'Merica.'
And he was. In the Five Towns we are apt to end our marriages in that
laconic manner. Toby did not complain too much; he simply and
unaffectedly went. It might be imagined that the situation was a trying
one for Priscilla. Not so! Priscilla had experienced marriage with Toby
and had found it wanting. She was content to be relieved of Toby. She
had her house and her money and her self-esteem, and also tranquillity.
She accepted the solution, and devoted her days to the cleanliness of
the house.
Toby drew all the money he had out of the Bursley and Turnhill
Permanent Fifty Pounds Benefit Building Society (four shares, nearly
paid up) and set sail--in the Adriatic, which was then the leading
greyhound of the Atlantic--for New York. From New York he went to
Trenton (New Jersey), which is the Five Towns of America. A man of his
skill in handling clay on a wheel had no difficulty whatever in
wresting a good livelihood from Trenton. When he had tarried there a
year he caused a letter to be written to his wife informing her that he
was dead. He wished to be quite free; and also (we have our feeling for
justice) he wished his wife to be quite free. It did not occur to him
that he had done anything extraordinary, either in deserting his wife
or in forwarding false news of his death. He had done the simple thing,
the casual thing, the blunt thing, the thing that necessitated the
minimum of talking. He did not intend to return to England.
However, after a few years, he did return to England. The cause of his
return is irrelevant to the history, but I may say that it sprang from
a conflict between the Five Towns temperament and the Trenton Union of
Earthenware Operatives. Such is the power of Unions in the United
States that Toby, if he wished to remain under the Federal Flag, had
either to yield or to starve. He would not yield. He changed his name
and came to England; strolled calmly into the Crown Porcelain Works at
Derby one day, and there recommenced his career as an artificer of
earthenware. He did well. He could easily earn four pounds a week, and
had no desires, save in the direction of fly-fishing--not an expensive
diversion. He knew better than to marry. He existed quietly; and one
year trod on the heels of another, and carried him from thirty to forty
and forty to fifty, and no one found out his identity, though there are
several direct trains daily between Derby and Knype.
And now, owing to the death of a friend and a glass of beer, he was in
Child Row, crossing the street towards the house whose ownership had
caused him to quit it.
He knocked on the door with the handle of his umbrella. There was no
knocker; there never had been a knocker.