CHAPTER I

The Old Wives' Tale

Arnold Bennett

To W. W. K.

PREFACE TO THIS EDITION

In the autumn of 1903 I used to dine frequently in a restaurant in the

Rue de Clichy, Paris. Here were, among others, two waitresses that

attracted my attention. One was a beautiful, pale young girl, to whom I

never spoke, for she was employed far away from the table which I

affected. The other, a stout, middle-aged managing Breton woman, had

sole command over my table and me, and gradually she began to assume

such a maternal tone towards me that I saw I should be compelled to

leave that restaurant. If I was absent for a couple of nights running

she would reproach me sharply: "What! you are unfaithful to me?" Once,

when I complained about some French beans, she informed me roundly that

French beans were a subject which I did not understand. I then decided

to be eternally unfaithful to her, and I abandoned the restaurant. A

few nights before the final parting an old woman came into the

restaurant to dine. She was fat, shapeless, ugly, and grotesque. She

had a ridiculous voice, and ridiculous gestures. It was easy to see

that she lived alone, and that in the long lapse of years she had

developed the kind of peculiarity which induces guffaws among the

thoughtless. She was burdened with a lot of small parcels, which she

kept dropping. She chose one seat; and then, not liking it, chose

another; and then another. In a few moments she had the whole

restaurant laughing at her. That my middle-aged Breton should laugh was

indifferent to me, but I was pained to see a coarse grimace of giggling

on the pale face of the beautiful young waitress to whom I had never

spoken.

I reflected, concerning the grotesque diner: "This woman was once

young, slim, perhaps beautiful; certainly free from these ridiculous

mannerisms. Very probably she is unconscious of her singularities. Her

case is a tragedy. One ought to be able to make a heartrending novel

out of the history of a woman such as she." Every stout, ageing woman

is not grotesque--far from it!--but there is an extreme pathos in the

mere fact that every stout ageing woman was once a young girl with the

unique charm of youth in her form and movements and in her mind. And

the fact that the change from the young girl to the stout ageing woman

is made up of an infinite number of infinitesimal changes, each

unperceived by her, only intensifies the pathos.

It was at this instant that I was visited by the idea of writing the

book which ultimately became "The Old Wives' Tale." Of course I felt

that the woman who caused the ignoble mirth in the restaurant would not

serve me as a type of heroine. For she was much too old and obviously

unsympathetic. It is an absolute rule that the principal character of a

novel must not be unsympathetic, and the whole modern tendency of

realistic fiction is against oddness in a prominent figure. I knew that

I must choose the sort of woman who would pass unnoticed in a crowd.

I put the idea aside for a long time, but it was never very distant

from me. For several reasons it made a special appeal to me. I had

always been a convinced admirer of Mrs. W. K. Clifford's most precious

novel, "Aunt Anne," but I wanted to see in the story of an old woman

many things that Mrs. W. K. Clifford had omitted from "Aunt Anne."

Moreover, I had always revolted against the absurd youthfulness, the

unfading youthfulness of the average heroine. And as a protest against

this fashion, I was already, in 1903, planning a novel ("Leonora") of

which the heroine was aged forty, and had daughters old enough to be in

love. The reviewers, by the way, were staggered by my hardihood in

offering a woman of forty as a subject of serious interest to the

public. But I meant to go much farther than forty! Finally as a supreme

reason, I had the example and the challenge of Guy de Maupassant's "Une

Vie." In the nineties we used to regard "Une Vie" with mute awe, as

being the summit of achievement in fiction. And I remember being very

cross with Mr. Bernard Shaw because, having read "Une Vie" at the

suggestion (I think) of Mr. William Archer, he failed to see in it

anything very remarkable. Here I must confess that, in 1908, I read

"Une Vie" again, and in spite of a natural anxiety to differ from Mr.

Bernard Shaw, I was gravely disappointed with it. It is a fine novel,

but decidedly inferior to "Pierre et Jean" or even "Fort Comme la

Mort." To return to the year 1903. "Une Vie" relates the entire life

history of a woman. I settled in the privacy of my own head that my

book about the development of a young girl into a stout old lady must

be the English "Une Vie." I have been accused of every fault except a

lack of self-confidence, and in a few weeks I settled a further point,

namely, that my book must "go one better" than "Une Vie," and that to

this end it must be the life-history of two women instead of only one.

Hence, "The Old Wives' Tale" has two heroines. Constance was the

original; Sophia was created out of bravado, just to indicate that I

declined to consider Guy de Maupassant as the last forerunner of the

deluge. I was intimidated by the audacity of my project, but I had

sworn to carry it out. For several years I looked it squarely in the

face at intervals, and then walked away to write novels of smaller

scope, of which I produced five or six. But I could not dally forever,

and in the autumn of 1907 I actually began to write it, in a village

near Fontainebleau, where I rented half a house from a retired railway

servant. I calculated that it would be 200,000 words long (which it

exactly proved to be), and I had a vague notion that no novel of such

dimensions (except Richardson's) had ever been written before. So I

counted the words in several famous Victorian novels, and discovered to

my relief that the famous Victorian novels average 400,000 words

apiece. I wrote the first part of the novel in six weeks. It was fairly

easy to me, because, in the seventies, in the first decade of my life,

I had lived in the actual draper's shop of the Baines's, and knew it as

only a child could know it. Then I went to London on a visit. I tried

to continue the book in a London hotel, but London was too distracting,

and I put the thing away, and during January and February of 1908, I

wrote "Buried Alive," which was published immediately, and was received

with majestic indifference by the English public, an indifference which

has persisted to this day.

I then returned to the Fontainebleau region and gave "The Old Wives'

Tale" no rest till I finished it at the end of July, 1908. It was

published in the autumn of the same year, and for six weeks afterward

the English public steadily confirmed an opinion expressed by a certain

person in whose judgment I had confidence, to the effect that the work

was honest but dull, and that when it was not dull it had a regrettable

tendency to facetiousness. My publishers, though brave fellows, were

somewhat disheartened; however, the reception of the book gradually

became less and less frigid.

With regard to the French portion of the story, it was not until I had

written the first part that I saw from a study of my chronological

basis that the Siege of Paris might be brought into the tale. The idea

was seductive; but I hated, and still hate, the awful business of

research; and I only knew the Paris of the Twentieth Century. Now I was

aware that my railway servant and his wife had been living in Paris at

the time of the war. I said to the old man, "By the way, you went

through the Siege of Paris, didn't you?" He turned to his old wife and

said, uncertainly, "The Siege of Paris? Yes, we did, didn't we?" The

Siege of Paris had been only one incident among many in their lives. Of

course, they remembered it well, though not vividly, and I gained much

information from them. But the most useful thing which I gained from

them was the perception, startling at first, that ordinary people went

on living very ordinary lives in Paris during the siege, and that to

the vast mass of the population the siege was not the dramatic,

spectacular, thrilling, ecstatic affair that is described in history.

Encouraged by this perception, I decided to include the siege in my

scheme. I read Sarcey's diary of the siege aloud to my wife, and I

looked at the pictures in Jules Claretie's popular work on the siege

and the commune, and I glanced at the printed collection of official

documents, and there my research ended.

It has been asserted that unless I had actually been present at a

public execution, I could not have written the chapter in which Sophia

was at the Auxerre solemnity. I have not been present at a public

execution, as the whole of my information about public executions was

derived from a series of articles on them which I read in the Paris

Matin. Mr. Frank Harris, discussing my book in "Vanity Fair," said it

was clear that I had not seen an execution, (or words to that effect),

and he proceeded to give his own description of an execution. It was a

brief but terribly convincing bit of writing, quite characteristic and

quite worthy of the author of "Montes the Matador" and of a man who has

been almost everywhere and seen almost everything. I comprehended how

far short I had fallen of the truth! I wrote to Mr. Frank Harris,

regretting that his description had not been printed before I wrote

mine, as I should assuredly have utilized it, and, of course, I

admitted that I had never witnessed an execution. He simply replied:

"Neither have I." This detail is worth preserving, for it is a reproof

to that large body of readers, who, when a novelist has really carried

conviction to them, assert off hand: "O, that must be autobiography!"

ARNOLD BENNETT.

CONTENTS

BOOK I.

MRS. BAINES

I. THE SQUARE

II. THE TOOTH

III. A BATTLE

IV. ELEPHANT

V. THE TRAVELLER

VI. ESCAPADE

VII. A DEFEAT

BOOK II.

CONSTANCE

I. REVOLUTION

II. CHRISTMAS AND THE FUTURE

III. CYRIL

IV. CRIME

V. ANOTHER CRIME

VI. THE WIDOW

VII. BRICKS AND MORTAR

VIII. THE PROUDEST MOTHER

BOOK III.

SOPHIA

I. THE ELOPEMENT

II. SUPPER

III. AN AMBITION SATISFIED

IV. A CRISIS FOR GERALD

V. FEVER

VI. THE SIEGE

VII. SUCCESS

BOOK IV.

WHAT LIFE IS

I. FRENSHAM'S

II. THE MEETING

III. TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE

IV. END OF SOPHIA

V. END OF CONSTANCE

BOOK I

MRS. BAINES

CHAPTER I

THE SQUARE

I

Those two girls, Constance and Sophia Baines, paid no heed to the

manifold interest of their situation, of which, indeed, they had never

been conscious. They were, for example, established almost precisely on

the fifty-third parallel of latitude. A little way to the north of

them, in the creases of a hill famous for its religious orgies, rose

the river Trent, the calm and characteristic stream of middle England.

Somewhat further northwards, in the near neighbourhood of the highest

public-house in the realm, rose two lesser rivers, the Dane and the

Dove, which, quarrelling in early infancy, turned their backs on each

other, and, the one by favour of the Weaver and the other by favour of

the Trent, watered between them the whole width of England, and poured

themselves respectively into the Irish Sea and the German Ocean. What a

county of modest, unnoticed rivers! What a natural, simple county,

content to fix its boundaries by these tortuous island brooks, with

their comfortable names--Trent, Mease, Dove, Tern, Dane, Mees, Stour,

Tame, and even hasty Severn! Not that the Severn is suitable to the

county! In the county excess is deprecated. The county is happy in not

exciting remark. It is content that Shropshire should possess that

swollen bump, the Wrekin, and that the exaggerated wildness of the Peak

should lie over its border. It does not desire to be a pancake like

Cheshire. It has everything that England has, including thirty miles of

Watling Street; and England can show nothing more beautiful and nothing

uglier than the works of nature and the works of man to be seen within

the limits of the county. It is England in little, lost in the midst of

England, unsung by searchers after the extreme; perhaps occasionally

somewhat sore at this neglect, but how proud in the instinctive

cognizance of its representative features and traits!

Constance and Sophia, busy with the intense preoccupations of youth,

recked not of such matters. They were surrounded by the county. On

every side the fields and moors of Staffordshire, intersected by roads

and lanes, railways, watercourses and telegraph-lines, patterned by

hedges, ornamented and made respectable by halls and genteel parks,

enlivened by villages at the intersections, and warmly surveyed by the

sun, spread out undulating. And trains were rushing round curves in

deep cuttings, and carts and waggons trotting and jingling on the

yellow roads, and long, narrow boats passing in a leisure majestic and

infinite over the surface of the stolid canals; the rivers had only

themselves to support, for Staffordshire rivers have remained virgin of

keels to this day. One could imagine the messages concerning prices,

sudden death, and horses, in their flight through the wires under the

feet of birds. In the inns Utopians were shouting the universe into

order over beer, and in the halls and parks the dignity of England was

being preserved in a fitting manner. The villages were full of women

who did nothing but fight against dirt and hunger, and repair the

effects of friction on clothes. Thousands of labourers were in the

fields, but the fields were so broad and numerous that this scattered

multitude was totally lost therein. The cuckoo was much more

perceptible than man, dominating whole square miles with his resounding

call. And on the airy moors heath-larks played in the ineffaceable

mule-tracks that had served centuries before even the Romans thought of

Watling Street. In short, the usual daily life of the county was

proceeding with all its immense variety and importance; but though

Constance and Sophia were in it they were not of it.

The fact is, that while in the county they were also in the district;

and no person who lives in the district, even if he should be old and

have nothing to do but reflect upon things in general, ever thinks

about the county. So far as the county goes, the district might almost

as well be in the middle of the Sahara. It ignores the county, save

that it uses it nonchalantly sometimes as leg-stretcher on holiday

afternoons, as a man may use his back garden. It has nothing in common

with the county; it is richly sufficient to itself. Nevertheless, its

self-sufficiency and the true salt savour of its life can only be

appreciated by picturing it hemmed in by county. It lies on the face of

the county like an insignificant stain, like a dark Pleiades in a green

and empty sky. And Hanbridge has the shape of a horse and its rider,

Bursley of half a donkey, Knype of a pair of trousers, Longshaw of an

octopus, and little Turnhill of a beetle. The Five Towns seem to cling

together for safety. Yet the idea of clinging together for safety would

make them laugh. They are unique and indispensable. From the north of

the county right down to the south they alone stand for civilization,

applied science, organized manufacture, and the century--until you come

to Wolverhampton. They are unique and indispensable because you cannot

drink tea out of a teacup without the aid of the Five Towns; because

you cannot eat a meal in decency without the aid of the Five Towns. For

this the architecture of the Five Towns is an architecture of ovens and

chimneys; for this its atmosphere is as black as its mud; for this it

burns and smokes all night, so that Longshaw has been compared to hell;

for this it is unlearned in the ways of agriculture, never having seen

corn except as packing straw and in quartern loaves; for this, on the

other hand, it comprehends the mysterious habits of fire and pure,

sterile earth; for this it lives crammed together in slippery streets

where the housewife must change white window-curtains at least once a

fortnight if she wishes to remain respectable; for this it gets up in

the mass at six a.m., winter and summer, and goes to bed when the

public-houses close; for this it exists--that you may drink tea out of

a teacup and toy with a chop on a plate. All the everyday crockery used

in the kingdom is made in the Five Towns--all, and much besides. A

district capable of such gigantic manufacture, of such a perfect

monopoly--and which finds energy also to produce coal and iron and

great men--may be an insignificant stain on a county, considered

geographically, but it is surely well justified in treating the county

as its back garden once a week, and in blindly ignoring it the rest of

the time.

Even the majestic thought that whenever and wherever in all England a

woman washes up, she washes up the product of the district; that

whenever and wherever in all England a plate is broken the fracture

means new business for the district--even this majestic thought had

probably never occurred to either of the girls. The fact is, that while

in the Five Towns they were also in the Square, Bursley and the Square

ignored the staple manufacture as perfectly as the district ignored the

county. Bursley has the honours of antiquity in the Five Towns. No

industrial development can ever rob it of its superiority in age, which

makes it absolutely sure in its conceit. And the time will never come

when the other towns--let them swell and bluster as they may--will not

pronounce the name of Bursley as one pronounces the name of one's

mother. Add to this that the Square was the centre of Bursley's retail

trade (which scorned the staple as something wholesale, vulgar, and

assuredly filthy), and you will comprehend the importance and the

self-isolation of the Square in the scheme of the created universe.

There you have it, embedded in the district, and the district embedded

in the county, and the county lost and dreaming in the heart of England!

The Square was named after St. Luke. The Evangelist might have been

startled by certain phenomena in his square, but, except in Wakes Week,

when the shocking always happened, St. Luke's Square lived in a manner

passably saintly--though it contained five public-houses. It contained

five public-houses, a bank, a barber's, a confectioner's, three

grocers', two chemists', an ironmonger's, a clothier's, and five

drapers'. These were all the catalogue. St. Luke's Square had no room

for minor establishments. The aristocracy of the Square undoubtedly

consisted of the drapers (for the bank was impersonal); and among the

five the shop of Baines stood supreme. No business establishment could

possibly be more respected than that of Mr. Baines was respected. And

though John Baines had been bedridden for a dozen years, he still lived

on the lips of admiring, ceremonious burgesses as 'our honoured

fellow-townsman.' He deserved his reputation.

