We were swept from the football ground on a furious flood of
humanity--carried forth and flung down a slope into a large waste space
that separated the ground from the nearest streets of little reddish
houses. At the bottom of the slope, on my suggestion, we halted for a
few moments aside, while the current rushed forward and, spreading out,
inundated the whole space in one marvellous minute. The impression of
the multitude streaming from that gap in the wooden wall was like
nothing more than the impression of a burst main which only the emptying
of the reservoir will assuage. Anybody who wanted to commit suicide
might have stood in front of that gap and had his wish. He would not
have been noticed. The interminable and implacable infantry charge would
have passed unheedingly over him. A silent, preoccupied host, bent on
something else now, and perhaps teased by the inconvenient thought that
after all a draw is not as good as a win! It hurried blindly,
instinctively outwards, knees and chins protruding, hands deep in
pockets, chilled feet stamping. Occasionally someone stopped or
slackened to light a pipe, and on being curtly bunted onward by a blind
force from behind, accepted the hint as an atom accepts the law of
gravity. The fever and ecstasy were over. What fascinated the Southern
in me was the grim taciturnity, the steady stare (vacant or dreaming),
and the heavy, muffled, multitudinous tramp shaking the cindery earth.
The flood continued to rage through the gap.
Our automobile had been left at the Haycock Hotel; we went to get it,
braving the inundation. Nearly opposite the stable-yard the electric
trams started for Hanbridge, Bursley and Turnhill, and for Longshaw.
Here the crowd was less dangerous, but still very formidable--to my
eyes. Each tram as it came up was savagely assaulted, seized, crammed
and possessed, with astounding rapidity. Its steps were the western bank
of a Beresina. At a given moment the inured conductor, brandishing his
leather-shielded arm with a pitiless gesture, thrust aspirants down
into the mud and the tram rolled powerfully away. All this in silence.
After a few minutes a bicyclist swished along through the mud, taking
the far side of the road, which was comparatively free. He wore grey
trousers, heavy boots, and a dark cut-away coat, up the back of which a
line of caked mud had deposited itself. On his head was a bowler hat.
"How do, Jos?" cried a couple of boys, cheekily. And then there were a
few adult greetings of respect.
It was the hero, in haste.
"Out of it, there!" he warned impeders, between his teeth, and plugged
on with bent head.
"He keeps the Foaming Quart up at Toft End," said the doctor. "It's the
highest pub in the Five Towns. He used to be what they call a
pot-hunter, a racing bicyclist, you know. But he's got past that and
he'll soon be past football. He's thirty-four if he's a day. That's one
reason why he's so independent--that and because he's almost the only
genuine native in the team."
"Why?" I asked. "Where do they come from, then?"
"Oh!" said Stirling as he gently started the car. "The club buys 'em, up
and down the country. Four of 'em are Scots. A few years ago an Oldham
club offered Knype £500 for Myatt, a big price--more than he's worth
now! But he wouldn't go, though they guaranteed to put him into a
first-class pub--a free house. He's never cost Knype anything except his
wages and the goodwill of the Foaming Quart."
"What are his wages?"
"Don't know exactly. Not much. The Football Association fix a maximum. I
daresay about four pounds a week _Hi there! Are you deaf_?"
"Thee mind what tha'rt about!" responded a stout loiterer in our path.
"Or I'll take thy ears home for my tea, mester."
Stirling laughed.
In a few minutes we had arrived at Hanbridge, splashing all the way
between two processions that crowded either footpath. And in the middle
of the road was a third procession of trams,--tram following tram, each
gorged with passengers, frothing at the step with passengers; not the
lackadaisical trams that I had seen earlier in the afternoon in Crown
Square; a different race of trams, eager and impetuous velocities. We
reached the _Signal_ offices. No crowd of urchins to salute us this
time!
Under the earth was the machine-room of the _Signal_. It reminded me of
the bowels of a ship, so full was it of machinery. One huge machine
clattered slowly, and a folded green thing dropped strangely on to a
little iron table in front of us. Buchanan opened it, and I saw that the
broken leg was in it at length, together with a statement that in the
_Signal's_ opinion the sympathy of every true sportsman would be with
the disabled player. I began to say something to Buchanan, when suddenly
I could not hear my own voice. The great machine, with another behind
us, was working at a fabulous speed and with a fabulous clatter. All
that my startled senses could clearly disentangle was that the blue
arc-lights above us blinked occasionally, and that folded green papers
were snowing down upon the iron table far faster than the eye could
follow them. Tall lads in aprons elbowed me away and carried off the
green papers in bundles, but not more quickly than the machine shed
them. Buchanan put his lips to my ear. But I could hear nothing. I shook
my head. He smiled, and led us out from the tumult.
"Come and see the boys take them," he said at the foot of the stairs.
In a sort of hall on the ground floor was a long counter, and beyond the
counter a system of steel railings in parallel lines, so arranged that a
person entering at the public door could only reach the counter by
passing up or down each alley in succession. These steel lanes, which
absolutely ensured the triumph of right over might, were packed with
boys--the ragged urchins whom we had seen playing in the street. But not
urchins now; rather young tigers! Perhaps half a dozen had reached the
counter; the rest were massed behind, shouting and quarrelling. Through
a hole in the wall, at the level of the counter, bundles of papers shot
continuously, and were snatched up by servers, who distributed them in
smaller bundles to the hungry boys; who flung down metal discs in
exchange and fled, fled madly as though fiends were after them, through
a third door, out of the pandemonium into the darkling street. And
unceasingly the green papers appeared at the hole in the wall and
unceasingly they were plucked away and borne off by those maddened
children, whose destination was apparently Aix or Ghent, and whose wings
were their tatters.
