The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories by Arnold Bennett (best free ebook reader for android .txt) 📕

regard to his golden hair and affection-compelling appearance, it was not surprising that Mary, accustomed to the monotony of her uncle's house, had surrendered her heart to him. And it was not surprising that old Peel had at once consented to the match, and made a will in favour of Mary and her offspring. What was surprising was that old Peel should have begun to part with his money at once, and in large quantities, for he was not of a very open-handed disposition.

The explanation of old Samuel Peel's generosity was due to his being a cousin of the Peels of Bursley, the great eighteenth-century family of earthenware manufacturers. The main branch had died out, the notorious Carlotta Peel having expired shockingly in Paris, and another young descendant, Matthew, having been forced under a will to alter his name to Peel-Swynnerton. So that only the distant cousin, Samuel Peel, was left, and he was a bachelor with no prospect of ever being anything else. Now Samuel had made a fortune of his own, and he considered that all the honour and all the historical splendours of the Peel family were concentrated in himself. And he tried to be worthy of them. He tried to restore the family traditions. For this he became a benefactor to his native town, a patron of the arts, and a candidate for the Staffordshire County Council. And when Mary set her young mind on a young man of parts and of ambition, and bearing by hazard the very same name of Peel, old Samuel Peel said to himself: "The old family name will not die out. It ought to be more magnificent than ever." He said this also to George Peel.

Whereupon George Peel talked to him persuasively and sensibly about the risks and the prizes of the sculptor's career. He explained just how extremely ambitious he was, and all that he had already done, and all that he intended to do. And he convinced his uncle-in-law that young sculptors were tremendously handicapped in an expensive and difficult profession by poverty or at least narrowness of means. He convinced his uncle-in-law that the best manner of succeeding was to begin at the top, to try for only the highest things, to sell nothing cheaply, to be haughty with dealers and connoisseurs, and to cut a figure in the very centre of the art-world of London. George was a good talker, and all that he said was perfectly true. And his uncle was dazzled by the immediate prospect of new fame for the ancient family of Peel. And in the end old Samuel promised to give George and Mary five hundred a year, so that George, as a sculptor, might begin at the top and "succeed like success." And George went off with his bride to London, whence he had come. And the old man thought he had done a very noble and a very wonderful thing, which, indeed, he had.

This had occurred when George was twenty-five.

Matters fell out rather as George had predicted. The youth almost at once obtained a commission for three hundred pounds' worth of symbolic statues for the front of the central offices of the Order of Rechabites, which particularly pleased his uncle, because Samuel Peel was a strong temperance man. And George got one or two other commissions.

Being extravagant was to George Peel the same thing as "putting all the profits into the business" is to a manufacturer. He was extravagant and ostentatious on principle, and by far-sighted policy--or, at least, he thought that he was.

And thus the world's rumours multiplied his success, and many persons said and believed that he was making quite two thousand a year, and would be an A.R.A. before he was grey-haired. But George always related the true facts to his uncle-in-law; he even made them out to be much less satisfactory than they really were. His favourite phrase in letters to his uncle was that he was "building," "building"--not houses, but his future reputation and success.

Then commissions fell off or grew intermittent, or were refused as being unworthy of George's dignity. And then young Georgie arrived, with his insatiable appetites and his vociferous need of doctors, nurses, perambulators, nurseries, and lacy garments. And all the time young George's father kept his head high and continued to be extravagant by far-sighted policy. And the five hundred a year kept coming in regularly by quarterly instalments. Many a tight morning George nearly decided that Mary must write to her uncle and ask for a little supplementary estimate. But he never did decide, partly because he was afraid, and partly from sheer pride. (According to his original statements to his uncle-in-law, seven years earlier, he ought at this epoch to have been in an assured position with a genuine income of thousands.)

But the state of trade worsened, and he had a cheque dishonoured. And then he won the Triennial Gold Medal. And then at length he did arrange with Mary that she should write to old Samuel and roundly ask him for an extra couple of hundred. They composed the letter together; and they stated the reasons so well, and convinced themselves so completely of the righteousness of their cause, that for a few moments they looked on the two hundred as already in hand. Hence the Heidsieck night. But on the morrow of the Heidsieck night they thought differently. And George was gloomy. He felt humiliated by the necessity of the application to his uncle--the first he had ever made. And he feared the result.

His fears were justified.


III


They were far more than justified. Three mornings after the first letter, to which she had made no reply, Mary received a second. It ran:

"DEAR MARY,--And what is more, I shall henceforth pay you three hundred instead of five hundred a year. If George has not made a position for himself it is quite time he had. The Gold Medal must make a lot of difference to him. And if necessary you must economize. I am sure there is room for economy in your household. Champagne, for instance.--Your affectionate uncle, SAMUEL PEEL.

