WHY THE CLOCK STOPPED
I
Mr Morfe and Mary Morfe, his sister, were sitting on either side of their drawing-room fire, on a Friday evening in November, when they heard a ring at the front door. They both started, and showed symptoms of nervous disturbance. They both said aloud that no doubt it was a parcel or something of the kind that had rung at the front door. And they both bent their eyes again on the respective books which they were reading. Then they heard voices in the lobby—the servant's voice and another voice—and a movement of steps over the encaustic tiles towards the door of the drawing-room. And Miss Morfe ejaculated:
"Really!"
As though she was unwilling to believe that somebody on the other side of that drawing-room door contemplated committing a social outrage, she nevertheless began to fear the possibility.
In the ordinary course it is not considered outrageous to enter a drawing-room—even at nine o'clock at night—with the permission and encouragement of the servant in charge of portals. But the case of the Morfes was peculiar. Mr Morfe was a bachelor aged forty-two, and looked older. Mary Morfe was a spinster aged thirty-eight, and looked thirty-seven. Brother and sister had kept house together for twenty years. They were passionately and profoundly attached to each other—and did not know it. They grumbled at each other freely, and practised no more conversation, when they were alone, than the necessities of existence demanded (even at meals they generally read), but still their mutual affection was tremendous. Moreover, they were very firmly fixed in their habits. Now one of these habits was never to entertain company on Friday night. Friday night was their night of solemn privacy. The explanation of this habit offers a proof of the sentimental relations between them.
Mr Morfe was an accountant. Indeed, he was the accountant in Bursley, and perhaps he knew more secrets of the ledgers of the principal earthenware manufacturers than some of the manufacturers did themselves. But he did not live for accountancy. At five o'clock every evening he was capable of absolutely forgetting it. He lived for music. He was organist of Saint Luke's Church (with an industrious understudy—for he did not always rise for breakfast on Sundays) and, more important, he was conductor of the Bursley Orpheus Glee and Madrigal Club. And herein lay the origin of those Friday nights. A glee and madrigal club naturally comprises women as well as men; and the women are apt to be youngish, prettyish, and somewhat fond of music. Further, the conductorship of a choir involves many and various social encounters. Now Mary Morfe was jealous. Though Richard Morfe ruled his choir with whips, though his satiric tongue was a scorpion to the choir, though he never looked twice at any woman, though she was always saying that she wished he would marry, Mary Morfe was jealous. It was Mary Morfe who had created the institution of the Friday night, and she had created it in order to prove, symbolically and spectacularly, to herself, to him, and to the world, that he and she lived for each other alone. All their friends, every member of the choir, in fact the whole of the respectable part of barsley, knew quite well that in the Morfes' house Friday was sacredly Friday.
And yet a caller!
"It's a woman," murmured Mary. Until her ear had assured her of this fact she had seemed to be more disturbed than startled by the stir in the lobby.
And it was a woman. It was Miss Eva Harracles, one of the principal contraltos in the glee and madrigal club. She entered richly blushing, and excusably a little nervous and awkward. She was a tall, agreeable creature of fewer than thirty years, dark, almost handsome, with fine lips and eyes, and an effective large hat and a good muff. In every physical way a marked contrast to the thin, prim, desiccated brother and sister.
Richard Morfe flushed faintly. Mary Morfe grew more pallid.
"I really must apologize for coming in like this," said Eva, as she shook hands cordially with Mary Morfe. She knew Mary very well indeed. For Mary was the "librarian" of the glee and madrigal club; Mary never missed a rehearsal, though she cared no more for music than she cared for the National Debt. She was a perfect librarian, and very good at unofficially prodding indolent members into a more regular attendance too.
"Not at all!" said Mary. "We were only reading; you aren't disturbing us in the least." Which, though polite, was a lie.
And Eva Harracles sat down between them. And brother and sister abandoned their literature.
"I can't stop," said she, glancing at the clock immediately in front of her eyes. "I must catch the last car for Silverhays."
"You've got twenty minutes yet," said Mr Morfe.
"Because," said Eva, "I don't want that walk from Turnhill to Silverhays on a dark night like this."
"No, I should think not, indeed!" said Mary Morfe.
"You've got a full twenty minutes," Mr Morfe repeated. The clock showed three minutes past nine.
The electric cars to and from the town of Turnhill were rumbling past the very door of the Morfes every five minutes, and would continue to do so till midnight. But Silverhays is a mining village a couple of miles beyond Turnhill, and the service between Turnhill and Silverhays ceases before ten o'clock. Eva's father was a colliery manager who lived on the outskirts of Silverhays.
"I've got a piece of news," said Eva.
"Yes?" said Mary Morfe
Mr Morfe was taciturn. He stooped to nourish the fire.
"About Mr Loggerheads," said Eva, and stared straight at Mary Morfe.
"About Mr Loggerheads!" Mary Morfe echoed, and stared back at Eva. And the atmosphere seemed to have been thrown into a strange pulsation.
