The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories Part 23

It was an alarm-clock going off in the next room.

And, further, when he arrived downstairs, the barmaid, sweet, conscientious little thing, came up to him and said, "I'm so sorry, sir.

I quite forgot to tell the boots to call you!"

II

That afternoon he sat in his beautiful new surgery and waited for dental sufferers to come to him from all quarters of the Five Towns. It needs not to be said that n.o.body came. The mere fact that a new dentist has "set up" in a district is enough to cure all the toothache for miles around. The one martyr who might, perhaps, have paid him a visit and a fee did not show herself. This martyr was Mrs Simeon Clowes, the mayoress. By a curious chance, he had observed, during his short sojourn at the Turk's Head, that the landlady thereof was obviously in pain from her teeth, or from a particular tooth. She must certainly have informed herself as to his name and condition, and Mr Cowlishaw thought that it would have been a graceful act on her part to patronize him, as he had patronized the Turk's Head. But no! Mayoresses, even the most tactful, do not always do the right thing at the right moment.

Besides, she had doubtless gone, despite toothache, to the football match with the Mayor, the new club being under the immediate patronage of his Wors.h.i.+p. All the potting world had gone to the football match.

Mr Cowlishaw would have liked to go, but it would have been madness to quit the surgery on his opening day. So he sat and yawned, and peeped at the crowd crowding to the match at two o'clock, and crowding back in the gloom at four o'clock; and at a quarter past five he was reading a full description of the carnage and the heroism in the football edition of the _Signal_. Though Hanbridge had been defeated, it appeared from the _Signal_ that Hanbridge was the better team, and that Rannoch, the new Scotch centre-forward, had fought n.o.bly for the town which had bought him so dear.

Mr Cowlishaw was just dozing over the _Signal_ when there happened a ring at his door. He did not precipitate himself upon the door. With beating heart he retained his presence of mind, and said to himself that of course it could not possibly be a client. Even dentists who bought a practice ready-made never had a client on their first day. He heard the attendant answer the ring, and then he heard the attendant saying, "I'll see, sir."

It was, in fact, a patient. The servant, having asked Mr Cowlishaw if Mr Cowlishaw was at liberty, introduced the patient to the Presence, and the Presence trembled.

The patient was a tall, stiff, fair man of about thirty, with a tousled head and inelegant but durable clothing. He had a drooping moustache, which prevented Mr Cowlishaw from adding his teeth up instantly.

"Good afternoon, mister," said the patient, abruptly.

"Good afternoon," said Mr Cowlishaw. "Have you ... Can I ..."

Strange; in the dental hospital and school there had been no course of study in the art of pattering to patients!

"It's like this," said the patient, putting his hand in his waistcoat pocket.

"Will you kindly sit down," said Mr Cowlishaw, turning up the gas, and pointing to the chair of chairs.

"It's like this," repeated the patient, doggedly. "You see these three teeth?"

He displayed three very real teeth in a piece of reddened paper. As a spectacle, they were decidedly not appetizing, but Mr Cowlishaw was hardened.

"Really!" said Mr Cowlishaw, impartially, gazing on them.

"They're my teeth," said the patient. And thereupon he opened his mouth wide, and displayed, not without vanity, a widowed gum. "'Ont 'eeth," he exclaimed, keeping his mouth open and omitting preliminary consonants.

"Yes," said Mr Cowlishaw, with a dry inflection. "I saw that they were upper incisors. How did this come about? An accident, I suppose?"

"Well," said the man, "you may call it an accident; I don't. My name's Rannoch; centre-forward. Ye see? Were ye at the match?"

Mr Cowlishaw understood. He had no need of further explanation; he had read it all in the _Signal_. And so the chief victim of Tottenham Hotspur had come to him, just him! This was luck! For Rannoch was, of course, the most celebrated man in the Five Towns, and the idol of the populace. He might have been M.P. had he chosen.

"Dear me!" Mr Cowlishaw sympathized, and he said again, pointing more firmly to the chair of chairs, "Will you sit down?"

