still at th' Rose and Crown?' Toby asked.
'For aught I know he is,' said Priscilla.
'I'll just step round there,' said Toby, picking up his hat and rising.
As he was manoeuvring the door-chain, Priscilla said—
'You're forgetting your umbrella, Tobias.'
'No,' he answered. 'I hanna' forgotten it. I'm coming back.'
Their eyes met, charged with meaning.
'That'll be all right,' she said. 'Well, well!'
'Aye!'
And he stepped round to Ned Walklate's.
From One Generation to Another
I
It is the greatest mistake in the world to imagine that, because the Five Towns is an industrial district, devoted to the manufacture of cups and saucers, marbles and door-knobs, therefore there is no luxury in it.
A writer, not yet deceased, who spent two nights there, and wrote four hundred pages about it, has committed herself to the assertion that there are no private carriages in its streets—only perambulators and tramcars.
That writer's reputation is ruined in the Five Towns. For the Five Towns, although continually complaining of bad times, is immensely wealthy, as well as immensely poor—a country of contrasts, indeed—and private carriages, if they do not abound, exist at any rate in sufficient numbers.
Nay, more, automobiles of the most expensive French and English makes fly dashingly along its hilly roads and scatter in profusion the rich black mud thereof.
On a Saturday afternoon in last spring, such an automobile stood outside the garden entrance of Bleakridge House, just halfway between Hanbridge and Bursley. It belonged to young Harold Etches, of Etches, Limited, the great porcelain manufacturers.
It was a 20 h.p. Panhard, and was worth over a thousand pounds as it stood there, throbbing, and Harold was proud of it.
He was also proud of his young wife, Maud, who, clad in several hundred pounds' worth of furs, had taken her seat next to the steering-wheel, and was waiting for Harold to mount by her side. The united ages of this handsome and gay couple came to less than forty-five.
And they owned the motor-car, and Bleakridge House with its ten bedrooms, and another house at Llandudno, and a controlling interest in Etches, Limited, that brought them in seven or eight thousand a year. They were a pretty tidy example of what the Five Towns can do when it tries to be wealthy.
At that moment, when Harold was climbing into the car, a shabby old man who was walking down the road, followed by a boy carrying a carpet-bag, stopped suddenly and touched Harold on the shoulder.
'Bless