The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories, Arnold Bennett [top novels TXT] 📗

/> "Well, auntie, did you have a pretty good night?"

Also:

"A fire is a very clumsy way of waking you up in the morning. A bell would be much simpler, and cost less," etcetera, etcetera. And then he said:

"A nice thing, auntie, if I'd followed your advice and brought my beauteous new suit! It would have been bound to be burnt to a cinder. One's best suit always is in a fire."

I ought to have told him then the trick I'd played on him, but I didn't. I merely agreed with him in a lame sort of way that it _would_ have been a nice thing if he'd brought his beauteous suit. I hoped that I might be able later on to invent some good excuse, something really plausible, for having brought along with me his newest suit unknown to him. But the more I reflected the more I couldn't think of anything clever enough.

Then the three Smiths came in. There was some queer attire in that dining-room, but I think that Mrs Smith won the gold medal for queerness. All her "colonialness" had come suddenly out. They evidently hadn't been very fortunate. But they didn't seem to mind much. They hadn't thought very highly of the hotel before, and they accepted the fire good-humouredly as one of the necessary drawbacks of a hotel that wasn't quite up to their Winnipeg form. Nellie Smith was delightful. I must say she was delightful, and she looked delightful. She was wearing a blue-and-red striped petticoat, rather short, and a white jersey, and over that a man's blue jacket, which fitted her pretty well. She looked indescribably pert and charming, though the jacket was dirty and stained.

I noticed Ellis staring and staring at that jacket....

I needn't tell you. You can see a mile off what had happened.

Ellis said in his casual way:

"Hello! Where did you pick up that affair, Miss Smith?" Meaning the jacket.

She said she had picked it up on one of the landings, and that there was a pair of continuations lying in a broken bonnet-box just close to it, and that the continuations were ruined by too much water.

I could feel myself blushing redder and redder.

"In a bonnet-box, eh?" said Master Ellis.

Then he said: "Would you mind letting me look at the right-hand breast-pocket of that jacket?"

She didn't mind in the least. He looked at the strip of white linen that your men's tailors always stitch into that pocket with your name and address and date, and age and weight, and I don't know what.

He said, "Thank you."

And she asked him if the jacket was his.

"Yes," he said, "but I hope you'll keep it."

Everybody said what a very curious coincidence! Ellis avoided my eyes, and I avoided his.... Will you believe me that when we "had it out" afterwards, he and I, that boy was seriously angry. He suspected me of a plan "to make the best of him" during the stay with the Smiths, and he very strongly objected to being "made the best of." His notion apparently was that even his worst was easily good enough for my Colonial friends, although, as he'd have said, they _had_ "simply wiped the floor with him" in the billiard-room. Anyhow, he was furious. He actually used the word "unwarrantable," and it was rather a long word for a mere stripling of a nephew to use to an auntie who was paying all his expenses. However, he's a nice enough boy at the bottom, and soon got down off his high horse. I must tell you that Nellie Smith wore that jacket all day, quite without any concern. These Colonials don't really seem to mind what they wear. At any rate she didn't. She was just as much at ease in that jacket as she had been in her gorgeousness the evening before. And she and Ellis were walking about together all day. The next day of course we all left. We couldn't stay, seeing the state we were in.... Now, don't you think it's a very curious story?

Thus spake Mrs Ellis across the tea-table in an alcove at the Hanover.

"But you've not finished the story!" I explained.

"Yes, I have," she said.

"You haven't explained what you were doing at my tailor's in Sackville Street."

"Oh!" she cried, "I was forgetting that. Well, I promised Ellis a new suit. And as I wanted to show him that after all I had larger ideas about tailoring than he had, I told him I knew a very good tailor's in Sackville Street--a real West End tailor--and that if he liked he could have his presentation suit made there. He pooh-poohed the offer at first, and pretended that his Bursley tailor was just as good as any of your West End tailors. But at last he accepted. You see--it meant an authorized visit to London.... I'd been into the tailor's just now to pay the bill. That's all."

"But even now," I said, "you haven't finished the story."

"Yes, I have," she replied again.

"What about Nellie Smith?" I demanded. "A story about a handsome girl named Nellie, who could make a break of twenty-eight at billiards, and a handsome dog like Ellis Carter, and a fire, and the girl wearing the youth's jacket--it can't break off like that."

"Look here," she said, leaning a little across the table. "Did you expect them to fall in love with each other on the spot and be engaged? What a sentimental old thing you are, after all!"

"But haven't they seen each other since?"

"Oh yes! In London, and in Bursley too."

"And haven't they--"

"Not yet.... They may or they mayn't. You must remember this isn't the reign of Queen Victoria.... If they _do_, I'll let you know."



