‘Merica.’
And he was. In the Five Towns we are apt to end our marriages in that laconic manner. Toby did not complain too much; he simply and unaffectedly went. It might be imagined that the situation was a trying one for Priscilla. Not so! Priscilla had experienced marriage with Toby and had found it wanting. She was content to be relieved of Toby. She had her house and her money and her self-esteem, and also tranquillity. She accepted the solution, and devoted her days to the cleanliness of the house.
Toby drew all the money he had out of the Bursley and Turnhill Permanent Fifty Pounds Benefit Building Society (four shares, nearly paid up) and set sail—in the Adriatic, which was then the leading greyhound of the Atlantic—for New York. From New York he went to Trenton (New Jersey), which is the Five Towns of America. A man of his skill in handling clay on a wheel had no difficulty whatever in wresting a good livelihood from Trenton. When he had tarried there a year he caused a letter to be written to his wife informing her that he was dead. He wished to be quite free; and also (we have our feeling for justice) he wished his wife to be quite free. It did not occur to him that he had done anything extraordinary, either in deserting his wife or in forwarding false news of his death. He had done the simple thing, the casual thing, the blunt thing, the thing that necessitated the minimum of talking. He did not intend to return to England.
However, after a few years, he did return to England. The cause of his return is irrelevant to the history, but I may say that it sprang from a conflict between the Five Towns temperament and the Trenton Union of Earthenware Operatives. Such is the power of Unions in the United States that Toby, if he wished to remain under the Federal Flag, had either to yield or to starve. He would not yield. He changed his name and came to England; strolled calmly into the Crown Porcelain Works at Derby one day, and there recommenced his career as an artificer of earthenware. He did well. He could easily earn four pounds a week, and had no desires, save in the direction of fly-fishing—not an expensive diversion. He knew better than to marry. He existed quietly; and one year trod on the heels of another, and carried him from thirty to forty and forty to fifty, and no one found out his identity, though there are several direct trains daily between Derby and Knype.
And now, owing to the death of a friend and a glass of beer, he was in Child Row, crossing the street towards the house whose ownership had caused him to quit it.
He knocked on the door with the handle of his umbrella. There was no knocker; there never had been a knocker.
III
The door opened cautiously, as such doors in the Five Towns do, after a shooting of bolts and a loosing of chains; it opened to the extent of about nine inches, and Toby Hall saw the face of a middle-aged woman eyeing him.
‘Is this Mrs Hall’s?’ he asked sternly.
‘No. It ain’t Mrs Hall’s. It’s Mrs Tansley’s.’
‘I thowt—’
The door opened a little wider.
‘That’s not you, Tobias?’ said the woman unmoved.
‘I reckon it is, though,’ replied Toby, with a difficult smile.
‘Bless us!’ exclaimed the woman. The door oscillated slightly under her hand. ‘Bless us!’ she repeated. And then suddenly, ‘You’d happen better come in, Tobias.’
‘Aye!’ said Tobias.
And he entered.
‘Sit ye down, do,’ said his wife. ‘I thowt as you were dead. They wrote and told me so.’
‘Aye!’ said Tobias. ‘But I am na’.’
He sat down in an armchair near the old-fashioned grate, with its hobs at either side. He was acquainted with that chair, and it had not appreciably altered since his departure. The lastingness of furniture under fair treatment is astonishing. This chair was uncomfortably in exactly the same spot where it had always been uncomfortable; and the same antimacassar was draped over its uncompromising back. Toby put his hat on the table, and leaned his umbrella against the chimney-piece. His overcoat he retained. Same table; same chimney-piece; same clock and ornaments on the chimney-piece! But a different carpet on the floor, and different curtains before the window.
Priscilla bolted and chained the door, and then she too sat down. Her gown was black, with a small black silk apron. And she was stout, and she wore felt slippers and moved with the same gingerly care as Toby himself did. She looked fully her years. Her thin lips were firmer than ever. It was indeed Priscilla.
‘Well, well!’ she murmured.
But her capacity for wonder was nearly exhausted.
‘Aye!’ said Toby, with an air that was meant to be quasi-humorous. He warmed his hands at the fire, and then rubbed them over the front of his calves, leaning forward.
‘So ye’ve come back?’ said Priscilla.
‘Aye!’ concurred Toby.
There was a pause.
‘Cold weather we’re having,’ he muttered.
‘It’s seasonable,’ Priscilla pointed out.
Her glance rested on a sprig of holly that was tied under the gas-chandelier, unique relic of Christmas in the apartment.
Another pause. It would be hazardous to guess what their feelings were; perhaps their feelings were scarcely anything at all.
‘And what be the news?’ Toby inquired, with what passes in the Five Towns for geniality.
