 Chapter four of Tales of the Five Towns, this LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Martin Clifton. Tales of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett. Chapter four, The Dog. This is a scandalous story. It scandalized the best people in Bursley. Some of them would wish it forgotten, but since I have begun to tell it I may as well finish. Moreover, like most tales whispered behind fans and across club tables, it carries a high and valuable moral. The moral, I will let you have it at once, is that those who love in glass houses should pull down the blinds. He had got his collar on safely. It bore his name, Ellis Carter. Strange name for a dog perhaps, and perhaps it was even more strange that his collar should be white. But such dogs are not common dogs. He tied his necktie exquisitely, caressed his hair again with two brushes, curved his young moustache, and then assumed his waistcoat and his coat. The trousers had naturally preceded the collar. He beheld the suit in the glass and saw that it was good. And it was not built in London either. There are tailors in Bursley. And in particular there is the dog's tailor. Ask the dog's tailor as the dog once did whether he can really do as well as London. And he will smile on you with gentle pity. He will not stoop to utter the obvious yes. He may casually inform you that if he is not in London himself the explanation is that he has reasons for preferring Bursley. He is the social equal of all his clients. He belongs to the dog's club. He knows and everybody knows that he is a first-class tailor with a first-class connection and no dog would dare to condescend to him. He is a great creative artist. The dogs who wear his clothes may be said to interpret his creations. Now, Ellis was a great interpretative artist. And the tailor recognised the fact. When the tailor met Ellis on duck bank, greatly wearing a new suit, the scene was impressive. It was as though Elgar had stopped to hear Paderecki play pomp and circumstance on the piano. Ellis descended from his bedroom into the hall, took his straw hat, chose a stick, and went out into the portico of the new large house on the Hawkins near Old Castle. In the neighbourhood of the five towns, no road is more august, more correct, more detached, more umbrageous than the Hawkins. MPs live there. It is the link between the aristocratic and antique aloofness of Old Castle and the solid commercial prosperity of the five towns. Ellis adorned the portico. Young, a bear twenty-two, fair, handsome, smiling, graceful, well-built, perfectly groomed. He was an admirable and characteristic specimen of the race of dogs which, with the modern growth of luxury and the luxurious spirit, has become so marked a phenomenon in the social development of the once barbarous five towns. When Old Jack Carter, reputed to be the best turner that Bursley ever produced, started a little pock bank near St Peter's Church in 1861, he was then forty, and had saved two hundred pounds, he little dreamt that the supreme and final result after forty years would be the dog. But so it was. Old Jack Carter had a son, John Carter, who married at twenty-five, and lived at first on twenty-five shillings a week, and enthusiastically continued the erection of the fortune which Old Jack had begun. At thirty-three, after Old Jack's death, John became a town counsellor. At thirty-six, he became mayor and the father of Ellis, and the recipient of a silver cradle. Ellis was his wife's maiden name. At forty-two, he built the finest earth-and-ware manufacturing in Bursley, down by the canal-side at Shoreport. At fifty-two, he had been everything that a man can be in the five towns, from county counsellor to president of the Society for the Prosecution of Felons. Then Ellis left school and came to the works to carry on the tradition. And his father suddenly discovered him. The truth was that John Carter had been so laudably busy with the affairs of his town and county that he had nearly forgotten his family. Ellis, in the process of achieving doghood, soon taught his father a thing or two. And John learned. John could manage a public meeting, but he could not manage Ellis. Besides, there was plenty of money, and Ellis was so ingratiating and had curly hair that somehow won sympathy. And, after all, Ellis was not such a duffer as all that at the works. John knew other people's sons were worse. And Ellis could keep order in the painter's shop, as order had never been kept there before. John sometimes wondered what old Jack would have said about Ellis and his friends, those handsome dogs, those fine dandies, who taught to the five towns the virtue of grace and of style and of dash, who went up to London, some of them even went to Paris and brought back civilisation to the five towns, who removed from the five towns the reproach of being uncouth and behind the times. Was the outcome of two generations of unremitting toil merely Ellis? Ellis had several pretty sisters, but they did not count. John could only guess at what old Jack's attitude might have been towards Ellis. Ellis, who had his shirts made to measure. He knew exactly what Ellis's attitude towards the ideals of old Jack. Old Jack, the class leader, who wore clogs till he was thirty and dined in his shirt sleeves at one o'clock to the end of his life. Ellis quitted the portico, ran down the winding garden path and jumped neatly and fearlessly onto an electric tram car as it passed at the rate of fifteen miles an hour. The car was going to Hanbridge and it was crowded with the joy of life. Ellis had to stand on the step. This was the Saturday before the first Monday in August and therefore the formal opening of Night Wakes, the most carnival-esque of all the carnivals which enliven the four seasons in the five towns. It is still called Night Wakes because once night overshadowed Hanbridge in importance, but its headquarters are now quite properly at Hanbridge, the hub, the centre, the Paris of the five towns, Hanbridge, the county borough of sixty odd thousand inhabitants. It is the festival of the masses that old Jack sprang from and every gentile person who can leaves the five towns for the seaside at the end of July. Nevertheless the district is never more crowned than at Night Wakes and of course gentile persons whom circumstances have forced to remain in the five towns sally out in the evening to do the wakes in a spirit of tolerant condescension. Ellis was in this case. His parents and sisters were at Landidno and he had been left in charge of the works and of the new house. He was always free. He could always pity the bondage of his sisters but now he was more free than ever. He was absolutely free. Imagine the delicious feeling that surged in his heart as he prepared to plunge himself doggishly into the wild ocean of the wakes. By the way, in that heart was the image of a girl. He stepped off the car on the outskirts of Hanbridge and strolled gently and spectacularly into the joyous town. The streets became more and more crowded and noisy as he approached the marketplace and in Crown Square tram cars from the four quarters of the earth discharged tram loads of humanity at the rate of two a minute and then glided off again empty in search of more humanity. The lower portion of Crown Square was devoted to tram lines. In the upper portion the wakes began and spread into the marketplace dense by many tentacles into all manner of streets. No wakes is better than night wakes. That is to say, no wakes is more ear splitting, more terrific, more dizzying or more impassable. When you go to night wakes you get stuck in the midst of an enormous crowd and you see roundabouts, swings, switchbacks, myrioramas, atrocity booths, quack dentists, shooting galleries, coconut shies and bizards all around you. Every establishment is dueled, gilded and electrically lighted. Every establishment has an orchestra. Most often played by steam and conducted by a stoker, every establishment has a steam whistle which shrieks at the beginning and at the end of each round or performance. You stand fixed in the multitude listening to a thousand orchestras and whistles with the roar of machinery and the merry din of car bells and the popping of rifles for a background of noise. Your eyes are charmed by the whirling of a million lights and the mad whirling of millions of beautiful girls and happy youths under the lights. For the roundabouts rule the scene. The roundabouts take the money. The supreme desire of the revelers is to describe circles, either on horseback or in yachts, either simple circles or complex circles, either up and down or straight along but always circles. And it is as though inventors had set up at nights puzzling their brains how best to make revelers seasick while keeping them equidistant from a steam orchestra. Then the crowd solidly lurches and you find yourself up against a dentist or a firm of wrestlers or a roundabout or an ice cream refectory and you take what comes. You have begun to do the wakes. The splendid insanity seizes you. The nights, the colours, the explosions, the shrieks, the feathered hats, the pretty faces as they fly past, the gilding, the statuary, the august night and the mingling of a thousand melodies in a counterpoint beyond the dreams of Wagner. These things have stirred the sap of life in you, have shown you how fine it is to be alive and careless and free, have caught up your spirit into a heaven from which you scornfully survey the year of daily toil between one wakes and another as the eagle scornfully surveys the potato field. Your nostrils dilate, nay, matters reach such a pass that even if you are genteel you forget to condescend. After Ellis had had the correct drink in the private bar up the passage at the Turk's head and after he had plunged into the crowd and got lost in it and submitted good humanly to the frequent ordeal of the penny squirt as administered by adorable creatures in bright skirts he found himself cast up by the human ocean on the macadam shore near a shooting gallery. This was no ordinary shooting gallery, it was one of Jenkins affairs, Jenkins of Manchester and on either side of it Jenkins Venetian gondolas and Jenkins Mexican mustangs were whizzing round to two of Jenkins' orchestras at times of time and taking thirty-two pounds an hour. This gallery was very different from the old galleries in which you leaned against a brass bar and shot up a kind of a drain. This gallery was a large and brilliant room with the front wall taken out. It was home with mirrors and kretons, it was richly carpeted and of course it was lighted by electricity. The carved and gilded tables bore a whole armory of weapons. You shot at tobacco pipes twisting and stationary at balls poised on jets of water and at proper targets. In the corners of the saloon near the open were large crimson plush lounges on which you lounged after the fatigue of shooting. A pink clad girl young and radiant had the concern in charge. She was speeding a party of bankrupt shooters and she caught sight of Ellis. Ellis answered her smile and strolled up to the booth with her countenance that might have meant anything. You can never tell what a dog is thinking. Hello said the girl prettily or rather she shouted prettily having to compete with the two orchestras. You here again? The truth was that Ellis had been there on the previous night when the wakes was only half opened and he had come again tonight expressly in order to see her but he would not have admitted even to himself that he had come expressly in order to see her. In his mind it was just a chance that he might see her. She was a jolly girl. We are gradually approaching the scandalous part. What a jolly frock he said when he had shot five celluloid balls in succession of a jet of water. Smiling she mechanically took a ball out of the basket and let it roll down the conduit to the fountain. So she replied, smoothing the fluffy muslin apron with her small hands, black from contact with the guns. That one I wore last night was my second