The Baines's shop, to make which three dwellings had at intervals been

thrown into one, lay at the bottom of the Square. It formed about

one-third of the south side of the Square, the remainder being made up

of Critchlow's (chemist), the clothier's, and the Hanover Spirit

Vaults. ("Vaults" was a favourite synonym of the public-house in the

Square. Only two of the public-houses were crude public-houses: the

rest were "vaults.") It was a composite building of three storeys, in

blackish-crimson brick, with a projecting shop-front and, above and

behind that, two rows of little windows. On the sash of each window was

a red cloth roll stuffed with sawdust, to prevent draughts; plain white

blinds descended about six inches from the top of each window. There

were no curtains to any of the windows save one; this was the window of

the drawing-room, on the first floor at the corner of the Square and

King Street. Another window, on the second storey, was peculiar, in

that it had neither blind nor pad, and was very dirty; this was the

window of an unused room that had a separate staircase to itself, the

staircase being barred by a door always locked. Constance and Sophia

had lived in continual expectation of the abnormal issuing from that

mysterious room, which was next to their own. But they were

disappointed. The room had no shameful secret except the incompetence

of the architect who had made one house out of three; it was just an

empty, unemployable room. The building had also a considerable frontage

on King Street, where, behind the shop, was sheltered the parlour, with

a large window and a door that led directly by two steps into the

street. A strange peculiarity of the shop was that it bore no

signboard. Once it had had a large signboard which a memorable gale had

blown into the Square. Mr. Baines had decided not to replace it. He had

always objected to what he called "puffing," and for this reason would

never hear of such a thing as a clearance sale. The hatred of "puffing"

grew on him until he came to regard even a sign as "puffing."

Uninformed persons who wished to find Baines's must ask and learn. For

Mr. Baines, to have replaced the sign would have been to condone, yea,

to participate in, the modern craze for unscrupulous

self-advertisement. This abstention of Mr. Baines's from indulgence in

signboards was somehow accepted by the more thoughtful members of the

community as evidence that the height of Mr. Baines's principles was

greater even than they had imagined.

Constance and Sophia were the daughters of this credit to human nature.

He had no other children.

II

They pressed their noses against the window of the show-room, and gazed

down into the Square as perpendicularly as the projecting front of the

shop would allow. The show-room was over the millinery and silken half

of the shop. Over the woollen and shirting half were the drawing-room

and the chief bedroom. When in quest of articles of coquetry, you

mounted from the shop by a curving stair, and your head gradually rose

level with a large apartment having a mahogany counter in front of the

window and along one side, yellow linoleum on the floor, many cardboard

boxes, a magnificent hinged cheval glass, and two chairs. The

window-sill being lower than the counter, there was a gulf between the

panes and the back of the counter, into which important articles such

as scissors, pencils, chalk, and artificial flowers were continually

disappearing: another proof of the architect's incompetence.

The girls could only press their noses against the window by kneeling

on the counter, and this they were doing. Constance's nose was snub,

but agreeably so. Sophia had a fine Roman nose; she was a beautiful

creature, beautiful and handsome at the same time. They were both of

them rather like racehorses, quivering with delicate, sensitive, and

luxuriant life; exquisite, enchanting proof of the circulation of the

blood; innocent, artful, roguish, prim, gushing, ignorant, and

miraculously wise. Their ages were sixteen and fifteen; it is an epoch

when, if one is frank, one must admit that one has nothing to learn:

one has learnt simply everything in the previous six months.

"There she goes!" exclaimed Sophia.

Up the Square, from the corner of King Street, passed a woman in a new

bonnet with pink strings, and a new blue dress that sloped at the

shoulders and grew to a vast circumference at the hem. Through the

silent sunlit solitude of the Square (for it was Thursday afternoon,

and all the shops shut except the confectioner's and one chemist's)

this bonnet and this dress floated northwards in search of romance,

under the relentless eyes of Constance and Sophia. Within them,

somewhere, was the soul of Maggie, domestic servant at Baines's. Maggie

had been at the shop since before the creation of Constance and Sophia.

She lived seventeen hours of each day in an underground kitchen and

larder, and the other seven in an attic, never going out except to

chapel on Sunday evenings, and once a month on Thursday afternoons.

"Followers" were most strictly forbidden to her; but on rare occasions

an aunt from Longshaw was permitted as a tremendous favour to see her

in the subterranean den. Everybody, including herself, considered that

she had a good "place," and was well treated. It was undeniable, for

instance, that she was allowed to fall in love exactly as she chose,

provided she did not "carry on" in the kitchen or the yard. And as a

fact, Maggie had fallen in love. In seventeen years she had been

engaged eleven times. No one could conceive how that ugly and powerful

organism could softly languish to the undoing of even a butty-collier,

nor why, having caught a man in her sweet toils, she could ever be

imbecile enough to set him free. There are, however, mysteries in the

souls of Maggies. The drudge had probably been affianced oftener than

any woman in Bursley. Her employers were so accustomed to an

interesting announcement that for years they had taken to saying naught

in reply but 'Really, Maggie!' Engagements and tragic partings were

Maggie's pastime. Fixed otherwise, she might have studied the piano

instead.

"No gloves, of course!" Sophia criticized.

"Well, you can't expect her to have gloves," said Constance.

Then a pause, as the bonnet and dress neared the top of the Square.

"Supposing she turns round and sees us?" Constance suggested.

"I don't care if she does," said Sophia, with a haughtiness almost

impassioned; and her head trembled slightly.

There were, as usual, several loafers at the top of the Square, in the

corner between the bank and the "Marquis of Granby." And one of these

loafers stepped forward and shook hands with an obviously willing

Maggie. Clearly it was a rendezvous, open, unashamed. The twelfth

victim had been selected by the virgin of forty, whose kiss would not

have melted lard! The couple disappeared together down Oldcastle Street.

"WELL!" cried Constance. "Did you ever see such a thing?"

While Sophia, short of adequate words, flushed and bit her lip.

With the profound, instinctive cruelty of youth, Constance and Sophia

had assembled in their favourite haunt, the show-room, expressly to

deride Maggie in her new clothes. They obscurely thought that a woman

so ugly and soiled as Maggie was had no right to possess new clothes.

Even her desire to take the air of a Thursday afternoon seemed to them

unnatural and somewhat reprehensible. Why should she want to stir out

of her kitchen? As for her tender yearnings, they positively grudged

these to Maggie. That Maggie should give rein to chaste passion was

more than grotesque; it was offensive and wicked. But let it not for an

instant be doubted that they were nice, kind-hearted, well-behaved, and

delightful girls! Because they were. They were not angels.

"It's too ridiculous!" said Sophia, severely. She had youth, beauty,

and rank in her favour. And to her it really was ridiculous.

"Poor old Maggie!" Constance murmured. Constance was foolishly

good-natured, a perfect manufactory of excuses for other people; and

her benevolence was eternally rising up and overpowering her reason.

"What time did mother say she should be back?" Sophia asked.

"Not until supper."

"Oh! Hallelujah!" Sophia burst out, clasping her hands in joy. And they

both slid down from the counter just as if they had been little boys,

and not, as their mother called them, "great girls."

"Let's go and play the Osborne quadrilles," Sophia suggested (the

Osborne quadrilles being a series of dances arranged to be performed on

drawing-room pianos by four jewelled hands).

"I couldn't think of it," said Constance, with a precocious gesture of

seriousness. In that gesture, and in her tone, was something which

conveyed to Sophia: "Sophia, how can you be so utterly blind to the

gravity of our fleeting existence as to ask me to go and strum the

piano with you?" Yet a moment before she had been a little boy.

"Why not?" Sophia demanded.

"I shall never have another chance like to-day for getting on with

this," said Constance, picking up a bag from the counter.

She sat down and took from the bag a piece of loosely woven canvas, on

which she was embroidering a bunch of roses in coloured wools. The

canvas had once been stretched on a frame, but now, as the delicate

labour of the petals and leaves was done, and nothing remained to do

but the monotonous background, Constance was content to pin the stuff

to her knee. With the long needle and several skeins of mustard-tinted

wool, she bent over the canvas and resumed the filling-in of the tiny

squares. The whole design was in squares--the gradations of red and

greens, the curves of the smallest buds--all was contrived in squares,

with a result that mimicked a fragment of uncompromising Axminster

carpet. Still, the fine texture of the wool, the regular and rapid

grace of those fingers moving incessantly at back and front of the

canvas, the gentle sound of the wool as it passed through the holes,

and the intent, youthful earnestness of that lowered gaze, excused and

invested with charm an activity which, on artistic grounds, could not

possibly be justified. The canvas was destined to adorn a gilt

firescreen in the drawing-room, and also to form a birthday gift to

Mrs. Baines from her elder daughter. But whether the enterprise was as

secret from Mrs. Baines as Constance hoped, none save Mrs. Baines knew.

"Con," murmured Sophia, "you're too sickening sometimes."

"Well," said Constance, blandly, "it's no use pretending that this

hasn't got to be finished before we go back to school, because it has."

Sophia wandered about, a prey ripe for the Evil One. "Oh," she

exclaimed joyously--even ecstatically--looking behind the cheval glass,

"here's mother's new skirt! Miss Dunn's been putting the gimp on it!

Oh, mother, what a proud thing you will be!" Constance heard swishings

behind the glass. "What are you doing, Sophia?"

"Nothing."

"You surely aren't putting that skirt on?"

"Why not?"

"You'll catch it finely, I can tell you!"

Without further defence, Sophia sprang out from behind the immense

glass. She had already shed a notable part of her own costume, and the

flush of mischief was in her face. She ran across to the other side of

the room and examined carefully a large coloured print that was affixed

to the wall.

This print represented fifteen sisters, all of the same height and

slimness of figure, all of the same age--about twenty-five or so, and

all with exactly the same haughty and bored beauty. That they were in

truth sisters was clear from the facial resemblance between them; their

demeanour indicated that they were princesses, offspring of some

impossibly prolific king and queen. Those hands had never toiled, nor

had those features ever relaxed from the smile of courts. The

princesses moved in a landscape of marble steps and verandahs, with a

bandstand and strange trees in the distance. One was in a riding-habit,

another in evening attire, another dressed for tea, another for the

theatre; another seemed to be ready to go to bed. One held a little

girl by the hand; it could not have been her own little girl, for these

princesses were far beyond human passions. Where had she obtained the

little girl? Why was one sister going to the theatre, another to tea,

another to the stable, and another to bed? Why was one in a heavy

mantle, and another sheltering from the sun's rays under a parasol? The

picture was drenched in mystery, and the strangest thing about it was

that all these highnesses were apparently content with the most

ridiculous and out-moded fashions. Absurd hats, with veils flying

behind; absurd bonnets, fitting close to the head, and spotted; absurd

coiffures that nearly lay on the nape; absurd, clumsy sleeves; absurd

waists, almost above the elbow's level; absurd scolloped jackets! And

the skirts! What a sight were those skirts! They were nothing but vast

decorated pyramids; on the summit of each was stuck the upper half of a

princess. It was astounding that princesses should consent to be so

preposterous and so uncomfortable. But Sophia perceived nothing uncanny

in the picture, which bore the legend: "Newest summer fashions from

Paris. Gratis supplement to Myra's Journal." Sophia had never imagined

anything more stylish, lovely, and dashing than the raiment of the

fifteen princesses.

For Constance and Sophia had the disadvantage of living in the middle

ages. The crinoline had not quite reached its full circumference, and

the dress-improver had not even been thought of. In all the Five Towns

there was not a public bath, nor a free library, nor a municipal park,

nor a telephone, nor yet a board-school. People had not understood the

vital necessity of going away to the seaside every year. Bishop Colenso

had just staggered Christianity by his shameless notions on the

Pentateuch. Half Lancashire was starving on account of the American

war. Garroting was the chief amusement of the homicidal classes.

Incredible as it may appear, there was nothing but a horse-tram running

between Bursley and Hanbridge--and that only twice an hour; and between

the other towns no stage of any kind! One went to Longshaw as one now

goes to Pekin. It was an era so dark and backward that one might wonder

how people could sleep in their beds at night for thinking about their

sad state.

Happily the inhabitants of the Five Towns in that era were passably

pleased with themselves, and they never even suspected that they were

not quite modern and quite awake. They thought that the intellectual,

the industrial, and the social movements had gone about as far as these

movements could go, and they were amazed at their own progress. Instead

of being humble and ashamed, they actually showed pride in their

pitiful achievements. They ought to have looked forward meekly to the

prodigious feats of posterity; but, having too little faith and too

much conceit, they were content to look behind and make comparisons

with the past. They did not foresee the miraculous generation which is

us. A poor, blind, complacent people! The ludicrous horse-car was

typical of them. The driver rang a huge bell, five minutes before

starting, that could be heard from the Wesleyan Chapel to the Cock

Yard, and then after deliberations and hesitations the vehicle rolled

off on its rails into unknown dangers while passengers shouted

good-bye. At Bleakridge it had to stop for the turnpike, and it was

assisted up the mountains of Leveson Place and Sutherland Street

(towards Hanbridge) by a third horse, on whose back was perched a tiny,

whip-cracking boy; that boy lived like a shuttle on the road between

Leveson Place and Sutherland Street, and even in wet weather he was the

envy of all other boys. After half an hour's perilous transit the car

drew up solemnly in a narrow street by the Signal office in Hanbridge,

and the ruddy driver, having revolved many times the polished iron

handle of his sole brake, turned his attention to his passengers in

calm triumph, dismissing them with a sort of unsung doxology.

And this was regarded as the last word of traction! A whip-cracking boy

on a tip horse! Oh, blind, blind! You could not foresee the hundred and

twenty electric cars that now rush madly bumping and thundering at

twenty miles an hour through all the main streets of the district!

So that naturally Sophia, infected with the pride of her period, had no

misgivings whatever concerning the final elegance of the princesses.

She studied them as the fifteen apostles of the ne plus ultra; then,

having taken some flowers and plumes out of a box, amid warnings from

Constance, she retreated behind the glass, and presently emerged as a

great lady in the style of the princesses. Her mother's tremendous new

gown ballooned about her in all its fantastic richness and

expensiveness. And with the gown she had put on her mother's

importance--that mien of assured authority, of capacity tested in many

a crisis, which characterized Mrs. Baines, and which Mrs. Baines seemed

to impart to her dresses even before she had regularly worn them. For

it was a fact that Mrs. Baines's empty garments inspired respect, as

though some essence had escaped from her and remained in them.

"Sophia!"

Constance stayed her needle, and, without lifting her head, gazed, with

eyes raised from the wool-work, motionless at the posturing figure of

her sister. It was sacrilege that she was witnessing, a prodigious

irreverence. She was conscious of an expectation that punishment would

instantly fall on this daring, impious child. But she, who never felt

these mad, amazing impulses, could nevertheless only smile fearfully.

"Sophia!" she breathed, with an intensity of alarm that merged into

condoning admiration. "Whatever will you do next?"

Sophia's lovely flushed face crowned the extraordinary structure like a

blossom, scarcely controlling its laughter. She was as tall as her

mother, and as imperious, as crested, and proud; and in spite of the

pigtail, the girlish semi-circular comb, and the loose foal-like limbs,

she could support as well as her mother the majesty of the

gimp-embroidered dress. Her eyes sparkled with all the challenges of

the untried virgin as she minced about the showroom. Abounding life

inspired her movements. The confident and fierce joy of youth shone on

her brow. "What thing on earth equals me?" she seemed to demand with

enchanting and yet ruthless arrogance. She was the daughter of a

respected, bedridden draper in an insignificant town, lost in the

central labyrinth of England, if you like; yet what manner of man,

confronted with her, would or could have denied her naive claim to

dominion? She stood, in her mother's hoops, for the desire of the

world. And in the innocence of her soul she knew it! The heart of a

young girl mysteriously speaks and tells her of her power long ere she

can use her power. If she can find nothing else to subdue, you may

catch her in the early years subduing a gate-post or drawing homage

from an empty chair. Sophia's experimental victim was Constance, with

suspended needle and soft glance that shot out from the lowered face.

Then Sophia fell, in stepping backwards; the pyramid was overbalanced;

great distended rings of silk trembled and swayed gigantically on the

floor, and Sophia's small feet lay like the feet of a doll on the rim

of the largest circle, which curved and arched above them like a

cavern's mouth. The abrupt transition of her features from assured

pride to ludicrous astonishment and alarm was comical enough to have

sent into wild uncharitable laughter any creature less humane than

Constance. But Constance sprang to her, a single embodied instinct of

benevolence, with her snub nose, and tried to raise her.

"Oh, Sophia!" she cried compassionately--that voice seemed not to know

the tones of reproof--"I do hope you've not messed it, because mother

would be so--"

The words were interrupted by the sound of groans beyond the door

leading to the bedrooms. The groans, indicating direst physical

torment, grew louder. The two girls stared, wonder-struck and afraid,

at the door, Sophia with her dark head raised, and Constance with her

arms round Sophia's waist. The door opened, letting in a much-magnified

sound of groans, and there entered a youngish, undersized man, who was

frantically clutching his head in his hands and contorting all the

muscles of his face. On perceiving the sculptural group of two prone,

interlocked girls, one enveloped in a crinoline, and the other with a

wool-work bunch of flowers pinned to her knee, he jumped back, ceased

groaning, arranged his face, and seriously tried to pretend that it was

not he who had been vocal in anguish, that, indeed, he was just passing

as a casual, ordinary wayfarer through the showroom to the shop below.

He blushed darkly; and the girls also blushed.

