"I don't know," said Jock-at-a-Venture to the parsons, gesturing with his hands and twisting his small, elegant feet, "I don't know as I'm in favour of stopping these play-acting folk from making a living; stopping 'em by force, that is."
He knew that he had said something shocking, something that when he joined the group he had not in the least meant to say. He knew that instead of protecting himself he was exposing himself to danger. But he did not care. When, as now, he was carried away by an idea, he cared for naught. And, moreover, he had the consciousness of being cleverer, acuter, than any of these ministers of religion, than anybody in the town! His sheer skill and resourcefulness in life had always borne him safely through every difficulty—from a prize-fight to a soprano's embrace.
"A strange doctrine, Brother Smith!" said Jock's own pastor.
The other two hummed and hawed, and brought the tips of their fingers together.
"Nay!" said Jock, persuasively smiling. "'Stead o' bringing 'em to starvation, bring 'em to the House o' God! Preach the gospel to 'em, and then when ye've preached the gospel to 'em, happen they'll change their ways o' their own accord. Or happen they'll put their play-acting to the service o' God. If there's plays agen drink, why shouldna' there be plays agen the devil, andforJesus Christ, our Blessed Redeemer?"
"Good day to you, brethren," said one of the parsons, and departed. Thus only could he express his horror of Jock's sentiments.
In those days churches and chapels were not so empty that parsons had to go forth beating up congregations. A pew was a privilege. And those who did not frequent the means of grace had at any rate the grace to be ashamed of not doing so. And, further, strolling players, in spite of John Wesley's exhortations, were not considered salvable. The notion of trying to rescue them from merited perdition was too fantastic to be seriously entertained by serious Christians. Finally, the suggested connection between Jesus Christ and a stage-play was really too appalling! None but Jock-at-a-Venture would have been capable of such an idea.
"I think, my friend—" began the second remaining minister.
"Look at that good woman there!" cried Jock-at-a-Venture, interrupting him with a dramatic out-stretching of the right arm, as he pointed to a very stout but comely dame, who, seated on a three-legged stool, was calmly peeling potatoes in front of one of the more resplendent booths. "Look at that face! Is there no virtue in it? Is there no hope for salvation in it?"
"None," Jock's pastor replied mournfully. "That woman—her name is Clowes—is notorious. She has eight children, and she has brought them all up to her trade. I have made inquiries. The elder daughters are actresses and married to play-actors, and even the youngest child is taught to strut on the boards. Her troupe is the largest in the Midlands."
Jock-at-a-Venture was certainly dashed by this information.
"The more reason," said he, obstinately, "for saving her!... And all hers!"
The two ministers did not want her to be saved. They liked to think of the theatre as being beyond the pale. They remembered the time, before they were ordained, and after, when they had hotly desired to see the inside of a theatre and to rub shoulders with wickedness. And they took pleasure in the knowledge that the theatre was always there, and the wickedness thereof, and the lost souls therein. But Jock-at-a-Venture genuinely longed, in that ecstasy of his, for the total abolition of all forms of sin.
"And what would you do to save her, brother?" Jock's pastor inquired coldly.
"What would I do? I'd go and axe her to come to chapel Sunday, her and hers. I'd axe her kindly, and I'd crack a joke with her. And I'd get round her for the Lord's sake."
Both ministers sighed. The same thought was in their hearts, namely, that brands plucked from the burning (such as Jock) had a disagreeable tendency to carry piety, as they had carried sin, to the most ridiculous and inconvenient lengths.
"Those are bonny potatoes, missis!"
"Ay!" The stout woman, the upper part of whose shabby dress seemed to be subjected to considerable strains, looked at Jock carelessly, and then, attracted perhaps by his eager face, smiled with a certain facile amiability.
"But by th' time they're cooked your supper'll be late, I'm reckoning."
"Them potatoes have naught to do with our supper," said Mrs Clowes. "They're for to-morrow's dinner. There'll be no time for peeling potatoes to-morrow. Kezia!" She shrilled the name.
A slim little girl showed herself between the heavy curtains of the main tent of Mrs Clowes's caravanserai.
"Bring Sapphira, too!"
"Those yours?" asked Jock.
"They're mine," said Mrs Clowes. "And I've six more, not counting grandchildren and sons-in-law like."
"No wonder you want a pailful of potatoes!" said Jock.
Kezia and Sapphira appeared in the gloom. They might have counted sixteen years together. They were dirty, tousled, graceful and lovely.
"Twins," Jock suggested.
Mrs Clowes nodded. "Off with this pail, now! And mind you don't spill the water. Here, Kezia! Take the knife. And bring me the other pail."
The children bore away the heavy pail, staggering, eagerly obedient. Mrs Clowes lifted her mighty form from the stool, shook peelings from the secret places of her endless apron, and calmly sat down again.
"Ye rule 'em with a rod of iron, missis," said Jock.
She smiled good-humouredly and shrugged her vast shoulders—no mean physical feat.
