INVITATION TO TEA
They were most foolishly happy as they sat there on the bench, this man
whose dim eyes ought to have been waiting placidly for the ship of death
to appear above the horizon, and this young girl who imagined that she
knew all about life and the world. When I say that they were foolishly
happy, I of course mean that they were most wisely happy. Each of them,
being gifted with common sense, and with a certain imperviousness to
sentimentality which invariably accompanies common sense, they did not
mar the present by regretting the tragic stupidity of a long
estrangement; they did not mourn over wasted years that could not be
recalled. It must be admitted, in favour of the Five Towns, that when
its inhabitants spill milk they do not usually sit down on the pavement
and adulterate the milk with their tears. They pass on. Such passing on
is termed callous and cold-hearted in the rest of England, which loves
to sit down on pavements and weep into irretrievable milk.
Nor did Helen and her great-stepuncle mar the present by worrying about
the future; it never occurred to them to be disturbed by the possibility
that milk not already spilt might yet be spilt.
Helen had been momentarily saddened by private reflections upon what
James Ollerenshaw had missed in his career; and James had been saddened,
somewhat less, by reminiscences which had sprung out of Helen's laugh.
But their melancholies had rapidly evaporated in the warmth of the
unexpected encounter. They liked one another. She liked him because he
was old and dry; and because he had a short laugh, and a cynical and
even wicked gleam of the eye that pleased her; and because there was an
occasional tone in his voice that struck her as deliciously masculine,
ancient, and indulgent; and because he had spoken to her first; and
because his gaze wandered with an admiring interest over her dress and
up into the dome of her sunshade; and because he put his chin in his
palm and leant his head towards her; and because the skin of his hand
was so crinkled and glossy. And he liked her because she was so
exquisitely fresh and candid, so elegant, so violent and complete a
contrast to James Ollerenshaw; so absurdly sagacious and sure of
herself, and perhaps because of a curve in her cheek, and a mysterious
suggestion of eternal enigma in her large and liquid eye. When she
looked right away from him, as she sometimes did in the conversation,
the outline of her soft cheek, which drew in at the eye and swelled out
again to the temple, resembled a map of the coast of some smooth,
romantic country not mentioned in geographies. When she looked _at_
him--well, the effect on him astonished him; but it enchanted him. He
was discovering for the first time the soul of a girl. If he was a
little taken aback he is to be excused. Younger men than he have been
taken aback by that discovery. But James Ollerenshaw did not behave as a
younger man would have behaved. He was more like some one who, having
heard tell of the rose for sixty years, and having paid no attention to
rumour, suddenly sees a rose in early bloom. At his age one knows how to
treat a flower; one knows what flowers are for.
It was no doubt this knowledge of what flowers are for that almost led
to the spilling of milk at the very moment when milk-spilling seemed in
a high degree improbable.
The conversation had left Susan and her caprices, and had reached Helen
and her solid wisdom.
"But you haven't told me what you're doing i' Bosley," said the old man.
"I've told you I'm living here," said Helen. "I've now been living here
for one week and one day. I'm teaching at the Park Road Board School. I
got transferred from Longshaw. I never liked Longshaw, and I always
like a change."
"Yes," said Ollerenshaw, judiciously, "of the two I reckon as Bosley is
the frying-pan. So you're teaching up yonder?" He jerked his elbow in
the direction of the spacious and imposing terra-cotta Board School,
whose front looked on the eastern gates of the park. "What dost teach?"
"Oh, everything," Helen replied.
"You must be very useful to 'em," said James. "What do they pay you for
teaching everything?"
"Seventy-two pounds," said Helen.
"A month? It 'ud be cheap at a hundred, lass; unless there's a whole
crowd on ye as can teach everything. Can you sew?"
"Sew!" she exclaimed. "I've given lessons in sewing for years. _And_
cookery. _And_ mathematics. I used to give evening lessons in
mathematics at Longshaw secondary school."
Great-stepuncle James gazed at her. It was useless for him to try to
pretend to himself that he was not, secretly, struck all of a heap by
the wonders of the living organism in front of him. He was. And this
shows, though he was a wise man and an experienced, how ignorant he was
of the world. But I do not think he was more ignorant of the world than
most wise and experienced men are. He conceived Helen Rathbone as an
extraordinary, an amazing creature. Nothing of the kind. There are
simply thousands of agreeable and good girls who can accomplish
herring-bone, omelettes, and simultaneous equations in a breath, as it
were. They are all over the kingdom, and may be seen in the streets and
lanes thereof about half-past eight in the morning and again about five
o'clock in the evening. But the fact is not generally known. Only the
stern and _blasé_ members of School Boards or Education Committees know
it. And they are so used to marvels that they make nothing of them.
However, James Ollerenshaw had no intention of striking his flag.
"Mathematics!" he murmured. "I lay you can't tell me the interest on
eighty-nine pounds for six months at four and a half per cent."
Consols happened to be at eighty-nine that day.
Her lips curled. "I'm really quite surprised you should encourage me to
gamble," said she. "But I'll bet you a shilling I can. And I'll bet you
one shilling against half-a-crown that I do it in my head, if you like.
And if I lose I'll pay."
She made a slight movement, and he noticed for the first time that she
was carrying a small purse as black as her glove.
He hesitated, and then he proved what a wise and experienced man he was.
"No," he said, "I'll none bet ye, lass."
He had struck his flag.
It is painful to be compelled to reinforce the old masculine statement
that women have no sense of honour. But have they? Helen clearly saw
that he had hauled down his flag. Yet did she cease firing? Not a bit.
She gave him a shattering broadside, well knowing that he had
surrendered. Her disregard of the ethics of warfare was deplorable.
"Two pounds and one half-penny--to the nearest farthing," said she, a
faint blush crimsoning her cheek.
