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TALES
OF THE FIVE TOWNS

By

ARNOLD BENNETT

First published January 1905

TO
MARCEL SCHWOB
MY LITERARY GODFATHER IN FRANCE

CONTENTS

PART I
AT HOME

HIS WORSHIP THE GOOSEDRIVER

I

It was an amiable but deceitful afternoon in the third week ofDecember. Snow fell heavily in the windows of confectioners' shops,and Father Christmas smiled in Keats's Bazaar the fawning smile ofa myth who knows himself to be exploded; but beyond these andsimilar efforts to remedy the forgetfulness of a careless climate,there was no sign anywhere in the Five Towns, and especially inBursley, of the immediate approach of the season of peace,goodwill, and gluttony on earth.

At the Tiger, next door to Keats's in the market-place, Mr.Josiah Topham Curtenty had put down his glass (the port was keptspecially for him), and told his boon companion, Mr. Gordon, thathe must be going. These two men had one powerful sentiment 004 incommon: they loved the same woman. Mr. Curtenty, aged twenty-six inheart, thirty-six in mind, and forty-six in looks, was fifty-sixonly in years. He was a rich man; he had made money as anearthenware manufacturer in the good old times before Satan wasingenious enough to invent German competition, American tariffs,and the price of coal; he was still making money with the aid ofhis son Harry, who now managed the works, but he never admittedthat he was making it. No one has yet succeeded, and no one everwill succeed, in catching an earthenware manufacturer in the act ofmaking money; he may confess with a sigh that he has performed thefeat in the past, he may give utterance to a vague, preposteroushope that he will perform it again in the remote future, but as forsurprising him in the very act, you would as easily surprise a henlaying an egg. Nowadays Mr. Curtenty, commercially secure, spentmost of his energy in helping to shape and control the highdestinies of the town. He was Deputy-Mayor, and Chairman of theGeneral Purposes Committee of the Town Council; he was also aGuardian of the Poor, 005 a Justice of thePeace, President of the Society for the Prosecution of Felons, asidesman, an Oddfellow, and several other things that meant dining,shrewdness, and good-nature. He was a short, stiff, stout,red-faced man, jolly with the jollity that springs from a kindheart, a humorous disposition, a perfect digestion, and therespectful deference of one's bank-manager. Without being a memberof the Browning Society, he held firmly to the belief that all'sright with the world.

Mr. Gordon, who has but a sorry part in the drama, was a