"Oh, I beg pardon, I'm sure!" said this youngish man suddenly; and with

a swift turn he disappeared whence he had come.

He was Mr. Povey, a person universally esteemed, both within and

without the shop, the surrogate of bedridden Mr. Baines, the unfailing

comfort and stand-by of Mrs. Baines, the fount and radiating centre of

order and discipline in the shop; a quiet, diffident, secretive,

tedious, and obstinate youngish man, absolutely faithful, absolutely

efficient in his sphere; without brilliance, without distinction;

perhaps rather little-minded, certainly narrow-minded; but what a force

in the shop! The shop was inconceivable without Mr. Povey. He was under

twenty and not out of his apprenticeship when Mr. Baines had been

struck down, and he had at once proved his worth. Of the assistants, he

alone slept in the house. His bedroom was next to that of his employer;

there was a door between the two chambers, and the two steps led down

from the larger to the less.

The girls regained their feet, Sophia with Constance's help. It was not

easy to right a capsized crinoline. They both began to laugh nervously,

with a trace of hysteria.

"I thought he'd gone to the dentist's," whispered Constance.

Mr. Povey's toothache had been causing anxiety in the microcosm for two

days, and it had been clearly understood at dinner that Thursday

morning that Mr. Povey was to set forth to Oulsnam Bros., the dentists

at Hillport, without any delay. Only on Thursdays and Sundays did Mr.

Povey dine with the family. On other days he dined later, by himself,

but at the family table, when Mrs. Baines or one of the assistants

could "relieve" him in the shop. Before starting out to visit her elder

sister at Axe, Mrs. Baines had insisted to Mr. Povey that he had eaten

practically nothing but "slops" for twenty-four hours, and that if he

was not careful she would have him on her hands. He had replied in his

quietest, most sagacious, matter-of-fact tone--the tone that carried

weight with all who heard it--that he had only been waiting for

Thursday afternoon, and should of course go instantly to Oulsnams' and

have the thing attended to in a proper manner. He had even added that

persons who put off going to the dentist's were simply sowing trouble

for themselves.

None could possibly have guessed that Mr. Povey was afraid of going to

the dentist's. But such was the case. He had not dared to set forth.

The paragon of commonsense, pictured by most people as being somehow

unliable to human frailties, could not yet screw himself up to the

point of ringing a dentist's door-bell.

"He did look funny," said Sophia. "I wonder what he thought. I couldn't

help laughing!"

Constance made no answer; but when Sophia had resumed her own clothes,

and it was ascertained beyond doubt that the new dress had not

suffered, and Constance herself was calmly stitching again, she said,

poising her needle as she had poised it to watch Sophia:

"I was just wondering whether something oughtn't to be done for Mr.

Povey."

"What?" Sophia demanded.

"Has he gone back to his bedroom?"

"Let's go and listen," said Sophia the adventuress.

They went, through the showroom door, past the foot of the stairs

leading to the second storey, down the long corridor broken in the

middle by two steps and carpeted with a narrow bordered carpet whose

parallel lines increased its apparent length. They went on tiptoe,

sticking close to one another. Mr. Povey's door was slightly ajar. They

listened; not a sound.

"Mr. Povey!" Constance coughed discreetly.

No reply. It was Sophia who pushed the door open. Constance made an

elderly prim plucking gesture at Sophia's bare arm, but she followed

Sophia gingerly into the forbidden room, which was, however, empty. The

bed had been ruffled, and on it lay a book, "The Harvest of a Quiet

Eye."

"Harvest of a quiet tooth!" Sophia whispered, giggling very low.

"Hsh!" Constance put her lips forward.

From the next room came a regular, muffled, oratorical sound, as though

some one had begun many years ago to address a meeting and had

forgotten to leave off and never would leave off. They were familiar

with the sound, and they quitted Mr. Povey's chamber in fear of

disturbing it. At the same moment Mr. Povey reappeared, this time in

the drawing-room doorway at the other extremity of the long corridor.

He seemed to be trying ineffectually to flee from his tooth as a

murderer tries to flee from his conscience.

"Oh, Mr. Povey!" said Constance quickly--for he had surprised them

coming out of his bedroom; "we were just looking for you."

"To see if we could do anything for you," Sophia added.

"Oh no, thanks!" said Mr. Povey.

Then he began to come down the corridor, slowly.

"You haven't been to the dentist's," said Constance sympathetically.

"No, I haven't," said Mr. Povey, as if Constance was indicating a fact

which had escaped his attention. "The truth is, I thought it looked

like rain, and if I'd got wet--you see--"

Miserable Mr. Povey!

"Yes," said Constance, "you certainly ought to keep out of draughts.

Don't you think it would be a good thing if you went and sat in the

parlour? There's a fire there."

"I shall be all right, thank you," said Mr. Povey. And after a pause:

"Well, thanks, I will."

III

The girls made way for him to pass them at the head of the twisting

stairs which led down to the parlour. Constance followed, and Sophia

followed Constance.

"Have father's chair," said Constance.

There were two rocking-chairs with fluted backs covered by

antimacassars, one on either side of the hearth. That to the left was

still entitled "father's chair," though its owner had not sat in it

since long before the Crimean war, and would never sit in it again.

"I think I'd sooner have the other one," said Mr. Povey, "because it's

on the right side, you see." And he touched his right cheek.

Having taken Mrs. Baines's chair, he bent his face down to the fire,

seeking comfort from its warmth. Sophia poked the fire, whereupon Mr.

Povey abruptly withdrew his face. He then felt something light on his

shoulders. Constance had taken the antimacassar from the back of the

chair, and protected him with it from the draughts. He did not

instantly rebel, and therefore was permanently barred from rebellion.

He was entrapped by the antimacassar. It formally constituted him an

invalid, and Constance and Sophia his nurses. Constance drew the

curtain across the street door. No draught could come from the window,

for the window was not 'made to open.' The age of ventilation had not

arrived. Sophia shut the other two doors. And, each near a door, the

girls gazed at Mr. Povey behind his back, irresolute, but filled with a

delicious sense of responsibility.

The situation was on a different plane now. The seriousness of Mr.

Povey's toothache, which became more and more manifest, had already

wiped out the ludicrous memory of the encounter in the showroom.

Looking at these two big girls, with their short-sleeved black frocks

and black aprons, and their smooth hair, and their composed serious

faces, one would have judged them incapable of the least lapse from an

archangelic primness; Sophia especially presented a marvellous

imitation of saintly innocence. As for the toothache, its action on Mr.

Povey was apparently periodic; it gathered to a crisis like a wave,

gradually, the torture increasing till the wave broke and left Mr.

Povey exhausted, but free for a moment from pain. These crises recurred

about once a minute. And now, accustomed to the presence of the young

virgins, and having tacitly acknowledged by his acceptance of the

antimacassar that his state was abnormal, he gave himself up frankly to

affliction. He concealed nothing of his agony, which was fully

displayed by sudden contortions of his frame, and frantic oscillations

of the rocking-chair. Presently, as he lay back enfeebled in the wash

of a spent wave, he murmured with a sick man's voice:

"I suppose you haven't got any laudanum?"

The girls started into life. "Laudanum, Mr. Povey?"

"Yes, to hold in my mouth."

He sat up, tense; another wave was forming. The excellent fellow was

lost to all self-respect, all decency.

"There's sure to be some in mother's cupboard," said Sophia.

Constance, who bore Mrs. Baines's bunch of keys at her girdle, a solemn

trust, moved a little fearfully to a corner cupboard which was hung in

the angle to the right of the projecting fireplace, over a shelf on

which stood a large copper tea-urn. That corner cupboard, of oak inlaid

with maple and ebony in a simple border pattern, was typical of the

room. It was of a piece with the deep green "flock" wall paper, and the

tea-urn, and the rocking-chairs with their antimacassars, and the

harmonium in rosewood with a Chinese paper-mache tea-caddy on the top

of it; even with the carpet, certainly the most curious parlour carpet

that ever was, being made of lengths of the stair-carpet sewn together

side by side. That corner cupboard was already old in service; it had

held the medicines of generations. It gleamed darkly with the grave and

genuine polish which comes from ancient use alone. The key which

Constance chose from her bunch was like the cupboard, smooth and

shining with years; it fitted and turned very easily, yet with a firm

snap. The single wide door opened sedately as a portal.

The girls examined the sacred interior, which had the air of being

inhabited by an army of diminutive prisoners, each crying aloud with

the full strength of its label to be set free on a mission.

"There it is!" said Sophia eagerly.

And there it was: a blue bottle, with a saffron label, "Caution.

POISON. Laudanum. Charles Critchlow, M.P.S. Dispensing Chemist. St.

Luke's Square, Bursley."

Those large capitals frightened the girls. Constance took the bottle as

she might have taken a loaded revolver, and she glanced at Sophia.

Their omnipotent, all-wise mother was not present to tell them what to

do. They, who had never decided, had to decide now. And Constance was

the elder. Must this fearsome stuff, whose very name was a name of

fear, be introduced in spite of printed warnings into Mr. Povey's

mouth? The responsibility was terrifying.

"Perhaps I'd just better ask Mr. Critchlow," Constance faltered.

The expectation of beneficent laudanum had enlivened Mr. Povey, had

already, indeed, by a sort of suggestion, half cured his toothache.

"Oh no!" he said. "No need to ask Mr. Critchlow ... Two or three drops

in a little water." He showed impatience to be at the laudanum.

The girls knew that an antipathy existed between the chemist and Mr.

Povey.

"It's sure to be all right," said Sophia. "I'll get the water."

With youthful cries and alarms they succeeded in pouring four mortal

dark drops (one more than Constance intended) into a cup containing a

little water. And as they handed the cup to Mr. Povey their faces were

the faces of affrighted comical conspirators. They felt so old and they

looked so young.

Mr. Povey imbibed eagerly of the potion, put the cup on the

mantelpiece, and then tilted his head to the right so as to submerge

the affected tooth. In this posture he remained, awaiting the sweet

influence of the remedy. The girls, out of a nice modesty, turned away,

for Mr. Povey must not swallow the medicine, and they preferred to

leave him unhampered in the solution of a delicate problem. When next

they examined him, he was leaning back in the rocking-chair with his

mouth open and his eyes shut.

"Has it done you any good, Mr. Povey?"

"I think I'll lie down on the sofa for a minute," was Mr. Povey's

strange reply; and forthwith he sprang up and flung himself on to the

horse-hair sofa between the fireplace and the window, where he lay

stripped of all his dignity, a mere beaten animal in a grey suit with

peculiar coat-tails, and a very creased waistcoat, and a lapel that was

planted with pins, and a paper collar and close-fitting paper cuffs.

Constance ran after him with the antimacassar, which she spread softly

on his shoulders; and Sophia put another one over his thin little legs,

all drawn up.

They then gazed at their handiwork, with secret self-accusations and

the most dreadful misgivings.

"He surely never swallowed it!" Constance whispered.

"He's asleep, anyhow," said Sophia, more loudly.

Mr. Povey was certainly asleep, and his mouth was very wide open--like

a shop-door. The only question was whether his sleep was not an eternal

sleep; the only question was whether he was not out of his pain for

ever.

Then he snored--horribly; his snore seemed a portent of disaster.

Sophia approached him as though he were a bomb, and stared, growing

bolder, into his mouth.

"Oh, Con," she summoned her sister, "do come and look! It's too droll!"

In an instant all their four eyes were exploring the singular landscape

of Mr. Povey's mouth. In a corner, to the right of that interior, was

one sizeable fragment of a tooth, that was attached to Mr. Povey by the

slenderest tie, so that at each respiration of Mr. Povey, when his body

slightly heaved and the gale moaned in the cavern, this tooth moved

separately, showing that its long connection with Mr. Povey was drawing

to a close.

"That's the one," said Sophia, pointing. "And it's as loose as

anything. Did you ever see such a funny thing?"

The extreme funniness of the thing had lulled in Sophia the fear of Mr.

Povey's sudden death.

"I'll see how much he's taken," said Constance, preoccupied, going to

the mantelpiece.

"Why, I do believe--" Sophia began, and then stopped, glancing at the

sewing-machine, which stood next to the sofa.

It was a Howe sewing-machine. It had a little tool-drawer, and in the

tool-drawer was a small pair of pliers. Constance, engaged in sniffing

at the lees of the potion in order to estimate its probable deadliness,

heard the well-known click of the little tool-drawer, and then she saw

Sophia nearing Mr. Povey's mouth with the pliers.

"Sophia!" she exclaimed, aghast. "What in the name of goodness are you

doing?"

"Nothing," said Sophia.

The next instant Mr. Povey sprang up out of his laudanum dream.

"It jumps!" he muttered; and, after a reflective pause, "but it's much

better." He had at any rate escaped death.

Sophia's right hand was behind her back.

Just then a hawker passed down King Street, crying mussels and cockles.

"Oh!" Sophia almost shrieked. "Do let's have mussels and cockles for

tea!" And she rushed to the door, and unlocked and opened it,

regardless of the risk of draughts to Mr. Povey.

In those days people often depended upon the caprices of hawkers for

the tastiness of their teas; but it was an adventurous age, when errant

knights of commerce were numerous and enterprising. You went on to your

doorstep, caught your meal as it passed, withdrew, cooked it and ate

it, quite in the manner of the early Briton.

Constance was obliged to join her sister on the top step. Sophia

descended to the second step.

"Fresh mussels and cockles all alive oh!" bawled the hawker, looking

across the road in the April breeze. He was the celebrated Hollins, a

professional Irish drunkard, aged in iniquity, who cheerfully saluted

magistrates in the street, and referred to the workhouse, which he

occasionally visited, as the Bastile.

Sophia was trembling from head to foot.

"What ARE you laughing at, you silly thing?" Constance demanded.

Sophia surreptitiously showed the pliers, which she had partly thrust

into her pocket. Between their points was a most perceptible, and even

recognizable, fragment of Mr. Povey.

This was the crown of Sophia's career as a perpetrator of the

unutterable.

"What!" Constance's face showed the final contortions of that horrified

incredulity which is forced to believe.

Sophia nudged her violently to remind her that they were in the street,

and also quite close to Mr. Povey.

"Now, my little missies," said the vile Hollins. "Three pence a pint,

and how's your honoured mother to-day? Yes, fresh, so help me God!"

CHAPTER II

THE TOOTH

I

The two girls came up the unlighted stone staircase which led from

Maggie's cave to the door of the parlour. Sophia, foremost, was

carrying a large tray, and Constance a small one. Constance, who had

nothing on her tray but a teapot, a bowl of steaming and balmy-scented

mussels and cockles, and a plate of hot buttered toast, went directly

into the parlour on the left. Sophia had in her arms the entire

material and apparatus of a high tea for two, including eggs, jam, and

toast (covered with the slop-basin turned upside down), but not

including mussels and cockles. She turned to the right, passed along

the corridor by the cutting-out room, up two steps into the sheeted and

shuttered gloom of the closed shop, up the showroom stairs, through the

showroom, and so into the bedroom corridor. Experience had proved it

easier to make this long detour than to round the difficult corner of

the parlour stairs with a large loaded tray. Sophia knocked with the

edge of the tray at the door of the principal bedroom. The muffled

oratorical sound from within suddenly ceased, and the door was opened

by a very tall, very thin, black-bearded man, who looked down at Sophia

as if to demand what she meant by such an interruption.

"I've brought the tea, Mr. Critchlow," said Sophia.

And Mr. Critchlow carefully accepted the tray.

"Is that my little Sophia?" asked a faint voice from the depths of the

bedroom.

"Yes, father," said Sophia.

But she did not attempt to enter the room. Mr. Critchlow put the tray

on a white-clad chest of drawers near the door, and then he shut the

door, with no ceremony. Mr. Critchlow was John Baines's oldest and

closest friend, though decidedly younger than the draper. He frequently

"popped in" to have a word with the invalid; but Thursday afternoon was

his special afternoon, consecrated by him to the service of the sick.

From two o'clock precisely till eight o'clock precisely he took charge

of John Baines, reigning autocratically over the bedroom. It was known

that he would not tolerate invasions, nor even ambassadorial visits.

No! He gave up his weekly holiday to this business of friendship, and

he must be allowed to conduct the business in his own way. Mrs. Baines

herself avoided disturbing Mr. Critchlow's ministrations on her

husband. She was glad to do so; for Mr. Baines was never to be left

alone under any circumstances, and the convenience of being able to

rely upon the presence of a staid member of the Pharmaceutical Society

for six hours of a given day every week outweighed the slight affront

to her prerogatives as wife and house-mistress. Mr. Critchlow was an

extremely peculiar man, but when he was in the bedroom she could leave

the house with an easy mind. Moreover, John Baines enjoyed these

Thursday afternoons. For him, there was 'none like Charles Critchlow.'