"I keep 'em lively," she said. "There's twelve of 'em in my lot, without th' two babbies. Someone's got to be after 'em all the time."
"And you not thirty-five, I swear!"
"Nay! Ye're wrong."
Sapphira brought the other pail, swinging it. She put it down with a clatter of the falling handle and scurried off.
"Am I now?" Jock murmured, interested; and, as it were out of sheer absent-mindedness, he turned the pail wrong side up, and seated himself on it with a calm that equalled the calm of Mrs Clowes.
It was now nearly dark. The flares of the showmen were answering each other across the Fair-ground; and presently a young man came and hung one out above the railed platform of Mrs Clowes's booth; and Mrs Clowes blinked. From behind the booth floated the sounds of the confused chatter of men, girls and youngsters, together with the complaint of an infant. A few yards away from Mrs Clowes was a truss of hay; a pony sidled from somewhere with false innocence up to this truss, nosed it cautiously, and then began to bite wisps from it. Occasionally a loud but mysterious cry swept across the ground. The sky was full of mystery. Against the sky to the west stood black and clear the silhouette of the new Town Hall spire, a wondrous erection; and sticking out from it at one side was the form of a gigantic angel. It was the gold angel which, from the summit of the spire, has now watched over Bursley for half a century, but which on that particular Friday had been lifted only two-thirds of the way to its final home.
Jock-at-a-Venture felt deeply all the influences of the scene and of the woman. He was one of your romantic creatures; and for him the woman was magnificent. Her magnificence thrilled.
"And what are you going to say?" she quizzed him. "Sitting on my pail!"
Now to quiz Jock was to challenge him.
"Sitting on your pail, missis," he replied, "I'm going for to say that you're much too handsome a woman to go down to hell in eternal damnation."
She was taken aback, but her profession had taught her the art of quick recovery.
"You belong to that Methody lot," she mildly sneered. "I thought I seed you talking to them white-chokers."
"I do," said Jock.
"And I make no doubt you think yourself very clever."
"Well," he vouchsafed, "I can splice a rope, shave a head, cure a wart or a boil, and tell a fine woman with any man in this town. Not to mention boxing, as I've given up on account of my religion."
"Iwashandsome once," said Mrs Clowes, with apparent, but not real, inconsequence. "But I'm all run to fat, like. I've played Portia in my time. But now it's as much as I can do to get through with Maria Martin or Belladonna."
"Fat!" Jock protested. "Fat! I wouldn't have an ounce taken off ye for fifty guineas."
He was so enthusiastic that Mrs Clowes blushed.
"What's this about hell-fire?" she questioned. "I often think of it—I'm a lonely woman, and I often think of it."
"You lonely!" Jock protested again. "With all them childer?"
"Ay!"
There was a silence.
"See thee here, missis!" he exploded, jumping up from the pail. "Ye must come to th' Bethesda down yon, on Sunday morning, and hear the word o' God. It'll be the making on ye."
Mrs Clowes shook her head.
"Nay!"
"And bring yer children," he persisted.
"If it was you as was going to preach like!" she said, looking away.
"It is me as is going to preach," he answered loudly and proudly. "And I'll preach agen any man in this town for a dollar!"
Jock was forgetting himself: an accident which often happened to him.
The Bethesda was crowded on Sunday morning; partly because it was Martinmas Sunday, and partly because the preacher was Jock-at-a-Venture. That Jock should have been appointed on the "plan" [rota of preachers] to discourse in the principal local chapel of the Connexion at such an important feast showed what extraordinary progress he had already made in the appreciation of that small public of experts which aided the parson in drawing up the quarterly plan. At the hands of the larger public his reception was sure. Some sixteen hundred of the larger public had crammed themselves into the chapel, and there was not an empty place either on the ground floor or in the galleries. Even the "orchestra" (as the "singing-seat" was then called) had visitors in addition to the choir and the double-bass players. And not a window was open. At that date it had not occurred to people that fresh air was not a menace to existence. The whole congregation was sweltering, and rather enjoying it; for in some strangely subtle manner perspiration seemed to be a help to religious emotion. Scores of women were fanning themselves; and among these was a very stout peony-faced woman of about forty in a gorgeous yellow dress and a red-and-black bonnet, with a large boy and a small girl under one arm, and a large boy and a small girl under the other arm. The splendour of the group appeared somewhat at odds with the penury of the "Free Seats," whither it had been conducted by a steward.
In the pulpit, dominating all, was Jock-at-a-Venture, who sweated like the rest. He presented a rather noble aspect in his broadcloth, so different from his careless, shabby week-day attire. His eye was lighted; his arm raised in a compelling gesture. Pausing effectively, he lifted a glass with his left hand and sipped. It was the signal that he had arrived at his peroration. His perorations were famous. And this morning everybody felt, and he himself knew, that all previous perorations were to be surpassed. His subject was the wrath to come, and the transient quality of human life on earth. "Yea," he announced, in gradually-increasing thunder, "all shall go. And loike the baseless fabric o' a vision, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself—Yea, I say, all which it inherit shall dissolve, and, like this insubstantial payjent faded, leave not a rack behind."
