BOOK IV
WHAT LIFE
IS
CHAPTER I
FRENSHAM'S
I
Matthew
Peel-Swynnerton sat in the long dining-room of
the Pension Frensham, Rue Lord Byron, Paris; and
he looked out of place there. It was an
apartment about thirty feet in length, and of
the width of two windows, which sufficiently
lighted one half of a very long table with round
ends. The gloom of the other extremity was
illumined by a large mirror in a tarnished gilt
frame, which filled a good portion of the wall
opposite the windows. Near the mirror was a high
folding-screen of four leaves, and behind this
screen could be heard the sound of a door
continually shutting and opening. In the long
wall to the left of the windows were two doors,
one dark and important, a door of state, through
which a procession of hungry and a procession of
sated solemn self- conscious persons passed
twice daily, and the other, a smaller door,
glazed, its glass painted with wreaths of roses,
not an original door of the house, but a late
breach in the wall, that seemed to lead to the
dangerous and to the naughty. The wall-paper and
the window drapery were rich and forbidding,
dark in hue, mysterious of pattern. Over the
state-door was a pair of antlers. And at
intervals, so high up as to defy inspection,
engravings and oil-paintings made oblong patches
on the walls. They were hung from immense nails
with porcelain heads, and they appeared to
depict the more majestic aspect of man and
nature. One engraving, over the mantelpiece and
nearer earth than the rest, unmistakably showed
Louis Philippe and his family in attitudes of
virtue. Beneath this royal group, a vast gilt
clock, flanked by pendants of the same period,
gave the right time—a quarter past seven.
And down
the room, filling it, ran the great white table,
bordered with bowed heads and the backs of
chairs. There were over thirty people at the
table, and the peculiarly restrained noisiness
of their knives and forks on the plates proved
that they were a discreet and a correct people.
Their clothes—blouses, bodices, and jackets—did
not flatter the lust of the eye. Only two or
three were in evening dress. They spoke little,
and generally in a timorous tone, as though
silence had been enjoined. Somebody would
half-whisper a remark, and then his neighbour,
absently fingering her bread and lifting gaze
from her plate into vacancy, would
conscientiously weigh the remark and
half-whisper in reply: "I dare say." But a few
spoke loudly and volubly, and were regarded by
the rest, who envied them, as underbred.
Food was
quite properly the chief preoccupation. The
diners ate as those eat who are paying a fixed
price per day for as much as they can consume
while observing the rules of the game. Without
moving their heads they glanced out of the
corners of their eyes, watching the manoeuvres
of the three starched maids who served. They had
no conception of food save as portions laid out
in rows on large silver dishes, and when a maid
bent over them deferentially, balancing the
dish, they summed up the offering in an instant,
and in an instant decided how much they could
decently take, and to what extent they could
practise the theoretic liberty of choice. And if
the food for any reason did not tempt them, or
if it egregiously failed to coincide with their
aspirations, they considered themselves
aggrieved. For, according to the game, they
might not command; they had the right to seize
all that was presented under their noses, like
genteel tigers; and they had the right to
refuse: that was all. The dinner was thus a
series of emotional crises for the diners, who
knew only that full dishes and clean plates came
endlessly from the banging door behind the
screen, and that ravaged dishes and dirty plates
vanished endlessly through the same door. They
were all eating similar food simultaneously;
they began together and they finished together.
The flies that haunted the paper-bunches which
hung from the chandeliers to the level of the
flower-vases, were more free. The sole event
that chequered the exact regularity of the
repast was the occasional arrival of a
wine-bottle for one of the guests. The receiver
of the wine-bottle signed a small paper in
exchange for it and wrote largely a number on
the label of the bottle; then, staring at the
number and fearing that after all it might be
misread by a stupid maid or an unscrupulous
compeer, he would re- write the number on
another part of the label, even more largely.
Matthew
Peel-Swynnerton obviously did not belong to this
world. He was a young man of twenty-five or so,
not handsome, but elegant. Though he was not in
evening dress, though he was, as a fact, in a
very light grey suit, entirely improper to a
dinner, he was elegant. The suit was admirably
cut, and nearly new; but he wore it as though he
had never worn anything else. Also his
demeanour, reserved yet free from
self-consciousness, his method of handling a
knife and fork, the niceties of his manner in
transferring food from the silver dishes to his
plate, the tone in which he ordered half a
bottle of wine—all these details infallibly
indicated to the company that Matthew
Peel-Swynnerton was their superior. Some folks
hoped that he was the son of a lord, or even a
lord. He happened to be fixed at the end of the
table, with his back to the window, and there
was a vacant chair on either side of him; this
situation favoured the hope of his high rank. In
truth, he was the son, the grandson, and several
times the nephew, of earthenware manufacturers.
He noticed that the large 'compote' (as it was
called in his trade) which marked the centre of
the table, was the production of his firm. This
surprised him, for Peel, Swynnerton and Co.,
known and revered throughout the Five Towns as
'Peels,' did not cater for cheap markets. A late
guest startled the room, a fat, flabby,
middle-aged man whose nose would have roused the
provisional hostility of those who have
convinced themselves that Jews are not as other
men. His nose did not definitely brand him as a
usurer and a murderer of Christ, but it was
suspicious. His clothes hung loose, and might
have been anybody's clothes. He advanced with
brisk assurance to the table, bowed, somewhat
too effusively, to several people, and sat down
next to Peel- Swynnerton. One of the maids at
once brought him a plate of soup, and he said:
"Thank you, Marie," smiling at her. He was
evidently a habitue of the house. His spectacled
eyes beamed the superiority which comes of
knowing girls by their names. He was seriously
handicapped in the race for sustenance, being
two and a half courses behind, but he drew level
with speed and then, having accomplished this,
he sighed, and pointedly engaged Peel-
Swynnerton with his sociable glance.
"Ah!" he
breathed out. "Nuisance when you come in late,
sir!"
Peel-Swynnerton gave a reluctant affirmative.
"Doesn't
only upset you! It upsets the house! Servants
don't like it!"
"No,"
murmured Peel-Swynnerton, "I suppose not."
"However,
it's not often I'm late," said the man.
"Can't help it sometimes. Business! Worst of
these French business people is that they've no
notion of time. Appointments …! God bless my
soul!"
"Do you
come here often?" asked Peel-Swynnerton. He
detested the fellow, quite inexcusably, perhaps
because his serviette was tucked under his chin;
but he saw that the fellow was one of your
determined talkers, who always win in the end.
Moreover, as being clearly not an ordinary
tourist in Paris, the fellow mildly excited his
curiosity.
"I live
here," said the other. "Very convenient for a
bachelor, you know. Have done for years. My
office is just close by. You may know my
name—Lewis Mardon."
Peel-Swynnerton hesitated. The hesitation
convicted him of not 'knowing his Paris' well.
"House-agent," said Lewis Mardon, quickly.
"Oh yes,"
said Peel-Swynnerton, vaguely recalling a vision
of the name among the advertisements on
newspaper kiosks.
"I expect,"
Mr. Mardon went on, "my name is as well-known as
anybody's in Paris."
"I suppose
so," assented Peel-Swynnerton.
The
conversation fell for a few moments.
"Staying
here long?" Mr. Mardon demanded, having added up
Peel- Swynnerton as a man of style and of means,
and being puzzled by his presence at that table.
"I don't
know," said Peel-Swynnerton.
This was a
lie, justified in the utterer's opinion as a
repulse to Mr. Mardon's vulgar inquisitiveness,
such inquisitiveness as might have been expected
from a fellow who tucked his serviette under his
chin. Peel-Swynnerton knew exactly how long he
would stay. He would stay until the day after
the morrow; he had only about fifty francs in
his pocket. He had been making a fool of himself
in another quarter of Paris, and he had
descended to the Pension Frensham as a place
where he could be absolutely sure of spending
not more than twelve francs a day. Its
reputation was high, and it was convenient for
the Galliera Museum, where he was making some
drawings which he had come to Paris expressly to
make, and without which he could not reputably
return to England. He was capable of
foolishness, but he was also capable of wisdom,
and scarcely any pressure of need would have
induced him to write home for money to replace
the money spent on making himself into a fool.
Mr. Mardon
was conscious of a check. But, being of an
accommodating disposition, he at once tried
another direction.
"Good food
here, eh?" he suggested.
"Very,"
said Peel-Swynnerton, with sincerity. "I was
quite—"
At that
moment, a tall straight woman of uncertain age
pushed open the principal door and stood for an
instant in the doorway. Peel- Swynnerton had
just time to notice that she was handsome and
pale, and that her hair was black, and then she
was gone again, followed by a clipped poodle
that accompanied her. She had signed with a
brief gesture to one of the servants, who at
once set about lighting the gas-jets over the
table.
"Who is
that?" asked Peel-Swynnerton, without reflecting
that it was now he who was making advances to
the fellow whose napkin covered all his
shirt-front.
"That's the
missis, that is," said Mr. Mardon, in a lower
and semi-confidential voice.
"Oh! Mrs.
Frensham?"
"Yes. But
her real name is Scales," said Mr. Mardon,
proudly.
"Widow, I
suppose?"
"Yes."
"And she
runs the whole show?"
"She runs
the entire contraption," said Mr. Mardon,
solemnly; "and don't you make any mistake!" He
was getting familiar.
Peel-Swynnerton beat him off once more, glancing
with careful, uninterested nonchalance at the
gas-burners which exploded one after another
with a little plop under the application of the
maid's taper. The white table gleamed more
whitely than ever under the flaring gas. People
at the end of the room away from the window
instinctively smiled, as though the sun had
begun to shine. The aspect of the dinner was
changed, ameliorated; and with the reiterated
statement that the evenings were drawing in
though it was only July, conversation became
almost general. In two minutes Mr. Mardon was
genially talking across the whole length of the
table. The meal finished in a state that
resembled conviviality.
Matthew
Peel-Swynnerton might not go out into the
crepuscular delights of Paris. Unless he
remained within the shelter of the Pension, he
could not hope to complete successfully his re-
conversion from folly to wisdom. So he bravely
passed through the small rose-embroidered door
into a small glass-covered courtyard, furnished
with palms, wicker armchairs, and two small
tables; and he lighted a pipe and pulled out of
his pocket a copy of The Referee. That retreat
was called the Lounge; it was the only part of
the Pension where smoking was not either a
positive crime or a transgression against good
form. He felt lonely. He said to himself grimly
in one breath that pleasure was all rot, and in
the next he sullenly demanded of the universe
how it was that pleasure could not go on for
ever, and why he was not Mr. Barney Barnato. Two
old men entered the retreat and burnt cigarettes
with many precautions. Then Mr. Lewis Mardon
appeared and sat down boldly next to Matthew,
like a privileged friend. After all, Mr. Mardon
was better than nobody whatever, and Matthew
decided to suffer him, especially as he began
without preliminary skirmishing to talk about
life in Paris. An irresistible subject! Mr.
Mardon said in a worldly tone that the existence
of a bachelor in Paris might easily be made
agreeable. But that, of course, for
himself—well, he preferred, as a general rule,
the Pension Frensham sort of thing; and it was
excellent for his business. Still he could not …
he knew … He compared the advantages of what he
called 'knocking about' in Paris, with the
equivalent in London. His information about
London was out of date, and Peel-Swynnerton was
able to set him right on important details. But
his information about Paris was infinitely
precious and interesting to the younger man,,
who saw that he had hitherto lived under strange
misconceptions.
"Have a
whiskey?" asked Mr. Mardon, suddenly. "Very good
here!" he added.
"Thanks!"
drawled Peel-Swynnerton.
The
temptation to listen to Mr. Mardon as long as
Mr. Mardon would talk was not to be overcome.
And presently, when the old men had departed,
they were frankly telling each other stories in
the dimness of the retreat. Then, when the
supply of stories came to an end, Mr. Mardon
smacked his lips over the last drop of whiskey
and ejaculated: "Yes!" as if giving a general
confirmation to all that had been said.
"Do have
one with me," said Matthew, politely. It was the
least he could do.
The second
supply of whiskies was brought into the Lounge
by Mr.
Mardon's Marie. He smiled on her familiarly, and
remarked that he
supposed she would soon be going to bed after a
hard day's work.
She gave a moue and a flounce in reply, and
swished out.
"Carries
herself well, doesn't she?" observed Mr. Mardon,
as though Marie had been an exhibit at an
agricultural show. "Ten years ago she was very
fresh and pretty, but of course it takes it out
of 'em, a place like this!"
"But
still," said Peel-Swynnerton, "they must like it
or they wouldn't stay—that is, unless things are
very different here from what they are in
England."
The
conversation seemed to have stimulated him to
examine the woman question in all its bearings,
with philosophic curiosity.
"Oh! They
LIKE it," Mr. Mardon assured him, as one who
knew. "Besides, Mrs. Scales treats 'em very
well. I know THAT. She's told me. She's very
particular"—he looked around to see if walls had
ears—"and, by Jove, you've got to be; but she
treats 'em well. You'd scarcely believe the
wages they get, and pickings. Now at the Hotel
Moscow—know the Hotel Moscow?"
Happily
Peel-Swynnerton did. He had been advised to
avoid it because it catered exclusively for
English visitors, but in the Pension Frensham he
had accepted something even more exclusively
British than the Hotel Moscow. Mr. Mardon was
quite relieved at his affirmative.
"The Hotel
Moscow is a limited company now," said he;
"English."
"Really?"
"Yes. I
floated it. It was my idea. A great success!
That's how I know all about the Hotel Moscow."
He looked at the walls again. "I wanted to do
the same here," he murmured, and Peel-Swynnerton
had to show that he appreciated this confidence.
"But she never would agree. I've tried her all
ways. No go! It's a thousand pities."
"Paying
thing, eh?"
"This
place? I should say it was! And I ought to be
able to judge, I reckon. Mrs. Scales is one of
the shrewdest women you'd meet in a day's march.
She's made a lot of money here, a lot of money.
And there's no reason why a place like this
shouldn't be five times as big as it is. Ten
times. The scope's unlimited, my dear sir. All
that's wanted is capital. Naturally she has
capital of her own, and she could get more. But
then, as she says, she doesn't want the place
any bigger. She says it's now just as big as she
can handle. That isn't so. She's a woman who
could handle anything—a born manager—but even if
it was so, all she would have to do would be to
retire—only leave us the place and the name.
It's the name that counts. And she's made the
name of Frensham worth something, I can tell
you!"
"Did she
get the place from her husband?" asked
Peel-Swynnerton.
Her own name of Scales intrigued him.
Mr. Mardon
shook his head. "Bought it on her own, after the
husband's time, for a song—a song! I know,
because I knew the original Frenshams."
"You must
have been in Paris a long time," said
Peel-Swynnerton.
Mr. Mardon
could never resist an opportunity to talk about
himself. His was a wonderful history. And
Peel-Swynnerton, while scorning the man for his
fatuity, was impressed. And when that was
finished—
"Yes!" said
Mr. Mardon after a pause,, reaffirming
everything in general by a single monosyllable.
Shortly
afterwards he rose, saying that his habits were
regular.
"Good-night,' he said with a mechanical smile.
"G-good-night," said Peel-Swynnerton, trying to
force the tone of fellowship and not succeeding.
Their intimacy, which had sprung up like a
mushroom, suddenly fell into dust.
Peel-Swynnerton's unspoken comment to Mr.
Mardon's back was: "Ass!" Still, the sum of
Peel-Swynnerton's knowledge had indubitably been
increased during the evening. And the hour was
yet early. Half-past ten! The Folies-Marigny,
with its beautiful architecture and its crowds
of white toilettes, and its frothing of
champagne and of beer, and its musicians in
tight red coats, was just beginning to be alive—
and at a distance of scarcely a stone's-throw!
Peel-Swynnerton pictured the terraced,
glittering hall, which had been the prime origin
of his exceeding foolishness. And he pictured
all the other resorts, great and small,
garlanded with white lanterns, in the Champs
Elysees; and the sombre aisles of the Champs
Elysees where mysterious pale figures walked
troublingly under the shade of trees, while
snatches of wild song or absurd brassy music
floated up from the resorts and restaurants. He
wanted to go out and spend those fifty francs
that remained in his pocket. After all, why not
telegraph to England for more money? "Oh, damn
it!" he said savagely, and stretched his arms
and got up. The Lounge was very small, gloomy
and dreary.
One
brilliant incandescent light burned in the hall,
crudely illuminating the wicker fauteuils, a
corded trunk with a blue-and- red label on it, a
Fitzroy barometer, a map of Paris, a coloured
poster of the Compagnie Transatlantique, and the
mahogany retreat of the hall-portress. In that
retreat was not only the hall- portress—an aged
woman with a white cap above her wrinkled pink
face—but the mistress of the establishment. They
were murmuring together softly; they seemed to
be well disposed to one another. The portress
was respectful, but the mistress was respectful
also. The hall, with its one light tranquilly
burning, was bathed in an honest calm, the calm
of a day's work accomplished, of gradual
relaxation from tension, of growing expectation
of repose. In its simplicity it affected
Peel-Swynnerton as a medicine tonic for nerves
might have affected him. In that hall, though
exterior nocturnal life was but just stirring
into activity, it seemed that the middle of the
night had come, and that these two women alone
watched in a mansion full of sleepers. And all
the recitals which Peel-Swynnerton and Mr.
Mardon had exchanged sank to the level of
pitiably foolish gossip. Peel-Swynnerton felt
that his duty to the house was to retire to bed.
He felt, too, that he could not leave the house
without saying that he was going out, and that
he lacked the courage deliberately to tell these
two women that he was going out—at that time of
night! He dropped into one of the chairs and
made a second attempt to peruse The Referee.
Useless! Either his mind was outside in the
Champs Elysees, or his gaze would wander
surreptitiously to the figure of Mrs. Scales. He
could not well distinguish her face because it
was in the shadow of the mahogany.
Then the
portress came forth from her box, and, slightly
bent, sped actively across the hall, smiling
pleasantly at the guest as she passed him, and
disappeared up the stairs. The mistress was
alone in the retreat. Peel-Swynnerton jumped up
brusquely, dropping the paper with a rustle, and
approached her.
"Excuse
me," he said deferentially. "Have any letters
come for me to-night?"
He knew
that the arrival of letters for him was
impossible, since nobody knew his address.
"What
name?" The question was coldly polite, and the
questioner looked him full in the face.
Undoubtedly she was a handsome woman. Her hair
was greying at the temples, and the skin was
withered and crossed with lines. But she was
handsome. She was one of those women of whom to
their last on earth the stranger will say: "When
she was young she must have been worth looking
at!"—with a little transient regret that
beautiful young women cannot remain for ever
young. Her voice was firm and even, sweet in
tone, and yet morally harsh from incessant
traffic—with all varieties of human nature. Her
eyes were the impartial eyes of one who is
always judging. And evidently she was a proud,
even a haughty creature, with her careful,
controlled politeness. Evidently she considered
herself superior to no matter what guest. Her
eyes announced that she had lived and learnt,
that she knew more about life than any one whom
she was likely to meet, and that having
pre-eminently succeeded in life, she had
tremendous confidence in herself. The proof of
her success was the unique Frensham's. A
consciousness of the uniqueness of Frensham's
was also in those eyes. Theoretically Matthew
Peel-Swynnerton's mental attitude towards
lodging-house keepers was condescending, but
here it was not condescending. It had the real
respectfulness of a man who for the moment at
any rate is impressed beyond his calculations.
His glance fell as he said—
"Peel-Swynnerton." Then he looked up again.
He said the
words awkwardly, and rather fearfully, as if
aware that he was playing with fire. If this
Mrs. Scales was the long- vanished aunt of his
friend, Cyril Povey, she must know those two
names, locally so famous. Did she start? Did she
show a sign of being perturbed? At first he
thought he detected a symptom of emotion, but in
an instant he was sure that he had detected
nothing of the sort, and that it was silly to
suppose that he was treading on the edge of a
romance. Then she turned towards the letter-rack
at her side, and he saw her face in profile. It
bore a sudden and astonishing likeness to the
profile of Cyril Povey; a resemblance
unmistakable and finally decisive. The nose, and
the curve of the upper lip were absolutely
Cyril's. Matthew Peel- Swynnerton felt very
queer. He felt like a criminal in peril of being
caught in the act, and he could not understand
why he should feel so. The landlady looked in
the 'P' pigeon-hole, and in the 'S' pigeon-hole.
"No," she
said quietly, "I see nothing for you."
Taken with
a swift rash audacity, he said: "Have you had
any one named Povey here recently?"
"Povey?"
"Yes. Cyril
Povey, of Bursley—in the Five Towns."
He was very
impressionable, very sensitive, was Matthew
Peel- Swynnerton. His voice trembled as he
spoke. But hers also trembled in reply.
"Not that I
remember! No! Were you expecting him to be
here?"
"Well, it
wasn't at all sure," he muttered. "Thank you.
Good- night."
"Good-night," she said, apparently with the
simple perfunctoriness of the landlady who says
good-night to dozens of strangers every evening.
He hurried
away upstairs, and met the portress coming down.
"Well, well!" he thought. "Of all the queer
things—!" And he kept nodding his head. At last
he had encountered something REALLY strange in
the spectacle of existence. It had fallen to him
to discover the legendary woman who had fled
from Bursley before he was born, and of whom
nobody knew anything. What news for Cyril! What
a staggering episode! He had scarcely any sleep
that night. He wondered whether he would be able
to meet Mrs. Scales without self-consciousness
on the morrow. However, he was spared the
curious ordeal of meeting her. She did not
appear at all on the following day; nor did he
see her before he left. He could not find a
pretext for asking why she was invisible.
II
The hansom
of Matthew Peel-Swynnerton drew up in front of
No. 26, Victoria Grove, Chelsea; his kit-bag was
on the roof of the cab. The cabman had a red
flower in his buttonhole. Matthew leaped out of
the vehicle, holding his straw hat on his head
with one hand. On reaching the pavement he
checked himself suddenly and became carelessly
calm. Another straw-hatted and grey-clad figure
was standing at the side-gate of No. 26 in the
act of lighting a cigarette.
"Hello,
Matt!" exclaimed the second figure, languidly,
and in a veiled voice due to the fact that he
was still holding the match to the cigarette and
puffing. "What's the meaning of all this
fluster? You're just the man I want to see."
He threw
away the match with a wave of the arm, and took
Matthew's hand for a moment, blowing a double
shaft of smoke through his nose
"I want to
see you, too," said Matthew. "And I've only got
a minute. I'm on my way to Euston. I must catch
the twelve-five."
He looked
at his friend, and could positively see no
feature of it that was not a feature of Mrs.
Scales's face. Also, the elderly woman held her
body in exactly the same way as the young man.
It was entirely disconcerting.
"Have a
cigarette," answered Cyril Povey, imperturbably.
He was two years younger than Matthew, from whom
he had acquired most of his vast and intricate
knowledge of life and art, with certain leading
notions of deportment; whose pupil indeed he was
in all the things that matter to young men. But
he had already surpassed his professor. He could
pretend to be old much more successfully than
Matthew could.
The cabman
approvingly watched the ignition of the second
cigarette, and then the cabman pulled out a
cigar, and showed his large, white teeth, as he
bit the end off it. The appearance and manner of
his fare, the quality of the kit-bag, and the
opening gestures of the interview between the
two young dukes, had put the cabman in an
optimistic mood. He had no apprehensions of
miserly and ungentlemanly conduct by his fare
upon the arrival at Euston. He knew the language
of the tilt of a straw hat. And it was a
magnificent day in London. The group of the two
elegances dominated by the perfection of the
cabman made a striking tableau of triumphant
masculinity, content with itself, and needing
nothing.
Matthew
lightly took Cyril's arm and drew him further
down the street, past the gate leading to the
studio (hidden behind a house) which Cyril
rented.
"Look here,
my boy," he began, "I've found your aunt."
"Well,
that's very nice of you," said Cyril, solemnly.
"That's a friendly act. May I ask what aunt?"
"Mrs.
Scales," said Matthew. "You know—"
"Not the—"
Cyril's face changed.
"Yes,
precisely!" said Matthew, feeling that he was
not being cheated of the legitimate joy caused
by making a sensation. Assuredly he had made a
sensation in Victoria Grove.
When he had
related the whole story, Cyril said: "Then she
doesn't know you know?"
"I don't
think so. No, I'm sure she doesn't. She may
guess."
"But how
can you be certain you haven't made a mistake?
It may be that—"
"Look here,
my boy," Matthew interrupted him. "I've not made
any mistake."
"But you've
no proof."
"Proof be
damned!" said Matthew, nettled. "I tell you it's
HER!"
"Oh! All
right! All right! What puzzles me most is what
the devil you were doing in a place like that.
According to your description of it, it must be
a—"
"I went
there because I was broke," said Matthew.
"Razzle?"
Matthew
nodded.
"Pretty
stiff, that!" commented Cyril, when Matthew had
narrated the prologue to Frensham's.
"Well, she
absolutely swore she never took less than two
hundred francs. And she looked it, too! And she
was worth it! I had the time of my life with
that woman. I can tell you one thing—no more
English for me! They simply aren't in it."
"How old
was she?"
Matthew
reflected judicially. "I should say she was
thirty." The gaze of admiration and envy was
upon him. He had the legitimate joy of making a
second sensation. "I'll let you know more about
that when I come back," he added. "I can open
your eyes, my child."
Cyril
smiled sheepishly. "Why can't you stay now?" he
asked. "I'm going to take the cast of that
Verrall girl's arm this afternoon, and I know I
can't do it alone. And Robson's no good. You're
just the man I want."
"Can't!"
said Matthew.
"Well, come
into the studio a minute, anyhow."
"Haven't
time; I shall miss my train."
"I don't
care if you miss forty trains. You must come in.
You've got to see that fountain," Cyril insisted
crossly.
Matthew
yielded. When they emerged into the street
again, after six minutes of Cyril's savage
interest in his own work, Matthew remembered
Mrs. Scales.
"Of course
you'll write to your mother?" he said.
"Yes," said
Cyril, "I'll write; but if you happen to see
her, you might tell her."
"I will,"
said Matthew. "Shall you go over to Paris?"
"What! To
see Auntie?" He smiled. "I don't know. Depends.
If the mater will fork out all my exes … it's an
idea," he said lightly, and then without any
change of tone, "Naturally, if you're going to
idle about here all morning you aren't likely to
catch the twelve-five."
Matthew got
into the cab, while the driver, the stump of a
cigar between his exposed teeth, leaned forward
and lifted the reins away from the tilted straw
hat.
"By-the-by,
lend me some silver," Matthew demanded. "It's a
good thing I've got my return ticket. I've run
it as fine as ever I did in my life."
Cyril
produced eight shillings in silver. Secure in
the possession of these riches, Matthew called
to the driver—
"Euston—like hell!"
"Yes, sir,"
said the driver, calmly.
"Not coming
my way I suppose?" Matthew shouted as an
afterthought, just when the cab began to move.
"No.
Barber's," Cyril shouted in answer, and waved
his hand.
The horse
rattled into Fulham Road.
III
Three days
later Matthew Peel-Swynnerton was walking along
Bursley Market Place when, just opposite the
Town Hall, he met a short, fat, middle-aged lady
dressed in black, with a black embroidered
mantle, and a small bonnet tied with black
ribbon and ornamented with jet fruit and crape
leaves. As she stepped slowly and carefully
forward she had the dignified, important look of
a provincial woman who has always been
accustomed to deference in her native town, and
whose income is ample enough to extort
obsequiousness from the vulgar of all ranks. But
immediately she caught sight of Matthew, her
face changed. She became simple and naive. She
blushed slightly, smiling with a timid pleasure.
For her, Matthew belonged to a superior race. He
bore the almost sacred name of Peel. His family
had been distinguished in the district for
generations. 'Peel!' You could without
impropriety utter it in the same breath with
'Wedgwood.' And 'Swynnerton' stood not much
lower. Neither her self-respect, which was
great, nor her commonsense, which far exceeded
the average, could enable her to extend as far
as the Peels the theory that one man is as good
as another. The Peels never shopped in St.
Luke's Square. Even in its golden days the
Square could not have expected such a
condescension. The Peels shopped in London or in
Stafford; at a pinch, in Oldcastle. That was the
distinction for the ageing stout lady in black.
Why, she had not in six years recovered from her
surprise that her son and Matthew
Peel-Swynnerton treated each other rudely as
equals! She and Matthew did not often meet, but
they liked each other. Her involuntary meekness
flattered him. And his rather elaborate homage
flattered her. He admired her fundamental
goodness, and her occasional raps at Cyril
seemed to put him into ecstasies of joy.
"Well, Mrs.
Povey," he greeted her, standing over her with
his hat raised. (It was a fashion he had picked
up in Paris.) "Here I am, you see."
"You're
quite a stranger, Mr. Matthew. I needn't ask you
how you are. Have you been seeing anything of my
boy lately?"
"Not since
Wednesday," said Matthew. "Of course he's
written to you?"
"There's no
'of course' about it," she laughed faintly. "I
had a short letter from him on Wednesday
morning. He said you were in Paris."
"But since
that—hasn't he written?"
"If I hear
from him on Sunday I shall be lucky, bless ye!"
said
Constance, grimly. "It's not letter-writing that
will kill Cyril."
"But do you
mean to say he hasn't—" Matthew stopped.
"Whatever's
amiss?" asked Constance. Matthew was at a loss
to know what to do or say. "Oh, nothing."
"Now, Mr.
Matthew, do please—" Constance's tone had
suddenly quite changed. It had become firm,
commanding, and gravely suspicious. The
conversation had ceased to be small-talk for
her.
Matthew saw
how nervous and how fragile she was. He had
never noticed before that she was so sensitive
to trifles, though it was notorious that nobody
could safely discuss Cyril with her in terms of
chaff. He was really astounded at that youth's
carelessness, shameful carelessness. That
Cyril's attitude to his mother was marked by a
certain benevolent negligence—this Matthew knew;
but not to have written to her with the
important news concerning Mrs. Scales was
utterly inexcusable; and Matthew determined that
he would tell Cyril so. He felt very sorry for
Mrs. Povey. She seemed pathetic to him, standing
there in ignorance of a tremendous fact which
she ought to have been aware of. He was very
content that he had said nothing about Mrs.
Scales to anybody except his own mother, who had
prudently enjoined silence upon him, saying that
his one duty, having told Cyril, was to keep his
mouth shut until the Poveys talked. Had it not
been for his mother's advice he would assuredly
have spread the amazing tale, and Mrs. Povey
might have first heard of it from a stranger's
gossip, which would have been too cruel upon
her.
"Oh!"
Matthew tried to smile gaily, archly. "You're
bound to hear from Cyril to-morrow."
He wanted
to persuade her that he was concealing merely
some delightful surprise from her. But he did
not succeed. With all his experience of the
world and of women he was not clever enough to
deceive that simple woman.
"I'm
waiting, Mr. Matthew," she said, in a tone that
flattened the smile out of Matthew's sympathetic
face. She was ruthless. The fact was, she had in
an instant convinced herself that Cyril had met
some girl and was engaged to be married. She
could think of nothing else. "What has Cyril
been doing?" she added, after a pause.
"It's
nothing to do with Cyril," said he.
"Then what
is it?"
"It was
about—Mrs. Scales," he murmured, nearly
trembling. As she offered no response, merely
looking around her in a peculiar fashion, he
said: "Shall we walk along a bit?" And he turned
in the direction in which she had been going.
She obeyed the suggestion.
"What did
ye say?" she asked. The name of Scales for a
moment had no significance for her. But when she
comprehended it she was afraid, and so she said
vacantly, as though wishing to postpone a shock:
"What did ye say?"
"I said it
was about Mrs. Scales. You know I m-met her in
Paris." And he was saying to himself: "I ought
not to be telling this poor old thing here in
the street. But what can I do?" "Nay, nay!" she
muttered.
She stopped
and looked at him with a worried expression.
Then he observed that the hand that carried her
reticule was making strange purposeless curves
in the air, and her rosy face went the colour of
cream, as though it had been painted with one
stroke of an unseen brush. Matthew was very much
put about.
"Hadn't you
better—" he began.
"Eh," she
said; "I must sit me—" Her bag dropped.
He
supported her to the door of Allman's shop, the
ironmonger's. Unfortunately, there were two
steps up into the shop, and she could not climb
them. She collapsed like a sack of flour on the
first step. Young Edward Allman ran to the door.
He was wearing a black apron and fidgeting with
it in his excitement.
"Don't lift
her up—don't try to lift her up, Mr. Peel-
Swynnerton!" he cried, as Matthew instinctively
began to do the wrong thing.
Matthew
stopped, looking a fool and feeling one, and he
and young Allman contemplated each other
helpless for a second across the body of
Constance Povey. A part of the Market Place now
perceived that the unusual was occurring. It was
Mr. Shawcross, the chemist next door to Allman's
who dealt adequately with the situation. He had
seen all, while selling a Kodak to a young lady,
and he ran out with salts. Constance recovered
very rapidly. She had not quite swooned. She
gave a long sigh, and whispered weakly that she
was all right. The three men helped her into the
lofty dark shop, which smelt of nails and of
stove-polish, and she was balanced on a ricketty
chair.
"My word!"
exclaimed young Allman, in his loud voice, when
she could smile and the pink was returning
reluctantly to her cheeks. "You mustn't frighten
us like that, Mrs. Povey!"
Matthew
said nothing. He had at last created a genuine
sensation.
Once again he felt like a criminal, and could
not understand why.
Constance
announced that she would walk slowly home, down
the Cock-yard and along Wedgwood Street. But
when, glancing round in her returned strength,
she saw the hedge of faces at the doorway, she
agreed with Mr. Shawcross that she would do
better to have a cab. Young Allman went to the
door and whistled to the unique cab that stands
for ever at the grand entrance to the Town Hall.
"Mr.
Matthew will come with me," said Constance.
"Certainly,
with pleasure," said Matthew.
And she
passed through the little crowd of gapers on Mr.
Shawcross's arm.
"Just take
care of yourself, missis," said Mr. Shawcross to
her, through the window of the cab. "It's
fainting weather, and we're none of us any
younger, seemingly."
She nodded.
"I'm
awfully sorry I upset you, Mrs. Povey," said
Matthew, when the cab moved.
She shook
her head, refusing his apology as unnecessary.
Tears filled her eyes. In less than a minute the
cab had stopped in front of Constance's
light-grained door. She demanded her reticule
from Matthew, who had carried it since it fell.
She would pay the cabman. Never before had
Matthew permitted a woman to pay for a cab in
which he had ridden; but there was no arguing
with Constance. Constance was dangerous.
Amy Bates,
still inhabiting the cave, had seen the
cab-wheels through the grating of her window and
had panted up the kitchen stairs to open the
door ere Constance had climbed the steps. Amy,
decidedly over forty, was a woman of authority.
She wanted to know what was the matter, and
Constance had to tell her that she had 'felt
unwell.' Amy took the hat and mantle and
departed to prepare a cup of tea. When they were
alone Constance said to Matthew:
"Now. Mr.
Matthew, will you please tell me?"
"It's only
this," he began.
And as he
told it, in quite a few words, it indeed had the
air of being 'only that.' And yet his voice
shook, in sympathy with the ageing woman's
controlled but visible emotion. It seemed to him
that gladness should have filled the absurd
little parlour, but the spirit that presided had
no name; it was certainly not joy. He himself
felt very sad, desolated. He would have given
much money to have been spared the experience.
He knew simply that in the memory of the stout,
comical, nice woman in the rocking-chair he had
stirred old, old things, wakened slumbers that
might have been eternal. He did not know that he
was sitting on the very spot where the sofa had
been on which Samuel Povey lay when a beautiful
and shameless young creature of fifteen
extracted his tooth. He did not know that
Constance was sitting in the very chair in which
the memorable Mrs. Baines had sat in vain
conflict with that same unconquerable girl. He
did not know ten thousand matters that were
rushing violently about in the vast heart of
Constance.
She
cross-questioned him in detail. But she did not
put the questions which he in his innocence
expected; such as, if her sister looked old, if
her hair was grey, if she was stout or thin. And
until Amy, mystified and resentful, had served
the tea, on a little silver tray, she remained
comparatively calm. It was in the middle of a
gulp of tea that she broke down, and Matthew had
to take the cup from her.
"I can't
thank you, Mr. Matthew," she wept. "I couldn't
thank you enough."
"But I've
done nothing," he protested.
She shook
her head. "I never hoped for this. Never hoped
for it!" she went on. "It makes me so happy—in a
way. … You mustn't take any notice of me. I'm
silly. You must kindly write down that address
for me. And I must write to Cyril at once. And I
must see Mr. Critchlow."
"It's
really very funny that Cyril hasn't written to
you," said
Matthew.
