BY THE SAME AUTHOR
_NOVELS_
A MAN FROM THE NORTH
ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS
LEONORA
A GREAT MAN
SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE
WHOM GOD HATH JOINED
BURIED ALIVE
THE OLD WIVES' TALE
THE GLIMPSE
HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND
CLAYHANGER
THE CARD
HILDA LESSWAYS
THE REGENT
THE PRICE OF LOVE
_FANTASIAS_
THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL
THE GATES OF WRATH
TERESA OF WATLING STREET
THE LOOT OF CITIES
HUGO
THE GHOST
THE CITY OF PLEASURE
_SHORT STORIES_
TALES OF THE FIVE TOWNS
THE GRIM SMILE OF THE FIVE TOWNS
THE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNS
_BELLES-LETTRES_
JOURNALISM FOR WOMEN
FAME AND FICTION
HOW TO BECOME AN AUTHOR
THE TRUTH ABOUT AN AUTHOR
THE REASONABLE LIFE
HOW TO LIVE ON 24 HOURS A DAY
THE HUMAN MACHINE
LITERARY TASTE
THE FEAST OF ST. FRIEND
THOSE UNITED STATES
THE PLAIN MAN AND HIS WIFE
PARIS NIGHTS
THE AUTHOR'S CRAFT
LIBERTY
_DRAMA_
POLITE FARCES
CUPID AND COMMON SENSE
WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS
THE HONEYMOON
THE GREAT ADVENTURE
(_In collaboration with Eden Phillpotts_)
THE SINEWS OF WAR: A Romance
THE STATUE: A Romance
(_In collaboration with Edward Knoblauch_)
MILESTONES
HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND
_IDYLLIC DIVERSION_
BY ARNOLD BENNETT
AUTHOR OF "THE OLD WIVES TALE," ETC.
_A NEW EDITION_
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
1915
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I BEGINNING OF THE IDYLL
II AN AFFAIR OF THE SEVENTIES
III MARRYING OFF A MOTHER
IV INVITATION TO TEA
V A SALUTATION
VI MRS. BUTT'S DEPARTURE
VII THE NEW COOK
VIII OMELETTE
IX A GREAT CHANGE
X A CALL
XI ANOTHER CALL
XII BREAKFAST
XIII THE WORLD
XIV SONG, SCENE AND DANCE
XV THE GIFT
XVI THE HALL AND ITS RESULT
XVII DESCENDANTS OF MACHIAVELLI
XVIII CHICANE
XIX THE TOSSING
XX THE FLITTING
XXI SHIP AND OCEAN
XXII CONFESSIONAL
XXIII NOCTURNAL
XXIV SEEING A LADY HOME
XXV GIRLISH CONFIDENCES
XXVI THE CONCERT
XXVII UNKNOTTING AND KNOTTING
CHAPTER I
BEGINNING OF THE IDYLL
In the Five Towns human nature is reported to be so hard that you can
break stones on it. Yet sometimes it softens, and then we have one of
our rare idylls of which we are very proud, while pretending not to be.
The soft and delicate South would possibly not esteem highly our idylls,
as such. Nevertheless they are our idylls, idyllic for us, and reminding
us, by certain symptoms, that though we never cry there is concealed
somewhere within our bodies a fount of happy tears.
The town park is an idyll in the otherwise prosaic municipal history of
the Borough of Bursley, which previously had never got nearer to romance
than a Turkish bath. It was once waste ground covered with horrible
rubbish-heaps, and made dangerous by the imperfectly-protected shafts of
disused coal-pits. Now you enter it by emblazoned gates; it is
surrounded by elegant railings; fountains and cascades babble in it;
wild-fowl from far countries roost in it, on trees with long names; tea
is served in it; brass bands make music on its terraces, and on its
highest terrace town councillors play bowls on billiard-table greens
while casting proud glances on the houses of thirty thousand people
spread out under the sweet influence of the gold angel that tops the
Town Hall spire. The other four towns are apt to ridicule that gold
angel, which for exactly fifty years has guarded the borough and only
been regilded twice. But ask the plumber who last had the fearsome job
of regilding it whether it is a gold angel to be despised, and--you will
see!