The two old friends experienced a sort of grim, desiccated happiness,

cooped up together in the bedroom, secure from women and fools

generally. How they spent the time did not seem to be certainly known,

but the impression was that politics occupied them. Undoubtedly Mr.

Critchlow was an extremely peculiar man. He was a man of habits. He

must always have the same things for his tea. Black-currant jam, for

instance. (He called it "preserve.") The idea of offering Mr. Critchlow

a tea which did not comprise black-currant jam was inconceivable by the

intelligence of St. Luke's Square. Thus for years past, in the

fruit-preserving season, when all the house and all the shop smelt

richly of fruit boiling in sugar, Mrs. Baines had filled an extra

number of jars with black-currant jam, 'because Mr. Critchlow wouldn't

TOUCH any other sort.'

So Sophia, faced with the shut door of the bedroom, went down to the

parlour by the shorter route. She knew that on going up again, after

tea, she would find the devastated tray on the doormat.

Constance was helping Mr. Povey to mussels and cockles. And Mr. Povey

still wore one of the antimacassars. It must have stuck to his

shoulders when he sprang up from the sofa, woollen antimacassars being

notoriously parasitic things. Sophia sat down, somewhat

self-consciously. The serious Constance was also perturbed. Mr. Povey

did not usually take tea in the house on Thursday afternoons; his

practice was to go out into the great, mysterious world. Never before

had he shared a meal with the girls alone. The situation was

indubitably unexpected, unforeseen; it was, too, piquant, and what

added to its piquancy was the fact that Constance and Sophia were,

somehow, responsible for Mr. Povey. They felt that they were

responsible for him. They had offered the practical sympathy of two

intelligent and well-trained young women, born nurses by reason of

their sex, and Mr. Povey had accepted; he was now on their hands.

Sophia's monstrous, sly operation in Mr. Povey's mouth did not cause

either of them much alarm, Constance having apparently recovered from

the first shock of it. They had discussed it in the kitchen while

preparing the teas; Constance's extraordinarily severe and dictatorial

tone in condemning it had led to a certain heat. But the success of the

impudent wrench justified it despite any irrefutable argument to the

contrary. Mr. Povey was better already, and he evidently remained in

ignorance of his loss.

"Have some?" Constance asked of Sophia, with a large spoon hovering

over the bowl of shells.

"Yes, PLEASE," said Sophia, positively.

Constance well knew that she would have some, and had only asked from

sheer nervousness.

"Pass your plate, then."

Now when everybody was served with mussels, cockles, tea, and toast,

and Mr. Povey had been persuaded to cut the crust off his toast, and

Constance had, quite unnecessarily, warned Sophia against the deadly

green stuff in the mussels, and Constance had further pointed out that

the evenings were getting longer, and Mr. Povey had agreed that they

were, there remained nothing to say. An irksome silence fell on them

all, and no one could lift it off. Tiny clashes of shell and crockery

sounded with the terrible clearness of noises heard in the night. Each

person avoided the eyes of the others. And both Constance and Sophia

kept straightening their bodies at intervals, and expanding their

chests, and then looking at their plates; occasionally a prim cough was

discharged. It was a sad example of the difference between young

women's dreams of social brilliance and the reality of life. These

girls got more and more girlish, until, from being women at the

administering of laudanum, they sank back to about eight years of

age--perfect children--at the tea-table.

The tension was snapped by Mr. Povey. "My God!" he muttered, moved by a

startling discovery to this impious and disgraceful oath (he, the

pattern and exemplar--and in the presence of innocent girlhood too!).

"I've swallowed it!"

"Swallowed what, Mr. Povey?" Constance inquired.

The tip of Mr. Povey's tongue made a careful voyage of inspection all

round the right side of his mouth.

"Oh yes!" he said, as if solemnly accepting the inevitable. "I've

swallowed it!"

Sophia's face was now scarlet; she seemed to be looking for some place

to hide it. Constance could not think of anything to say.

"That tooth has been loose for two years," said Mr. Povey, "and now

I've swallowed it with a mussel."

"Oh, Mr. Povey!" Constance cried in confusion, and added, "There's one

good thing, it can't hurt you any more now."

"Oh!" said Mr. Povey. "It wasn't THAT tooth that was hurting me. It's

an old stump at the back that's upset me so this last day or two. I

wish it had been."

Sophia had her teacup close to her red face. At these words of Mr.

Povey her cheeks seemed to fill out like plump apples. She dashed the

cup into its saucer, spilling tea recklessly, and then ran from the

room with stifled snorts.

"Sophia!" Constance protested.

"I must just--" Sophia incoherently spluttered in the doorway. "I

shall be all right. Don't----"

Constance, who had risen, sat down again.

II

Sophia fled along the passage leading to the shop and took refuge in

the cutting-out room, a room which the astonishing architect had

devised upon what must have been a backyard of one of the three

constituent houses. It was lighted from its roof, and only a wooden

partition, eight feet high, separated it from the passage. Here Sophia

gave rein to her feelings; she laughed and cried together, weeping

generously into her handkerchief and wildly giggling, in a hysteria

which she could not control. The spectacle of Mr. Povey mourning for a

tooth which he thought he had swallowed, but which in fact lay all the

time in her pocket, seemed to her to be by far the most ridiculous,

side-splitting thing that had ever happened or could happen on earth.

It utterly overcame her. And when she fancied that she had exhausted

and conquered its surpassing ridiculousness, this ridiculousness seized

her again and rolled her anew in depths of mad, trembling laughter.

Gradually she grew calmer. She heard the parlour door open, and

Constance descend the kitchen steps with a rattling tray of tea-things.

Tea, then, was finished, without her! Constance did not remain in the

kitchen, because the cups and saucers were left for Maggie to wash up

as a fitting coda to Maggie's monthly holiday. The parlour door closed.

And the vision of Mr. Povey in his antimacassar swept Sophia off into

another convulsion of laughter and tears. Upon this the parlour door

opened again, and Sophia choked herself into silence while Constance

hastened along the passage. In a minute Constance returned with her

woolwork, which she had got from the showroom, and the parlour received

her. Not the least curiosity on the part of Constance as to what had

become of Sophia!

At length Sophia, a faint meditative smile being all that was left of

the storm in her, ascended slowly to the showroom, through the shop.

Nothing there of interest! Thence she wandered towards the

drawing-room, and encountered Mr. Critchlow's tray on the mat. She

picked it up and carried it by way of the showroom and shop down to the

kitchen, where she dreamily munched two pieces of toast that had cooled

to the consistency of leather. She mounted the stone steps and listened

at the door of the parlour. No sound! This seclusion of Mr. Povey and

Constance was really very strange. She roved right round the house, and

descended creepingly by the twisted house-stairs, and listened intently

at the other door of the parlour. She now detected a faint regular

snore. Mr. Povey, a prey to laudanum and mussels, was sleeping while

Constance worked at her fire-screen! It was now in the highest degree

odd, this seclusion of Mr. Povey and Constance; unlike anything in

Sophia's experience! She wanted to go into the parlour, but she could

not bring herself to do so. She crept away again, forlorn and puzzled,

and next discovered herself in the bedroom which she shared with

Constance at the top of the house; she lay down in the dusk on the bed

and began to read "The Days of Bruce;" but she read only with her eyes.

Later, she heard movements on the house-stairs, and the familiar

whining creak of the door at the foot thereof. She skipped lightly to

the door of the bedroom.

"Good-night, Mr. Povey. I hope you'll be able to sleep."

Constance's voice!

"It will probably come on again."

Mr. Povey's voice, pessimistic!

Then the shutting of doors. It was almost dark. She went back to the

bed, expecting a visit from Constance. But a clock struck eight, and

all the various phenomena connected with the departure of Mr. Critchlow

occurred one after another. At the same time Maggie came home from the

land of romance. Then long silences! Constance was now immured with her

father, it being her "turn" to nurse; Maggie was washing up in her

cave, and Mr. Povey was lost to sight in his bedroom. Then Sophia heard

her mother's lively, commanding knock on the King Street door. Dusk had

definitely yielded to black night in the bedroom. Sophia dozed and

dreamed. When she awoke, her ear caught the sound of knocking. She

jumped up, tiptoed to the landing, and looked over the balustrade,

whence she had a view of all the first-floor corridor. The gas had been

lighted; through the round aperture at the top of the porcelain globe

she could see the wavering flame. It was her mother, still bonneted,

who was knocking at the door of Mr. Povey's room. Constance stood in

the doorway of her parents' room. Mrs. Baines knocked twice with an

interval, and then said to Constance, in a resonant whisper that

vibrated up the corridor----

"He seems to be fast asleep. I'd better not disturb him."

"But suppose he wants something in the night?"

"Well, child, I should hear him moving. Sleep's the best thing for him."

Mrs. Baines left Mr. Povey to the effects of laudanum, and came along

the corridor. She was a stout woman, all black stuff and gold chain,

and her skirt more than filled the width of the corridor. Sophia

watched her habitual heavy mounting gesture as she climbed the two

steps that gave variety to the corridor. At the gas-jet she paused,

and, putting her hand to the tap, gazed up into the globe.

"Where's Sophia?" she demanded, her eyes fixed on the gas as she

lowered the flame.

"I think she must be in bed, mother," said Constance, nonchalantly.

The returned mistress was point by point resuming knowledge and control

of that complicated machine--her household.

Then Constance and her mother disappeared into the bedroom, and the

door was shut with a gentle, decisive bang that to the silent watcher

on the floor above seemed to create a special excluding intimacy round

about the figures of Constance and her father and mother. The watcher

wondered, with a little prick of jealousy, what they would be

discussing in the large bedroom, her father's beard wagging feebly and

his long arms on the counterpane, Constance perched at the foot of the

bed, and her mother walking to and fro, putting her cameo brooch on the

dressing-table or stretching creases out of her gloves. Certainly, in

some subtle way, Constance had a standing with her parents which was

more confidential than Sophia's.

III

When Constance came to bed, half an hour later, Sophia was already in

bed. The room was fairly spacious. It had been the girls' retreat and

fortress since their earliest years. Its features seemed to them as

natural and unalterable as the features of a cave to a cave-dweller. It

had been repapered twice in their lives, and each papering stood out in

their memories like an epoch; a third epoch was due to the replacing of

a drugget by a resplendent old carpet degraded from the drawing-room.

There was only one bed, the bedstead being of painted iron; they never

interfered with each other in that bed, sleeping with a detachment as

perfect as if they had slept on opposite sides of St. Luke's Square;

yet if Constance had one night lain down on the half near the window

instead of on the half near the door, the secret nature of the universe

would have seemed to be altered. The small fire-grate was filled with a

mass of shavings of silver paper; now the rare illnesses which they had

suffered were recalled chiefly as periods when that silver paper was

crammed into a large slipper-case which hung by the mantelpiece, and a

fire of coals unnaturally reigned in its place--the silver paper was

part of the order of the world. The sash of the window would not work

quite properly, owing to a slight subsidence in the wall, and even when

the window was fastened there was always a narrow slit to the left hand

between the window and its frame; through this slit came draughts, and

thus very keen frosts were remembered by the nights when Mrs. Baines

caused the sash to be forced and kept at its full height by means of

wedges--the slit of exposure was part of the order of the world.

They possessed only one bed, one washstand, and one dressing-table; but

in some other respects they were rather fortunate girls, for they had

two mahogany wardrobes; this mutual independence as regards wardrobes

was due partly to Mrs. Baines's strong commonsense, and partly to their

father's tendency to spoil them a little. They had, moreover, a chest

of drawers with a curved front, of which structure Constance occupied

two short drawers and one long one, and Sophia two long drawers. On it

stood two fancy work-boxes, in which each sister kept jewellery, a

savings-bank book, and other treasures, and these boxes were absolutely

sacred to their respective owners. They were different, but one was not

more magnificent than the other. Indeed, a rigid equality was the rule

in the chamber, the single exception being that behind the door were

three hooks, of which Constance commanded two.

"Well," Sophia began, when Constance appeared. "How's darling Mr.

Povey?" She was lying on her back, and smiling at her two hands, which

she held up in front of her.

"Asleep," said Constance. "At least mother thinks so. She says sleep is

the best thing for him."

"'It will probably come on again,'" said Sophia.

"What's that you say?" Constance asked, undressing.

"'It will probably come on again.'"

These words were a quotation from the utterances of darling Mr. Povey

on the stairs, and Sophia delivered them with an exact imitation of Mr.

Povey's vocal mannerism.

"Sophia," said Constance, firmly, approaching the bed, "I wish you

wouldn't be so silly!" She had benevolently ignored the satirical note

in Sophia's first remark, but a strong instinct in her rose up and

objected to further derision. "Surely you've done enough for one day!"

she added.

For answer Sophia exploded into violent laughter, which she made no

attempt to control. She laughed too long and too freely while Constance

stared at her.

"_I_ don't know what's come over you!" said Constance.

"It's only because I can't look at it without simply going off into

fits!" Sophia gasped out. And she held up a tiny object in her left

hand.

Constance started, flushing. "You don't mean to say you've kept it!"

she protested earnestly. "How horrid you are, Sophia! Give it me at

once and let me throw it away. I never heard of such doings. Now give

it me!"

"No," Sophia objected, still laughing. "I wouldn't part with it for

worlds. It's too lovely."

She had laughed away all her secret resentment against Constance for

having ignored her during the whole evening and for being on such

intimate terms with their parents. And she was ready to be candidly

jolly with Constance.

"Give it me," said Constance, doggedly.

Sophia hid her hand under the clothes. "You can have his old stump,

when it comes out, if you like. But not this. What a pity it's the

wrong one!"

"Sophia, I'm ashamed of you! Give it me."

Then it was that Sophia first perceived Constance's extreme

seriousness. She was surprised and a little intimidated by it. For the

expression of Constance's face, usually so benign and calm, was harsh,

almost fierce. However, Sophia had a great deal of what is called

"spirit," and not even ferocity on the face of mild Constance could

intimidate her for more than a few seconds. Her gaiety expired and her

teeth were hidden.

"I've said nothing to mother----" Constance proceeded.

"I should hope you haven't," Sophia put in tersely.

"But I certainly shall if you don't throw that away," Constance

finished.

"You can say what you like," Sophia retorted, adding contemptuously a

term of opprobrium which has long since passed out of use: "Cant!"

"Will you give it me or won't you?"

"No!"

It was a battle suddenly engaged in the bedroom. The atmosphere had

altered completely with the swiftness of magic. The beauty of Sophia,

the angelic tenderness of Constance, and the youthful, naive, innocent

charm of both of them, were transformed into something sinister and

cruel. Sophia lay back on the pillow amid her dark-brown hair, and

gazed with relentless defiance into the angry eyes of Constance, who

stood threatening by the bed. They could hear the gas singing over the

dressing-table, and their hearts beating the blood wildly in their

veins. They ceased to be young without growing old; the eternal had

leapt up in them from its sleep.

Constance walked away from the bed to the dressing-table and began to

loose her hair and brush it, holding back her head, shaking it, and

bending forward, in the changeless gesture of that rite. She was so

disturbed that she had unconsciously reversed the customary order of

the toilette. After a moment Sophia slipped out of bed and, stepping

with her bare feet to the chest of drawers, opened her work-box and

deposited the fragment of Mr. Povey therein; she dropped the lid with

an uncompromising bang, as if to say, "We shall see if I am to be trod

upon, miss!" Their eyes met again in the looking-glass. Then Sophia got

back into bed.

Five minutes later, when her hair was quite finished, Constance knelt

down and said her prayers. Having said her prayers, she went straight

to Sophia's work-box, opened it, seized the fragment of Mr. Povey, ran

to the window, and frantically pushed the fragment through the slit

into the Square.

"There!" she exclaimed nervously.

She had accomplished this inconceivable transgression of the code of

honour, beyond all undoing, before Sophia could recover from the

stupefaction of seeing her sacred work-box impudently violated. In a

single moment one of Sophia's chief ideals had been smashed utterly,

and that by the sweetest, gentlest creature she had ever known. It was

a revealing experience for Sophia--and also for Constance. And it

frightened them equally. Sophia, staring at the text, "Thou God seest

me," framed in straw over the chest of drawers, did not stir. She was

defeated, and so profoundly moved in her defeat that she did not even

reflect upon the obvious inefficacy of illuminated texts as a deterrent

from evil-doing. Not that she cared a fig for the fragment of Mr.

Povey! It was the moral aspect of the affair, and the astounding,

inexplicable development in Constance's character, that staggered her

into silent acceptance of the inevitable.

Constance, trembling, took pains to finish undressing with dignified

deliberation. Sophia's behaviour under the blow seemed too good to be

true; but it gave her courage. At length she turned out the gas and lay

down by Sophia. And there was a little shuffling, and then stillness

for a while.