"Cyril has
not been a good son," she said with sudden,
solemn coldness. "To think that he should have
kept that …!" She wept again.
At length
Matthew saw the possibility of leaving. He felt
her warm, soft, crinkled hand round his fingers.
"You've
behaved very nicely over this," she said. "And
very cleverly. In EVERY thing—both over there
and here. Nobody could have shown a nicer
feeling than you've shown. It's a great comfort
to me that my son has got you for a friend."
When he
thought of his escapades, and of all the
knowledge, unutterable in Bursley, fantastically
impossible in Bursley, which he had imparted to
her son, he marvelled that the maternal instinct
should be so deceived. Still, he felt that her
praise of him was deserved.
Outside, he
gave vent to a 'Phew' of relief. He smiled, in
his worldliest manner. But the smile was a sham.
A pretence to himself! A childish attempt to
disguise from himself how profoundly he had been
moved by a natural scene!
IV
On the
night when Matthew Peel-Swynnerton spoke to Mrs.
Scales, Matthew was not the only person in the
Pension Frensham who failed to sleep. When the
old portress came downstairs from her errand,
she observed that her mistress was leaving the
mahogany retreat.
"She is
sleeping tranquilly, the poor one!" said the
portress, discharging her commission, which had
been to learn the latest news of the mistress's
indisposed dog, Fossette. In saying this her
ancient, vibrant voice was rich with sympathy
for the suffering animal. And she smiled. She
was rather like a figure out of an almshouse,
with her pink, apparently brittle skin, her
tight black dress, and frilled white cap. She
stooped habitually, and always walked quickly,
with her head a few inches in advance of her
feet. Her grey hair was scanty. She was old;
nobody perhaps knew exactly how old. Sophia had
taken her with the Pension, over a quarter of a
century before, because she was old and could
not easily have found another place. Although
the clientele was almost exclusively English,
she spoke only French, explaining herself to
Britons by means of benevolent smiles.
"I think I
shall go to bed, Jacqueline," said the mistress,
in reply.
A strange
reply, thought Jacqueline. The unalterable
custom of Jacqueline was to retire at midnight
and to rise at five-thirty. Her mistress also
usually retired about midnight, and during the
final hour mistress and portress saw a good deal
of each other. And considering that Jacqueline
had just been sent up into the mistress's own
bedroom to glance at Fossette, and that the
bulletin was satisfactory, and that madame and
Jacqueline had several customary daily matters
to discuss, it seemed odd that madame should
thus be going instantly to bed. However,
Jacqueline said nothing but:
"Very well,
madame. And the number 32?"
"Arrange
yourself as you can," said the mistress, curtly.
"It is
well, madame. Good evening, madame, and a good
night."
Jacqueline,
alone in the hall, re-entered her box and set
upon one of those endless, mysterious tasks
which occupied her when she was not rushing to
and fro or whistling up the tubes.
Sophia,
scarcely troubling even to glance into
Fossette's round basket, undressed, put out the
light, and got into bed. She felt extremely and
inexplicably gloomy. She did not wish to
reflect; she strongly wished not to reflect; but
her mind insisted on reflection—a monotonous,
futile, and distressing reflection. Povey!
Povey! Could this be Constance's Povey, the
unique Samuel Povey? That is to say, not he, but
his son, Constance's son. Had Constance a
grown-up son? Constance must be over fifty now,
perhaps a grandmother! Had she really married
Samuel Povey? Possibly she was dead. Certainly
her mother must be dead, and Aunt Harriet and
Mr. Critchlow. If alive, her mother must be at
least eighty years of age.
The
cumulative effect of merely remaining inactive
when one ought to be active, was terrible.
Undoubtedly she should have communicated with
her family. It was silly not to have done so.
After all, even if she had, as a child, stolen a
trifle of money from her wealthy aunt, what
would that have mattered? She had been proud.
She was criminally proud. That was her vice. She
admitted it frankly. But she could not alter her
pride. Everybody had some weak spot. Her
reputation for sagacity, for commonsense, was,
she knew, enormous; she always felt, when people
were talking to her, that they regarded her as a
very unusually wise woman. And yet she had been
guilty of the capital folly of cutting herself
off from her family. She was ageing, and she was
alone in the world. She was enriching herself;
she had the most perfectly managed and the most
respectable Pension in the world (she sincerely
believed), and she was alone in the world.
Acquaintances she had—French people who never
offered nor accepted hospitality other than tea
or wine, and one or two members of the English
commercial colony— but her one friend was
Fossette, aged three years! She was the most
solitary person on earth. She had heard no word
of Gerald, no word of anybody. Nobody whatever
could truly be interested in her fate. This was
what she had achieved after a quarter of a
century of ceaseless labour and anxiety, during
which she had not once been away from the Rue
Lord Byron for more than thirty hours at a
stretch. It was appalling—the passage of years;
and the passage of years would grow more
appalling. Ten years hence, where would she be?
She pictured herself dying. Horrible!
Of course
there was nothing to prevent her from going back
to Bursley and repairing the grand error of her
girlhood. No, nothing except the fact that her
whole soul recoiled from the mere idea of any
such enterprise! She was a fixture in the Rue
Lord Byron. She was a part of the street. She
knew all that happened or could happen there.
She was attached to it by the heavy chains of
habit. In the chill way of long use she loved
it. There! The incandescent gas-burner of the
street-lamp outside had been turned down, as it
was turned down every night! If it is possible
to love such a phenomenon, she loved that
phenomenon. That phenomenon was a portion of her
life, dear to her.
An
agreeable young man, that Peel-Swynnerton! Then
evidently, since her days in Bursley, the Peels
and the Swynnertons, partners in business, must
have intermarried, or there must have been some
affair of a will. Did he suspect who she was? He
had had a very self-conscious, guilty look. No!
He could not have suspected who she was. The
idea was ridiculous. Probably he did not even
know that her name was Scales. And even if he
knew her name, he had probably never heard of
Gerald Scales, or the story of her flight. Why,
he could not have been born until after she had
left Bursley! Besides, the Peels were always
quite aloof from the ordinary social life of the
town. No! He could not have suspected her
identity. It was infantile to conceive such a
thing.
And yet,
she inconsequently proceeded in the tangle of
her afflicted mind, supposing he had suspected
it! Supposing by some queer chance, he had heard
her forgotten story, and casually put two and
two together! Supposing even that he were merely
to mention in the Five Towns that the Pension
Frensham was kept by a Mrs. Scales. 'Scales?
Scales?' people might repeat. 'Now, what does
that remind me of?' And the ball might roll and
roll till Constance or somebody picked it up!
And then …
Moreover—a
detail of which she had at first unaccountably
failed to mark the significance—this
Peel-Swynnerton was a friend of the Mr. Povey as
to whom he had inquired. In that case it could
not be the same Povey. Impossible that the Peels
should be on terms of friendship with Samuel
Povey or his connections! But supposing after
all they were! Supposing something utterly
unanticipated and revolutionary had happened in
the Five Towns!
She was
disturbed. She was insecure. She foresaw
inquiries being made concerning her. She foresaw
an immense family fuss, endless tomfoolery, the
upsetting of her existence, the destruction of
her calm. And she sank away from that prospect.
She could not face it. She did not want to face
it. "No," she cried passionately in her soul,
"I've lived alone, and I'll stay as I am. I
can't change at my time of life." And her
attitude towards a possible invasion of her
solitude became one of resentment. "I won't have
it! I won't have it! I will be left alone.
Constance! What can Constance be to me, or I to
her, now?" The vision of any change in her
existence was in the highest degree painful to
her. And not only painful! It frightened her. It
made her shrink. But she could not dismiss it. …
She could not argue herself out of it. The
apparition of Matthew Peel-Swynnerton had
somehow altered the very stuff of her fibres.
And surging
on the outskirts of the central storm of her
brain were ten thousand apprehensions about the
management of the Pension. All was black,
hopeless. The Pension might have been the most
complete business failure that gross
carelessness and incapacity had ever provoked.
Was it not the fact that she had to supervise
everything herself, that she could depend on no
one? Were she to be absent even for a single day
the entire structure would inevitably fall.
Instead of working less she worked harder. And
who could guarantee that her investments were
safe?
When dawn
announced itself, slowly discovering each object
in the chamber, she was ill. Fever seemed to
rage in her head. And in and round her mouth she
had strange sensations. Fossette stirred in the
basket near the large desk on which multifarious
files and papers were ranged with minute
particularity.
"Fossette!"
she tried to call out; but no sound issued from
her lips. She could not move her tongue. She
tried to protrude it, and could not. For hours
she had been conscious of a headache. Her heart
sank. She was sick with fear. Her memory flashed
to her father and his seizure. She was his
daughter! Paralysis! "Ca serait le comble!" she
thought in French, horrified. Her fear became
abject! "Can I move at all?" she thought, and
madly jerked her head. Yes, she could move her
head slightly on the pillow, and she could
stretch her right arm, both arms. Absurd
cowardice! Of course it was not a seizure! She
reassured herself. Still, she could not put her
tongue out. Suddenly she began to hiccough, and
she had no control over the hiccough. She put
her hand to the bell, whose ringing would summon
the man who slept in a pantry off the hall, and
suddenly the hiccough ceased. Her hand dropped.
She was better. Besides, what use in ringing for
a man if she could not speak to him through the
door? She must wait for Jacqueline. At six
o'clock every morning, summer and winter,
Jacqueline entered her mistress's bedroom to
release the dog for a moment's airing under her
own supervision. The clock on the mantelpiece
showed five minutes past three. She had three
hours to wait. Fossette pattered across the
room, and sprang on to the bed and nestled down.
Sophia ignored her, but Fossette, being herself
unwell and torpid, did not seem to care.
Jacqueline
was late. In the quarter of an hour between six
o'clock and a quarter past, Sophia suffered the
supreme pangs of despair and verged upon
insanity. It appeared to her that her cranium
would blow off under pressure from within. Then
the door opened silently, a few inches. Usually
Jacqueline came into the room, but sometimes she
stood behind the door and called in her soft,
trembling voice, "Fossette! Fossette!" And on
this morning she did not come into the room. The
dog did not immediately respond. Sophia was in
an agony. She marshalled all her volition, all
her self-control and strength, to shout:
"Jacqueline!"
It came out
of her, a horribly difficult and misshapen
birth, but it came. She was exhausted.
"Yes,
madame." Jacqueline entered.
As soon as
she had a glimpse of Sophia she threw up her
hands.
Sophia stared at her, wordless.
"I will
fetch the doctor—myself," whispered Jacqueline,
and fled.
"Jacqueline!" The woman stopped. Then Sophia
determined to force herself to make a speech,
and she braced her muscles to an unprecedented
effort. "Say not a word to the others." She
could not bear that the whole household should
know of her illness. Jacqueline nodded and
vanished, the dog following. Jacqueline
understood. She lived in the place with her
mistress as with a fellow-conspirator.
Sophia
began to feel better. She could get into a
sitting posture, though the movement made her
dizzy. By working to the foot of the bed she
could see herself in the glass of the wardrobe.
And she saw that the lower part of her face was
twisted out of shape.
The doctor,
who knew her, and who earned a lot of money in
her house, told her frankly what had happened.
Paralysie glosso-labio- laryngee was the phrase
he used. She understood. A very slight attack;
due to overwork and worry. He ordered absolute
rest and quiet.
"Impossible!" she said, genuinely convinced that
she alone was indispensable.
"Repose the
most absolute!" he repeated.
She
marvelled that a few words with a man who
chanced to be named Peel-Swynnerton could have
resulted in such a disaster, and drew a curious
satisfaction from this fearful proof that she
was so highly-strung. But even then she did not
realize how profoundly she had been disturbed.
V
"My darling
Sophia—"
The
inevitable miracle had occurred. Her suspicions
concerning that Mr. Peel-Swynnerton were
well-founded, after all! Here was a letter from
Constance! The writing on the envelope was not
Constance's; but even before examining it she
had had a peculiar qualm. She received letters
from England nearly every day asking about rooms
and prices (and on many of them she had to pay
threepence excess postage, because the writers
carelessly or carefully forgot that a penny
stamp was not sufficient); there was nothing to
distinguish this envelope, and yet her first
glance at it had startled her; and when,
deciphering the smudged post-mark, she made out
the word 'Bursley,' her heart did literally seem
to stop, and she opened the letter in quite
violent tremulation, thinking to herself: "The
doctor would say this is very bad for me." Six
days had elapsed since her attack, and she was
wonderfully better; the distortion of her face
had almost disappeared. But the doctor was
grave; he ordered no medicine, merely a tonic;
and monotonously insisted on 'repose the most
absolute,' on perfect mental calm. He said
little else, allowing Sophia to judge from his
silences the seriousness of her condition. Yes,
the receipt of such a letter must be bad for
her!
She
controlled herself while she read it, lying in
her dressing- gown against several pillows on
the bed; a mist did not form in her eyes, nor
did she sob, nor betray physically that she was
not reading an order for two rooms for a week.
But the expenditure of nervous force necessary
to self-control was terrific.
Constance's
handwriting had changed; it was, however, easily
recognizable as a development of the neat
calligraphy of the girl who could print
window-tickets. The 'S' of Sophia was formed in
the same way as she had formed it in the last
letter which she had received from her at Axe!
"MY DARLING
SOPHIA,
"I cannot
tell you how overjoyed I was to learn that after
all these years you are alive and well, and
doing so well too. I long to see you, my dear
sister. It was Mr. Peel-Swynnerton who told me.
He is a friend of Cyril's. Cyril is the name of
my son. I married Samuel in 1867. Cyril was born
in 1874 at Christmas. He is now twenty-two, and
doing very well in London as a student of
sculpture, though so young. He won a National
Scholarship. There were only eight, of which he
won one, in all England. Samuel died in 1888. If
you read the papers you must have seen about the
Povey affair. I mean of course Mr. Daniel Povey,
Confectioner. It was that that killed poor
Samuel. Poor mother died in 1875. It doesn't
seem so long. Aunt Harriet and Aunt Maria are
both dead. Old Dr. Harrop is dead, and his son
has practically retired. He has a partner, a
Scotchman. Mr. Critchlow has married Miss
Insull. Did you ever hear of such a thing? They
have taken over the shop, and I live in the
house part, the other being bricked up. Business
in the Square is not what it used to be. The
steam trams take all the custom to Hanbridge,
and they are talking of electric trams, but I
dare say it is only talk. I have a fairly good
servant. She has been with me a long time, but
servants are not what they were. I keep pretty
well, except for my sciatica and palpitation.
Since Cyril went to London I have been very
lonely. But I try to cheer up and count my
blessings. I am sure I have a great deal to be
thankful for. And now this news of you! Please
write to me a long letter, and tell me all about
yourself. It is a long way to Paris. But surely
now you know I am still here, you will come and
pay me a visit—at least. Everybody would be most
glad to see you. And I should be so proud and
glad. As I say, I am all alone. Mr. Critchlow
says I am to say there is a deal of money
waiting for you. You know he is the trustee.
There is the half-share of mother's and also of
Aunt Harriet's, and it has been accumulating. By
the way, they are getting up a subscription for
Miss Chetwynd, poor old thing. Her sister is
dead, and she is in poverty. I have put myself
down for L20. Now, my dear sister, please do
write to me at once. You see it is still the old
address. I remain, my darling Sophia, with much
love, your affectionate sister,
"CONSTANCE
POVEY.
"P.S.—I
should have written yesterday, but I was not
fit. Every time I sat down to write, I cried."
"Of
course," said Sophia to Fossette, "she expects
me to go to her, instead of her coming to me!
And yet who's the busiest?"
But this
observation was not serious. It was merely a
trifle of affectionate malicious embroidery that
Sophia put on the edge of her deep satisfaction.
The very spirit of simple love seemed to emanate
from the paper on which Constance had written.
And this spirit woke suddenly and completely
Sophia's love for Constance. Constance! At that
moment there was assuredly for Sophia no
creature in the world like Constance. Constance
personified for her the qualities of the Baines
family. Constance's letter was a great letter, a
perfect letter, perfect in its artlessness; the
natural expression of the Baines character at
its best. Not an awkward reference in the whole
of it! No clumsy expression of surprise at
anything that she, Sophia, had done, or failed
to do! No mention of Gerald! Just a sublime
acceptance of the situation as it was, and the
assurance of undiminished love! Tact? No; it was
something finer than tact! Tact was conscious,
skilful. Sophia was certain that the notion of
tactfulness had not entered Constance's head.
Constance had simply written out of her heart.
And that was what made the letter so splendid.
Sophia was convinced that no one but a Baines
could have written such a letter. She felt that
she must rise to the height of that letter, that
she too must show her Baines blood. And she went
primly to her desk, and began to write (on
private notepaper) in that imperious large hand
of hers that was so different from Constance's.
She began a little stiffly, but after a few
lines her generous and passionate soul was
responding freely to the appeal of Constance.
She asked that Mr. Critchlow should pay L20 for
her to the Miss Chetwynd fund. She spoke of her
Pension and of Paris, and of her pleasure in
Constance's letter. But she said nothing as to
Gerald, nor as to the possibility of a visit to
the Five Towns. She finished the letter in a
blaze of love, and passed from it as from a
dream to the sterile banality of the daily life
of the Pension Frensham, feeling that, compared
to Constance's affection, nothing else had any
worth.
But she
would not consider the project of going to
Bursley. Never, never would she go to Bursley.
If Constance chose to come to Paris and see her,
she would be delighted, but she herself would
not budge. The mere notion of any change in her
existence intimidated her. And as for returning
to Bursley itself … no, no!
Nevertheless, at the Pension Frensham, the
future could not be as the past. Sophia's health
forbade that. She knew that the doctor was
right. Every time that she made an effort, she
knew intimately and speedily that the doctor was
right. Only her will-power was unimpaired; the
machinery by which will-power is converted into
action was mysteriously damaged. She was aware
of the fact. But she could not face it yet. Time
would have to elapse before she could bring
herself to face that fact. She was getting an
old woman. She could no longer draw on reserves.
Yet she persisted to every one that she was
quite recovered, and was abstaining from her
customary work simply from an excess of
prudence. Certainly her face had recovered. And
the Pension, being a machine all of whose parts
were in order, continued to run, apparently,
with its usual smoothness. It is true that the
excellent chef began to peculate, but as his
cuisine did not suffer, the result was not
noticeable for a long period. The whole staff
and many of the guests knew that Sophia had been
indisposed; and they knew no more.
When by
hazard Sophia observed a fault in the daily
conduct of the house, her first impulse was to
go to the root of it and cure it, her second was
to leave it alone, or to palliate it by some
superficial remedy. Unperceived, and yet vaguely
suspected by various people, the decline of the
Pension Frensham had set in. The tide, having
risen to its highest, was receding, but so
little that no one could be sure that it had
turned. Every now and then it rushed up again
and washed the furthest stone.
Sophia and
Constance exchanged several letters. Sophia said
repeatedly that she could not leave Paris. At
length she roundly asked Constance to come and
pay her a visit. She made the suggestion with
fear—for the prospect of actually seeing her
beloved Constance alarmed her—but she could do
no less than make it. And in a few days she had
a reply to say that Constance would have come,
under Cyril's charge, but that her sciatica was
suddenly much worse, and she was obliged to lie
down every day after dinner to rest her legs.
Travelling was impossible for her. The fates
were combining against Sophia's decision.
And now
Sophia began to ask herself about her duty to
Constance. The truth was that she was groping
round to find an excuse for reversing her
decision. She was afraid to reverse it, yet
tempted. She had the desire to do something
which she objected to doing. It was like the
desire to throw one's self over a high balcony.
It drew her, drew her, and she drew back against
it. The Pension was now tedious to her. It bored
her even to pretend to be the supervising head
of the Pension. Throughout the house discipline
had loosened.
She
wondered when Mr. Mardon would renew his
overtures for the transformation of her
enterprise into a limited company. In spite of
herself she would deliberately cross his path
and give him opportunities to begin on the old
theme. He had never before left her in peace for
so long a period. No doubt she had, upon his
last assault, absolutely convinced him that his
efforts had no smallest chance of success, and
he had made up his mind to cease them. With a
single word she could wind him up again. The
merest hint, one day when he was paying his
bill, and he would be beseeching her. But she
could not utter the word.
Then she
began to say openly that she did not feel well,
that the house was too much for her, and that
the doctor had imperatively commanded rest. She
said this to every one except Mardon. And every
one somehow persisted in not saying it to
Mardon. The doctor having advised that she
should spend more time in the open air, she
would take afternoon drives in the Bois with
Fossette. It was October. But Mr. Mardon never
seemed to hear of those drives.
One morning
he met her in the street outside the house.
"I'm sorry
to hear you're so unwell," he said
confidentially, after they had discussed the
health of Fossette.
"So
unwell!" she exclaimed as if resenting the
statement. "Who told you I was so unwell?"
"Jacqueline. She told me you often said that
what you needed was a complete change. And it
seems the doctor says so, too."
"Oh!
doctors!" she murmured, without however denying
the truth of
Jacqueline's assertion. She saw hope in Mr.
Mardon's eyes.
"Of course,
you know," he said, still more confidentially,
"if you
SHOULD happen to change your mind, I'm always
ready to form a
little syndicate to take this"—he waved
discreetly at the
Pension—"off your hands."
She shook
her head violently, which was strange,
considering that for weeks she had been wishing
to hear such words from Mr. Mardon.
"You
needn't give it up altogether," he said. "You
could retain your hold on it. We'd make you
manageress, with a salary and a share in the
profits. You'd be mistress just as much as you
are now."
"Oh!" said
she carelessly. "IF I GAVE IT UP, I
SHOULD GIVE IT
UP ENTIRELY. No half measures for me."
With the
utterance of that sentence, the history of
Frensham's as a private understanding was
brought to a close. Sophia knew it. Mr. Mardon
knew it. Mr. Mardon's heart leapt. He saw in his
imagination the formation of the preliminary
syndicate, with himself at its head, and then
the re-sale by the syndicate to a limited
company at a profit. He saw a nice little profit
for his own private personal self of a thousand
or so—gained in a moment. The plant, his hope,
which he had deemed dead, blossomed with
miraculous suddenness.
"Well," he
said. "Give it up entirely, then! Take a holiday
for life. You've deserved it, Mrs. Scales."
She shook
her head once again.
"Think it
over," he said.
"I gave you
my answer years ago," she said obstinately,
while fearing lest he should take her at her
word.
"Oblige me
by thinking it over," he said. "I'll mention it
to you again in a few days."
"It will be
no use," she said.
He took his
leave, waddling down the street in his vague
clothes, conscious of his fame as Lewis Mardon,
the great house-agent of the Champs Elysees,
known throughout Europe and America.
In a few
days he did mention it again.
"There's
only one thing that makes me dream of it even
for a moment," said Sophia. "And that is my
sister's health."
"Your
sister!" he exclaimed. He did not know she had a
sister.
Never had she spoken of her family.
"Yes. Her
letters are beginning to worry me."
"Does she
live in Paris?"
"No. In
Staffordshire. She has never left home."
And to
preserve her pride intact she led Mr. Mardon to
think that Constance was in a most serious way,
whereas in truth Constance had nothing worse
than her sciatica, and even that was somewhat
better.
Thus she
yielded.
CHAPTER II
THE MEETING
I
Soon after
dinner one day in the following spring, Mr.
Critchlow knocked at Constance's door. She was
seated in the rocking-chair in front of the fire
in the parlour. She wore a large 'rough' apron,
and with the outlying parts of the apron she was
rubbing the moisture out of the coat of a young
wire-haired fox-terrier, for whom no more
original name had been found than 'Spot.' It is
true that he had a spot. Constance had more than
once called the world to witness that she would
never have a young dog again, because, as she
said, she could not be always running about
after them, and they ate the stuffing out of the
furniture. But her last dog had lived too long;
a dog can do worse things than eat furniture;
and, in her natural reaction against age in
dogs, and also in the hope of postponing as long
as possible the inevitable sorrow and upset
which death causes when it takes off a domestic
pet, she had not known how to refuse the very
desirable fox- terrier aged ten months that an
acquaintance had offered to her. Spot's
beautiful pink skin could be seen under his
disturbed hair; he was exquisitely soft to the
touch, and to himself he was loathsome. His eyes
continually peeped forth between corners of the
agitated towel, and they were full of inquietude
and shame.
Amy was
assisting at this performance, gravely on the
watch to see that Spot did not escape into the
coal-cellar. She opened the door to Mr.
Critchlow's knock. Mr. Critchlow entered without
any formalities, as usual. He did not seem to
have changed. He had the same quantity of white
hair, he wore the same long white apron, and his
voice (which showed however an occasional
tendency to shrillness) had the same grating
quality. He stood fairly straight. He was
carrying a newspaper in his vellum hand.
"Well,
missis!" he said.
"That will
do, thank you, Amy," said Constance, quietly.
Amy went slowly.
"So ye're
washing him for her!" said Mr. Critchlow.
"Yes,"
Constance admitted. Spot glanced sharply at the
aged man.
"An' ye
seen this bit in the paper about Sophia?" he
asked, holding the Signal for her inspection.
"About
Sophia?" cried Constance. "What's amiss?"
"Nothing's
amiss. But they've got it. It's in the
'Staffordshire day by day' column. Here! I'll
read it ye." He drew a long wooden
spectacle-case from his waistcoat pocket, and
placed a second pair of spectacles on his nose.
Then he sat down on the sofa, his knees sticking
out pointedly, and read: "'We understand that
Mrs. Sophia Scales, proprietress of the famous
Pension Frensham in the Rue Lord Byron,
Paris'—it's that famous that nobody in th' Five
Towns has ever heard of it—'is about to pay a
visit to her native town, Bursley, after an
absence of over thirty years. Mrs. Scales
belonged to the well-known and highly respected
family of Baines. She has recently disposed of
the Pension Frensham to a limited company, and
we are betraying no secret in stating that the
price paid ran well into five figures.' So ye
see!" Mr. Critchlow commented.
"How do
those Signal people find out things?" Constance
murmured.
"Eh, bless
ye, I don't know," said Mr. Critchlow.
This was an
untruth. Mr. Critchlow had himself given the
information to the new editor of the Signal, who
had soon been made aware of Critchlow's passion
for the press, and who knew how to make use of
it.
"I wish it
hadn't appeared just to-day," said Constance.
"Why?"
"Oh! I
don't know, I wish it hadn't."
"Well, I'll
be touring on, missis," said Mr. Critchlow,
meaning that he would go.
He left the
paper, and descended the steps with senile
deliberation. It was characteristic that he had
shown no curiosity whatever as to the details of
Sophia's arrival.
Constance
removed her apron,, wrapped Spot up in it, and
put him in a corner of the sofa. She then
abruptly sent Amy out to buy a penny time-table.
"I thought
you were going by tram to Knype," Amy observed.
"I have
decided to go by train," said Constance, with
cold dignity, as if she had decided the fate of
nations. She hated such observations from Amy,
who unfortunately lacked, in an increasing
degree, the supreme gift of unquestioning
obedience.
When Amy
came breathlessly back, she found Constance in
her bedroom, withdrawing crumpled balls of paper
from the sleeves of her second-best mantle.
Constance scarcely ever wore this mantle. In
theory it was destined for chapel on wet
Sundays; in practice it had remained long in the
wardrobe, Sundays having been obstinately fine
for weeks and weeks together. It was a mantle
that Constance had never really liked. But she
was not going to Knype to meet Sophia in her
everyday mantle; and she had no intention of
donning her best mantle for such an excursion.
To make her first appearance before Sophia in
the best mantle she had—this would have been a
sad mistake of tactics! Not only would it have
led to an anti-climax on Sunday, but it would
have given to Constance the air of being in awe
of Sophia. Now Constance was in truth a little
afraid of Sophia; in thirty years Sophia might
have grown into anything, whereas Constance had
remained just Constance. Paris was a great
place; and it was immensely far off. And the
mere sound of that limited company business was
intimidating. Imagine Sophia having by her own
efforts created something which a real limited
company wanted to buy and had bought! Yes,
Constance was afraid, but she did not mean to
show her fear in her mantle. After all, she was
the elder. And she had her dignity too—and a lot
of it—tucked away in her secret heart, hidden
within the mildness of that soft exterior. So
she had decided on the second-best mantle,
which, being seldom used, had its sleeves
stuffed with paper to the end that they might
keep their shape and their 'fall.' The little
balls of paper were strewed over the bed.
"There's a
train at a quarter to three, gets to Knype at
ten minutes past." said Amy. officiously. "But
supposing it was only three minutes late and the
London train was prompt, then you might miss
her. Happen you'd better take the two fifteen to
be on the safe side."
"Let me
look," said Constance, firmly. "Please put all
this paper in the wardrobe."
She would
have preferred not to follow Amy's suggestion,
but it was so incontestably wise that she was
obliged to accept it.
"Unless ye
go by tram," said Amy. "That won't mean starting
quite so soon."
But
Constance would not go by tram. If she took the
tram she would be bound to meet people who had
read the Signal, and who would say, with their
stupid vacuity: "Going to meet your sister at
Knype?" And then tiresome conversations would
follow. Whereas, in the train, she would choose
a compartment, and would be far less likely to
encounter chatterers.
There was
now not a minute to lose. And the excitement
which had been growing in that house for days
past, under a pretence of calm, leapt out
swiftly into the light of the sun, and was
unashamed. Amy had to help her mistress make
herself as comely as she could be made without
her best dress, mantle, and bonnet. Amy was
frankly consulted as to effects. The barrier of
class was lowered for a space. Many years had
elapsed since Constance had been conscious of a
keen desire to look smart. She was reminded of
the days when, in full fig for chapel, she would
dash downstairs on a Sunday morning, and,
assuming a pose for inspection at the threshold
of the parlour, would demand of Samuel: "Shall I
do?" Yes, she used to dash downstairs, like a
child, and yet in those days she had thought
herself so sedate and mature! She sighed, half
with lancinating regret, and half in gentle
disdain of that mercurial creature aged less
than thirty. At fifty-one she regarded herself
as old. And she was old. And Amy had the tricks
and manners of an old spinster. Thus the
excitement in the house was an 'old' excitement,
and, like Constance's desire to look smart, it
had its ridiculous side, which was also its
tragic side, the side that would have made a
boor guffaw, and a hysterical fool cry, and a
wise man meditate sadly upon the earth's fashion
of renewing itself.
At
half-past one Constance was dressed, with the
exception of her gloves. She looked at the clock
a second time to make sure that she might safely
glance round the house without fear of missing
the train. She went up into the bedroom on the
second-floor, her and Sophia's old bedroom,
which she had prepared with enormous care for
Sophia. The airing of that room had been an
enterprise of days, for, save by a minister
during the sittings of the Wesleyan Methodist
Conference at Bursley, it had never been
occupied since the era when Maria Insull used
occasionally to sleep in the house. Cyril clung
to his old room on his visits. Constance had an
ample supply of solid and stately furniture, and
the chamber destined for Sophia was lightened in
every corner by the reflections of polished
mahogany. It was also fairly impregnated with
the odour of furniture paste—an odour of which
no housewife need be ashamed. Further, it had
been re-papered in a delicate blue, with one of
the new 'art' patterns. It was a 'Baines' room.
And Constance did not care where Sophia came
from, nor what Sophia had been accustomed to,
nor into what limited company Sophia had been
transformed—that room was adequate! It could not
have been improved upon. You had only to look at
the crocheted mats—even those on the washstand
under the white-and-gold ewer and other
utensils. It was folly to expose such mats to
the splashings of a washstand, but it was
sublime folly. Sophia might remove them if she
cared. Constance was house-proud; house-pride
had slumbered within her; now it blazed forth.
A fire
brightened the drawing-room, which was a truly
magnificent apartment, a museum of valuables
collected by the Baines and the Maddack families
since the year 1840, tempered by the latest
novelties in antimacassars and cloths. In all
Bursley there could have been few drawing-rooms
to compare with Constance's. Constance knew it.
She was not afraid of her drawing-room being
seen by anybody.
She passed
for an instant into her own bedroom, where Amy
was patiently picking balls of paper from the
bed.
"Now you
quite understand about tea?" Constance asked.
"Oh yes,
'm," said Amy, as if to say: "How much oftener
are you going to ask me that question?" "Are you
off now, 'm?"
"Yes," said
Constance. "Come and fasten the front-door after
me."
They
descended together to the parlour. A white cloth
for tea lay folded on the table. It was of the
finest damask that skill could choose and money
buy. It was fifteen years old, and had never
been spread. Constance would not have produced
it for the first meal, had she not possessed two
other of equal eminence. On the harmonium were
ranged several jams and cakes, a Bursley
pork-pie, and some pickled salmon; with the
necessary silver. All was there. Amy could not
go wrong. And crocuses were in the vases on the
mantelpiece. Her 'garden,' in the phrase which
used to cause Samuel to think how
extraordinarily feminine she was! It was a long
time since she had had a 'garden' on the
mantelpiece. Her interest in her chronic
sciatica and in her palpitations had grown at
the expense of her interest in gardens. Often,
when she had finished the complicated processes
by which her furniture and other goods were kept
in order, she had strength only to 'rest.' She
was rather a fragile, small, fat woman, soon out
of breath, easily marred. This business of
preparing for the advent of Sophia had appeared
to her genuinely colossal. However, she had come
through it very well. She was in pretty good
health; only a little tired, and more than a
little anxious and nervous, as she gave the last
glance.
"Take away
that apron, do!" she said to Amy, pointing to
the rough apron in the corner of the sofa. "By
the way, where is Spot?"
"Spot,
m'm?" Amy ejaculated.
Both their
hearts jumped. Amy instinctively looked out of
the window. He was there, sure enough, in the
gutter, studying the indescribabilities of King
Street. He had obviously escaped when Amy came
in from buying the time-table. The woman's face
was guilty.
"Amy, I
wonder AT you!" exclaimed Constance, tragically.
She opened the door.
"Well, I
never did see the like of that dog!" murmured
Amy.
"Spot!" his
mistress commanded. "Come here at once. Do you
hear me?"
Spot turned
sharply and gazed motionless at Constance. Then
with a toss of the head he dashed off to the
corner of the Square, and gazed motionless
again. Amy went forth to catch him. After an age
she brought him in, squealing. He was in a state
exceedingly offensive to the eye and to the
nose. He had effectively got rid of the smell of
soap, which he loathed. Constance could have
wept. It did really appear to her that nothing
had gone right that day. And Spot had the most
innocent, trustful air. Impossible to make him
realize that his aunt Sophia was coming. He
would have sold his entire family into servitude
in order to buy ten yards of King Street gutter.
"You must
wash him in the scullery, that's all there is
for it," said Constance, controlling herself.
"Put that apron on, and don't forget one of your
new aprons when you open the door. Better shut
him up in Mr. Cyril's bedroom when you've dried
him."
And she
went, charged with worries, clasping her bag and
her umbrella and smoothing her gloves, and
spying downwards at the folds of her mantle.
"That's a
funny way to go to Bursley Station, that is,"
said Amy, observing that Constance was
descending King Street instead of crossing it
into Wedgwood Street. And she caught Spot 'a
fair clout on the head,' to indicate to him that
she had him alone in the house now.
Constance
was taking a round-about route to the station,
so that, if stopped by acquaintances, she should
not be too obviously going to the station. Her
feelings concerning the arrival of Sophia, and
concerning the town's attitude towards it, were
very complex.
She was
forced to hurry. And she had risen that morning
with plans perfectly contrived for the avoidance
of hurry. She disliked hurry because it always
'put her about.'
II
The express
from London was late, so that Constance had
three- quarters of an hour of the stony calmness
of Knype platform when it is waiting for a great
train. At last the porters began to cry,
"Macclesfield, Stockport, and Manchester train;"
the immense engine glided round the curve,
dwarfing the carriages behind it, and Constance
had a supreme tremor. The calmness of the
platform was transformed into a melee. Little
Constance found herself left on the fringe of a
physically agitated crowd which was apparently
trying to scale a precipice surmounted by
windows and doors from whose apertures looked
forth defenders of the train. Knype platform
seemed as if it would never be reduced to order
again. And Constance did not estimate highly the
chances of picking out an unknown Sophia from
that welter. She was very seriously perturbed.
All the muscles of her face were drawn as her
gaze wandered anxiously from end to end of the
train.