The other four towns are also apt to point to their own parks when
Bursley mentions its park (especially Turnhill, smallest and most
conceited of the Five); but let them show a park whose natural situation
equals that of Bursley's park. You may tell me that the terra-cotta
constructions within it carry ugliness beyond a joke; you may tell me
that in spite of the park's vaunted situation nothing can be seen from
it save the chimneys and kilns of earthenware manufactories, the
scaffoldings of pitheads, the ample dome of the rate-collector's
offices, the railway, minarets of non-conformity, sundry undulating
square miles of monotonous house-roofs, the long scarves of black smoke
which add such interest to the sky of the Five Towns--and, of course,
the gold angel. But I tell you that before the days of the park lovers
had no place to walk in but the cemetery; not the ancient churchyard of
St. Luke's (the rector would like to catch them at it!)--the borough
cemetery! One generation was forced to make love over the tombs of
another--and such tombs!--before the days of the park. That is the
sufficient answer to any criticism of the park.
The highest terrace of the park is a splendid expanse of gravel,
ornamented with flower-beds. At one end is the north bowling-green; at
the other is the south bowling-green; in the middle is a terra-cotta and
glass shelter; and at intervals, against the terra-cotta balustrade, are
arranged rustic seats from which the aged, the enamoured, and the
sedentary can enjoy the gold angel.
Between the southernmost seat and the south bowling-green, on that
Saturday afternoon, stood Mr. James Ollerenshaw. He was watching a man
who earned four-and-sixpence a day by gently toying from time to time
with a roller on the polished surface of the green. Mr. James
Ollerenshaw's age was sixty; but he looked as if he did not care. His
appearance was shabby; but he did not seem to mind. He carried his hands
in the peculiar horizontal pockets of his trousers, and stuck out his
figure, in a way to indicate that he gave permission to all to think of
him exactly what they pleased. Those pockets were characteristic of the
whole costume; their very name is unfamiliar to the twentieth century.
They divide the garment by a fissure whose sides are kept together by
many buttons, and a defection on the part of even a few buttons is apt
to be inconvenient. James Ollerenshaw was one of the last persons in
Bursley to defy fashion in the matter of pockets. His suit was of a
strange hot colour--like a brick which, having become very dirty, has
been imperfectly cleaned and then powdered with sand--made in a hard,
eternal, resistless cloth, after a pattern which has not survived the
apprenticeship of Five Towns' tailors in London. Scarcely anywhere save
on the person of James Ollerenshaw would you see nowadays that cloth,
that tint, those very short coat-tails, that curved opening of the
waistcoat, or those trouser-pockets. The paper turned-down collar, and
the black necktie (of which only one square inch was ever visible), and
the paper cuffs, which finished the tailor-made portion of Mr.
Ollerenshaw, still linger in sporadic profusion. His low, flat-topped
hat was faintly green, as though a delicate fungoid growth were just
budding on its black. His small feet were cloistered in small, thick
boots of glittering brilliance. The colour of his face matched that of
his suit. He had no moustache and no whiskers, but a small, stiff grey
beard was rooted somewhere under his chin. He had kept a good deal of
his hair. He was an undersized man, with short arms and legs, and all
his features--mouth, nose, ears, blue eyes--were small and sharp; his
head, as an entirety, was small. His thin mouth was always tightly
shut, except when he spoke. The general expression of his face was one
of suppressed, sarcastic amusement.
He was always referred to as Jimmy Ollerenshaw, and he may strike you as
what is known as a "character," an oddity. His sudden appearance at a
Royal Levée would assuredly have excited remark, and even in Bursley he
diverged from the ordinary; nevertheless, I must expressly warn you
against imagining Mr. Ollerenshaw as an oddity. It is the most difficult
thing in the world for a man named James not to be referred to as Jimmy.
The temptation to the public is almost irresistible. Let him have but a
wart on his nose, and they will regard it as sufficient excuse for
yielding. I do not think that Mr. Ollerenshaw was consciously set down
as an oddity in his native town. Certainly he did not so set down
himself. Certainly he was incapable of freakishness. By the town he was
respected. His views on cottage property, the state of trade, and the
finances of the borough were listened to with a respectful absence of
comment. He was one of the few who had made cottage property pay. It was
said he owned a mile of cottages in Bursley and Turnhill. It was said
that, after Ephraim Tellwright, he was the richest man in Bursley. There
was a slight resemblance of type between Ollerenshaw and Tellwright. But
Tellwright had buried two wives, whereas Ollerenshaw had never got
within arm's length of a woman. The town much preferred Ollerenshaw.