"And if you want to know," said Constance in a tone that mingled

amicableness with righteousness, "mother's decided with Aunt Harriet

that we are BOTH to leave school next term."

CHAPTER III

A BATTLE

I

The day sanctioned by custom in the Five Towns for the making of pastry

is Saturday. But Mrs. Baines made her pastry on Friday, because

Saturday afternoon was, of course, a busy time in the shop. It is true

that Mrs. Baines made her pastry in the morning, and that Saturday

morning in the shop was scarcely different from any other morning.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Baines made her pastry on Friday morning instead of

Saturday morning because Saturday afternoon was a busy time in the

shop. She was thus free to do her marketing without breath-taking

flurry on Saturday morning.

On the morning after Sophia's first essay in dentistry, therefore, Mrs.

Baines was making her pastry in the underground kitchen. This kitchen,

Maggie's cavern-home, had the mystery of a church, and on dark days it

had the mystery of a crypt. The stone steps leading down to it from the

level of earth were quite unlighted. You felt for them with the feet of

faith, and when you arrived in the kitchen, the kitchen, by contrast,

seemed luminous and gay; the architect may have considered and intended

this effect of the staircase. The kitchen saw day through a wide,

shallow window whose top touched the ceiling and whose bottom had been

out of the girls' reach until long after they had begun to go to

school. Its panes were small, and about half of them were of the "knot"

kind, through which no object could be distinguished; the other half

were of a later date, and stood for the march of civilization. The view

from the window consisted of the vast plate-glass windows of the newly

built Sun vaults, and of passing legs and skirts. A strong wire grating

prevented any excess of illumination, and also protected the glass from

the caprices of wayfarers in King Street. Boys had a habit of stopping

to kick with their full strength at the grating.

Forget-me-nots on a brown field ornamented the walls of the kitchen.

Its ceiling was irregular and grimy, and a beam ran across it; in this

beam were two hooks; from these hooks had once depended the ropes of a

swing, much used by Constance and Sophia in the old days before they

were grown up. A large range stood out from the wall between the stairs

and the window. The rest of the furniture comprised a table--against

the wall opposite the range--a cupboard, and two Windsor chairs.

Opposite the foot of the steps was a doorway, without a door, leading

to two larders, dimmer even than the kitchen, vague retreats made

visible by whitewash, where bowls of milk, dishes of cold bones, and

remainders of fruit-pies, reposed on stillages; in the corner nearest

the kitchen was a great steen in which the bread was kept. Another

doorway on the other side of the kitchen led to the first coal-cellar,

where was also the slopstone and tap, and thence a tunnel took you to

the second coal-cellar, where coke and ashes were stored; the tunnel

proceeded to a distant, infinitesimal yard, and from the yard, by ways

behind Mr. Critchlow's shop, you could finally emerge, astonished, upon

Brougham Street. The sense of the vast-obscure of those regions which

began at the top of the kitchen steps and ended in black corners of

larders or abruptly in the common dailiness of Brougham Street, a sense

which Constance and Sophia had acquired in infancy, remained with them

almost unimpaired as they grew old.

Mrs. Baines wore black alpaca, shielded by a white apron whose string

drew attention to the amplitude of her waist. Her sleeves were turned

up, and her hands, as far as the knuckles, covered with damp flour. Her

ageless smooth paste-board occupied a corner of the table, and near it

were her paste-roller, butter, some pie-dishes, shredded apples, sugar,

and other things. Those rosy hands were at work among a sticky

substance in a large white bowl.

"Mother, are you there?" she heard a voice from above.

"Yes, my chuck."

Footsteps apparently reluctant and hesitating clinked on the stairs,

and Sophia entered the kitchen.

"Put this curl straight," said Mrs. Baines, lowering her head slightly

and holding up her floured hands, which might not touch anything but

flour. "Thank you. It bothered me. And now stand out of my light. I'm

in a hurry. I must get into the shop so that I can send Mr. Povey off

to the dentist's. What is Constance doing?"

"Helping Maggie to make Mr. Povey's bed."

"Oh!"

Though fat, Mrs. Baines was a comely woman, with fine brown hair, and

confidently calm eyes that indicated her belief in her own capacity to

accomplish whatever she could be called on to accomplish. She looked

neither more nor less than her age, which was forty-five. She was not a

native of the district, having been culled by her husband from the

moorland town of Axe, twelve miles off. Like nearly all women who

settle in a strange land upon marriage, at the bottom of her heart she

had considered herself just a trifle superior to the strange land and

its ways. This feeling, confirmed by long experience, had never left

her. It was this feeling which induced her to continue making her own

pastry--with two thoroughly trained "great girls" in the house!

Constance could make good pastry, but it was not her mother's pastry.

In pastry-making everything can be taught except the "hand," light and

firm, which wields the roller. One is born with this hand, or without

it. And if one is born without it, the highest flights of pastry are

impossible. Constance was born without it. There were days when Sophia

seemed to possess it; but there were other days when Sophia's pastry

was uneatable by any one except Maggie. Thus Mrs. Baines, though

intensely proud and fond of her daughters, had justifiably preserved a

certain condescension towards them. She honestly doubted whether either

of them would develop into the equal of their mother.

"Now you little vixen!" she exclaimed. Sophia was stealing and eating

slices of half-cooked apple. "This comes of having no breakfast! And

why didn't you come down to supper last night?"

"I don't know. I forgot."

Mrs. Baines scrutinized the child's eyes, which met hers with a sort of

diffident boldness. She knew everything that a mother can know of a

daughter, and she was sure that Sophia had no cause to be indisposed.

Therefore she scrutinized those eyes with a faint apprehension.

"If you can't find anything better to do," said she, "butter me the

inside of this dish. Are your hands clean? No, better not touch it."

Mrs. Baines was now at the stage of depositing little pats of butter in

rows on a large plain of paste. The best fresh butter! Cooking butter,

to say naught of lard, was unknown in that kitchen on Friday mornings.

She doubled the expanse of paste on itself and rolled the butter

in--supreme operation!

"Constance has told you--about leaving school?" said Mrs. Baines, in

the vein of small-talk, as she trimmed the paste to the shape of a

pie-dish.

"Yes," Sophia replied shortly. Then she moved away from the table to

the range. There was a toasting-fork on the rack, and she began to play

with it.

"Well, are you glad? Your aunt Harriet thinks you are quite old enough

to leave. And as we'd decided in any case that Constance was to leave,

it's really much simpler that you should both leave together."

"Mother," said Sophia, rattling the toasting-fork, "what am I going to

do after I've left school?"

"I hope," Mrs. Baines answered with that sententiousness which even the

cleverest of parents are not always clever enough to deny themselves,

"I hope that both of you will do what you can to help your mother--and

father," she added.

"Yes," said Sophia, irritated. "But what am I going to DO?"

"That must be considered. As Constance is to learn the millinery, I've

been thinking that you might begin to make yourself useful in the

underwear, gloves, silks, and so on. Then between you, you would one

day be able to manage quite nicely all that side of the shop, and I

should be--"

"I don't want to go into the shop, mother."

This interruption was made in a voice apparently cold and inimical. But

Sophia trembled with nervous excitement as she uttered the words. Mrs.

Baines gave a brief glance at her, unobserved by the child, whose face

was towards the fire. She deemed herself a finished expert in the

reading of Sophia's moods; nevertheless, as she looked at that straight

back and proud head, she had no suspicion that the whole essence and

being of Sophia was silently but intensely imploring sympathy.

"I wish you would be quiet with that fork," said Mrs. Baines, with the

curious, grim politeness which often characterized her relations with

her daughters.

The toasting-fork fell on the brick floor, after having rebounded from

the ash-tin. Sophia hurriedly replaced it on the rack.

"Then what SHALL you do?" Mrs. Baines proceeded, conquering the

annoyance caused by the toasting-fork. "I think it's me that should ask

you instead of you asking me. What shall you do? Your father and I were

both hoping you would take kindly to the shop and try to repay us for

all the--"

Mrs. Baines was unfortunate in her phrasing that morning. She happened

to be, in truth, rather an exceptional parent, but that morning she

seemed unable to avoid the absurd pretensions which parents of those

days assumed quite sincerely and which every good child with meekness

accepted.

Sophia was not a good child, and she obstinately denied in her heart

the cardinal principle of family life, namely, that the parent has

conferred on the offspring a supreme favour by bringing it into the

world. She interrupted her mother again, rudely.

"I don't want to leave school at all," she said passionately.

"But you will have to leave school sooner or later," argued Mrs.

Baines, with an air of quiet reasoning, of putting herself on a level

with Sophia. "You can't stay at school for ever, my pet, can you? Out

of my way!"

She hurried across the kitchen with a pie, which she whipped into the

oven, shutting the iron door with a careful gesture.

"Yes," said Sophia. "I should like to be a teacher. That's what I want

to be."

The tap in the coal-cellar, out of repair, could be heard distinctly

and systematically dropping water into a jar on the slopstone.

"A school-teacher?" inquired Mrs. Baines.

"Of course. What other kind is there?" said Sophia, sharply. "With Miss

Chetwynd."

"I don't think your father would like that," Mrs. Baines replied. "I'm

sure he wouldn't like it."

"Why not?"

"It wouldn't be quite suitable."

"Why not, mother?" the girl demanded with a sort of ferocity. She had

now quitted the range. A man's feet twinkled past the window.

Mrs. Baines was startled and surprised. Sophia's attitude was really

very trying; her manners deserved correction. But it was not these

phenomena which seriously affected Mrs. Baines; she was used to them

and had come to regard them as somehow the inevitable accompaniment of

Sophia's beauty, as the penalty of that surpassing charm which

occasionally emanated from the girl like a radiance. What startled and

surprised Mrs. Baines was the perfect and unthinkable madness of

Sophia's infantile scheme. It was a revelation to Mrs. Baines. Why in

the name of heaven had the girl taken such a notion into her head?

Orphans, widows, and spinsters of a certain age suddenly thrown on the

world--these were the women who, naturally, became teachers, because

they had to become something. But that the daughter of comfortable

parents, surrounded by love and the pleasures of an excellent home,

should wish to teach in a school was beyond the horizons of Mrs.

Baines's common sense. Comfortable parents of to-day who have a

difficulty in sympathizing with Mrs. Baines, should picture what their

feelings would be if their Sophias showed a rude desire to adopt the

vocation of chauffeur.

"It would take you too much away from home," said Mrs. Baines,

achieving a second pie.

She spoke softly. The experience of being Sophia's mother for nearly

sixteen years had not been lost on Mrs. Baines, and though she was now

discovering undreamt-of dangers in Sophia's erratic temperament, she

kept her presence of mind sufficiently well to behave with diplomatic

smoothness. It was undoubtedly humiliating to a mother to be forced to

use diplomacy in dealing with a girl in short sleeves. In HER day

mothers had been autocrats. But Sophia was Sophia.

"What if it did?" Sophia curtly demanded.

"And there's no opening in Bursley," said Mrs. Baines.

"Miss Chetwynd would have me, and then after a time I could go to her

sister."

"Her sister? What sister?"

"Her sister that has a big school in London somewhere."

Mrs. Baines covered her unprecedented emotions by gazing into the oven

at the first pie. The pie was doing well, under all the circumstances.

In those few seconds she reflected rapidly and decided that to a

desperate disease a desperate remedy must be applied.

London! She herself had never been further than Manchester. London,

'after a time'! No, diplomacy would be misplaced in this crisis of

Sophia's development!

"Sophia," she said, in a changed and solemn voice, fronting her

daughter, and holding away from her apron those floured, ringed hands,

"I don't know what has come over you. Truly I don't! Your father and I

are prepared to put up with a certain amount, but the line must be

drawn. The fact is, we've spoilt you, and instead of getting better as

you grow up, you're getting worse. Now let me hear no more of this,

please. I wish you would imitate your sister a little more. Of course

if you won't do your share in the shop, no one can make you. If you

choose to be an idler about the house, we shall have to endure it. We

can only advise you for your own good. But as for this ..." She

stopped, and let silence speak, and then finished: "Let me hear no more

of it."

It was a powerful and impressive speech, enunciated clearly in such a

tone as Mrs. Baines had not employed since dismissing a young lady

assistant five years ago for light conduct.

"But, mother--"

A commotion of pails resounded at the top of the stone steps. It was

Maggie in descent from the bedrooms. Now, the Baines family passed its

life in doing its best to keep its affairs to itself, the assumption

being that Maggie and all the shop-staff (Mr. Povey possibly excepted)

were obsessed by a ravening appetite for that which did not concern

them. Therefore the voices of the Baineses always died away, or fell to

a hushed, mysterious whisper, whenever the foot of the eavesdropper was

heard.

Mrs. Baines put a floured finger to her double chin. "That will do,"

said she, with finality.

Maggie appeared, and Sophia, with a brusque precipitation of herself,

vanished upstairs.

II

"Now, really, Mr. Povey, this is not like you," said Mrs. Baines, who,

on her way into the shop, had discovered the Indispensable in the

cutting-out room.

It is true that the cutting-out room was almost Mr. Povey's sanctum,

whither he retired from time to time to cut out suits of clothes and

odd garments for the tailoring department. It is true that the

tailoring department flourished with orders, employing several tailors

who crossed legs in their own homes, and that appointments were

continually being made with customers for trying-on in that room. But

these considerations did not affect Mrs. Baines's attitude of

disapproval.

"I'm just cutting out that suit for the minister," said Mr. Povey.

The Reverend Mr. Murley, superintendent of the Wesleyan Methodist

circuit, called on Mr. Baines every week. On a recent visit Mr. Baines

had remarked that the parson's coat was ageing into green, and had

commanded that a new suit should be built and presented to Mr. Murley.

Mr. Murley, who had a genuine mediaeval passion for souls, and who

spent his money and health freely in gratifying the passion, had

accepted the offer strictly on behalf of Christ, and had carefully

explained to Mr. Povey Christ's use for multifarious pockets.

"I see you are," said Mrs. Baines tartly. "But that's no reason why you

should be without a coat--and in this cold room too. You with

toothache!"

The fact was that Mr. Povey always doffed his coat when cutting out.

Instead of a coat he wore a tape-measure.

"My tooth doesn't hurt me," said he, sheepishly, dropping the great

scissors and picking up a cake of chalk.

"Fiddlesticks!" said Mrs. Baines.

This exclamation shocked Mr. Povey. It was not unknown on the lips of

Mrs. Baines, but she usually reserved it for members of her own sex.

Mr. Povey could not recall that she had ever applied it to any

statement of his. "What's the matter with the woman?" he thought. The

redness of her face did not help him to answer the question, for her

face was always red after the operations of Friday in the kitchen.

"You men are all alike," Mrs. Baines continued. "The very thought of

the dentist's cures you. Why don't you go in at once to Mr. Critchlow

and have it out--like a man?"

Mr. Critchlow extracted teeth, and his shop sign said "Bone-setter and

chemist." But Mr. Povey had his views.

"I make no account of Mr. Critchlow as a dentist," said he.

"Then for goodness' sake go up to Oulsnam's."

"When? I can't very well go now, and to-morrow is Saturday."

"Why can't you go now?"

"Well, of course, I COULD go now," he admitted.

"Let me advise you to go, then, and don't come back with that tooth in

your head. I shall be having you laid up next. Show some pluck, do!"

"Oh! pluck--!" he protested, hurt.

At that moment Constance came down the passage singing.

"Constance, my pet!" Mrs. Baines called.

"Yes, mother." She put her head into the room. "Oh!" Mr. Povey was

assuming his coat.

"Mr. Povey is going to the dentist's."

"Yes, I'm going at once," Mr. Povey confirmed.

"Oh! I'm so GLAD!" Constance exclaimed. Her face expressed a pure

sympathy, uncomplicated by critical sentiments. Mr. Povey rapidly

bathed in that sympathy, and then decided that he must show himself a

man of oak and iron.

"It's always best to get these things done with," said he, with stern

detachment. "I'll just slip my overcoat on."

"Here it is," said Constance, quickly. Mr. Povey's overcoat and hat

were hung on a hook immediately outside the room, in the passage. She

gave him the overcoat, anxious to be of service.

"I didn't call you in here to be Mr. Povey's valet," said Mrs. Baines

to herself with mild grimness; and aloud: "I can't stay in the shop

long, Constance, but you can be there, can't you, till Mr. Povey comes

back? And if anything happens run upstairs and tell me."

"Yes, mother," Constance eagerly consented. She hesitated and then

turned to obey at once.

"I want to speak to you first, my pet," Mrs. Baines stopped her. And

her tone was peculiar, charged with import, confidential, and therefore

very flattering to Constance.

"I think I'll go out by the side-door," said Mr. Povey. "It'll be

nearer."