Here perhaps I ought to explain that it was not the peculiarity of Mr Loggerheads' name that produced the odd effect. Loggerheads is a local term for a harmless plant called the knapweed (centaurea nigra), and it is also the appellation of a place and of quite excellent people, and no one regards it as even the least bit odd.
"I'm told," said Eva, "that he's going into the Hanbridge Choir!"
Mr Loggerheads was the principal tenor of the Bursley Glee and Madrigal Club. And he was reckoned one of the finest "after-dinner tenors" in the Five Towns. The Hanbridge Choir was a rival organization, a vast and powerful affair that fascinated and swallowed promising singers from all the choirs of the vicinity. The Hanbridge Choir had sung at Windsor, and since that event there had been no holding it. All other choirs hated it with a homicidal hatred.
"I'm told," Eva proceeded, "that the Birmingham and Sheffield Bank will promote him to the cashiership of the Hanbridge Branch on the understanding that he joins the Hanbridge Choir. Shows what influence they have! And it shows how badly the Hanbridge Choir wants him."
(Mr Loggerheads was cashier of the Bursley branch of the Birmingham and Sheffield Bank.)
"Who told you?" asked Mary Morfe, curtly.
Richard Morfe said nothing. The machinations of the manager of the Hanbridge Choir always depressed and disgusted him into silence.
"Oh!" said Eva Harracles. "It's all about." (By which she meant that it was in the air.) "Everyone's talking of it."
"And do they say Mr Loggerheads has accepted?" Mary demanded.
"Yes," said Eva.
"Well," said Mary, "it's not true!... A mistake!" she added.
"How do you know it isn't true?" Mr Morfe inquired doubtfully.
"Since you're so curious," said Mary, defiantly, "Mr Loggerheads told me himself."
"When?"
"The other day."
"You never said anything to me," protested Mr Morfe.
"It didn't occur to me," Mary replied.
"Well, I'm very glad!" remarked Eva Harracles. "But I thought I ought to let you know at once what was being said."
Mary Morfe's expression conveyed the fact that in her opinion Eva Harracles' evening call was a vain thing, too lightly undertaken, and conceivably lacking in the nicest discretion. Whereupon Mr Morfe was evidently struck by the advisability of completely changing the subject. And he did change it. He began to talk about certain difficulties in the choral parts of Havergal Brian's Vision of Cleopatra, a work which he meant the Bursley Glee and Madrigal Club to perform though it should perish in the attempt. Growing excited, in his dry way, concerning the merits of this composition, he rose from his easy chair and went to search for it. Before doing so he looked at the clock, which indicated twenty minutes past nine.
"Am I all right for time?" asked Eva.
"Yes, you're all right," said he. "If you go when that clock strikes half-past, and take the next car down, you'll make the connection easily at Turnhill. I'll put you into the car."
"Oh, thanks!" said Eva.
Mr Morfe kept his modern choral music beneath a broad seat under the bow window. The music was concealed by a low curtain that ran on a rod—the ingenious device of Mary. He stooped down to find the Vision of Cleopatra, and at first he could not find it. Mary walked towards that end of the drawing-room with a vague notion of helping him, and then Eva did the same, and then Mary walked back, and then Mr Morfe happily put his hand on the Vision of Cleopatra.
He opened the score for Eva's inspection, and began to hum passages and to point out others, and Eva also began to hum, and they hummed in concert, at intervals exclaiming against the wantonness with which Havergal Brian had invented difficulties. Eva glanced at the clock.
"You're all right," Mr Morfe assured her somewhat impatiently. And he, too, glanced at the clock: "You've still nearly ten minutes."
And proceeded with his critical and explanatory comments on the Vision of Cleopatra.
He was capable of becoming almost delirious about music. Mary Morfe had seated herself in silence.
At last Eva and Mr Morfe approached the fire and the mantelpiece again. Mr Morfe shut up the score, dismissed his delirium, and looked at the clock, quite prepared to see it pointing to twenty-nine and a half minutes past nine. Instead, the clock pointed to only twenty-two minutes past nine.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed. He went nearer.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed again rather more loudly. "I do believe that clock's stopped!"
It had. The pendulum hung perpendicular, motionless, dead.
He was astounded. For the clock had never been known to stop. It was a presentation clock, of the highest guaranteed quality, offered to him as a small token of regard and esteem by the members of the Bursley Orpheus Glee and Madrigal Club to celebrate the twelfth anniversary of his felicitous connection with the said society. It had stood on his mantelpiece for four years and had earned an absolutely first-class reputation for itself. He wound it up on the last day of every month, for it was a thirty-odd day clock, specially made by a famous local expert; and he had not known it to vary more than ten minutes a month at the most. And lo! it had stopped in the very middle of the month.
"Did you wind it up last time?" asked Mary.
"Of course," he snapped. He had taken out his watch and was gazing at it. He turned to Eva. "It's twenty to ten," he said. "You've missed your connection at Turnhill—that's a certainty. I'm very sorry."