"_P.S._--I am, of course, acting in your best interests.

"S.P."

This letter infuriated George, so much so that George the younger, observing strange symptoms on his father's face, and strange sounds issuing from his father's mouth, stopped eating in order to give the whole of his attention to them.

"Champagne! What's he driving at?" exclaimed George, glaring at Mary as though it was Mary who had written the letter.

"I expect he's been reading that paper," said Mary.

"Do you mean to say," George asked scornfully, "that your uncle reads a rag like that? I thought all _his_ lot looked down on worldliness."

"So they do," said Mary. "But somehow they like reading about it. I believe uncle has read it every week for twenty years."

"Well, why didn't you tell me?"

"The other morning?"

"Yes."

"Oh, I didn't want to worry you. What good would it have done?"

"What good would it have done!" George repeated in accents of terrible disdain, as though the good that it would have done was obvious to the lowest intelligence. (Yet he knew quite well that it would have done no good at all.) "Georgie, take that spoon out of your sleeve."

And Georgie, usually disobedient, took the porridge-laden spoon out of his sleeve and glanced at his mother for moral protection. His mother merely wiped him rather roughly. Georgie thought, once more, that he never in this world should understand grown-up people. And the recurring thought made him cry gently.

George lapsed into savage meditation. During all the seven years of his married life he had somehow supposed himself to be superior, as a man, to his struggling rivals. He had regarded them with easy toleration, as from a height. And now he saw himself tumbling down among them, humiliated. Everything seemed unreal to him then. The studio and the breakfast-room were solid; the waving trees in Regent's Park were solid; the rich knick-knacks and beautiful furniture and excellent food and fine clothes were all solid enough; but they seemed most disconcertingly unreal. One letter from old Samuel had made them tremble, and the second had reduced them to illusions, or delusions. Even George's reputation as a rising sculptor appeared utterly fallacious. What rendered him savage was the awful injustice of Samuel. Samuel had no right whatever to play him such a trick. It was, in a way, worse than if Samuel had cut off the allowance altogether, for in that case he could at any rate have gone majestically to Samuel and said: "Your niece and her child are starving." But with a minimum of three hundred a year for their support three people cannot possibly starve.

"Ring the bell and have this kid taken out," said he.

Whereupon Georgie yelled.

Kate came, a starched white-and-blue young thing of sixteen.

"Kate," said George, autocratically, "take baby."

"Yes, sir," said Kate, with respectful obedience. The girl had no notion that she was not real to her master, or that her master was saying to himself: "I ought not to be ordering human beings about like this. I can't pay their wages. I ought to be starving in a garret."

When George and Mary were alone, George said: "Look here! Does he mean it?"

"You may depend he means it. It's so like him. Me asking for that L200 must have upset him. And then seeing that about Heidsieck in the paper--he'd make up his mind all of a sudden--I know him so well."

"H'm!" snorted George. "I shall make my mind up all of a sudden, too!"

"What shall you do?"

"There's one thing I shan't do," said George.

"And that is, stop here. Do you realize, my girl, that we shall be absolutely up a gum-tree?"

"I should have thought you would be able--"

"Absolute gum-tree!" George interrupted her. "Simply can't keep the shop open! To-morrow, my child, we go down to Bursley."

"Who?"

"You, me, and the infant."

"And what about the servants?"

"Send 'em home."

"But we can't descend on uncle like that without notice, and him full of his election! Besides, he's cross."

"We shan't descend on him."

"Then where shall you go?"

"We shall put up at the Tiger," said George, impressively.

"The Tiger?" gasped Mary.

George had meant to stagger, and he had staggered.

"The Tiger," he iterated.

"With Georgie?"

"With Georgie."

"But what will uncle say? I shouldn't be surprised if uncle has never been in the Tiger in his life. You know his views--"

"I don't care twopence for your uncle," said George, again implicitly blaming Mary for the peculiarities of her uncle's character. "Something's got to be done, and I'm going to do it."


IV


Two days later, at about ten o'clock in the morning, Samuel Peel, J.P., entered the market-place, Bursley, from the top of Oldcastle Street. He had walked down, as usual, from his dignified residence at Hillport. It was his day for the Bench, and he had, moreover, a lot of complicated election business. On a dozen hoardings between Hillport and Bursley market-place blazed the red letters of his posters inviting the faithful to vote for Peel, whose family had been identified with the district for a century and a half. He was pleased with these posters, and with the progress of canvassing. A slight and not a tall man, with a feeble grey beard and a bald head, he was yet a highly-respected figure in the