This was truth. He would save about ten yards, in two miles, by going

out through the side-door instead of through the shop. Who could have

guessed that he was ashamed to be seen going to the dentist's, afraid

lest, if he went through the shop, Mrs. Baines might follow him and

utter some remark prejudicial to his dignity before the assistants?

(Mrs. Baines could have guessed, and did.)

"You won't want that tape-measure," said Mrs. Baines, dryly, as Mr.

Povey dragged open the side-door. The ends of the forgotten

tape-measure were dangling beneath coat and overcoat.

"Oh!" Mr. Povey scowled at his forgetfulness.

"I'll put it in its place," said Constance, offering to receive the

tape-measure.

"Thank you," said Mr. Povey, gravely. "I don't suppose they'll be long

over my bit of a job," he added, with a difficult, miserable smile.

Then he went off down King Street, with an exterior of gay briskness

and dignified joy in the fine May morning. But there was no May morning

in his cowardly human heart.

"Hi! Povey!" cried a voice from the Square.

But Mr. Povey disregarded all appeals. He had put his hand to the

plough, and he would not look back.

"Hi! Povey!"

Useless!

Mrs. Baines and Constance were both at the door. A middle-aged man was

crossing the road from Boulton Terrace, the lofty erection of new shops

which the envious rest of the Square had decided to call "showy." He

waved a hand to Mrs. Baines, who kept the door open.

"It's Dr. Harrop," she said to Constance. "I shouldn't be surprised if

that baby's come at last, and he wanted to tell Mr. Povey."

Constance blushed, full of pride. Mrs. Povey, wife of "our Mr. Povey's"

renowned cousin, the high-class confectioner and baker in Boulton

Terrace, was a frequent subject of discussion in the Baines family,

but this was absolutely the first time that Mrs. Baines had

acknowledged, in presence of Constance, the marked and growing change

which had characterized Mrs. Povey's condition during recent months.

Such frankness on the part of her mother, coming after the decision

about leaving school, proved indeed that Constance had ceased to be a

mere girl.

"Good morning, doctor."

The doctor, who carried a little bag and wore riding-breeches (he was

the last doctor in Bursley to abandon the saddle for the dog-cart),

saluted and straightened his high, black stock.

"Morning! Morning, missy! Well, it's a boy."

"What? Yonder?" asked Mrs. Baines, indicating the confectioner's.

Dr. Harrop nodded. "I wanted to inform him," said he, jerking his

shoulder in the direction of the swaggering coward.

"What did I tell you, Constance?" said Mrs. Baines, turning to her

daughter.

Constance's confusion was equal to her pleasure. The alert doctor had

halted at the foot of the two steps, and with one hand in the pocket of

his "full-fall" breeches, he gazed up, smiling out of little eyes, at

the ample matron and the slender virgin.

"Yes," he said. "Been up most of th' night. Difficult! Difficult!"

"It's all RIGHT, I hope?"

"Oh yes. Fine child! Fine child! But he put his mother to some trouble,

for all that. Nothing fresh?" This time he lifted his eyes to indicate

Mr. Baines's bedroom.

"No," said Mrs. Baines, with a different expression.

"Keeps cheerful?"

"Yes."

"Good! A very good morning to you."

He strode off towards his house, which was lower down the street.

"I hope she'll turn over a new leaf now," observed Mrs. Baines to

Constance as she closed the door. Constance knew that her mother was

referring to the confectioner's wife; she gathered that the hope was

slight in the extreme.

"What did you want to speak to me about, mother?" she asked, as a way

out of her delicious confusion.

"Shut that door," Mrs. Baines replied, pointing to the door which led

to the passage; and while Constance obeyed, Mrs. Baines herself shut

the staircase-door. She then said, in a low, guarded voice--

"What's all this about Sophia wanting to be a school-teacher?"

"Wanting to be a school-teacher?" Constance repeated, in tones of

amazement.

"Yes. Hasn't she said anything to you?"

"Not a word!"

"Well, I never! She wants to keep on with Miss Chetwynd and be a

teacher." Mrs. Baines had half a mind to add that Sophia had mentioned

London. But she restrained herself. There are some things which one

cannot bring one's self to say. She added, "Instead of going into the

shop!"

"I never heard of such a thing!" Constance murmured brokenly, in the

excess of her astonishment. She was rolling up Mr. Povey's tape-measure.

"Neither did I!" said Mrs. Baines.

"And shall you let her, mother?"

"Neither your father nor I would ever dream of it!" Mrs. Baines

replied, with calm and yet terrible decision. "I only mentioned it to

you because I thought Sophia would have told you something."

"No, mother!"

As Constance put Mr. Povey's tape-measure neatly away in its drawer

under the cutting-out counter, she thought how serious life was--what

with babies and Sophias. She was very proud of her mother's confidence

in her; this simple pride filled her ardent breast with a most

agreeable commotion. And she wanted to help everybody, to show in some

way how much she sympathized with and loved everybody. Even the madness

of Sophia did not weaken her longing to comfort Sophia.

III

That afternoon there was a search for Sophia, whom no one had seen

since dinner. She was discovered by her mother, sitting alone and

unoccupied in the drawing-room. The circumstance was in itself

sufficiently peculiar, for on weekdays the drawing-room was never used,

even by the girls during their holidays, except for the purpose of

playing the piano. However, Mrs. Baines offered no comment on Sophia's

geographical situation, nor on her idleness.

"My dear," she said, standing at the door, with a self-conscious effort

to behave as though nothing had happened, "will you come and sit with

your father a bit?"

"Yes, mother," answered Sophia, with a sort of cold alacrity.

"Sophia is coming, father," said Mrs. Baines at the open door of the

bedroom, which was at right-angles with, and close to, the drawing-room

door. Then she surged swishing along the corridor and went into the

showroom, whither she had been called.

Sophia passed to the bedroom, the eternal prison of John Baines.

Although, on account of his nervous restlessness, Mr. Baines was never

left alone, it was not a part of the usual duty of the girls to sit

with him. The person who undertook the main portion of the vigils was a

certain Aunt Maria--whom the girls knew to be not a real aunt, not a

powerful, effective aunt like Aunt Harriet of Axe--but a poor second

cousin of John Baines; one of those necessitous, pitiful relatives who

so often make life difficult for a great family in a small town. The

existence of Aunt Maria, after being rather a "trial" to the Baineses,

had for twelve years past developed into something absolutely

"providential" for them. (It is to be remembered that in those days

Providence was still busying himself with everybody's affairs, and

foreseeing the future in the most extraordinary manner. Thus, having

foreseen that John Baines would have a "stroke" and need a faithful,

tireless nurse, he had begun fifty years in advance by creating Aunt

Maria, and had kept her carefully in misfortune's way, so that at the

proper moment she would be ready to cope with the stroke. Such at least

is the only theory which will explain the use by the Baineses, and

indeed by all thinking Bursley, of the word "providential" in

connection with Aunt Maria.) She was a shrivelled little woman, capable

of sitting twelve hours a day in a bedroom and thriving on the regime.

At nights she went home to her little cottage in Brougham Street; she

had her Thursday afternoons and generally her Sundays, and during the

school vacations she was supposed to come only when she felt inclined,

or when the cleaning of her cottage permitted her to come. Hence, in

holiday seasons, Mr. Baines weighed more heavily on his household than

at other times, and his nurses relieved each other according to the

contingencies of the moment rather than by a set programme of hours.

The tragedy in ten thousand acts of which that bedroom was the scene,

almost entirely escaped Sophia's perception, as it did Constance's.

Sophia went into the bedroom as though it were a mere bedroom, with its

majestic mahogany furniture, its crimson rep curtains (edged with

gold), and its white, heavily tasselled counterpane. She was aged four

when John Baines had suddenly been seized with giddiness on the steps

of his shop, and had fallen, and, without losing consciousness, had

been transformed from John Baines into a curious and pathetic survival

of John Baines. She had no notion of the thrill which ran through the

town on that night when it was known that John Baines had had a stroke,

and that his left arm and left leg and his right eyelid were paralyzed,

and that the active member of the Local Board, the orator, the

religious worker, the very life of the town's life, was permanently

done for. She had never heard of the crisis through which her mother,

assisted by Aunt Harriet, had passed, and out of which she had

triumphantly emerged. She was not yet old enough even to suspect it.

She possessed only the vaguest memory of her father before he had

finished with the world. She knew him simply as an organism on a bed,

whose left side was wasted, whose eyes were often inflamed, whose mouth

was crooked, who had no creases from the nose to the corners of the

mouth like other people, who experienced difficulty in eating because

the food would somehow get between his gums and his cheek, who slept a

great deal but was excessively fidgety while awake, who seemed to hear

what was said to him a long time after it was uttered, as if the sense

had to travel miles by labyrinthine passages to his brain, and who

talked very, very slowly in a weak, trembling voice.

And she had an image of that remote brain as something with a red spot

on it, for once Constance had said: "Mother, why did father have a

stroke?" and Mrs. Baines had replied: "It was a haemorrhage of the

brain, my dear, here"--putting a thimbled finger on a particular part

of Sophia's head.

Not merely had Constance and Sophia never really felt their father's

tragedy; Mrs. Baines herself had largely lost the sense of it--such is

the effect of use. Even the ruined organism only remembered fitfully

and partially that it had once been John Baines. And if Mrs. Baines had

not, by the habit of years, gradually built up a gigantic fiction that

the organism remained ever the supreme consultative head of the family;

if Mr. Critchlow had not obstinately continued to treat it as a crony,

the mass of living and dead nerves on the rich Victorian bedstead would

have been of no more account than some Aunt Maria in similar case.

These two persons, his wife and his friend, just managed to keep him

morally alive by indefatigably feeding his importance and his dignity.

The feat was a miracle of stubborn self-deceiving, splendidly blind

devotion, and incorrigible pride.

When Sophia entered the room, the paralytic followed her with his

nervous gaze until she had sat down on the end of the sofa at the foot

of the bed. He seemed to study her for a long time, and then he

murmured in his slow, enfeebled, irregular voice:

"Is that Sophia?"

"Yes, father," she answered cheerfully.

And after another pause, the old man said: "Ay! It's Sophia."

And later: "Your mother said she should send ye."

Sophia saw that this was one of his bad, dull days. He had,

occasionally, days of comparative nimbleness, when his wits seized

almost easily the meanings of external phenomena.

Presently his sallow face and long white beard began to slip down the

steep slant of the pillows, and a troubled look came into his left eye.

Sophia rose and, putting her hands under his armpits, lifted him higher

in the bed. He was not heavy, but only a strong girl of her years could

have done it.

"Ay!" he muttered. "That's it. That's it."

And, with his controllable right hand, he took her hand as she stood by

the bed. She was so young and fresh, such an incarnation of the spirit

of health, and he was so far gone in decay and corruption, that there

seemed in this contact of body with body something unnatural and

repulsive. But Sophia did not so feel it.

"Sophia," he addressed her, and made preparatory noises in his throat

while she waited.

He continued after an interval, now clutching her arm, "Your mother's

been telling me you don't want to go in the shop."

She turned her eyes on him, and his anxious, dim gaze met hers. She

nodded.

"Nay, Sophia," he mumbled, with the extreme of slowness. "I'm surprised

at ye... Trade's bad, bad! Ye know trade's bad?" He was still

clutching her arm.

She nodded. She was, in fact, aware of the badness of trade, caused by

a vague war in the United States. The words "North" and "South" had a

habit of recurring in the conversation of adult persons. That was all

she knew, though people were starving in the Five Towns as they were

starving in Manchester.

"There's your mother," his thought struggled on, like an aged horse

over a hilly road. "There's your mother!" he repeated, as if wishful to

direct Sophia's attention to the spectacle of her mother. "Working

hard! Con--Constance and you must help her.... Trade's bad! What can I

do ... lying here?"

The heat from his dry fingers was warming her arm. She wanted to move,

but she could not have withdrawn her arm without appearing impatient.

For a similar reason she would not avert her glance. A deepening flush

increased the lustre of her immature loveliness as she bent over him.

But though it was so close he did not feel that radiance. He had long

outlived a susceptibility to the strange influences of youth and beauty.

"Teaching!" he muttered. "Nay, nay! I canna' allow that."

Then his white beard rose at the tip as he looked up at the ceiling

above his head, reflectively.

"You understand me?" he questioned finally.

She nodded again; he loosed her arm, and she turned away. She could not

have spoken. Glittering tears enriched her eyes. She was saddened into

a profound and sudden grief by the ridiculousness of the scene. She had

youth, physical perfection; she brimmed with energy, with the sense of

vital power; all existence lay before her; when she put her lips

together she felt capable of outvying no matter whom in fortitude of

resolution. She had always hated the shop. She did not understand how

her mother and Constance could bring themselves to be deferential and

flattering to every customer that entered. No, she did not understand

it; but her mother (though a proud woman) and Constance seemed to

practise such behaviour so naturally, so unquestioningly, that she had

never imparted to either of them her feelings; she guessed that she

would not be comprehended. But long ago she had decided that she would

never "go into the shop." She knew that she would be expected to do

something, and she had fixed on teaching as the one possibility. These

decisions had formed part of her inner life for years past. She had not

mentioned them, being secretive and scarcely anxious for

unpleasantness. But she had been slowly preparing herself to mention

them. The extraordinary announcement that she was to leave school at

the same time as Constance had taken her unawares, before the

preparations ripening in her mind were complete--before, as it were,

she had girded up her loins for the fray. She had been caught unready,

and the opposing forces had obtained the advantage of her. But did they

suppose she was beaten?

No argument from her mother! No hearing, even! Just a curt and haughty

'Let me hear no more of this'! And so the great desire of her life,

nourished year after year in her inmost bosom, was to be flouted and

sacrificed with a word! Her mother did not appear ridiculous in the

affair, for her mother was a genuine power, commanding by turns genuine

love and genuine hate, and always, till then, obedience and the respect

of reason. It was her father who appeared tragically ridiculous; and,

in turn, the whole movement against her grew grotesque in its

absurdity. Here was this antique wreck, helpless, useless,

powerless--merely pathetic--actually thinking that he had only to

mumble in order to make her 'understand'! He knew nothing; he perceived

nothing; he was a ferocious egoist, like most bedridden invalids, out

of touch with life,--and he thought himself justified in making

destinies, and capable of making them! Sophia could not, perhaps,

define the feelings which overwhelmed her; but she was conscious of

their tendency. They aged her, by years. They aged her so that, in a

kind of momentary ecstasy of insight, she felt older than her father

himself.

"You will be a good girl," he said. "I'm sure o' that."

It was too painful. The grotesqueness of her father's complacency

humiliated her past bearing. She was humiliated, not for herself, but

for him. Singular creature! She ran out of the room.

Fortunately Constance was passing in the corridor, otherwise Sophia had

been found guilty of a great breach of duty.

"Go to father," she whispered hysterically to Constance, and fled

upwards to the second floor.

IV

At supper, with her red, downcast eyes, she had returned to sheer

girlishness again, overawed by her mother. The meal had an unusual

aspect. Mr. Povey, safe from the dentist's, but having lost two teeth

in two days, was being fed on 'slops'--bread and milk, to wit; he sat

near the fire. The others had cold pork, half a cold apple-pie, and

cheese; but Sophia only pretended to eat; each time she tried to

swallow, the tears came into her eyes, and her throat shut itself up.

Mrs. Baines and Constance had a too careful air of eating just as

usual. Mrs. Baines's handsome ringlets dominated the table under the

gas.

"I'm not so set up with my pastry to-day," observed Mrs. Baines,

critically munching a fragment of pie-crust.

She rang a little hand-bell. Maggie appeared from the cave. She wore a

plain white bib-less apron, but no cap.

"Maggie, will you have some pie?"

"Yes, if you can spare it, ma'am."

This was Maggie's customary answer to offers of food.

"We can always spare it, Maggie," said her mistress, as usual. "Sophia,

if you aren't going to use that plate, give it to me."

Maggie disappeared with liberal pie.

Mrs. Baines then talked to Mr. Povey about his condition, and in

particular as to the need for precautions against taking cold in the

bereaved gum. She was a brave and determined woman; from start to

finish she behaved as though nothing whatever in the household except

her pastry and Mr. Povey had deviated that day from the normal. She

kissed Constance and Sophia with the most exact equality, and called

them 'my chucks' when they went up to bed.

Constance, excellent kind heart, tried to imitate her mother's tactics

as the girls undressed in their room. She thought she could not do

better than ignore Sophia's deplorable state.

"Mother's new dress is quite finished, and she's going to wear it on

Sunday," said she, blandly.

"If you say another word I'll scratch your eyes out!" Sophia turned on

her viciously, with a catch in her voice, and then began to sob at

intervals. She did not mean this threat, but its utterance gave her

relief. Constance, faced with the fact that her mother's shoes were too

big for her, decided to preserve her eyesight.