Presently
she saw a singular dog. Other people also saw
it. It was of the colour of chocolate; it had a
head and shoulders richly covered with hair that
hung down in thousands of tufts like the tufts
of a modern mop such as is bought in shops. This
hair stopped suddenly rather less than halfway
along the length of the dog's body, the
remainder of which was naked and as smooth as
marble. The effect was to give to the
inhabitants of the Five Towns the impression
that the dog had forgotten an essential part of
its attire and was outraging decency. The ball
of hair which had been allowed to grow on the
dog's tail, and the circles of hair which
ornamented its ankles, only served to intensify
the impression of indecency. A pink ribbon round
its neck completed the outrage. The animal had
absolutely the air of a decked trollop. A chain
ran taut from the creature's neck into the
middle of a small crowd of persons gesticulating
over trunks, and Constance traced it to a tall
and distinguished woman in a coat and skirt with
a rather striking hat. A beautiful and
aristocratic woman, Constance thought, at a
distance! Then the strange idea came to her:
"That's Sophia!" She was sure. … She was not
sure. … She was sure. The woman emerged from the
crowd. Her eye fell on Constance. They both
hesitated, and, as it were, wavered uncertainly
towards each other.
"I should
have known you anywhere," said Sophia, with
apparently careless tranquillity, as she stooped
to kiss Constance, raising her veil.
Constance
saw that this marvellous tranquillity must be
imitated, and she imitated it very well. It was
a 'Baines' tranquillity. But she noticed a
twitching of her sister's lips. The twitching
comforted Constance, proving to her that she was
not alone in foolishness. There was also
something queer about the permanent lines of
Sophia's mouth. That must be due to the 'attack'
about which Sophia had written.
"Did Cyril
meet you?" asked Constance. It was all that she
could think of to say.
"Oh yes!"
said Sophia, eagerly. "And I went to his studio,
and he saw me off at Euston. He is a VERY nice
boy. I love him."
She said 'I
love him' with the intonation of Sophia aged
fifteen. Her tone and imperious gesture sent
Constance flying back to the 'sixties. "She
hasn't altered one bit," Constance thought with
joy. "Nothing could change Sophia." And at the
back of that notion was a more general notion:
"Nothing could change a Baines." It was true
that Constance's Sophia had not changed.
Powerful individualities remain undisfigured by
no matter what vicissitudes. After this
revelation of the original Sophia, arising as it
did out of praise of Cyril, Constance felt
easier, felt reassured.
"This is
Fossette," said Sophia, pulling at the chain.
Constance
knew not what to reply. Surely Sophia could not
be aware what she did in bringing such a dog to
a place where people were so particular as they
are in the Five Towns.
"Fossette!"
She repeated the name in an endearing accent,
half stooping towards the dog. After all, it was
not the dog's fault. Sophia had certainly
mentioned a dog in her letters, but she had not
prepared Constance for the spectacle of
Fossette.
All that
happened in a moment. A porter appeared with two
trunks belonging to Sophia. Constance observed
that they were superlatively 'good' trunks; also
that Sophia's clothes, though 'on the showy
side,' were superlatively 'good.' The getting of
Sophia's ticket to Bursley occupied them next,
and soon the first shock of meeting had worn
off.
In a
second-class compartment of the Loop Line train,
with Sophia and Fossette opposite to her,
Constance had leisure to 'take in' Sophia. She
came to the conclusion that, despite her
slenderness and straightness and the general
effect of the long oval of her face under the
hat, Sophia looked her age. She saw that Sophia
must have been through a great deal; her
experiences were damagingly printed in the
details of feature. Seen at a distance, she
might have passed for a woman of thirty, even
for a girl, but seen across a narrow railway
carriage she was a woman whom suffering had
aged. Yet obviously her spirit was unbroken.
Hear her tell a doubtful porter that of course
she should take Fossette with her into the
carriage! See her shut the carriage door with
the expressed intention of keeping other people
out! She was accustomed to command. At the same
time her face had an almost set smile, as though
she had said to herself: "I will die smiling."
Constance felt sorry for her. While recognizing
in Sophia a superior in charm, in experience, in
knowledge of the world and in force of
personality, she yet with a kind of undisturbed,
fundamental superiority felt sorry for Sophia.
"What do
you think?" said Sophia, absently fingering
Fossette. "A man came up to me at Euston, while
Cyril was getting my ticket, and said, 'Eh, Miss
Baines, I haven't seen ye for over thirty years,
but I know you're Miss Baines, or WERE—and
you're looking bonny.' Then he went off. I think
it must have been Holl, the grocer."
"Had he got
a long white beard?"
"Yes."
"Then it
was Mr. Holl. He's been Mayor twice. He's an
alderman, you know."
"Really!"
said Sophia. "But wasn't it queer?"
"Eh! Bless
us!" exclaimed Constance. "Don't talk about
queer! It's terrible how time flies."
The
conversation stopped, and it refused to start
again. Two women who are full of affectionate
curiosity about each other, and who have not
seen each other for thirty years, and who are
anxious to confide in each other, ought to
discover no difficulty in talking; but somehow
these two could not talk. Constance perceived
that Sophia was impeded by the same awkwardness
as herself.
"Well I
never!" cried Sophia, suddenly. She had glanced
out of the window and had seen two camels and an
elephant in a field close to the line, amid
manufactories and warehouses and advertisements
of soap.
"Oh!" said
Constance. "That's Barnum's, you know. They have
what they call a central depot here, because
it's the middle of England." Constance spoke
proudly. (After all, there can be only one
middle.) It was on her tongue to say, in her
'tart' manner, that Fossette ought to be with
the camels, but she refrained. Sophia hit on the
excellent idea of noting all the buildings that
were new to her and all the landmarks that she
remembered. It was surprising how little the
district had altered.
"Same
smoke!" said Sophia.
"Same
smoke!" Constance agreed.
"It's even
worse," said Sophia.
"Do you
think so?" Constance was slightly piqued. "But
they're doing something now for smoke
abatement."
"I must
have forgotten how dirty it was!" said Sophia.
"I suppose that's it. I'd no idea …!"
"Really!"
said Constance. Then, in candid admission, "The
fact is, it is dirty. You can't imagine what
work it makes, especially with window-curtains."
As the
train puffed under Trafalgar Road, Constance
pointed to a new station that was being built
there, to be called 'Trafalgar Road' station.
"Won't it
be strange?" said she, accustomed to the eternal
sequence of Loop Lane stations—Turnhill,
Bursley, Bleakridge, Hanbridge, Cauldon, Knype,
Trent Vale, and Longshaw. A 'Trafalgar Road'
inserting itself between Bleakridge and
Hanbridge seemed to her excessively curious.
"Yes, I
suppose it will," Sophia agreed.
"But of
course it's not the same to you," said
Constance, dashed. She indicated the glories of
Bursley Park, as the train slackened for
Bursley, with modesty. Sophia gazed, and vaguely
recognized the slopes where she had taken her
first walk with Gerald Scales.
Nobody
accosted them at Bursley Station, and they drove
to the Square in a cab. Amy was at the window;
she held up Spot, who was in a plenary state of
cleanliness, rivalling the purity of Amy's
apron.
"Good
afternoon, m'm," said Amy, officiously, to
Sophia, as Sophia came up the steps.
"Good
afternoon, Amy," Sophia replied. She flattered
Amy in thus showing that she was acquainted with
her name; but if ever a servant was put into her
place by mere tone, Amy was put into her place
on that occasion. Constance trembled at Sophia's
frigid and arrogant politeness. Certainly Sophia
was not used to being addressed first by
servants. But Amy was not quite the ordinary
servant. She was much older than the ordinary
servant, and she had acquired a partial moral
dominion over Constance, though Constance would
have warmly denied it. Hence Constance's
apprehension. However, nothing happened. Amy
apparently did not feel the snub.
"Take Spot
and put him in Mr. Cyril's bedroom," Constance
murmured to her, as if implying: "Have I not
already told you to do that?" The fact was, she
was afraid for Spot's life.
"Now,
Fossette!" She welcomed the incoming poodle
kindly; the poodle began at once to sniff.
The fat,
red cabman was handling the trunks on the
pavement, and Amy was upstairs. For a moment the
sisters were alone together in the parlour.
"So here I
am!" exclaimed the tall, majestic woman of
fifty. And her lips twitched again as she looked
round the room—so small to her.
"Yes, here
you are!" Constance agreed. She bit her lip,
and, as a measure of prudence to avoid breaking
down, she bustled out to the cabman. A passing
instant of emotion, like a fleck of foam on a
wide and calm sea!
The cabman
blundered up and downstairs with trunks, and
saluted Sophia's haughty generosity, and then
there was quietness. Amy was already brewing the
tea in the cave. The prepared tea-table in front
of the fire made a glittering array.
"Now, what
about Fossette?" Constance voiced anxieties that
had been growing on her.
"Fossette
will be quite right with me," said Sophia,
firmly.
They
ascended to the guest's room, which drew
Sophia's admiration for its prettiness. She
hurried to the window and looked out into the
Square.
"Would you
like a fire?" Constance asked, in a rather
perfunctory manner. For a bedroom fire, in
seasons of normal health, was still regarded as
absurd in the Square.
"Oh, no!"
said Sophia; but with a slight failure to rebut
the suggestion as utterly ridiculous.
"Sure?"
Constance questioned.
"Quite,
thank you," said Sophia.
"Well, I'll
leave you. I expect Amy will have tea ready
directly." She went down into the kitchen.
"Amy," she said, "as soon as we've finished tea,
light a fire in Mrs. Scales's bedroom."
"In the top
bedroom, m'm?"
"Yes."
Constance
climbed again to her own bedroom, and shut the
door. She needed a moment to herself, in the
midst of this terrific affair. She sighed with
relief as she removed her mantle. She thought:
"At any rate we've met, and I've got her here.
She's very nice. No, she isn't a bit altered."
She hesitated to admit that to her Sophia was
the least in the world formidable. And so she
said once more: "She's very nice. She isn't a
bit altered." And then: "Fancy her being here!
She really is here." With her perfect simplicity
it did not occur to Constance to speculate as to
what Sophia thought of her.
Sophia was
downstairs first, and Constance found her
looking at the blank wall beyond the door
leading to the kitchen steps.
"So this is
where you had it bricked up?" said Sophia.
"Yes," said
Constance. "That's the place."
"It makes
me feel like people feel when they have tickling
in a limb that's been cut off!" said Sophia.
"Oh,
Sophia!"
The tea
received a great deal of praise from Sophia, but
neither of them ate much. Constance found that
Sophia was like herself: she had to be
particular about her food. She tasted dainties
for the sake of tasting, but it was a bird's
pecking. Not the twelfth part of the tea was
consumed. They dared not indulge caprices. Only
their eyes could feed.
After tea
they went up to the drawing-room, and in the
corridor had the startling pleasure of seeing
two dogs who scurried about after each other in
amity. Spot had found Fossette, with the aid of
Amy's incurable carelessness, and had at once
examined her with great particularity. She
seemed to be of an amiable disposition, and not
averse from the lighter distractions. For a long
time the sisters sat chatting together in the
lit drawing-room to the agreeable sound of happy
dogs playing in the dark corridor. Those dogs
saved the situation, because they needed
constant attention. When the dogs dozed, the
sisters began to look through photograph albums,
of which Constance had several, bound in plush
or morocco. Nothing will sharpen the memory,
evoke the past, raise the dead, rejuvenate the
ageing, and cause both sighs and smiles, like a
collection of photographs gathered together
during long years of life. Constance had an
astonishing menagerie of unknown cousins and
their connections, and of townspeople; she had
Cyril at all ages; she had weird daguerreotypes
of her parents and their parents. The strangest
of all was a portrait of Samuel Povey as an
infant in arms. Sophia checked an impulse to
laugh at it. But when Constance said: "Isn't it
funny?" she did allow herself to laugh. A
photograph of Samuel in the year before his
death was really imposing. Sophia stared at it,
impressed. It was the portrait of an honest man.
"How long
have you been a widow?" Constance asked in a low
voice, glancing at upright Sophia over her
spectacles, a leaf of the album raised against
her finger.
Sophia
unmistakably flushed. "I don't know that I am a
widow," said she, with an air. "My husband left
me in 1870, and I've never seen nor heard of him
since."
"Oh, my
dear!" cried Constance, alarmed and deafened as
by a clap of awful thunder. "I thought ye were a
widow. Mr. Peel-Swynnerton said he was told
positively ye were a widow. That's why I never.
…" She stopped. Her face was troubled.
"Of course
I always passed for a widow, over there," said
Sophia.
"Of
course," said Constance quickly. "I see. …"
"And I may
be a widow," said Sophia.
Constance
made no remark. This was a blow. Bursley was
such a particular place. Doubtless, Gerald
Scales had behaved like a scoundrel. That was
sure!
When,
immediately afterwards, Amy opened the
drawing-room door (having first knocked—the
practice of encouraging a servant to plunge
without warning of any kind into a drawing-room
had never been favoured in that house) she saw
the sisters sitting rather near to each other at
the walnut oval table, Mrs. Scales very upright,
and staring into the fire, and Mrs. Povey
'bunched up' and staring at the photograph
album; both seeming to Amy aged and
apprehensive; Mrs. Povey's hair was quite grey,
though Mrs. Scales' hair was nearly as black as
Amy's own. Mrs. Scales started at the sound of
the knock, and turned her head.
"Here's Mr.
and Mrs. Critchlow, m'm," announced Amy.
The sisters
glanced at one another, with lifted foreheads.
Then Mrs. Povey spoke to Amy as though visits at
half-past eight at night were a customary
phenomenon of the household. Nevertheless, she
trembled to think what outrageous thing Mr.
Critchlow might say to Sophia after thirty
years' absence. The occasion was great, and it
might also be terrible.
"Ask them
to come up," she said calmly.
But Amy had
the best of that encounter. "I have done," she
replied, and instantly produced them out of the
darkness of the corridor. It was providential:
the sisters had made no remark that the
Critchlows might not hear.
Then Maria
Critchlow, simpering, had to greet Sophia. Mrs.
Critchlow was very agitated, from sheer
nervousness. She curvetted; she almost pranced;
and she made noises with her mouth as though she
saw some one eating a sour apple. She wanted to
show Sophia how greatly she had changed from the
young, timid apprentice. Certainly since her
marriage she had changed. As manager of other
people's business she had not felt the necessity
of being effusive to customers, but as
proprietress, anxiety to succeed had dragged her
out of her capable and mechanical indifference.
It was a pity. Her consistent dullness had had a
sort of dignity; but genial, she was merely
ridiculous. Animation cruelly displayed her
appalling commonness and physical shabbiness.
Sophia's demeanour was not chilly; but it
indicated that Sophia had no wish to be eyed
over as a freak of nature.
Mr.
Critchlow advanced very slowly into the room.
"Ye still carry your head on a stiff neck," said
he, deliberately examining Sophia. Then with
great care he put out his long thin arm and took
her hand. "Well, I'm rare and glad to see ye!"
Every one
was thunderstruck at this expression of joy. Mr.
Critchlow had never been known to be glad to see
anybody.
"Yes,"
twittered Maria, "Mr. Critchlow would come in
to-night.
Nothing would do but he must come in to-night."
"You didn't
tell me this afternoon," said Constance, "that
you were going to give us the pleasure of your
company like this."
He looked
momentarily at Constance. "No," he grated, "I
don't know as I did."
His gaze
flattered Sophia. Evidently he treated this
experienced and sad woman of fifty as a young
girl. And in presence of his extreme age she
felt like a young girl, remembering the while
how as a young girl she had hated him. Repulsing
the assistance of his wife, he arranged an
armchair in front of the fire and meticulously
put himself into it. Assuredly he was much older
in a drawing-room than behind the counter of his
shop. Constance had noticed that in the
afternoon. A live coal fell out of the fire. He
bent forward, wet his fingers, picked up the
coal and threw it back into the fire.
"Well,"
said Sophia. "I wouldn't have done that."
"I never
saw Mr. Critchlow's equal for picking up hot
cinders,"
Maria giggled.
Mr.
Critchlow deigned no remark. "When did ye leave
this Paris?" he demanded of Sophia, leaning
back, and putting his hands on the arms of the
chair.
"Yesterday
morning," said Sophia,
"And what'n
ye been doing with yeself since yesterday
morning?"
"I spent
last night in London," Sophia replied.
"Oh, in
London, did ye?"
"Yes. Cyril
and I had an evening together."
"Eh? Cyril!
What's yer opinion o' Cyril, Sophia?"
"I'm very
proud to have Cyril for a nephew," said Sophia.
"Oh! Are
ye?" The old man was obviously ironic.
"Yes I am,"
Sophia insisted sharply. "I'm not going to hear
a word said against Cyril."
She
proceeded to an enthusiastic laudation of Cyril
which rather overwhelmed his mother. Constance
was pleased; she was delighted. And yet
somewhere in her mind was an uncomfortable
feeling that Cyril, having taken a fancy to his
brilliant aunt, had tried to charm her as he
seldom or never tried to charm his mother. Cyril
and Sophia had dazzled and conquered each other;
they were of the same type; whereas she,
Constance, being but a plain person, could not
glitter.
She rang
the bell and gave instructions to Amy about
food—fruit cakes, coffee and hot milk, on a
tray; and Sophia also spoke to Amy murmuring a
request as to Fossette.
"Yes, Mrs.
Scales," said Amy, with eager deference.
Mrs.
Critchlow smiled vaguely from a low chair near
the curtained window. Then Constance lit another
burner of the chandelier. In doing so, she gave
a little sigh; it was a sigh of relief. Mr.
Critchlow had behaved himself. Now that he and
Sophia had met, the worst was over. Had
Constance known beforehand that he would pay a
call, she would have been agonized by
apprehensions, but now that he had actually come
she was glad he had come.
When he had
silently sipped some hot milk, he drew a thick
bunch of papers, white and blue, from his
bulging breast-pocket.
"Now, Maria
Critchlow," he called, edging round his chair
slightly. "Ye'd best go back home."
Maria
Critchlow was biting at a bit of walnut cake,
while in her right hand, all seamed with black
lines, she held a cup of coffee.
"But, Mr.
Critchlow——!" Constance protested.
"I've got
business with Sophia, and I must get it done.
I've got for to render an account of my
stewardship to Sophia, under her father's will,
and her mother's will, and her aunt's will, and
it's nobody's business but mine and Sophia's, I
reckon. Now then," he glanced at his wife, "off
with ye!"
Maria rose,
half-kittenish and half-ashamed.
"Surely you
don't want to go into all that to-night," said
Sophia. She spoke softly, for she had already
fully perceived that Mr. Critchlow must be
managed with the tact which the capricious
obstinacies of advanced age demanded. "Surely
you can wait a day or two. I'm in no hurry."
"HAVEN'T I
WAITED LONG ENOUGH?" he retorted fiercely.
There was a
pause. Maria Critchlow moved.
"As for you
being in no hurry, Sophia," the old man went on,
"nobody can say as you've been in a hurry."
Sophia had
suffered a check. She glanced hesitatingly at
Constance.
"Mrs.
Critchlow and I will go down into the parlour,"
said
Constance, quickly. "There is a bit of fire
there."
"Oh no. I
won't hear of such a thing!"
"Yes, we
will, won't we, Mrs. Critchlow?" Constance
insisted, cheerfully but firmly. She was
determined that in her house Sophia should have
all the freedom and conveniences that she could
have had in her own. If a private room was
needed for discussions between Sophia and her
trustee, Constance's pride was piqued to supply
that room. Further, Constance was glad to get
Maria out of Sophia's sight. She was accustomed
to Maria; with her it did not matter; but she
did not care that the teeth of Sophia should be
set on edge by the ridiculous demeanour of
Maria. So those two left the drawing-room, and
the old man began to open the papers which he
had been preparing for weeks.
There was
very little fire in the parlour, and Constance,
in addition to being bored by Mrs. Critchlow's
inane and inquisitive remarks, felt chilly,
which was bad for her sciatica. She wondered
whether Sophia would have to confess to Mr.
Critchlow that she was not certainly a widow.
She thought that steps ought to be taken to
ascertain, through Birkinshaws, if anything was
known of Gerald Scales. But even that course was
set with perils. Supposing that he still lived,
an unspeakable villain (Constance could only
think of him as an unspeakable villain), and
supposing that he molested Sophia,—what scenes!
What shame in the town! Such frightful thoughts
ran endlessly through Constance's mind as she
bent over the fire endeavouring to keep alive a
silly conversation with Maria Critchlow.
Amy passed
through the parlour to go to bed. There was no
other way of reaching the upper part of the
house.
"Are you
going to bed, Amy?"
"Yes'm."
"Where is
Fossette?"
"In the
kitchen, m'm," said Amy, defending herself.
"Mrs. Scales told me the dog might sleep in the
kitchen with Spot, as they was such good
friends. I've opened the bottom drawer, and
Fossit is lying in that."
"Mrs.
Scales has brought a dog with her!" exclaimed
Maria.
"Yes'm!"
said Amy, drily, before Constance could answer.
She implied everything in that affirmative.
"You are a
family for dogs," said Maria. "What sort of dog
is it?"
"Well,"
said Constance. "I don't know exactly what they
call it. It's a French dog, one of those French
dogs." Amy was lingering at the stairfoot. "Good
night, Amy, thank you."
Amy
ascended, shutting the door.
"Oh! I
see!" Maria muttered. "Well, I never!"
It was ten
o'clock before sounds above indicated that the
first interview between trustee and beneficiary
was finished.
"I'll be
going on to open our side-door," said Maria.
"Say good night to Mrs. Scales for me." She was
not sure whether Charles Critchlow had really
meant her to go home, or whether her mere
absence from the drawing-room had contented him.
So she departed. He came down the stairs with
the most tiresome slowness, went through the
parlour in silence, ignoring Constance, and also
Sophia, who was at his heels, and vanished.
As
Constance shut and bolted the front-door, the
sisters looked at each other, Sophia faintly
smiling. It seemed to them that they understood
each other better when they did not speak. With
a glance, they exchanged their ideas on the
subject of Charles Critchlow and Maria, and
learnt that their ideas were similar. Constance
said nothing as to the private interview. Nor
did Sophia. At present, on this the first day,
they could only achieve intimacy by intermittent
flashes.
"What about
bed?" asked Sophia.
"You must
be tired," said Constance.
Sophia got
to the stairs, which received a little light
from the corridor gas, before Constance, having
tested the window- fastening, turned out the gas
in the parlour. They climbed the lower flight of
stairs together.
"I must
just see that your room is all right," Constance
said.
"Must you?"
Sophia smiled.
They
climbed the second flight, slowly. Constance was
out of breath.
"Oh, a
fire! How nice!" cried Sophia. "But why did you
go to all that trouble? I told you not to."
"It's no
trouble at all," said Constance, raising the gas
in the bedroom. Her tone implied that bedroom
fires were a quite ordinary incident of daily
life in a place like Bursley.
"Well, my
dear, I hope you'll find everything
comfortable," said
Constance.
"I'm sure I
shall. Good night, dear."
"Good
night, then."
They looked
at each other again, with timid
affectionateness. They did not kiss. The thought
in both their minds was: "We couldn't keep on
kissing every day." But there was a vast amount
of quiet, restrained affection, of mutual
confidence and respect, even of tenderness, in
their tones.
About half
an hour later a dreadful hullaballoo smote the
ear of Constance. She was just getting into bed.
She listened intently, in great alarm. It was
undoubtedly those dogs fighting, and fighting to
the death. She pictured the kitchen as a
battlefield, and Spot slain. Opening the door,
she stepped out into the corridor,
"Constance," said a low voice above her. She
jumped. "Is that you?"
"Yes."
"Well,
don't bother to go down to the dogs; they'll
stop in a moment. Fossette won't bite. I'm so
sorry she's upsetting the house."
Constance
stared upwards, and discerned a pale shadow. The
dogs did soon cease their altercation. This
short colloquy in the dark affected Constance
strangely.
III
The next
morning, after a night varied by periods of
wakefulness not unpleasant, Sophia arose and,
taking due precautions against cold, went to the
window. It was Saturday; she had left Paris on
the Thursday. She looked forth upon the Square,
holding aside the blind. She had expected, of
course, to find that the Square had shrunk in
size; but nevertheless she was startled to see
how small it was. It seemed to her scarcely
bigger than a courtyard. She could remember a
winter morning when from the window she had
watched the Square under virgin snow in the
lamplight, and the Square had been vast, and the
first wayfarer, crossing it diagonally and
leaving behind him the irregular impress of his
feet, had appeared to travel for hours over an
interminable white waste before vanishing past
Holl's shop in the direction of the Town Hall.
She chiefly recalled the Square under snow; cold
mornings, and the coldness of the oil-cloth at
the window, and the draught of cold air through
the ill-fitting sash (it was put right now)!
These visions of herself seemed beautiful to
her; her childish existence seemed beautiful;
the storms and tempests of her girlhood seemed
beautiful; even the great sterile expanse of
tedium when, after giving up a scholastic
career, she had served for two years in the
shop—even this had a strange charm in her
memory.
And she
thought that not for millions of pounds would
she live her life over again.
In its
contents the Square had not surprisingly changed
during the immense, the terrifying interval that
separated her from her virginity. On the east
side, several shops had been thrown into one,
and forced into a semblance of eternal unity by
means of a coat of stucco. And there was a
fountain at the north end which was new to her.
No other constructional change! But the moral
change, the sad declension from the ancient
proud spirit of the Square—this was painfully
depressing. Several establishments lacked
tenants, had obviously lacked tenants for a long
time; 'To let' notices hung in their stained and
dirty upper windows, and clung insecurely to
their closed shutters. And on the sign-boards of
these establishments were names that Sophia did
not know. The character of most of the shops
seemed to have worsened; they had become
pettifogging little holes, unkempt, shabby,
poor; they had no brightness, no feeling of
vitality. And the floor of the Square was
littered with nondescript refuse. The whole
scene, paltry, confined, and dull, reached for
her the extreme of provinciality. It was what
the French called, with a pregnant intonation,
la province. This—being said, there was nothing
else to say. Bursley, of course, was in the
provinces; Bursley must, in the nature of
things, be typically provincial. But in her mind
it had always been differentiated from the
common province; it had always had an air, a
distinction, and especially St. Luke's Square!
That illusion was now gone. Still, the
alteration was not wholly in herself; it was not
wholly subjective. The Square really had changed
for the worse; it might not be smaller, but it
had deteriorated. As a centre of commerce it had
assuredly approached very near to death. On a
Saturday morning thirty years ago it would have
been covered with linen-roofed stalls, and
chattering country-folk, and the stir of
bargains. Now, Saturday morning was like any
other morning in the Square, and the glass-roof
of St. Luke's market in Wedgwood Street, which
she could see from her window, echoed to the
sounds of noisy commerce. In that instance
business had simply moved a few yards to the
east; but Sophia knew, from hints in Constance's
letters and in her talk, that business in
general had moved more than a few yards, it had
moved a couple of miles—to arrogant and pushing
Hanbridge, with its electric light and its
theatres and its big, advertising shops. The
heaven of thick smoke over the Square, the black
deposit on painted woodwork, the intermittent
hooting of steam syrens, showed that the
wholesale trade of Bursley still flourished. But
Sophia had no memories of the wholesale trade of
Bursley; it meant nothing to the youth of her
heart; she was attached by intimate links to the
retail traffic of Bursley, and as a mart old
Bursley was done for.
She
thought: "It would kill me if I had to live
here. It's deadening. It weighs on you. And the
dirt, and the horrible ugliness! And the—way
they talk, and the way they think! I felt it
first at Knype station. The Square is rather
picturesque, but it's such a poor, poor little
thing! Fancy having to look at it every morning
of one's life! No!" She almost shuddered.
For the
time being she had no home. To Constance she was
'paying a visit.'
Constance
did not appear to realize the awful conditions
of dirt, decay, and provinciality in which she
was living. Even Constance's house was extremely
inconvenient, dark, and no doubt unhealthy.
Cellar-kitchen, no hall, abominable stairs, and
as to hygiene, simply mediaeval. She could not
understand why Constance had remained in the
house. Constance had plenty of money and might
live where she liked, and in a good modern
house. Yet she stayed in the Square. "I daresay
she's got used to it," Sophia thought leniently.
"I daresay I should be just the same in her
place." But she did not really think so, and she
could not understand Constance's state of mind.
Certainly
she could not claim to have 'added up' Constance
yet. She considered that her sister was in some
respects utterly provincial—what they used to
call in the Five Towns a 'body.' Somewhat too
diffident, not assertive enough, not erect
enough; with curious provincial pronunciations,
accents, gestures, mannerisms, and inarticulate
ejaculations; with a curious narrowness of
outlook! But at the same time Constance was very
shrewd, and she was often proving by some bit of
a remark that she knew what was what, despite
her provinciality. In judgments upon human
nature they undoubtedly thought alike, and there
was a strong natural general sympathy between
them. And at the bottom of Constance was
something fine. At intervals Sophia discovered
herself secretly patronizing Constance, but
reflection would always cause her to cease from
patronage and to examine her own defences.
Constance, besides being the essence of
kindness, was no fool. Constance could see
through a pretence, an absurdity, as quickly as
any one. Constance did honestly appear to Sophia
to be superior to any Frenchwoman that she had
ever encountered. She saw supreme in Constance
that quality which she had recognized in the
porters at Newhaven on landing—the quality of an
honest and naive goodwill, of powerful
simplicity. That quality presented itself to her
as the greatest in the world, and it seemed to
be in the very air of England. She could even
detect it in Mr. Critchlow, whom, for the rest,
she liked, admiring the brutal force of his
character. She pardoned his brutality to his
wife. She found it proper. "After all," she
said, "supposing he hadn't married her, what
would she have been? Nothing but a slave! She's
infinitely better off as his wife. In fact she's
lucky. And it would be absurd for him to treat
her otherwise than he does treat her." (Sophia
did not divine that her masterful Critchlow had
once wanted Maria as one might want a star.)
But to be
always with such people! To be always with
Constance! To be always in the Bursley
atmosphere, physical and mental!
She
pictured Paris as it would be on that very
morning—bright, clean, glittering; the neatness
of the Rue Lord Byron, and the magnificent
slanting splendour of the Champs Elysees. Paris
had always seemed beautiful to her; but the life
of Paris had not seemed beautiful to her. Yet
now it did seem beautiful. She could delve down
into the earlier years of her ownership of the
Pension, and see a regular, placid beauty in her
daily life there. Her life there, even so late
as a fortnight ago, seemed beautiful; sad, but
beautiful. It had passed into history. She
sighed when she thought of the innumerable
interviews with Mardon, the endless formalities
required by the English and the French law and
by the particularity of the Syndicate. She had
been through all that. She had actually been
through it and it was over. She had bought the
Pension for a song and sold it for great riches.
She had developed from a nobody into the desired
of Syndicates. And after long, long, monotonous,
strenuous years of possession the day had come,
the emotional moment had come, when she had
yielded up the keys of ownership to Mr. Mardon
and a man from the Hotel Moscow, and had paid
her servants for the last time and signed the
last receipted bill. The men had been very
gallant, and had requested her to stay in the
Pension as their guest until she was ready to
leave Paris. But she had declined that. She
could not have borne to remain in the Pension
under the reign of another. She had left at once
and gone to a hotel with her few goods while
finally disposing of certain financial
questions. And one evening Jacqueline had come
to see her, and had wept.
Her exit
from the Pension Frensham struck her now as
poignantly pathetic, in its quickness and its
absence of ceremonial. Ten steps, and her career
was finished, closed. Astonishing with what
liquid tenderness she turned and looked back on
that hard, fighting, exhausting life in Paris!
For, even if she had unconsciously liked it, she
had never enjoyed it. She had always compared
France disadvantageously with England, always
resented the French temperament in business,
always been convinced that 'you never knew where
you were' with French tradespeople. And now they
flitted before her endowed with a wondrous
charm; so polite in their lying, so eager to
spare your feelings and to reassure you, so neat
and prim. And the French shops, so exquisitely
arranged! Even a butcher's shop in Paris was a
pleasure to the eye, whereas the butcher's shop
in Wedgwood Street, which she remembered of old,
and which she had glimpsed from the cab—what a
bloody shambles! She longed for Paris again. She
longed to stretch her lungs in Paris. These
people in Bursley did not suspect what Paris
was. They did not appreciate and they never
would appreciate the marvels that she had
accomplished in a theatre of marvels. They
probably never realized that the whole of the
rest of the world was not more or less like
Bursley. They had no curiosity. Even Constance
was a thousand times more interested in relating
trifles of Bursley gossip than in listening to
details of life in Paris. Occasionally she had
expressed a mild, vapid surprise at things told
to her by Sophia; but she was not really
impressed, because her curiosity did not extend
beyond Bursley. She, like the rest, had the
formidable, thrice-callous egotism of the
provinces. And if Sophia had informed her that
the heads of Parisians grew out of their navels
she would have murmured: "Well, well! Bless us!
I never heard of such things! Mrs. Brindley's
second boy has got his head quite crooked, poor
little fellow!"
Why should
Sophia feel sorrowful? She did not know. She was
free; free to go where she liked and do what she
liked, She had no responsibilities, no cares.
The thought of her husband had long ago ceased
to rouse in her any feeling of any kind. She was
rich. Mr. Critchlow had accumulated for her
about as much money as she had herself acquired.
Never could she spend her income! She did not
know how to spend it. She lacked nothing that
was procurable. She had no desires except the
direct desire for happiness. If thirty thousand
pounds or so could have bought a son like Cyril,
she would have bought one for herself. She
bitterly regretted that she had no child. In
this, she envied Constance. A child seemed to be
the one commodity worth having. She was too
free, too exempt from responsibilities. In spite
of Constance she was alone in the world. The
strangeness of the hazards of life overwhelmed
her. Here she was at fifty, alone.
But the
idea of leaving Constance, having once rejoined
her, did not please Sophia. It disquieted her.
She could not see herself living away from
Constance. She was alone—but Constance was
there.
She was
downstairs first, and she had a little
conversation with Amy. And she stood on the step
of the front-door while Fossette made a
preliminary inspection of Spot's gutter. She
found the air nipping.
Constance,
when she descended, saw stretching across one
side of the breakfast-table an umbrella,
Sophia's present to her from Paris. It was an
umbrella such that a better could not be bought.
It would have impressed even Aunt Harriet. The
handle was of gold, set with a circlet of
opalines. The tips of the ribs were also of
gold. It was this detail which staggered
Constance. Frankly, this development of luxury
had been unknown and unsuspected in the Square.
That the tips of the ribs should match the
handle … that did truly beat everything! Sophia
said calmly that the device was quite common.
But she did not conceal that the umbrella was
strictly of the highest class and that it might
be shown to queens without shame. She intimated
that the frame (a 'Fox's Paragon'), handle, and
tips, would outlast many silks. Constance was
childish with pleasure.
They
decided to go out marketing together. The
unspoken thought in their minds was that as
Sophia would have to be introduced to the town
sooner or later, it might as well be sooner.
Constance looked at the sky. "It can't possibly
rain," she said. "I shall take my umbrella."
CHAPTER III
TOWARDS
HOTEL LIFE
I
SOPHIA wore
list slippers in the morning. It was a habit
which she had formed in the Rue Lord Byron—by
accident rather than with an intention to
utilize list slippers for the effective
supervision of servants. These list slippers
were the immediate cause of important happenings
in St. Luke's Square. Sophia had been with
Constance one calendar month—it was, of course,
astonishing how quickly the time had passed!—and
she had become familiar with the house.
Restraint had gradually ceased to mark the
relations of the sisters. Constance, in
particular, hid nothing from Sophia, who was
made aware of the minor and major defects of Amy
and all the other creakings of the household
machine. Meals were eaten off the ordinary
tablecloths, and on the days for 'turning out'
the parlour, Constance assumed, with a little
laugh, that Sophia would excuse Amy's apron,
which she had not had time to change. In brief,
Sophia was no longer a stranger, and nobody felt
bound to pretend that things were not exactly
what they were. In spite of the foulness and the
provinciality of Bursley, Sophia enjoyed the
intimacy with Constance. As for Constance, she
was enchanted. The inflections of their voices,
when they were talking to each other very
privately, were often tender, and these sudden
surprising tendernesses secretly thrilled both
of them.
On the
fourth Sunday morning Sophia put on her
dressing-gown and those list slippers very
early, and paid a visit to Constance's bedroom.
She was somewhat concerned about Constance, and
her concern was pleasurable to her. She made the
most of it. Amy, with her lifelong carelessness
about doors, had criminally failed to latch the
street-door of the parlour on the previous
morning, and Constance had only perceived the
omission by the phenomenon of frigidity in her
legs at breakfast. She always sat with her back
to the door, in her mother's fluted
rocking-chair; and Sophia on the spot, but not
in the chair, occupied by John Baines in the
forties, and in the seventies and later by
Samuel Povey. Constance had been alarmed by that
frigidity. "I shall have a return of my
sciatica!" she had exclaimed, and Sophia was
startled by the apprehension in her tone. Before
evening the sciatica had indeed revisited
Constance's sciatic nerve, and Sophia for the
first time gained an idea of what a pulsating
sciatica can do in the way of torturing its
victim. Constance, in addition to the sciatica,
had caught a sneezing cold, and the act of
sneezing caused her the most acute pain. Sophia
had soon stopped the sneezing. Constance was got
to bed. Sophia wished to summon the doctor, but
Constance assured her that the doctor would have
nothing new to advise. Constance suffered
angelically. The weak and exquisite sweetness of
her smile, as she lay in bed under the stress of
twinging pain amid hot-water bottles, was
amazing to Sophia. It made her think upon the
reserves of Constance's character, and upon the
variety of the manifestations of the Baines'
blood.