best. I only wear this on Saturdays and Mondays. He nodded like a commissar. The sixth ball had sprung up to the top of the jet. He removed it with the certainty of a king's prize winner and she complimented him. Ah! he said, you should have seen me before I took to smoking and drinking. She laughed freely. She was always showing her fine teeth and she had such a frank jolly countenance, not exactly pretty better than pretty. She was a little short and a little plump and she wore a necklace round her neck, a ring on her dainty dirty finger and a watch bracelet on her wrist. Why? she exclaimed. How old are you? How old are you? he retorted. Dogs do not give things away like that. I'm nineteen, she said submissively. At least I shall become Martin Mass. And she yawned. Well, he said, a little girl like you ought to be in bed. Sunday to-morrow, she observed. Aren't you glad you're English? She remarked, if you were in Paris you'd have to work Sundays too. Not me, she said. Who told you that? Have you been to Paris? No, he admitted cautiously. But a friend of mine has and he told me. He came back only last week and he says they keep open Sundays and all night sometimes. Sunday is the great day over there. Well, said the girl kindly, don't you believe it. The police wouldn't allow it. I know what the police are. More shooters entered the saloon. Ellis had finished his dozen. He sank into a lounge and elegantly lighted a cigarette and watched her serve the other marksmen. She was decidedly charming and so jolly with him. He noticed with satisfaction that with the other marksmen she showed a certain high reserve. They did not stay long and when they were gone she came across to the lounge and gazed at him provocatively. Dashed if she hasn't taken her fancy to me. The thought ran through him like lightning. Well, she said. What do you do with yourself on Sundays, he asked her. Oh, sleep, all day, all morning. What do you do in the afternoon? Oh, nothing, she laughed gaily. Come out with me, eh? Tomorrow. Oh, I should love to, she cried. Her voice expanded into large capitals because by a singular chance both the neighbouring orchestras stopped momentarily together and thus gave her shout a fair field. The effect was startling. It startled Ellis. He had not for an instant expected that she would consent. Never, dog though he was, had he armed a girl out on any afternoon to say nothing of Sunday afternoon and night's wake Sunday at that. He had talked about girls at the club. He understood the theory but the practice. The foundation of England's greatness is that Englishmen hate to look fools. The fear of being taken for a niny will spur an Englishman to the most surprising deeds of courage. Ellis said good with apparent enthusiasm and arranged to be waiting for her at half-past two at the Turks' head. Then he left the saloon and struck out anew into the ocean. He wanted to think it over. Once, painful to relate, he had thoughts of failing to keep the appointment. However, she was so jolly and frank and what a fancy she must have taken to him though he would see it through. If anybody had prophesied to Ellis that he would be driving out a wakes girl in a dog cart that Sunday afternoon, he would have laughed at the prophet. But so it occurred. He arrived at the Turks' head at 2.25. She was there before him, dressed all in blue, except the white shoes and stockings, weighing herself on the machine in the yard. She showed her teeth, told him she weighed nine stone one and abruptly asked him if he could drive. He said he could. She clapped her hands and sprang off the machine. Her father had bought a new mare the day before and it was in the Turks' head stable and the admin said it wanted exercise and there was a dog cart and harness idling about and, in short, Ellis should drive her to Snade Park which she had long desired to see. Ellis wished to ask questions but the moment did not seem auspicious. In a few minutes the new mare, a high and somewhat frisky bay with big shoulders, passed through the shafts of a high green dog cart. When asked if he could drive, Ellis ought to have answered that depends on the horse. Many men can tool a 15 year old screw down a country lane who would hesitate to get up behind a 5 year old animal in need of exercise for a spin down Broad Street Handbridge on Nightwake Sunday. Ellis could drive. He could just drive. His father had always steadfastly refused to keep horses but the fathers of other dogs were more progressive and Ellis had had opportunities. He knew how to take the reins and get up and give the office. Indeed he had read a handbook on the subject so he took the reins and got up and the wakes girl got up. He cheer up. The mare merely banked. Give her a mouth said the admin disgustedly. Oh! said Ellis back in the reins and the mare poured forward. Then he had to turn her in the yard and get her and the dog cart down the passage. He doubted whether he should do it for the passage seemed a size too small. However he did it, or the mare did it, and the entire organism swerved across a portion of the footpath into Broad Street. For quite a quarter of a mile down Broad Street Ellis blushed and kept his gaze between the mare's ears. However the mare went beautifully. You could have driven her with a silk and thread so it seemed, and then the dog growing accustomed to his prominence up there on the dog cart began to be a bit doggy. He knew the little things age and weight but really when you take a girl out for a Sunday spin you want more information about her than that. He asked her name and her name was Jenkins, Ada. She was the great Jenkins' daughter. Oh, thought Ellis, the juicier. Father's gone to Manchester for the day and aunts looking after me said Ada. Do they know you've come out like this? Not much, she laughed deliciously how lovely it is. At night they drew up before the Five Towns Hotel and descended. The Five Towns Hotel is the greatest hotel in North Staffordshire. It has two hundred rooms. It would not entirely disgrace Northumberland Avenue. In the Five Towns it is august, imposing and unique. They had a lemonade there and preceded. A clock struck. It was a near thing, no more refreshments now until they had passed the three mile limit. Yes, not two hundred yards further on she spied an ice cream shop in Fleet Road and Ellis learned that she adored ice cream. The mayor waited patiently outside in the thronged street. After that the pilgrimage to Snade was punctuated with ice creams. At the stag at Snade where among 99 dog carts Ellis's dog cart was the brightest green of them all Ada had another lemonade and Ellis had something else. They saw the park and Ada giggled charmingly her appreciation of his beauty. The conversation throughout consisted chiefly of Ada's teeth. Ellis said he would return by a different route and he managed to get lost. How anyone driving to Handbridge from Snade could arrive at the mining village of Silverton is a mystery but Ellis arrived there and he ultimately came out at Hillport the aristocratic suburb of Bursley where he had always lived till the last year. He feared recognition there and his fear was justified. Some silly ass a schoolmate cried go it as the machine bowled along and the mischief was that the mayor startled went it. She went it down the curving hill and the vehicle after her like a kettle tied to a dog's tail. Ellis winked stoutly at Ada when they reached the bottom and gave the mayor a piece of his mind to which she objected. As they crossed the railway bridge a good strain ran underneath and puffed smoke into the mayor's eyes. She set her ears back. Would you? cried Ellis authoritatively and touched her with the whip. He had forgotten the handbook. He scarcely touched her but you never know where you are with any horse. That mayor which had been a mirror of all the virtues all the afternoon was off like a rocket. She overtook an electric car as if it had been standing still. Ellis soared her mouth he might as well have soared the funnel of a locomotive. He had meant to turn off and traverse Bursley by secluded streets but he perceived that safety lay solely in letting her go straight ahead up the very steep slope of Old Castle Street into the middle of the town. It would be an amazing mayor that galloped to the top of Old Castle Street. She galloped nearly to the top and then Ellis began to get hold of her a bit. Don't be afraid he said masculinely to Ada and conscious of victory he jerked the mayor to the left to avoid an approaching car. The next instant they were anchored against the roots of a lamppost. When Ellis saw the upper half of the lamppost bent down at right angles and pieces of glass covering the pavement he could not believe that he and his dog cart had done that especially as neither the mayor nor the dog cart nor its freight was damaged the machine was merely jammed and the mayor satisfied stood quiet breathing rapidly but Ada Jenkins was crying and the car stopped a moment to observe and then a number of chapel-goers on their way to the sitched chapel which the Carter family still faithfully attended joined the scene and then a policeman. Ellis sat like a stuck pig in the dog cart he knew that speech was demanded of him but he did not know where to begin the worst thing of all was the lamppost bent, moveless, unnatural atrociously comic accusing him the affair was over the town in a minute the next morning it reached clandidno Ellis Carter had been out on the spree with a wakes girl in a dog cart on Sunday afternoon and had got into such a condition that he had driven into a lamppost at the top of Old Castle Street just as people were going into chapel the lamppost remained bent for three days a fearful warning to all dogs that doggishness has limits if it had not been a dog cart or such a high green dog cart if it had been say a broom or even a cab if it had not been Sunday and granting Sunday if it had not been just as people were going to chapel and if he had not chosen that particular lamppost visible both from the marketplace and St Luke's Square if he had only contrived to destroy a less obtrusive lamppost in some unfrequenting street and if it had not been a wakes girl if the reprobate had only selected for his guilty amours an actress from one of the touring companies or even a star from a handbridge empire yay or even a local bar maid but a wakes girl Ellis himself saw the enormity of his transgression he lay awake astounded by his own doggishness and yet he had seldom felt less doggie than during that trip it seemed to him that doggishness was not the glorious thing he had thought however he cut a heroic figure at the dogs club every admiring face said well you have been going the pace we always knew you were a hot-un but really on the following Friday evening when Ellis jumped off the car opposite his home on the Hawkins he saw in the road halted a train of vast and queer shaped wagons in charge of two traction engines they were painted on all sides with the great name of Jenkins they contained Jenkins roundabouts and shooting saloons on their way to rouse the joy of life in other towns and he perceived in front of the portico the high green dog cart and the lamppost destroying mare he went in the family had come home that afternoon sundry of his sisters greeted him with silent horror on their faces in the hall in the breakfast room which gave off the drawing room was his mother in the attitude of an intense listener she spoke no word and Ellis listened too yes, a very powerful and raucous voice was saying in the drawing room I reckoned I'd call and tell you myself Mr Carter what I thought on it my gal, a motherless gal but brought up respectable sixth standard at Wally Range Board School and her aunt a strict god-fearing woman and here your son comes along and gets hold of the girl while her aunt's at the special service for wakesfaking Bethesda Chapel and runs off with her in my dog cart with one of my houses and raises a scandal all over the five towns God bless my soul Mr I telling you I hardly