Long after the gas was out, rare sobs from Sophia shook the bed, and

they both lay awake in silence.

"I suppose you and mother have been talking me over finely to-day?"

Sophia burst forth, to Constance's surprise, in a wet voice.

"No," said Constance soothingly. "Mother only told me."

"Told you what?"

"That you wanted to be a teacher."

"And I will be, too!" said Sophia, bitterly.

"You don't know mother," thought Constance; but she made no audible

comment.

There was another detached, hard sob. And then, such is the astonishing

talent of youth, they both fell asleep.

The next morning, early, Sophia stood gazing out of the window at the

Square. It was Saturday, and all over the Square little stalls, with

yellow linen roofs, were being erected for the principal market of the

week. In those barbaric days Bursley had a majestic edifice, black as

basalt, for the sale of dead animals by the limb and rib--it was

entitled 'the Shambles'--but vegetables, fruit, cheese, eggs, and

pikelets were still sold under canvas. Eggs are now offered at five

farthings apiece in a palace that cost twenty-five thousand pounds. Yet

you will find people in Bursley ready to assert that things generally

are not what they were, and that in particular the romance of life has

gone. But until it has gone it is never romance. To Sophia, though she

was in a mood which usually stimulates the sense of the romantic, there

was nothing of romance in this picturesque tented field. It was just

the market. Holl's, the leading grocer's, was already open, at the

extremity of the Square, and a boy apprentice was sweeping the pavement

in front of it. The public-houses were open, several of them

specializing in hot rum at 5.30 a.m. The town-crier, in his blue coat

with red facings, crossed the Square, carrying his big bell by the

tongue. There was the same shocking hole in one of Mrs. Povey's

(confectioner's) window-curtains--a hole which even her recent travail

could scarcely excuse. Such matters it was that Sophia noticed with

dull, smarting eyes.

"Sophia, you'll take your death of cold standing there like that!"

She jumped. The voice was her mother's. That vigorous woman, after a

calm night by the side of the paralytic, was already up and neatly

dressed. She carried a bottle and an egg-cup, and a small quantity of

jam in a table-spoon.

"Get into bed again, do! There's a dear! You're shivering."

White Sophia obeyed. It was true; she was shivering. Constance awoke.

Mrs. Baines went to the dressing-table and filled the egg-cup out of

the bottle.

"Who's that for, mother?" Constance asked sleepily.

"It's for Sophia," said Mrs. Baines, with good cheer. "Now, Sophia!"

and she advanced with the egg-cup in one hand and the table-spoon in

the other.

"What is it, mother?" asked Sophia, who well knew what it was.

"Castor-oil, my dear," said Mrs. Baines, winningly.

The ludicrousness of attempting to cure obstinacy and yearnings for a

freer life by means of castor-oil is perhaps less real than apparent.

The strange interdependence of spirit and body, though only understood

intelligently in these intelligent days, was guessed at by sensible

mediaeval mothers. And certainly, at the period when Mrs. Baines

represented modernity, castor-oil was still the remedy of remedies. It

had supplanted cupping. And, if part of its vogue was due to its

extreme unpleasantness, it had at least proved its qualities in many a

contest with disease. Less than two years previously old Dr. Harrop

(father of him who told Mrs. Baines about Mrs. Povey), being then aged

eighty-six, had fallen from top to bottom of his staircase. He had

scrambled up, taken a dose of castor-oil at once, and on the morrow was

as well as if he had never seen a staircase. This episode was town

property and had sunk deep into all hearts.

"I don't want any, mother," said Sophia, in dejection. "I'm quite well."

"You simply ate nothing all day yesterday," said Mrs. Baines. And she

added, "Come!" As if to say, "There's always this silly fuss with

castor-oil. Don't keep me waiting."

"I don't WANT any," said Sophia, irritated and captious.

The two girls lay side by side, on their backs. They seemed very thin

and fragile in comparison with the solidity of their mother. Constance

wisely held her peace.

Mrs. Baines put her lips together, meaning: "This is becoming tedious.

I shall have to be angry in another moment!"

"Come!" said she again.

The girls could hear her foot tapping on the floor.

"I really don't want it, mamma," Sophia fought. "I suppose I ought to

know whether I need it or not!" This was insolence.

"Sophia, will you take this medicine, or won't you?"

In conflicts with her children, the mother's ultimatum always took the

formula in which this phrase was cast. The girls knew, when things had

arrived at the pitch of 'or won't you' spoken in Mrs. Baines's firmest

tone, that the end was upon them. Never had the ultimatum failed.

There was a silence.

"And I'll thank you to mind your manners," Mrs. Baines added.

"I won't take it," said Sophia, sullenly and flatly; and she hid her

face in the pillow.

It was a historic moment in the family life. Mrs. Baines thought the

last day had come. But still she held herself in dignity while the

apocalypse roared in her ears.

"OF COURSE I CAN'T FORCE YOU TO TAKE IT," she said with superb

evenness, masking anger by compassionate grief. "You're a big girl and

a naughty girl. And if you will be ill you must."

Upon this immense admission, Mrs. Baines departed.

Constance trembled.

Nor was that all. In the middle of the morning, when Mrs. Baines was

pricing new potatoes at a stall at the top end of the Square, and

Constance choosing threepennyworth of flowers at the same stall, whom

should they both see, walking all alone across the empty corner by the

Bank, but Sophia Baines! The Square was busy and populous, and Sophia

was only visible behind a foreground of restless, chattering figures.

But she was unmistakably seen. She had been beyond the Square and was

returning. Constance could scarcely believe her eyes. Mrs. Baines's

heart jumped. For let it be said that the girls never under any

circumstances went forth without permission, and scarcely ever alone.

That Sophia should be at large in the town, without leave, without

notice, exactly as if she were her own mistress, was a proposition

which a day earlier had been inconceivable. Yet there she was, and

moving with a leisureliness that must be described as effrontery!

Red with apprehension, Constance wondered what would happen. Mrs.

Baines said nought of her feelings, did not even indicate that she had

seen the scandalous, the breath-taking sight. And they descended the

Square laden with the lighter portions of what they had bought during

an hour of buying. They went into the house by the King Street door;

and the first thing they heard was the sound of the piano upstairs.

Nothing happened. Mr. Povey had his dinner alone; then the table was

laid for them, and the bell rung, and Sophia came insolently downstairs

to join her mother and sister. And nothing happened. The dinner was

silently eaten, and Constance having rendered thanks to God, Sophia

rose abruptly to go.

"Sophia!"

"Yes, mother."

"Constance, stay where you are," said Mrs. Baines suddenly to

Constance, who had meant to flee. Constance was therefore destined to

be present at the happening, doubtless in order to emphasize its

importance and seriousness.

"Sophia," Mrs. Baines resumed to her younger daughter in an ominous

voice. "No, please shut the door. There is no reason why everybody in

the house should hear. Come right into the room--right in! That's it.

Now, what were you doing out in the town this morning?"

Sophia was fidgeting nervously with the edge of her little black apron,

and worrying a seam of the carpet with her toes. She bent her head

towards her left shoulder, at first smiling vaguely. She said nothing,

but every limb, every glance, every curve, was speaking. Mrs. Baines

sat firmly in her own rocking-chair, full of the sensation that she had

Sophia, as it were, writhing on the end of a skewer. Constance was

braced into a moveless anguish.

"I will have an answer," pursued Mrs. Baines. "What were you doing out

in the town this morning?"

"I just went out," answered Sophia at length, still with eyes downcast,

and in a rather simpering tone.

"Why did you go out? You said nothing to me about going out. I heard

Constance ask you if you were coming with us to the market, and you

said, very rudely, that you weren't."

"I didn't say it rudely," Sophia objected.

"Yes you did. And I'll thank you not to answer back."

"I didn't mean to say it rudely, did I, Constance?" Sophia's head

turned sharply to her sister. Constance knew not where to look.

"Don't answer back," Mrs. Baines repeated sternly. "And don't try to

drag Constance into this, for I won't have it."

"Oh, of course Constance is always right!" observed Sophia, with an

irony whose unparalleled impudence shook Mrs. Baines to her massive

foundations.

"Do you want me to have to smack you, child?"

Her temper flashed out and you could see ringlets vibrating under the

provocation of Sophia's sauciness. Then Sophia's lower lip began to

fall and to bulge outwards, and all the muscles of her face seemed to

slacken.

"You are a very naughty girl," said Mrs. Baines, with restraint. ("I've

got her," said Mrs. Baines to herself. "I may just as well keep my

temper.")

And a sob broke out of Sophia. She was behaving like a little child.

She bore no trace of the young maiden sedately crossing the Square

without leave and without an escort.

("I knew she was going to cry," said Mrs. Baines, breathing relief.)

"I'm waiting," said Mrs. Baines aloud.

A second sob. Mrs. Baines manufactured patience to meet the demand.

"You tell me not to answer back, and then you say you're waiting,"

Sophia blubbered thickly.

"What's that you say? How can I tell what you say if you talk like

that?" (But Mrs. Baines failed to hear out of discretion, which is

better than valour.)

"It's of no consequence," Sophia blurted forth in a sob. She was

weeping now, and tears were ricocheting off her lovely crimson cheeks

on to the carpet; her whole body was trembling.

"Don't be a great baby," Mrs. Baines enjoined, with a touch of rough

persuasiveness in her voice.

"It's you who make me cry," said Sophia, bitterly. "You make me cry and

then you call me a great baby!" And sobs ran through her frame like

waves one after another. She spoke so indistinctly that her mother now

really had some difficulty in catching her words.

"Sophia," said Mrs. Baines, with god-like calm, "it is not I who make

you cry. It is your guilty conscience makes you cry. I have merely

asked you a question, and I intend to have an answer."

"I've told you." Here Sophia checked the sobs with an immense effort.

"What have you told me?"

"I just went out."

"I will have no trifling," said Mrs. Baines. "What did you go out for,

and without telling me? If you had told me afterwards, when I came in,

of your own accord, it might have been different. But no, not a word!

It is I who have to ask! Now, quick! I can't wait any longer."

("I gave way over the castor-oil, my girl," Mrs. Baines said in her own

breast. "But not again! Not again!")

"I don't know," Sophia murmured.

"What do you mean--you don't know?"

The sobbing recommenced tempestuously. "I mean I don't know. I just

went out." Her voice rose; it was noisy, but scarcely articulate. "What

if I did go out?"

"Sophia, I am not going to be talked to like this. If you think because

you're leaving school you can do exactly as you like--"

"Do I want to leave school?" yelled Sophia, stamping. In a moment a

hurricane of emotion overwhelmed her, as though that stamping of the

foot had released the demons of the storm. Her face was transfigured by

uncontrollable passion. "You all want to make me miserable!" she

shrieked with terrible violence. "And now I can't even go out! You are

a horrid, cruel woman, and I hate you! And you can do what you like!

Put me in prison if you like! I know you'd be glad if I was dead!"

She dashed from the room, banging the door with a shock that made the

house rattle. And she had shouted so loud that she might have been

heard in the shop, and even in the kitchen. It was a startling

experience for Mrs. Baines. Mrs. Baines, why did you saddle yourself

with a witness? Why did you so positively say that you intended to have

an answer?

"Really," she stammered, pulling her dignity about her shoulders like a

garment that the wind has snatched off. "I never dreamed that poor girl

had such a dreadful temper! What a pity it is, for her OWN sake!" It

was the best she could do.

Constance, who could not bear to witness her mother's humiliation,

vanished very quietly from the room. She got halfway upstairs to the

second floor, and then, hearing the loud, rapid, painful, regular

intake of sobbing breaths, she hesitated and crept down again.

This was Mrs. Baines's first costly experience of the child thankless

for having been brought into the world. It robbed her of her profound,

absolute belief in herself. She had thought she knew everything in her

house and could do everything there. And lo! she had suddenly stumbled

against an unsuspected personality at large in her house, a sort of

hard marble affair that informed her by means of bumps that if she did

not want to be hurt she must keep out of the way.

V

On the Sunday afternoon Mrs. Baines was trying to repose a little in

the drawing-room, where she had caused a fire to be lighted. Constance

was in the adjacent bedroom with her father. Sophia lay between

blankets in the room overhead with a feverish cold. This cold and her

new dress were Mrs. Baines's sole consolation at the moment. She had

prophesied a cold for Sophia, refuser of castor-oil, and it had come.

Sophia had received, for standing in her nightdress at a draughty

window of a May morning, what Mrs. Baines called 'nature's slap in the

face.' As for the dress, she had worshipped God in it, and prayed for

Sophia in it, before dinner; and its four double rows of gimp on the

skirt had been accounted a great success. With her lace-bordered mantle

and her low, stringed bonnet she had assuredly given a unique lustre to

the congregation at chapel. She was stout; but the fashions,

prescribing vague outlines, broad downward slopes, and vast amplitudes,

were favourable to her shape. It must not be supposed that stout women

of a certain age never seek to seduce the eye and trouble the

meditations of man by other than moral charms. Mrs. Baines knew that

she was comely, natty, imposing, and elegant; and the knowledge gave

her real pleasure. She would look over her shoulder in the glass as

anxious as a girl: make no mistake.

She did not repose; she could not. She sat thinking, in exactly the

same posture as Sophia's two afternoons previously. She would have been

surprised to hear that her attitude, bearing, and expression powerfully

recalled those of her reprehensible daughter. But it was so. A good

angel made her restless, and she went idly to the window and glanced

upon the empty, shuttered Square. She too, majestic matron, had

strange, brief yearnings for an existence more romantic than this;

shootings across her spirit's firmament of tailed comets; soft,

inexplicable melancholies. The good angel, withdrawing her from such a

mood, directed her gaze to a particular spot at the top of the square.

She passed at once out of the room--not precisely in a hurry, yet

without wasting time. In a recess under the stairs, immediately outside

the door, was a box about a foot square and eighteen inches deep

covered with black American cloth. She bent down and unlocked this box,

which was padded within and contained the Baines silver tea-service.

She drew from the box teapot, sugar-bowl, milk-jug, sugar-tongs,

hot-water jug, and cake-stand (a flattish dish with an arching

semicircular handle)--chased vessels, silver without and silver-gilt

within; glittering heirlooms that shone in the dark corner like the

secret pride of respectable families. These she put on a tray that

always stood on end in the recess. Then she looked upwards through the

banisters to the second floor.

"Maggie!" she piercingly whispered.

"Yes, mum," came a voice.

"Are you dressed?"

"Yes, mum. I'm just coming."

"Well, put on your muslin." "Apron," Mrs. Baines implied.

Maggie understood.

"Take these for tea," said Mrs. Baines when Maggie descended. "Better

rub them over. You know where the cake is--that new one. The best cups.

And the silver spoons."

They both heard a knock at the side-door, far off, below.

"There!" exclaimed Mrs. Baines. "Now take these right down into the

kitchen before you open."

"Yes, mum," said Maggie, departing.

Mrs. Baines was wearing a black alpaca apron. She removed it and put on

another one of black satin embroidered with yellow flowers, which, by

merely inserting her arm into the chamber, she had taken from off the

chest of drawers in her bedroom. Then she fixed herself in the

drawing-room.

Maggie returned, rather short of breath, convoying the visitor.

"Ah! Miss Chetwynd," said Mrs. Baines, rising to welcome. "I'm sure I'm

delighted to see you. I saw you coming down the Square, and I said to

myself, 'Now, I do hope Miss Chetwynd isn't going to forget us.'"

Miss Chetwynd, simpering momentarily, came forward with that

self-conscious, slightly histrionic air, which is one of the penalties

of pedagogy. She lived under the eyes of her pupils. Her life was one

ceaseless effort to avoid doing anything which might influence her

charges for evil or shock the natural sensitiveness of their parents.

She had to wind her earthly way through a forest of the most delicate

susceptibilities--fern-fronds that stretched across the path, and that

she must not even accidentally disturb with her skirt as she passed. No

wonder she walked mincingly! No wonder she had a habit of keeping her

elbows close to her sides, and drawing her mantle tight in the streets!

Her prospectus talked about 'a sound and religious course of training,'

'study embracing the usual branches of English, with music by a

talented master, drawing, dancing, and calisthenics.' Also 'needlework

plain and ornamental;' also 'moral influence;' and finally about terms,

'which are very moderate, and every particular, with references to

parents and others, furnished on application.' (Sometimes, too, without

application.) As an illustration of the delicacy of fern-fronds, that

single word 'dancing' had nearly lost her Constance and Sophia seven

years before!

She was a pinched virgin, aged forty, and not 'well off;' in her family

the gift of success had been monopolized by her elder sister. For these

characteristics Mrs. Baines, as a matron in easy circumstances, pitied

Miss Chetwynd. On the other hand, Miss Chetwynd could choose ground

from which to look down upon Mrs. Baines, who after all was in trade.

