________________________________________________
_ It is the greatest mistake in the world to imagine that, because
the Five Towns is an industrial district, devoted to the
manufacture of cups and saucers, marbles and door-knobs, therefore
there is no luxury in it.
A writer, not yet deceased, who spent two nights there, and wrote
four hundred pages about it, has committed herself to the
assertion that there are no private carriages in its streets--
only perambulators and tramcars.
That writer's reputation is ruined in the Five Towns. For the Five
Towns, although continually complaining of bad times, is immensely
wealthy, as well as immensely poor--a country of contrasts,
indeed--and private carriages, if they do not abound, exist at any
rate in sufficient numbers.
Nay, more, automobiles of the most expensive French and English
makes fly dashingly along its hilly roads and scatter in profusion
the rich black mud thereof.
On a Saturday afternoon in last spring, such an automobile stood
outside the garden entrance of Bleakridge House, just halfway
between Hanbridge and Bursley. It belonged to young Harold Etches,
of Etches, Limited, the great porcelain manufacturers.
It was a 20 h.p. Panhard, and was worth over a thousand pounds as
it stood there, throbbing, and Harold was proud of it.
He was also proud of his young wife, Maud, who, clad in several
hundred pounds' worth of furs, had taken her seat next to the
steering-wheel, and was waiting for Harold to mount by her side.
The united ages of this handsome and gay couple came to less than
forty-five.
And they owned the motor-car, and Bleakridge House with its ten
bedrooms, and another house at Llandudno, and a controlling
interest in Etches, Limited, that brought them in seven or eight
thousand a year. They were a pretty tidy example of what the Five
Towns can do when it tries to be wealthy.
At that moment, when Harold was climbing into the car, a shabby
old man who was walking down the road, followed by a boy carrying
a carpet-bag, stopped suddenly and touched Harold on the shoulder.
'Bless us!' exclaimed the old man. And the boy and the carpet-bag
halted behind him.
'What? Uncle Dan?' said Harold.
'Uncle Dan!' cried Maud, springing up with an enchanting smile.
'Why, it's ages since--'
'And what d'ye reckon ye'n gotten here?' demanded the old man.
'It's my new car,' Harold explained.
'And ca'st drive it, lad?' asked the old man.
'I should think I could!' said Harold confidently.
'H'm!' commented the old man, and then he shook hands, and
thoroughly scrutinized Maud.
Now, this is the sort of thing that can only be seen and
appreciated in a district like the Five Towns, where families
spring into splendour out of nothing in the course of a couple of
generations, and as often as not sink back again into nothing in
the course of two generations more.
The Etches family is among the best known and the widest spread in
the Five Towns. It originated in three brothers, of whom Daniel
was the youngest. Daniel never married; the other two did. Daniel
was not very fond of money; the other two were, and they founded
the glorious firm of Etches. Harold was the grandson of one
brother, and Maud was the Granddaughter of the other.
Consequently, they both stood in the same relation to Dan, who was
their great-uncle--addressed as uncle 'for short'.
There is a good deal of snobbery in the Five Towns, but it does
not exist between relatives. The relatives in danger of suffering
by it would never stand it. Besides, although Dan's income did not
exceed two hundred a year, he was really richer than his
grandnephew, since Dan lived on half his income, whereas Harold,
aided by Maud, lived on all of his.
Consequently, despite the vast difference in their stations,
clothes, and manners, Daniel and his young relatives met as
equals. It would have been amusing to see anyone--even the
Countess of Chell, who patronized the entire district--attempt to
patronize Dan.
In his time he had been the greatest pigeon-fancier in the
country.
'So you're paying a visit to Bursley, uncle?' said Maud.
'Aye!' Dan replied. 'I'm back i' owd Bosley. Sarah--my
housekeeper, thou know'st--'
'Not dead?'
'No. Her inna' dead; but her sister's dead, and I've give her a
week's play [holiday], and come away. Rat Edge'll see nowt o' me
this side Easter.'
Rat Edge was the name of the village, five miles off, which Dan
had honoured in his declining years.
'And where are you going to now?' asked Harold.
'I'm going to owd Sam Shawn's, by th' owd church, to beg a bed.'
'But you'll stop with us, of course?' said Harold.
'Nay, lad,' said Dan.
'Oh yes, uncle,' Maud insisted.
'Nay, lass,' said Dan.
'Indeed, you will, uncle,' said Maud positively. 'If you don't,
I'll never speak to you again.'
She had a charming fire in her eyes, had Maud.
Daniel, the old bachelor, yielded at once, but in his own style.
'I'll try it for a night, lass,' said he.
Thus it occurred that the carpet-bag was carried into Bleakridge
House, and that after some delay Harold and Maud carried off Uncle
Dan with them in the car. He sat in the luxurious tonneau behind,
and Maud had quitted her husband in order to join him. Possibly
she liked the humorous wrinkles round his grey eyes. Or it may
have been the eyes themselves. And yet Dan was nearer seventy than
sixty.
The car passed everything on the road; it seemed to be overtaking
electric trams all the time.
'So ye'n been married a year?' said Uncle Dan, smiling at Maud.
'Oh yes; a year and three days. We're quite used to it.'
'Us'n be in h-ll in a minute, wench!' exclaimed Dan, calmly
changing the topic, as Harold swung the car within an inch of a
brewer's dray, and skidded slightly in the process. No anti-
skidding device would operate in that generous, oozy mud.
And, as a matter of fact, they were in Hanbridge the next minute--
Hanbridge, the centre of the religions, the pleasures, and the
vices of the Five Towns.
'Bless us!' said the old man. 'It's fifteen year and more since I
were here.'
'Harold,' said Maud, 'let's stop at the Piccadilly Cafe and have
some tea.'
