Tales of the Five Towns | Page 7

in Hillport saw
nothing but a paralyzing insult in the opinion of the Signal (first and
foremost a Hanbridge organ), that Bursley could find no better civic
head than Josiah Curtenty. At least three Aldermen and seven
Councillors privately, and in the Tiger, disagreed with any such view of
Bursley's capacity to find heads.
And underneath all this brooding dissatisfaction lurked the thought, as
the alligator lurks in a muddy river, that 'the Earl wouldn't like
it'--meaning the geese episode. It was generally felt that the Earl had
been badly treated by Jos Curtenty. The town could not explain its
sentiments--could not argue about them. They were not, in fact, capable
of logical justification; but they were there, they violently existed. It
would have been useless to point out that if the inimitable Jos had not
been called to the mayoralty the episode of the geese would have
passed as a gorgeous joke; that everyone had been vastly amused by it
until that desolating issue of the Signal announced the Earl's retirement;
that Jos Curtenty could not possibly have foreseen what was about to
happen; and that, anyhow, goosedriving was less a crime than a social
solecism, and less a social solecism than a brilliant eccentricity.
Bursley was hurt, and logic is no balm for wounds.
Some may ask: If Bursley was offended, why did it not mark its sense
of Josiah's failure to read the future by electing another Mayor? The

answer is, that while all were agreed that his antic was inexcusable, all
were equally agreed to pretend that it was a mere trifle of no
importance; you cannot deprive a man of his prescriptive right for a
mere trifle of no importance. Besides, nobody could be so foolish as to
imagine that goosedriving, though reprehensible in a Mayor about to
succeed an Earl, is an act of which official notice can be taken.
The most curious thing in the whole imbroglio is that Josiah Curtenty
secretly agreed with his wife and the town. He was ashamed, overset.
His procession of geese appeared to him in an entirely new light, and
he had the strength of mind to admit to himself, 'I've made a fool of
myself.'
Harry went to London for a week, and Josiah, under plea of his son's
absence, spent eight hours a day at the works. The brougham remained
in the coach-house.
The Town Council duly met in special conclave, and Josiah Topham
Curtenty became Mayor of Bursley.
Shortly after Christmas it was announced that the Mayor and Mayoress
had decided to give a New Year's treat to four hundred poor old people
in the St. Luke's covered market. It was also spread about that this treat
would eclipse and extinguish all previous treats of a similar nature, and
that it might be accepted as some slight foretaste of the hospitality
which the Mayor and Mayoress would dispense in that memorable year
of royal festival. The treat was to occur on January 9, the Mayoress's
birthday.
On January 7 Josiah happened to go home early. He was proceeding
into the drawing-room without enthusiasm to greet his wife, when he
heard voices within; and one voice was the voice of Gas Gordon.
Jos stood still. It has been mentioned that Gordon and the Mayor were
in love with the same woman. The Mayor had easily captured her under
the very guns of his not formidable rival, and he had always thereafter
felt a kind of benevolent, good-humoured, contemptuous pity for
Gordon--Gordon, whose life was a tragic blank; Gordon, who lived, a

melancholy and defeated bachelor, with his mother and two unmarried
sisters older than himself. That Gordon still worshipped at the shrine
did not disturb him; on the contrary, it pleased him. Poor Gordon!
'But, really, Mrs. Curtenty,' Gordon was saying--'really, you know
I--that--is--really--'
'To please me!' Mrs. Curtenty entreated, with a seductive charm that
Jos felt even outside the door.
Then there was a pause.
'Very well,' said Gordon.
Mr. Curtenty tiptoed away and back into the street. He walked in the
dark nearly to Oldcastle, and returned about six o'clock. But Clara said
no word of Gordon's visit. She had scarcely spoken to Topham for
three weeks.
The next morning, as Harry was departing to the works, Mrs. Curtenty
followed the handsome youth into the hall.
'Harry,' she whispered, 'bring me two ten-pound notes this afternoon,
will you, and say nothing to your father.'

IV
Gas Gordon was to be on the platform at the poor people's treat. As he
walked down Trafalgar Road his eye caught a still-exposed fragment of
a decayed bill on a hoarding. It referred to a meeting of the local branch
of the Anti-Gambling League a year ago in the lecture-hall of the
Wesleyan Chapel, and it said that