Mr. Ollerenshaw glanced round at the bowling-green, where the captain in
vain tried to catch his eye, and then at the groups of children playing
on the lower terraces.
"I make no doubt ye can play the piano?" he remarked, when he had
recovered.
"Certainly," she replied. "Not that we have to teach the piano. No! But
it's understood, all the same, that one or another of us can play
marches for the children to walk and drill to. In fact," she added, "for
something less than thirty shillings a week we do pretty nearly
everything, except build the schools. And soon they'll be expecting us
to build the new schools in our spare time." She spoke bitterly, as a
native of the Congo Free State might refer to the late King of the
Belgians.
"Thirty shillings a _wik_!" said James, acting with fine histrionic
skill. "I thought as you said seventy-two pounds a month!"
"Oh no, you didn't!" she protested, firmly. "So don't try to tease me. I
never joke about money. Money's a very serious thing."
("Her's a chip o' th' owd block," he told himself, delighted. When he
explained matters to himself, and when he grew angry, he always employed
the Five Towns dialect in its purest form.)
"You must be same as them hospital nurses," he said, aloud. "You do it
because ye like it--for love on it, as they say."
"Like it! I hate it. I hate any sort of work. What fun do you suppose
there is in teaching endless stupid children, and stuffing in classrooms
all day, and correcting exercises and preparing sewing all night? Of
course, they can't help being stupid. It's that that's so amazing. You
can't help being kind to them--they're so stupid."
"If ye didn't do that, what should ye do?" James inquired.
"I shouldn't do anything unless I was forced," said she. "I don't want
to do anything, except enjoy myself--read, play the piano, pay visits,
and have plenty of _really_ nice clothes. Why should I want to do
anything? I can tell you this--if I didn't need the money I'd never go
inside that school again, or any other!"
She was heated.
"Dun ye mean to say," he asked, with an ineffable intonation, "that
Susan and that there young farmer have gone gadding off to Canada and
left you all alone with nothing?"
"Of course they haven't," said Helen. "Why, mother is the most generous
old thing you can possibly imagine. She's left all her own income to
me."
"How much?"
"Well, it comes to rather over thirty shillings a week."
"And can't a single woman live on thirty shillings a _wik_? Bless us! I
don't spend thirty shillings a wik myself."
Helen raised her chin. "A single woman can live on thirty shillings a
week," she said. "But what about her frocks?"
"Well, what about her frocks?" he repeated.
"Well," she said, "I like frocks. It just happens that I can't do
without frocks. It's just frocks that I work for; I spend nearly all I
earn on them." And her eyes, descending, seemed to say: "Look at the
present example."
"Seventy pounds a year on ye clothes! Ye're not serious, lass?"
She looked at him coldly. "I am serious," she said.
Experienced as he was, he had never come across a fact so incredible as
this fact. And the compulsion of believing it occupied his forces to
such an extent that he had no force left to be wise. He did not observe
the icy, darting challenge in her eye, and he ignored the danger in her
voice.
"All as I can say is you ought to be ashamed o' yourself, lass!" he
said, sharply. The reflection was blown out of him by the expansion of
his feelings. Seventy pounds a year on clothes!... He too was serious.
Now, James Ollerenshaw was not the first person whom Helen's passion for
clothes had driven into indiscretions. Her mother, for example, had done
battle with that passion, and had been defeated with heavy loss. A
head-mistress and a chairman of a School Board (a pompous coward) had
also suffered severely. And though Helen had been the victor, she had
not won without some injury to her nerves. Her campaigns and conquests
had left her, on this matter, "touchy"--as the word is used in the Five
Towns.
"I shall be very much obliged if you will not speak to me in that tone,"
said she. "Because I cannot permit it either from you or any other man.
When I venture to criticise your private life I shall expect you to
criticise mine--and not before. I don't want to be rude, but I hope you
understand, great-stepuncle."
The milk was within the twentieth of an inch of the brim. James
Ollerenshaw blushed as red as Helen herself had blushed at the
beginning of their acquaintance. A girl, the daughter of the chit Susan,
to address him so! She had the incomparable insolence of her mother.
Yes, thirty years ago Susan had been just as rude to him. But he was
thirty years younger then; he was not a sage of sixty then. He continued
to blush. He was raging. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to assert
that his health was momentarily in peril. He glanced for an instant at
Helen, and saw that her nostrils were twitching. Then he looked
hurriedly away, and rose. The captain of the bowling club excusably
assumed that James was at length going to attack the serious business of
the day.
"Now, Mr. Ollerenshaw!" the captain called out; and his tone implied,
gently: "Don't you think you've kept me waiting long enough? Women are
women; but a bowling-match is a bowling-match."
James turned his back on the captain, moved off, and then--how can one
explain it? He realised that in the last six words of Helen's speech
there had been a note, a hint, a mere nothing, of softness, of regret
for pain caused. He realised, further, the great universal natural law
that under any circumstances--no matter what they may be--when any
man--no matter who he may be--differs from any pretty and well-dressed
woman--no matter who she may be--he is in the wrong. He saw that it was
useless for serious, logical, high-minded persons to inveigh against the
absurdity of this law, and to call it bad names. The law of gravity is
absurd and indefensible when you fall downstairs; but you obey it.
He returned to Helen, who bravely met his eyes. "I'm off home," he said,
hoarsely. "It's my tea-time."
"Good-afternoon," she replied, with amiability.
"Happen you'll come along with me, like?"
The use of that word "like" at the end of an interrogative sentence, in
the Five Towns, is a subject upon which a book ought to be written; but
not this history. The essential point to observe is that Helen got up
from the bench and said, with adorable sweetness:
"Why, I shall be charmed to come!"
("What a perfect old darling he is!" she said to herself.)