AN AFFAIR OF THE SEVENTIES
Having satisfied her obstinacy by sitting down on the seat of her
choice, she might surely--one would think--have ended a mysteriously
difficult situation by rising again and departing, of course with due
dignity. But no! She could not! She wished to do so, but she could not
command her limbs. She just sat there, in horridest torture, like a
stoical fly on a pin--one of those flies that pretend that nothing
hurts. The agony might have been prolonged to centuries had not an
extremely startling and dramatic thing happened--the most startling and
dramatic thing that ever happened either to James Ollerenshaw or to the
young woman. James Ollerenshaw spoke, and I imagine that nobody was more
surprised than James Ollerenshaw by his brief speech, which slipped out
of him quite unawares. What he said was:
"Well, lass, how goes it, like?"
If the town could have heard him, the town would have rustled from
boundary to boundary with agitated and delicious whisperings.
The young woman, instead of being justly incensed by this monstrous
molestation from an aged villain who had not been introduced to her,
gave a little jump (as though relieved from the spell of an
enchantment), and then deliberately turned and faced Mr. Ollerenshaw.
She also smiled, amid her roses.
"Very well indeed, thank you," she replied, primly, but nicely.
Upon this, they both of them sought to recover--from an affair that had
occurred in the late seventies.
In the late seventies James Ollerenshaw had been a young-old man of
nearly thirty. He had had a stepbrother, much older and much poorer than
himself, and the stepbrother had died, leaving a daughter, named Susan,
almost, but not quite, in a state of indigence. The stepbrother and
James had not been on terms of effusive cordiality. But James was
perfectly ready to look after Susan, his stepniece. Susan, aged
seventeen years, was, however, not perfectly ready to be looked after.
She had a little money, and she earned a little (by painting asters on
toilet ware), and the chit was very rude to her stepuncle. In less than
a year she had married a youth of twenty, who apparently had not in him
even the rudiments of worldly successfulness. James Ollerenshaw did his
avuncular duty by formally and grimly protesting against the marriage.
But what authority has a stepuncle? Susan defied him, with a maximum of
unforgettable impoliteness; and she went to live with her husband at
Longshaw, which is at the other end of the Five Towns. The fact became
public that a solemn quarrel existed between James and Susan, and that
each of them had sworn not to speak until the other spoke. James would
have forgiven, if she had hinted at reconciliation. And, hard as it is
for youth to be in the wrong, Susan would have hinted at reconciliation
if James had not been so rich. The riches of James offended Susan's
independence. Not for millions would she have exposed herself to the
suspicion that she had broken her oath because her stepuncle was a
wealthy and childless man. She was, of course, wrong. Nor was this her
only indiscretion. She was so ridiculously indiscreet as to influence
her husband in such a way that he actually succeeded in life. Had James
perceived them to be struggling in poverty, he might conceivably have
gone over to them and helped them, in an orgy of forgiving charity. But
the success of young Rathbone falsified his predictions utterly, and
was, further, an affront to him. Thus the quarrel slowly crystallised
into a permanent estrangement, a passive feud. Everybody got thoroughly
accustomed to it, and thought nothing of it, it being a social
phenomenon not at all unique of its kind in the Five Towns. When,
fifteen years later, Rathbone died in mid-career, people thought that
the feud would end. But it did not. James wrote a letter of condolence
to his niece, and even sent it to Longshaw by special messenger in the
tramcar; but he had not heard of the death until the day of the funeral,
and Mrs. Rathbone did not reply to his letter. Her independence and
sensitiveness were again in the wrong. James did no more. You could not
expect him to have done more. Mrs. Rathbone, like many widows of
successful men, was "left poorly off." But she "managed." Once, five
years before the scene on the park terrace, Mrs. Rathbone and James had
encountered one another by hazard on the platform of Knype Railway
Station. Destiny hesitated while Susan waited for James's recognition
and James waited for Susan's recognition. Both of them waited too long.
Destiny averted its head and drew back, and the relatives passed on
their ways without speaking. James observed with interest a girl of
twenty by Susan's side--her daughter. This daughter of Susan's was now
sharing the park bench with him. Hence the hidden drama of their
meeting, of his speech, of her reply.
"And what's your name, lass?"
"Helen."
"Helen what?"
"Helen, great-stepuncle," said she.
He laughed; and she laughed also. The fact was that he had been aware
of her name, vaguely. It had come to him, on the wind, or by some bird's
wing, although none of his acquaintances had been courageous enough to
speak to him about the affair of Susan for quite twenty years past.