like to open on Monday afternoon I was that ashamed and I packed Ada off to Manchester it seems to me that if the upper classes as they call them the immoral classes I call them had looked after themselves a bit instead of looking after other people so much it would be a bit better Mr Carter I dare say you think it's nothing as your son should go about ruining the reputation of any decent respectable girl as he happens to fancy Mr Carter but this is what I say I say Mr Carter was understood to assert in his most specific and pained public meeting voice that he regretted, infinitely regretted Mrs Carter weeping ran out of the breakfast room and soon afterwards the traction engines rumbled off and the high green dog cart followed them Ellis sat spellbound he heard the Parliament go into the drawing room and announce T is ready sir and then his father's dry cough and then the Parliament came into the breakfast room T is ready Mr Ellis oh the meal end of chapter four chapter five are tales of the five towns this Librivox recording is in the public domain recording by Martin Clifton tales of the five towns by Arnold Bennett chapter five a feud when Clive Timis paused at the side door of Ezra Brunt's great shop in Machen Street and the door was open to him by Ezra Brunt's daughter before he had had time to pull the bell not only all Machen Street knew it within the hour but also most persons of consequence left in Handbridge on a Thursday afternoon Thursday being early closing day for Handbridge, though it counts 60,000 inhabitants and is the chief of the five towns that vast huddled Congress of Burrers devoted to the manufacture of earthenware is a place where the art of attending to other people's business still flourishes in rustic perfection Ezra Brunt's drapery establishment was the foremost retail house in any branch of trade of the five towns it had no rival nearer than Manchester 36 miles off and even Manchester could exhibit nothing conspicuously superior to it the most acutely critical shoppers of the five towns women who were in the habit of going to London every year for the January sales spoke of Brunt's as a right down good shop and the husbands of these ladies manufacturers who employed from 200 to 1000 men regarded Ezra Brunt as a commercial magnet of equal importance with themselves Brunt, who had served his apprenticeship at Birmingham started business in Machen Street in 1862 when Handbridge was half its present size and all the best shops of the district were in Old Castle an ancient burg contiguous with but holding itself proudly a loop from the industrial five towns he paid £80 a year rent and lived over the shop and in the summer quarter his gas bill was always under a sovereign for ten years success tarried but in 1872 his daughter Eva was born and his wife died and from that moment the son of his prosperity climbed higher and higher into heaven he had been profoundly attached to his wife and having lost her he abandoned himself to the mercantile struggle with that morose and terrible ferocity which was the root of his character of rude, gaunt aspect, gruffly taciturned by nature and variable in temper he yet had the precious instinct for soothing customers to this day he can surpass his own shop walkers in the admirable and tender solicitude with which for saking dialect he drops into a lady's ear his famous stereotype phrase are you receiving proper attention madam? from the first he eschewed the façade trickers and ostentations which allure the populace he sought a high class trade and by waiting he found it he would never advertise on hoardings for many years he had no signboard over his shop front and whereas the name of Boss Docks, the huge cheap draper's lower down Machen Street on the opposite side a taxi at every railway station and in every tram car the name of E. Brunt is to be seen only in a modest regular advertisement on the front page of the Staffordshire signal repose, reticence, respectability it was these attributes which he decided his shop should possess and by means of which he succeeded to enter Brunt's with its silently swinging doors its broad, easy staircases its long floors covered with warm red linoleum its partitioned walls its smooth, mahogany counters its unobtrusive mirrors its rows of youths and virgins in black and its pervading atmosphere of quietude and discretion was like entering a temple before the act of ablation had commenced you were conscious of some supreme administrative influence everywhere imposing itself that influence was Ezra Brunt and yet the man differed utterly from the thing he had created his was one of those dark and passionate souls which smolder in this harsh Midland district as slag heaps smolder on the pit banks revealing their strange fires only in the darkness in 1899 Brunt's establishment occupied four shops numbers 52, 56, 58 and 60 in Machen Street he had bought the freeholds at a price which timid people regarded as exorbitant but the solicitors of Handbridge secretly applauded his enterprise and shrewdness in anticipating the enormous rise in ground values which has now been in rapid steady progress there for more than a decade he had thrown the interiors together and rebuilt the frontages in Handsome Freestone he had also purchased several shops opposite and rumor said that it was his intention to offer these latter to the town council at a low figure if the council would cut a new street leading from his premises to the market square such a scheme would have met with general approval but there was one serious hiatus in the plans of Ezra Brunt to wit number 54 Machen Street number 54 separating 52 and 56 was a chemist's shop shabby but sedate as to appearance owned and occupied by George Christopher Timmis a mild and venerable citizen and a local preacher in the Wesleyan Methodist connection for nearly 30 years Brunt had coveted Mr. Timmis shop more than 20 years have elapsed since he first opened negotiations for it Mr. Timmis was by no means eager to sell indeed his attitude was distinctly a repellent one but a bargain would undoubtedly have been concluded had not a report reached the ears of Mr. Timmis to the effect that Ezra Brunt had remarked at the Turks head that the old leech was only sticking out for every brass farthing he could get the report was untrue but Mr. Timmis believed it and from that moment Ezra Brunt's chances of obtaining the chemist shop vanished completely his lawyer expended diplomacy in vain raising the offer week by week till the incredible sum of 3,000 pounds was reached then Ezra Brunt himself saw Mr. Timmis and without a word of prelude said will you take 3,000 guineas for this bitter property not 30,000 guineas said Mr. Timmis quietly the stern pride of the benevolent old local preacher had been aroused then be damned to you said Ezra Brunt who had never been known to swear before thenceforth a feud existed not less bitter because it was a feud in which nothing was said and nothing done a silent and implacable mutual resistance the sole outward sign of it was the dirty and stumpy brown brick shop front of Mr. Timmis squeezed in between those massive luxurious facades of stone which Ezra Brunt soon afterwards erected the pharmaceutical business of Mr. Timmis was not a very large one and fiscally Ezra Brunt could have swallowed him at a meal and suffered no inconvenience but in that the aged chemist had lived on just half his small income for some 50 years past his position was impregnable Handbridge smiled cynically at this impasse produced by an idle word and recognising the equality of the antagonists leaned neither to one side nor to the other at intervals however the legend of the feud was embroidered with new and effective detail in the mouth of some inventive gossip and by degrees it took high place among those pecan social histories which illustrate the real life of a town and which parents recount to their children with such zest in moods of reminiscence When Christopher Timmis buried his wife Ezra Brunt as a near neighbour was asked to the funeral The cortege will move at 1.30 round the printed invitation and at 1.15 Brunt's carriage was decorously in place behind the hearse and the two morning coaches The demeanour of the chemist and the draper towards each other was a sublime answer to the demands of the occasion Some people even said that the breach had been healed but these were not of the discerning The most active person at the funeral was the chemist's only nephew Clive Timmis partner in a small but prosperous firm of Majolica manufacturers at Bursley Clive, who was seldom seen in Handbridge made a favourable impression on everyone by his pleasing unaffected manner and his air of discretion and success He was a bachelor of 32 and lived in lodgings at Bursley On the return of the funeral party from the cemetery Clive Timmis found Brunt's daughter Eva in his uncle's house Uninvited she had left her place in the private room at her father's shop in order to assist Timmis's servant Sarah in the preparation of that solid and solemn repast which must inevitably follow every proper interment in the five towns Without false modesty she introduced herself to one or two of the men who had surprised her at her work and then quietly departed just as they were sitting down to table and Sarah had brought in the hot tea-cakes Clive Timmis saw her only for a moment but from that moment she was his one thought During the evening which he spent alone with his uncle he behaved in every particular as a nephew should Yet he was acting apart His real self roved after Ezra Brunt's daughter wherever she might be Clive had never fallen in love though several times in his life he had tried hard to do so He had long wished to marry, wished ardently He had even got into the way of regarding every woman he met and he met many in the light of a possible partner Can it be she he had asked himself a thousand times and then answered half sadly No Not one woman had touched his imagination coincided with his dream It is strange that after seeing Eva Brunt he forgot thus to interrogate himself For a fortnight while he went his ways as usual her image occupied his heart throwing that once orderly chamber into the wildest confusion and he let it remain dimly aware of some delicious danger He inspected the image every night before he slept and every morning when he awoke and made no effort to define its distracting charm He knew only that Eva Brunt was absolutely and in every detail unlike all other women On the second Sunday he murmured during the sermon but I only saw her for a minute A few days afterwards he took the tram to Handbridge Uncle, he said How should you like me to come and live here with you? I've been thinking about things a bit and I thought perhaps you'd like it I expect you must feel rather lonely now The neat fragrant shop was empty and the two men stood behind the big glass-fronted case of burrows and welcomes preparations Clive's venerable uncle happened to be looking into a draw-marked gentian-rad-pulve He closed the draw with slow hesitation and then stroking his long white beard replied in that deliberate voice which seemed always to tremble with religious fervour The hand of the Lord is in this thing, Clive I have wished that you might come to live here with me but I was afraid it would be too far from the works That's nothing, said Clive As he lingered at the shop-door for the Bursley car to pass the end of Machen Street Eva Brunt went by He raised his hat with diffidence and she smiled It was a marvellous chance His heart leapt into a throb which was half agony and half delight I am in love, he said gravely He had just discovered the fact and the discovery filled him with exquisite apprehension If he had waited till the age of thirty-two for that springtime of the soul which we call love Clive had not waited for nothing Eva was a woman to enraveage the heart of a man whose imagination could pierce the agitating secrets immured in that calm and silent bosom Slender and scarcely tall she belonged to the