Obviously there was only one course open to a gallant man whose clock was to blame: namely, to accompany Eva Harracles to Turnhill by car, to accompany her on foot to Silverhays, then to walk back to Turnhill and come home again by car. A young woman could not be expected to perform that bleak and perhaps dangerous journey from Turnhill to Silverhays alone after ten o'clock at night in November. Such was the clear course. But he dared scarcely suggest it. He dared scarcely suggest it because of his sister. He was afraid of Mary. The names of Richard Morfe and Eva Harracles had already been coupled in the mouth of gossip. And naturally Eva Harracles herself could not suggest that Richard should sally out and leave his sister alone on this night specially devoted to sisterliness and brotherliness. And of course, Eva thought, Mary will never, never suggest it.
But Eva was wrong there.
To the amazement of both Richard and Eva, Mary calmly said:
"Well, Dick, the least you can do now is to see Miss Harracles home. You'll easily be able to catch the last car back from Turnhill if you start at once. I daresay I shall go to bed."
And in three minutes Richard Morfe and Eva Harracles were being sped into the night by Mary Morfe.
The Morfes' house was at the corner of Trafalgar Road and Beech Street. The cars stopped at that corner in their wild course towards the town and towards Turnhill. A car was just coming. But instead of waiting for it Richard Morfe and Eva Harracles deliberately turned their backs on Trafalgar Road, and hurried side by side down Beech Street. Beech Street is a short street, and ends in a nondescript unlighted waste patch of ground. They arrived in the gloom of this patch, safe from all human inquisitiveness, and then Richard Morfe warmly kissed Eva Harracles in the mathematical centre of those lips of hers. And Eva Harracles showed no resentment of any kind, nor even shame. Yet she had been very carefully brought up. The sight would have interested Bursley immensely; it would have appealed strongly to Bursley's strong sense of the piquant.... That dry old stick Dick Morfe kissing one of his contraltos in the dark at the bottom end of Beech Street.
"Then you hadn't told her!" murmured Eva Harracles.
"No!" said Richard, with a slight hesitation. "I was just going to begin to tell her when you called."
Another woman might have pouted to learn that her lover had exhibited even a little cowardice in informing his family that he was engaged to be married. But Eva did not pout. She comprehended the situation, and the psychology of the relations between brothers and sisters. (She herself possessed both brothers and sisters.) All the courting had been singularly secret and odd.
"I shall tell her to-morrow morning at breakfast," said Richard, firmly. "Unless, after all, she isn't gone to bed when I get back."
By a common impulse they now returned towards Trafalgar Road.
"I say," said Richard, "what made you call?"
"I was passing," said the beloved. "And somehow I couldn't help it. Of course, I knew it wasn't true about Mr Loggerheads. But I had to think of something."
Richard was in ecstasy; had never been in such ecstasy.
"I say," he said again. "I suppose you didn't put your finger against the pendulum of that clock?"
"Oh, no!" she replied with emphasis.
"Well, I'm jolly glad it did stop, anyway," said Richard. "What a lark, eh?"
She agreed that the lark was ideal. They walked down the road till a car should overtake them.
"Do you think she suspects anything?" Eva asked.
"I'll swear she doesn't," said Richard, positively. "It'll be a bit of a startler for the old girl."
"No doubt you've heard," said Eva, haltingly, "that Mr Loggerheads has cast eyes on Mary."
"And do you think there's anything in that?" Richard questioned sharply.
"Well," she said, "I really don't know." Meaning that she decidedly thought that Mary had been encouraging advances from Mr Loggerheads.
"Well," said Richard, superiorly, "you may just take it from me that there's nothing in it at all.... Ha!" He laughed shortly. He knew Mary.
Then they got on a car, and tried to behave as though their being together was a mere accident, as though they had not become engaged to one another within the previous twenty-four hours.
II
Immediately after the departure of Richard Morfe and Eva Harracles, his betrothed, from the front door of the former, Mr Simon Loggerheads arrived at the same front door, and rang thereat, and was a little surprised, and also a little unnerved, when the door opened instantly, as if by magic. Mr Simon Loggerheads said to himself, as he saw the door move on its hinges, that Miss Morfe must have discovered a treasure of a servant who, when she had nothing else to do, spent her time on the inner door-mat waiting to admit possible visitors—even on Friday night. Nevertheless, Mr Simon Loggerheads regretted that prompt opening, as one regrets the prompt opening of the door of a dentist.
And it was no servant who stood in front of him, under the flickering beam of the lobby-lamp. It was Mary Morfe herself. The simple explanation was that she had just sped her brother and Eva Harracles, and had remained in the lobby for the purpose of ascertaining by means of her finger whether the servant had, as usual, forgotten to dust the tops of the picture-frames.
"Oh!" said Mr Loggerheads, when he saw Mary Morfe. For the cashier of the Bursley branch of the Birmingham and Sheffield Bank it was not a very able speech, but it was all he could accomplish.
And Miss Mary Morfe said:
"Oh!"
