I
It was considered by certain people to be a dramatic moment in the
history of musical enterprise in the Five Towns when Mrs Swann opened
the front door of her house at Bleakridge, in the early darkness of a
November evening, and let forth her son Gilbert. Gilbert's age was
nineteen, and he was wearing evening dress, a form of raiment that had
not hitherto happened to him. Over the elegant suit was his winter
overcoat, making him bulky, and round what may be called the rim of the
overcoat was a white woollen scarf, and the sleeves of the overcoat were
finished off with white woollen gloves. Under one arm he carried a vast
inanimate form whose extremity just escaped the ground. This form was
his violoncello, fragile as a pretty woman, ungainly as a navvy, and
precious as honour. Mrs Swann looked down the street, which ended to the
east in darkness and a marl pit, and up the street, which ended to the
west in Trafalgar Road and electric cars; and she shivered, though she
had a shawl over her independent little shoulders. In the Five Towns,
and probably elsewhere, when a woman puts her head out of her front
door, she always looks first to right and then to left, like a scouting
Iroquois, and if the air nips she shivers--not because she is cold, but
merely to express herself.
"For goodness sake, keep your hands warm," Mrs Swann enjoined her son.
"Oh!" said Gilbert, with scornful lightness, as though his playing had
never suffered from cold hands, "it's quite warm to-night!" Which it was
not.
"And mind what you eat!" added his mother. "There! I can hear the car."
He hurried up the street. The electric tram slid in thunder down
Trafalgar Road, and stopped for him with a jar, and he gingerly climbed
into it, practising all precautions on behalf of his violoncello. The
car slid away again towards Bursley, making blue sparks. Mrs Swann
stared mechanically at the flickering gas in her lobby, and then closed
her front door. He was gone! The boy was gone!
Now, the people who considered the boy's departure to be a dramatic
moment in the history of musical enterprise in the Five Towns were Mrs
Swann, chiefly, and the boy, secondarily.