order of spare, slight maid-women who hide within their slim frames an endowment of profound passion far exceeding that of their more voluptuously-formed sisters who never coursed into stoutness and who at forty are as disturbing as at twenty At this date Eva was twenty-six She had a rather small white face which was a mask to the casual observer and the very mirror of her feelings to anyone with eyes to read its signs I tell you what you're like, Clive said to her once, you're like a fine resource always on the quiver Yet many people considered her cold and impassive Her walk and bearing showed a sensitive independence and when she spoke it was usually in tones of command The girls in the shop where she was at power second only to Ezra Brunt were a little afraid of her chiefly because she poured terrible scorn on their small affectations, jealousies and vendettas but they liked her because in their own phrase there was no nonsense about this redoubtable woman She hated shams and mate-believes with a bitter and ruthless hatred She was the heiress to at least five thousand a year and knew it well but she never encouraged her father to complicate their simple mode of life with the pumps of wealth They lived in a house with a large garden at Pireford which is on the summit of the steep ridge between the five towns and old castle and they kept two servants and a coachman who was also gardener Eva paid the servants good wages and took care to get good value therefore It's not often I have any bother with my servants, she would say, for they know that if there's any trouble I would just as soon clear them out and put on an apron and do the work myself She was an accomplished house mistress and could bake her own bread, in towns not one woman in a thousand can bake With the coachman she had little to do for she could not rid herself of a sentimental objection to the carriage It savoured of heirs When she used it she used it as she might use a tram-car It was her custom every day except Saturday to walk to the shop about eleven o'clock after her house had been set in order She had been thoroughly trained in the business and had spent a year at a first-rate shop in High Street Kensington Millinery was her speciality and she still watched over that department with a particular attention But for some time past she had risen beyond the limitations of departments and assisted her father in the general management of the vast concern In commercial aptitude she resembled the typical French woman Although he was her father Ezra Brunt had the wit to recognise her talents and he always listened to her suggestions which however sometimes startled him One of them was that he should import into the five towns a medist from Paris offering a salary of two hundred a year The old provincial stood aghast He had the idea that all Parisian women were stage dancers and to pay four pounds a week to a female Nevertheless, mademoiselle Bercteau, styled in the shop Madame, now presides over Ezra Brunt's dressmakers draws her four pounds a week of which she saves two and by mere nationality has given a unique distinction and success to her branch of the business Eva occupied a small room opening off the principal showroom and during hours of work she issued dense but seldom Only customers of the highest importance might speak with her She was a power felt rather than seen Employees who knocked at her door always did so the certain awe of what awaited them on the other side and a consciousness that the moment was unsuitable for levity If you please, Miss Eva Here she gave audience to the buyers and window-dressers listen to complaints and excuses and occasionally had a secret orgy of afternoon tea with one or two of her friends None but these few girls, mostly younger than herself and remarkable only in that their dislike of the snobbery of the five towns, though less fiercely displayed, agreed with her own, really knew Eva She was known to she unveil herself and by them she was idolized She is simply splendid when you know her such a jolly girl they would say to other people But other people, especially other women, could not believe it They fearfully respected her because she was very well dressed and had quantities of money But they called her a curious creature It was inconceivable to them that she should choose to work in a shop But her tongue had a causticity which was sometimes exceedingly disconcerting and mortifying As for men she was shy of them and, moreover, she loathed the elaborate and insincere ritual of deference which the average man practices towards women unrelated to him, particularly when they are young and rich Her father she adored without knowing it For he often angered her and humiliated her in private As for the rest she was, after all, only six and twenty If you don't mind I should like to walk along with you Clive Timis said to her one Sunday evening in the porch of the Bethesda Chapel I should be glad, she answered at once, Father isn't here and I'm all alone Ezra Brunt was indeed seldom there, counting in the matter of attendance at Chapel among what were called the Weaker Brethren I'm going over to Old Castle, Clive explained calmly So began the formal courtship More than a month after Clive had settled in Machen Street, or he was far too discreet to engender by precipitancy any suspicion in the haunts of scandal That his true reason for establishing himself in his uncle's household was a certain rich young woman who was to be found every day next door Guided as much by instinct as by tact, Clive approached Eva with an almost savage simplicity and naturalness of manner Ignoring not only her father's wealth, but all the feigned punctilio of a war His face said, Let there be no beating about the bush, I like you Hers answered, Good, we will see From the first he pleased her, and not least in treating her exactly as she would have wished to be treated Namely as a quite plain person of that part of the middle class which is neither upper nor lower Few men in the five towns would have been capable of forgetting Ezra Brunt's income in talking to Ezra Brunt's daughter Fortunately, Timis had a proud, confident spirit The spirit of one who, unaided, has rested success from the world's death-like clutch Had Eva the reversion of fifty thousand a year instead of five, he, Clive, was still a prosperous, plain man, well able to support a wife in the position to which God had called him Their walks together grew more and more frequent, and they became intimate, exchanging ideas and rejoicing openly at the similarity of those ideas Although there was no concealment in these encounters, still there was a circumspection which resembled the clandestine By a silent understanding Clive did not enter the house at Pireford, to have done so would have excited remark, for this house, unlike some, had never been the rendezvous of young men Much less, therefore, did he invade the shop No, the chief part of their love-making, for such it was, though the term would have roused Eva's contemptuous anger, occurred in the streets In this they did but follow the traditions of their class, thus the idyll, so matter-of-fact upon the surface, but within which Clive's secret and adorable fires progressed towards its culmination Eva, the artless fool, oh, how simple are the wisest at times, thought that the affair was hid from the shop But was it possible, was it possible, that in those tiny bedrooms on the third floor, where the heavy evening hours were ever lightened with breathless, intermerable recitals of what some he had said and some she had replied Such an enthralling episode should escape discovery The dormitories knew of Eva's attachment before Eva herself Yet none knew how it was known The whisper arose like Venus from a sea of trivial gossip, miraculously, exquisitely On the night when the first rumour of it traversed the passages, there was scarcely any sleep at Brunt's, while Eva up at Pieford slumbered as a young girl On the Thursday afternoon with which we began, Brunt's was deserted, save for the housekeeper and Eva, who was writing letters in her room I saw you from my window coming up the street, she said to Clive, and so I ran down to open the door Will you come into Father's room, he's in Manchester for the day, buying I knew that, said Timmis, how did you know? She observed that his manner was somewhat nervous and constrained You yourself told me last night, don't you remember? So I did. That's why I sent the note round this morning to say I'd call this afternoon. You got it, I suppose She nodded thoughtfully Well, what is this business you want to talk about? It was spoken with a brave carelessness, but he caught the tremor in her voice and saw her little hand shake as it lay on the table amid her Father's papers Without knowing why he should do so, he stepped hastily forward and seized that hand Her emotion unmanned him. He thought he was going to cry, he could not account for himself Eva, he said thickly, you know what the business is, you know, don't you? She smiled. That smile, the softness of her hand and the sparkle in her eye, the heave of her small bosom, it was the divinest miracle Clive, manufacturer of Majolica, went hot and then cold, and then his wits were suddenly his own again That's all right, he murmured, and sighed, and placed on Eva's lips the first kiss that had ever lain there Dear boy, she said later, you should have come up to Pireford, not here, and when Father was there Should I, he answered happily, it just occurred to me all of a sudden this morning that you would be here and that I couldn't wait You will come up to night and see, Father, I had meant to, you'd better go home now, had I She nodded, putting her lips tightly together, a trick of hers, come up about half past eight, good, I'll let myself out He left her, and she gazed dreamily at the window which looked onto a whitewashed yard The next moment someone else entered the room with heavy footsteps She turned round a little startled, it was her father Why, you are back early, Father, how—she stopped, something in the old man's glance gave her a premonition of disaster To this day she does not know what accident brought him from Manchester two hours sooner than usual, and to Machen Street instead of Pireford As young Timmy's been here, he inquired curtly Yes, ha! with subdued sinister satisfaction, I saw him going out, he dinner-seem me Ezra Brunt deposited his hat and sat down Intermit with all her father's various moods, she saw instantly and with terrible certainty that a series of chances had fatally combined themselves against her If only she had not happened to tell Clive that her father would be at Manchester this day If only her father had adhered to his customary hour of return, if only Clive had had the sense to make his proposal openly at Pireford some evening If only he had left a little earlier, if only her father had not caught him going out by the side door on a Thursday afternoon when the place was empty Here, she guessed, was the suggestion of furtiveness which had raised her father's unreasoning anger, often fierce and always incalculable Clive Timmy's has asked me to marry him, Father. Has he? Surely you must have known, Father, that he and I were seeing each other a great deal? Not from your lips, my girl Well, Father, again she stopped. This strong and capable woman gifted with a fine brain to organise and a powerful will to command She quailed, robbed of speech, before the causeless, vindictive and infantile wrath of an old man who happened to be in a bad temper She actually felt like a naughty schoolgirl before him. Such is the tremendous influence of life-long habit, the irresistible power of the patria potestas, when it has never been relaxed Ezra Brunt saw in front of him only a cowering child Clive is coming up to see you tonight, she went on timidly, clearing her throat Humph! Izzy! The rosy and tender dream of five minutes ago lay in fragments at Eva's feet She brooded with stricter apprehension upon the forms of obstruction