She was thirty-eight, and he was quite that (for the Bank mentioned does not elevate its men to the august situation of cashier under less than twenty years' service), and yet they neither of them had enough worldliness to behave in a reasonable manner. Then Miss Morfe, to whom it did at last occur that something must be done, produced an invitation:
"Do come in!" And she added, "Richard has just gone out."
"Oh!" commented Mr Simon Loggerheads again. (After all, it must be admitted that tenors as a class have never been noted for their conversational powers.) But he was obviously more at ease, and he went in, and Mary Morfe shut the door. At this very instant her brother and Eva were in secret converse at the back end of Beech Street.
"Do take your coat off!" Mary suggested to Simon. Simultaneously the servant appeared at the kitchen extremity of the lobby, and Mary thrust her out of sight again with the cold words: "It's all right, Susan."
Mr Loggerheads took his coat off, and Mary Morfe watched him as he did so.
He made a pretty figure. He was something of a dandy. The lapels of the overcoat would have showed that, not to mention the correctly severe necktie. All his clothes, in fact, had "cut and style," even to his boots. In the Five Towns many a young man is a dandy down to the edge of his trousers, but not down to the ground. Mr Loggerheads looked a young man. The tranquillity of his career and the quietude of his tastes had preserved his youthfulness. And, further, he had the air of a successful, solid, much-respected individual. To be a cashier, though worthy, is not to be a nabob, but a bachelor can save a lot out of over twenty years of regular salary. And Mr Loggerheads had saved quite a lot. And he had had opportunities of advantageously investing his savings. Then everybody knew him, and he knew everybody. He handed out gold at least once a week to nearly half the town, and you cannot help venerating a man who makes a practice of handing out gold to you. And he had thrilled thousands with the wistful beauty of his voice in "The Sands of Dee." In a word, Simon Loggerheads was a personage, if not talkative.
They went into the drawing-room. Mary Morfe closed the door gently. Simon Loggerheads strolled vaguely and self-consciously up to the fireplace, murmuring:
"So he's gone out?"
"Yes," said Mary Morfe, in confirmation of her first statement.
"I'm sorry!" said Simon Loggerheads. A statement which was absolutely contrary to the truth. Simon Loggerheads was deeply relieved and glad that Richard Morfe was out.
The pair, aged slightly under and slightly over forty, seemed to hover for a fraction of a second uncertainly near each other, and then, somehow, mysteriously, Simon Loggerheads had kissed Mary Morfe. She blushed. He blushed. The kiss was repeated. Mary gazed up at him. Mary could scarcely believe that he was hers. She could scarcely believe that on the previous evening he had proposed marriage to her—rather suddenly, so it seemed to her, but delightfully. She could comprehend his conduct no better than her own. They two, staid, settled-down, both of them "old maids," falling in love and behaving like lunatics! Mary, a year ago, would have been ready to prophesy that if ever Simon Loggerheads—at his age!—did marry, he would assuredly marry something young, something ingenuous, something cream-and-rose, and probably something with rich parents. For twenty years Simon Loggerheads had been marked down for capture by the marriageable spinsters and widows, and the mothers with daughters, of Bursley. And he had evaded capture, despite the special temptations to which an after-dinner tenor is necessarily subject. And now Mary Morfe had caught him—caught him, moreover, without having had the slightest intention of catching him. She was one of the most spinsterish spinsters in the Five Towns; and she had often said things about men and marriage of which the recollection now, as an affianced woman, was very disturbing to her. However, she did not care. She did not understand how Simon Loggerheads had had the wit to perceive that she would be an ideal wife. And she did not care. She did not understand how, as a result of Simon Loggerheads falling in love with her, she had fallen in love with him. And she did not care. She did not care a fig for anything. She was in love with him, and he with her, and she was idiotically joyous, and so was he. And that was all.
On reflection, I have to admit that she did in fact care for one thing. That one thing was the look on her brother's face when he should learn that she, the faithful sardonic sister, having incomprehensibly become indispensable and all in all to a bank cashier, meant to desert him. She was afraid of that look. She trembled at the fore-vision of it.
Still, Richard had to be informed, and the world had to be informed, for the silken dalliance between Mary and Simon had been conducted with a discretion and a secrecy more than characteristic of their age and dispositions. It had been arranged between the lovers that Simon should call on that Friday evening, when he would be sure to catch Richard in his easy chair, and should, in presence of Mary, bluntly communicate to Richard the blunt fact.
"What's he gone out for? Anything special?" asked Simon.
Mary explained the circumstances.
"The truth is," she finished, "that girl is just throwing herself at Dick's head. There's no doubt of it. I never saw such work!"
"Well," said Simon Loggerheads, "of course, you know, there's been a certain amount of talk about them. Some folks say that your brother—er—began—"
"And do you believe that?" demanded Mary.
"I don't know," said Simon. By which he meant diplomatically to convey that he had had a narrow escape of believing it, at any rate.