So on the
Sunday morning she had arisen early, just after
Amy.
She
discovered Constance to be a little better, as
regards the neuralgia, but exhausted by the
torments of a sleepless night. Sophia, though
she had herself not slept well, felt somehow
conscience-stricken for having slept at all.
"You poor
dear!" she murmured, brimming with sympathy. "I
shall make you some tea at once, myself."
"Oh, Amy
will do it," said Constance.
Sophia
repeated with a resolute intonation: "I shall
make it myself." And after being satisfied that
there was no instant need for a renewal of
hot-water bottles, she went further downstairs
in those list slippers.
As she was
descending the dark kitchen steps she heard
Amy's voice in pettish exclamation: "Oh, get
out, YOU!" followed by a yelp from Fossette. She
had a swift movement of anger, which she
controlled. The relations between her and
Fossette were not marked by transports, and her
rule over dogs in general was severe; even when
alone she very seldom kissed the animal
passionately, according to the general habit of
people owning dogs. But she loved Fossette. And,
moreover, her love for Fossette had been lately
sharpened by the ridicule which Bursley had
showered upon that strange beast. Happily for
Sophia's amour propre, there was no means of
getting Fossette shaved in Bursley, and thus
Fossette was daily growing less comic to the
Bursley eye. Sophia could therefore without loss
of dignity yield to force of circumstances what
she would not have yielded to popular opinion.
She guessed that Amy had no liking for the dog,
but the accent which Amy had put upon the 'you'
seemed to indicate that Amy was making
distinctions between Fossette and Spot, and this
disturbed Sophia much more than Fossette's yelp.
Sophia
coughed, and entered the kitchen.
Spot was
lapping his morning milk out of a saucer, while
Fossette stood wistfully, an amorphous mass of
thick hair, under the table.
"Good
morning, Amy," said Sophia, with dreadful
politeness.
"Good
morning, m'm," said Amy, glumly.
Amy knew
that Sophia had heard that yelp, and Sophia knew
that she knew. The pretence of politeness was
horrible. Both the women felt as though the
kitchen was sanded with gunpowder and there were
lighted matches about. Sophia had a very proper
grievance against Amy on account of the open
door of the previous day. Sophia thought that,
after such a sin, the least Amy could do was to
show contrition and amiability and an anxiety to
please: which things Amy had not shown. Amy had
a grievance against Sophia because Sophia had
recently thrust upon her a fresh method of
cooking green vegetables. Amy was a strong
opponent of new or foreign methods. Sophia was
not aware of this grievance, for Amy had hidden
it under her customary cringing politeness to
Sophia.
They
surveyed each other like opposing armies.
"What a
pity you have no gas-stove here! I want to make
some tea at once for Mrs. Povey," said Sophia,
inspecting the just-born fire.
"Gas-stove,
m'm?" said Amy, hostilely. It was Sophia's list
slippers which had finally decided Amy to drop
the mask of deference.
She made no
effort to aid Sophia; she gave no indication as
to where the various necessaries for tea were to
be found. Sophia got the kettle, and washed it
out. Sophia got the smallest tea-pot, and, as
the tea-leaves had been left in it, she washed
out the teapot also, with exaggerated noise and
meticulousness. Sophia got the sugar and the
other trifles, and Sophia blew up the fire with
the bellows. And Amy did nothing in particular
except encourage Spot to drink.
"Is that
all the milk you give to Fossette?" Sophia
demanded coldly, when it had come to Fossette's
turn. She was waiting for the water to boil. The
saucer for the bigger dog, who would have made
two of Spot, was not half full.
"It's all
there is to spare, m'm," Amy rasped.
Sophia made
no reply. Soon afterwards she departed, with the
tea successfully made. If Amy had not been a
mature woman of over forty she would have
snorted as Sophia went away. But Amy was
scarcely the ordinary silly girl.
Save for a
certain primness as she offered the tray to her
sister, Sophia's demeanour gave no sign whatever
that the Amazon in her was aroused. Constance's
eager trembling pleasure in the tea touched her
deeply, and she was exceedingly thankful that
Constance had her, Sophia, as a succour in time
of distress.
A few
minutes later, Constance, having first asked
Sophia what time it was by the watch in the
watch-case on the chest of drawers (the Swiss
clock had long since ceased to work), pulled the
red tassel of the bell-cord over her bed. A bell
tinkled far away in the kitchen.
"Anything I
can do?" Sophia inquired.
"Oh no,
thanks," said Constance. "I only want my
letters, if the postman has come. He ought to
have been here long ago." Sophia had learned
during her stay that Sunday morning was the
morning on which Constance expected a letter
from Cyril. It was a definite arrangement
between mother and son that Cyril should write
on Saturdays, and Constance on Sundays. Sophia
knew that Constance set store by this letter,
becoming more and more preoccupied about Cyril
as the end of the week approached. Since
Sophia's arrival Cyril's letter had not failed
to come, but once it had been naught save a
scribbled line or two, and Sophia gathered that
it was never a certainty, and that Constance was
accustomed, though not reconciled, to
disappointments. Sophia had been allowed to read
the letters. They left a faint impression on her
mind that her favourite was perhaps somewhat
negligent in his relations with his mother.
There was
no reply to the bell. Constance rang again
without effect.
With a
brusque movement Sophia left the bedroom by way
of Cyril's room.
"Amy," she
called over the banisters, "do you not hear your
mistress's bell?"
"I'm coming
as quick as I can, m'm." The voice was still
very glum.
Sophia
murmured something inarticulate, staying till
assured that Amy really was coming, and then she
passed back into Cyril's bedroom. She waited
there, hesitant, not exactly on the watch, not
exactly unwilling to assist at an interview
between Amy and Amy's mistress; indeed, she
could not have surely analyzed her motive for
remaining in Cyril's bedroom, with the door ajar
between that room and Constance's.
Amy
reluctantly mounted the stairs and went into her
mistress's bedroom with her chin in the air. She
thought that Sophia had gone up to the second
storey, where she 'belonged.' She stood in
silence by the bed, showing no sympathy with
Constance, no curiosity as to the indisposition.
She objected to Constance's attack of sciatica,
as being a too permanent reproof of her
carelessness as to doors.
Constance
also waited, for the fraction of a second, as if
expectant.
"Well,
Amy," she said at length in her voice weakened
by fatigue and pain. "The letters?"
"There
ain't no letters," said Amy, grimly. "You might
have known, if there'd been any, I should have
brought 'em up. Postman went past twenty minutes
agone. I'm always being interrupted, and it
isn't as if I hadn't got enough to do—now!"
She turned
to leave, and was pulling the door open.
"Amy!" said
a voice sharply. It was Sophia's.
The servant
jumped, and in spite of herself obeyed the
implicit, imperious command to stop.
"You will
please not speak to your mistress in that tone,
at any rate while I'm here," said Sophia, icily.
"You know she is ill and weak. You ought to be
ashamed of yourself."
"I never—-"
Amy began.
"I don't
want to argue," Sophia said angrily. "Please
leave the room."
Amy obeyed.
She was cowed, in addition to being staggered.
To the
persons involved in it, this episode was
intensely dramatic. Sophia had surmised that
Constance permitted liberties of speech to Amy;
she had even guessed that Amy sometimes took
licence to be rude. But that the relations
between them were such as to allow the bullying
of Constance by an Amy downright insolent—this
had shocked and wounded Sophia, who suddenly had
a vision of Constance as the victim of a reign
of terror. "If the creature will do this while
I'm here," said Sophia to herself, "what does
she do when they are alone together in the
house?"
"Well," she
exclaimed, "I never heard of such goings-on! And
you let her talk to you in that style! My dear
Constance!"
Constance
was sitting up in bed, the small tea-tray on her
knees. Her eyes were moist. The tears had filled
them when she knew that there was no letter.
Ordinarily the failure of Cyril's letter would
not have made her cry, but weakness had impaired
her self- control. And the tears having once got
into her eyes, she could not dismiss them. There
they were!
"She's been
with me such a long time," Constance murmured.
"She takes liberties. I've corrected her once or
twice."
"Liberties!" Sophia repeated the word.
"Liberties!"
"Of course
I really ought not to allow it," said Constance.
"I ought to have put a stop to it long since."
"Well,"
said Sophia, rather relieved by this symptom of
Constance's secret mind, "I do hope you won't
think I'm meddlesome, but truly it was too much
for me. The words were out of my mouth before
I——" She stopped.
"You were
quite right, quite right," said Constance,
seeing before her in the woman of fifty the
passionate girl of fifteen.
"I've had a
good deal of experience of servants," said
Sophia.
"I know you
have," Constance put in.
"And I'm
convinced that it never pays to stand any sauce.
Servants don't understand kindness and
forbearance. And this sort of thing grows and
grows till you can't call your soul your own."
"You are
quite right," Constance said again, with even
more positiveness.
Not merely
the conviction that Sophia was quite right, but
the desire to assure Sophia that Sophia was not
meddlesome, gave force to her utterance. Amy's
allusion to extra work shamed Amy's mistress as
a hostess, and she was bound to make amends.
"Now as to
that woman," said Sophia in a lower voice, as
she sat down confidentially on the edge of the
bed. And she told Constance about Amy and the
dogs, and about Amy's rudeness in the kitchen.
"I should never have DREAMT of mentioning such
things," she finished. "But under the
circumstances I feel it right that you should
know. I feel you ought to know."
And
Constance nodded her head in thorough agreement.
She did not trouble to go into articulate
apologies to her guest for the actual misdeeds
of her servant. The sisters were now on a plane
of intimacy where such apologies would have been
supererogatory. Their voices fell lower and
lower, and the case of Amy was laid bare and
discussed to the minutest detail.
Gradually
they realized that what had occurred was a
crisis. They were both very excited,
apprehensive, and rather too consciously
defiant. At the same time they were drawn very
close to each other, by Sophia's generous
indignation and by Constance's absolute loyalty.
A long time
passed before Constance said, thinking about
something else:
"I expect
it's been delayed in the post."
"Cyril's
letter? Oh, no doubt! If you knew the posts in
France, my word!"
Then they
determined, with little sighs, to face the
crisis cheerfully.
In truth it
was a crisis, and a great one. The sensation of
the crisis affected the atmosphere of the entire
house. Constance got up for tea and managed to
walk to the drawing-room. And when Sophia, after
an absence in her own room, came down to tea and
found the tea all served, Constance whispered:
"She's
given notice! And Sunday too!"
"What did
she say?"
"She didn't
say much," Constance replied vaguely, hiding
from Sophia that Amy had harped on the too great
profusion of mistresses in that house. "After
all, it's just as well. She'll be all right.
She's saved a good bit of money, and she has
friends."
"But how
foolish of her to give up such a good place!"
"She simply
doesn't care," said Constance, who was a little
hurt by Amy's defection. "When she takes a thing
into her head she simply doesn't care. She's got
no common sense. I've always known that."
"So you're
going to leave, Amy?" said Sophia that evening,
as Amy was passing through the parlour on her
way to bed. Constance was already arranged for
the night.
"I am,
m'm," answered Amy, precisely.
Her tone
was not rude, but it was firm. She had
apparently reconnoitred her position in
calmness.
"I'm sorry
I was obliged to correct you this morning," said
Sophia, with cheerful amicableness, pleased in
spite of herself with the woman's tone. "But I
think you will see that I had reason to."
"I've been
thinking it over, m'm," said Amy, with dignity,
"and I see as I must leave."
There was a
pause.
"Well, you
know best. … Good night, Amy."
"Good
night, m'm."
"She's a
decent woman," thought Sophia, "but hopeless for
this place now."
The sisters
were fronted with the fact that Constance had a
month in which to find a new servant, and that a
new servant would have to be trained in
well-doing and might easily prove disastrous.
Both Constance and Amy were profoundly disturbed
by the prospective dissolution of a bond which
dated from the seventies. And both were decided
that there was no alternative to the
dissolution. Outsiders knew merely that Mrs.
Povey's old servant was leaving. Outsiders
merely saw Mrs. Povey's advertisement in the
Signal for a new servant. They could not read
hearts. Some of the younger generation even said
superiorly that old-fashioned women like Mrs.
Povey seemed to have servants on the brain,
etc., etc.
II
"Well, have
you got your letter?" Sophia demanded cheerfully
of
Constance when she entered the bedroom the next
morning.
Constance
merely shook her head. She was very depressed.
Sophia's cheerfulness died out. As she hated to
be insincerely optimistic, she said nothing.
Otherwise she might have remarked: "Perhaps the
afternoon post will bring it." Gloom reigned. To
Constance particularly, as Amy had given notice
and as Cyril was 'remiss,' it seemed really that
the time was out of joint and life unworth
living. Even the presence of Sophia did not
bring her much comfort. Immediately Sophia left
the room Constance's sciatica began to return,
and in a severe form. She had regretted this,
less for the pain than because she had just
assured Sophia, quite honestly, that she was not
suffering; Sophia had been sceptical. After that
it was of course imperative that Constance
should get up as usual. She had said that she
would get up as usual. Besides, there was the
immense enterprise of obtaining a new servant!
Worries loomed mountainous. Suppose Cyril were
dangerously ill, and unable to write! Suppose
something had happened to him! Supposing she
never did obtain a new servant!
Sophia, up
in her room, was endeavouring to be
philosophical, and to see the world brightly.
She was saying to herself that she must take
Constance in hand, that what Constance lacked
was energy, that Constance must be stirred out
of her groove. And in the cavernous kitchen Amy,
preparing the nine-o'clock breakfast, was
meditating upon the ingratitude of employers and
wondering what the future held for her. She had
a widowed mother in the picturesque village of
Sneyd, where the mortal and immortal welfare of
every inhabitant was watched over by God's
vicegerent, the busy Countess of Chell; she
possessed about two hundred pounds of her own;
her mother for years had been begging Amy to
share her home free of expense. But nevertheless
Amy's mind was black with foreboding and vague
dejection. The house was a house of sorrow, and
these three women, each solitary, the devotees
of sorrow. And the two dogs wandered
disconsolate up and down, aware of the necessity
for circumspection, never guessing that the
highly peculiar state of the atmosphere had been
brought about by nothing but a half-shut door
and an incorrect tone.
As Sophia,
fully dressed this time, was descending to
breakfast, she heard Constance's voice, feebly
calling her, and found the convalescent still in
bed. The truth could not be concealed. Constance
was once more in great pain, and her moral
condition was not favourable to fortitude.
"I wish you
had told me, to begin with," Sophia could not
help saying, "then I should have known what to
do."
Constance
did not defend herself by saying that the pain
had only recurred since their first interview
that morning. She just wept.
"I'm very
low!" she blubbered.
Sophia was
surprised. She felt that this was not 'being a
Baines.'
During the
progress of that interminable April morning, her
acquaintance with the possibilities of sciatica
as an agent destructive of moral fibre was
further increased. Constance had no force at all
to resist its activity. The sweetness of her
resignation seemed to melt into nullity. She
held to it that the doctor could do nothing for
her.
About noon,
when Sophia was moving anxiously around her, she
suddenly screamed.
"I feel as
if my leg was going to burst!" she cried.
That
decided Sophia. As soon as Constance was a
little easier she went downstairs to Amy.
"Amy," she
said, "it's a Doctor Stirling that your mistress
has when she's ill, isn't it?"
"Yes, m'm."
"Where is
his surgery?"
"Well, m'm,
he did live just opposite, with Dr. Harrop, but
latterly he's gone to live at Bleakridge."
"I wish you
would put your things on, and run up there and
ask him to call as soon as he can."
"I will,
m'm," said Amy, with the greatest willingness.
"I thought I heard missis cry out." She was not
effusive. She was better than effusive: kindly
and helpful with a certain reserve.
"There's
something about that woman I like," said Sophia,
to herself. For a proved fool, Amy was indeed
holding her own rather well.
Dr.
Stirling drove down about two o'clock. He had
now been established in the Five Towns for more
than a decade, and the stamp of success was on
his brow and on the proud forehead of his
trotting horse. He had, in the phrase of the
Signal, 'identified himself with the local life
of the district.' He was liked, being a man of
broad sympathies. In his rich Scotch accent he
could discuss with equal ability the flavour of
whisky or of a sermon, and he had more than
sufficient tact never to discuss either whiskies
or sermons in the wrong place. He had made a
speech (responding for the learned professions)
at the annual dinner of the Society for the
Prosecution of Felons, and this speech (in which
praise of red wine was rendered innocuous by
praise of books—his fine library was notorious)
had classed him as a wit with the American
consul, whose post-prandial manner was modelled
on Mark Twain's. He was thirty-five years of
age, tall and stoutish, with a chubby boyish
face that the razor left chiefly blue every
morning.
The
immediate effect of his arrival on Constance was
miraculous. His presence almost cured her for a
moment, just as though her malady had been
toothache and he a dentist. Then, when he had
finished his examination, the pain resumed its
sway over her.
In talking
to her and to Sophia, he listened very seriously
to all that they said; he seemed to regard the
case as the one case that had ever aroused his
genuine professional interest; but as it
unfolded itself, in all its difficulty and
urgency, so he seemed, in his mind, to be
discovering wondrous ways of dealing with it;
these mysterious discoveries seemed to give him
confidence, and his confidence was communicated
to the patient by means of faint sallies of
humour. He was a highly skilled doctor. This
fact, however, had no share in his popularity;
which was due solely to his rare gift of taking
a case very seriously while remaining cheerful.
He said he
would return in a quarter of an hour, and he
returned in thirteen minutes with a hypodermic
syringe, with which he attacked the pain in its
central strongholds.
"What is
it?" asked Constance, breathing gratitude for
the relief.
He paused,
looking at her roguishly from under lowered
eyelids.
"I'd better
not tell ye," he said. "It might lead ye into
mischief."
"Oh, but
you must tell me, doctor," Constance insisted,
anxious that he should live up to his reputation
for Sophia's benefit.
"It's
hydrochloride of cocaine," he said, and lifted a
finger. "Beware of the cocaine habit. It's
ruined many a respectable family. But if I
hadn't had a certain amount of confidence in yer
strength of character, Mrs. Povey, I wouldn't
have risked it."
"He will
have his joke, will the doctor!" Constance
smiled, in a brighter world.
He said he
should come again about half-past five, and he
arrived about half-past six, and injected more
cocaine. The special importance of the case was
thereby established. On this second visit, he
and Sophia soon grew rather friendly. When she
conducted him downstairs again he stopped
chatting with her in the parlour for a long
time, as though he had nothing else on earth to
do, while his coachman walked the horse to and
fro in front of the door.
His
attitude to her flattered Sophia, for it showed
that he took her for no ordinary woman. It
implied a continual assumption that she must be
a mine of interest for any one who was
privileged to delve into her memory. So far,
among Constance's acquaintance, Sophia had met
no one who showed more than a perfunctory
curiosity as to her life. Her return was
accepted with indifference. Her escapade of
thirty years ago had entirely lost its dramatic
quality. Many people indeed had never heard that
she had run away from home to marry a commercial
traveller; and to those who remembered, or had
been told, it seemed a sufficiently banal
exploit—after thirty years! Her fear, and
Constance's, that the town would be murmurous
with gossip was ludicrously unfounded. The
effect of time was such that even Mr. Critchlow
appeared to have forgotten even that she had
been indirectly responsible for her father's
death. She had nearly forgotten it herself; when
she happened to think of it she felt no shame,
no remorse, seeing the death as purely
accidental, and not altogether unfortunate. On
two points only was the town inquisitive: as to
her husband, and as to the precise figure at
which she had sold the pension. The town knew
that she was probably not a widow, for she had
been obliged to tell Mr. Critchlow, and Mr.
Critchlow in some hour of tenderness had told
Maria. But nobody had dared to mention the name
of Gerald Scales to her. With her fashionable
clothes, her striking mien of command, and the
legend of her wealth, she inspired respect, if
not awe, in the townsfolk. In the doctor's
attitude there was something of amaze; she felt
it. Though the dull apathy of the people she had
hitherto met was assuredly not without its
advantageous side for her tranquillity of mind,
it had touched her vanity, and the gaze of the
doctor soothed the smart. He had so obviously
divined her interestingness; he so obviously
wanted to enjoy it.
"I've just
been reading Zola's 'Downfall,'" he said.
Her mind
searched backwards, and recalled a poster.
"Oh!" she
replied. "'La Debacle'?"
"Yes. What
do ye think of it?" His eyes lighted at the
prospect of a talk. He was even pleased to hear
her give him the title in French.
"I haven't
read it," she said, and she was momentarily
sorry that she had not read it, for she could
see that he was dashed. The doctor had supposed
that residence in a foreign country involved a
knowledge of the literature of that country. Yet
he had never supposed that residence in England
involved a knowledge of English literature.
Sophia had read practically nothing since 1870;
for her the latest author was Cherbuliez.
Moreover, her impression of Zola was that he was
not at all nice, and that he was the enemy of
his race, though at that date the world had
scarcely heard of Dreyfus. Dr. Stirling had too
hastily assumed that the opinions of the
bourgeois upon art differ in different
countries.
"And ye
actually were in the siege of Paris?" he
questioned, trying again.
"Yes."
"AND the
commune?"
"Yes, the
commune too."
"Well!" he
exclaimed. "It's incredible! When I was reading
the 'Downfall' the night before last, I said to
myself that you must have been through a lot of
all that. I didn't know I was going to have the
pleasure of a chat with ye so soon."
She smiled.
"But how did you know I was in the siege of
Paris?" she asked, curious.
"How do I
know? I know because I've seen that birthday
card ye sent to Mrs. Povey in 1871, after it was
over. It's one of her possessions, that card is.
She showed it me one day when she told me ye
were coming."
Sophia
started. She had quite forgotten that card. It
had not occurred to her that Constance would
have treasured all those cards that she had
despatched during the early years of her exile.
She responded as well as she could to his
eagerness for personal details concerning the
siege and the commune. He might have been
disappointed at the prose of her answers, had he
not been determined not to be disappointed.
"Ye seem to
have taken it all very quietly," he observed.
"Eh yes!"
she agreed, not without pride. "But it's a long
time since."
Those
events, as they existed in her memory, scarcely
warranted the tremendous fuss subsequently made
about them. What were they, after all? Such was
her secret thought. Chirac himself was now
nothing but a faint shadow. Still, were the
estimate of those events true or false, she was
a woman who had been through them, and Dr.
Stirling's high appreciation of that fact was
very pleasant to her. Their friendliness
approached intimacy. Night had fallen. Outside
could be heard the champing of a bit.
"I must be
getting on," he said at last; but he did not
move.
"Then there
is nothing else I am to do for my sister?"
Sophia inquired.
"I don't
think so," said he. "It isn't a question of
medicine."
"Then what
is it a question of?" Sophia demanded bluntly.
"Nerves,"
he said. "It's nearly all nerves. I know
something about Mrs. Povey's constitution now,
and I was hoping that your visit would do her
good."
"She's been
quite well—I mean what you may call quite
well—until the day before yesterday, when she
sat in that draught. She was better last night,
and then this morning I find her ever so much
worse."
"No
worries?" The doctor looked at her
confidentially.
"What CAN
she have in the way of worries?" exclaimed
Sophia.
"That's to say—real worries."
"Exactly!"
the doctor agreed.
"I tell her
she doesn't know what worry is," said Sophia.
"So do I!"
said the doctor, his eyes twinkling.
"She was a
little upset because she didn't receive her
usual Sunday letter from Cyril yesterday. But
then she was weak and low."
"Clever
youth, Cyril!" mused the doctor.
"I think
he's a particularly nice boy," said Sophia,
eagerly,
"So you've
seen him?"
"Of
course," said Sophia, rather stiffly. Did the
doctor suppose that she did not know her own
nephew? She went back to the subject of her
sister. "She is also a little bothered, I think,
because the servant is going to leave."
"Oh! So Amy
is going to leave, is she?" He spoke still
lower.
"Between you and me, it's no bad thing."
"I'm so
glad you think so."
"In another
few years the servant would have been the
mistress here. One can see these things coming
on, but it's so difficult to do anything. In
fact ye can't do anything."
"I did
something," said Sophia, sharply. "I told the
woman straight that it shouldn't go on while I
was in the house. I didn't suspect it at
first—but when I found it out … I can tell you!"
She let the doctor imagine what she could tell
him.
He smiled.
"No," he said. "I can easily understand that ye
didn't suspect anything at first. When she's
well and bright Mrs. Povey could hold her own—so
I'm told. But it was certainly slowly getting
worse."
"Then
people talk about it?" said Sophia, shocked.
"As a
native of Bursley, Mrs. Scales," said the
doctor, "ye ought to know what people in Bursley
do!" Sophia put her lips together. The doctor
rose, smoothing his waistcoat. "What does she
bother with servants at all for?" he burst out.
"She's perfectly free. She hasn't got a care in
the world, if she only knew it. Why doesn't she
go out and about, and enjoy herself? She wants
stirring up, that's what your sister wants."
"You're
quite right," Sophia burst out in her turn.
"That's precisely what I say to myself;
precisely! I was thinking it over only this
morning. She wants stirring up. She's got into a
rut."
"She needs
to be jolly. Why doesn't she go to some seaside
place, and live in a hotel, and enjoy herself?
Is there anything to prevent her?"
"Nothing
whatever."
"Instead of
being dependent on a servant! I believe in
enjoying one's self—when ye've got the money to
do it with! Can ye imagine anybody living in
Bursley, for pleasure? And especially in St.
Luke's Square, right in the thick of it all!
Smoke! Dirt! No air! No light! No scenery! No
amusements! What does she do it for? She's in a
rut."
"Yes, she's
in a rut," Sophia repeated her own phrase, which
he had copied.
"My word!"
said the doctor. "Wouldn't I clear out and enjoy
myself if I could! Your sister's a young woman."
"Of course
she is!" Sophia concurred, feeling that she
herself was even younger. "Of course she is!"
"And except
that she's nervously organized, and has certain
predispositions, there's nothing the matter with
her. This sciatica—I don't say it would be
cured, but it might be, by a complete change and
throwing off all these ridiculous worries. Not
only does she live in the most depressing
conditions, but she suffers tortures for it, and
there's absolutely no need for her to be here at
all."
"Doctor,"
said Sophia, solemnly, impressed, "you are quite
right.
I agree with every word you say."
"Naturally
she's attached to the place," he continued,
glancing round the room. "I know all about that.
After living here all her life! But she's got to
break herself of her attachment. It's her duty
to do so. She ought to show a little energy. I'm
deeply attached to my bed in the morning, but I
have to leave it."
"Of
course," said Sophia, in an impatient tone, as
though disgusted with every person who could not
perceive, or would not subscribe to, these
obvious truths that the doctor was uttering. "Of
course!"
"What she
needs is the bustle of life in a good hotel, a
good hydro, for instance. Among jolly people.
Parties! Games! Excursions! She wouldn't be the
same woman. You'd see. Wouldn't I do it, if I
could? Strathpeffer. She'd soon forget her
sciatica. I don't know what Mrs. Povey's annual
income is, but I expect that if she took it into
her head to live in the dearest hotel in
England, there would be no reason why she
shouldn't."
Sophia
lifted her head and smiled in calm amusement. "I
expect so," she said superiorly.
"A
hotel—that's the life. No worries. If ye want
anything ye ring a bell. If a waiter gives
notice, it's some one else who has the worry,
not you. But you know all about that, Mrs.
Scales."
"No one
better," murmured Sophia.
"Good
evening," he said abruptly, sticking out his
hand. "I'll be down in the morning."
"Did you
ever mention this to my sister?" Sophia asked
him, rising.
"Yes," said
he. "But it's no use. Oh yes, I've told her. But
she does really think it's quite impossible. She
wouldn't even hear of going to live in London
with her beloved son. She won't listen."
"I never
thought of that," said Sophia. "Good night."
Their
hand-grasp was very intimate and mutually
comprehending. He was pleased by the quick
responsiveness of her temperament, and the
masterful vigour which occasionally flashed out
in her replies. He noticed the hardly
perceptible distortion of her handsome, worn
face, and he said to himself: "She's been
through a thing or two," and: "She'll have to
mind her p's and q's." Sophia was pleased
because he admired her, and because with her he
dropped his bedside jocularities, and talked
plainly as a sensible man will talk when he
meets an uncommonly wise woman, and because he
echoed and amplified her own thoughts. She
honoured him by standing at the door till he had
driven off.
For a few
moments she mused solitary in the parlour, and
then, lowering the gas, she went upstairs to her
sister, who lay in the dark. Sophia struck a
match.
"You've
been having quite a long chat with the doctor,"
said Constance. "He's very good company, isn't
he? What did he talk about this time?"
"He wanted
to know about Paris and so on," Sophia answered.
"Oh! I
believe he's a rare student."
Lying there
in the dark, the simple Constance never
suspected that those two active and strenuous
ones had been arranging her life for her, so
that she should be jolly and live for twenty
years yet. She did not suspect that she had been
tried and found guilty of sinful attachments,
and of being in a rut, and of lacking the
elements of ordinary sagacity. It had not
occurred to her that if she was worried and ill,
the reason was to be found in her own blind and
stupid obstinacy. She had thought herself a
fairly sensible kind of creature.
III
The sisters
had an early supper together in Constance's
bedroom. Constance was much easier. Having a
fancy that a little movement would be
beneficial, she had even got up for a few
moments and moved about the room. Now she sat
ensconced in pillows. A fire burned in the
old-fashioned ineffectual grate. From the Sun
Vaults opposite came the sound of a phonograph
singing an invitation to God to save its
gracious queen. This phonograph was a wonderful
novelty, and filled the Sun nightly. For a few
evenings it had interested the sisters, in spite
of themselves, but they had soon sickened of it
and loathed it. Sophia became more and more
obsessed by the monstrous absurdity of the
simple fact that she and Constance were there,
in that dark inconvenient house, wearied by the
gaiety of public-houses, blackened by smoke,
surrounded by mud, instead of being luxuriously
installed in a beautiful climate, amid scenes of
beauty and white cleanliness. Secretly she
became more and more indignant.
Amy
entered, bearing a letter in her coarse hand. As
Amy unceremoniously handed the letter to
Constance, Sophia thought: "If she was my
servant she would hand letters on a tray." (An
advertisement had already been sent to the
Signal.)
Constance
took the letter trembling. "Here it is at last,"
she cried.
When she
had put on her spectacles and read it, she
exclaimed:
"Bless us!
Here's news! He's coming down! That's why he
didn't write on Saturday as usual."
She gave
the letter to Sophia to read. It ran—
"Sunday
midnight.
"DEAR
MOTHER,
"Just a
line to say I am coming down to Bursley on
Wednesday, on business with Peels. I shall get
to Knype at 5.28, and take the Loop. I've been
very busy, and as I was coming down I didn't
write on Saturday. I hope you didn't worry. Love
to yourself and Aunt Sophia.
"Yours, C."
"I must
send him a line," said Constance, excitedly.
"What?
To-night?"
"Yes. Amy
can easily catch the last post with it.
Otherwise he won't know that I've got his
letter."
She rang
the bell.
Sophia
thought: "His coming down is really no excuse
for his not writing on Saturday. How could she
guess that he was coming down? I shall have to
put in a little word to that young man. I wonder
Constance is so blind. She is quite satisfied
now that his letter has come." On behalf of the
elder generation she rather resented Constance's
eagerness to write in answer.
But
Constance was not so blind. Constance thought
exactly as Sophia thought. In her heart she did
not at all justify or excuse Cyril. She
remembered separately almost every instance of
his carelessness in her regard. "Hope I didn't
worry, indeed!" she said to herself with a faint
touch of bitterness, apropos of the phrase in
his letter.
Nevertheless she insisted on writing at once.
And Amy had to bring the writing materials.
"Mr. Cyril
is coming down on Wednesday," she said to Amy
with great dignity.
Amy's stony
calmness was shaken, for Mr. Cyril was a great
deal to Amy. Amy wondered how she would be able
to look Mr. Cyril in the face when he knew that
she had given notice.
In the
middle of writing, on her knee, Constance looked
up at Sophia, and said, as though defending
herself against an accusation: "I didn't write
to him yesterday, you know, or to- day."
"No,"
Sophia murmured assentingly.
Constance
rang the bell yet again, and Amy was sent out to
the post.
Soon
afterwards the bell was rung for a fourth time,
and not answered.
"I suppose
she hasn't come back yet. But I thought I heard
the door. What a long time she is!"
"What do
you want?" Sophia asked.
"I just
want to speak to her," said Constance.
When the
bell had been rung seven or eight times, Amy at
length re-appeared, somewhat breathless.
"Amy," said
Constance, "let me examine those sheets, will
you?"
"Yes'm,"
said Amy, apparently knowing what sheets, of all
the various and multitudinous sheets in that
house.
"And the
pillow-cases," Constance added as Amy left the
room.
So it
continued. The next day the fever heightened.
Constance was up early, before Sophia, and
trotting about the house like a girl.
Immediately after breakfast Cyril's bedroom was
invested and revolutionized; not till evening
was order restored in that chamber. And on the
Wednesday morning it had to be dusted afresh.
Sophia watched the preparations, and the
increasing agitation of Constance's demeanour,
with an astonishment which she had real
difficulty in concealing. "Is the woman
absolutely mad?" she asked herself. The
spectacle was ludicrous: or it seemed so to
Sophia, whose career had not embraced much
experience of mothers. It was not as if the
manifestations of Constance's anxiety were
dignified or original or splendid. They were
just silly, ordinary fussinesses; they had no
sense in them. Sophia was very careful to make
no observation. She felt that before she and
Constance were very much older she had a very
great deal to do, and that a subtle diplomacy
and wary tactics would be necessary. Moreover,
Constance's angelic temper was slightly affected
by the strain of expectation. She had a tendency
to rasp. After the high-tea was set she suddenly
sprang on to the sofa and lifted down the 'Stag
at Eve' engraving. The dust on the top of the
frame incensed her.
"What are
you going to do?" Sophia asked, in a final
marvel.
"I'm going
to change it with that one," said Constance,
pointing to another engraving opposite the
fireplace. "He said the effect would be very
much better if they were changed. And his
lordship is very particular."
Constance
did not go to Bursley station to meet her son.
She explained that it upset her to do so, and
that also Cyril preferred her not to come.
"Suppose I
go to meet him," said Sophia, at half-past five.
The idea had visited her suddenly. She thought:
"Then I could talk to him before any one else."
"Oh, do!"
Constance agreed.
Sophia put
her things on with remarkable expedition. She
arrived at the station a minute before the train
came in. Only a few persons emerged from the
train, and Cyril was not among them. A porter
said that there was not supposed to be any
connection between the Loop Line trains and the
main line expresses, and that probably the
express had missed the Loop. She waited
thirty-five minutes for the next Loop, and Cyril
did not emerge from that train either.
Constance
opened the front-door to her, and showed a
telegram—
"Sorry
prevented last moment. Writing. CYRIL."
Sophia had
known it. Somehow she had known that it was
useless to wait for the second train. Constance
was silent and calm; Sophia also.
"What a
shame! What a shame!" thumped Sophia's heart.
It was the
most ordinary episode. But beneath her calm she
was furious against her favourite. She
hesitated.
"I'm just
going out a minute," she said.
"Where?"
asked Constance. "Hadn't we better have tea? I
suppose we must have tea."
"I shan't
be long. I want to buy something."
Sophia went
to the post-office and despatched a telegram.
Then, partially eased, she returned to the arid
and painful desolation of the house.
IV
The next
evening Cyril sat at the tea-table in the
parlour with his mother and his aunt. To
Constance his presence there had something of
the miraculous in it. He had come, after all!
Sophia was in a rich robe, and for ornament wore
an old silver-gilt neck- chain, which was
clasped at the throat, and fell in double to her
waist, where it was caught in her belt. This
chain interested Cyril. He referred to it once
or twice, and then he said: "Just let me have a
LOOK at that chain," and put out his hand; and
Sophia leaned forward so that he could handle
it. His fingers played with it thus for some
seconds; the picture strikingly affected
Constance. At length he dropped it, and said:
"H'm!" After a pause he said: "Louis Sixteenth,
eh?" and Sophia said:
"They told
me so. But it's nothing; it only cost thirty
francs, you know." And Cyril took her up
sharply:
"What does
that matter?" Then after another pause he asked:
"How often do you break a link of it?"