which his despotism might choose The next morning Clive and his uncle breakfasted together as usual in the parlour behind the chemist's shop Uncle said Clive brusquely when the meal was nearly finished. I'd better tell you that I've proposed to Eva Brunt Old George Timis lured the Manchester Guardian and gazed at Clive over his steel-rimmed spectacles She is a good girl, he remarked, and she'll make you a good wife. Have you spoken to her father? That's the point. I saw him last night, and I'll tell you what he said These were his words. You can marry my daughter, Mr Timis, when your uncle agrees to part with his shop That I shall never do, nephew, said the aged patriarch quietly and deliberately Of course you won't, Uncle. I shouldn't think of suggesting it. I'm merely telling you what he said Clive laughed harshly. Why, he added, the man must be mad What did the young woman say to that, his uncle inquired Clive frowned. I didn't see her last night. He said I didn't ask to see her. I was too angry Just then the post arrived, and there was a letter for Clive, which he read and put carefully in his waistcoat pocket Eva writes asking me to go to Pireford tonight, he said, after a pause. I'll soon settle it. Depend on that If Ezra Brunt refuses his consent, so much the worse for him I wonder whether he actually imagines that a grown man and a grown woman are to be... Well, I can't talk about it. It's too silly. I'll be off to the works When Clive reached Pireford that night, Eva herself opened the door to him She was wearing a grey frock and over it a large white apron, perfectly plain My girls are both out tonight, she said, and I was making some puffs for the sewing meeting tea Come into the breakfast-room. This way, she added, guiding him He had entered the house on the previous night for the first time She spoke hurriedly and, instead of stopping in the breakfast-room, wandered Uncertainly through into the greenhouse, to which it gave access by means of a French window In the dark, confined space amid the close packed blossoms they stood together She bent down to smell at a musk-plant He took her hand and drew her soft and yielding form towards him And kissed her warm face Oh, Clive, she said, whatever are we to do? Do, he replied, enchanted by her instinctive feminine surrender and reliance upon him Which seemed the more precious in that creature so proud and reserved to all others Do, where is your father? Reading the signal in the dining-room Every businessman in the five towns reads the Staffordshire signal from beginning to end every night I will see him, of course he is your father, but I will just tell him, as decently as I can That neither you nor I will stand this nonsense You mustn't, you mustn't see him Why not? It will only lead to unpleasantness That can't be helped He never, never changes once he has said a thing, I know him Clive was arrested by something in her tone, something new to him That in its poignant finality seemed to have caught up and expressed in a single instant That bitterness of a lifetime's renunciation which forced the lot of most women Will you come outside, he asked, in a different voice Without replying she led the way down the long garden Which ended in an ivy-grown brick wall and a panorama of the immense valley of industries below It was a warm, cloudy evening The last silver tinge of an august twilight lay on the shoulder of the hill to the left There was no moon but the splendid watchfires of labour Flamed from awe-heap and furnace across the whole expanse Performing their nightly miracle of beauty Trains crept with noiseless mystery along the middle distance under their canopies of yellow steam Further off the far-extending streets of Handbridge Made a map of starry lines on the blackness To the south-east stared the cold blue electric lights of Nype Railway Station All was silent, save for a distant thunderous roar The giant breathing of the forge at Cauldron Bar Ironworks Eva leaned both elbows on the wall and looked forth What do you mean to say, said Clive, that Mr. Brunt will actually stick by what he has said Like grim death, said Eva But what's his idea? Oh, how can I tell you she burst out passionately? Perhaps I did wrong, perhaps I ought to have warned him earlier, said him, Father Clive Timmis is courting me Ugh, he cannot bear to be surprised about anything But yet he must have known it was all an accident, Clive, all an accident He saw you leaving the shop yesterday He would say he caught you leaving the shop, sneaking off like But Eva, I know, I know, don't tell me But it was that, I'm sure, he would resent the mere look of things And then he would think and think, and the notion of your uncle's shop would occur to him again after all these years I can see his thoughts as plain, my dear, if he had not seen you at Machen Street yesterday Or if you had seen him and spoken to him, all might have gone right He would have objected, but he would have given way in a day or two Now he will never give way I asked you just now what was to be done, but I knew all the time that there was nothing There is one thing to be done, Eva, and the sooner the better Do you mean that old Mr. Timmis must give up his shop to my father? Never, never I mean, said Clive quietly, that we must marry without your father's consent She shook her head slowly and sadly, relapsing into calmness You shake your head, Eva, but it must be so I can't, my dear Do you mean to say that you will allow your father's childish whim, for it's nothing else He can't find any objection to me as a husband for you, and he knows it That you will allow his childish whim to spoil your life and mine? Remember, you are twenty-six, and I'm thirty-two I can't do it, I dant, I'm mad with myself for feeling like this But I dant, and even if I dared, I wouldn't Clive, you don't know you can't tell how it is Her sorrowful, pathetic firmness daunted him She was now composed, mistress again of herself, and her moral force dominated him Then you and I are to be unhappy all our lives, Eva The soft influences of the night seemed to direct her voice as, after a long pause, she uttered the words No one is ever quite unhappy in all this world There was another pause as she gazed steadily down into the wonderful valley We must wait, wait! echo Clive with angry grimness, he will live for twenty years No one is ever quite unhappy in all this world, she repeated dreamily, as one might turn over a treasure in order to examine it Now for the epilogue to the feud Two years passed and it happened that there was to be a revival at the Bethesda Chapel One morning the superintendent minister and the revivalist called on Ezra Brunt at his shop When informed of their presence the great draper had an impulse of anger for, like many stouter chapel-goers than himself, he would scarcely tolerate the intrusion of religion into commerce However the visit had an air of ceremony and he could not decline to see these ambassadors of heaven in his private room The revivalist, a cheery shrewd man whose powers of organisation were obvious, and who seemed to put organisation before everything else, pleased Ezra Brunt at once We want a specially good congregation at the opening meeting tonight, said the revivalist Now the basis of a good congregation must necessarily be the regular pillars of the church And therefore we are making a few calls this morning to ensure the presence of our chief men, the men of influence and position You will come Mr Brunt, and you will let it be known among your employees that they will please you by coming too? Ezra Brunt was by no means a regular pillar of the Bethesda, but he had a vague sensation of flattery and he consented Indeed there was no alternative. The first him was being sung when he reached the chapel To his surprise he found the place crowded in every part of a man whom he did not know led him to a wooden form which had been put in the space between the front pews and the communion rail He felt strange there and uneasy, apprehensive The usual discreet somnolence of the chapel had been disturbed as by some indecorous but formidable awakener The air was electric, anything might occur Ezra was astounded by the mere volume of the singing, never had he heard such singing At the end of the hymn the congregation sat down, hiding their faces in expectation The revivalist stood erect and terrible in the pulpit, no longer a shrewd, cheery man of the world, but the very mouthpiece of the wrath and mercy of God Ezra's self-importance dwindled before that gaze, till from a renowned magnate of the five towns he became an item in the multitude of suppliants He profoundly wished he had never come Remember the hymn said the revivalist with austere emphasis, my richest gain I count but loss, and poor contempt on all my pride The admirable histrionic art with which he intensified the consonants in the last line produced a tremendous effect Not for nothing was this man celebrated throughout Methodism as a saver of souls When, after a pause, he raised his hand and ejaculated, let us pray Sobs could be heard throughout the chapel The revival had begun At the end of a quarter of an hour Ezra Brunt would have given fifty pounds to be outside, but he could not stir, he was magnetised Soon the revivalist came down from the pulpit and stood within the Communion Rail, whence he addressed the near most part of the people in low, soothing tones of persuasion Apparently he ignored Ezra Brunt, but the man was convicted of sin and felt himself melting like an icicle in front of a fire He recalled the days of his youth, the piety of his father and mother, and the long traditions of a stern, dissenting family He had backslidden, slackened in the use of the means of grace, run after the things of the world It is true that none of his chiefest iniquities presented themselves to him, he was quite unconscious of them even then, but the lesser ones were more than sufficient to overwhelm him Class leaders were now reasoning with stricken sinners, and Ezra, who could not take his eyes off the revivalist, heard the footsteps of those who were going to the Inquiry Room for more private counsel, in vain he argued that he was about to be ridiculous, that the idea of him, Ezra Brunt, a professed Wesleyan for half a century being publicly saved at the age of fifty-seven, was not to be entertained, that the town would talk that his business might suffer if for any reason he should be morally banned to apply to it too strictly the principles of the New Testament He was under the spell, the tears coursed down his long cheeks, and he forgot to care, but sat entranced by the revivalist's marvellous voice Suddenly, with an awful sob, he bent and hid his face in his hands The spectacle of the old, proud man, helpless in the grasp of profound emotion, was a sight to rend the heartstrings Brother, be of good cheer, said a tremulous and benign voice above him The love of God encompasses all things only believe He looked up and saw the venerable face and long white beard of George Christopher Timmis Ezra Brunt shrank away, embittered and ashamed I cannot, he murmured with difficulty, the love of God is all-powerful Will it make you part with that bit of property, thank you? said Ezra Brunt with a kind of despairing ferocity Brother, replied the aged servant of God, unmoved, if my sharp ears in truth are stumbling block in this solemn hour, you shall have it Ezra Brunt was staggered I believe, I believe, he cried Praise God, said the chemist, with majestic joy Three months afterwards Eva Brunt and Clive Timmis were married It is characteristic of the fine sentimentality which underlies the surface harshness of the inhabitants of the five towns that, though No. 54 Machen Street was duly transferred to Ezra Brunt, the chemist retiring from business, he has never rebuilt it to accord with the rest of the premises In all its shabbiness it stands between the other big dazzling shops, as a reminding monument End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 by Martin