'Cafe?' asked Dan. 'What be that?'
'It's a kind of a pub.' Harold threw the explanation over his
shoulder as he brought the car up with swift dexterity in front of
the Misses Callear's newly opened afternoon tea-rooms.
'Oh, well, if it's a pub,' said Uncle Dan, 'I dunna' object.'
He frankly admitted, on entering, that he had never before seen a
pub full of little tables and white cloths, and flowers, and young
women, and silver teapots, and cake-stands. And though he did pour
his tea into his saucer, he was sufficiently at home there to
address the younger Miss Callear as 'young woman', and to inform
her that her beverage was lacking in Orange Pekoe. And the Misses
Callear, who conferred a favour on their customers in serving
them, didn't like it.
He became reminiscent.
'Aye!' he said, 'when I left th' Five Towns fifty-two years sin'
to go weaving i' Derbyshire wi' my mother's brother, tay were ten
shilling a pun'. Us had it when us were sick--which wasna' often.
We worked too hard for be sick. Hafe past five i' th' morning till
eight of a night, and then Saturday afternoon walk ten mile to
Glossop with a week's work on ye' back, and home again wi' th'
brass.
'They've lost th' habit of work now-a-days, seemingly,' he went
on, as the car moved off once more, but slowly, because of the
vast crowds emerging from the Knype football ground. 'It's
football, Saturday; bands of a Sunday; football, Monday; ill i'
bed and getting round, Tuesday; do a bit o' work Wednesday;
football, Thursday; draw wages Friday night; and football,
Saturday. And wages higher than ever. It's that as beats me--
wages higher than ever--
'Ye canna' smoke with any comfort i' these cars,' he added, when
Harold had got clear of the crowds and was letting out. He
regretfully put his pipe in his pocket.
Harold skirted the whole length of the Five Towns from south to
north, at an average rate of perhaps thirty miles an hour; and
quite soon the party found itself on the outer side of Turnhill,
and descending the terrible Clough Bank, three miles long, and of
a steepness resembling the steepness of the side of a house.
The car had warmed to its business, and Harold took them down that
declivity in a manner which startled even Maud, who long ago had
resigned herself to the fact that she was tied for life to a young
man for whom the word 'danger' had no meaning.
At the bottom they had a swerve skid; but as there was plenty of
room for eccentricities, nothing happened except that the car
tried to climb the hill again.
'Well, if I'd known,' observed Uncle Dan, 'if I'd guessed as you
were reservin' this treat for th' owd uncle, I'd ha' walked.'
The Etches blood in him was pretty cool, but his nerve had had a
shaking.
Then Harold could not restart the car. The engine had stopped of
its own accord, and, though Harold lavished much physical force on
the magic handle in front, nothing would budge. Maud and the old
man got down, the latter with relief.
'Stuck, eh?' said Dan. 'No steam?'
'That's it!' Harold cried, slapping his leg. 'What an ass I am!
She wants petrol, that's all. Maud, pass a couple of cans. They're
under the seat there, behind. No; on the left, child.'
However, there was no petrol on the car.
'That's that cursed Durand' (Durand being the new chauffeur--
French, to match the car). 'I told him not to forget. Last thing I
said to the fool! Maud, I shall chuck that chap!'
'Can't we do anything?' asked Maud stiffly, putting her lips
together.
'We can walk back to Turnhill and buy some petrol, some of us!'
snapped Harold. 'That's what we can do!'
'Sithee,' said Uncle Dan. 'There's the Plume o' Feathers half-a-
mile back. Th' landlord's a friend o' mine. I can borrow his mare
and trap, and drive to Turnhill and fetch some o' thy petrol, as
thou calls it.'
'It's awfully good of you, uncle.'
'Nay, lad, I'm doing it for please mysen. But Maud mun come wi'
me. Give us th' money for th' petrol, as thou calls it.'
'Then I must stay here alone?' Harold complained.
'Seemingly,' the old man agreed.
After a few words on pigeons, and a glass of beer, Dan had no
difficulty whatever in borrowing his friend's white mare and black
trap. He himself helped in the harnessing. Just as he was driving
triumphantly away, with that delicious vision Maud on his left
hand and a stable-boy behind, he reined the mare in.
'Give us a couple o' penny smokes, matey,' he said to the
landlord, and lit one.
The mare could go, and Dan could make her go, and she did go. And
the whole turn-out looked extremely dashing when, ultimately, it
dashed into the glare of the acetylene lamps which the deserted
Harold had lighted on his car.
The red end of a penny smoke in the gloom of twilight looks
exactly as well as the red end of an Havana. Moreover, the mare
caracolled ornamentally in the rays of the acetylene, and the
stable-boy had to skip down quick and hold her head.
'How much didst say this traction-engine had cost thee?' Dan
asked, while Harold was pouring the indispensable fluid into the
tank.
'Not far off twelve hundred,' answered Harold lightly. 'Keep that
cigar away from here.'
'Fifteen pun' ud buy this mare,' Dan announced to the road.
'Now, all aboard!' Harold commanded at length. 'How much shall I
give to the boy for the horse and trap, uncle?'
'Nothing,' said Dan. 'I havena' finished wi' that mare yet. Didst
think I was going to trust mysen i' that thing o' yours again?
I'll meet thee at Bleakridge, lad.'
'And I think I'll go with uncle too, Harold,' said Maud.
Whereupon they both got into the trap.
Harold stared at them, astounded.
'But I say--' he protested, beginning to be angry.
Uncle Dan drove away like the wind, and the stable-boy had all he
could do to clamber up behind. _
Read next: PART XI - FROM ONE GENERATION TO ANOTHER: CHAPTER II
Read previous: PART X - BEGINNING THE NEW YEAR: CHAPTER III
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