After having duly surveyed the majestic activities of the ground-man on
the bowling-green, and having glanced at his watch, Mr. Ollerenshaw sat
down on the nearest bench; he was waiting for an opponent, the captain
of the bowling-club. It is exactly at the instant of his downsitting
that the drama about to be unfolded properly begins. Strolling along
from the northern extremity of the terrace to the southern was a young
woman. This young woman, as could be judged from her free and
independent carriage, was such a creature as, having once resolved to do
a thing, is not to be deterred from doing it by the caprices of other
people. She had resolved--a resolution of no importance whatever--to
seat herself on precisely the southernmost bench of the terrace. There
was not, indeed, any particular reason why she should have chosen the
southernmost bench; but she had chosen it. She had chosen it, afar off,
while it was yet empty and Mr. Ollerenshaw was on his feet. When Mr.
Ollerenshaw dropped into a corner of it the girl's first instinctive
volition was to stop, earlier than she had intended, at one of the other
seats.
Despite statements to the contrary, man is so little like a sheep that
when he has a choice of benches in a park he will always select an empty
one. This rule is universal in England and Scotland, though elsewhere
exceptions to it have been known to occur. But the girl, being a girl,
and being a girl who earned her own living, and being a girl who brought
all conventions to the bar of her reason and forced them to stand trial
there, said to herself, proudly and coldly: "It would be absurd on my
part to change my mind. I meant to occupy that bench, and why should I
not? There is amply sufficient space for the man and me too. He has
taken one corner, and I will take the other. These notions that girls
have are silly." She meant the notion that she herself had had.
So she floated forward, charmingly and inexorably. She was what in the
Five Towns is called "a stylish piece of goods." She wore a
black-and-white frock, of a small check pattern, with a black belt and
long black gloves, and she held over her serenity a black parasol richly
flounced with black lace--a toilet unusual in the district, and as
effective as it was unusual. She knew how to carry it. She was a tall
girl, and generously formed, with a complexion between fair and dark;
her age, perhaps, about twenty-five. She had the eye of an empress--and
not an empress-consort either, nor an empress who trembles in secret at
the rumour of cabals and intrigues. Yes, considered as a decoration of
the terrace, she was possibly the finest, most dazzling thing that
Bursley could have produced; and Bursley doubtless regretted that it
could only claim her as a daughter by adoption.
Approaching, step by dainty and precise step, the seat invested by Mr.
James Ollerenshaw, she arrived at the point whence she could distinguish
the features of her forestaller; she was somewhat short-sighted. She
gave no outward sign of fear, irresolution, cowardice. But if she had
not been more afraid of her own contempt than of anything else in the
world, she would have run away; she would have ceased being an empress
and declined suddenly into a scared child. However, her fear of her own
contempt kept her spine straight, her face towards the danger, and her
feet steadily moving.
"It's not my fault," she said to herself. "I meant to occupy that bench,
and occupy it I will. What have I to be ashamed of?"
And she did occupy that bench. She contrived to occupy it without seeing
Mr. Ollerenshaw. Each separate movement of hers denied absolutely the
existence of Mr. Ollerenshaw. She arranged her dress, and her parasol,
and her arms, and the exact angle of her chin; and there gradually fell
upon her that stillness which falls upon the figure of a woman when she
has definitively adopted an attitude in the public eye. She was gazing
at the gold angel, a mile off, which flashed in the sun. But what a
deceptive stillness was that stillness! A hammer was hammering away
under her breast with what seemed to her a reverberating sound. Strange
that that hammering did not excite attention throughout the park! Then
she had the misfortune to think of the act of blushing. She violently
willed not to blush. But her blood was too much for her. It displayed
itself in the most sanguinary manner first in the centre of each cheek,
and it increased its area of conquest until the whole of her visible
skin--even the back of her neck and her lobes--had rosily yielded. And
she was one of your girls who never blush! The ignominy of it! To blush
because she found herself within thirty inches of a man, an old man,
with whom she had never in her life exchanged a single word!