Clifton Tales of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett Chapter 6 Phantom Part 1 The heart of the five towns that undulating patch of England covered with mean streets and dominated by tall smoking chimneys when Tsar derived your cups and sauces and plates, some of your coal and a portion of your iron, is Hanbridge a borough larger and busier than its four sisters and even more grimy and commonplace than they and the heart of Hanbridge is probably the offices of the Five Towns banking company where the last trace of magic and romance is beaten out of human existence and the meaning of life is expressed in balances, deposits, percentages and overdrafts especially overdrafts In a fine suite of rooms on the first floor of the bank building resides Mr Lionel Woolley, the manager, with his wife May and their children Mrs Woolley is compelled to change her white window curtains once a week because of the smuts Mr Woolley, forty-five, rather bald, frigidly suave, positive, egotistic and pontifical is a specimen of the man of business who is nothing else but a man of business His career has been a calculation from which sentiment is entirely omitted He has no instinct for the things which cannot be defined and assessed Scarcely a manufacturer in Hanbridge but who inimically and fearfully regards Mr Woolley as an amazing instance of a creature without a soul and the absence of soul in a fellow man must be very marked indeed before a Hanbridge manufacturer notices it There are some sixty thousand immortal souls in Hanbridge but they seldom attract tension Yet Mr Woolley was once brought into contact with the things which cannot be defined and assessed once he stood face to face with some strange visible resultant of those secret forces that lie beyond the human chem and moreover the adventure affected the whole of his domestic life The wonder and the pathos of the story lie in the fact that nature, prodigal though she is known to be should have wasted the rare and beautiful visitation on just Mr Woolley Mr Woolley was bathed in romance of the most singular kind and the precious fluid ran off him like water off a duck's back Part 2 Ten years ago on a Thursday afternoon in July Lionel Woolley as he walked up through the new park at Bursley to his celibate rooms in Park Terrace was making addition sums out of various items connected with the institution of marriage Bursley is next door to Hanbridge and Lionel happened then to be cashier of the Bursley branch of the bank He had in mind two possible wives each of whom possessed advantages which appealed to him and he was unable to decide between them by any mathematical process Suddenly from a glazed shelter near the empty bandstand there emerged in front of him one of the delectable creatures who had excited his fancy May Lawton was twenty-eight an orphan and a school mistress She too had celibate rooms in Park Terrace and it was owing to this coincidence that Lionel had made her acquaintance six months previously She was not pretty but she was tall straight well dressed well educated and not lacking in experience and she had a little money of her own Well Mr. Woolley she said easily stopping for him as she raised her sunshade How satisfied you look? It's the sight of you he replied without a moment's hesitation He had a fine assured way with women. He need not have envied a cure at accustomed to sewing meetings and May Lawton belonged to the type of girl whose demeanour always challenges the masculine in a man Gazing at her Lionel was swiftly conscious of several things The pecancy of her snubbed nose, the brightness of her smile at once defiant and wistful, the lingering softness of her gloved hand and the extraordinary charm of her sunshade which matched her dress and formed a sort of canopy and frame for that intelligent tantalising face He remembered that of late he and she had grown very intimate And it came upon him with a shock as though he had just opened a telegram which said so that May and not the other girl was his destined mate And he thought of her fortune, tiny but nevertheless useful, and how clever she was and how inexplicably different from the rest of her sex and how she would adorn his house and set him off and help him in his career He heard himself saying negligently to friends, my wife speaks French like a native, of course my wife has travelled a great deal My wife has thoroughly studied the management of children, now my wife does understand the art of dress I put my wife's bit of money in so and so, in short Lionel was as near being in love as his character permitted And while he walked by May's side past the bowling greens at the summit of the hill, she, likely quizzing the raw newness of the park and its appurtenances he wondered, he honestly wondered, that he could ever have hesitated between May Lawton and the other Her superiority was too obvious, she was a woman of the world, she, in a flash he knew that he would propose to her that very afternoon And when he had suggested a stroll towards Morthorn, and she had deliciously agreed, he was conscious of a tumultuous uplifting and splendid carelessness of spirits Imagine me bringing it to a climax today, he reflected profoundly pleased with himself, oh well, it will be settled once for all He admired his own decision, he was quite struck by it I shall call her May before I leave her, he thought, gazing at her, and discovering how well the name suited her with its significances of alertness, geniality and half mocking coiness So, school is closed, he said, and added humorously, broken up is the technical term, I believe Yes, she answered, and I had walked out into the park to meditate seriously upon the question of my holiday She caught his eye in a net of bright glances and romance was in the air They had crossed a couple of smoke-soiled fields, and struck into the old handbridge road just below the abandoned toll-house with its broad eaves And wither do your meditations point, he demanded playfully My meditations point to Switzerland, she said, I have friends in Lausanne The reference to foreign climbs impressed him Would that I could go to Switzerland too, he exclaimed, and privately, now for it, I'm about to begin Why, she questioned with elaborate simplicity At the moment, as they were passing the toll-house, the other girl appeared surprisingly from round the corner of the toll-house where the lane from Toft End joins the high road This second creature was smaller than Miss Lawton, less assertive, less intelligent perhaps, but much more beautiful Everyone halted, and everyone blushed May, the interrupter at length, stammered May responded Miss Lawton lamely The other girl was named May too, May Dean, child of the well-known Majolica manufacturer who lived with his sons and daughter in a solitary and ancient house at Toft End Lionel Woody said nothing until they had all shaken hands His famous way with women seemed to have deserted him, and then he actually stated that he had forgotten an appointment and must depart He had gone before the girls could move When they were alone, the two Mays fronted each other, confused, hostile, almost homicidal I hope I didn't spoil a tet-a-tet, said May Dean, stiffly and sharply, in a manner quite foreign to her soft and yielding nature The schoolmistress, abandoning herself to an inexplicable but overwhelming impulse, took breath for a proud lie No, she answered, but if you had come three minutes earlier, she smiled calmly Oh! murmured May Dean after a pause Part 3 That evening May Dean returned home at half-past nine She had been with her two brothers to a lawn tennis-party at Hillport, and she told her father who was reading the Staffordshire signal in his accustomed solitude that the boys were staying later for cards, but that she had declined to stay because she felt tired She kissed the old widower good-night and said that she should go to bed at once But before retiring she visited the housekeeper in the kitchen in order to discuss certain household matters Jim's early breakfast, the proper method of washing Herbert's new flannels Herbert would be very angry if they were shrunk, and the dog biscuits for Carlo These questions settled, she went to her room, drew the blind, lighted some candles, and sat down near the window She was twenty-two, and she had about her that strange and charming nun-like mystery which often comes to a woman who lives alone and unguessed at among male relatives Her room was her bower, no one save the servant and herself ever entered in Mr. Dean and Jim and Bertie might glance carelessly through the open door in passing along the corridor, but had they chanced in idle curiosity to enter the room would have struck them as unfamiliar, and they might perhaps have exclaimed with momentary interest, so this is May's room And some hint that May was more than a daughter and sister, a woman withdrawn, secret, disturbing, living her own inner life side by side with a household life might have penetrated their obtuse, paternal and fraternal masculinity Her beautiful face, the nose and mouth were perfect, and at either extremity of the upper lip grew a soft down Her dark hair, her quiet voice, and her gentle acquiescence, diversified by occasional outbursts of sarcasm appealed to them and won them, but they accepted her as something, of course, as something which went without saying They adored her and did not know that they adored her May took off her hat, stuck the pins into it again, and threw it on the bed, whose white and green counter-pane hung down nearly to the floor on either side Then she lay back in the chair, and, pulling away the blind, glanced through the window The moon, rather dim behind the furnace lights of red cow ironworks, was rising over Mawthorn May dropped the blind with a weary gesture, and turned within the room, examining its contents as if she had not seen them before The wardrobe, the chest of drawers, which was also a dressing table, the wash stand, the dwarf bookcase with its store of Edna Lyles, Elizabeth Gaskill's, Thackeray's, Charlotte Young's, Charlotte Bronte's, Thomas Hardy or so, and some old schoolbooks She looked at the pictures, including a sampler worked by a deceased aunt, at the loud ticking Swiss clock on the mantelpiece The higgledy-piggledy photographs there, at the new X-minster carpet, the piece of linoleum in front of the wash stand, and the bad joining of the wallpaper to the left of the door She missed none of the details which she knew so well, with such long monotonous intimacy, and sighed Then she got up from the chair, and, opening a small drawer in the chest of drawers, put her hand familiarly to the back and drew forth a photograph She carried the photograph to the light of the candles on the mantelpiece, and gazed at it attentively, puckering her brows It was a portrait of Lionel Woolly, heaven knows by what sub-diffusional lucky accident she had obtained it, for Lionel certainly had not given it to her She loved Lionel, she had loved him for five years, with a love, silent, blind, intense, irrational and too elemental to be concealed Everyone knew of May's passion, many women admired her taste, a few were shocked and puzzled by it All the men of her acquaintance either pitted or despised her for it Her father said nothing, her brothers were less cautious, and summed up their opinion of Lionel in the curt, scornful assertion that he showed a tendency to cheat at tennis But May would never hear ill of him, he was a god to her, and she could not hide her worship For more than a year until lately she had been almost sure of him, and then came a faint, vague rumour concerning Lionel and May Lawton, a rumour which she had refused to take seriously The encounter of that afternoon and Miss Lawton's triumphant remark had dazed her For seven hours she had existed in a kind of semi-conscious delirium, in which she could perceive nothing but the fatal fact, emerging more clearly every moment from the welter of her thoughts that she had lost Lionel Lionel had proposed to May Lawton