"Oh,
often," she said. "It's always getting shorter."
And he
murmured mysteriously: "H'm!"
He was
still mysterious, withdrawn within himself
extraordinarily uninterested in his physical
surroundings. But that evening he talked more
than he usually did. He was benevolent, and
showed a particular benevolence towards his
mother, apparently exerting himself to answer
her questions with fullness and heartiness, as
though admitting frankly her right to be
curious. He praised the tea; he seemed to notice
what he was eating. He took Spot on his knee,
and gazed in admiration at Fossette.
"By Jove!"
he said, "that's a dog, that is! … All the same.
…
" And he burst out laughing.
"I won't
have Fossette laughed at," Sophia warned him.
"No,
seriously," he said, in his quality of an
amateur of dogs; "she is very fine." Even then
he could not help adding: "What you can see of
her!"
Whereupon
Sophia shook her head, deprecating such wit.
Sophia was very lenient towards him. Her
leniency could be perceived in her eyes, which
followed his movements all the time. "Do you
think he is like me, Constance?" she asked.
"I wish I
was half as good-looking," said Cyril, quickly;
and
Constance said:
"As a baby
he was very like you. He was a handsome baby. He
wasn't at all like you when he was at school.
These last few years he's begun to be like you
again. He's very much changed since he left
school; he was rather heavy and clumsy then."
"Heavy and
clumsy!" exclaimed Sophia. "Well, I should never
have believed it!"
"Oh, but he
was!" Constance insisted.
"Now,
mater," said Cyril, "it's a pity you don't want
that cake cutting into. I think I could have
eaten a bit of that cake. But of course if it's
only for show …!"
Constance
sprang up, seizing a knife.
"You
shouldn't tease your mother," Sophia told him.
"He doesn't really want any, Constance; he's
regularly stuffed himself."
And Cyril
agreed, "No, no, mater, don't cut it; I really
couldn't.
I was only gassing."
But
Constance could never clearly see through humour
of that sort.
She cut three slices of cake, and she held the
plate towards
Cyril.
"I tell you
I really couldn't!" he protested.
"Come!" she
said obstinately. "I'm waiting! How much longer
must I hold this plate?"
And he had
to take a slice. So had Sophia. When she was
roused, they both of them had to yield to
Constance.
With the
dogs, and the splendour of the tea-table under
the gas, and the distinction of Sophia and
Cyril, and the conversation, which on the whole
was gay and free, rising at times to jolly
garrulity, the scene in her parlour ought surely
to have satisfied Constance utterly. She ought
to have been quite happy, as her sciatica had
raised the siege for a space. But she was not
quite happy. The circumstances of Cyril's
arrival had disturbed her; they had in fact
wounded her, though she would scarcely admit the
wound. In the morning she had received a brief
letter from Cyril to say that he had not been
able to come, and vaguely promising, or
half-promising, to run down at a later date.
That letter had the cardinal defects of all
Cyril's relations with his mother; it was
casual, and it was not candid. It gave no hint
of the nature of the obstacle which had
prevented him from coming. Cyril had always been
too secretive. She was gravely depressed by the
letter, which she did not show to Sophia,
because it impaired her dignity as a mother, and
displayed her son in a bad light. Then about
eleven o'clock a telegram had come for Sophia.
"That's all
right," Sophia had said, on reading it. "He'll
be here this evening!" And she had handed over
the telegram, which read—
"Very well.
Will come same train to-day."
And
Constance learned that when Sophia had rushed
out just before tea on the previous evening, it
was to telegraph to Cyril.
"What did
you say to him?" Constance asked.
"Oh!" said
Sophia, with a careless air, "I told him I
thought he ought to come. After all, you're more
important than any business, Constance! And I
don't like him behaving like that. I was
determined he should come!"
Sophia had
tossed her proud head.
Constance
had pretended to be pleased and grateful. But
the existence of a wound was incontestable.
Sophia, then, could do more with Cyril than she
could! Sophia had only met him once, and could
simply twist him round her little finger. He
would never have done so much for his mother. A
fine sort of an obstacle it must have been, if a
single telegram from Sophia could overcome it …!
And Sophia, too, was secretive. She had gone out
and had telegraphed, and had not breathed a word
until she got the reply, sixteen hours later.
She was secretive, and Cyril was secretive. They
resembled one another. They had taken to one
another. But Sophia was a curious mixture. When
Constance had asked her if she should go to the
station again to meet Cyril, she had replied
scornfully: "No, indeed! I've done going to meet
Cyril. People who don't arrive must not expect
to be met."
When Cyril
drove up to the door, Sophia had been in
attendance. She hurried down the steps. "Don't
say anything about my telegram," she had rapidly
whispered to Cyril; there was no time for
further explanation. Constance was at the top of
the steps. Constance had not heard the whisper,
but she had seen it; and she saw a guilty,
puzzled look on Cyril's face, afterwards an
ineffectively concealed conspiratorial look on
both their faces. They had 'something between
them,' from which she, the mother, was shut out!
Was it not natural that she should be wounded?
She was far too proud to mention the telegrams.
And as neither Cyril nor Sophia mentioned them,
the circumstances leading to Cyril's change of
plan were not referred to at all, which was very
curious. Then Cyril was more sociable than he
had ever been; he was different, under his
aunt's gaze. Certainly he treated his mother
faultlessly. But Constance said to herself: "It
is because she is here that he is so specially
nice to me."
When tea
was finished and they were going upstairs to the
drawing- room, she asked him, with her eye on
the 'Stag at Eve' engraving:
"Well, is
it a success?"
"What?" His
eye followed hers. "Oh, you've changed it! What
did you do that for, mater?"
"You said
it would be better like that," she reminded him.
"Did I?" He
seemed genuinely surprised. "I don't remember. I
believe it is better, though," he added. "It
might be even better still if you turned it the
other way up."
He pulled a
face to Sophia, and screwed up his shoulders, as
if to indicate: "I've done it, this time!"
"How? The
other way up?" Constance queried. Then as she
comprehended that he was teasing her, she said:
"Get away with you!" and pretended to box his
ears. "You were fond enough of that picture at
one time!" she said ironically.
"Yes, I
was, mater," he submissively agreed. "There's no
getting over that." And he pressed her cheeks
between his hands and kissed her.
In the
drawing-room he smoked cigarettes and played the
piano— waltzes of his own composition. Constance
and Sophia did not entirely comprehend those
waltzes. But they agreed that all were wonderful
and that one was very pretty indeed. (It soothed
Constance that Sophia's opinion coincided with
hers.) He said that that waltz was the worst of
the lot. When he had finished with the piano,
Constance informed him about Amy. "Oh! She told
me," he said, "when she brought me my water. I
didn't mention it because I thought it would be
rather a sore subject." Beneath the casualness
of his tone there lurked a certain curiosity, a
willingness to hear details. He heard them.
At five
minutes to ten, when Constance had yawned, he
threw a bomb among them on the hearthrug.
"Well," he
said, "I've got an appointment with Matthew at
the Conservative Club at ten o'clock. I must go.
Don't wait up for me."
Both women
protested, Sophia the more vivaciously. It was
Sophia now who was wounded.
"It's
business," he said, defending himself. "He's
going away early to-morrow, and it's my only
chance." And as Constance did not brighten he
went on: "Business has to be attended to. You
mustn't think I've got nothing to do but enjoy
myself."
No hint of
the nature of the business! He never explained.
As to business, Constance knew only that she
allowed him three hundred a year, and paid his
local tailor. The sum had at first seemed to her
enormous, but she had grown accustomed to it.
"I should
have preferred you to see Mr. Peel-Swynnerton
here," said Constance. "You could have had a
room to yourselves. I do not like you going out
at ten o'clock at night to a club."
"Well, good
night, mater," he said, getting up. "See you to-
morrow. I shall take the key out of the door.
It's true my pocket will never be the same
again."
Sophia saw
Constance into bed, and provided her with two
hot-water bottles against sciatica. They did not
talk much.
V
Sophia sat
waiting on the sofa in the parlour. It appeared
to her that, though little more than a month had
elapsed since her arrival in Bursley, she had
already acquired a new set of interests and
anxieties. Paris and her life there had receded
in the strangest way. Sometimes for hours she
would absolutely forget Paris. Thoughts of Paris
were disconcerting; for either Paris or Bursley
must surely be unreal! As she sat waiting on the
sofa Paris kept coming into her mind. Certainly
it was astonishing that she should be just as
preoccupied with her schemes for the welfare of
Constance as she had ever been preoccupied with
schemes for the improvement of the Pension
Frensham. She said to herself: "My life has been
so queer—and yet every part of it separately
seemed ordinary enough—how will it end?"
Then there
were footfalls on the steps outside, and a key
was put into the door, which she at once opened.
"Oh!"
exclaimed Cyril, startled, and also somewhat out
of countenance. "You're still up! Thanks." He
came in, smoking the end of a cigar. "Fancy
having to cart that about!" he murmured, holding
up the great old-fashioned key before inserting
it in the lock on the inside.
"I stayed
up," said Sophia, "because I wanted to talk to
you about your mother, and it's so difficult to
get a chance."
Cyril
smiled, not without self-consciousness, and
dropped into his mother's rocking-chair, which
he had twisted round with his feet to face the
sofa.
"Yes," he
said. "I was wondering what was the real meaning
of your telegram. What was it?" He blew out a
lot of smoke and waited for her reply.
"I thought
you ought to come down," said Sophia, cheerfully
but firmly. "It was a fearful disappointment to
your mother that you didn't come yesterday. And
when she's expecting a letter from you and it
doesn't come, it makes her ill."
"Oh, well!"
he said. "I'm glad it's no worse. I thought from
your telegram there was something seriously
wrong. And then when you told me not to mention
it—when I came in …!"
She saw
that he failed to realize the situation, and she
lifted her head challengingly.
"You
neglect your mother, young man," she said.
"Oh, come
now, auntie!" he answered quite gently. "You
mustn't talk like that. I write to her every
week. I've never missed a week. I come down as
often as——"
"You miss
the Sunday sometimes," Sophia interrupted him.
"Perhaps,"
he said doubtfully. "But what—-"
"Don't you
understand that she simply lives for your
letters? And if one doesn't come, she's very
upset indeed—can't eat! And it brings on her
sciatica, and I don't know what!"
He was
taken aback by her boldness, her directness.
"But how
silly of her! A fellow can't always——"
"It may be
silly. But there it is. You can't alter her.
And, after all, what would it cost you to be
more attentive, even to write to her twice a
week? You aren't going to tell me you're so busy
as all that! I know a great deal more about
young men than your mother does." She smiled
like an aunt.
He answered
her smile sheepishly.
"If you'll
only put yourself in your mother's place …!"
"I expect
you're quite right," he said at length. "And I'm
much obliged to you for telling me. How was I to
know?" He threw the end of the cigar, with a
large sweeping gesture, into the fire.
"Well,
anyhow, you know now!" she said curtly; and she
thought: "You OUGHT to have known. It was your
business to know." But she was pleased with the
way in which he had accepted her criticism, and
the gesture with which he threw away the
cigar-end struck her as very distinguished.
"That's all
right!" he said dreamily, as if to say: "That's
done with." And he rose.
Sophia,
however, did not stir.
"Your
mother's health is not what it ought to be," she
went on, and gave him a full account of her
conversation with the doctor.
"Really!"
Cyril murmured, leaning on the mantel-piece with
his elbow and looking down at her. "Stirling
said that, did he? I should have thought she
would have been better where she is, in the
Square."
"Why better
in the Square?"
"Oh, I
don't know!"
"Neither do
I!"
"She's
always been here."
"Yes." said
Sophia, "she's been here a great deal too long."
"What do
YOU suggest?" Cyril asked, with impatience in
his voice against this new anxiety that was
being thrust upon him.
"Well,"
said Sophia, "what should you say to her coming
to London and living with you?"
Cyril
started back. Sophia could see that he was
genuinely shocked. "I don't think that would do
at all," he said.
"Why?"
"Oh! I
don't think it would. London wouldn't suit her.
She's not that sort of woman. I really thought
she was quite all right down here. She wouldn't
like London." He shook his head, looking up at
the gas; his eyes had a dangerous glare.
"But
supposing she said she did?"
"Look
here," Cyril began in a new and brighter tone.
"Why don't you and she keep house together
somewhere? That would be the very—"
He turned
his head sharply. There was a noise on the
staircase, and the staircase door opened with
its eternal creak.
"Yes," said
Sophia. "The Champs Elysees begins at the Place
de la
Concorde, and ends——. Is that you, Constance?"
The figure
of Constance filled the doorway. Her face was
troubled. She had heard Cyril in the street, and
had come down to see why he remained so long in
the parlour. She was astounded to find Sophia
with him. There they were, as intimate as
cronies, chattering about Paris! Undoubtedly she
was jealous! Never did Cyril talk like that to
her!
"I thought
you were in bed and asleep, Sophia," she said
weakly.
"It's nearly one o'clock."
"No," said
Sophia. "I didn't seem to feel like going to
bed; and then Cyril happened to come in."
But neither
she nor Cyril could look innocent. And Constance
glanced from one to the other apprehensively.
The next
morning Cyril received a letter which, he
said—with no further explanation—forced him to
leave at once. He intimated that there had been
danger in his coming just then, and that matters
had turned out as he had feared.
"You think
over what I said," he whispered to Sophia when
they were alone for an instant, "and let me
know."
VI
A week
before Easter the guests of the Rutland Hotel in
the Broad Walk, Buxton, being assembled for
afternoon tea in the "lounge" of that
establishment, witnessed the arrival of two
middle-aged ladies and two dogs. Critically to
examine newcomers was one of the amusements of
the occupants of the lounge. This apartment,
furnished "in the oriental style," made a pretty
show among the photographs in the illustrated
brochure of the hotel, and, though draughty, it
was of all the public rooms the favourite. It
was draughty because only separated from the
street (if the Broad Walk can be called a
street) by two pairs of swinging-doors—in charge
of two page-boys. Every visitor entering the
hotel was obliged to pass through the lounge,
and for newcomers the passage was an ordeal;
they were made to feel that they had so much to
learn, so much to get accustomed to; like
passengers who join a ship at a port of call,
they felt that the business lay before them of
creating a niche for themselves in a hostile and
haughty society. The two ladies produced a
fairly favourable impression at the outset by
reason of their two dogs. It is not every one
who has the courage to bring dogs into an
expensive private hotel; to bring one dog
indicates that you are not accustomed to deny
yourself small pleasures for the sake of a few
extra shillings; to bring two indicates that you
have no fear of hotel-managers and that you are
in the habit of regarding your own whim as
nature's law. The shorter and stouter of the two
ladies did not impose herself with much force on
the collective vision of the Rutland; she was
dressed in black, not fashionably, though with a
certain unpretending richness; her gestures were
timid and nervous; evidently she relied upon her
tall companion to shield her in the first trying
contacts of hotel life. The tall lady was of a
different stamp. Handsome, stately, deliberate,
and handsomely dressed in colours, she had the
assured hard gaze of a person who is thoroughly
habituated to the inspection of strangers. She
curtly asked one of the page-boys for the
manager, and the manager's wife tripped rapidly
down the stairs in response, and was noticeably
deferential—Her voice was quiet and commanding,
the voice of one who gives orders that are
obeyed. The opinion of the lounge was divided as
to whether or not they were sisters.
They
vanished quietly upstairs in convoy of the
manager's wife, and they did not re-appear for
the lounge tea, which in any case would have
been undrinkably stewed. It then became known,
by the agency of one of those guests, to be
found in every hotel, who acquire all the
secrets of the hotel by the exercise of
unabashed curiosity on the personnel, that the
two ladies had engaged two bedrooms, Nos. 17 and
18, and the sumptuous private parlour with a
balcony on the first floor, styled "C" in the
nomenclature of rooms. This fact definitely
established the position of the new arrivals in
the moral fabric of the hotel. They were
wealthy. They had money to throw away. For even
in a select hotel like the Rutland it is not
everybody who indulges in a private sitting-
room; there were only four such apartments in
the hotel, as against fifty bedrooms.
At dinner
they had a small table to themselves in a
corner. The short lady wore a white shawl over
her shoulders. Her almost apologetic manner
during the meal confirmed the view that she must
be a very simple person, unused to the world and
its ways. The other continued to be imperial.
She ordered half-a-bottle of wine and drank two
glasses. She stared about her quite self-
unconsciously, whereas the little woman divided
her glances between her companion and her plate.
They did not talk much. Immediately after dinner
they retired. "Widows in easy circumstances" was
the verdict; but the contrast between the pair
held puzzles that piqued the inquisitive.
Sophia had
conquered again. Once more Sophia had resolved
to accomplish a thing and she had accomplished
it. Events had fallen out thus. The
advertisement for a general servant in the
Signal had been a disheartening failure. A few
answers were received, but of an entirely
unsatisfactory character. Constance, a great
deal more than Sophia, had been astounded by the
bearing and the demands of modern servants.
Constance was in despair. If Constance had not
had an immense pride she would have been ready
to suggest to Sophia that Amy should be asked to
'stay on.' But Constance would have accepted a
modern impudent wench first. It was Maria
Critchlow who got Constance out of her
difficulty by giving her particulars of a
reliable servant who was about to leave a
situation in which she had stayed for eight
years. Constance did not imagine that a servant
recommended by Maria Critchlow would suit her,
but, being in a quandary, she arranged to see
the servant, and both she and Sophia were very
pleased with the girl— Rose Bennion by name. The
mischief was that Rose would not be free until
about a month after Amy had left. Rose would
have left her old situation, but she had a fancy
to go and spend a fortnight with a married
sister at Manchester before settling into new
quarters. Constance and Sophia felt that this
caprice of Rose's was really very tiresome and
unnecessary. Of course Amy might have been asked
to 'stay on' just for a month. Amy would
probably have volunteered to do so had she been
aware of the circumstances. She was not,
however, aware of the circumstances. And
Constance was determined not to be beholden to
Amy for anything. What could the sisters do?
Sophia, who conducted all the interviews with
Rose and other candidates, said that it would be
a grave error to let Rose slip. Besides, they
had no one to take her place, no one who could
come at once.
The dilemma
was appalling. At least, it seemed appalling to
Constance, who really believed that no mistress
had ever been so 'awkwardly fixed.' And yet,
when Sophia first proposed her solution,
Constance considered it to be a quite impossible
solution. Sophia's idea was that they should
lock up the house and leave it on the same day
as Amy left it, to spend a few weeks in some
holiday resort. To begin with, the idea of
leaving the house empty seemed to Constance a
mad idea. The house had never been left empty.
And then—going for a holiday in April! Constance
had never been for a holiday except in the month
of August. No! The project was beset with
difficulties and dangers which could not be
overcome nor provided against. For example, "We
can't come back to a dirty house," said
Constance. "And we can't have a strange servant
coming here before us." To which Sophia had
replied: "Then what SHALL you do?" And
Constance, after prodigious reflection on the
frightful pass to which destiny had brought her,
had said that she supposed she would have to
manage with a charwoman until Rose's advent. She
asked Sophia if she remembered old Maggie.
Sophia, of course, perfectly remembered. Old
Maggie was dead, as well as the drunken, amiable
Hollins, but there was a young Maggie (wife of a
bricklayer) who went out charing in the spare
time left from looking after seven children. The
more Constance meditated upon young Maggie, the
more was she convinced that young Maggie would
meet the case. Constance felt she could trust
young Maggie.
This
expression of trust in Maggie was Constance's
undoing. Why should they not go away, and
arrange with Maggie to come to the house a few
days before their return, to clean and
ventilate? The weight of reason overbore
Constance. She yielded unwillingly, but she
yielded. It was the mention of Buxton that
finally moved her. She knew Buxton. Her old
landlady at Buxton was dead, and Constance had
not visited the place since before Samuel's
death; nevertheless its name had a reassuring
sound to her ears, and for sciatica its waters
and climate were admitted to be the best in
England. Gradually Constance permitted herself
to be embarked on this perilous enterprise of
shutting up the house for twenty-five days. She
imparted the information to Amy, who was
astounded. Then she commenced upon her domestic
preparations. She wrapped Samuel's Family Bible
in brown paper; she put Cyril's straw-framed
copy of Sir Edwin Landseer away in a drawer, and
she took ten thousand other precautions. It was
grotesque; it was farcical; it was what you
please. And when, with the cab at the door and
the luggage on the cab, and the dogs chained
together, and Maria Critchlow waiting on the
pavement to receive the key, Constance put the
key into the door on the outside, and locked up
the empty house, Constance's face was tragic
with innumerable apprehensions. And Sophia felt
that she had performed a miracle. She had.
On the
whole the sisters were well received in the
hotel, though they were not at an age which
commands popularity. In the criticism which was
passed upon them—the free, realistic and
relentless criticism of private hotels—Sophia
was at first set down as overbearing. But in a
few days this view was modified, and Sophia rose
in esteem. The fact was that Sophia's behaviour
changed after forty-eight hours. The Rutland
Hotel was very good. It was so good as to
disturb Sophia's profound beliefs that there was
in the world only one truly high-class pension,
and that nobody could teach the creator of that
unique pension anything about the art of
management. The food was excellent; the
attendance in the bedrooms was excellent (and
Sophia knew how difficult of attainment was
excellent bedroom attendance); and to the eye
the interior of the Rutland presented a
spectacle far richer than the Pension Frensham
could show. The standard of comfort was higher.
The guests had a more distinguished appearance.
It is true that the prices were much higher.
Sophia was humbled. She had enough sense to
adjust her perspective. Further, she found
herself ignorant of many matters which by the
other guests were taken for granted and used as
a basis for conversation. Prolonged residence in
Paris would not justify this ignorance; it
seemed rather to intensify its strangeness.
Thus, when someone of cosmopolitan experience,
having learnt that she had lived in Paris for
many years, asked what had been going on lately
at the Comedie Francaise, she had to admit that
she had not been in a French theatre for nearly
thirty years. And when, on a Sunday, the same
person questioned her about the English chaplain
in Paris, lo! she knew nothing but his name, had
never even seen him. Sophia's life, in its way,
had been as narrow as Constance's. Though her
experience of human nature was wide, she had
been in a groove as deep as Constance's. She had
been utterly absorbed in doing one single thing.
By tacit
agreement she had charge of the expedition. She
paid all the bills. Constance protested against
the expensiveness of the affair several times,
but Sophia quietened her by sheer force of
individuality. Constance had one advantage over
Sophia. She knew Buxton and its neighbourhood
intimately, and she was therefore in a position
to show off the sights and to deal with local
peculiarities. In all other respects Sophia led.
They very
soon became acclimatized to the hotel. They
moved easily between Turkey carpets and
sculptured ceilings; their eyes grew used to the
eternal vision of themselves and other
slow-moving dignities in gilt mirrors, to the
heaviness of great oil-paintings of picturesque
scenery, to the indications of surreptitious
dirt behind massive furniture, to the grey-brown
of the shirt-fronts of the waiters, to the
litter of trays, boots and pails in long
corridors; their ears were always awake to the
sounds of gongs and bells. They consulted the
barometer and ordered the daily carriage with
the perfunctoriness of habit. They discovered
what can be learnt of other people's needlework
in a hotel on a wet day. They performed
co-operative outings with fellow-guests. They
invited fellow-guests into their sitting-room.
When there was an entertainment they did not
avoid it. Sophia was determined to do everything
that could with propriety be done, partly as an
outlet for her own energy (which since she left
Paris had been accumulating), but more on
Constance's account. She remembered all that Dr.
Stirling had said, and the heartiness of her own
agreement with his opinions. It was a great day
when, under tuition of an aged lady and in the
privacy of their parlour, they both began to
study the elements of Patience. Neither had ever
played at cards. Constance was almost afraid to
touch cards, as though in the very cardboard
there had been something unrighteous and
perilous. But the respectability of a luxurious
private hotel makes proper every act that passes
within its walls. And Constance plausibly argued
that no harm could come from a game which you
played by yourself. She acquired with some
aptitude several varieties of Patience. She
said: "I think I could enjoy that, if I kept at
it. But it does make my head whirl."
Nevertheless Constance was not happy in the
hotel. She worried the whole time about her
empty house. She anticipated difficulties and
even disasters. She wondered again and again
whether she could trust the second Maggie in her
house alone, whether it would not be better to
return home earlier and participate personally
in the cleaning. She would have decided to do so
had it not been that she hesitated to subject
Sophia to the inconvenience of a house upside
down. The matter was on her mind, always. Always
she was restlessly anticipating the day when
they would leave. She had carelessly left her
heart behind in St. Luke's Square. She had never
stayed in a hotel before, and she did not like
it. Sciatica occasionally harassed her. Yet when
it came to the point she would not drink the
waters. She said she never had drunk them, and
seemed to regard that as a reason why she never
should. Sophia had achieved a miracle in getting
her to Buxton for nearly a month, but the
ultimate grand effect lacked brilliance.
Then came
the fatal letter, the desolating letter, which
vindicated Constance's dark apprehensions. Rose
Bennion calmly wrote to say that she had decided
not to come to St. Luke's Square. She expressed
regret for any inconvenience which might
possibly be caused; she was polite. But the
monstrousness of it! Constance felt that this
actually and truly was the deepest depth of her
calamities. There she was, far from a dirty
home, with no servant and no prospect of a
servant! She bore herself bravely, nobly; but
she was stricken. She wanted to return to the
dirty home at once.
Sophia felt
that the situation created by this letter would
demand her highest powers of dealing with
situations, and she determined to deal with it
adequately. Great measures were needed, for
Constance's health and happiness were at stake.
She alone could act. She knew that she could not
rely upon Cyril. She still had an immense
partiality for Cyril; she thought him the most
charming young man she had ever known; she knew
him to be industrious and clever; but in his
relations with his mother there was a hardness,
a touch of callousness. She explained it vaguely
by saying that 'they did not get on well
together'; which was strange, considering
Constance's sweet affectionateness. Still,
Constance could be a little trying—at times.
Anyhow, it was soon clear to Sophia that the
idea of mother and son living together in London
was entirely impracticable. No! If Constance was
to be saved from herself, there was no one but
Sophia to save her.
After half
a morning spent chiefly in listening to
Constance's hopeless comments on the monstrous
letter, Sophia said suddenly that she must take
the dogs for an airing. Constance did not feel
equal to walking out, and she would not drive.
She did not want Sophia to 'venture,' because
the sky threatened. However, Sophia did venture,
and she returned a few minutes late for lunch,
full of vigour, with two happy dogs. Constance
was moodily awaiting her in the dining-room.
Constance could not eat. But Sophia ate, and she
poured out cheerfulness and energy as from a
source inexhaustible. After lunch it began to
rain. Constance said she thought she should
retire directly to the sitting-room. "I'm coming
too," said Sophia, who was still wearing her hat
and coat and carried her gloves in her hand. In
the pretentious and banal sitting-room they sat
down on either side the fire. Constance put a
little shawl round her shoulders, pushed her
spectacles into her grey hair, folded her hands,
and sighed an enormous sigh: "Oh, dear!" She was
the tragic muse, aged, and in black silk.
"I tell you
what I've been thinking," said Sophia, folding
up her gloves.
"What?"
asked Constance, expecting some wonderful
solution to come out of Sophia's active brain.
"There's no
earthly reason why you should go back to
Bursley. The house won't run away, and it's
costing nothing but the rent. Why not take
things easy for a bit?"
"And stay
here?" said Constance, with an inflection that
enlightened Sophia as to the intensity of her
dislike of the existence at the Rutland.
"No, not
here," Sophia answered with quick deprecation.
"There are plenty of other places we could go
to."
"I don't
think I should be easy in my mind," said
Constance. "What with nothing being settled, the
house——"
"What does
it matter about the house?"
"It matters
a great deal," said Constance, seriously, and
slightly hurt. "I didn't leave things as if we
were going to be away for a long time. It
wouldn't do."
"I don't
see that anything could come to any harm, I
really don't!" said Sophia, persuasively. "Dirt
can always be cleaned, after all. I think you
ought to go about more. It would do you good—all
the good in the world. And there is no reason
why you shouldn't go about. You are perfectly
free. Why shouldn't we go abroad together, for
instance, you and I? I'm sure you would enjoy it
very much."
"Abroad?"
murmured Constance, aghast, recoiling from the
proposition as from a grave danger.
"Yes," said
Sophia, brightly and eagerly. She was determined
to take Constance abroad. "There are lots of
places we could go to, and live very comfortably
among nice English people." She thought of the
resorts she had visited with Gerald in the
sixties. They seemed to her like cities of a
dream. They came back to her as a dream recurs.
"I don't
think going abroad would suit me," said
Constance.
"But why
not? You don't know. You've never tried, my
dear." She smiled encouragingly. But Constance
did not smile. Constance was inclined to be
grim.
"I don't
think it would," said she, obstinately. "I'm one
of your stay-at-homes. I'm not like you. We
can't all be alike," she added, with her 'tart'
accent.
Sophia
suppressed a feeling of irritation. She knew
that she had a stronger individuality than
Constance's.
"Well,
then," she said, with undiminished
persuasiveness, "in England or Scotland. There
are several places I should like to
visit—Torquay, Tunbridge Wells. I've always
under-stood that Tunbridge Wells is a very nice
town indeed, with very superior people, and a
beautiful climate."
"I think I
shall have to be getting back to St. Luke's
Square," said Constance, ignoring all that
Sophia had said. "There's so much to be done."
Then Sophia
looked at Constance with a more serious and
resolute air; but still kindly, as though
looking thus at Constance for Constance's own
good.
"You are
making a mistake, Constance," she said, "if you
will allow me to say so."
"A
mistake!" exclaimed Constance, startled.
"A very
great mistake," Sophia insisted, observing that
she was creating an effect.
"I don't
see how I can be making a mistake," Constance
said, gaining confidence in herself, as she
thought the matter over.
"No," said
Sophia, "I'm sure you don't see it. But you are.
You know, you are just a little apt to let
yourself be a slave to that house of yours.
Instead of the house existing for you, you exist
for the house."
"Oh!
Sophia!" Constance muttered awkwardly. "What
ideas you do have, to be sure!" In her
nervousness she rose and picked up some
embroidery, adjusting her spectacles and
coughing. When she sat down she said: "No one
could take things easier than I do as regards
housekeeping. I can assure you I let dozens of
little matters go, rather than bother myself."
"Then why
do you bother now?" Sophia posed her.
"I can't
leave the place like that." Constance was hurt.
"There's
one thing I can't understand," said Sophia,
raising her head and gazing at Constance again,
"and that is, why you live in St. Luke's Square
at all."
"I must
live somewhere. And I'm sure it's very
pleasant."
"In all
that smoke! And with that dirt! And the house is
very old."
"It's a
great deal better built than a lot of those new
houses by the Park," Constance sharply retorted.
In spite of herself she resented any criticism
of her house. She even resented the obvious
truth that it was old.
"You'll
never get a servant to stay in that
cellar-kitchen, for one thing," said Sophia,
keeping calm.
"Oh! I
don't know about that! I don't know about that!
That Bennion woman didn't object to it, anyway.
It's all very well for you, Sophia, to talk like
that. But I know Bursley perhaps better than you
do." She was tart again. "And I can assure you
that my house is looked upon as a very good
house indeed."
"Oh! I
don't say it isn't; I don't say it isn't. But
you would be better away from it. Every one says
that."
"Every
one?" Constance looked up, dropping her work.
"Who? Who's been talking about me?"
"Well,"
said Sophia, "the doctor, for instance."
"Dr.
Stirling? I like that! He's always saying that
Bursley is one of the healthiest climates in
England. He's always sticking up for Bursley."
"Dr.
Stirling thinks you ought to go away more—not
stay always in that dark house." If Sophia had
sufficiently reflected she would not have used
the adjective 'dark.' It did not help her cause.
"Oh, does
he!" Constance fairly snorted. "Well, if it's of
any interest to Dr. Stirling, I like my dark
house."
"Hasn't he
ever told you you ought to go away more?" Sophia
persisted.
"He may
have mentioned it," Constance reluctantly
admitted.
"When he
was talking to me he did a good deal more than
mention it. And I've a good mind to tell you
what he said."
"Do!" said
Constance, politely.
"You don't
realize how serious it is, I'm afraid," said
Sophia. "You can't see yourself." She hesitated
a moment. Her blood being stirred by Constance's
peculiar inflection of the phrase 'my dark
house,' her judgment was slightly obscured. She
decided to give Constance a fairly full version
of the conversation between herself and the
doctor.
"It's a
question of your health," she finished. "I think
it's my duty to talk to you seriously, and I
have done. I hope you'll take it as it's meant."
"Oh, of
course!" Constance hastened to say. And she
thought: "It isn't yet three months that we've
been together, and she's trying already to get
me under her thumb."
A pause
ensued. Sophia at length said: "There's no doubt
that both your sciatica and your palpitations
are due to nerves. And you let your nerves get
into a state because you worry over trifles. A
change would do you a tremendous amount of good.
It's just what you need. Really, you must admit,
Constance, that the idea of living always in a
place like St. Luke's Square, when you are
perfectly free to do what you like and go where
you like—you must admit it's rather too much."
Constance
put her lips together and bent over her
embroidery.
"Now, what
do you say?" Sophia gently entreated.
"There's
some of us like Bursley, black as it is!" said
Constance.
And Sophia was surprised to detect tears in her
sister's voice.
"Now, my
dear Constance," she remonstrated.
"It's no
use!" cried Constance, flinging away her work,
and letting her tears flow suddenly. Her face
was distorted. She was behaving just like a
child. "It's no use! I've got to go back home
and look after things. It's no use. Here we are
pitching money about in this place. It's
perfectly sinful. Drives, carriages, extras! A
shilling a day extra for each dog. I never heard
of such goings-on. And I'd sooner be at home.
That's it. I'd sooner be at home." This was the
first reference that Constance had made for a
long time to the question of expense, and
incomparably the most violent. It angered
Sophia.
"We will
count it that you are here as my guest," said
Sophia, loftily, "if that is how you look at
it."
"Oh no!"
said Constance. "It isn't the money I grudge. Oh
no, we won't." And her tears were falling thick.
"Yes, we
will," said Sophia, coldly. "I've only been
talking to you for your own good. I—"
"Well,"
Constance interrupted her despairingly, "I wish
you wouldn't try to domineer over me!"
"Domineer!"
exclaimed Sophia, aghast. "Well, Constance, I do
think—"
She got up
and went to her bedroom, where the dogs were
imprisoned. They escaped to the stairs. She was
shaking with emotion. This was what came of
trying to help other people! Imagine Constance
…! Truly Constance was most unjust, and quite
unlike her usual self! And Sophia encouraged in
her breast the feeling of injustice suffered.
But a voice kept saying to her: "You've made a
mess of this. You've not conquered this time.
You're beaten. And the situation is unworthy of
you, of both of you. Two women of fifty
quarreling like this! It's undignified. You've
made a mess of things." And to strangle the
voice, she did her best to encourage the feeling
of injustice suffered.
'Domineer!'
And
Constance was absolutely in the wrong. She had
not argued at all. She had merely stuck to her
idea like a mule! How difficult and painful
would be the next meeting with Constance, after
this grievous miscarriage!
As she was
reflecting thus the door burst open, and
Constance stumbled, as it were blindly, into the
bedroom. She was still weeping.
"Sophia!"
she sobbed, supplicatingly, and all her fat body
was trembling. "You mustn't kill me … I'm like
that—you can't alter me. I'm like that. I know
I'm silly. But it's no use!" She made a piteous
figure.
Sophia was
aware of a lump in her throat.
"It's all
right, Constance; it's all right. I quite
understand.
Don't bother any more."
Constance,
catching her breath at intervals, raised her
wet, worn face and kissed her.
Sophia
remembered the very words, 'You can't alter
her,' which she had used in remonstrating with
Cyril. And now she had been guilty of precisely
the same unreason as that with which she had
reproached Cyril! She was ashamed, both for
herself and for Constance. Assuredly it had not
been such a scene as women of their age would
want to go through often. It was humiliating.
She wished that it could have been blotted out
as though it had never happened. Neither of them
ever forgot it. They had had a lesson. And
particularly Sophia had had a lesson. Having
learnt, they left the Rutland, amid due
ceremonies, and returned to St. Luke's Square.
CHAPTER IV
END OF
SOPHIA
I
The kitchen
steps were as steep, dark, and difficult as
ever. Up those steps Sophia Scales, nine years
older than when she had failed to persuade
Constance to leave the Square, was carrying a
large basket, weighted with all the heaviness of
Fossette. Sophia, despite her age, climbed the
steps violently, and burst with equal violence
into the parlour, where she deposited the basket
on the floor near the empty fireplace. She was
triumphant and breathless. She looked at
Constance, who had been standing near the door
in the attitude of a shocked listener.
