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

bargain. The affair was all arranged as quick as you please at the Trustees' meeting last Monday. Titus Blackhurst said he would give a hundred pounds if eight others would do the same within a fortnight--it must be settled at once. As Enoch said to me afterwards, it seemed, as soon as Mr Blackhurst had made his speech, that we _must_ have that organ. We really couldn't forshame to show up with the old one again at _this_ Conference--don't you remember the funny speech the President made about it at the last Conference, eleven years ago? Of course he was very polite and nice with his sarcasm, but I'm sure he meant us to take the hint. Now, would you believe, seven out of those eight subscriptions were promised by Wednesday morning! I think that was just splendid!"

"Well, well!" exclaimed Peake, genuinely amazed at this proof of religious vitality. "Who are the subscribers?"

"I'm one," said Enoch Lovatt, quietly, but with unconcealed pride.

"And I'm another," said Mrs Lovatt. "Bless you, I should have been ashamed of myself if I hadn't responded to such an appeal. You may say what you like about Titus Blackhurst--I know there's a good many that don't like him--but he's a real good sort. I'm sure he's the best Sunday School superintendent we ever had. Then there's Mr Clayton-Vernon, and Alderman Sutton, and young Henry Mynors and--"

"And Eardley Brothers--they're giving a hundred apiece," put in Lovatt, glancing at Randolph Sneyd.

"I wish they'd pay their debts first," said Peake, with sudden savageness.

"They're all right, I suppose?" said Sneyd, interested, and leaning over towards Peake.

"Oh, they're all _right_," Peake said testily. "At least, I hope so," and he gave a short, grim laugh. "But they're uncommon slow payers. I sent 'em in an account for coal only last week--three hundred and fifty pound. Well, auntie, who's the ninth subscriber?"

"Ah, that's the point," said Enoch Lovatt. "The ninth isn't forthcoming."

Mrs Lovatt looked straight at her sister's husband. "We want you to be the ninth," she said.

"Me!" He laughed heartily, perceiving a broad humour in the suggestion.

"Oh, but I mean it," Mrs Lovatt insisted earnestly. "Your name was mentioned at the trustees' meeting, wasn't it, Enoch?"

"Yes," said Lovatt, "it was."

"And dost mean to say as they thought as I 'ud give 'em a hundred pound towards th' new organ?" said Peake, dropping into dialect.

"Why not?" returned Mrs Lovatt, her spirit roused. "I shall. Enoch will. Why not you?"

"Oh, you're different. You're _in_ it."

"You can't deny that you're one of the richest pew-holders in the chapel. What's a hundred pound to you? Nothing, is it, Mr Sneyd? When Mr Copinger, our superintendent minister, mentioned it to me yesterday, I told him I was sure you would consent."

"You did?"

"I did," she said boldly.

"Well, I shanna'."

Like many warm-hearted, impulsive and generous men, James Peake did not care that his generosity should be too positively assumed. To take it for granted was the surest way of extinguishing it. The pity was that Mrs Lovatt, in the haste of her zeal for the amelioration of divine worship at Bursley Chapel, had overlooked this fact. Peake's manner was final. His wife threw a swift glance at Ella, who stood behind her father's chair, and received a message back that she too had discerned finality in the tone.

Sneyd got up, and walking slowly to the fireplace emitted the casual remark: "Yes, you will, Peake."

He was a man of considerable education, and though in neither force nor astuteness was he the equal of James Peake, it often pleased him to adopt towards his friend a philosophic pose--the pose of a seer, of one far removed from the trivial disputes in which the colliery-owner was frequently concerned.

"Yes, you will, Peake," he repeated.

"I shanna', Sneyd."

"I can read you like a book, Peake." This was a favourite phrase of Sneyd's, which Peake never heard without a faint secret annoyance. "At the bottom of your mind you mean to give that hundred. It's your duty to do so, and you will. You'll let them persuade you."

"I'll bet thee a shilling I don't."

"Done!"

"Ssh!" murmured Mrs Lovatt, "I'm ashamed of both of you, betting on such a subject--or on any subject," she added. "And Ella here too!"

"It's a bet, Sneyd," said Peake, doggedly, and then turned to Lovatt. "What do you say about this, Enoch?"

But Enoch Lovatt, self-trained to find safety in the middle, kept that neutral and diplomatic silence which invariably marked his demeanour in the presence of an argument.

"Now, Nan, you'll talk to James," said Mrs Lovatt, when they all stood at the front-door bidding good-night.

"Nay, I've nothing to do with it," Mrs Peake replied, as quickly as at dinner she might have set down a very hot plate. In some women profound affection exists side by side with a nervous dread lest that affection should seem to possess the least influence over its object.


II


Peake dismissed from his mind as grotesque the suggestion that he should contribute a hundred pounds to the organ fund; it revolted his sense of the fitness of things; the next morning he had entirely forgotten it. But two days afterwards, when he was finishing his midday dinner with a piece of Cheshire cheese, his wife said:

"James, have you thought anything more about that organ affair?" She gave a timid little laugh.