THE TIGER AND THE BABY

I


George Peel and Mary, his wife, sat down to breakfast. Their only son, Georgie, was already seated. George the younger showed an astounding disregard for the decencies of life, and a frankly gluttonous absorption in food which amounted to cynicism. Evidently he cared for nothing but the satisfaction of bodily desires. Yet he was twenty-two months old, and occupied a commanding situation in a high chair! His father and mother were aged thirty-two and twenty-eight respectively. They both had pale, intellectual faces; they were dressed with elegance, and their gestures were the gestures of people accustomed to be waited upon and to consider luxuries as necessaries. There was silver upon the table, and the room, though small and somewhat disordered, had in it beautiful things which had cost money. Through a doorway half-screened by a portiere could be seen a large studio peopled with heroic statuary, plaster casts, and lumps of clay veiled in wet cloths. And on the other side of the great window of the studio green trees waved their foliage. The trees were in Regent's Park. Another detail to show that the Peels had not precisely failed in life: the time was then ten-thirty o'clock! Millions of persons in London had already been at hard work for hours.

And indeed George Peel was not merely a young sculptor of marked talent; he was also a rising young sculptor. For instance, when you mentioned his name in artistic circles the company signified that it knew whom you meant, and those members of the company who had never seen his work had to feel ashamed of themselves. Further, he had lately been awarded the Triennial Gold Medal of the International Society, an honour that no Englishman had previously achieved. His friends and himself had, by the way, celebrated this dazzling event by a noble and joyous gathering in the studio, at which famous personages had been present.

Everybody knew that George Peel, in addition to what he earned, had important "private resources." For even rising young sculptors cannot live luxuriously on what they gain, and you cannot eat gold medals. Nor will gold medals pay a heavy rent or the cost of manual help in marble cutting. All other rising young sculptors envied George Peel, and he rather condescended to them (in his own mind) because they had to keep up appearances by means of subterfuges, whereas there was no deception about his large and ample existence.

On the table by Mary's plate was a letter, the sole letter. It had come by the second post. The contents of the first post had been perused in bed. While Mary was scraping porridge off the younger George's bib with a spoon, and wiping porridge out of his eyes with a serviette, George the elder gave just a glance at the letter.

"So he has written after all!" said George, in a voice that tried to be nonchalant.

"Who?" asked Mary, although she had already seen the envelope, and knew exactly what George meant. And her voice also was unnatural in its attempted casualness.

"The old cock," said George, beginning to serve bacon.

"Oh!" said Mary, coming to her chair, and beginning to dispense tea.

She was dying to open the letter, yet she poured out the tea with superhuman leisureliness, and then indicated to Georgie exactly where to search for bits of porridge on his big plate, while George with a great appearance of calm unfolded a newspaper. Then at length she did open the letter. Having read it, she put her lips tighter together, nodded, and passed the letter to George. And George read:

"DEAR MARY,--I cannot accede to your request.--Your affectionate uncle, SAMUEL PEEL.

"_P.S._--The expenses connected with my County Council election will be terrible. S.P."

George lifted his eyebrows, as if to indicate that in his opinion there was no accounting for the wild stupidity of human nature, and that he as a philosopher refused to be startled by anything whatever.

"Curt!" he muttered coldly.

Mary uneasily laughed.

"What shall you do?" she inquired.

"Without!" replied George, with a curtness that equalled Mary's uncle's.

"And what about the rent?"

"The rent will have to wait."

A brave young man! Nevertheless he saw in that moment chasms at his feet--chasms in which he and his wife and child and his brilliant prospects might be swallowed up. He changed the subject.

"You didn't see this cutting," he said, and passed a slip from a newspaper gummed to a piece of green paper.

George, in his quality of rising young sculptor, received Press cuttings from an agency. This one was from a somewhat vulgar Society journal, and it gave, in two paragraphs, an account of the recent festivity at George's studio. It finished with the words: "Heidsieck flowed freely." He could not guess who had written it. No! It was not in the nicest taste, but it furnished indubitable proof that George was still rising, that he was a figure in the world. "What a rag!" he observed, with an explosion of repugnance. "Read by suburban shop-girls, I suppose."


II


George had arranged his career in a quite exceptional way. It is true that chance had served him; but then he had known how to make use of chance to the highest advantage. The chance that had served him lay in the facts that Mary Peel had fallen gravely in love with him, that her sole surviving relative was a rich uncle, and that George's surname was the same as hers and her uncle's. He had met niece and uncle in Bursley in the Five Towns, where old Samuel Peel was a personage, and, timidly, a patron of the arts. Having