"There!"
said Sophia. "Did you hear how she talked?"
"Yes," said
Constance. "What shall you do?"
"Well,"
said Sophia. "I had a very good mind to order
her out of the house at once. But then I thought
I would take no notice. Her time will be up in
three weeks. It's best to be indifferent. If
once they see they can upset you However, I
wasn't going to leave Fossette down there to her
tender mercies a moment longer. She's simply not
looked after her at all."
Sophia went
on her knees to the basket, and, pulling aside
the dog's hair, round about the head, examined
the skin. Fossette was a sick dog and behaved
like one. Fossette, too, was nine years older,
and her senility was offensive. She was to no
sense a pleasant object.
"See here,"
said Sophia.
Constance
also knelt to the basket.
"And here,"
said Sophia. "And here."
The dog
sighed, the insincere and pity-seeking sigh of a
spoilt animal. Fossette foolishly hoped by such
appeals to be spared the annoying treatment
prescribed for her by the veterinary surgeon.
While the
sisters were coddling her, and protecting her
from her own paws, and trying to persuade her
that all was for the best, another aged dog
wandered vaguely into the room: Spot. Spot had
very few teeth, and his legs were stiff. He had
only one vice, jealousy. Fearing that Fossette
might be receiving the entire attention of his
mistresses, he had come to inquire into the
situation. When he found the justification of
his gloomiest apprehensions, he nosed
obstinately up to Constance, and would not be
put off. In vain Constance told him at length
that he was interfering with the treatment. In
vain Sophia ordered him sharply to go away. He
would not listen to reason, being furious with
jealousy. He got his foot into the basket.
"Will you!"
exclaimed Sophia angrily, and gave him a clout
on his old head. He barked snappishly, and
retired to the kitchen again, disillusioned,
tired of the world, and nursing his terrific
grievance. "I do declare," said Sophia, "that
dog gets worse and worse."
Constance
said nothing.
When
everything was done that could be done for the
aged virgin in the basket, the sisters rose from
their knees, stiffly; and they began to whisper
to each other about the prospects of obtaining a
fresh servant. They also debated whether they
could tolerate the criminal eccentricities of
the present occupant of the cave for yet another
three weeks. Evidently they were in the midst of
a crisis. To judge from Constance's face every
imaginable woe had been piled on them by destiny
without the slightest regard for their powers of
resistance. Her eyes had the permanent look of
worry, and there was in them also something of
the self-defensive. Sophia had a bellicose air,
as though the creature in the cave had squarely
challenged her, and she was decided to take up
the challenge. Sophia's tone seemed to imply an
accusation of Constance. The general tension was
acute.
Then
suddenly their whispers expired, and the door
opened and the servant came in to lay the
supper. Her nose was high, her gaze cruel,
radiant, and conquering. She was a pretty and an
impudent girl of about twenty-three. She knew
she was torturing her old and infirm mistresses.
She did not care. She did it purposely. Her
motto was: War on employers, get all you can out
of them, for they will get all they can out of
you. On principle—the sole principle she
possessed—she would not stay in a place more
than six months. She liked change. And employers
did not like change. She was shameless with men.
She ignored all orders as to what she was to eat
and what she was not to eat. She lived up to the
full resources of her employers. She could be to
the last degree slatternly. Or she could be as
neat as a pin, with an apron that symbolized
purity and propriety, as to-night. She could be
idle during a whole day, accumulating dirty
dishes from morn till eve. On the other hand she
could, when she chose, work with astonishing
celerity and even thoroughness. In short, she
was born to infuriate a mistress like Sophia and
to wear out a mistress like Constance. Her
strongest advantage in the struggle was that she
enjoyed altercation; she revelled in a brawl;
she found peace tedious. She was perfectly
calculated to convince the sisters that times
had worsened, and that the world would never
again be the beautiful, agreeable place it once
had been.
Her
gestures as she laid the table were very
graceful, in the pert style. She dropped forks
into their appointed positions with disdain; she
made slightly too much noise; when she turned
she manoeuvred her swelling hips as though for
the benefit of a soldier in a handsome uniform.
Nothing but
the servant had been changed in that house. The
harmonium on which Mr. Povey used occasionally
to play was still behind the door; and on the
harmonium was the tea-caddy of which Mrs. Baines
used to carry the key on her bunch. In the
corner to the right of the fireplace still hung
the cupboard where Mrs. Baines stored her
pharmacopoeia. The rest of the furniture was
arranged as it had been arranged when the death
of Mrs. Baines endowed Mr. and Mrs. Povey with
all the treasures of the house at Axe. And it
was as good as ever; better than ever. Dr.
Stirling often expressed the desire for a corner
cupboard like Mrs. Baines's corner cupboard. One
item had been added: the 'Peel' compote which
Matthew Peel-Swynnerton had noticed in the
dining- room of the Pension Frensham. This
majestic piece, which had been reserved by
Sophia in the sale of the pension, stood alone
on a canterbury in the drawingroom. She had
stored it, with a few other trifles, in Paris,
and when she sent for it and the packing-case
arrived, both she and Constance became aware
that they were united for the rest of their
lives. Of worldly goods, except money,
securities, and clothes, that compote was
practically all that Sophia owned. Happily it
was a first-class item, doing no shame to the
antique magnificence of the drawing-room.
In yielding
to Constance's terrible inertia, Sophia had
meant nevertheless to work her own will on the
interior of the house. She had meant to bully
Constance into modernizing the dwelling. She did
bully Constance, but the house defied her.
Nothing could be done to that house. If only it
had had a hall or lobby a complete
transformation would have been possible. But
there was no access to the upper floor except
through the parlour. The parlour could not
therefore be turned into a kitchen and the
basement suppressed, and the ladies of the house
could not live entirely on the upper floor. The
disposition of the rooms had to remain exactly
as it had always been. There was the same
draught under the door, the same darkness on the
kitchen stairs, the same difficulties with
tradesmen in the distant backyard, the same
twist in the bedroom stairs, the same eternal
ascending and descending of pails. An efficient
cooking-stove, instead of the large and
capacious range, alone represented the twentieth
century in the fixtures of the house.
Buried at
the root of the relations between the sisters
was Sophia's grudge against Constance for
refusing to leave the Square. Sophia was loyal.
She would not consciously give with one hand
while taking away with the other, and in
accepting Constance's decision she honestly
meant to close her eyes to its stupidity. But
she could not entirely succeed. She could not
avoid thinking that the angelic Constance had
been strangely and monstrously selfish in
refusing to quit the Square. She marvelled that
a woman of Constance's sweet and calm
disposition should be capable of so vast and
ruthless an egotism. Constance must have known
that Sophia would not leave her, and that the
habitation of the Square was a continual irk to
Sophia. Constance had never been able to advance
a single argument for remaining in the Square.
And yet she would not budge. It was so
inconsistent with the rest of Constance's
behaviour. See Sophia sitting primly there by
the table, a woman approaching sixty, with
immense experience written on the fine hardness
of her worn and distinguished face! Though her
hair is not yet all grey, nor her figure bowed,
you would imagine that she would, in her passage
through the world, have learnt better than to
expect a character to be consistent. But no! She
was ever disappointed and hurt by Constance's
inconsistency! And see Constance, stout and
bowed, looking more than her age with hair
nearly white and slightly trembling hands! See
that face whose mark is meekness and the spirit
of conciliation, the desire for peace—you would
not think that that placid soul could, while
submitting to it, inly rage against the imposed
weight of Sophia's individuality. "Because I
wouldn't turn out of my house to please her,"
Constance would say to herself, "she fancies she
is entitled to do just as she likes." Not often
did she secretly rebel thus, but it occurred
sometimes. They never quarrelled. They would
have regarded separation as a disaster.
Considering the difference of their lives, they
agreed marvellously in their judgment of things.
But that buried question of domicile prevented a
complete unity between, them. And its subtle
effect was to influence both of them to make the
worst, instead of the best, of the trifling
mishaps that disturbed their tranquillity. When
annoyed, Sophia would meditate upon the mere
fact that they lived in the Square for no reason
whatever, until it grew incredibly shocking to
her. After all it was scarcely conceivable that
they should be living in the very middle of a
dirty, ugly, industrial town simply because
Constance mulishly declined to move. Another
thing that curiously exasperated both of them
upon occasion was that, owing to a recurrence of
her old complaint of dizziness after meals,
Sophia had been strictly forbidden to drink tea,
which she loved. Sophia chafed under the
deprivation, and Constance's pleasure was
impaired because she had to drink it alone.
While the
brazen and pretty servant, mysteriously smiling
to herself, dropped food and utensils on to the
table, Constance and Sophia attempted to
converse with negligent ease upon indifferent
topics, as though nothing had occurred that day
to mar the beauty of ideal relations between
employers and employed. The pretence was
ludicrous. The young wench saw through it
instantly, and her mysterious smile developed
almost into a laugh.
"Please
shut the door after you, Maud," said Sophia, as
the girl picked up her empty tray.
"Yes,
ma'am," replied Maud, politely.
She went
out and left the door open.
It was a
defiance, offered from sheer, youthful, wanton
mischief.
The sisters
looked at each other, their faces gravely
troubled, aghast, as though they had glimpsed
the end of civilized society, as though they
felt that they had lived too long into an age of
decadence and open shame. Constance's face
showed despair—she might have been about to be
pitched into the gutter without a friend and
without a shilling—but Sophia's had the reckless
courage that disaster breeds.
Sophia
jumped up, and stepped to the door. "Maud," she
called out.
No answer.
"Maud, do
you hear me?"
The
suspense was fearful.
Still no
answer.
Sophia
glanced at Constance. "Either she shuts this
door, or she leaves this house at once, even if
I have to fetch a policeman!"
And Sophia
disappeared down the kitchen steps. Constance
trembled with painful excitement. The horror of
existence closed in upon her. She could imagine
nothing more appalling than the pass to which
they had been brought by the modern change in
the lower classes.
In the
kitchen, Sophia, conscious that the moment held
the future of at least the next three weeks,
collected her forces.
"Maud," she
said, "did you not hear me call you?"
Maud looked
up from a book—doubtless a wicked book.
"No,
ma'am."
"You liar!"
thought Sophia. And she said: "I asked you to
shut the parlour door, and I shall be obliged if
you will do so."
Now Maud
would have given a week's wages for the moral
force to disobey Sophia. There was nothing to
compel her to obey. She could have trampled on
the fragile and weak Sophia. But something in
Sophia's gaze compelled her to obey. She
flounced; she bridled; she mumbled; she
unnecessarily disturbed the venerable Spot; but
she obeyed. Sophia had risked all, and she had
won something.
"And you
should light the gas in the kitchen," said
Sophia magnificently, as Maud followed her up
the steps. "Your young eyes may be very good
now, but you are not going the way to preserve
them. My sister and I have often told you that
we do not grudge you gas."
With
stateliness she rejoined Constance, and sat down
to the cold supper. And as Maud clicked the door
to, the sisters breathed relief. They envisaged
new tribulations, but for a brief instant there
was surcease.
Yet they
could not eat. Neither of them, when it came to
the point, could swallow. The day had been too
exciting, too distressing. They were at the end
of their resources. And they did not hide from
each other that they were at the end of their
resources. The illness of Fossette, without
anything else, had been more than enough to ruin
their tranquillity. But the illness of Fossette
was as nothing to the ingenious naughtiness of
the servant. Maud had a sense of temporary
defeat, and was planning fresh operations; but
really it was Maud who had conquered. Poor old
things, they were in such a 'state' that they
could not eat!
"I'm not
going to let her think she can spoil my
appetite!" said
Sophia, dauntless. Truly that woman's spirit was
unquenchable.
She cut a
couple of slices off the cold fowl; she cut a
tomato into slices; she disturbed the butter;
she crumbled bread on the cloth, and rubbed bits
of fowl over the plates, and dirtied knives and
forks. Then she put the slices of fowl and bread
and tomato into a piece of tissue paper, and
silently went upstairs with the parcel and came
down again a moment afterwards empty-handed.
After an
interval she rang the bell, and lighted the gas.
"We've
finished, Maud. You can clear away."
Constance
thirsted for a cup of tea. She felt that a cup
of tea was the one thing that would certainly
keep her alive. She longed for it passionately.
But she would not demand it from Maud. Nor would
she mention it to Sophia, lest Sophia, flushed
by the victory of the door, should incur new
risks. She simply did without. On empty stomachs
they tried pathetically to help each other in
games of Patience. And when the blithe Maud
passed through the parlour on the way to bed,
she saw two dignified and apparently calm
ladies, apparently absorbed in a delightful game
of cards, apparently without a worry in the
world. They said "Good night, Maud," cheerfully,
politely, and coldly. It was a heroic scene.
Immediately afterwards Sophia carried Fossette
up to her own bedroom.
II
The next
afternoon the sisters, in the drawing-room, saw
Dr. Stirling's motor-car speeding down the
Square. The doctor's partner, young Harrop, had
died a few years before at the age of over
seventy, and the practice was much larger than
it had ever been, even in the time of old
Harrop. Instead of two or three horses, Stirling
kept a car, which was a constant spectacle in
the streets of the district.
"I do hope
he'll call in," said Mrs. Povey, and sighed.
Sophia
smiled to herself with a little scorn. She knew
that Constance's desire for Dr. Stirling was due
simply to the need which she felt of telling
some one about the great calamity that had
happened to them that morning. Constance was
utterly absorbed by it, in the most provincial
way. Sophia had said to herself at the beginning
of her sojourn in Bursley, and long afterwards,
that she should never get accustomed to the
exasperating provinciality of the town,
exemplified by the childish preoccupation of the
inhabitants with their own two-penny affairs. No
characteristic of life in Bursley annoyed her
more than this. None had oftener caused her to
yearn in a brief madness for the desert-like
freedom of great cities. But she had got
accustomed to it. Indeed, she had almost ceased
to notice it. Only occasionally, when her nerves
were more upset than usual, did it strike her.
She went
into Constance's bedroom to see whether the
doctor's car halted in King Street. It did.
"He's
here," she called out to Constance.
"I wish
you'd go down, Sophia," said Constance. "I can't
trust that minx——"
So Sophia
went downstairs to superintend the opening of
the door by the minx.
The doctor
was radiant, according to custom.
"I thought
I'd just see how that dizziness was going on,"
said he as he came up the steps.
"I'm glad
you've come," said Sophia, confidentially. Since
the first days of their acquaintanceship they
had always been confidential. "You'll do my
sister good to-day."
Just as
Maud was closing the door a telegraph-boy
arrived, with a telegram addressed to Mrs.
Scales. Sophia read it and then crumpled it in
her hand.
"What's
wrong with Mrs. Povey to-day?" the doctor asked,
when the servant had withdrawn.
"She only
wants a bit of your society," said Sophia. "Will
you go up? You know the way to the drawing-room.
I'll follow."
As soon as
he had gone she sat down on the sofa, staring
out of the window. Then with a grunt: "Well,
that's no use, anyway!" she went upstairs after
the doctor. Already Constance had begun upon her
recital.
"Yes,"
Constance was saying. "And when I went down this
morning to keep an eye on the breakfast, I
thought Spot was very quiet—" She paused. "He
was dead in the drawer. She pretended she didn't
know, but I'm sure she did. Nothing will
convince me that she didn't poison that dog with
the mice-poison we had last year. She was vexed
because Sophia took her up sharply about
Fossette last night, and she revenged herself on
the other dog. It would just be like her. Don't
tell me! I know. I should have packed her off at
once, but Sophia thought better not. We couldn't
prove anything, as Sophia says. Now, what do you
think of it, doctor?"
Constance's
eyes suddenly filled with tears.
"Ye'd had
Spot a long time, hadn't ye?" he said
sympathetically.
She nodded.
"When I was married," said she, "the first thing
my husband did was to buy a fox-terrier, and
ever since we've always had a fox-terrier in the
house." This was not true, but Constance was
firmly convinced of its truth.
"It's very
trying," said the doctor. "I know when my
Airedale died, I said to my wife I'd never have
another dog—unless she could find me one that
would live for ever. Ye remember my Airedale?"
"Oh, quite
well!"
"Well, my
wife said I should be bound to have another one
sooner or later, and the sooner the better. She
went straight off to Oldcastle and bought me a
spaniel pup, and there was such a to-do training
it that we hadn't too much time to think about
Piper."
Constance
regarded this procedure as somewhat callous, and
she said so, tartly. Then she recommenced the
tale of Spot's death from the beginning, and
took it as far as his burial, that afternoon, by
Mr. Critchlow's manager, in the yard. It had
been necessary to remove and replace
paving-stones.
"Of
course," said Dr. Stirling, "ten years is a long
time. He was an old dog. Well, you've still got
the celebrated Fossette." He turned to Sophia.
"Oh yes,"
said Constance, perfunctorily. "Fossette's ill.
The fact is that if Fossette hadn't been ill,
Spot would probably have been alive and well
now."
Her tone
exhibited a grievance. She could not forget that
Sophia had harshly dismissed Spot to the
kitchen, thus practically sending him to his
death. It seemed very hard to her that Fossette,
whose life had once been despaired of, should
continue to exist, while Spot, always healthy
and unspoilt, should die untended, and by
treachery. For the rest, she had never liked
Fossette. On Spot's behalf she had always been
jealous of Fossette.
"Probably
alive and well now!" she repeated, with a
peculiar accent.
Observing
that Sophia maintained a strange silence, Dr.
Stirling suspected a slight tension in the
relations of the sisters, and he changed the
subject. One of his great qualities was that he
refrained from changing a subject introduced by
a patient unless there was a professional reason
for changing it.
"I've just
met Richard Povey in the town," said he. "He
told me to tell ye that he'll be round in about
an hour or so to take you for a spin. He was in
a new car, which he did his best to sell to me,
but he didn't succeed."
"It's very
kind of Dick," said Constance. "But this
afternoon really we're not—"
"I'll thank
ye to take it as a prescription, then," replied
the doctor. "I told Dick I'd see that ye went.
Splendid June weather. No dust after all that
rain. It'll do ye all the good in the world. I
must exercise my authority. The truth is, I've
gradually been losing all control over ye. Ye do
just as ye like."
"Oh,
doctor, how you do run on!" murmured Constance,
not quite well pleased to-day by his tone.
After the
scene between Sophia and herself at Buxton,
Constance had always, to a certain extent, in
the doctor's own phrase, 'got her knife into
him.' Sophia had, then, in a manner betrayed
him. Constance and the doctor discussed that
matter with frankness, the doctor humorously
accusing her of being 'hard' on him.
Nevertheless the little cloud between them was
real, and the result was often a faint
captiousness on Constance's part in judging the
doctor's behaviour.
"He's got a
surprise for ye, has Dick!" the doctor added.
Dick Povey,
after his father's death and his own partial
recovery, had set up in Hanbridge as a bicycle
agent. He was permanently lamed, and he hopped
about with a thick stick. He had succeeded with
bicycles and had taken to automobiles, and he
was succeeding with automobiles. People were at
first startled that he should advertise himself
in the Five Towns. There was an obscure general
feeling that because his mother had been a
drunkard and his father a murderer, Dick Povey
had no right to exist. However, when it had
recovered from the shock of seeing Dick Povey's
announcement of bargains in the Signal, the
district most sensibly decided that there was no
reason why Dick Povey should not sell bicycles
as well as a man with normal parents. He was now
supposed to be acquiring wealth rapidly. It was
said that he was a marvellous chauffeur, at once
daring and prudent. He had one day, several
years previously, overtaken the sisters in the
rural neighbourhood of Sneyd, where they had
been making an afternoon excursion. Constance
had presented him to Sophia, and he had insisted
on driving the ladies home. They had been much
impressed by his cautious care of them, and
their natural prejudice against anything so new
as a motorcar had been conquered instantly.
Afterwards he had taken them out for occasional
runs. He had a great admiration for Constance,
founded on gratitude to Samuel Povey; and as for
Sophia, he always said to her that she would be
an ornament to any car.
"You
haven't heard his latest, I suppose?" said the
doctor, smiling.
"What is
it?" Sophia asked perfunctorily.
"He wants
to take to ballooning. It seems he's been up
once."
Constance
made a deprecating noise with her lips.
"However,
that's not his surprise," the doctor added,
smiling again at the floor. He was sitting on
the music-stool, and saying to himself, behind
his mask of effulgent good-nature: "It gets more
and more uphill work, cheering up these two
women. I'll try them on Federation."
Federation
was the name given to the scheme for blending
the Five Towns into one town, which would be the
twelfth largest town in the kingdom. It aroused
fury in Bursley, which saw in the suggestion
nothing but the extinction of its ancient glory
to the aggrandizement of Hanbridge. Hanbridge
had already, with the assistance of electric
cars that whizzed to and fro every five minutes,
robbed Bursley of two-thirds of its retail
trade—as witness the steady decadence of the
Square!—and Bursley had no mind to swallow the
insult and become a mere ward of Hanbridge.
Bursley would die fighting. Both Constance and
Sophia were bitter opponents of Federation. They
would have been capable of putting
Federationists to the torture. Sophia in
particular, though so long absent from her
native town, had adopted its cause with
characteristic vigour. And when Dr. Stirling
wished to practise his curative treatment of
taking the sisters 'out of themselves,' he had
only to start the hare of Federation and the
hunt would be up in a moment. But this afternoon
he did not succeed with Sophia, and only
partially with Constance. When he stated that
there was to be a public meeting that very
night, and that Constance as a ratepayer ought
to go to it and vote, if her convictions were
genuine, she received his chaff with a mere
murmur to the effect that she did not think she
should go. Had the man forgotten that Spot was
dead? At length he became grave, and examined
them both as to their ailments, and nodded his
head, and looked into vacancy while meditating
upon each case. And then, when he had inquired
where they meant to go for their summer
holidays, he departed.
"Aren't you
going to see him out?" Constance whispered to
Sophia, who had shaken hands with him at the
drawingroom door. It was Sophia who did the
running about, owing to the state of Constance's
sciatic nerve. Constance had, indeed, become
extraordinarily inert, leaving everything to
Sophia.
Sophia
shook her head. She hesitated; then approached
Constance, holding out her hand and disclosing
the crumpled telegram.
"Look at
that!" said she.
Her face
frightened Constance, who was always expectant
of new anxieties and troubles. Constance
straightened out the paper with difficulty, and
read—
"Mr. Gerald
Scales is dangerously ill here. Boldero, 49,
Deansgate, Manchester."
All through
the inexpressibly tedious and quite unnecessary
call of Dr. Stirling—(Why had he chosen to call
just then? Neither of them was ill)—Sophia had
held that telegram concealed in her hand and its
information concealed in her heart. She had kept
her head up, offering a calm front to the world.
She had given no hint of the terrible
explosion—for an explosion it was. Constance was
astounded at her sister's self-control, which
entirely passed her comprehension. Constance
felt that worries would never cease, but would
rather go on multiplying until death ended all.
First, there had been the frightful worry of the
servant; then the extremely distressing death
and burial of Spot—and now it was Gerald Scales
turning up again! With what violence was the
direction of their thoughts now shifted! The
wickedness of maids was a trifle; the death of
pets was a trifle. But the reappearance of
Gerald Scales! That involved the possibility of
consequences which could not even be named, so
afflictive was the mere prospect to them.
Constance was speechless, and she saw that
Sophia was also speechless.
Of course
the event had been bound to happen. People do
not vanish never to be heard of again. The time
surely arrives when the secret is revealed. So
Sophia said to herself—now!
She had
always refused to consider the effect of
Gerald's reappearance. She had put the idea of
it away from her, determined to convince herself
that she had done with him finally and for ever.
She had forgotten him. It was years since he had
ceased to disturb her thoughts—many years. "He
MUST be dead," she had persuaded herself. "It is
inconceivable that he should have lived on and
never come across me. If he had been alive and
learnt that I had made money, he would assuredly
have come to me. No, he must be dead!"
And he was
not dead! The brief telegram overwhelmingly
shocked her. Her life had been calm, regular,
monotonous. And now it was thrown into an
indescribable turmoil by five words of a
telegram, suddenly, with no warning whatever.
Sophia had the right to say to herself: "I have
had my share of trouble, and more than my
share!" The end of her life promised to be as
awful as the beginning. The mere existence of
Gerald Scales was a menace to her. But it was
the simple impact of the blow that affected her
supremely, beyond ulterior things. One might
have pictured fate as a cowardly brute who had
struck this ageing woman full in the face, a
felling blow, which however had not felled her.
She staggered, but she stuck on her legs. It
seemed a shame—one of those crude, spectacular
shames which make the blood boil—that the
gallant, defenceless creature should be so
maltreated by the bully, destiny.
"Oh,
Sophia!" Constance moaned. "What trouble is
this?"
Sophia's
lip curled with a disgusted air. Under that she
hid her suffering.
She had not
seen him for thirty-six years. He must be over
seventy years of age, and he had turned up again
like a bad penny, doubtless a disgrace! What had
he been doing in those thirty-six years? He was
an old, enfeebled man now! He must be a pretty
sight! And he lay at Manchester, not two hours
away!
Whatever
feelings were in Sophia's heart, tenderness was
not among them. As she collected her wits from
the stroke, she was principally aware of the
sentiment of fear. She recoiled from the future.
"What shall
you do?" Constance asked. Constance was weeping.
Sophia
tapped her foot, glancing out of the window.
"Shall you
go to see him?" Constance continued.
"Of
course," said Sophia. "I must!"
She hated
the thought of going to see him. She flinched
from it. She felt herself under no moral
obligation to go. Why should she go? Gerald was
nothing to her, and had no claim on her of any
kind. This she honestly believed. And yet she
knew that she must go to him. She knew it to be
impossible that she should not go.
"Now?"
demanded Constance.
Sophia
nodded.
"What about
the trains? … Oh, you poor dear!" The mere idea
of the journey to Manchester put Constance out
of her wits, seeming a business of unparalleled
complexity and difficulty.
"Would you
like me to come with you?"
"Oh no! I
must go by myself."
Constance
was relieved by this. They could not have left
the servant in the house alone, and the idea of
shutting up the house without notice or
preparation presented itself to Constance as too
fantastic.
By a common
instinct they both descended to the parlour.
"Now, what
about a time-table? What about a time-table?"
Constance mumbled on the stairs. She wiped her
eyes resolutely. "I wonder whatever in this
world has brought him at last to that Mr.
Boldero's in Deansgate?" she asked the walls.
As they
came into the parlour, a great motor-car drove
up before the door, and when the pulsations of
its engine had died away, Dick Povey hobbled
from the driver's seat to the pavement. In an
instant he was hammering at the door in his
lively style. There was no avoiding him. The
door had to be opened. Sophia opened it. Dick
Povey was over forty, but he looked considerably
younger. Despite his lameness, and the fact that
his lameness tended to induce corpulence, he had
a dashing air, and his face, with its short,
light moustache, was boyish. He seemed to be
always upon some joyous adventure.
"Well,
aunties," he greeted the sisters, having
perceived
Constance behind Sophia; he often so addressed
them. "Has Dr.
Stirling warned you that I was coming? Why
haven't you got your
things on?"
Sophia
observed a young woman in the car.
"Yes," said
he, following her gaze, "you may as well look.
Come down, miss. Come down, Lily. You've got to
go through with it." The young woman, delicately
confused and blushing, obeyed. "This is Miss
Lily Holl," he went on. "I don't know whether
you would remember her. I don't think you do.
It's not often she comes to the Square. But, of
course, she knows you by sight. Granddaughter of
your old neighbour, Alderman Holl! We are
engaged to be married, if you please."
Constance
and Sophia could not decently pour out their
griefs on the top of such news. The betrothed
pair had to come in and be congratulated upon
their entry into the large realms of mutual
love. But the sisters, even in their painful
quandary, could not help noticing what a nice,
quiet, ladylike girl Lily Holl was. Her one
fault appeared to be that she was too quiet.
Dick Povey was not the man to pass time in
formalities, and he was soon urging departure.
"I'm sorry
we can't come," said Sophia. "I've got to go to
Manchester now. We are in great trouble."
"Yes, in
great trouble," Constance weakly echoed.
Dick's face
clouded sympathetically. And both the affianced
began to see that to which the egotism of their
happiness had blinded them. They felt that long,
long years had elapsed since these ageing ladies
had experienced the delights which they were
feeling.
"Trouble?
I'm sorry to hear that!" said Dick.
"Can you
tell me the trains to Manchester?" asked Sophia.
"No," said
Dick, quickly, "But I can drive you there
quicker than any train, if it's urgent. Where do
you want to go to?"
"Deansgate," Sophia faltered.
"Look
here," said Dick, "it's half-past three. Put
yourself in my hands; I'll guarantee at
Deansgate you shall be before half-past five.
I'll look after you."
"But——"
"There
isn't any 'but.' I'm quite free for the
afternoon and evening."
At first
the suggestion seemed absurd, especially to
Constance. But really it was too tempting to be
declined. While Sophia made ready for the
journey, Dick and Lily Holl and Constance
conversed in low, solemn tones. The pair were
waiting to be enlightened as to the nature of
the trouble; Constance, however, did not
enlighten them. How could Constance say to them:
"Sophia has a husband that she hasn't seen for
thirty-six years, and he's dangerously ill, and
they've telegraphed for her to go?" Constance
could not. It did not even occur to Constance to
order a cup of tea.
III
Dick Povey
kept his word. At a quarter-past five he drew up
in front of No. 49, Deansgate, Manchester.
"There you are!" he said, not without pride.
"Now, we'll come back in about a couple of hours
or so, just to take your orders, whatever they
are." He was very comforting, with his
suggestion that in him Sophia had a sure support
in the background.
Without
many words Sophia went straight into the shop.
It looked like a jeweller's shop, and a shop for
bargains generally. Only the conventional sign
over a side-entrance showed that at heart it was
a pawnbroker's. Mr. Till Boldero did a nice
business in the Five Towns, and in other centres
near Manchester, by selling silver-ware
second-hand, or nominally second hand, to
persons who wished to make presents to other
persons or to themselves. He would send anything
by post on approval. Occasionally he came to the
Five Towns, and he had once, several years
before, met Constance. They had talked. He was
the son of a cousin of the late great and
wealthy Boldero, sleeping partner in
Birkinshaws, and Gerald's uncle. It was from
Constance that he had learnt of Sophia's return
to Bursley. Constance had often remarked to
Sophia what a superior man Mr. Till Boldero was.
The shop
was narrow and lofty. It seemed like a menagerie
for trapped silver-ware. In glass cases right up
to the dark ceiling silver vessels and
instruments of all kinds lay confined. The top
of the counter was a glass prison containing
dozens of gold watches, together with
snuff-boxes, enamels, and other antiquities. The
front of the counter was also glazed, showing
vases and large pieces of porcelain. A few
pictures in heavy gold frames were perched
about. There was a case of umbrellas with
elaborate handles and rich tassels. There were a
couple of statuettes. The counter, on the
customers' side, ended in a glass screen on
which were the words 'Private Office.' On the
seller's side the prospect was closed by a vast
safe. A tall young man was fumbling in this
safe. Two women sat on customers' chairs,
leaning against the crystal counter. The young
man came towards them from the safe, bearing a
tray.
"How much
is that goblet?" asked one of the women, raising
her parasol dangerously among such fragility and
pointing to one object among many in a case high
up from the ground.
"That,
madam?"
"Yes."
"Thirty-five pounds."
The young
man disposed his tray on the counter. It was
packed with more gold watches, adding to the
extraordinary glitter and shimmer of the shop.
He chose a small watch from the regiment.
"Now, this
is something I can recommend," he said. "It's
made by Cuthbert Butler of Blackburn. I can
guarantee you that for five years." He spoke as
though he were the accredited representative of
the Bank of England, with calm and absolute
assurance.
The effect
upon Sophia was mysteriously soothing. She felt
that she was among honest men. The young man
raised his head towards her with a questioning,
deferential gesture.
"Can I see
Mr. Boldero?" she asked. "Mrs. Scales."
The young
man's face changed instantly to a sympathetic
comprehension.
"Yes,
madam. I'll fetch him at once," said he, and he
disappeared behind the safe. The two customers
discussed the watch. Then the door opened in the
glass screen, and a portly, middle-aged man
showed himself. He was dressed in blue
broad-cloth, with a turned- down collar and a
small black tie. His waistcoat displayed a plain
but heavy gold watch-chain, and his cuff-links
were of plain gold. His eye-glasses were
gold-rimmed. He had grey hair, beard and
moustache, but on the backs of his hands grew a
light brown hair. His appearance was strangely
mild, dignified, and confidence- inspiring. He
was, in fact, one of the most respected
tradesmen in Manchester.
He peered
forward, looking over his eye-glasses, which he
then took off, holding them up in the air by
their short handle. Sophia had approached him.
"Mrs.
Scales?" he said, in a very quiet, very
benevolent voice. Sophia nodded. "Please come
this way." He took her hand, squeezing it
commiseratingly, and drew her into the sanctum.
"I didn't expect you so soon," he said. "I
looked up th' trains, and I didn't see how you
could get here before six."
Sophia
explained.
He led her
further, through the private office, into a sort
of parlour, and asked her to sit down. And he
too sat down. Sophia waited, as it were, like a
suitor.
"I'm afraid
I've got bad news for you, Mrs. Scales," he
said, still in that mild, benevolent voice.
"He's
dead?" Sophia asked.
Mr. Till
Boldero nodded. "He's dead. I may as well tell
you that he had passed away before I
telegraphed. It all happened very, very
suddenly." He paused. "Very, very suddenly!"
"Yes," said
Sophia, weakly. She was conscious of a profound
sadness which was not grief, though it resembled
grief. And she had also a feeling that she was
responsible to Mr. Till Boldero for anything
untoward that might have occurred to him by
reason of Gerald.
"Yes," said
Mr. Till Boldero, deliberately and softly. "He
came in last night just as we were closing. We
had very heavy rain here. I don't know how it
was with you. He was wet, in a dreadful state,
simply dreadful. Of course, I didn't recognize
him. I'd never seen him before, so far as my
recollection goes. He asked me if I was the son
of Mr. Till Boldero that had this shop in 1866.
I said I was. 'Well,' he says, 'you're the only
connection I've got. My name's Gerald Scales. My
mother was your father's cousin. Can you do
anything for me?' he says. I could see he was
ill. I had him in here. When I found he couldn't
eat nor drink I thought I'd happen better send
for th' doctor. The doctor got him to bed. He
passed away at one o'clock this afternoon. I was
very sorry my wife wasn't here to look after
things a bit better. But she's at Southport, not
well at all."
"What was
it?" Sophia asked briefly.
Mr. Boldero
indicated the enigmatic. "Exhaustion, I
suppose," he replied.
"He's
here?" demanded Sophia, lifting her eyes to
possible bedrooms.
"Yes," said
Mr. Boldero. "I suppose you would wish to see
him?"
"Yes," said
Sophia.
"You
haven't seen him for a long time, your sister
told me?" Mr.
Boldero murmured, sympathetically.
"Not since
'seventy," said Sophia.
"Eh, dear!
Eh, dear!" ejaculated Mr. Boldero. "I fear it's
been a sad business for ye, Mrs. Scales. Not
since 'seventy!" He sighed. "You must take it as
well as you can. I'm not one as talks much, but
I sympathize, with you. I do that! I wish my
wife had been here to receive you."
Tears came
into Sophia's eyes.
"Nay, nay!"
he said. "You must bear up now!"
"It's you
that make me cry," said Sophia, gratefully. "You
were very good to take him in. It must have been
exceedingly trying for you."
"Oh," he
protested, "you mustn't talk like that. I
couldn't leave a Boldero on the pavement, and an
old man at that! . . . Oh, to think that if he'd
only managed to please his uncle he might ha'
been one of the richest men in Lancashire. But
then there'd ha' been no Boldero Institute at
Strangeways!" he added.
They both
sat silent a moment.
"Will you
come now? Or will you wait a bit?" asked Mr.
Boldero, gently. "Just as you wish. I'm sorry as
my wife's away, that I am!"
"I'll come
now," said Sophia, firmly. But she was stricken.
He
conducted her up a short, dark flight of stairs,
which gave on a passage, and at the end of the
passage was a door ajar. He pushed the door
open. "I'll leave you for a moment," he said,
always in the same very restrained tone. "You'll
find me downstairs, there, if you want me." And
he moved away with hushed, deliberate tread.
Sophia went
into the room, of which the white blind was
drawn. She appreciated Mr. Boldero's
consideration in leaving her. She was trembling.