"Well," said Mary, with conviction, "you may take it from me that it isn't so. I know Dick. Eva Harracles may throw herself at his head till there's no breath left in her body, and it'll make no difference to Dick. Do you see Dick a married man? I don't. I only wish he would take it into his head to get married. It would make me much easier in my mind. But all the same I do think it's downright wicked that a girl should fling herself at him, right at him. Fancy her calling to-night! It's the sort of thing that oughtn't to be encouraged."
"But I understood you to say that you yourself had told him to see her home," Simon Loggerheads put in. "Isn't that encouraging her, as it were?"
"Ah!" said Mary, with a smile. "I only suggested it to him because it came over me all of a sudden how nice it would be to have you here all alone! He can't be back much before twelve."
To such a remark there is but one response. A sofa is, after all, made for two people, and the chance of the servant calling on them was small.
"And so the clock stopped!" observed Simon Loggerheads.
"Yes," said Mary. "If it hadn't been for the sheer accident of that clock stopping, we shouldn't be sitting here on this sofa now, and Dick would be in that chair, and you would just be beginning to tell him that we are engaged." She sighed. "Poor Dick! What on earth will he do?"
"Strange how things happen!" Simon reflected in a low voice. "But I'm really surprised at that clock stopping like that. It's a clock that you ought to be able to depend on, that clock is."
He got up to inspect the timepiece. He knew all about the clock, because he had been chairman of the presentation committee which had gone to Manchester to buy it.
"Why!" he murmured, after he had toyed a little with the pendulum, "it goes all right. Its tick is as right as rain."
"How odd!" responded Mary.
Simon Loggerheads set the clock by his own impeccable watch, and then sat down again. And he drew something from his waistcoat pocket and slid it on to Mary's finger.
Mary regarded her finger in silent ecstasy, and then breathed "How lovely!"—not meaning her finger.
"Shall I stay till he comes back?" asked Simon.
"If I were you I shouldn't do that," said Mary. "But you can safely stay till eleven-thirty. Then I shall go to bed. He'll be tired and short [curt] when he gets back. I'll tell him myself to-morrow morning at breakfast. And you might come to-morrow afternoon early, for tea."
Simon did stay till half-past eleven. He left precisely when the clock, now convalescent, struck the half-hour. At the door Mary said to him:
"I won't have any secrets from you, Simon. It was I who stopped that clock. I stopped it while they were bending down looking for music. I wanted to be as sure as I could of a good excuse for me suggesting that he ought to take her home. I just wanted to get him out of the house."
"But why?" asked Simon.
"I must leave that to you to guess," said Mary, with a hint of tartness, but smiling.
Loggerheads and Richard Morfe met in Trafalgar Road.
"Good-night, Morfe."
"'night, Loggerheads!"
And each passed on, without having stopped.
You can picture for yourself the breakfast of the brother and sister.
HOT POTATOES
I
It was considered by certain people to be a dramatic moment in the history of musical enterprise in the Five Towns when Mrs Swann opened the front door of her house at Bleakridge, in the early darkness of a November evening, and let forth her son Gilbert. Gilbert's age was nineteen, and he was wearing evening dress, a form of raiment that had not hitherto happened to him. Over the elegant suit was his winter overcoat, making him bulky, and round what may be called the rim of the overcoat was a white woollen scarf, and the sleeves of the overcoat were finished off with white woollen gloves. Under one arm he carried a vast inanimate form whose extremity just escaped the ground. This form was his violoncello, fragile as a pretty woman, ungainly as a navvy, and precious as honour. Mrs Swann looked down the street, which ended to the east in darkness and a marl pit, and up the street, which ended to the west in Trafalgar Road and electric cars; and she shivered, though she had a shawl over her independent little shoulders. In the Five Towns, and probably elsewhere, when a woman puts her head out of her front door, she always looks first to right and then to left, like a scouting Iroquois, and if the air nips she shivers—not because she is cold, but merely to express herself.
"For goodness sake, keep your hands warm," Mrs Swann enjoined her son.
"Oh!" said Gilbert, with scornful lightness, as though his playing had never suffered from cold hands, "it's quite warm to-night!" Which it was not.
"And mind what you eat!" added his mother. "There! I can hear the car."
He hurried up the street. The electric tram slid in thunder down Trafalgar Road, and stopped for him with a jar, and he gingerly climbed into it, practising all precautions on behalf of his violoncello. The car slid away again towards Bursley, making blue sparks. Mrs Swann stared mechanically at the flickering gas in her lobby, and then closed her front door. He was gone! The boy was gone!
Now, the people who considered the boy's departure to be a dramatic moment in the history of musical enterprise in the Five Towns were Mrs Swann, chiefly, and the boy, secondarily.
II
And more than the moment—the day, nay, the whole week—was dramatic in the history of local musical enterprise.