Longshaw is as far from Bursley, in some ways, as San Francisco from New
York. There are people in Bursley who do not know the name of the Mayor
of Longshaw--who make a point of _not_ knowing it. Yet news travels even
from Longshaw to Bursley, by mysterious channels; and Helen Rathbone's
name had so travelled. James Ollerenshaw was glad that she was just
Helen. He had been afraid that there might be something fancy between
Helen and Rathbone--something expensive and aristocratic that went with
her dress and her parasol. He illogically liked her for being called
merely Helen--as if the credit were hers! Helen was an old Ollerenshaw
name--his grandmother's (who had been attached to the household of
Josiah Wedgwood), and his aunt's. Helen was historic in his mind. And,
further, it could not be denied that Rathbone was a fine old Five Towns
name too.
He was very illogical that afternoon; he threw over the principles of a
lifetime, arguing from particulars to generals exactly like a girl. He
had objected, always, to the expensive and the aristocratic. He was
proud of his pure plebeian blood, as many plebeians are; he gloried in
it. He disliked show, with a calm and deep aversion. He was a plain man
with a simple, unostentatious taste for money. The difference between
Helen's name and her ornamental raiment gave him pleasure in the name.
But he had not been examining her for more than half a minute when he
began to find pleasure in her rich clothes (rich, that is, to him!).
Quite suddenly he, at the age of sixty, abandoned without an effort his
dear prejudice against fine feathers, and began, for the first time, to
take joy in sitting next to a pretty and well-dressed woman. And all
this, not from any broad, philosophic perception that fine feathers have
their proper part in the great scheme of cosmic evolution; but because
the check dress suited her, and the heavy, voluptuous parasol suited
her, and the long black gloves were inexplicably effective. Women grow
old; women cease to learn; but men, never.
As for Helen, she liked him. She had liked him for five years, ever
since her mother had pointed him out on the platform of Knype Railway
Station. She saw him closer now. He was older than she had been
picturing him; indeed, the lines on his little, rather wizened face, and
the minute sproutings of grey-white hair in certain spots on his reddish
chin, where he had shaved himself badly, caused her somehow to feel
quite sad. She thought of him as "a dear old thing," and then as "a dear
old darling." Yes, old, very old! Nevertheless, she felt maternal
towards him. She felt that she was much wiser than he was, and that she
could teach him a great deal. She saw very clearly how wrong he and her
mother had been, with their stupidly terrific quarrel; and the notion of
all the happiness which he had missed, in his solitary, unfeminised,
bachelor existence, nearly brought into her eyes tears of a quick and
generous sympathy.
He, blind and shabby ancient, had no suspicion that his melancholy state
and the notion of all the happiness he had missed had tinged with sorrow
the heart within the frock, and added a dangerous humidity to the glance
under the sunshade. It did not occur to him that he was an object of
pity, nor that a vast store of knowledge was waiting to be poured into
him. The aged, self-satisfied wag-beard imagined that he had conducted
his career fairly well. He knew no one with whom he would have changed
places. He regarded Helen as an extremely agreeable little thing, with
her absurd air of being grown-up. Decidedly in five years she had
tremendously altered. Five years ago she had been gawky. Now ... Well,
he was proud of her. She had called him great-stepuncle, thus conferring
on him a sort of part-proprietorship in her; and he was proud of her.
The captain of the bowling-club came along, and James Ollerenshaw gave
him just such a casual nod as he might have given to a person of no
account. The nod seemed to say: "Match this, if you can. It's mine, and
there's nothing in the town to beat it. Mrs. Prockter herself hasn't got
more style than this." (Of this Mrs. Prockter, more later.)
Helen soon settled down into a condition of ease, which put an end to
blushing. She knew she was admired.
"What are you doing i' Bosley?" James demanded.
"I'm living i' Bosley," she retorted, smartly.
"Living here!" He stopped, and his hard old heart almost stopped too. If
not in mourning, she was in semi-mourning. Surely Susan had not had the
effrontery to die, away in Longshaw, without telling him!
"Mother has married again," said Helen, lightly.
"Married!" He was staggered. The wind was knocked out of him.
"Yes. And gone to Canada!" Helen added.
You pick up your paper in the morning, and idly and slowly peruse the
advertisements on the first page, forget it, eat some bacon, grumble at
the youngest boy, open the paper, read the breach of promise case on
page three, drop it, and ask your wife for more coffee--hot--glance at
your letters again, then reopen the paper at the news page, and find
that the Tsar of Russia has been murdered, and a few American cities
tumbled to fragments by an earthquake--you know how you feel then.
James Ollerenshaw felt like that. The captain of the bowling-club,
however, poising a bowl in his right hand, and waiting for James
Ollerenshaw to leave his silken dalliance, saw nothing but an old man
and a young woman sitting on a Corporation seat.