But when she saw, in the pale gloom, the face of
an aged man peeping out from under a white sheet
on a naked mattress, she started back, trembling
no more—rather transfixed into an absolute
rigidity. That was no conventional, expected
shock that she had received. It was a genuine
unforeseen shock, the most violent that she had
ever had. In her mind she had not pictured
Gerald as a very old man. She knew that he was
old; she had said to herself that he must be
very old, well over seventy. But she had not
pictured him. This face on the bed was
painfully, pitiably old. A withered face, with
the shiny skin all drawn into wrinkles! The
stretched skin under the jaw was like the skin
of a plucked fowl. The cheek-bones stood up, and
below them were deep hollows, almost like
egg-cups. A short, scraggy white beard covered
the lower part of the face. The hair was scanty,
irregular, and quite white; a little white hair
grew in the ears. The shut mouth obviously hid
toothless gums, for the lips were sucked in. The
eyelids were as if pasted down over the eyes,
fitting them like kid. All the skin was
extremely pallid; it seemed brittle. The body,
whose outlines were clear under the sheet, was
very small, thin, shrunk, pitiable as the face.
And on the face was a general expression of
final fatigue, of tragic and acute exhaustion;
such as made Sophia pleased that the fatigue and
exhaustion had been assuaged in rest, while all
the time she kept thinking to herself horribly:
"Oh! how tired he must have been!"
Sophia then
experienced a pure and primitive emotion,
uncoloured by any moral or religious quality.
She was not sorry that Gerald had wasted his
life, nor that he was a shame to his years and
to her. The manner of his life was of no
importance. What affected her was that he had
once been young, and that he had grown old, and
was now dead. That was all. Youth and vigour had
come to that. Youth and vigour always came to
that. Everything came to that. He had
ill-treated her; he had abandoned her; he had
been a devious rascal; but how trivial were such
accusations against him! The whole of her huge
and bitter grievance against him fell to pieces
and crumbled. She saw him young, and proud, and
strong, as for instance when he had kissed her
lying on the bed in that London hotel—she forgot
the name—in 1866; and now he was old, and worn,
and horrible, and dead. It was the riddle of
life that was puzzling and killing her. By the
corner of her eye, reflected in the mirror of a
wardrobe near the bed, she glimpsed a tall,
forlorn woman, who had once been young and now
was old; who had once exulted in abundant
strength, and trodden proudly on the neck of
circumstance, and now was old. He and she had
once loved and burned and quarrelled in the
glittering and scornful pride of youth. But time
had worn them out. "Yet a little while," she
thought, "and I shall be lying on a bed like
that! And what shall I have lived for? What is
the meaning of it?" The riddle of life itself
was killing her, and she seemed to drown in a
sea of inexpressible sorrow.
Her memory
wandered hopelessly among those past years. She
saw Chirac with his wistful smile. She saw him
whipped over the roof of the Gare du Nord at the
tail of a balloon. She saw old Niepce. She felt
his lecherous arm round her. She was as old now
as Niepce had been then. Could she excite lust
now? Ah! the irony of such a question! To be
young and seductive, to be able to kindle a
man's eye—that seemed to her the sole thing
desirable. Once she had been so! … Niepce must
certainly have been dead for years. Niepce, the
obstinate and hopeful voluptuary, was nothing
but a few bones in a coffin now!
She was
acquainted with affliction in that hour. All
that she had previously suffered sank into
insignificance by the side of that suffering.
She turned
to the veiled window and idly pulled the blind
and looked out. Huge red and yellow cars were
swimming in thunder along Deansgate; lorries
jolted and rattled; the people of Manchester
hurried along the pavements, apparently
unconscious that all their doings were vain.
Yesterday he too had been in Deansgate, hungry
for life, hating the idea of death! What a
figure he must have made! Her heart dissolved in
pity for him. She dropped the blind.
"My life
has been too terrible!" she thought. "I wish I
was dead. I have been through too much. It is
monstrous, and I cannot stand it. I do not want
to die, but I wish I was dead."
There was a
discreet knock on the door.
"Come in,"
she said, in a calm, resigned, cheerful voice.
The sound had recalled her with the swiftness of
a miracle to the unconquerable dignity of human
pride.
Mr. Till
Boldero entered.
"I should
like you to come downstairs and drink a cup of
tea," he said. He was a marvel of tact and good
nature. "My wife is unfortunately not here, and
the house is rather at sixes and sevens; but I
have sent out for some tea."
She
followed him downstairs into the parlour. He
poured out a cup of tea.
"I was
forgetting," she said. "I am forbidden tea. I
mustn't drink it."
She looked
at the cup, tremendously tempted. She longed for
tea. An occasional transgression could not harm
her. But no! She would not drink it.
"Then what
can I get you?"
"If I could
have just milk and water," she said meekly.
Mr. Boldero
emptied the cup into the slop basin, and began
to fill it again.
"Did he
tell you anything?" she asked, after a
considerable silence.
"Nothing,"
said Mr. Boldero in his low, soothing tones.
"Nothing except that he had come from Liverpool.
Judging from his shoes I should say he must have
walked a good bit of the way."
"At his
age!" murmured Sophia, touched.
"Yes,"
sighed Mr. Boldero. "He must have been in great
straits. You know, he could scarcely talk at
all. By the way, here are his clothes. I have
had them put aside."
Sophia saw
a small pile of clothes on a chair. She examined
the suit, which was still damp, and its woeful
shabbiness pained her. The linen collar was
nearly black, its stud of bone. As for the
boots, she had noticed such boots on the feet of
tramps. She wept now. These were the clothes of
him who had once been a dandy living at the rate
of fifty pounds a week.
"No luggage
or anything, of course?" she muttered.
"No," said
Mr. Boldero. "In the pockets there was nothing
whatever but this."
He went to
the mantelpiece and picked up a cheap, cracked
letter case, which Sophia opened. In it were a
visiting card—'Senorita Clemenzia Borja'—and a
bill-head of the Hotel of the Holy Spirit,
Concepcion del Uruguay, on the back of which a
lot of figures had been scrawled.
"One would
suppose," said Mr. Boldero, "that he had come
from
South America."
"Nothing
else?"
"Nothing."
Gerald's
soul had not been compelled to abandon much in
the haste of its flight.
A servant
announced that Mrs. Scales's friends were
waiting for her outside in the motor-car. Sophia
glanced at Mr. Till Boldero with an exacerbated
anxiety on her face.
"Surely
they don't expect me to go back with them
tonight!" she said. "And look at all there is to
be done!"
Mr. Till
Boldero's kindness was then redoubled. "You can
do nothing for HIM now," he said. "Tell me your
wishes about the funeral. I will arrange
everything. Go back to your sister to- night.
She will be nervous about you. And return
tomorrow or the day after. … No! It's no
trouble, I assure you!"
She
yielded.
Thus
towards eight o'clock, when Sophia had eaten a
little under Mr. Boldero's superintendence, and
the pawnshop was shut up, the motor-car started
again for Bursley, Lily Holl being beside her
lover and Sophia alone in the body of the car.
Sophia had told them nothing of the nature of
her mission. She was incapable of talking to
them. They saw that she was in a condition of
serious mental disturbance. Under cover of the
noise of the car, Lily said to Dick that she was
sure Mrs. Scales was ill, and Dick, putting his
lips together, replied that he meant to be in
King Street at nine-thirty at the latest. From
time to time Lily surreptitiously glanced at
Sophia—a glance of apprehensive inspection, or
smiled at her silently; and Sophia vaguely
responded to the smile.
In half an
hour they had escaped from the ring of
Manchester and were on the county roads of
Cheshire, polished, flat, sinuous. It was the
season of the year when there is no night—only
daylight and twilight; when the last silver of
dusk remains obstinately visible for hours. And
in the open country, under the melancholy arch
of evening, the sadness of the earth seemed to
possess Sophia anew. Only then did she realize
the intensity of the ordeal through which she
was passing.
To the
south of Congleton one of the tyres softened,
immediately after Dick had lighted his lamps. He
stopped the car and got down again. They were
two miles Astbury, the nearest village. He had
just, with the resignation of experience,
reached for the tool- bag, when Lily exclaimed:
"Is she asleep, or what?" Sophia was not asleep,
but she was apparently not conscious.
It was a
difficult and a trying situation for two lovers.
Their voices changed momentarily to the tone of
alarm and consternation, and then grew firm
again. Sophia showed life but not reason. Lily
could feel the poor old lady's heart.
"Well,
there's nothing for it!" said Dick, briefly,
when all their efforts failed to rouse her.
"What—shall
you do?"
"Go
straight home as quick as I can on three tyres.
We must get her over to this side, and you must
hold her. Like that we shall keep the weight off
the other side."
He pitched
back the tool-bag into its box. Lily admired his
decision.
It was in
this order, no longer under the spell of the
changing beauty of nocturnal landscapes, that
they finished the journey. Constance had opened
the door before the car came to a stop in the
gloom of King Street. The young people
considered that she bore the shock well, though
the carrying into the house of Sophia's inert,
twitching body, with its hat forlornly awry, was
a sight to harrow a soul sturdier than
Constance.
When that
was done, Dick said curtly: "I'm off. You stay
here, of course."
"Where are
you going?" asked Lily.
"Doctor!"
snapped Dick, hobbling rapidly down the steps.
IV
The
extraordinary violence of the turn in affairs
was what chiefly struck Constance, though it did
not overwhelm her. Less than twelve hours
before—nay, scarcely six hours before—she and
Sophia had been living their placid and
monotonous existence, undisturbed by anything
worse than the indisposition or death of dogs,
or the perversity of a servant. And now, the
menacing Gerald Scales having reappeared,
Sophia's form lay mysterious and affrightening
on the sofa; and she and Lily Holl, a girl whom
she had not met till that day, were staring at
Sophia side by side, intimately sharing the same
alarm. Constance rose to the crisis. She no
longer had Sophia's energy and decisive
peremptoriness to depend on, and the Baines in
her was awakened. All her daily troubles sank
away to their proper scale of unimportance.
Neither the young woman nor the old one knew
what to do. They could loosen clothes, vainly
offer restoratives to the smitten mouth: that
was all. Sophia was not unconscious, as could be
judged from her eyes; but she could not speak,
nor make signs; her body was frequently
convulsed. So the two women waited, and the
servant waited in the background. The sight of
Sophia had effected an astonishing
transformation in Maud. Maud was a changed girl.
Constance could not recognize, in her eager
deferential anxiety to be of use, the pert
naughtiness of the minx. She was altered as a
wanton of the middle ages would have been
altered by some miraculous visitation. It might
have been the turning-point in Maud's career!
Doctor
Stirling arrived in less than ten minutes. Dick
Povey had had the wit to look for him at the
Federation meeting in the Town Hall. And the
advent of the doctor and Dick, noisily, at
breakneck speed in the car, provided a second
sensation. The doctor inquired quickly what had
occurred. Nobody could tell him anything.
Constance had already confided to Lily Holl the
reason of the visit to Manchester; but that was
the extent of her knowledge. Not a single person
in Bursley, except Sophia, knew what had
happened in Manchester. But Constance
conjectured that Gerald Scales was dead—or
Sophia would never have returned so soon. Then
the doctor suggested that on the contrary Gerald
Scales might be out of danger. And all then
pictured to themselves this troubling Gerald
Scales, this dark and sinister husband that had
caused such a violent upheaval.
Meanwhile
the doctor was at work. He sent Dick Povey to
knock up Critchlow's, if the shop should be
closed, and obtain a drug. Then, after a time,
he lifted Sophia, just as she was, like a bundle
on his shoulder, and carried her single-handed
upstairs to the second floor. He had recently
been giving a course of instruction to
enthusiasts of the St. John's Ambulance
Association in Bursley. The feat had an air of
the superhuman. Above all else it remained
printed on Constance's mind: the burly doctor
treading delicately and carefully on the
crooked, creaking stairs, his precautions
against damaging Sophia by brusque contacts, his
stumble at the two steps in the middle of the
corridor; Sophia's horribly limp head and
loosened hair; and then the tender placing of
her on the bed, and the doctor's long breath and
flourish of his large handkerchief, all that
under the crude lights and shadows of gas jets!
The doctor was nonplussed. Constance gave him a
second-hand account of Sophia's original attack
in Paris, roughly as she had heard it from
Sophia. He at once said that it could not have
been what the French doctor had said it was.
Constance shrugged her shoulders. She was not
surprised. For her there was necessarily
something of the charlatan about a French
doctor. She said she only knew what Sophia had
told her. After a time Dr. Stirling determined
to try electricity, and Dick Povey drove him up
to the surgery to fetch his apparatus. The women
were left alone again. Constance was very deeply
impressed by Lily Holl's sensible, sympathetic
attitude. "Whatever I should have done without
Miss Lily I don't know!" she used to exclaim
afterwards. Even Maud was beyond praise. It
seemed to be the middle of the night when Dr.
Stirling came back, but it was barely eleven
o'clock, and people were only just returning
from Hanbridge Theatre and Hanbridge Music Hall.
The use of the electrical apparatus was a dead
spectacle. Sophia's inertness under it was
agonizing. They waited, as it were, breathless
for the result. And there was no result. Both
injections and electricity had entirely failed
to influence the paralysis of Sophia's mouth and
throat. Everything had failed. "Nothing to do
but wait a bit!" said the doctor quietly. They
waited in the chamber. Sophia seemed to be in a
kind of coma. The distortion of her handsome
face was more marked as time passed. The doctor
spoke now and then in a low voice. He said that
the attack had ultimately been determined by
cold produced by rapid motion in the automobile.
Dick Povey whispered that he must run over to
Hanbridge and let Lily's parents know that there
was no cause for alarm on her account, and that
he would return at once. He was very devoted. On
the landing out-side the bedroom, the doctor
murmured to him: "U.P." And Dick nodded. They
were great friends.
At
intervals the doctor, who never knew when he was
beaten, essayed new methods of dealing with
Sophia's case. New symptoms followed. It was
half-past twelve when, after gazing with
prolonged intensity at the patient, and after
having tested her mouth and heart, he rose
slowly and looked at Constance.
"It's
over?" said Constance.
And he very
slightly moved his head. "Come downstairs,
please," he enjoined her, in a pause that
ensued. Constance was amazingly courageous. The
doctor was very solemn and very kind; Constance
had never before seen him to such heroic
advantage. He led her with infinite gentleness
out of the room. There was nothing to stay for;
Sophia had gone. Constance wanted to stay by
Sophia's body; but it was the rule that the
stricken should be led away, the doctor observed
this classic rule, and Constance felt that he
was right and that she must obey. Lily Holl
followed. The servant, learning the truth by the
intuition accorded to primitive natures, burst
into loud sobs, yelling that Sophia had been the
most excellent mistress that servant ever had.
The doctor angrily told her not to stand
blubbering there, but to go into her kitchen and
shut the door if she couldn't control herself.
All his accumulated nervous agitation was
discharged on Maud like a thunderclap. Constance
continued to behave wonderfully. She was the
admiration of the doctor and Lily Holl. Then
Dick Povey came back. It was settled that Lily
should pass the night with Constance. At last
the doctor and Dick departed together, the
doctor undertaking the mortuary arrangements.
Maud was hunted to bed.
Early in
the morning Constance rose up from her own bed.
It was five o'clock, and there had been daylight
for two hours already. She moved noiselessly and
peeped over the foot of the bed at the sofa.
Lily was quietly asleep there, breathing with
the softness of a child. Lily would have deemed
that she was a very mature woman, who had seen
life and much of it. Yet to Constance her face
and attitude had the exquisite quality of a
child's. She was not precisely a pretty girl,
but her features, the candid expression of her
disposition, produced an impression that was
akin to that of beauty. Her abandonment was
complete. She had gone through the night
unscathed, and was now renewing herself in calm,
oblivious sleep. Her ingenuous girlishness was
apparent then. It seemed as if all her wise and
sweet behaviour of the evening could have been
nothing but so many imitative gestures. It
seemed impossible that a being so young and
fresh could have really experienced the mood of
which her gestures had been the expression. Her
strong virginal simplicity made Constance
vaguely sad for her.
Creeping
out of the room, Constance climbed to the second
floor in her dressing-gown, and entered the
other chamber. She was obliged to look again
upon Sophia's body. Incredible swiftness of
calamity! Who could have foreseen it? Constance
was less desolated than numbed. She was as yet
only touching the fringe of her bereavement. She
had not begun to think of herself. She was
drenched, as she gazed at Sophia's body, not by
pity for herself, but by compassion for the
immense disaster of her sister's life. She
perceived fully now for the first time the
greatness of that disaster. Sophia's charm and
Sophia's beauty—what profit had they been to
their owner? She saw pictures of Sophia's
career, distorted and grotesque images formed in
her untravelled mind from Sophia's own rare and
compressed recitals. What a career! A brief
passion, and then nearly thirty years in a
boarding-house! And Sophia had never had a
child; had never known either the joy or the
pain of maternity. She had never even had a true
home till, in all her sterile splendour, she
came to Bursley. And she had ended —thus! This
was the piteous, ignominious end of Sophia's
wondrous gifts of body and soul. Hers had not
been a life at all. And the reason? It is
strange how fate persists in justifying the
harsh generalizations of Puritan morals, of the
morals in which Constance had been brought up by
her stern parents! Sophia had sinned. It was
therefore inevitable that she should suffer. An
adventure such as she had in wicked and
capricious pride undertaken with Gerald Scales,
could not conclude otherwise than it had
concluded. It could have brought nothing but
evil. There was no getting away from these
verities, thought Constance. And she was to be
excused for thinking that all modern progress
and cleverness was as naught, and that the world
would be forced to return upon its steps and
start again in the path which it had left.
Up to
within a few days of her death people had been
wont to remark that Mrs. Scales looked as young
as ever, and that she was as bright and as
energetic as ever. And truly, regarding Sophia
from a little distance—that handsome oval, that
erect carriage of a slim body, that challenging
eye!—no one would have said that she was in her
sixtieth year. But look at her now, with her
twisted face, her sightless orbs, her worn
skin—she did not seem sixty, but seventy! She
was like something used, exhausted, and thrown
aside! Yes, Constance's heart melted in an
anguished pity for that stormy creature. And
mingled with the pity was a stern recognition of
the handiwork of divine justice. To Constance's
lips came the same phrase as had come to the
lips of Samuel Povey on a different occasion:
God is not mocked! The ideas of her parents and
her grandparents had survived intact in
Constance. It is true that Constance's father
would have shuddered in Heaven could he have
seen Constance solitarily playing cards of a
night. But in spite of cards, and of a son who
never went to chapel, Constance, under the
various influences of destiny, had remained
essentially what her father had been. Not in her
was the force of evolution manifest. There are
thousands such.
Lily,
awake, and reclothed with that unreal mien of a
grown and comprehending woman, stepped quietly
into the room, searching for the poor old thing,
Constance. The layer-out had come.
By the
first post was delivered a letter addressed to
Sophia by Mr. Till Boldero. From its contents
the death of Gerald Scales was clear. There
seemed then to be nothing else for Constance to
do. What had to be done was done for her. And
stronger wills than hers put her to bed. Cyril
was telegraphed for. Mr. Critchlow called, Mrs.
Critchlow following—a fussy infliction, but
useful in certain matters. Mr. Critchlow was not
allowed to see Constance. She could hear his
high grating voice in the corridor. She had to
lie calm, and the sudden tranquillity seemed
strange after the feverish violence of the
night. Only twenty-four hours since, and she had
been worrying about the death of a dog! With a
body crying for sleep, she dozed off, thoughts
of the mystery of life merging into the
incoherence of dreams.
The news
was abroad in the Square before nine o'clock.
There were persons who had witnessed the arrival
of the motorcar, and the transfer of Sophia to
the house. Untruthful rumours had spread as to
the manner of Gerald Scales's death. Some said
that he had dramatically committed suicide. But
the town, though titillated, was not moved as it
would have been moved by a similar event twenty
years, or even ten years earlier. Times had
changed in Bursley. Bursley was more
sophisticated than in the old days.
Constance
was afraid lest Cyril, despite the seriousness
of the occasion, might exhibit his customary
tardiness in coming. She had long since learnt
not to rely upon him. But he came the same
evening. His behaviour was in every way perfect.
He showed quiet but genuine grief for the death
of his aunt, and he was a model of consideration
for his mother. Further, he at once assumed
charge of all the arrangements, in regard both
to Sophia and to her husband. Constance was
surprised at the ease which he displayed in the
conduct of practical affairs, and the assurance
with which he gave orders. She had never seen
him direct anything before. He said, indeed,
that he had never directed anything before, but
that there appeared to him to be no
difficulties. Whereas Constance had figured a
tiresome series of varied complications. As to
the burial of Sophia, Cyril was vigorously in
favour of an absolutely private funeral; that is
to say, a funeral at which none but himself
should be present. He seemed to have a
passionate objection to any sort of parade.
Constance agreed with him. But she said that it
would be impossible not to invite Mr. Critchlow,
Sophia's trustee, and that if Mr. Critchlow were
invited certain others must be invited. Cyril
asked: "Why impossible?" Constance said:
"Because it mould be impossible. Because Mr.
Critchlow would be hurt." Cyril asked: "What
does it matter if he is hurt?" and suggested
that Mr. Critchlow would get over his damage.
Constance grew more serious. The discussion
threatened to be warm. Suddenly Cyril yielded.
"All right, Mrs. Plover, all right! It shall be
exactly as you choose," he said, in a gentle,
humouring tone. He had not called her 'Mrs.
Plover' for years. She thought the hour badly
chosen for verbal pleasantry, but he was so kind
that she made no complaint. Thus there were six
people at Sophia's funeral, including Mr.
Critchlow. No refreshments were offered. The
mourners separated at the church. When both
funerals were accomplished Cyril sat down and
played the harmonium softly, and said that it
had kept well in tune. He was extraordinarily
soothing.
He had now
reached the age of thirty-three. His habits were
as industrious as ever, his preoccupation with
his art as keen. But he had achieved no fame, no
success. He earned nothing, living in comfort on
an allowance from his mother. He seldom spoke of
his plans and never of his hopes. He had in fact
settled down into a dilletante, having learnt
gently to scorn the triumphs which he lacked the
force to win. He imagined that industry and a
regular existence were sufficient justification
in themselves for any man's life. Constance had
dropped the habit of expecting him to astound
the world. He was rather grave and precise in
manner, courteous and tepid, with a touch of
condescension towards his environment; as though
he were continually permitting the perspicacious
to discern that he had nothing to learn—if the
truth were known! His humour had assumed a
modified form. He often smiled to himself. He
was unexceptionable.
On the day
after Sophia's funeral he set to work to design
a simple stone for his aunt's tomb. He said he
could not tolerate the ordinary gravestone,
which always looked, to him, as if the wind
might blow it over, thus negativing the idea of
solidity. His mother did not in the least
understand him. She thought the lettering of his
tombstone affected and finicking. But she let it
pass without comment, being secretly very
flattered that he should have deigned to design
a stone at all.
Sophia had
left all her money to Cyril, and had made him
the sole executor of her will. This arrangement
had been agreed with Constance. The sisters
thought it was the best plan. Cyril ignored Mr.
Critchlow entirely, and went to a young lawyer
at Hanbridge, a friend of his and of Matthew
Peel-Swynnerton's. Mr. Critchlow, aged and
unaccustomed to interference, had to render
accounts of his trusteeship to this young man,
and was incensed. The estate was proved at over
thirty-five thousand pounds. In the main, Sophia
had been careful, and had even been
parsimonious. She had often told Constance that
they ought to spend money much more freely, and
she had had a few brief fits of extravagance.
But the habit of stern thrift, begun in 1870 and
practised without any intermission till she came
to England in 1897, had been too strong for her
theories. The squandering of money pained her.
And she could not, in her age, devise expensive
tastes.
Cyril
showed no emotion whatever on learning himself
the inheritor of thirty-five thousand pounds. He
did not seem to care. He spoke of the sum as a
millionaire might have spoken of it. In justice
to him it is to be said that he cared nothing
for wealth, except in so far as wealth could
gratify his eye and ear trained to artistic
voluptuousness. But, for his mother's sake, and
for the sake of Bursley, he might have affected
a little satisfaction. His mother was somewhat
hurt. His behaviour caused her to revert in
meditation again and again to the futility of
Sophia's career, and the waste of her
attributes. She had grown old and hard in
joyless years in order to amass this money which
Cyril would spend coldly and ungratefully, never
thinking of the immense effort and endless
sacrifice which had gone to its collection. He
would spend it as carelessly as though he had
picked it up in the street. As the days went by
and Constance realized her own grief, she also
realized more and more the completeness of the
tragedy of Sophia's life. Headstrong Sophia had
deceived her mother, and for the deception had
paid with thirty years of melancholy and the
entire frustration of her proper destiny.
After
haunting Bursley for a fortnight in elegant
black, Cyril said, without any warning, one
night: "I must go the day after to- morrow,
mater." And he told her of a journey to Hungary
which he had long since definitely planned with
Matthew Peel-Swynnerton, and which could not be
postponed, as it comprised 'business.' He had
hitherto breathed no word of this. He was as
secretive as ever. As to her holiday, he
suggested that she should arrange to go away
with the Holls and Dick Povey. He approved of
Lily Holl and of Dick Povey. Of Dick Povey he
said: "He's one of the most remarkable chaps in
the Five Towns." And he had the air of having
made Dick's reputation. Constance, knowing there
was no appeal, accepted the sentence of
loneliness. Her health was singularly good.
When he was
gone she said to herself: "Scarcely a fortnight
and Sophia was here at this table!" She would
remember every now and then, with a faint shock,
that poor, proud, masterful Sophia was dead.
CHAPTER V
END OF
CONSTANCE
I
When, on a
June afternoon about twelve months later, Lily
Holl walked into Mrs. Povey's drawing-room
overlooking the Square, she found a calm,
somewhat optimistic old lady—older than her
years— which were little more than sixty—whose
chief enemies were sciatica and rheumatism. The
sciatica was a dear enemy of long standing,
always affectionately referred to by the
forgiving Constance as 'my sciatica'; the
rheumatism was a new-comer, unprivileged, spoken
of by its victim apprehensively and yet
disdainfully as 'this rheumatism.' Constance was
now very stout. She sat in a low easy-chair
between the oval table and the window, arrayed
in black silk. As the girl Lily came in,
Constance lifted her head with a bland smile,
and Lily kissed her, contentedly. Lily knew that
she was a welcome visitor. These two had become
as intimate as the difference between their ages
would permit; of the two, Constance was the more
frank. Lily as well as Constance was in
mourning. A few months previously her aged
grandfather, 'Holl, the grocer,' had died. The
second of his two sons, Lily's father, had then
left the business established by the brothers at
Hanbridge in order to manage, for a time, the
parent business in St. Luke's Square. Alderman
Holl's death had delayed Lily's marriage. Lily
took tea with Constance, or at any rate paid a
call, four or five times a week. She listened to
Constance.
Everybody
considered that Constance had 'come splendidly
through' the dreadful affair of Sophia's death.
Indeed, it was observed that she was more
philosophic, more cheerful, more sweet, than she
had been for many years. The truth was that,
though her bereavement had been the cause of a
most genuine and durable sorrow, it had been a
relief to her. When Constance was over fifty,
the energetic and masterful Sophia had burst in
upon her lethargic tranquillity and very
seriously disturbed the flow of old habits.
Certainly Constance had fought Sophia on the
main point, and won; but on a hundred minor
points she had either lost or had not fought.
Sophia had been 'too much' for Constance, and it
had been only by a wearying expenditure of
nervous force that Constance had succeeded in
holding a small part of her own against the
unconscious domination of Sophia. The death of
Mrs. Scales had put an end to all the strain,
and Constance had been once again mistress in
Constance's house. Constance would never have
admitted these facts, even to herself; and no
one would ever have dared to suggest them to
her. For with all her temperamental mildness she
had her formidable side.
She was
slipping a photograph into a plush-covered
photograph album.
"More
photographs?" Lily questioned. She had almost
exactly the same benignant smile that Constance
had. She seemed to be the personification of
gentleness—one of those feather-beds that some
capricious men occasionally have the luck to
marry. She was capable, with a touch of honest,
simple stupidity. All her character was
displayed in the tone in which she said: "More
photographs?" It showed an eager responsive
sympathy with Constance's cult for photographs,
also a slight personal fondness for photographs,
also a dim perception that a cult for
photographs might be carried to the ridiculous,
and a kind desire to hide all trace of this
perception. The voice was thin, and matched the
pale complexion of her delicate face.
Constance's
eyes had a quizzical gleam behind her spectacles
as she silently held up the photograph for
Lily's inspection.
Lily,
sitting down, lowered the corners of her soft
lips when she beheld the photograph, and nodded
her head several times, scarce perceptibly.
"Her
ladyship has just given it to me," whispered
Constance.
"Indeed!"
said Lily, with an extraordinary accent.
'Her
ladyship' was the last and best of Constance's
servants, a really excellent creature of thirty,
who had known misfortune, and who must assuredly
have been sent to Constance by the old watchful
Providence. They 'got on together' nearly
perfectly. Her name was Mary. After ten years of
turmoil, Constance in the matter of servants was
now at rest.
"Yes," said
Constance. "She's named it to me several
times—about having her photograph taken, and
last week I let her go. I told you, didn't I? I
always consider her in every way, all her little
fancies and everything. And the copies came
to-day. I wouldn't hurt her feelings for
anything. You may be sure she'll take a look
into the album next time she cleans the room."
Constance
and Lily exchanged a glance agreeing that
Constance had affably stretched a point in
deciding to put the photograph of a servant
between the same covers with photographs of her
family and friends. It was doubtful whether such
a thing had ever been done before.
One
photograph usually leads to another, and one
photograph album to another photograph album.
"Pass me
that album on the second shelf of the
Canterbury; my dear," said Constance.
Lily rose
vivaciously, as though to see the album on the
second shelf of the Canterbury had been the
ambition of her life.
They sat
side by side at the table, Lily turning over the
pages. Constance, for all her vast bulk,
continually made little nervous movements.
Occasionally she would sniff and occasionally a
mysterious noise would occur in her chest; she
always pretended that this noise was a cough,
and would support the pretence by emitting a
real cough immediately after it.
"Why!"
exclaimed Lily. "Have I seen that before?" "I
don't know, my dear," said Constance. "HAVE
you?"
It was a
photograph of Sophia taken a few years
previously by 'a very nice gentleman,' whose
acquaintance the sisters had made during a
holiday at Harrogate. It portrayed Sophia on a
knoll, fronting the weather.
"It's Mrs.
Scales to the life—I can see that," said Lily.
"Yes," said
Constance. "Whenever there was a wind she always
stood like that, and took long deep breaths of
it."
This
recollection of one of Sophia's habits recalled
the whole woman to Constance's memory, and drew
a picture of her character for the girl who had
scarcely known her.
"It's not
like ordinary photographs. There's something
special about it," said Lily, enthusiastically.
"I don't think I ever saw a photograph like
that."
"I've got
another copy of it in my bedroom," said
Constance. "I'll give you this one."
"Oh, Mrs.
Povey! I couldn't think—!"
"Yes, yes!"
said Constance, removing the photograph from the
page.
"Oh, THANK
you!" said Lily.
"And that
reminds me," said Constance, getting up with
great difficulty from her chair.
"Can I find
anything for you?" Lily asked.
"No, no!"
said Constance, leaving the room.
She
returned in a moment with her jewel-box, a
receptacle of ebony with ivory ornamentations.
"I've
always meant to give you this," said Constance,
taking from the box a fine cameo brooch. "I
don't seem to fancy wearing it myself. And I
should like to see you wearing it. It was
mother's. I believe they're coming into fashion
again. I don't see why you shouldn't wear it
while you're in mourning. They aren't half so
strict now about mourning as they used to be."
"Truly!"
murmured Lily, ecstatically. They kissed.
Constance seemed to breathe out benevolence, as
with trembling hands she pinned the brooch at
Lily's neck. She lavished the warm treasure of
her heart on Lily, whom she regarded as an
almost perfect girl, and who had become the idol
of her latter years.
"What a
magnificent old watch!" said Lily, as they
delved together in the lower recesses of the
box. "AND the chain to it!"
"That was
father's," said Constance. "He always used to
swear by it. When it didn't agree with the Town
Hall, he used to say: 'Then th' Town Hall's
wrong.' And it's curious, the Town Hall WAS
wrong. You know the Town Hall clock has never
been a good timekeeper. I've been thinking of
giving that watch and chain to Dick."
"HAVE you?"
said Lily.
"Yes. It's
just as good as it was when father wore it. My
husband never would wear it. He preferred his
own. He had little fancies like that. And Cyril
takes after his father." She spoke in her 'dry'
tone. "I've almost decided to give it to
Dick—that is, if he behaves himself. Is he still
on with this ballooning?"
Lily Smiled
guiltily: "Oh yes!"
"Well,"
said Constance, "I never heard the like! If he's
been up and come down safely, that ought to be
enough for him. I wonder you let him do it, my
dear."
"But how
can I stop him? I've no control over him."
"But do you
mean to say that he'd still do it if you told
him seriously you didn't want him to?"
"Yes," said
Lily; and added: "So I shan't tell him."
Constance
nodded her head, musing over the secret nature
of men. She remembered too well the cruel
obstinacy of Samuel, who had nevertheless loved
her. And Dick Povey was a thousand times more
bizarre than Samuel. She saw him vividly, a
little boy, whizzing down King Street on a
boneshaker, and his cap flying off. Afterwards
it had been motor-cars! Now it was balloons! She
sighed. She was struck by the profound
instinctive wisdom just enunciated by the girl.
"Well," she
said, "I shall see. I've not made up my mind
yet.
What's the young man doing this afternoon, by
the way?"
"He's gone
to Birmingham to try to sell two motor-lorries.
He won't be back home till late. He's coming
over here to-morrow."
It was an
excellent illustration of Dick Povey's methods
that at this very moment Lily heard in the
Square the sound of a motor- car, which happened
to be Dick's car. She sprang up to look.
"Why!" she
cried, flushing. "Here he is now!"
"Bless us,
bless us!" muttered Constance, closing the box.
When Dick,
having left his car in King Street, limped
tempestuously into the drawing-room, galvanizing
it by his abundant vitality into a new life, he
cried joyously: "Sold my lorries! Sold my
lorries!" And he explained that by a charming
accident he had disposed of them to a chance
buyer in Hanbridge, just before starting for
Birmingham. So he had telephoned to Birmingham
that the matter was 'off,' and then, being 'at a
loose end,' he had come over to Bursley in
search of his betrothed. At Holl's shop they had
told him that she was with Mrs. Povey. Constance
glanced at him, impressed by his jolly air of
success. He seemed exactly like his breezy and
self-confident advertisements in the Signal. He
was absolutely pleased with himself. He
triumphed over his limp—that ever-present
reminder of a tragedy. Who would dream, to look
at his blond, laughing, scintillating face,
astonishingly young for his years, that he had
once passed through such a night as that on
which his father had killed his mother while he
lay immovable and cursing, with a broken knee,
in bed? Constance had heard all about that scene
from her husband, and she paused in wonder at
the contrasting hazards of existence.
Dick Povey
brought his hands together with a resounding
smack, and then rubbed them rapidly.
"AND a good
price, too!" he exclaimed blithely. "Mrs. Povey,
I don't mind telling you that I've netted
seventy pounds odd this afternoon."
Lily's eyes
expressed her proud joy.
"I hope
pride won't have a fall," said Constance, with a
calm smile out of which peeped a hint of a
rebuke. "That's what I hope. I must just go and
see about tea."
"I can't
stay for tea—really," said Dick.
"Of course
you can," said Constance, positively. "Suppose
you'd been at Birmingham? It's weeks since you
stayed to tea."
"Oh, well,
thanks!" Dick yielded, rather snubbed.
"Can't I
save you a journey, Mrs. Povey?" Lily asked,
eagerly thoughtful.
"No, thank
you, my dear. There are one or two little things
that need my attention." And Constance departed
with her jewel-box.
Dick,
having assured himself that the door was closed,
assaulted
Lily with a kiss.
"Been here
long?" he inquired.
"About an
hour and a half."
"Glad to
see me?"
"Oh, Dick!"
she protested.
"Old lady's
in one of her humours, eh?"
"No, no!
Only she was just talking about balloons—you
know. She's very much up in arms."
"You ought
to keep her off balloons. Balloons may be the
ruin of her wedding-present to us, my child."
"Dick! How
can you talk like that? … It's all very well
saying I ought to keep her off balloons. You try
to keep her off balloons when once she begins,
and see!"
"What
started her?"
"She said
she was thinking of giving you old Mr. Baines's
gold watch and chain—if you behaved yourself."
"Thank you
for nothing!" said Dick. "I don't want it."
"Have you
seen it?"
"Have I
seen it? I should say I had seen it. She's
mentioned it once or twice before."
