________________________________________________
_ My mother never came to meet me at Bursley station when I arrived
in the Five Towns from London; much less did she come as far as
Knype station, which is the great traffic centre of the district,
the point at which one changes from the express into the local
train. She had always other things to do; she was 'preparing' for
me. So I had the little journey from Knype to Bursley, and then
the walk up Trafalgar Road, amid the familiar high chimneys and
the smoke and the clayey mud and the football posts and the
Midland accent, all by myself. And there was leisure to consider
anew how I should break to my mother the tremendous news I had for
her. I had been considering that question ever since getting into
the train at Euston, where I had said goodbye to Agnes; but in the
atmosphere of the Five Towns it seemed just slightly more
difficult; though, of course, it wasn't difficult, really.
You see, I wrote to my mother regularly every week, telling her
most of my doings. She knew all my friends by name. I dare say she
formed in her mind notions of what sort of people they were. Thus
I had frequently mentioned Agnes and her family in my letters. But
you can't write even to your mother and say in cold blood: 'I
think I am beginning to fall in love with Agnes,' 'I think Agnes
likes me,' 'I am mad on her,' 'I feel certain she likes me,' 'I
shall propose to her on such a day.' You can't do that. At least I
couldn't. Hence it had come about that on the 20th of December I
had proposed to Agnes and been accepted by Agnes, and my mother
had no suspicion that my happiness was so near. And on the 22nd,
by a previous and unalterable arrangement, I had come to spend
Christmas with my mother.
I was the only son of a widow; I was all that my mother had. And
lo! I had gone and engaged myself to a girl she had never seen,
and I had kept her in the dark! She would certainly be extremely
surprised, and she might be a little bit hurt--just at first.
Anyhow, the situation was the least in the world delicate.
I walked up the whitened front steps of my mother's little house,
just opposite where the electric cars stop, but before I could put
my hand on the bell my little plump mother, in her black silk and
her gold brooch and her auburn hair, opened to me, having
doubtless watched me down the road from the bay-window, as usual,
and she said, as usual kissing me--
'Well, Philip! How are you?'
And I said--
'Oh! I'm all right, mother. How are you?'
I perceived instantly that she was more excited than my arrival
ordinarily made her. There were tears in her smiling eyes, and she
was as nervous as a young girl. She did indeed look remarkably
young for a woman of forty-five, with twenty-five years of
widowhood and a brief but too tempestuous married life behind her.
The thought flashed across my mind: 'By some means or other she
has got wind of my engagement. But how?'
But I said nothing. I, too, was naturally rather nervous. Mothers
are kittle cattle.
'I'll tell her at supper,' I decided.
And she hovered round me, like a sea-gull round a steamer, as I
went upstairs.
There was a ring at the door. She flew, instead of letting the
servant go. It was a porter with my bag.
Just as I was coming down-stairs again there was another ring at
the door. And my mother appeared magically out of the kitchen, but
I was beforehand with her, and with a laugh I insisted on opening
the front door myself this time. A young woman stood on the step.
'Please, Mrs Dawson wants to know if Mrs Durance can kindly lend
her half-a-dozen knives and forks?'
'Eh, with pleasure,' said my mother, behind me. 'Just wait a
minute, Lucy. Come inside on the mat.'
I followed my mother into the drawing-room, where she kept her
silver in a cabinet.
'That's Mrs Dawson's new servant,' my mother whispered. 'But she
needn't think I'm going to lend her my best, because I'm not.'
'I shouldn't, if I were you,' I supported her.
And she went out with some second-best in tissue paper, and beamed
on Mrs Dawson's servant with an assumed benevolence.
'There!' she exclaimed. 'And the compliments of the season to your
mistress, Lucy.'
After that my mother disappeared into the kitchen to worry an
entirely capable servant. And I roamed about, feeling happily
excited, examining the drawing-room, in which nothing was changed
except the incandescent light and the picture postcards on the
mantelpiece. Then I wandered into the dining-room, a small room at
the back of the house, and here an immense surprise awaited me.
Supper was set for three!
'Well,' I reflected. 'Here's a nice state of affairs! Supper for
three, and she hasn't breathed a word!'
My mother was so clever in social matters, and especially in the
planning of delicious surprises, that I believed her capable even
of miracles. In some way or other she must have discovered the
state of my desires towards Agnes. She had written, or something.
She and Agnes had been plotting together by letter to startle me,
and perhaps telegraphing. Agnes had fibbed in telling me that she
could not possibly come to Bursley for Christmas; she had
delightfully fibbed. And my mother had got her concealed somewhere
in the house, or was momentarily expecting her. That explained the
tears, the nervousness, the rushes to the door.