It had occurred to somebody in Hanbridge, about a year before, that since York, Norwich, Hereford, Gloucester, Birmingham, and even Blackpool had their musical festivals, the Five Towns, too, ought to have its musical festival. The Five Towns possessed a larger population than any of these centres save Birmingham, and it was notorious for its love of music. Choirs from the Five Towns had gone to all sorts of places—such as Brecknock, Aberystwyth, the Crystal Palace, and even a place called Hull—and had come back with first prizes—cups and banners—for the singing of choruses and part-songs. There were three (or at least two and a half) rival choirs in Hanbridge alone. Then also the brass band contests were famously attended. In the Five Towns the number of cornet players is scarcely exceeded by the number of public-houses. Hence the feeling, born and fanned into lustiness at Hanbridge, that the Five Towns owed it to its self-respect to have a Musical Festival like the rest of the world! Men who had never heard of Wagner, men who could not have told the difference between a sonata and a sonnet to save their souls, men who spent all their lives in manufacturing tea-cups or china door-knobs, were invited to guarantee five pounds a-piece against possible loss on the festival; and they bravely and blindly did so. The conductor of the largest Hanbridge choir, being appointed to conduct the preliminary rehearsals of the Festival Chorus, had an acute attack of self-importance, which, by the way, almost ended fatally a year later.
Double-crown posters appeared magically on all the hoardings announcing that a Festival consisting of three evening and two morning concerts would be held in the Alexandra Hall, at Hanbridge, on the 6th, 7th and 8th November, and that the box-plan could be consulted at the principal stationers. The Alexandra Hall contained no boxes whatever, but "box-plan" was the phrase sacred to the occasion, and had to be used. And the Festival more and more impregnated the air, and took the lion's share of the columns of the Staffordshire Signal. Every few days the Signal reported progress, even to intimate biographical details of the singers engaged, and of the composers to be performed, together with analyses of the latter's works. And at last the week itself had dawned in exhilaration and excitement. And early on the day before the opening day John Merazzi, the renowned conductor, and Herbert Millwain, the renowned leader of the orchestra, and the renowned orchestra itself, all arrived from London. And finally sundry musical critics arrived from the offices of sundry London dailies. The presence of these latter convinced an awed population that its Festival was a real Festival, and not a local make-believe. And it also tranquillized in some degree the exasperating and disconcerting effect of a telegram from the capricious Countess of Chell (who had taken six balcony seats and was the official advertised high patroness of the Festival) announcing at the last moment that she could not attend.
III
Mrs Swann's justification for considering (as she in fact did consider) that her son was either the base or the apex of the splendid pyramid of the Festival lay in the following facts:—
From earliest infancy Gilbert had been a musical prodigy, and the circle of his fame had constantly been extending. He could play the piano with his hands before his legs were long enough for him to play it with his feet. That is to say, before he could use the pedals. A spectacle formerly familiar to the delighted friends of the Swanns was Gilbert, in a pinafore and curls, seated on a high chair topped with a large Bible and a bound volume of the Graphic, playing "Home Sweet Home" with Thalberg's variations, while his mother, standing by his side on her right foot, put the loud pedal on or off with her left foot according to the infant's whispered orders. He had been allowed to play from ear—playing from ear being deemed especially marvellous—until some expert told Mrs Swann that playing solely from ear was a practice to be avoided if she wished her son to fulfil the promise of his babyhood. Then he had lessons at Knype, until he began to teach his teacher. Then he said he would learn the fiddle, and he did learn the fiddle; also the viola. He did not pretend to play the flute, though he could. And at school the other boys would bring him their penny or even sixpenny whistles so that he might show them of what wonderful feats a common tin whistle is capable.
Mr Swann was secretary for the Toft End Brickworks and Colliery Company (Limited). Mr Swann had passed the whole of his career in the offices of the prosperous Toft End Company, and his imagination did not move freely beyond the company's premises. He had certainly intended that Gilbert should follow in his steps; perhaps he meant to establish a dynasty of Swanns, in which the secretaryship of the twenty per cent. paying company should descend for ever from father to son. But Gilbert's astounding facility in music had shaken even this resolve, and Gilbert had been allowed at the age of fifteen to enter, as assistant, the shop of Mr James Otkinson, the piano and musical instrument dealer and musicseller, in Crown Square, Hanbridge. Here, of course, he found himself in a musical atmosphere. Here he had at once established a reputation for showing off the merits of a piano, a song, or a waltz, to customers male and female. Here he had thirty pianos, seven harmoniums, and all the new and a lot of classical music to experiment with. He would play any "piece" at sight for the benefit of any lady in search of a nice easy waltz or reverie. Unfortunately ladies would complain that the pieces proved much more difficult at home than they had seemed under the fingers of Gilbert in the shop. Here, too, he began to give lessons on the piano. And here he satisfied his secret ambition to learn the violoncello, Mr Otkinson having in stock a violoncello that had never found a proper customer. His progress with the 'cello had been such that the theatre people offered him an engagement, which his father and his own sense of the enormous respectability of the Swanns compelled him to refuse. But he always played in the band of the Five Towns Amateur Operatic Society, and was beloved by its conductor as being utterly reliable. His connection with choirs started through his merits as a rehearsal accompanist who could keep time and make his bass chords heard against a hundred and fifty voices. He had been appointed (nem. con.) rehearsal accompanist to the Festival Chorus. He knew the entire Festival music backwards and upside down. And his modestly-expressed desire to add his 'cello as one of the local reinforcements of the London orchestra had been almost eagerly complied with by the Advisory Committee.