"Oh! I
didn't know."
"I don't
see myself carting that thing about. I much
prefer my own. What do you think of it?"
"Of course
it is rather clumsy," said Lily. "But if she
offered it to you, you couldn't refuse it, and
you'd simply have to wear it."
"Well,
then," said Dick, "I must try to behave myself
just badly enough to keep off the watch, but not
badly enough to upset her notions about
wedding-presents."
"Poor old
thing!" Lily murmured, compassionately.
Then Lily
put her hand silently to her neck.
"What's
that?"
"She's just
given it to me."
Dick
approached very near to examine the cameo
brooch. "Hm!" he murmured. It was an adverse
verdict. And Lily coincided with it by a lift of
the eyebrows.
"And I
suppose you'll have to wear that!" said Dick.
"She values
it as much as anything she's got, poor old
thing!" said Lily. "It belonged to her mother.
And she says cameos are coming into fashion
again. It really is rather good, you know."
"I wonder
where she learnt that!" said Dick, drily. "I see
you've been suffering from the photographs
again."
"Well,"
said Lily, "I much prefer the photographs to
helping her to play Patience. The way she cheats
herself—it's too silly! I—"
She
stopped. The door which had after all not been
latched, was pushed open, and the antique
Fossette introduced herself painfully into the
room. Fossette had an affection for Dick Povey.
"Well,
Methusaleh!" he greeted the animal loudly. She
could scarcely wag her tail, nor shake the hair
out of her dim eyes in order to look up at him.
He stooped to pat her.
"That dog
does smell," said Lily, bluntly.
"What do
you expect? What she wants is the least dose of
prussic acid. She's a burden to herself."
"It's funny
that if you venture to hint to Mrs. Povey that
the dog is offensive she gets quite peppery,"
said Lily.
"Well,
that's very simple," said Dick. "Don't hint,
that's all!
Hold your nose and your tongue too."
"Dick, I do
wish you wouldn't be so absurd."
Constance
returned into the room, cutting short the
conversation.
"Mrs.
Povey," said Dick, in a voice full of gratitude,
"Lily has just been showing me her brooch—"
He noticed
that she paid no heed to him, but passed
hurriedly to the window.
"What's
amiss in the Square?" Constance exclaimed. "When
I was in the parlour just now I saw a man
running along Wedgwood Street, and I said to
myself, what's amiss?"
Dick and
Lily joined her at the window.
Several
people were hurrying down the Square, and then a
man came running with a doctor from the
market-place. All these persons disappeared from
view under the window of Mrs. Povey's drawing-
room, which was over part of Mrs. Critchlow's
shop. As the windows of the shop projected
beyond the walls of the house it was impossible,
from the drawing-room window, to see the
pavement in front of the shop.
"It must be
something on the pavement—or in the shop!"
murmured
Constance.
"Oh,
ma'am!" said a startled voice behind the three.
It was Mary, original of the photograph, who had
run unperceived into the drawing-room. "They say
as Mrs. Critchlow has tried to commit suicide!"
Constance
started back. Lily went towards her, with an
instinctive gesture of supporting consolation.
"Maria
Critchlow tried to commit suicide!" Constance
muttered.
"Yes,
ma'am! But they say she's not done it."
"By Jove!
I'd better go and see if I can help, hadn't I?"
cried Dick Povey, hobbling off, excited and
speedy. "Strange, isn't it?" he exclaimed
afterwards, "how I manage to come in for things?
Sheer chance that I was here to-day! But it's
always like that! Somehow something
extraordinary is always happening where I am."
And this too ministered to his satisfaction, and
to his zest for life.
II
When, in
the evening, after all sorts of comings and
goings, he finally returned to the old lady and
the young one, in order to report the upshot,
his demeanour was suitably toned to Constance's
mood. The old lady had been very deeply
disturbed by the tragedy, which, as she said,
had passed under her very feet while she was
calmly talking to Lily.
The whole
truth came out in a short space of time. Mrs.
Critchlow was suffering from melancholia. It
appeared that for long she had been depressed by
the failing trade of the shop, which was none of
her fault. The state of the Square had steadily
deteriorated. Even the 'Vaults' were not what
they once were. Four or five shops had been shut
up, as it were definitely, the landlords having
given up hope of discovering serious tenants.
And, of those kept open, the majority were
struggling desperately to make ends meet. Only
Holl's and a new upstart draper, who had widely
advertised his dress-making department, were
really flourishing. The confectionery half of
Mr. Brindley's business was disappearing. People
would not go to Hanbridge for their bread or for
their groceries, but they would go for their
cakes. These electric trams had simply carried
to Hanbridge the cream, and much of the milk, of
Bursley's retail trade. There were unprincipled
tradesmen in Hanbridge ready to pay the
car-fares of any customer who spent a crown in
their establishments. Hanbridge was the
geographical centre of the Five Towns, and it
was alive to its situation. Useless for Bursley
to compete! If Mrs. Critchlow had been a
philosopher, if she had known that geography had
always made history, she would have given up her
enterprise a dozen years ago. But Mrs. Critchlow
was merely Maria Insull. She had seen Baines's
in its magnificent prime, when Baines's almost
conferred a favour on customers in serving them.
At the time when she took over the business
under the wing of her husband, it was still a
good business. But from that instant the tide
had seemed to turn. She had fought, and she kept
on fighting, stupidly. She was not aware that
she was fighting against evolution, not aware
that evolution had chosen her for one of its
victims! She could understand that all the other
shops in the Square should fail, but not that
Baines's should fail! She was as industrious as
ever, as good a buyer, as good a seller, as keen
for novelties, as economical, as methodical! And
yet the returns dropped and dropped.
She
naturally had no sympathy from Charles, who now
took small interest even in his own business, or
what was left of it, and who was coldly
disgusted at the ultimate cost of his marriage.
Charles gave her no money that he could avoid
giving her. The crisis had been slowly
approaching for years. The assistants in the
shop had said nothing, or had only whispered
among themselves, but now that the crisis had
flowered suddenly in an attempted self-murder,
they all spoke at once, and the evidences were
pieced together into a formidable proof of the
strain which Mrs. Critchlow had suffered. It
appeared that for many months she had been
depressed and irritable, that sometimes she
would sit down in the midst of work and declare,
with every sign of exhaustion, that she could do
no more. Then with equal briskness she would
arise and force herself to labour. She did not
sleep for whole nights. One assistant related
how she had complained of having had no sleep
whatever for four nights consecutively. She had
noises in the ears and a chronic headache. Never
very plump, she had grown thinner and thinner.
And she was for ever taking pills: this
information came from Charles's manager. She had
had several outrageous quarrels with the
redoubtable Charles, to the stupefaction of all
who heard or saw them. … Mrs. Critchlow standing
up to her husband! Another strange thing was
that she thought the bills of several of the big
Manchester firms were unpaid, when as a fact
they had been paid. Even when shown the receipts
she would not be convinced, though she pretended
to be convinced. She would recommence the next
day. All this was sufficiently disconcerting for
female assistants in the drapery. But what could
they do?
Then Maria
Critchlow had gone a step further. She had
summoned the eldest assistant to her corner and
had informed her, with all the solemnity of a
confession made to assuage a conscience which
has been tortured too long, that she had on many
occasions been guilty of sexual irregularity
with her late employer, Samuel Povey. There was
no truth whatever in this accusation (which
everybody, however, took care not to mention to
Constance); it merely indicated, perhaps, the
secret aspirations of Maria Insull, the virgin.
The assistant was properly scandalized, more by
the crudity of Mrs. Critchlow's language than by
the alleged sin buried in the past. Goodness
knows what the assistant would have done! But
two hours later Maria Critchlow tried to commit
suicide by stabbing herself with a pair of
scissors. There was blood in the shop.
With as
little delay as possible she had been driven
away to the asylum. Charles Critchlow, enveloped
safely in the armour of his senile egotism, had
shown no emotion, and very little activity. The
shop was closed. And as a general draper's it
never opened again. That was the end of
Baines's. Two assistants found themselves
without a livelihood. The small tumble with the
great.
Constance's
emotion was more than pardonable; it was
justified. She could not eat and Lily could not
persuade her to eat. In an unhappy moment Dick
Povey mentioned—he never could remember how,
afterwards—the word Federation! And then
Constance, from a passive figure of grief became
a menace. She overwhelmed Dick Povey with her
anathema of Federation, for Dick was a citizen
of Hanbridge, where this detestable movement for
Federation had had its birth. All the
misfortunes of St. Luke's Square were due to
that great, busy, grasping, unscrupulous
neighbour. Had not Hanbridge done enough,
without wanting to merge all the Five Towns into
one town, of which of course itself would be the
centre? For Constance, Hanbridge was a borough
of unprincipled adventurers, bent on ruining the
ancient 'Mother of the Five Towns' for its own
glory and aggrandizement. Let Constance hear no
more of Federation! Her poor sister Sophia had
been dead against Federation, and she had been
quite right! All really respectable people were
against it! The attempted suicide of Mrs.
Critchlow sealed the fate of Federation and
damned it for ever, in Constance's mind. Her
hatred of the idea of it was intensified into
violent animosity; insomuch that in the result
she died a martyr to the cause of Bursley's
municipal independence.
III
It was on a
muddy day in October that the first great battle
for and against Federation was fought in
Bursley. Constance was suffering severely from
sciatica. She was also suffering from disgust
with the modern world.
Unimaginable things had happened in the Square.
For Constance, the reputation of the Square was
eternally ruined. Charles Critchlow, by that
strange good fortune which always put him in the
right when fairly he ought to have been in the
wrong, had let the Baines shop and his own shop
and house to the Midland Clothiers Company,
which was establishing branches throughout
Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, and
adjacent counties. He had sold his own chemist's
stock and gone to live in a little house at the
bottom of Kingstreet. It is doubtful whether he
would have consented to retire had not Alderman
Holl died earlier in the year, thus ending a
long rivalry between the old men for the
patriarchate of the Square. Charles Critchlow
was as free from sentiment as any man, but no
man is quite free from it, and the ancient was
in a position to indulge sentiment had he
chosen. His business was not a source of loss,
and he could still trust his skinny hands and
peering eyes to make up a prescription. However,
the offer of the Midland Clothiers Company
tempted him, and as the undisputed 'father' of
the Square he left the Square in triumph.
The Midland
Clothiers Company had no sense of the
proprieties of trade. Their sole idea was to
sell goods. Having possessed themselves of one
of the finest sites in a town which, after all
was said and done, comprised nearly forty
thousand inhabitants, they set about to make the
best of that site. They threw the two shops into
one, and they caused to be constructed a sign
compared to which the spacious old 'Baines' sign
was a postcard. They covered the entire frontage
with posters of a theatrical
description—coloured posters! They occupied the
front page of the Signal, and from that pulpit
they announced that winter was approaching, and
that they meant to sell ten thousand overcoats
at their new shop in Bursley at the price of
twelve and sixpence each. The tailoring of the
world was loudly and coarsely defied to equal
the value of those overcoats. On the day of
opening they arranged an orchestra or artillery
of phonographs upon the leads over the window of
that part of the shop which had been Mr.
Critchlow's. They also carpeted the Square with
handbills, and flew flags from their upper
storeys. The immense shop proved to be full of
overcoats; overcoats were shown in all the three
great windows; in one window an overcoat was
disposed as a receptacle for water, to prove
that the Midland twelve-and-sixpenny overcoats
were impermeable by rain. Overcoats flapped in
the two doorways. These devices woke and drew
the town, and the town found itself received by
bustling male assistants very energetic and
rapid, instead of by demure anaemic virgins. At
moments towards evening the shop was populous
with custom; the number of overcoats sold was
prodigious. On another day the Midland sold
trousers in a like manner, but without the
phonographs. Unmistakably the Midland had shaken
the Square and demonstrated that commerce was
still possible to fearless enterprise.
Nevertheless the Square was not pleased. The
Square was conscious of shame, of dignity
departed. Constance was divided between pain and
scornful wrath. For her, what the Midland had
done was to desecrate a shrine. She hated those
flags, and those flaring, staring posters on the
honest old brick walls, and the enormous gilded
sign, and the windows all filled with a
monotonous repetition of the same article, and
the bustling assistants. As for the phonographs,
she regarded them as a grave insult; they had
been within twenty feet of her drawing-room
window! Twelve-and- sixpenny overcoats! It was
monstrous, and equally monstrous was the
gullibility of the people. How could an overcoat
at twelve and sixpence be 'good.' She remembered
the overcoats made and sold in the shop in the
time of her father and her husband, overcoats of
which the inconvenience was that they would not
wear out! The Midland, for Constance, was not a
trading concern, but something between a
cheap-jack and a circus. She could scarcely bear
to walk down the Square, to such a degree did
the ignoble frontage of the Midland offend her
eye and outrage her ancestral pride. She even
said that she would give up her house.
But when,
on the twenty-ninth of September, she received
six months' notice, signed in Critchlow's shaky
hand, to quit the house—it was wanted for the
Midland's manager, the Midland having taken the
premises on condition that they might eject
Constance if they chose—the blow was an
exceedingly severe one. She had sworn to go—but
to be turned out, to be turned out of the house
of her birth and out of her father's home, that
was different! Her pride, injured as it was, had
a great deal to support. It became necessary for
her to recollect that she was a Baines. She
affected magnificently not to care. But she
could not refrain from telling all her
acquaintances that she was being turned out of
her house, and asking them what they thought of
THAT; and when she met Charles Critchlow in the
street she seared him with the heat of her
resentment. The enterprise of finding a new
house and moving into it loomed before her
gigantic, terrible, the idea of it was alone
sufficient to make her ill.
Meanwhile,
in the matter of Federation, preparations for
the pitched battle had been going forward,
especially in the columns of the Signal, where
the scribes of each one of the Five Towns had
proved that all the other towns were in the
clutch of unscrupulous gangs of self-seekers.
After months of argument and recrimination, all
the towns except Bursley were either favourable
or indifferent to the prospect of becoming a
part of the twelfth largest town in the United
Kingdom. But in Bursley the opposition was
strong, and the twelfth largest town in the
United Kingdom could not spring into existence
without the consent of Bursley. The United
Kingdom itself was languidly interested in the
possibility of suddenly being endowed with a new
town of a quarter of a million inhabitants. The
Five Towns were frequently mentioned in the
London dailies, and London journalists would
write such sentences as: "The Five Towns, which
are of course, as everybody knows, Hanbridge,
Bursley, Knype, Longshaw, and Turnhill … ." This
was renown at last, for the most maligned
district in the country! And then a Cabinet
Minister had visited the Five Towns, and
assisted at an official inquiry, and stated in
his hammering style that he meant personally to
do everything possible to accomplish the
Federation of the Five Towns: an incautious
remark, which infuriated, while it flattered,
the opponents of Federation in Bursley.
Constance, with many other sensitive persons,
asked angrily what right a Cabinet Minister had
to take sides in a purely local affair. But the
partiality of the official world grew flagrant.
The Mayor of Bursley openly proclaimed himself a
Federationist, though there was a majority on
the Council against him. Even ministers of
religion permitted themselves to think and to
express opinions. Well might the indignant Old
Guard imagine that the end of public decency had
come! The Federationists were very ingenious
individuals. They contrived to enrol in their
ranks a vast number of leading men. Then they
hired the Covered Market, and put a platform in
it, and put all these leading men on the
platform, and made them all speak eloquently on
the advantages of moving with the times. The
meeting was crowded and enthusiastic, and
readers of the Signal next day could not but see
that the battle was won in advance, and that
anti-Federation was dead. In the following week,
however, the anti-Federationists held in the
Covered Market an exactly similar meeting
(except that the display of leading men was less
brilliant), and demanded of a floor of serried
heads whether the old Mother of the Five Towns
was prepared to put herself into the hands of a
crew of highly-paid bureaucrats at Hanbridge,
and was answered by a wild defiant "No," that
could be heard on Duck Bank. Readers of the
Signal next day were fain to see that the battle
had not been won in advance. Bursley was
lukewarm on the topics of education, slums,
water, gas, electricity. But it meant to fight
for that mysterious thing, its identity. Was the
name of Bursley to be lost to the world? To ask
the question was to give the answer.
Then dawned
the day of battle, the day of the Poll, when the
burgesses were to indicate plainly by means of a
cross on a voting paper whether or not they
wanted Federation. And on this day Constance was
almost incapacitated by sciatica. It was a
heroic day. The walls of the town were covered
with literature, and the streets dotted with
motor-cars and other vehicles at the service of
the voters. The greater number of these vehicles
bore large cards with the words, "Federation
this time." And hundreds of men walked briskly
about with circular cards tied to their lapels,
as though Bursley had been a race-course, and
these cards too had the words, "Federation this
time." (The reference was to a light poll which
had been taken several years before, when no
interest had been aroused and the immature
project yet defeated by a six to one majority.)
All partisans of Federation sported a red
ribbon; all Anti-Federationists sported a blue
ribbon. The schools were closed and the
Federationists displayed their characteristic
lack of scruple in appropriating the children.
The Federationists, with devilish skill, had
hired the Bursley Town Silver Prize Band, an
organization of terrific respectability, and had
set it to march playing through the town
followed by wagonettes crammed with children,
who sang:
Vote, vote,
vote for Federation, Don't be stupid, old and
slow, We are sure that it will be Good for the
communitie, So vote, vote, vote, and make it go.
How this
performance could affect the decision of grave
burgesses at the polls was not apparent; but the
Anti-Federationists feared that it might, and
before noon was come they had engaged two bands
and had composed in committee, the following
lyric in reply to the first one:
Down, down,
down, with Federation, As we are we'd rather
stay;
When the vote on Saturday's read Federation will
be dead, Good old
Bursley's sure to win the day.
They had
also composed another song, entitled "Dear old
Bursley," which, however, they made the fatal
error of setting to the music of "Auld Lang
Syne." The effect was that of a dirge, and it
perhaps influenced many voters in favour of the
more cheerful party. The Anti-Federationists,
indeed, never regained the mean advantage
filched by unscrupulous Federationists with the
help of the Silver Prize Band and a few hundred
infants. The odds were against the
Anti-Federationists. The mayor had actually
issued a letter to the inhabitants accusing the
Anti-Federationists of unfair methods! This was
really too much! The impudence of it knocked the
breath out of its victims, and breath is very
necessary in a polling contest. The
Federationists, as one of their prominent
opponents admitted, 'had it all their own way,'
dominating both the streets and the walls. And
when, early in the afternoon, Mr. Dick Povey
sailed over the town in a balloon that was
plainly decorated with the crimson of
Federation, it was felt that the cause of
Bursley's separate identity was for ever lost.
Still, Bursley, with the willing aid of the
public-houses, maintained its gaiety.
IV
Towards
dusk a stout old lady, with grey hair, and a
dowdy bonnet, and an expensive mantle, passed
limping, very slowly, along Wedgwood Street and
up the Cock Yard towards the Town Hall. Her
wrinkled face had an anxious look, but it was
also very determined. The busy, joyous
Federationists and Anti- Federationists who knew
her not saw merely a stout old lady fussing
forth, and those who knew her saw merely Mrs.
Povey and greeted her perfunctorily, a woman of
her age and gait being rather out of place in
that feverish altercation of opposed principles.
But it was more than a stout old lady, it was
more than Mrs. Povey. that waddled with such
painful deliberation through the streets—it was
a miracle.
In the
morning Constance had been partially
incapacitated by her sciatica; so much so, at
any rate, that she had perceived the
advisability of remaining on the bedroom floor
instead of descending to the parlour. Therefore
Mary had lighted the drawing- room fire, and
Constance had ensconced herself by it, with
Fossette in a basket. Lily Holl had called
early, and had been very sympathetic, but rather
vague. The truth was that she was concealing the
imminent balloon ascent which Dick Povey, with
his instinct for the picturesque, had somehow
arranged, in conjunction with a well-known
Manchester aeronaut, for the very day of the
poll. That was one of various matters that had
to be 'kept from' the old lady. Lily herself was
much perturbed about the balloon ascent. She had
to run off and see Dick before he started, at
the Football Ground at Bleakridge, and then she
had to live through the hours till she should
receive a telegram to the effect that Dick had
come down safely or that Dick had broken his leg
in coming down, or that Dick was dead. It was a
trying time for Lily. She had left Constance
after a brief visit, with a preoccupied unusual
air, saying that as the day was a special day,
she should come in again 'if she could.' And she
did not forget to assure Constance that
Federation would beyond any question whatever be
handsomely beaten at the poll; for this was
another matter as to which it was deemed
advisable to keep the old lady 'in the dark,'
lest the foolish old lady should worry and
commit indiscretions.
After that
Constance had been forgotten by the world of
Bursley, which could pay small heed to sciatical
old ladies confined to sofas and firesides. She
was in acute pain, as Mary could see when at
intervals she hovered round her. Assuredly it
was one of Constance's bad days, one of those
days on which she felt that the tide of life had
left her stranded in utter neglect. The sound of
the Bursley Town Silver Prize Band aroused her
from her mournful trance of suffering. Then the
high treble of children's voices startled her.
She defied her sciatica, and, grimacing, went to
the window. And at the first glimpse she could
see that the Federation Poll was going to be a
much more exciting affair than she had imagined.
The great cards swinging from the wagonettes
showed her that Federation was at all events
still sufficiently alive to make a formidable
impression on the eye and the ear. The Square
was transformed by this clamour in favour of
Federation; people cheered, and sang also, as
the procession wound down the Square. And she
could distinctly catch the tramping, martial
syllables, "Vote, vote, vote." She was
indignant. The pother, once begun, continued.
Vehicles flashed frequently across the Square,
most of them in the crimson livery. Little knots
and processions of excited wayfarers were a
recurring feature of the unaccustomed traffic,
and the large majority of them flaunted the
colours of Federation. Mary, after some errands
of shopping, came upstairs and reported that 'it
was simply "Federation" everywhere,' and that
Mr. Brindley, a strong Federationist, was 'above
a bit above himself'; further, that the interest
in the poll was tremendous and universal. She
said there were 'crowds and crowds' round the
Town Hall. Even Mary, generally a little placid
and dull, had caught something of the contagious
vivacity.
Constance
remained at the window till dinner, and after
dinner she went to it again. It was fortunate
that she did not think of looking up into the
sky when Dick's balloon sailed westwards; she
would have guessed instantly that Dick was in
that balloon, and her grievances would have been
multiplied. The vast grievance of the Federation
scheme weighed on her to the extremity of her
power to bear. She was not a politician; she had
no general ideas; she did not see the cosmic
movement in large curves. She was incapable of
perceiving the absurdity involved in
perpetuating municipal divisions which the
growth of the district had rendered artificial,
vexatious, and harmful. She saw nothing but
Bursley, and in Bursley nothing but the Square.
She knew nothing except that the people of
Bursley, who once shopped in Bursley, now
shopped in Hanbridge, and that the Square was a
desert infested by cheap-jacks. And there were
actually people who wished to bow the neck to
Hanbridge, who were ready to sacrifice the very
name of Bursley to the greedy humour of that
pushing Chicago! She could not understand such
people. Did they know that poor Maria Critchlow
was in a lunatic asylum because Hanbridge was so
grasping? Ah, poor Maria was al-ready forgotten!
Did they know that, as a further indirect
consequence, she, the daughter of Bursley's
chief tradesman, was to be thrown out of the
house in which she was born? She wished,
bitterly, as she stood there at the window,
watching the triumph of Federation, that she had
bought the house and shop at the Mericarp sale
years ago. She would have shown them, as owner,
what was what! She forgot that the property
which she already owned in Bursley was a
continual annoyance to her, and that she was
always resolving to sell it at no matter what
loss.
She said to
herself that she had a vote, and that if she had
been 'at all fit to stir out' she would
certainly have voted. She said to herself that
it had been her duty to vote. And then by an
illusion of her wrought nerves, tightened minute
by minute throughout the day, she began to fancy
that her sciatica was easier. She said: "If only
I could go out!" She might have a cab, of any of
the parading vehicles would be glad to take her
to the Town Hall, and, perhaps, as a favour, to
bring her back again. But no! She dared not go
out. She was afraid, really afraid that even the
mild Mary might stop her. Otherwise, she could
have sent Mary for a cab. And supposing that
Lily returned, and caught her going out or
coming in! She ought not to go out. Yet her
sciatica was strangely better. It was folly to
think of going out. Yet …! And Lily did not
come. She was rather hurt that Lily had not paid
her a second visit. Lily was neglecting her. …
She would go out. It was not four minutes' walk
for her to the Town Hall, and she was better.
And there had been no shower for a long time,
and the wind was drying the mud in the roadways.
Yes, she would go.
Like a
thief she passed into her bedroom and put on her
things; and like a thief she crept downstairs,
and so, without a word to Mary, into the street.
It was a desperate adventure. As soon as she was
in the street she felt all her weakness, all the
fatigue which the effort had already cost her.
The pain returned. The streets were still wet
and foul, the wind cold, and the sky menacing.
She ought to go back. She ought to admit that
she had been a fool to dream of the enterprise.
The Town Hall seemed to be miles off, at the top
of a mountain. She went forward, however,
steeled to do her share in the killing of
Federation. Every step caused her a gnashing of
her old teeth. She chose the Cock Yard route,
because if she had gone up the Square she would
have had to pass Holl's shop, and Lily might
have spied her.
This was
the miracle that breezy politicians witnessed
without being aware that it was a miracle. To
have impressed them, Constance ought to have
fainted before recording her vote, and made
herself the centre of a crowd of gapers. But she
managed, somehow, to reach home again on her own
tortured feet, and an astounded and protesting
Mary opened the door to her. Rain was
descending. She was frightened, then, by the
hardihood of her adventure, and by its atrocious
results on her body. An appalling exhaustion
rendered her helpless. But the deed was done.
V
The next
morning, after a night which she could not have
described, Constance found herself lying flat in
bed, with all her limbs stretched out straight.
She was conscious that her face was covered with
perspiration. The bell-rope hung within a foot
of her head, but she had decided that, rather
than move in order to pull it, she would prefer
to wait for assistance until Mary came of her
own accord. Her experiences of the night had
given her a dread of the slightest movement;
anything was better than movement. She felt
vaguely ill, with a kind of subdued pain, and
she was very thirsty and somewhat cold. She knew
that her left arm and leg were extraordinarily
tender to the touch. When Mary at length
entered, clean and fresh and pale in all her
mildness, she found the mistress the colour of a
duck's egg, with puffed features, and a
strangely anxious expression.
"Mary,"
said Constance, "I feel so queer. Perhaps you'd
better run up and tell Miss Holl, and ask her to
telephone for Dr. Stirling."
This was
the beginning of Constance's last illness. Mary
most impressively informed Miss Holl that her
mistress had been out on the previous afternoon
in spite of her sciatica, and Lily telephoned
the fact to the Doctor. Lily then came down to
take charge of Constance. But she dared not
upbraid the invalid.
"Is the
result out?" Constance murmured.
"Oh yes,"
said Lily, lightly. "There's a majority of over
twelve hundred against Federation. Great
excitement last night! I told you yesterday
morning that Federation was bound to be beaten."
Lily spoke
as though the result throughout had been a
certainty; her tone to Constance indicated:
"Surely you don't imagine that I should have
told you untruths yesterday morning merely to
cheer you up!" The truth was, however, that
towards the end of the day nearly every one had
believed Federation to be carried. The result
had caused great surprise. Only the profoundest
philosophers had not been surprised to see that
the mere blind, deaf, inert forces of reaction,
with faulty organization, and quite deprived of
the aid of logic, had proved far stronger than
all the alert enthusiasm arrayed against them.
It was a notable lesson to reformers.
"Oh!"
murmured Constance, startled. She was relieved;
but she would have liked the majority to be
smaller. Moreover, her interest in the question
had lessened. It was her limbs that pre-
occupied her now.
"You look
tired," she said feebly to Lily.
"Do I?"
said Lily, shortly, hiding the fact that she had
spent half the night in tending Dick Povey, who,
in a sensational descent near Macclesfield, had
been dragged through the tops of a row of elm
trees to the detriment of an elbow-joint; the
professional aeronaut had broken a leg.
Then Dr.
Stirling came.
"I'm afraid
my sciatica's worse, Doctor," said Constance,
apologetically.
"Did you
expect it to be better?" said he, gazing at her
sternly. She knew then that some one had saved
her the trouble of confessing her escapade.
However,
her sciatica was not worse. Her sciatica had not
behaved basely. What she was suffering from was
the preliminary advances of an attack of acute
rheumatism. She had indeed selected the right
month and weather for her escapade! Fatigued by
pain, by nervous agitation, and by the immense
moral and physical effort needed to carry her to
the Town Hall and back, she had caught a chill,
and had got her feet damp. In such a subject as
herself it was enough. The doctor used only the
phrase 'acute rheumatism.' Constance did not
know that acute rheumatism was precisely the
same thing as that dread disease, rheumatic
fever, and she was not informed. She did not
surmise for a considerable period that her case
was desperately serious. The doctor explained
the summoning of two nurses, and the frequency
of his own visits, by saying that his chief
anxiety was to minimise the fearful pain as much
as possible, and that this end could only be
secured by incessant watchfulness. The pain was
certainly formidable. But then Constance was
well habituated to formidable pain. Sciatica, at
its most active, cannot be surpassed even by
rheumatic fever. Constance had been in nearly
continuous pain for years. Her friends, however
sympathetic, could not appreciate the intensity
of her torture. They were just as used to it as
she was. And the monotony and particularity of
her complaints (slight though the complaints
were in comparison with their cause) necessarily
blunted the edge of compassion. "Mrs. Povey and
her sciatica again! Poor thing, she really is a
little tedious!" They were apt not to realise
that sciatica is even more tedious than
complaints about sciatica.
She asked
one day that Dick should come to see her. He
came with his arm in a sling, and told her
charily that he had hurt his elbow through
dropping his stick and slipping downstairs.
"Lily never
told me," said Constance, suspiciously.
"Oh, it's
simply nothing!" said Dick. Not even the sick
room could chasten him of his joy in the
magnificent balloon adventure.
"I do hope
you won't go running any risks!" said Constance.
"Never you
fear!" said he. "I shall die in my bed."
And he was
absolutely convinced that he would, and not as
the result of any accident, either! The nurse
would not allow him to remain in the room.
Lily
suggested that Constance might like her to write
to Cyril. It was only in order to make sure of
Cyril's correct address. He had gone on a tour
through Italy with some friends of whom
Constance knew nothing. The address appeared to
be very uncertain; there were several addresses,
poste restante in various towns. Cyril had sent
postcards to his mother. Dick and Lily went to
the post- office and telegraphed to foreign
parts. Though Constance was too ill to know how
ill she was, though she had no conception of the
domestic confusion caused by her illness, her
brain was often remarkably clear, and she could
reflect in long, sane meditations above the
uneasy sea of her pain. In the earlier hours of
the night, after the nurses had been changed,
and Mary had gone to bed exhausted with
stair-climbing, and Lily Holl was recounting the
day to Dick up at the grocer's, and the
day-nurse was already asleep, and the
night-nurse had arranged the night, then, in the
faintly-lit silence of the chamber, Constance
would argue with herself for an hour at a time.
She frequently thought of Sophia. In spite of
the fact that Sophia was dead she still pitied
Sophia as a woman whose life had been wasted.
This idea of Sophia's wasted and sterile life,
and of the far-reaching importance of adhering
to principles, recurred to her again and again.
"Why did she run away with him? If only she had
not run away!" she would repeat. And yet there
had been something so fine about Sophia! Which
made Sophia's case all the more pitiable!
Constance never pitied herself. She did not
consider that Fate had treated her very badly.
She was not very discontented with herself. The
invincible commonsense of a sound nature
prevented her, in her best moments, from feebly
dissolving in self-pity. She had lived in
honesty and kindliness for a fair number of
years, and she had tasted triumphant hours. She
was justly respected, she had a position, she
had dignity, she was well-off. She possessed,
after all, a certain amount of quiet
self-conceit. There existed nobody to whom she
would 'knuckle down,' or could be asked to
'knuckle down.' True, she was old! So were
thousands of other people in Bursley. She was in
pain. So there were thousands of other people.
With whom would she be willing to exchange lots?
She had many dissatisfactions. But she rose
superior to them. When she surveyed her life,
and life in general, she would think, with a
sort of tart but not sour cheerfulness: "Well,
that is what life is!" Despite her habit of
complaining about domestic trifles, she was, in
the essence of her character, 'a great body for
making the best of things.' Thus she did not
unduly bewail her excursion to the Town Hall to
vote, which the sequel had proved to be
ludicrously supererogatory. "How was I to know?"
she said.
The one
matter in which she had gravely to reproach
herself was her indulgent spoiling of Cyril
after the death of Samuel Povey. But the end of
her reproaches always was: "I expect I should do
the same again! And probably it wouldn't have
made any difference if I hadn't spoiled him!"
And she had paid tenfold for the weakness. She
loved Cyril, but she had no illusions about him;
she saw both sides of him. She remembered all
the sadness and all the humiliations which he
had caused her. Still, her affection was
unimpaired. A son might be worse than Cyril was;
he had admirable qualities. She did not resent
his being away from England while she lay ill.
"If it was serious," she said, "he would not
lose a moment." And Lily and Dick were a
treasure to her. In those two she really had
been lucky. She took great pleasure in
contemplating the splendour of the gift with
which she would mark her appreciation of them at
their approaching wedding. The secret attitude
of both of them towards her was one of
good-natured condescension, expressed in the
tone in which they would say to each other, 'the
old lady.' Perhaps they would have been startled
to know that Constance lovingly looked down on
both of them. She had unbounded admiration for
their hearts; but she thought that Dick was a
little too brusque, a little too clownish, to be
quite a gentleman. And though Lily was perfectly
ladylike, in Constance's opinion she lacked
backbone, or grit, or independence of spirit.
Further, Constance considered that the disparity
of age between them was excessive. It is to be
doubted whether, when all was said, Constance
had such a very great deal to learn from the
self-confident wisdom of these young things.
After a
period of self-communion, she would sometimes
fall into a shallow delirium. In all her
delirium she was invariably wandering to and
fro, lost, in the long underground passage
leading from the scullery past the coal-cellar
and the cinder-cellar to the backyard. And she
was afraid of the vast-obscure of those regions,
as she had been in her infancy.
It was not
acute rheumatism, but a supervening pericarditis
that in a few days killed her. She died in the
night, alone with the night-nurse. By a curious
chance the Wesleyan minister, hearing that she
was seriously ill, had called on the previous
day. She had not asked for him; and this
pastoral visit, from a man who had always said
that the heavy duties of the circuit rendered
pastoral visits almost impossible, made her
think. In the evening she had requested that
Fossette should be brought upstairs.
Thus she
was turned out of her house, but not by the
Midland Clothiers Company. Old people said to
one another: "Have you heard that Mrs. Povey is
dead? Eh, dear me! There'll be no one left
soon." These old people were bad prophets. Her
friends genuinely regretted her, and forgot the
tediousness of her sciatica. They tried, in
their sympathetic grief, to picture to
themselves all that she had been through in her
life. Possibly they imagined that they succeeded
in this imaginative attempt. But they did not
succeed. No one but Constance could realize all
that Constance had been through, and all that
life had meant to her.
Cyril was
not at the funeral. He arrived three days later.
(As he had no interest in the love affairs of
Dick and Lily, the couple were robbed of their
wedding-present. The will, fifteen years old,
was in Cyril's favour.) But the immortal Charles
Critchlow came to the funeral, full of calm,
sardonic glee, and without being asked. Though
fabulously senile, he had preserved and even
improved his faculty for enjoying a catastrophe.
He now went to funerals with gusto, contentedly
absorbed in the task of burying his friends one
by one. It was he who said, in his high,
trembling, rasping, deliberate voice: "It's a
pity her didn't live long enough to hear as
Federation is going on after all! That would ha'
worritted her." (For the unscrupulous advocates
of Federation had discovered a method of setting
at naught the decisive result of the referendum,
and that day's Signal was fuller than ever of
Federation.)
When the
short funeral procession started, Mary and the
infirm Fossette (sole relic of the connection
between the Baines family and Paris) were left
alone in the house. The tearful servant prepared
the dog's dinner and laid it before her in the
customary soup-plate in the customary corner.
Fossette sniffed at it, and then walked away and
lay down with a dog's sigh in front of the
kitchen fire. She had been deranged in her
habits that day; she was conscious of neglect,
due to events which passed her comprehension.
And she did not like it. She was hurt, and her
appetite was hurt. However, after a few minutes,
she began to reconsider the matter. She glanced
at the soup-plate, and, on the chance that it
might after all contain something worth
inspection, she awkwardly balanced herself on
her old legs and went to it again.
THE END