His voice had fallen for the last words. After a dramatic silence, he finished, in a whisper almost, and with eyebrows raised and staring gaze directed straight at the vast woman in yellow: "We are such stuff as drames are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep. May God have mercy on us. Hymn 442."
The effect was terrific. Men sighed and women wept, in relief that the strain was past. Jock was an orator; he wielded the orator's dominion. Well he knew, and well they all knew, that not a professional preacher in the Five Towns could play on a congregation as he did. For when Jock was roused you could nigh see the waves of emotion sweeping across the upturned faces of his hearers like waves across a wheatfield on a windy day.
And this morning he had been roused.
But in the vestry after the service he met enemies, in the shape and flesh of the chapel-steward and the circuit-steward, Mr Brett and Mr Hanks respectively. Both these important officials were local preachers, but, unfortunately, their godliness did not protect them against the ravages of jealousy. Neither of them could stir a congregation, nor even fill a country chapel.
"Brother Smith," said Jabez Hanks, shutting the door of the vestry. He was a tall man with a long, greyish beard and no moustache. "Brother Smith, it is borne in upon me and my brother here to ask ye a question."
"Ask!" said Jock.
"Were them yer own words—about cloud-capped towers and baseless fabrics and the like? I ask ye civilly."
"And I answer ye civilly, they were," replied Jock.
"Because I have here," said Jabez Hanks, maliciously, "Dod'sBeauties o' Shakspere, where I find them very same words, taken from a stage-play calledThe Tempest."
Jock went a little pale as Jabez Hanks opened the book.
"They may be Shakspere's words too," said Jock, lightly.
"A fortnight ago, at Moorthorne Chapel, I suspected it," said Jabez.
"Suspected what?"
"Suspected ye o' quoting Shakspere in our pulpits."
"And cannot a man quote in a sermon? Why, Jabez Hanks, I've heard ye quote Matthew Henry by the fathom."
"Ye've never heard me quote a stage-play in a pulpit, Brother Smith," said Jabez Hanks, majestically. "And as long as I'm chapel-steward it wunna' be tolerated in this chapel."
"Wunna it?" Jock put in defiantly.
"It's a defiling of the Lord's temple; that's what it is!" Jabez Hanks continued. "Ye make out as ye're against stage-plays at the Fair, and yet ye come here and mouth 'em in a Christian pulpit.Youagen stage-plays! Weren't ye seen talking by the hour to one o' them trulls, Friday night—? And weren't ye seen peeping through th' canvas last night? And now—"
"Now what?" Jock inquired, approaching Jabez on his springy toes, and looking up at Jabez's great height.
Jabez took breath. "Now ye bring yer fancy women into the House o' God! You—a servant o' Christ, you—"
Jock-at-a-Venture interrupted the sentence with his daring fist, which seemed to lift Jabez from the ground by his chin, and then to let him fall in a heap, as though his clothes had been a sack containing loose bones.
"A good-day to ye, Brother Brett," said Jock, reaching for his hat, and departing with a slam of the vestry door.
He emerged at the back of the chapel and got by "back-entries" into Aboukir Street, up which he strolled with a fine show of tranquillity, as far as the corner of Trafalgar Road, where stood and stands the great Dragon Hotel. The congregations of several chapels were dispersing slowly round about this famous corner, and Jock had to salute several of his own audience. Then suddenly he saw Mrs Clowes and her four children enter the tap-room door of the Dragon.
He hesitated one second and followed the variegated flotilla and its convoy.
The tap-room was fairly full of both sexes. But among them Jock and Mrs Clowes and her children were the only persons who had been to church or chapel.
"Here's preacher, mother!" Kezia whispered, blushing, to Mrs Clowes.
"Eh," said Mrs Clowes, turning very amiably. "It's never you, mester! It was that hot in that chapel we're all on us dying of thirst.... Four gills and a pint, please!" (This to the tapster.)
"And give me a pint," said Jock, desperately.
They all sat down familiarly. That a mother should take her children into a public-house and give them beer, and on a Sunday of all days, and immediately after a sermon! That a local preacher should go direct from the vestry to the gin-palace and there drink ale with a strolling player! These phenomena were simply and totally inconceivable! And yet Jock was in presence of them, assisting at them, positively acting in them! And in spite of her enormities, Mrs Clowes still struck him as a most agreeable, decent, kindly, motherly woman—quite apart from her handsomeness. And her offspring, each hidden to the eyes behind a mug, were a very well-behaved lot of children.
"It does me good," said Mrs Clowes, quaffing. "And ye need summat to keep ye up in these days! We didBelphegorandThe Witchand a harlequinade last night. And not one of these children got to bed before half after midnight. But I was determined to have 'em at chapel this morning. And not sorry I am I went! Eh, mester, what a Virginius you'd ha' made! I never heard preaching like it—not as I've heard much!"
"And you'll never hear anything like it again, missis," said Jock, "for I've preached my last sermon."