Nor was this all. He had been invited to dinner by Mrs Clayton Vernon, the social leader of Bursley. In the affair of the Festival Mrs Clayton Vernon loomed larger than even she really was. And this was due to an accident, to a sheer bit of luck on her part. She happened to be a cousin of Mr Herbert Millwain, the leader of the orchestra down from London. Mrs Clayton Vernon knew no more about music than she knew about the North Pole, and cared no more. But she was Mr Millwain's cousin, and Mr Millwain had naturally to stay at her house. And she came in her carriage to fetch him from the band rehearsals; and, in short, anyone might have thought from her self-satisfied demeanour (though she was a decent sort of woman at heart) that she had at least composed "Judas Maccabeus." It was at a band rehearsal that she had graciously commanded Gilbert Swann to come and dine with her and Mr Millwain between the final rehearsal and the opening concert. This invitation was, as it were, the overflowing drop in Mrs Swann's cup. It was proof, to her, that Mr Millwain had instantly pronounced Gilbert to be the equal of London 'cellists, and perhaps their superior. It was proof, to her, that Mr Millwain relied on him particularly to maintain the honour of the band in the Festival.
Gilbert had dashed home from the final rehearsal, and his mother had helped him with the unfamiliarities of evening dress, while he gave her a list of all the places in the music where, as he said, the band was "rocky," and especially the 'cellos, and a further list of all the smart musical things that the players from London had said to him and he had said to them. He simply knew everything from the inside. And not even the great Merazzi, the conductor, was more familiar with the music than he. And the ineffable Mrs Clayton Vernon had asked him to dinner with Mr Millwain! It was indubitable to Mrs Swann that all the Festival rested on her son's shoulders.
IV
"It's freezing, I think," said Mr Swann, when he came home at six o'clock from his day's majestic work at Toft End. This was in the bedroom. Mrs Swann, a comely little thing of thirty-nine, was making herself resplendent for the inaugural solemnity of the Festival, which began at eight. The news of the frost disturbed her.
"How annoying!" she said.
"Annoying?" he questioned blandly. "Why?"
"Now you needn't put on any of your airs, John!" she snapped. She had a curt way with her at critical times. "You know as well as I do that I'm thinking of Gilbert's hands.... No! you must wear your frock-coat, of course!... All that drive from the other end of the town right to Hanbridge in a carriage! Perhaps outside the carriage, because of the 'cello! There'll never be room for two of them and the 'cello and Mrs Clayton Vernon in her carriage! And he can't keep his hands in his pockets because of holding the 'cello. And he's bound to pretend he isn't cold. He's so silly. And yet he knows perfectly well he won't do himself justice if his hands are cold. Don't you remember last year at the Town Hall?"
"Well," said Mr Swann, "we can't do anything; anyway, we must hope for the best."
"That's all very well," said Mrs Swann. And it was.
Shortly afterwards, perfect in most details of her black silk, she left the bedroom, requesting her husband to be quick, as tea was ready. And she came into the little dining-room where the youthful servant was poking up the fire.
"Jane," she said, "put two medium-sized potatoes in the oven to bake."
"Potatoes, mum?"
"Yes, potatoes," said Mrs Swann, tartly.
It was an idea of pure genius that had suddenly struck her; the genius of common sense.
She somewhat hurried the tea; then rang.
"Jane," she inquired, "are those potatoes ready?"
"Potatoes?" exclaimed Mr Swann.
"Yes, hot potatoes," said Mrs Swann, tartly. "I'm going to run up with them by car to Mrs Vernon's. I can slip them quietly over to Gil. They keep your hands warm better than anything. Don't I remember when I was a child! I shall leave Mrs Vernon's immediately, of course, but perhaps you'd better give me my ticket and I will meet you at the hall. Don't you think it's the best plan, John?"
"As you like," said Mr Swann, with the force of habit.
He was supreme in most things, but in the practical details of their son's life and comfort she was supreme. Her decision in such matters had never been questioned. Mr Swann had a profound belief in his wife as a uniquely capable and energetic woman. He was tremendously loyal to her, and he sternly inculcated the same loyalty to her in Gilbert.
V
Just as the car had stopped at the end of the street for Gilbert and his violoncello, so—more than an hour later—it stopped for Mrs Swann and her hot potatoes.
They were hot potatoes—nay, very hot potatoes—of a medium size, because Mrs Swann's recollections of youth had informed her that if a potato is too large one cannot get one's fingers well around it, and if it is too small it cools somewhat rapidly. She had taken two, not in the hope that Gilbert would be able to use two at once, for one cannot properly nurse either a baby or a 'cello with two hands full of potatoes, but rather to provide against accident. Besides, the inventive boy might after all find a way of using both simultaneously, which would be all the better for his playing at the concert, and hence all the better for the success of the Musical Festival.
