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 us!' exclaimed the old man. And the boy and the carpet-bag
halted behind him.
'What? Uncle Dan?' said Harold.
'Uncle Dan!' cried Maud, springing up with an enchanting smile. 'Why,
it's ages since--'
'And what d'ye reckon ye'n gotten here?' demanded the old man.
'It's my new car,' Harold explained.
'And ca'st drive it, lad?' asked the old man.
'I should think I could!' said Harold confidently.
'H'm!' commented the old man, and then he shook hands, and thoroughly
scrutinized Maud.
Now, this is the sort of thing that can only be seen and appreciated in
a district like the Five Towns, where families spring into splendour
out of nothing in the course of a couple of generations, and as often
as not sink back again into nothing in the course of two generations
more.
The Etches family is among the best known and the widest spread in the
Five Towns. It originated in three brothers, of whom Daniel was the
youngest. Daniel never married; the other two did. Daniel was not very
fond of money; the other two were, and they founded the glorious firm
of Etches. Harold was the grandson of one brother, and Maud was the
Granddaughter of the other. Consequently, they both stood in the same
relation to Dan, who was their great-uncle--addressed as uncle 'for
short'.
There is a good deal of snobbery in the Five Towns, but it does not
exist between relatives. The relatives in danger of suffering by it
would never stand it. Besides, although Dan's income did not exceed two
hundred a year, he was really richer than his grandnephew, since Dan
lived on half his income, whereas Harold, aided by Maud, lived on all
of his.
Consequently, despite the vast difference in their stations, clothes,
and manners, Daniel and his young relatives met as equals. It would
have been amusing to see anyone--even the Countess of Chell, who
patronized the entire district--attempt to patronize Dan.
In his time he had been the greatest pigeon-fancier in the country.
'So you're paying a visit to Bursley, uncle?' said Maud.
'Aye!' Dan replied. 'I'm back i' owd Bosley. Sarah--my housekeeper,
thou know'st--'
'Not dead?'
'No. Her inna' dead; but her sister's dead, and I've give her a week's
play [holiday], and come away. Rat Edge'll see nowt o' me this side
Easter.'
Rat Edge was the name of the village, five miles off, which Dan had
honoured in his declining years.
'And where are you going to now?' asked Harold.
'I'm going to owd Sam Shawn's, by th' owd church, to beg a bed.'
'But you'll stop with us, of course?' said Harold.
'Nay, lad,' said Dan.
'Oh yes, uncle,' Maud insisted.
'Nay, lass,' said Dan.
'Indeed, you will, uncle,' said Maud positively. 'If you don't, I'll
never speak to you again.'
She had a charming fire in her eyes, had Maud.
Daniel, the old bachelor, yielded at once, but in his own style.
'I'll try it for a night, lass,' said he.
Thus it occurred that the carpet-bag was carried into Bleakridge House,
and that after some delay Harold and Maud carried off Uncle Dan with
them in the car. He sat in the luxurious tonneau behind, and Maud had
quitted her husband in order to join him. Possibly she liked the
humorous wrinkles round his grey eyes. Or it may have been the eyes
themselves. And yet Dan was nearer seventy than sixty.
The car passed everything on the road; it seemed to be overtaking
electric trams all the time.
'So ye'n been married a year?' said Uncle Dan, smiling at Maud.
'Oh yes; a year and three days. We're quite used to it.'
'Us'n be in h-ll in a minute, wench!' exclaimed Dan, calmly changing
the topic, as Harold swung the car within an inch of a brewer's dray,
and skidded slightly in the process. No anti-skidding device would
operate in that generous, oozy mud.
And, as a matter of fact, they were in Hanbridge the next
minute--Hanbridge, the centre of the religions, the pleasures, and the
vices of the Five Towns.
'Bless us!' said the old man. 'It's fifteen year and more since I were
here.'
'Harold,' said Maud, 'let's stop at the Piccadilly Cafe and have some
tea.'
'Cafe?' asked Dan. 'What be that?'
'It's a kind of a pub.' Harold threw the explanation over his shoulder
as he brought the car up with swift dexterity in front of the Misses
Callear's newly opened afternoon tea-rooms.
'Oh, well, if it's a pub,' said Uncle Dan, 'I dunna' object.'
He frankly admitted, on entering, that he had never before seen a pub
full of little tables and white cloths, and flowers, and young women,
and silver teapots, and cake-stands. And though he did pour his tea
into his saucer, he was sufficiently at home there to address the
younger Miss Callear as 'young woman', and to inform her that her
beverage was lacking in Orange Pekoe. And the Misses Callear, who
conferred a favour on their customers in serving them, didn't like it.
He became reminiscent.
