The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories Part 54

According to every rule of medicine she should have been dead long since; but she lived--by volition. It was to the credit of Bursley that the whole town recognized in Sarah Sutton the treasure it held.

"I wanted to see you," Mrs Sutton said, after they had exchanged various inquiries.

"What about?"

"Mrs Lovatt was telling me yesterday you hadn't made up your mind about that organ subscription." They were ascending the steepest part of Oldcastle Street, and Peake lowered the reins and let the horse into a walk.

"Now look here, Mrs Sutton," he began, with pa.s.sionate frankness, "I can talk to you. You know me; you know I'm not one of their set, as it were.

Of course I've got a pew and all that; but you know as well as I do that I don't belong to the chapel lot. Why should they ask me? Why should they come to me? Why should I give all that sum?"

"Why?" she repeated the word, smiling. "You're a generous man; you've felt the pleasure of giving. I always think of you as one of the most generous men in the town. I'm sure you've often realized what a really splendid thing it is to be able to give. D'you know, it comes over me sometimes like a perfect shock that if I couldn't give--something, do--something, I shouldn't be able to live; I would be obliged to go to bed and die right off."

"Ah!" he murmured, and then paused. "We aren't all like you, Mrs Sutton. I wish to G.o.d we were. But seriously, I'm not for giving that hundred; it's against my grain, and that's flat--you'll excuse me speaking plain."

"I like it," she said quickly. "Then I know where I am."

"No," he reiterated firmly, "I'm not for giving that hundred."

"Then I'm bound to say I'm sorry," she returned kindly. "The whole scheme will be ruined, for it's one of those schemes that can only be carried out in a particular way--if they aren't done on the inspiration of the moment they're not done at all. Not that I care so much for the organ itself. It's the idea that was so grand. Fancy--nine hundred pounds all in a minute; such a thing was never known in Bursley Chapel before!"

"Well," said Peake, "I guess when it comes to the pinch they'll find someone else instead of me."

"They won't; there isn't another man who could afford it and trade so bad."

Peake was silent; but he was inflexible. Not even Mrs Sutton could make the suggestion of this subscription seem other than grossly unfair to him, an imposition on his good-nature.

"Think it over," she said abruptly, after he had a.s.sisted her to alight at the top of Trafalgar Road. "Think it over, to oblige me."

"I'd do anything to oblige you," he replied. "But I'll tell you this"--he put his mouth to her ear and whispered, half-smiling at the confession. "You call me a generous man, but whenever that organ's mentioned I feel just like a miser--yes, as hard as a miser. Good-bye!

I'm very glad to have had the pleasure of driving you up." He beamed on her as the horse shot forward.

III

This was on Tuesday. During the next few days Peake went through a novel and very disturbing experience. He gradually became conscious of the power of that mysterious and all-but-irresistible moral force which is called public opinion. His own public of friends and acquaintances connected with the chapel seemed to be, for some inexplicable reason, against him on the question of the organ subscription. They visited him, even to the Rev. Mr Copinger (whom he heartily admired as having "nothing of the parson" about him), and argued quietly, rather severely, and then left him with the a.s.surance that they relied on his sense of what was proper. He was amazed and secretly indignant at this combined attack. He thought it cowardly, unscrupulous; it resembled brigandage.

He felt most acutely that no one had any right to demand from him that hundred pounds, and that they who did so transgressed one of those unwritten laws which govern social intercourse. Yet these transgressors were his friends, people who had earned his respect in years long past and kept it through all the intricate situations arising out of daily contact. They could defy him to withdraw his respect now; and, without knowing it, they did. He was left brooding, pained, bewildered. The explanation was simply this: he had failed to perceive that the grandiose idea of the ninefold organ fund had seized, fired, and obsessed the imaginations of the Wesleyan community, and that under the unwonted poetic stimulus they were capable of acting quite differently from their ordinary selves.

Peake was perplexed, he felt that he was weakening; but, being a man of resourceful obstinacy, he was by no means defeated. On Friday morning he told his wife that he should go to see a customer at Blackpool about a contract, and probably remain at the seaside for the week-end.