"Nay, nay!" Mrs Clowes deprecated.
"I've preached my last sermon," said Jock again. "And if I've saved a soul wi' it, missis...!" He looked at her steadily and then drank.
"I won't say as ye haven't," said Mrs Clowes, lowering her eyes.
Rather less than a week later, on a darkening night, a van left the town of Bursley by the Moorthorne Road on its way to Axe-in-the-Moors, which is the metropolis of the wild wastes that cut off northern Staffordshire from Derbyshire. This van was the last of Mrs Clowes's caravanserai, and almost the last to leave the Fair. Owing to popular interest in the events of Jock-at-a-Venture's public career, in whose meshes Mrs Clowes had somehow got caught, the booth of Mrs Clowes had succeeded beyond any other booth, and had kept open longer and burned more naphtha and taken far more money. The other vans of the stout lady's enterprise (there were three in all) had gone forward in advance, with all her elder children and her children-in-law and her grandchildren, and the heavy wood and canvas of the booth. Mrs Clowes, transacting her own business herself, from habit, invariably brought up the rear of her procession out of a town; and sometimes her leisurely manner of settling with the town authorities for water, ground-space and other necessary com-modities, left her several miles behind her tribe.
The mistress's van, though it would not compare with the glorious vehicles that showmen put upon the road in these days, was a roomy and dignified specimen, and about as good as money could then buy. The front portion consisted of a parlour and kitchen combined, and at the back was a dormitory. In the dormitory Kezia, Sapphira and the youngest of their brothers were sleeping hard. In the parlour and kitchen sat Mrs Clowes, warmly enveloped, holding the reins with her right hand and a shabby, paper-covered book in her left hand. The book was the celebrated play,The Gamester, and Mrs Clowes was studying therein the rôle of Dulcibel. Not a rôle for which Mrs Clowes was physically fitted; but her prolific daughter, Hephzibah, to whom it appertained by prescription, could not possibly play it any longer, and would, indeed, be incapacitated from any rôle whatever for at least a month. And the season was not yet over; for folk were hardier in those days.
The reins stretched out from the careless hand of Mrs Clowes and vanished through a slit between the double doors, which had been fixed slightly open. Mrs Clowes's gaze, penetrating now and then the slit, could see the gleam of her lamp's ray on a horse's flank. The only sounds were the hoof-falls of the horse, the crunching of the wheels on the wet road, the occasional rattle of a vessel in the racks when the van happened to descend violently into a rut, and the steady murmur of Mrs Clowes's voice rehearsing the grandiloquence of the part of Dulcibel.
And then there was another sound, which Mrs Clowes did not notice until it had been repeated several times; the cry of a human voice out on the road:
"Missis!"
She opened wide the doors of the van and looked prudently forth. Naturally, inevitably, Jock-at-a-Venture was trudging alongside, level with the horse's tail! He stepped nimbly—he was a fine walker—but none the less his breath came short and quick, for he had been making haste up a steepish hill in order to overtake the van. And he carried a bundle and a stick in his hands, and on his head a superb but heavy beaver hat.
"I'm going your way, missis," said Jock.
"Seemingly," agreed Mrs Clowes, with due caution.
"Canst gi' us a lift?" he asked.
"And welcome," she said, her face changing like a flash to suit the words.
"Nay, ye needna' stop!" shouted Jock.
In an instant he had leapt easily up into the van, and was seated by her side therein on the children's stool.
"That's a hat—to travel in!" observed Mrs Clowes.
Jock removed the hat, examined it lovingly and replaced it.
"I couldn't ha' left it behind," said he, with a sigh, and continued rapidly in another voice: "Missis, we'n seen a pretty good lot o' each other this wik, and yet ye slips off o'this'n, without saying good-bye, nor a word about yer soul!"
Mrs Clowes heaved her enormous breast and shook the reins.
"I've had my share of trouble," she remarked mysteriously.
"Tell me about it, missis!"
And lo! in a moment, lured on by his smile, she was telling him quite familiarly about the ailments of her younger children, the escapades of her unmarried daughter aged fifteen, the surliness of one of her sons-in-law, the budding dishonesty of the other, the perils of infant life, and the need of repainting the big van and getting new pictures for the front of the booth. Indeed, all the worries of a queen of the road!
"And I'm so fat!" she said, "and yet I'm not forty, and shan't be for two year—and me a grandmother!"
"I knowed it!" Jock exclaimed.
"If I wasn't such a heap o' flesh—"
"Ye're the grandest heap o' flesh as I ever set eyes on, and I'm telling ye!" Jock interrupted her.
Then there were disconcerting sounds out in the world beyond the van. The horse stopped. The double doors were forced open from without, and a black figure, with white eyes in a black face, filled the doorway. The van had passed through the mining village of Moorthorne, and this was one of the marauding colliers on the outskirts thereof. When the colliers had highroad business in the night they did not trouble to wash their faces after work. The coal-dust was a positive aid to them, for it gave them a most useful resemblance to the devil.
Jock-at-a-Venture sprang up as though launched from a catapult.