'Aye!' he said, 'when I left th' Five Towns fifty-two years sin' to go
weaving i' Derbyshire wi' my mother's brother, tay were ten shilling a
pun'. Us had it when us were sick--which wasna' often. We worked too
hard for be sick. Hafe past five i' th' morning till eight of a night,
and then Saturday afternoon walk ten mile to Glossop with a week's work
on ye' back, and home again wi' th' brass.
'They've lost th' habit of work now-a-days, seemingly,' he went on, as
the car moved off once more, but slowly, because of the vast crowds
emerging from the Knype football ground. 'It's football, Saturday;
bands of a Sunday; football, Monday; ill i' bed and getting round,
Tuesday; do a bit o' work Wednesday; football, Thursday; draw wages
Friday night; and football, Saturday. And wages higher than ever. It's
that as beats me--wages higher than ever--
'Ye canna' smoke with any comfort i' these cars,' he added, when Harold
had got clear of the crowds and was letting out. He regretfully put his
pipe in his pocket.
Harold skirted the whole length of the Five Towns from south to north,
at an average rate of perhaps thirty miles an hour; and quite soon the
party found itself on the outer side of Turnhill, and descending the
terrible Clough Bank, three miles long, and of a steepness resembling
the steepness of the side of a house.
The car had warmed to its business, and Harold took them down that
declivity in a manner which startled even Maud, who long ago had
resigned herself to the fact that she was tied for life to a young man
for whom the word 'danger' had no meaning.
At the bottom they had a swerve skid; but as there was plenty of room
for eccentricities, nothing happened except that the car tried to climb
the hill again.
'Well, if I'd known,' observed Uncle Dan, 'if I'd guessed as you were
reservin' this treat for th' owd uncle, I'd ha' walked.'
The Etches blood in him was pretty cool, but his nerve had had a
shaking.
Then Harold could not restart the car. The engine had stopped of its
own accord, and, though Harold lavished much physical force on the
magic handle in front, nothing would budge. Maud and the old man got
down, the latter with relief.
'Stuck, eh?' said Dan. 'No steam?'
'That's it!' Harold cried, slapping his leg. 'What an ass I am! She
wants petrol, that's all. Maud, pass a couple of cans. They're under
the seat there, behind. No; on the left, child.'
However, there was no petrol on the car.
'That's that cursed Durand' (Durand being the new chauffeur--French, to
match the car). 'I told him not to forget. Last thing I said to the
fool! Maud, I shall chuck that chap!'
'Can't we do anything?' asked Maud stiffly, putting her lips together.
'We can walk back to Turnhill and buy some petrol, some of us!' snapped
Harold. 'That's what we can do!'
'Sithee,' said Uncle Dan. 'There's the Plume o' Feathers half-a-mile
back. Th' landlord's a friend o' mine. I can borrow his mare and trap,
and drive to Turnhill and fetch some o' thy petrol, as thou calls it.'
'It's awfully good of you, uncle.'
'Nay, lad, I'm doing it for please mysen. But Maud mun come wi' me.
Give us th' money for th' petrol, as thou calls it.'
'Then I must stay here alone?' Harold complained.
'Seemingly,' the old man agreed.
After a few words on pigeons, and a glass of beer, Dan had no
difficulty whatever in borrowing his friend's white mare and black
trap. He himself helped in the harnessing. Just as he was driving
triumphantly away, with that delicious vision Maud on his left hand and
a stable-boy behind, he reined the mare in.
'Give us a couple o' penny smokes, matey,' he said to the landlord, and
lit one.
The mare could go, and Dan could make her go, and she did go. And the
whole turn-out looked extremely dashing when, ultimately, it dashed
into the glare of the acetylene lamps which the deserted Harold had
lighted on his car.
The red end of a penny smoke in the gloom of twilight looks exactly as
well as the red end of an Havana. Moreover, the mare caracolled
ornamentally in the rays of the acetylene, and the stable-boy had to
skip down quick and hold her head.
'How much didst say this traction-engine had cost thee?' Dan asked,
while Harold was pouring the indispensable fluid into the tank.
'Not far off twelve hundred,' answered Harold lightly. 'Keep that cigar
away from here.'
'Fifteen pun' ud buy this mare,' Dan announced to the road.
'Now, all aboard!' Harold commanded at length. 'How much shall I give
to the boy for the horse and trap, uncle?'
'Nothing,' said Dan. 'I havena' finished wi' that mare yet. Didst think
I was going to trust mysen i' that thing o' yours again? I'll meet thee
at Bleakridge, lad.'
'And I think I'll go with uncle too, Harold,' said Maud.
Whereupon they both got into the trap.
Harold stared at them, astounded.
'But I say--' he protested, beginning to be angry.
Uncle Dan drove away like the wind, and the stable-boy had all he could
do to clamber up behind.