It never occurred to Mrs Swann that she was doing anything in the least unusual. There she was, in her best boots, and her best dress, and her best hat, and her sealskin mantle (not easily to be surpassed in the town), and her muff to match (nearly), and concealed in the muff were the two very hot potatoes. And it did not strike her that women of fashion like herself, wives of secretaries of flourishing companies, do not commonly go about with hot potatoes concealed on their persons. For she was a self-confident woman, and after a decision she did not reflect, nor did she heed minor consequences. She was always sure that what she was doing was the right and the only thing to do. And, to give her justice, it was; for her direct, abrupt common sense was indeed remarkable. The act of climbing up into the car warned her that she must be skilful in the control of these potatoes; one of them nearly fell out of the right end of her muff as she grasped the car rail with her right hand. She had to let go and save the potato, and begin again, while the car waited. The conductor took her for one of those hesitating, hysterical women who are the bane of car conductors. "Now, missis!" he said. "Up with ye!" But she did not care what manner of woman the conductor took her for.
The car was nearly full of people going home from their work, of people actually going in a direction contrary to the direction of the Musical Festival. She sat down among them, shocked by this indifference to the Musical Festival. At the back of her head had been an idea that all the cars for Hanbridge would be crammed to the step, and all the cars from Hanbridge forlorn and empty. She had vaguely imagined that the thoughts of a quarter of a million of people would that evening be centred on the unique Musical Festival. And she was shocked also by the conversation—not that it was in the slightest degree improper—but because it displayed no interest whatever in the Musical Festival. And yet there were several Festival advertisements adhering to the roof of the car. Travellers were discussing football, soap, the weather, rates, trade; travellers were dozing; travellers were reading about starting prices; but not one seemed to be occupied with the Musical Festival. "Nevertheless," she reflected with consoling pride, "if they knew that our Gilbert was playing 'cello in the orchestra and dining at this very moment with Mr Millwain, some of them would be fine and surprised, that they would!" No one would ever have suspected, from her calm, careless, proud face, that such vain and two-penny thoughts were passing through her head. But the thoughts that do pass through the heads of even the most common-sensed philosophers, men and women, are truly astonishing.
In four minutes she was at Bursley Town Hall, where she changed into another car—full of people equally indifferent to the Musical Festival—for the suburb of Hillport, where Mrs Clayton Vernon lived.
"Put me out opposite Mrs Clayton Vernon's, will you?" she said to the conductor, and added, "you know the house?"
He nodded as if to say disdainfully in response to such a needless question: "Do I know the house? Do I know my pocket?"
As she left the car she did catch two men discussing the Festival, but they appeared to have no intention of attending it. They were earthenware manufacturers. One of them raised his hat to her. And she said to herself: "He at any rate knows how important my Gilbert is in the Festival!"
It was at the instant she pushed open Mrs Clayton Vernon's long and heavy garden gate, and crunched in the frosty darkness up the short winding drive, that the notion of the peculiarity of her errand first presented itself to her. Mrs Clayton Vernon was a relatively great lady, living in a relatively great house; one of the few exalted or peculiar ones who did not dine in the middle of the day like other folk. Mrs Clayton Vernon had the grand manner. Mrs Clayton Vernon instinctively and successfully patronized everybody. Mrs Clayton Vernon was a personage with whom people did not joke. And lo! Mrs Swann was about to invade her courtly and luxurious house, uninvited, unauthorized, with a couple of hot potatoes in her muff. What would Mrs Clayton Vernon think of hot potatoes in a muff? Of course, the Swanns were "as good as anybody." The Swanns knelt before nobody. The Swanns were of the cream of the town, combining commerce with art, and why should not Mrs Swann take practical measures to keep her son's hands warm in Mrs Clayton Vernon's cold carriage? Still, there was only one Mrs Clayton Vernon in Bursley, and it was impossible to deny that she inspired awe, even in the independent soul of Mrs Swann.
Mrs Swann rang the bell, reassuring herself. The next instant an electric light miraculously came into existence outside the door, illuminating her from head to foot. This startled her. But she said to herself that it must be the latest dodge, and that, at any rate, it was a very good dodge, and she began again the process of reassuring herself. The door opened, and a prim creature stiffly starched stood before Mrs Swann. "My word!" reflected Mrs Swann, "she must cost her mistress a pretty penny for getting up aprons!" And she said aloud curtly:
"Will you please tell Mr Gilbert Swann that someone wants to speak to him a minute at the door?"
"Yes," said the servant, with pert civility. "Will you please step in?"
She had not meant to step in. She had decidedly meant not to step in, for she had no wish to encounter Mrs Clayton Vernon; indeed, the reverse. But she immediately perceived that in asking to speak to a guest at the door she had socially erred. At Mrs Clayton Vernon's refined people did not speak to refined people at the door. So she stepped in, and the door was closed, prisoning her and her potatoes in the imposing hall.
"I only want to see Mr Gilbert Swann," she insisted.
"Yes," said the servant. "Will you please step into the breakfast-room? There's no one there. I will tell Mr Swann."