"Is it thou, Jock?" cried the collier, astounded.
"Ay, lad!" said Jock, briefly.
And caught the collier a blow under the chin that sent him flying into the obscurity of the night. Other voices sounded in the road. Jock rushed to the doorway, taking a pistol from his pocket. And Mrs Clowes, all dithering like a jelly, heard shots. The horse started into a gallop. The reins escaped from the hands of the mistress, but Jock secured them, and lashed the horse to greater speed with the loose ends of them.
"I've saved thee, missis!" he said later. "I give him a regular lifter under the gob, same as I give Jabez, Sunday. But where's the sense of a lone woman wandering about dark roads of a night wi' a pack of childer?... Them childer 'ud ha' slept through th' battle o' Trafalgar," he added.
Mrs Clowes wept.
"Well may you say it!" she murmured. "And it's not the first time as I've been set on!"
"Thou'rt nowt but a girl, for all thy flesh and thy grandchilder!" said Jock. "Dry thy eyes, or I'll dry 'em for thee!"
She smiled in her weeping. It was an invitation to him to carry out his threat.
And while he was drying her eyes for her, she asked:
"How far are ye going? Axe?"
"Ay! And beyond! Can I act, I ask ye? Can I fight, I ask ye? Can ye do without me, I ask ye, you a lone woman? And yer soul, as is mine to save?"
"But that business o' yours at Bursley?"
"Here's my bundle," he said, "and here's my best hat. And I've money and a pistol in my pocket. The only thing I've clean forgot is my cornet; but I'll send for it and I'll play it at my wedding. I'm Jock-at-a-Venture."
And while the van was rumbling in the dark night across the waste and savage moorland, and while the children were sleeping hard at the back of the van, and while the crockery was restlessly clinking in the racks and the lamp swaying, and while he held the reins, the thin, lithe, greying man contrived to take into his arms the vast and amiable creature whom he desired. And the van became a vehicle of high romance.
"Have you heard about Tommy Chadwick?" one gossip asked another in Bursley.
"No."
"He's a tram-conductor now."
This information occasioned surprise, as it was meant to do, the expression on the faces of both gossips indicating a pleasant curiosity as to what Tommy Chadwick would be doing next.
Thomas Chadwick was a "character" in the Five Towns, and of a somewhat unusual sort. "Characters" in the Five Towns are generally either very grim or very jolly, either exceptionally shrewd or exceptionally simple; and they nearly always, in their outward aspect, depart from the conventional. Chadwick was not thus. Aged fifty or so, he was a portly and ceremonious man with an official gait. He had been a policeman in his youth, and he never afterwards ceased to look like a policeman in plain clothes. The authoritative mien of the policeman refused to quit his face. Yet, beneath that mien, few men (of his size) were less capable of exerting authority than Chadwick. He was, at bottom, a weak fellow. He knew it himself, and everybody knew it. He had left the police force because he considered that the strain was beyond his strength. He had the constitution of a she-ass, and the calm, terrific appetite of an elephant; but he maintained that night duty in January was too much for him. He was then twenty-seven, with a wife and two small girls. He abandoned the uniform with dignity. He did everything with dignity. He looked for a situation with dignity, saw his wife and children go hungry with dignity, and even went short himself with dignity. He continually got fatter, waxing on misfortune. And—another curious thing—he could always bring out, when advisable, a shining suit of dark blue broadcloth, a clean collar and a fancy necktie. He was not a consistent dandy, but he could be a dandy when he liked.
Of course, he had no trade. The manual skill of a policeman is useless outside the police force. One cannot sell it in other markets. People said that Chadwick was a fool to leave the police force. He was; but he was a sublime and dignified fool in his idle folly. What he wanted was a position of trust, a position where nothing would be required from him but a display of portliness, majesty and incorruptibility. Such positions are not easy to discover. Employers had no particular objection to portliness, majesty and incorruptibility, but as a rule they demanded something else into the bargain. Chadwick's first situation after his defection from the police was that of night watchman in an earthenware manufactory down by the canal at Shawport. He accepted it regretfully, and he firmly declined to see the irony of fate in forcing such a post on a man who conscientiously objected to night duty. He did not maintain this post long, and his reasons for giving it up were kept a dark secret. Some said that Chadwick's natural tendency to sleep at night had been taken amiss by his master.
Thenceforward he went through transformation after transformation, outvying the legendary chameleon. He was a tobacconist, a park-keeper, a rent collector, a commission agent, a clerk, another clerk, still another clerk, a sweetstuff seller, a fried fish merchant, a coal agent, a book agent, a pawnbroker's assistant, a dog-breeder, a door-keeper, a board-school keeper, a chapel-keeper, a turnstile man at football matches, a coachman, a carter, a warehouseman, and a chucker-out at the Empire Music Hall at Hanbridge. But he was nothing long. The explanations of his changes were invariably vague, unseizable. And his dignity remained unimpaired, together with his broadcloth. He not only had dignity for himself, but enough left over to decorate the calling which he happened for the moment to be practising. He was dignified in the sale of rock-balls, and especially so in encounters with his creditors; and his grandeur when out of a place was a model to all unemployed.