Accustomed to these sudden movements, she packed his bag without questioning, and he set off for Knype station in the dogcart. Once behind the horse he felt safe, he could breathe again. The customer at Blackpool was merely an excuse to enable him to escape from the circle of undue influence. Ardently desiring to be in the train and on the other side of Crewe, he pulled up at his little order-office in the market-place to give some instructions. As he did so his clerk, Vodrey, came rushing out and saw him.

"I have just telephoned to your house, sir," the clerk said excitedly.

"They told me you were driving to Knype and so I was coming after you in a cab."

"Why, what's up now?"

"Eardley Brothers have called their creditors together."

"_What_?"

"I've just had a circular-letter from them, sir."

Peake stared at Vodrey, and then took two steps forward, stamping his feet.

"The devil!" he exclaimed, with pa.s.sionate ferocity. "The devil!"

Other men of business, besides James Peake, made similar exclamations that morning; for the collapse of Eardley Brothers, the great earthenware manufacturers, who were chiefly responsible for the ruinous cutting of prices in the American and Colonial markets, was no ordinary trade fiasco. Bursley was staggered, especially when it learnt that the Bank, the inaccessible and autocratic Bank, was an unsecured creditor for twelve thousand pounds.

Peake abandoned the Blackpool customer and drove off to consult his lawyer at Hanbridge; he stood to lose three hundred and fifty pounds, a matter sufficiently disconcerting. Yet, in another part of his mind, he felt strangely serene and happy, for he was sure now of winning his bet of one shilling with Randolph Sneyd. In the first place, the failure of Eardleys would annihilate the organ scheme, and in the second place no one would have the audacity to ask him for a subscription of a hundred pounds when it was known that he would be a heavy sufferer in the Eardley bankruptcy.

Later in the day he happened to meet one of the Eardleys, and at once launched into a stream of that hot invective of which he was a master.

And all the while he was conscious of a certain hypocrisy in his att.i.tude of violence; he could not dismiss the notion that the Eardleys had put him under an obligation by failing precisely at this juncture.

IV

On the Sat.u.r.day evening only Sneyd and Mrs Lovatt came up to Hillport, Enoch Lovatt being away from home. Therefore there were no cards; they talked of the Eardley affair.

"You'll have to manage with the old organ now," was one of the first things that Peake said to Mrs Lovatt, after he had recited his own woe.

He smiled grimly as he said it.

"I don't see why," Sneyd remarked. It was not true; he saw perfectly; but he enjoyed the rousing of Jim Peake into a warm altercation.

"Not at all," said Mrs Lovatt, proudly. "We shall have the organ, I'm sure. There was an urgency committee meeting last night. t.i.tus Blackhurst has most generously given another hundred; he said it would be a shame if the bankruptcy of professed Methodists was allowed to prejudice the interests of the chapel. And the organ-makers have taken fifty pounds off their price. Now, who do you think has given another fifty? Mr Copinger! He stood up last night, Mr Blackhurst told me this morning, and he said, 'Friends, I've only seventy pounds in the world, but I'll give fifty pounds towards this organ.' There! What do you think of that? Isn't he a grand fellow?"

"He is a grand fellow," said Peake, with emphasis, reflecting that the total income of the minister could not exceed three hundred a year.

"So you see you'll _have_ to give your hundred," Mrs Lovatt continued.

"You can't do otherwise after that."

There was a pause.

"I won't give it," said Peake. "I've said I won't, and I won't."

He could think of no argument. To repeat that Eardley's bankruptcy would cost him dear seemed trivial. Nevertheless, the absence of any plausible argument served only to steel his resolution.

At that moment the servant opened the door.

"Mr t.i.tus Blackhurst, senior, to see you, sir."

Peake and his wife looked at one another in amazement, and Sneyd laughed quietly.

"He told me he should come up," Mrs Lovatt explained.

"Show him into the breakfast-room, Clara," said Mrs Peake to the servant.