and been accepted just before she surprised them together And Lionel, with a man's excusable cowardice, had left his betrothed to announce the engagement She tore up the photograph, put the fragments in the grate, and set a light to them Her father's step sounded on the stairs, he hesitated, and knocked sharply at her door What's burning, May? It's all right, father, she answered calmly, I'm only burning some papers in the fire grate Well, see you don't burn the house down, he passed on Then she found a sheet of note paper and wrote on it in pencil using the mantelpiece for a desk Dear home, good night, goodbye She cogitated and wrote further, forgive me, May She put the message in an envelope and wrote on the envelope, Jim, and placed it prominently in front of the clock But after she had looked at it for a minute, she wrote, Father, above Jim, and then Herbert, below There were noises in the hall, the boys had returned earlier than she expected As they went along the corridor and caught a glimpse of her light under the door, Jim cried gaily Now then, out with that light, a little thing like you ought to be asleep hours since She listened for the bang of their door, and then, very hurriedly, she removed her pink frock and put on an old black one, which was rather tight in the waist And she donned her hat, securing it carefully with both pins, extinguished the candles, and crept quietly downstairs and sewed by the back door into the garden Carlo, the retriever, came halfway out of his kennel and greeted her in the moonlight with a yawn She patted his head and ran stealthily up the garden, through the gate, and up the waste-green land towards the crown of the hill Part four The top of Toft End is the highest land in the five towns, and from it may be clearly seen all the euryd evidences of manufacture which sweep across the borders of the sky on northeast, west, and south North-eastwards lie the Moorlands, and far off manifold the metropolis of the Moorlands, as it is called On this night the furnaces of red cow-iron works in the Hollow to the East were in full blast Their fluctuating yellow light illuminated clearly the grass of the fields above Dean's House, and the regular roar of their breathing reached that solitary spot like the distant rumour of some leviathan beast angrily fuming Further away to the south-west the cauldron bar-iron works reproduced the same phenomena, and round the whole horizon near and far except to the northeast the lesser fires of labour leapt and flickered and glinted in their mists of smoke burning ceaselessly as they burned every night and every day at all seasons of all years The town of Bursley slept in the deep valley to the west, and vast hambridge in their shallower depression to the south, like two sleepers accustomed to rest quietly amid great disturbances The beacons of their town halls and churches kept watch, and the whole scene was dominated by the placidity of the moon, which had now risen clear of the red cow-furnace clouds and was passing upwards through tracts of stars Into this scene, climbing up from the direction of manifold, came Lionel Woolley, nearly at midnight having walked some 18 miles in a vain effort to re-establish his self-satisfaction by a process of reasoning and ingenious excuses Lionel felt that in the brief episode of the afternoon he had scarcely behaved with dignity In other words he was fully and painfully aware that he must have looked a fool, a coward, an ass, a contemptible and pitiful person in the eyes of at least one girl, if not of two He did not like this, no man would have liked it, and to Lionel the memory of an undignified act was acute torture Why had he bidden the girls adieu and departed? Why had he, in fact, run away? What precisely would May Lawton think of him? How could he explain his conduct to her and to himself? And had that worshipping affectionate thing May Dean take a note of his confusion? Of the confusion of him who was never confused, who was equal to every occasion and every emergency? These were some of the questions which harried him and declined to be settled He had walked to manifold and had tea at the row-buck and walked back, and still the questions were harrying And as he came over the hill by the field-path and described the lone house of the deans in the light of the Red Cow furnaces and of the moon The worship of May Dean seemed suddenly very precious to him, and he could not bear to think that any stupidity of his should have impaired it Then he saw May Dean walking slowly across the field, close to an abandoned pit-shaft, whose low-protecting circular wall of brick was crumbling to ruin on the side nearest to him She stopped, appeared to gaze at him intently, turned and began to approach him And he too, moved by a mysterious impulse which he did not pause to examine, swerved and quickened his step in order to lessen the distance between them He did not at first even feel surprised that she should be wandering solitary on the hill at that hour Presently she stood still while he continued to move forward It was as if she drew him, and soon in the pale moonlight and the wavering light of the furnaces he could decipher all the details of her face And he saw that she was smiling fondly, invitingly, admiringly, lustrously, with the old, undiminished worship and affection And he perceived a dark discoloration on her right cheek as though she had suffered a blow, but this mark did not long occupy his mind He thought suddenly of the strong probability that her father would leave a nice little bit of money to each of his three children And he thought of her beauty, and of her timid fragility in the tight black dress, and of her immense and unquestioning love for him which would survive all accidents and mishaps He seemed to sink luxuriously into this grand passion of hers, which he deemed quite natural and proper, as into a soft featherbed To live secure in an atmosphere of exhaustless worship, to keep a fount of balm and admiration forever in the house, a bubbling spring of passionate appreciation which would be continually available for the refreshment of his self-esteem To be always sure of an obedience, blind and willing, a subservience which no tyranny and no harshness and no whim would rouse into revolt, to sit on a throne with so much beauty kneeling at his feet And the possession of her beauty would be a source of legitimate pride to him, people would often refer to the beautiful Mrs. Woolly He felt that in sending May Dean to interrupt his highly emotional conversation with May Lawton, Providence had watched over him and done him a good turn May Lawton had advantages and striking advantages, but he could not be sure of her The suspicion that if she married him she would marry him for her own ends caused him a secret disquiet And he feared that one day, perhaps one morning at breakfast, she might take it into her intelligent head to mock him, to exercise upon him her gift of irony and to intimate to him that if he fancied she was his slave he was deceived, that she sincerely admired him he never for an instant doubted, but and moreover the unfortunate episode of the afternoon might have cooled her ardour to freezing point He stood now in front of his worshipper, and the notion crossed his mind that in after years he could say to his friends, I proposed to my wife at midnight under the moon, not many men have done that Good evening, he ventured to the girl, and he added with bravado, we've met before today, haven't we? She made no reply, but her smile was more affectionate, more inviting than ever I'm glad of this opportunity, very glad he proceeded, I've been wanting to, you must know my dear girl how I feel She gave a gesture charming in its sweet humility as if to say, who am I that I should dare? And then he proposed to her, asked her to share his life and all that sort of thing And when he had finished he thought, it's done now anyway Strange to relate, she offered no immediate reply, but she bent a little towards him with shining happy eyes He had an impulse to seize her in his arms and kiss her, but Prudence suggested that he should defer the right She turned and began to walk slowly and meditatively towards the pictureft He followed almost at her side, but a foot or so behind, waiting for her to speak And as he waited, expectant, he looked at her profile and reflected how well the name may suited her, with its significances of shyness and dreamy hope and hidden fire and the modesty of spring And while he was thus savouring her face and they were still ten yards from the pictureft, she suddenly disappeared from his vision, as it were by a conjuring trick He had a horrible sensation in his spinal column He was not the man to mistrust the evidence of his senses, and he knew therefore that he had been proposing to a phantom Part 5 The next morning, early because of Jim's early breakfast, when May Dean's disappearance became known to the members of the household, Jim had the idea of utilising Carlo in the search for her The retriever went straight without a fault to the pictureft, and May was discovered alive and unscathed, save for a contusion of the face and a sprain in the wrist A suicidal plunge had been arrested at only a few feet from the top of the pictureft, by a cross-stay of timber upon which she lay prone There was no reason why the affair should be made public, and it was not It was suppressed into one of those secrets which embed themselves in the history of families, and after two or three generations blossom into romantic legends full of appropriate circumstantial detail Lionel Woolley spent a woeful night at his rooms. He did not know what to do, and on the following day May Lawton encountered him again and proved by her demeanour that the episode of the previous afternoon had caused no estrangement Lionel vacillated. The sway of the schoolmistress was almost restored, and it would have been restored fully had he not been preoccupied by her feverish curiosity The curiosity to know whether or not May Dean was dead He felt that she must indeed be dead, and he lived through the day expectant of the news of her sudden disease Towards night his state of mind was such that he was obliged to call at the deans May hurt him and insisted on seeing him, more she insisted on seeing him alone in the breakfast-room, where she reclined, interestingly, white on the sofa Her father and brothers objected strongly to the interview, but they yielded, afraid that a refusal might induce hysteria and worse things And when Lionel Woolley came into the room, May, steeped in felicity, related to him the story of her impulsive crime I was so happy, she said, when I knew that Miss Lawton had deceived me And before he could inquire what she meant, she continued rapidly, I must have been unconscious, but I felt you were there, and something of me went out towards you And, oh, the answer to your question, I heard your question, the real me heard it, but that something could not speak My question You asked a question, didn't you? She faltered, sitting up He hesitated and then surrendered himself to her immense love and sank into it, and forgot May Lawton Yes, he said The answer is yes, oh, you must have known the answer would be yes, you did know, didn't you? He nodded, grandly She sighed with delicious and overwhelming joy In the ecstasy of the achievement of her desire, the girl gave little thought to the psychic aspect of the possibly unique wooing As for Lionel, he refused to dwell on it even in thought And so that strange, magic, yearning effluence of a soul into a visible projection and shape was ignored, slurred over And after ten years of domesticity in the bank premises, he's gradually being forgotten He is a man of business, and she, with her fading beauty, her ardent, continuous worship of the idol Her half-dozen small children, the eldest of whom is only eight, and the white window curtains to change every week because of the smuts Do you suppose she has time or inclination to ponder upon the theory of the subliminal