Further, he was ever a pillar and aid of the powers. He worshipped order, particularly the old order, and wealth and correctness. He was ever with the strong against the weak, unless the weak happened to be an ancient institution, in which case he would support it with all the valour of his convictions. Needless to say, he was a very active politician. Perhaps the activity of his politics had something to do with the frequency of his transformations—for he would always be his somewhat spectacular self; he would always call his soul his own, and he would quietly accept a snub from no man.
And now he was a tram-conductor. Things had come to that.
In the old days of the steam trams, where there were only about a score of tram-conductors and eight miles of line in all the Five Towns, the profession of tram-conductor had still some individuality in it, and a conductor was something more than a number. But since the British Electric Traction Company had invaded the Five Towns, and formed a subsidiary local company, and constructed dozens of miles of new line, and electrified everything, and raised prices, and abolished season tickets, and quickened services, and built hundreds of cars and engaged hundreds of conductors—since then a tram-conductor had been naught but an unhuman automaton in a vast machine-like organization. And passengers no longer had their favourite conductors.
Gossips did not precisely see Thomas Chadwick as an unhuman automaton for the punching of tickets and the ringing of bells and the ejaculation of street names. He was never meant by nature to be part of a system. Gossips hoped for the best. That Chadwick, at his age and with his girth, had been able, in his extremity, to obtain a conductorship was proof that he could bring influences to bear in high quarters. Moreover, he was made conductor of one of two cars that ran on a little branch line between Bursley and Moorthorne, so that to the village of Moorthorne he was still somebody, and the chances were just one to two that persons who travelled by car from or to Moorthorne did so under the majestic wing of Thomas Chadwick. His manner of starting a car was unique and stupendous. He might have been signalling "full speed ahead" from the bridge of an Atlantic liner.
Chadwick's hours aboard his Atlantic liner were so long as to interfere seriously, not only with his leisure, but with his political activities. And this irked him the more for the reason that at that period local politics in the Five Towns were extremely agitated and interesting. People became politicians who had never been politicians before. The question was, whether the Five Towns, being already one town in practice, should not become one town in theory—indeed, the twelfth largest town in the United Kingdom! And the district was divided into Federationists and anti-Federationists. Chadwick was a convinced anti-Federationist. Chadwick, with many others, pointed to the history of Bursley, "the mother of the Five Towns," a history which spread over a thousand years and more; and he asked whether "old Bursley" was to lose her identity merely because Hanbridge had insolently outgrown her. A poll was soon to be taken on the subject, and feelings were growing hotter every day, and rosettes of different colours flowered thicker and thicker in the streets, until nothing but a strong sense of politeness prevented members of the opposing parties from breaking each other's noses in St Luke's Square.
Now on a certain Tuesday afternoon in spring Tommy Chadwick's car stood waiting, opposite the Conservative Club, to depart to Moorthorne. And Tommy Chadwick stood in all his portliness on the platform. The driver, a mere nobody, was of course at the front of the car. The driver held the power, but he could not use it until Tommy Chadwick gave him permission; and somehow Tommy's imperial attitude seemed to indicate this important fact.
There was not a soul in the car.
Then Mrs Clayton Vernon came hurrying up the slope of Duck Bank and signalled to Chadwick to wait for her. He gave her a wave of the arm, kindly and yet deferential, as if to say, "Be at ease, noble dame! You are in the hands of a man of the world, who knows what is due to your position. This car shall stay here till you reach it, even if Thomas Chadwick loses his situation for failing to keep time."
And Mrs Clayton Vernon puffed into the car. And Thomas Chadwick gave her a helping hand, and raised his official cap to her with a dignified sweep; and his glance seemed to be saying to the world, "There, you see what happens whenIdeign to conduct a car! Even Mrs Clayton Vernon travels by car then." And the whole social level of the electric tramway system was apparently uplifted, and conductors became fine, portly court-chamberlains.
For Mrs Clayton Vernon really was a personage in the town—perhaps, socially, the leading personage. A widow, portly as Tommy himself, wealthy, with a family tradition behind her, and the true grand manner in every gesture! Her entertainments at her house at Hillport were unsurpassed, and those who had been invited to them seldom forgot to mention the fact. Thomas, a person not easily staggered, was nevertheless staggered to see her travelling by car to Moorthorne—even in his car, which to him in some subtle way was not like common cars—for she was seldom seen abroad apart from her carriage. She kept two horses. Assuredly both horses must be laid up together, or her coachman ill. Anyhow, there she was, in Thomas's car, splendidly dressed in a new spring gown of flowered silk.
"Thank you," she said very sweetly to Chadwick, in acknowledgment of his assistance.
Then three men of no particular quality mounted the car.
"How do, Tommy?" one of them carelessly greeted the august conductor. This impertinent youth was Paul Ford, a solicitor's clerk, who often went to Moorthorne because his employer had a branch office there, open twice a week.