"What are those discs?" I inquired.
"The lads have to come and buy them earlier in the day," said Buchanan.
"We haven't time to sell this edition for cash, you see."
"Well," I said as we left, "I'm very much obliged."
"What on earth for?" Buchanan asked.
"Everything," I said.
We returned through the squares of Hanbridge and by Trafalgar Road to
Stirling's house at Bleakridge. And everywhere in the deepening twilight
I could see the urchins, often hatless and sometimes scarcely shod,
scudding over the lamp-reflecting mire with sheets of wavy green, and
above the noises of traffic I could hear the shrill outcry: "_Signal_.
Football Edition. Football Edition. _Signal_." The world was being
informed of the might of Jos Myatt, and of the averting of disaster from
Knype, and of the results of over a hundred other matches--not counting
Rugby.
V
During the course of the evening, when Stirling had thoroughly
accustomed himself to the state of being in sole charge of an expert
from the British Museum, London, and the high walls round his more
private soul had yielded to my timid but constant attacks, we grew
fairly intimate. And in particular the doctor proved to me that his
reputation for persuasive raciness with patients was well founded. Yet
up to the time of dessert I might have been justified in supposing that
that much-praised "manner" in a sick-room was nothing but a provincial
legend. Such may be the influence of a quite inoffensive and shy
Londoner in the country. At half-past ten, Titus being already asleep
for the night in an arm-chair, we sat at ease over the fire in the study
telling each other stories. We had dealt with the arts, and with
medicine; now we were dealing with life, in those aspects of it which
cause men to laugh and women uneasily to wonder. Once or twice we had
mentioned the Brindleys. The hour for their arrival was come. But being
deeply comfortable and content where I was, I felt no impatience. Then
there was a tap on the window.
"That's Bobbie!" said Stirling, rising slowly from his chair. "_He_
won't refuse whisky, even if you do. I'd better get another bottle."
The tap was repeated peevishly.
"I'm coming, laddie!" Stirling protested.
He slippered out through the hall and through the surgery to the side
door, I following, and Titus sneezing and snuffing in the rear.
"I say, mester," said a heavy voice as the doctor opened the door. It
was not Brindley, but Jos Myatt. Unable to locate the bell-push in the
dark, he had characteristically attacked the sole illuminated window. He
demanded, or he commanded, very curtly, that the doctor should go up
instantly to the Foaming Quart at Toft End.
Stirling hesitated a moment.
"All right, my man," said he, calmly.
"Now?" the heavy, suspicious voice on the doorstep insisted.
"I'll be there before ye if ye don't sprint, man. I'll run up in the
car." Stirling shut the door. I heard footsteps on the gravel path
outside.
"Ye heard?" said he to me. "And what am I to do with ye?"
"I'll go with you, of course," I answered.
"I may be kept up there a while."
"I don't care," I said roisterously. "It's a pub and I'm a traveller."
Stirling's household was in bed and his assistant gone home. While he
and Titus got out the car I wrote a line for the Brindleys: "Gone with
doctor to see patient at Toft End. Don't wait up.--A.L." This we pushed
under Brindley's front door on our way forth. Very soon we were
vibrating up a steep street on the first speed of the car, and the
yellow reflections of distant furnaces began to shine over house roofs
below us. It was exhilaratingly cold, a clear and frosty night, tonic,
bracing after the enclosed warmth of the study. I was joyous, but
silently. We had quitted the kingdom of the god Pan; we were in Lucina's
realm, its consequence, where there is no laughter. We were on a
mission.
"I didn't expect this," said Stirling.
"No?" I said. "But seeing that he fetched you this morning--"
"Oh! That was only in order to be sure, for himself. His sister was
there, in charge. Seemed very capable. Knew all about everything. Until
ye get to the high social status of a clerk or a draper's assistant
people seem to manage to have their children without professional
assistance."
"Then do you think there's anything wrong?" I asked.
"I'd not be surprised."
He changed to the second speed as the car topped the first bluff. We
said no more. The night and the mission solemnized us. And gradually, as
we rose towards the purple skies, the Five Towns wrote themselves out in
fire on the irregular plain below.
"That's Hanbridge Town Hall," said Stirling, pointing to the right. "And
that's Bursley Town Hall," he said, pointing to the left. And there were
many other beacons, dominating the jewelled street-lines that faded on
the horizon into golden-tinted smoke.
The road was never quite free of houses. After occurring but sparsely
for half a mile, they thickened into a village--the suburb of Bursley
called Toft End. I saw a moving red light in front of us. It was the
reverse of Hyatt's bicycle lantern. The car stopped near the dark façade
of the inn, of which two yellow windows gleamed. Stirling, under Myatt's
shouted guidance, backed into an obscure yard under cover. The engine
ceased to throb.
"Friend of mine," he introduced me to Myatt. "By the way, Loring, pass
me my bag, will you? Mustn't forget that." Then he extinguished the
acetylene lamps, and there was no light in the yard except the ray of
the bicycle lantern which Myatt held in his hand. We groped towards the
house. Strange, every step that I take in the Five Towns seems to have
the genuine quality of an adventure!