"I had 'em all picked up," Mr Rannoch proceeded, ignoring the suggestion. "Because a bit of a scheme came into my head. And that's why I've come to you, as you're just commencing dentist. Supposing you put these teeth on a bit of green velvet in the case in your window, with a big card to say as they're guaranteed to be my genuine teeth, knocked out by that blighter of a Tottenham half-back, you'll have such a crowd as was never seen around your door. All the Five Towns'll come to see 'em. It'll be the biggest advertis.e.m.e.nt that either you or any other dentist ever had. And you might put a little notice in the _Signal_ saying that my teeth are on view at your premises; it would only cost ye a s.h.i.+lling.... I should expect ye to furnish me with new teeth for nothing, ye see."

In his travels throughout England Mr Rannoch had lost most of his Scotch accent, but he had not lost his Scotch skill in the art and craft of trying to pay less than other folks for whatever he might happen to want.

a.s.suredly the idea was an idea of genius. As an advertis.e.m.e.nt it would be indeed colossal and unique. Tens of thousands would gaze spellbound for hours at those relics of their idol, and every gazer would inevitably be familiarized with the name and address of Mr Cowlishaw, and with the fact that Mr Cowlishaw was dentist-in-chief to the heroical Rannoch. Unfortunately, in dentistry there is etiquette. And the etiquette of dentistry is as terrible, as unbending, as the etiquette of the Court of Austria.

Mr Cowlishaw knew that he could not do this thing without sinning against etiquette.

"I'm sorry I can't fall in with your scheme," said he, "but I can't."

"But, _man_!" protested the Scotchman, "it's the greatest scheme that ever was."

"Yes," said Mr Cowlishaw, "but it would be unprofessional."

Mr Rannoch was himself a professional. "Oh, well," he said sarcastically, "if you're one of those amateurs--"

"I'll put you the job in as low as possible," said Mr Cowlishaw, persuasively.

But Scotchmen are not to be persuaded like that.

Mr Rannoch wrapped up his teeth and left.

What finally happened to those teeth Mr Cowlishaw never knew. But he satisfied himself that they were not advertised in the _Signal_.

III

Now, just as Mr Cowlishaw was personally conducting to the door the greatest goal-getter that the Five Towns had ever seen there happened another ring, and thus it fell out that Mr Cowlishaw found himself in the double difficulty of speeding his first visitor and welcoming his second all in the same breath. It is true that the second might imagine that the first was a client, but then the aspect of Mr Rannoch's mouth, had it caught the eye of the second, was not rea.s.suring. However, Mr Rannoch's mouth happily did not catch the eye of the second.

The second was a visitor beyond Mr Cowlishaw's hopes, no other than Mrs Simeon Clowes, landlady of the Turk's Head and Mayoress of Hanbridge; a tall and well-built, handsome, downright woman, of something more than fifty and something less than sixty; the mother of five married daughters, the aunt of fourteen nephews and nieces, the grandam of seven, or it might be eight, a.s.sorted babies; in short, a lady of vast influence. After all, then, she had come to him! If only he could please her, he regarded his succession to his predecessor as definitely established and his fortune made. No person in Hanbridge with any yearnings for style would dream, he trusted, of going to any other dentist than the dentist patronized by Mrs Clowes.

She eyed him interrogatively and firmly. She probed into his character, and he felt himself pierced.

"You _are_ Mr Cowlishaw?" she began.

"Good afternoon, Mrs Clowes," he replied. "Yes, I am. Can I be of service to you?"

"That depends," she said.

He asked her to step in, and in she stepped.

"Have you had any experience in taking teeth out?" she asked in the surgery. Her hand stroked her left cheek.

"Oh yes," he said eagerly. "But, of course, we try to avoid extraction as much as possible."

"If you're going to talk like that," she said coldly, and even bitterly, "I'd better go."

He wondered what she was driving at.

"Naturally," he said, summoning all his latent powers of diplomacy, "there are cases in which extraction is unfortunately necessary."