Tommy did not respond, but rather showed his displeasure. He hated to be called Tommy, except by a few intimate coevals.
"Now then, hurry up, please!" he said coldly.
"Right oh! your majesty," said another of the men, and they all three laughed.
What was still worse, they all three wore the Federationist rosette, which was red to the bull in Thomas Chadwick. It was part of Tommy's political creed that Federationists were the "rag, tag, and bob-tail" of the town. But as he was a tram-conductor, though not an ordinary tram-conductor, his mouth was sealed, and he could not tell his passengers what he thought of them.
Just as he was about to pull the starting bell, Mrs Clayton Vernon sprang up with a little "Oh, I was quite forgetting!" and almost darted out of the car. It was not quite a dart, for she was of full habit, but the alacrity of her movement was astonishing. She must have forgotten something very important.
An idea in the nature of a political argument suddenly popped into Tommy's head, and it was too much for him. He was obliged to let it out. To the winds with that impartiality which a tram company expects from its conductors!
"Ah!" he remarked, jerking his elbow in the direction of Mrs Clayton Vernon and pointedly addressing his three Federationist passengers, "she's a lady, she is!Shewon't travel with anybody, she won't!She chooses her company—and quite right too, I say!"
And then he started the car. He felt himself richly avenged by this sally for the "Tommy" and the "your majesty" and the sneering laughter.
Paul Ford winked very visibly at his companions, but made no answering remark. And Thomas Chadwick entered the interior of the car to collect fares. In his hands this operation became a rite. His gestures seemed to say, "No one ever appreciated the importance of the vocation of tram-conductor until I came. We will do this business solemnly and meticulously. Mind what money you give me, count your change, and don't lose, destroy, or deface this indispensable ticket that I hand to you. Do you hear the ting of my bell? It is a sign of my high office. I am fully authorized."
When he had taken his toll he stood at the door of the car, which was now jolting and climbing past the loop-line railway station, and continued his address to the company about the aristocratic and exclusive excellences of his friend Mrs Clayton Vernon. He proceeded to explain the demerits and wickedness of federation, and to descant on the absurdity of those who publicly wore the rosettes of the Federation party, thus branding themselves as imbeciles and knaves; in fact, his tongue was loosed. Although he stooped to accept the wages of a tram-conductor, he was not going to sacrifice the great political right of absolutely free speech.
"If I wasn't the most good-natured man on earth, Tommy Chadwick," said Paul Ford, "I should write to the tram company to-night, and you'd get the boot to-morrow."
"All I say is," persisted the singular conductor—"all I say is—she's a lady, she is—a regular real lady! She chooses her company—and quite right too! That I do say, and nobody's going to stop my mouth." His manner was the least in the world heated.
"What's that?" asked Paul Ford, with a sudden start, not inquiring what Thomas Chadwick's mouth was, but pointing to an object which was lying on the seat in the corner which Mrs Clayton Vernon had too briefly occupied.
He rose and picked up the object, which had the glitter of gold.
"Give it here," said Thomas Chadwick, commandingly. "It's none of your business to touch findings in my car;" and he snatched the object from Paul Ford's hands.
It was so brilliant and so obviously costly, however, that he was somehow obliged to share the wonder of it with his passengers. The find levelled all distinctions between them. A purse of gold chain-work, it indiscreetly revealed that it was gorged with riches. When you shook it the rustle of banknotes was heard, and the chink of sovereigns, and through the meshes of the purse could be seen the white of valuable paper and the tawny orange discs for which mankind is so ready to commit all sorts of sin. Thomas Chadwick could not forbear to open the contrivance, and having opened it he could not forbear to count its contents. There were, in that purse, seven five-pound notes, fifteen sovereigns, and half a sovereign, and the purse itself was probably worth twelve or fifteen pounds as mere gold.
"There's some that would leave their heads behind 'em if they could!" observed Paul Ford.
Thomas Chadwick glowered at him, as if to warn him that in the presence of Thomas Chadwick noble dames could not be insulted with impunity.
"Didn't I say she was a lady?" said Chadwick, holding up the purse as proof. "It's lucky it'smeas has laid hands on it!" he added, plainly implying that the other occupants of the car were thieves whenever they had the chance.
"Well," said Paul Ford, "no doubt you'll get your reward all right!"
"It's not—" Chadwick began; but at that moment the driver stopped the car with a jerk, in obedience to a waving umbrella. The conductor, who had not yet got what would have been his sea-legs if he had been captain of an Atlantic liner, lurched forward, and then went out on to the platform to greet a new fare, and his sentence was never finished.
That day happened to be the day of Thomas Chadwick's afternoon off; at least, of what the tram company called an afternoon off. That is to say, instead of ceasing work at eleven-thirty p.m. he finished at six-thirty p.m. In the ordinary way the company housed its last Moorthorne car at eleven-thirty (Moorthorne not being a very nocturnal village), and gave the conductors the rest of the evening to spend exactly as they liked; but once a week, in turn, it generously allowed them a complete afternoon beginning at six-thirty.