I crept out of the dining-room, determined not to let my mother
know that I had secretly viewed the supper-table. And as I was
crossing the lobby to the drawing-room there was a third ring at
the door, and a third time my mother rushed out of the kitchen.
'By Jove!' I thought. 'Suppose it's Agnes. What a scene!'
And trembling with expectation I opened the door. It was Mr Nixon.
Now, Mr Nixon was an old friend of the family's, a man of forty-
nine or fifty, with a reputation for shrewdness and increasing
wealth. He owned a hundred and seventy-five cottages in the town,
having bought them gradually in half-dozens, and in rows; he
collected the rents himself, and attended to the repairs himself,
and was celebrated as a good landlord, and as being almost the
only man in Bursley who had made cottage property pay. He lived
alone in Commerce Street, and, though not talkative, was usually
jolly, with one or two good stories tucked away in the corners of
his memory. He was my mother's trustee, and had morally aided her
in the troublous times before my father's early death.
'Well, young man,' cried he. 'So you're back in owd Bosley!' It
amused him to speak the dialect a little occasionally.
And he brought his burly, powerful form into the lobby.
I greeted him as jovially as I could, and then he shook hands with
my mother, neither of them speaking.
'Mr Nixon is come for supper, Philip,' said my mother.
I liked Mr Nixon, but I was not too well pleased by this
information, for I wanted to talk confidentially to my mother. I
had a task before me with my mother, and here Mr Nixon was
plunging into the supper. I could not break it gently to my mother
that I was engaged to a strange young woman in the presence of Mr
Nixon. Mr Nixon had been in to supper several times during
previous visits of mine, but never on the first night.
However, I had to make the best of it. And we sat down and began
on the ham, the sausages, the eggs, the crumpets, the toast, the
jams, the mince-tarts, the Stilton, and the celery. But we none of
us ate very much, despite my little plump mother's protestations.
My suspicion was that perhaps something had gone slightly wrong
with my mother's affairs, and that Mr Nixon was taking the first
opportunity to explain things to me. But such a possibility did
not interest me, for I could easily afford to keep my mother and a
wife too. I was still preoccupied in my engagement--and surely
there is nothing astonishing in that--and I began to compose the
words in which, immediately on the departure of Mr Nixon after
supper, I would tackle my mother on the subject.
When we had reached the Stilton and celery, I intimated that I
must walk down to the post-office, as I had to dispatch a letter.
'Won't it do tomorrow, my pet?' asked my mother.
'It will not,' I said.
Imagine leaving Agnes two days without news of my safe arrival and
without assurances of my love! I had started writing the letter in
the train, near Willesden, and I finished it in the drawing-room.
'A lady in the case?' Mr Nixon called out gaily.
'Yes,' I replied with firmness.
I went forth, bought a picture postcard showing St Luke's Square,
Bursley, most untruthfully picturesque, and posted the card and
the letter to my darling Agnes. I hoped that Mr Nixon would have
departed ere my return; he had made no reference at all during
supper to my mother's affairs. But he had not departed. I found
him solitary in the drawing-room, smoking a very fine cigar.
'Where's the mater?' I demanded.
'She's just gone out of the room,' he said. 'Come and sit down.
Have a weed. I want a bit of a chat with you, Philip.'
I obeyed, taking one of the very fine cigars.
'Well, Uncle Nixon,' I encouraged him, wishing to get the chat
over because my mind was full of Agnes. I sometimes called him
uncle for fun.
'Well, my boy,' he began. 'It's no use me beating about the bush.
What do you think of me as a stepfather?'
I was struck, as they say down there, all of a heap.
'What?' I stammered. 'You don't mean to say--you and mother--?'
He nodded.
'Yes, I do, lad. Yesterday she promised as she'd marry my unworthy
self. It's been coming along for some time. But I don't expect
she's given you any hint in her letters. In fact, I know she
hasn't. It would have been rather difficult, wouldn't it? She
couldn't well have written, "My dear Philip, an old friend, Mr
Nixon, is falling in love with me and I believe I'm falling in
love with him. One of these days he'll be proposing to me." She
couldn't have written like that, could she?'
I laughed. I could not help it.
'Shake hands,' I said warmly. 'I'm delighted.'
And soon afterwards my mother sidled in, shyly.
'The lad's delighted, Sarah,' said Mr Nixon shortly.
I said nothing about my own engagement that night. I had never
thought of my mother as a woman with a future, I had never
realized that she was desirable, and that a man might desire her,
and that her lonely existence in that house was not all that she
had the right to demand from life. And I was ashamed of my
characteristic filial selfish egoism. So I decided that I would
not intrude my joys on hers until the next morning. We live and
learn. _
Read next: PART X - BEGINNING THE NEW YEAR: CHAPTER I
Read previous: PART VIII - THE BURGLARY: CHAPTER III
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