consciousness and kindred mysteries? End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Recording by Martin Clifton Tales of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett Chapter 7 It was the dinner hour, and a group of ragged and clay-soiled apprentice boys were making a great noise in the yard of Henry Miners and Co's small, compact, earthenware manufacturing up at Toft End Toft End caps the ridge to the east of Bursley, and Bursley, which has been the home of the Potter for ten centuries, is the most ancient of the five towns in Staffordshire The boys, dressed for the most part in shirt, trousers, and boots, all equally ragged and insecure, were playing at prison bars Soon the game ended abruptly in a clamorous dispute upon a point of law, and it was not recommenced The dispute, dying and natural death, the tireless energies of the boys needed a fresh outlet Inspired by a common instinct, they began at once to bait one of their number a slight youngster of twelve years, much better clothed than the rest, who had adventurously strolled in from a neighbouring manufacturing This child answered their jibes in an amiable, silly, drawing tone, which seemed to justify the epithet Looney frequently applied to him Now and then he stammered, and then companions laughed loud, and he with them It was known that several years ago he had fallen down a flight of stone steps, a lighting on the back of his head, and that ever since he had been deaf of one ear and under some trifling mental derangement His sublime calmness under their jests baffled them, until the terrible figure of Mr. Machen, the engine man, standing at the door of the slip-house, caught their attention and suggested a plan full of joyous possibilities They gathered round the lad, and, talking in subdued murmurs, unanimously urged him with many persuasions to a certain course of action He declined the scheme, and declined again Suddenly a boy shouted, The Dazna, I dare was the drawled smiling answer, I tell thee the Dazna I tell thee I dare, and thereupon he slowly but resolutely set out for the slip-house door and Mr. Machen Eli Machen was, beyond doubt, the most considerable employee on Clark's bank, manufacturing Even Henry Clark approached him with a subtly indicated deference And whenever Silas Emery, the immensely rich and miserly sleeping partner in the firm, came up to visit the works, these two men chatted as old friends In a modern earth and ware manufacturing the engine room is the source of all activity For, owing to the inventive genius of a famous and venerable son of the five towns, steam now presides at nearly every stage in the long process of turning earth into ware It moves the pug mill, the jollies and the marvellous batting machines Drives the unfired clay, heats the printer's stoves and warms the offices where the jacket men dwell Coal is a tremendous item in the cost of production, and a competent, economical engine man can be sure of good wages and a choice of births He is desired like a good domestic servant Eli Machen was the prince of engine men His engine never went wrong, his coal bills were never extravagant, and supreme virtue he was never absent on Mondays From his post in the slip house he watched over the whole works like a father, stern, gruff, forbidding, but to be trusted absolutely He was sixty years old and had been putting by for nearly half a century He lived in a tiny villa cottage with his bedridden, cheerful wife, and lent small sums on mortgage of approved freeholds at five percent, no more and no less Secure behind this rampart of saved money, he was the equal of the king on the throne Not a magnet in all the five towns who would dare to be condescending to Eli Machen He had been a sidesman at the old church A trades union had once asked him to become a working man candidate for the Bursley town council, but he had refused because he did not care for the possibility of losing caste by being concerned in a strike His personal respectability was entirely un-solid, and he worshipped this abstract quality as he worshipped God There was only one plot but how foul on Eli Machen's career, and that had been dropped by his daughter Miriam When defying his authority she married a scene shifter at Handbridge Theatre The atrocious idea of being connected with the theatre had rendered him speechless for a time He could but endure it in the most awful silence that ever hid passionate feeling Then one day he had burst out, the wench is no better than a titty-fall lull, only this solitary phrase, nothing else What a titty-fall lull was, no one quite knew but the word getting about stuck to him, and for some weeks boys used to shout it after him in the streets until he caught one of them and in thirty seconds put an end to the practice Thenceforth Miriam, with all hers, was dead to him When her husband expired of consumption Eli Machen saw the avenging arm of the Lord in action And when her boy grew to be a source of painful anxiety to her he said to himself that the wrath of heaven was not yet called towards this impious daughter The passage of fifteen years had apparently in no way softened his resentment The challenged lad in Miner's yard slowly approached the sliphouse door and halted before Eli Machen grinning Well, young and the old man said absolutely what does one want To defile all grandfather the child drawled in his silly, irritating voice and added they said I dare not say it to ye Without an instant's hesitation Eli Machen raised his still powerful arm and catching the boy under the ear and knocked him down The other boys yelled with unaffected pleasure and ran away Get up and be off with ye, ye donna belong to this bank said Eli Machen in cold anger to the lad But the lad did not stir, the lad's eyes were closed and he lay white on the stones Eli Machen bent down and peered through his spectacles at the prone form upon which the midday sun was beating It's Miriam's boy he ejaculated under his breath and looked round as if in inquiry The yard was empty Then with quick decision he picked up this limp and inconvenient parcel of humanity and hastened ran with it out of the yard into the road Down the road he ran turned to the left into Klaus Street and stopped before a row of small brown cottages At the open door of one of these cottages a woman sat sowing She was rather stout and full bosom to the fair, fresh face, full of sense and peace She looked under thirty but was older Here's thy Tommy Miriam said Eli Machen shortly He give me some of his sauce and I doubt I've done him an injury The woman dropped her sowing, a dear she cried, is that lad of mine in mischief again? I do hope he's no limb broken It dinner that said the old man, but he's days like better lay him on the squab She calmly took Tommy and placed him gently down on the check covered sofa under the window Come in father do The man obeyed, astonished at the entire friendliness of this daughter, whom, though he had frequently seen her he had never spoken to for more than ten years Her manner at once filial and quite natural perfectly ignored the long breach and disclosed no trace of animosity Father and daughter examined the unconscious child Pale, pulseless, cold he lay on the sofa like a corpse except for the short faint breath which he drew through his blue lips I doubt I've killed him said Eli Nay, nay, father and her face actually smiled This supremacy of the soul against years of continued misfortune lifted her high above him and he suddenly felt himself an inferior creature I'll go for the doctor he said Nay, I shall need ye, and she put her head out of the window Mrs. Wally, would ye let your Lucy run quick for the club doctor, my Tommy's hurt The whole street awoke instantly from its nap and in a few moments every door was occupied Miriam closed her own door softly as though she might wake the boy and spoke in whispers to people through the window finally telling them to go away When the doctor came half an hour afterwards she had done all that she knew for Tommy without the slightest apparent result What is it? asked the doctor curtly as he lifted the child's thin and lifeless hand Eli Machen explained that he had boxed the boy's ear Tommy was impudent to his grandfather, Miriam added hastily Which ear? the doctor inquired It was the left, he gazed into it and then raised the boy's right leg and arm There is no paralysis he said Then he felt the heart and then took out his stethoscope and applied it, listening intently Can't hear out, the old man said Nay, cannot, he answered Don't say that doctor, don't say that said Miriam with an accent of appeal In these cases it is almost impossible to tell whether the patient is alive or dead We must wait Mrs. Baderly make a mustard plaster for his feet and we will put another over the heart And so they waited one hour while the clock ticked and the mustard plasters gradually cooled Then Tommy's lips parted After another half hour the doctor said I must go now, I'll come again at six, do nothing but apply fresh plasters Be sure to keep his neck free He is breathing but I may as well be playing with you, there is a great risk of your child dying in this condition Neighbours were again at the window and Miriam drew the blind waving them away At six o'clock the doctor reappeared There is no change, he remarked, I will call in before I go to bed When he lifted the latch for the third time at ten o'clock Eli Machen and Miriam still sat by the sofa And Tommy still lay there on, moveless, a terrible enigma But the glass lamp was lighted on the mantelpiece And some sewing by which she earned a livelihood had been hidden out of sight There is no change, said the doctor, you can do nothing except hope And pray, the calm mother added Eli neither stirred nor spoke For nine hours he had absolutely forgotten his engine, he knew the boy would die The clock struck eleven, twelve, one, two, three each time fretting the nerves of the old man like a rasp It was the hour of summer dawn a cold grey light fell unkindly across the small figure on the sofa Opened the door a bit farther, said Miriam, the parlour is getting close, the lad canner breathe Nay, lass, Eli sighed as he stumbled obediently to the door The lad'll breathe no more, I've killed him in my anger He frowned heavily as though someone was annoying him His cheek slamed when, after extinguishing the lamp, she returned to her boy's side He's reddened, he's reddened, look thee at his cheek's father She seized the child's inert hands and rubbed them between her own The blood was now plain in Tommy's face, his legs faintly twitched His breathing was slower Miriam moved the coverlet and put her head upon his heart It's beating loud farther, she cried, bless God Eli stared at the child with the fixity of a statue Then Tommy opened his eyes for an instant The old man groaned Tommy looked vacantly round, closed his eyes again, and was unmistakably asleep He slept for one minute, then waked Eli involuntarily put a hand on the sofa Tommy gazed at him, and with the most heavenly innocent smile of recognition lightly touched his grandfather's hand Then he turned over on his right side In the anguish of sudden joy Eli gave a deep, piteous sob That smile burnt into him like a coal fire Now for the beef-tea, said Miriam, crying Beef-tea, the boy repeated after him, mildly questioning Yes, my puppet, she answered, and then aside Father, he can hear in his left ear, did you notice it? It's a miracle, a miracle of God, said Eli In a few hours Tommy was as well as ever, indeed better Not only was his hearing fully restored, but he had ceased to stammer And the thin, almost imperceptible cloud upon his intellect was dissipated The doctor expressed but little surprise at these phenomena And in fact stated that similar things had occurred often before and were duly written down in the books of medicine But Eli Machin's firm, instinctive faith that providence had intervened will never be shaken Miriam and Tommy now live in the villa cottage with the old people End of chapter 7