Now on this afternoon, instead of going home for tea, Thomas Chadwick, having delivered over his insignia and takings to the inspector in Bursley market-place, rushed away towards a car bound for Hillport. A policeman called out to him:
"Hi! Chadwick!"
"What's up?" asked Chadwick, unwillingly stopping.
"Mrs Clayton Vernon's been to the station an hour ago or hardly, about a purse as she says she thinks she must have left in your car. I was just coming across to tell your inspector."
"Tell him, then, my lad," said Chadwick, curtly, and hurried on towards the Hillport car. His manner to policemen always mingled the veteran with the comrade, and most of them indeed regarded him as an initiate of the craft. Still, his behaviour on this occasion did somewhat surprise the young policeman who had accosted him. And undoubtedly Thomas Chadwick was scarcely acting according to the letter of the law. His proper duty was to hand over all articles found in his car instantly to the police—certainly not to keep them concealed on his person with a view to restoring them with his own hands to their owners. But Thomas Chadwick felt that, having once been a policeman, he was at liberty to interpret the law to suit his own convenience. He caught the Hillport car, and nodded the professional nod to its conductor, asking him a technical question, and generally showing to the other passengers on the platform that he was not as they, and that he had important official privileges. Of course, he travelled free; and of course he stopped the car when, its conductor being inside, two ladies signalled to it at the bottom of Oldcastle Street. He had meant to say nothing whatever about his treasure and his errand to the other conductor; but somehow, when fares had been duly collected, and these two stood chatting on the platform, the gold purse got itself into the conversation, and presently the other conductor knew the entire history, and had even had a glimpse of the purse itself.
Opposite the entrance to Mrs Clayton Vernon's grounds at Hillport Thomas Chadwick slipped neatly, for all his vast bulk, off the swiftly-gliding car. (A conductor on a car but not on duty would sooner perish by a heavy fall than have a car stopped in order that he might descend from it.) And Thomas Chadwick heavily crunched the gravel of the drive leading up to Mrs Clayton Vernon's house, and imperiously rang the bell.
"Mrs Clayton Vernon in?" he officially asked the responding servant.
"She'sin," said the servant. Had Thomas Chadwick been wearing his broadcloth she would probably have added "sir."
"Well, will you please tell her that Mr Chadwick—Thomas Chadwick—wants to speak to her?"
"Is it about the purse?" the servant questioned, suddenly brightening into eager curiosity.
"Never you mind what it's about, miss," said Thomas Chadwick, sternly.
At the same moment Mrs Clayton Vernon's grey-curled head appeared behind the white cap of the servant. Probably she had happened to catch some echo of Thomas Chadwick's great rolling voice. The servant retired.
"Good-evening, m'm," said Thomas Chadwick, raising his hat airily. "Good-evening." He beamed.
"So you did find it?" said Mrs Vernon, calmly smiling. "I felt sure it would be all right."
"Oh, yes, m'm." He tried to persuade himself that this sublime confidence was characteristic of great ladies, and a laudable symptom of aristocracy. But he would have preferred her to be a little less confident. After all, in the hands of a conductor less honourable than himself, of a common conductor, the purse might not have been so "all right" as all that! He would have preferred to witness the change on Mrs Vernon's features from desperate anxiety to glad relief. After all, £50, 10s. was money, however rich you were!
"Have you got it with you?" asked Mrs Vernon.
"Yes'm," said he. "I thought I'd just step up with it myself, so as to be sure."
"It's very good of you!"
"Not at all," said he; and he produced the purse. "I think you'll find it as it should be."
Mrs Vernon gave him a courtly smile as she thanked him.
"I'd like ye to count it, ma'am," said Chadwick, as she showed no intention of even opening the purse.
"If you wish it," said she, and counted her wealth and restored it to the purse. "Quiteright—quiteright! Fifty pounds and ten shillings," she said pleasantly. "I'm very much obliged to you, Chadwick."
"Not at all, m'm!" He was still standing in the sheltered porch.
An idea seemed to strike Mrs Clayton Vernon.
"Would you like something to drink?" she asked.
"Well, thank ye, m'm," said Thomas.
"Maria," said Mrs Vernon, calling to someone within the house, "bring this man a glass of beer." And she turned again to Chadwick, smitten with another idea. "Let me see. Your eldest daughter has two little boys, hasn't she?"
"Yes'm," said Thomas—"twins."
"I thought so. Her husband is my cook's cousin. Well, here's two threepenny bits—one for each of them." With some trouble she extracted the coins from a rather shabby leather purse—evidently her household purse. She bestowed them upon the honest conductor with another grateful and condescending smile. "I hope you don'tmindtaking them for the chicks," she said. "Idolike giving things to children. It's so muchnicer, isn't it?"
"Certainly, m'm."
Then the servant brought the glass of beer, and Mrs Vernon, with yet another winning smile, and yet more thanks, left him to toss it off on the mat, while the servant waited for the empty glass.