He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, holding a morsel of cheese on the end of his knife; then he ate the cheese in silence.

"Nan," he said at length, rather deliberately, "have they been trying to come round you? Because it won't work. Upon my soul I don't know what some people are dreaming of. I tell you I never was more surprised i' my life than when your sister made that suggestion. I'll give 'em a guinea towards their blooming organ if that's any use to 'em. Ella, go and see if the horse is ready."

"Yes, father."

He felt genuinely aggrieved.

"If they'd get a new organist," he remarked, with ferocious satire, five minutes later, as he lit a cigar, "and a new choir--I could see summat in that."

In another minute he was driving at a fine pace towards his colliery at Toft End. The horse, with swift instinct, had understood that to-day its master was not in the mood for badinage.

Half-way down the hill into Shawport he overtook a lady walking very slowly.

"Mrs Sutton!" he shouted in astonishment, and when he had finished with the tense frown which involuntarily accompanied the effort of stopping the horse dead within its own length, his face softened into a beautiful smile. "How's this?" he questioned.

"Our mare's gone lame," Mrs Sutton answered, "and as I'm bound to get about I'm bound to walk."

He descended instantly from the dogcart. "Climb up," he said, "and tell me where you want to go to."

"Nay, nay."

"Climb up," he repeated, and he helped her into the dogcart.

"Well," she said, laughing, "what must be, must. I was trudging home, and I hope it isn't out of your way."

"It isn't," he said; "I'm for Toft End, and I should have driven up Trafalgar Road anyhow."

Mrs Sutton was one of James Peake's ideals. He worshipped this small frail woman of fifty-five, whose soft eyes were the mirror of as candid a soul as was ever prisoned in Staffordshire clay. More than forty years ago he had gone to school with her, and the remembrance of having kissed the pale girl when she was crying over a broken slate was still vivid in his mind. For nearly half a century she had remained to him exactly that same ethereal girl. The sole thing about her that puzzled him was that she should have found anything attractive in the man whom she allowed to marry her--Alderman Sutton. In all else he regarded her as an angel. And to many another, besides James Peake, it seemed that Sarah Sutton wore robes of light. She was a creature born to be the succour of misery, the balm of distress. She would have soothed the two thieves on Calvary. Led on by the bounteous instinct of a divine, all-embracing sympathy, the intrepid spirit within her continually forced its fragile physical mechanism into an activity which appeared almost supernatural. According to every rule of medicine she should have been dead long since; but she lived--by volition. It was to the credit of Bursley that the whole town recognized in Sarah Sutton the treasure it held.

"I wanted to see you," Mrs Sutton said, after they had exchanged various inquiries.

"What about?"

"Mrs Lovatt was telling me yesterday you hadn't made up your mind about that organ subscription." They were ascending the steepest part of Oldcastle Street, and Peake lowered the reins and let the horse into a walk.

"Now look here, Mrs Sutton," he began, with passionate frankness, "I can talk to you. You know me; you know I'm not one of their set, as it were. Of course I've got a pew and all that; but you know as well as I do that I don't belong to the chapel lot. Why should they ask me? Why should they come to me? Why should I give all that sum?"

"Why?" she repeated the word, smiling. "You're a generous man; you've felt the pleasure of giving. I always think of you as one of the most generous men in the town. I'm sure you've often realized what a really splendid thing it is to be able to give. D'you know, it comes over me sometimes like a perfect shock that if I couldn't give--something, do--something, I shouldn't be able to live; I would be obliged to go to bed and die right off."

"Ah!" he murmured, and then paused. "We aren't all like you, Mrs Sutton. I wish to God we were. But seriously, I'm not for giving that hundred; it's against my grain, and that's flat--you'll excuse me speaking plain."

"I like it," she said quickly. "Then I know where I am."

"No," he reiterated firmly, "I'm not for giving that hundred."

"Then I'm bound to say I'm sorry," she returned kindly. "The whole scheme will be ruined, for it's one of those schemes that can only be carried out in a particular way--if they aren't done on the inspiration of the moment they're not done at all. Not that I care so much for the organ itself. It's the idea that was so grand. Fancy--nine hundred pounds all in a minute; such a thing was never known in Bursley Chapel before!"

"Well," said Peake, "I guess when it comes to the pinch they'll find someone else instead of me."

"They won't; there isn't another man who could afford it and trade so bad."

Peake was silent; but he was inflexible. Not even Mrs Sutton could make the suggestion of this subscription seem other than grossly unfair to him, an imposition on his good-nature.

"Think it over," she said abruptly, after he had assisted her to alight at the top of Trafalgar Road. "Think it over, to oblige me."

"I'd do anything to oblige you," he replied. "But I'll tell you this"--he put his mouth to her ear and whispered, half-smiling at the confession. "You call me a generous man, but whenever that organ's mentioned I feel just like a miser--yes, as hard as a miser. Good-bye! I'm