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The Heroism Of Thomas Chadwick
by
“And have you handed it over?” Paul Ford inquired mildly, after a period of soft whistling.
“I’ve started two post-office savings bank accounts for ’em,” said Thomas Chadwick, with ferocity.
The talk stopped, and nothing whatever occurred until the car halted at the railway station to take up passengers. The heart of Thomas Chadwick gave a curious little jump when he saw Mrs Clayton Vernon coming out of the station and towards his car. (Her horses must have been still lame or her coachman still laid aside.) She boarded the car, smiling with a quite particular effulgence upon Thomas Chadwick, and he greeted her with what he imagined to be the true antique chivalry. And she sat down in the corner opposite to Paul Ford, beaming.
When Thomas Chadwick came, with great respect, to demand her fare, she said:
“By the way, Chadwick, it’s such a short distance from the station to the town, I think I should have walked and saved a penny. But I wanted to speak to you. I wasn’t aware, last Tuesday, that your other daughter got married last year and now has a dear little baby. I gave you threepenny bits each for those dear little twins. Here’s another one for the other baby, I think I ought to treat all your grandchildren alike–otherwise your daughters might be jealous of each other”–she smiled archly, to indicate that this passage was humorous–“and there’s no knowing what might happen!”
Mrs Clayton Vernon always enunciated her remarks in a loud and clear voice, so that Paul Ford could not have failed to hear every word. A faint but beatific smile concealed itself roguishly about Paul Ford’s mouth, and he looked with a rapt expression on an advertisement above Mrs Clayton Vernon’s head, which assured him that, with a certain soap, washing-day became a pleasure.
Thomas Chadwick might have flung the threepenny bit into the road. He might have gone off into language unseemly in a tram-conductor and a grandfather. He might have snatched Mrs Clayton Vernon’s bonnet off and stamped on it. He might have killed Paul Ford (for it was certainly Paul Ford with whom he was the most angry). But he did none of these things. He said, in his best unctuous voice:
“Thank you, m’m, I’m sure!”
And, at the journey’s end, when the passengers descended, he stared a harsh stare, without winking, full in the face of Paul Ford, and he courteously came to the aid of Mrs Clayton Vernon. He had proclaimed Mrs Clayton Vernon to be his ideal of a true lady, and he was heroically loyal to his ideal, a martyr to the cause he had espoused. Such a man was not fitted to be a tram-conductor, and the Five Towns Electric Traction Company soon discovered his unfitness–so that he was again thrown upon the world.