Miss Chetwynd had no trace of the local accent; she spoke with a

southern refinement which the Five Towns, while making fun of it,

envied. All her O's had a genteel leaning towards 'ow,' as ritualism

leans towards Romanism. And she was the fount of etiquette, a wonder of

correctness; in the eyes of her pupils' parents not so much 'a perfect

LADY' as 'a PERFECT lady.' So that it was an extremely nice question

whether, upon the whole, Mrs. Baines secretly condescended to Miss

Chetwynd or Miss Chetwynd to Mrs. Baines. Perhaps Mrs. Baines, by

virtue of her wifehood, carried the day.

Miss Chetwynd, carefully and precisely seated, opened the conversation

by explaining that even if Mrs. Baines had not written she should have

called in any case, as she made a practice of calling at the home of

her pupils in vacation time: which was true. Mrs. Baines, it should be

stated, had on Friday afternoon sent to Miss Chetwynd one of her most

luxurious notes--lavender-coloured paper with scalloped edges, the

selectest mode of the day--to announce, in her Italian hand, that

Constance and Sophia would both leave school at the end of the next

term, and giving reasons in regard to Sophia.

Before the visitor had got very far, Maggie came in with a lacquered

tea-caddy and the silver teapot and a silver spoon on a lacquered tray.

Mrs. Baines, while continuing to talk, chose a key from her bunch,

unlocked the tea-caddy, and transferred four teaspoonfuls of tea from

it to the teapot and relocked the caddy.

"Strawberry," she mysteriously whispered to Maggie; and Maggie

disappeared, bearing the tray and its contents.

"And how is your sister? It is quite a long time since she was down

here," Mrs. Baines went on to Miss Chetwynd, after whispering

"strawberry."

The remark was merely in the way of small-talk--for the hostess felt a

certain unwilling hesitation to approach the topic of daughters--but it

happened to suit the social purpose of Miss Chetwynd to a nicety. Miss

Chetwynd was a vessel brimming with great tidings.

"She is very well, thank you," said Miss Chetwynd, and her expression

grew exceedingly vivacious. Her face glowed with pride as she added,

"Of course everything is changed now."

"Indeed?" murmured Mrs. Baines, with polite curiosity.

"Yes," said Miss Chetwynd. "You've not heard?"

"No," said Mrs. Baines. Miss Chetwynd knew that she had not heard.

"About Elizabeth's engagement? To the Reverend Archibald Jones?"

It is the fact that Mrs. Baines was taken aback. She did nothing

indiscreet; she did not give vent to her excusable amazement that the

elder Miss Chetwynd should be engaged to any one at all, as some women

would have done in the stress of the moment. She kept her presence of

mind.

"This is really MOST interesting!" said she.

It was. For Archibald Jones was one of the idols of the Wesleyan

Methodist Connexion, a special preacher famous throughout England. At

'Anniversaries' and 'Trust sermons,' Archibald Jones had probably no

rival. His Christian name helped him; it was a luscious, resounding

mouthful for admirers. He was not an itinerant minister, migrating

every three years. His function was to direct the affairs of the 'Book

Room,' the publishing department of the Connexion. He lived in London,

and shot out into the provinces at week-ends, preaching on Sundays and

giving a lecture, tinctured with bookishness, 'in the chapel' on Monday

evenings. In every town he visited there was competition for the

privilege of entertaining him. He had zeal, indefatigable energy, and a

breezy wit. He was a widower of fifty, and his wife had been dead for

twenty years. It had seemed as if women were not for this bright star.

And here Elizabeth Chetwynd, who had left the Five Towns a quarter of a

century before at the age of twenty, had caught him! Austere,

moustached, formidable, desiccated, she must have done it with her

powerful intellect! It must be a union of intellects! He had been

impressed by hers, and she by his, and then their intellects had

kissed. Within a week fifty thousand women in forty counties had

pictured to themselves this osculation of intellects, and shrugged

their shoulders, and decided once more that men were incomprehensible.

These great ones in London, falling in love like the rest! But no! Love

was a ribald and voluptuous word to use in such a matter as this. It

was generally felt that the Reverend Archibald Jones and Miss Chetwynd

the elder would lift marriage to what would now be termed an astral

plane.

After tea had been served, Mrs. Baines gradually recovered her

position, both in her own private esteem and in the deference of Miss

Aline Chetwynd.

"Yes," said she. "You can talk about your sister, and you can call HIM

Archibald, and you can mince up your words. But have you got a

tea-service like this? Can you conceive more perfect strawberry jam

than this? Did not my dress cost more than you spend on your clothes in

a year? Has a man ever looked at you? After all, is there not something

about my situation ... in short, something...?"

She did not say this aloud. She in no way deviated from the scrupulous

politeness of a hostess. There was nothing in even her tone to indicate

that Mrs. John Baines was a personage. Yet it suddenly occurred to Miss

Chetwynd that her pride in being the prospective sister-in-law of the

Rev. Archibald Jones would be better for a while in her pocket. And she

inquired after Mr. Baines. After this the conversation limped somewhat.

"I suppose you weren't surprised by my letter?" said Mrs. Baines.

"I was and I wasn't," answered Miss Chetwynd, in her professional

manner and not her manner of a prospective sister-in-law. "Of course I

am naturally sorry to lose two such good pupils, but we can't keep our

pupils for ever." She smiled; she was not without fortitude--it is

easier to lose pupils than to replace them. "Still"--a pause--"what you

say of Sophia is perfectly true, perfectly. She is quite as advanced as

Constance. Still"--another pause and a more rapid enunciation--"Sophia

is by no means an ordinary girl."

"I hope she hasn't been a very great trouble to you?"

"Oh NO!" exclaimed Miss Chetwynd. "Sophia and I have got on very well

together. I have always tried to appeal to her reason. I have never

FORCED her ... Now, with some girls ... In some ways I look on Sophia

as the most remarkable girl--not pupil--but the most remarkable--what

shall I say?--individuality, that I have ever met with." And her

demeanour added, "And, mind you, this is something--from me!"

"Indeed!" said Mrs. Baines. She told herself, "I am not your common

foolish parent. I see my children impartially. I am incapable of being

flattered concerning them."

Nevertheless she was flattered, and the thought shaped itself that

really Sophia was no ordinary girl.

"I suppose she has talked to you about becoming a teacher?" asked Miss

Chetwynd, taking a morsel of the unparalleled jam.

She held the spoon with her thumb and three fingers. Her fourth finger,

in matters of honest labour, would never associate with the other

three; delicately curved, it always drew proudly away from them.

"Has she mentioned that to you?" Mrs. Baines demanded, startled.

"Oh yes!" said Miss Chetwynd. "Several times. Sophia is a very

secretive girl, very--but I think I may say I have always had her

confidence. There have been times when Sophia and I have been very near

each other. Elizabeth was much struck with her. Indeed, I may tell you

that in one of her last letters to me she spoke of Sophia and said she

had mentioned her to Mr. Jones, and Mr. Jones remembered her quite

well."

Impossible for even a wise, uncommon parent not to be affected by such

an announcement!

"I dare say your sister will give up her school now," observed Mrs.

Baines, to divert attention from her self-consciousness.

"Oh NO!" And this time Mrs. Baines had genuinely shocked Miss Chetwynd.

"Nothing would induce Elizabeth to give up the cause of education.

Archibald takes the keenest interest in the school. Oh no! Not for

worlds!"

"THEN YOU THINK SOPHIA WOULD MAKE A GOOD TEACHER?" asked Mrs. Baines

with apparent inconsequence, and with a smile. But the words marked an

epoch in her mind. All was over.

"I think she is very much set on it and--"

"That wouldn't affect her father--or me," said Mrs. Baines quickly.

"Certainly not! I merely say that she is very much set on it. Yes, she

would, at any rate, make a teacher far superior to the average." ("That

girl has got the better of her mother without me!" she reflected.) "Ah!

Here is dear Constance!"

Constance, tempted beyond her strength by the sounds of the visit and

the colloquy, had slipped into the room.

"I've left both doors open, mother," she excused herself for quitting

her father, and kissed Miss Chetwynd.

She blushed, but she blushed happily, and really made a most creditable

debut as a young lady. Her mother rewarded her by taking her into the

conversation. And history was soon made.

So Sophia was apprenticed to Miss Aline Chetwynd. Mrs. Baines bore

herself greatly. It was Miss Chetwynd who had urged, and her respect

for Miss Chetwynd ... Also somehow the Reverend Archibald Jones came

into the cause.

Of course the idea of Sophia ever going to London was ridiculous,

ridiculous! (Mrs. Baines secretly feared that the ridiculous might

happen; but, with the Reverend Archibald Jones on the spot, the worst

could be faced.) Sophia must understand that even the apprenticeship in

Bursley was merely a trial. They would see how things went on. She had

to thank Miss Chetwynd.

"I made Miss Chetwynd come and talk to mother," said Sophia

magnificently one night to simple Constance, as if to imply, 'Your Miss

Chetwynd is my washpot.'

To Constance, Sophia's mere enterprise was just as staggering as her

success. Fancy her deliberately going out that Saturday morning, after

her mother's definite decision, to enlist Miss Chetwynd in her aid!

There is no need to insist on the tragic grandeur of Mrs. Baines's

renunciation--a renunciation which implied her acceptance of a change

in the balance of power in her realm. Part of its tragedy was that

none, not even Constance, could divine the intensity of Mrs. Baines's

suffering. She had no confidant; she was incapable of showing a wound.

But when she lay awake at night by the organism which had once been her

husband, she dwelt long and deeply on the martyrdom of her life. What

had she done to deserve it? Always had she conscientiously endeavoured

to be kind, just, patient. And she knew herself to be sagacious and

prudent. In the frightful and unguessed trials of her existence as a

wife, surely she might have been granted consolations as a mother! Yet

no; it had not been! And she felt all the bitterness of age against

youth--youth egotistic, harsh, cruel, uncompromising; youth that is so

crude, so ignorant of life, so slow to understand! She had Constance.

Yes, but it would be twenty years before Constance could appreciate the

sacrifice of judgment and of pride which her mother had made, in a

sudden decision, during that rambling, starched, simpering interview

with Miss Aline Chetwynd. Probably Constance thought that she had

yielded to Sophia's passionate temper! Impossible to explain to

Constance that she had yielded to nothing but a perception of Sophia's

complete inability to hear reason and wisdom. Ah! Sometimes as she lay

in the dark, she would, in fancy, snatch her heart from her bosom and

fling it down before Sophia, bleeding, and cry: "See what I carry about

with me, on your account!" Then she would take it back and hide it

again, and sweeten her bitterness with wise admonitions to herself.

All this because Sophia, aware that if she stayed in the house she

would be compelled to help in the shop, chose an honourable activity

which freed her from the danger. Heart, how absurd of you to bleed!

CHAPTER IV

ELEPHANT

I

"Sophia, will you come and see the elephant? Do come!" Constance

entered the drawing-room with this request on her eager lips.

"No," said Sophia, with a touch of condescension. "I'm far too busy for

elephants."

Only two years had passed; but both girls were grown up now; long

sleeves, long skirts, hair that had settled down in life; and a

demeanour immensely serious, as though existence were terrific in its

responsibilities; yet sometimes childhood surprisingly broke through

the crust of gravity, as now in Constance, aroused by such things as

elephants, and proclaimed with vivacious gestures that it was not dead

after all. The sisters were sharply differentiated. Constance wore the

black alpaca apron and the scissors at the end of a long black elastic,

which indicated her vocation in the shop. She was proving a

considerable success in the millinery department. She had learnt how to

talk to people, and was, in her modest way, very self-possessed. She

was getting a little stouter. Everybody liked her. Sophia had developed

into the student. Time had accentuated her reserve. Her sole friend was

Miss Chetwynd, with whom she was, having regard to the disparity of

their ages, very intimate. At home she spoke little. She lacked

amiability; as her mother said, she was 'touchy.' She required

diplomacy from others, but did not render it again. Her attitude,

indeed, was one of half-hidden disdain, now gentle, now coldly bitter.

She would not wear an apron, in an age when aprons were almost

essential to decency. No! She would not wear an apron, and there was an

end of it. She was not so tidy as Constance, and if Constance's hands

had taken on the coarse texture which comes from commerce with needles,

pins, artificial flowers, and stuffs, Sophia's fine hands were seldom

innocent of ink. But Sophia was splendidly beautiful. And even her

mother and Constance had an instinctive idea that that face was, at any

rate, a partial excuse for her asperity.

"Well," said Constance, "if you won't, I do believe I shall ask mother

if she will."

Sophia, bending over her books, made no answer. But the top of her head

said: "This has no interest for me whatever."

Constance left the room, and in a moment returned with her mother.

"Sophia," said her mother, with gay excitement, "you might go and sit

with your father for a bit while Constance and I just run up to the

playground to see the elephant. You can work just as well in there as

here. Your father's asleep."

"Oh, very, well!" Sophia agreed haughtily. "Whatever is all this fuss

about an elephant? Anyhow, it'll be quieter in your room. The noise

here is splitting." She gave a supercilious glance into the Square as

she languidly rose.

It was the morning of the third day of Bursley Wakes; not the modern

finicking and respectable, but an orgiastic carnival, gross in all its

manifestations of joy. The whole centre of the town was given over to

the furious pleasures of the people. Most of the Square was occupied by

Wombwell's Menagerie, in a vast oblong tent, whose raging beasts roared

and growled day and night. And spreading away from this supreme

attraction, right up through the market-place past the Town Hall to

Duck Bank, Duck Square and the waste land called the 'playground' were

hundreds of booths with banners displaying all the delights of the

horrible. You could see the atrocities of the French Revolution, and of

the Fiji Islands, and the ravages of unspeakable diseases, and the

living flesh of a nearly nude human female guaranteed to turn the scale

at twenty-two stone, and the skeletons of the mysterious phantoscope,

and the bloody contests of champions naked to the waist (with the

chance of picking up a red tooth as a relic). You could try your

strength by hitting an image of a fellow-creature in the stomach, and

test your aim by knocking off the heads of other images with a wooden

ball. You could also shoot with rifles at various targets. All the

streets were lined with stalls loaded with food in heaps, chiefly dried

fish, the entrails of animals, and gingerbread. All the public-houses

were crammed, and frenzied jolly drunkards, men and women, lunged along

the pavements everywhere, their shouts vying with the trumpets, horns,

and drums of the booths, and the shrieking, rattling toys that the

children carried.

It was a glorious spectacle, but not a spectacle for the leading

families. Miss Chetwynd's school was closed, so that the daughters of

leading families might remain in seclusion till the worst was over. The

Baineses ignored the Wakes in every possible way, choosing that week to

have a show of mourning goods in the left-hand window, and refusing to

let Maggie outside on any pretext. Therefore the dazzling social

success of the elephant, which was quite easily drawing Mrs. Baines

into the vortex, cannot imaginably be over-estimated.

On the previous night one of the three Wombwell elephants had suddenly

knelt on a man in the tent; he had then walked out of the tent and

picked up another man at haphazard from the crowd which was staring at

the great pictures in front, and tried to put this second man into his

mouth. Being stopped by his Indian attendant with a pitchfork, he

placed the man on the ground and stuck his tusk through an artery of

the victim's arm. He then, amid unexampled excitement, suffered himself

to be led away. He was conducted to the rear of the tent, just in front

of Baines's shuttered windows, and by means of stakes, pulleys, and

ropes forced to his knees. His head was whitewashed, and six men of the

Rifle Corps were engaged to shoot at him at a distance of five yards,

while constables kept the crowd off with truncheons. He died instantly,

rolling over with a soft thud. The crowd cheered, and, intoxicated by

their importance, the Volunteers fired three more volleys into the

carcase, and were then borne off as heroes to different inns. The

elephant, by the help of his two companions, was got on to a railway

lorry and disappeared into the night. Such was the greatest sensation

that has ever occurred, or perhaps will ever occur, in Bursley. The

excitement about the repeal of the Corn Laws, or about Inkerman, was

feeble compared to that excitement. Mr. Critchlow, who had been called

on to put a hasty tourniquet round the arm of the second victim, had

popped in afterwards to tell John Baines all about it. Mr. Baines's

interest, however, had been slight. Mr. Critchlow succeeded better with

the ladies, who, though they had witnessed the shooting from the

drawing-room, were thirsty for the most trifling details.

The next day it was known that the elephant lay near the playground,

pending the decision of the Chief Bailiff and the Medical Officer as to

his burial. And everybody had to visit the corpse. No social

exclusiveness could withstand the seduction of that dead elephant.

Pilgrims travelled from all the Five Towns to see him.

"We're going now," said Mrs. Baines, after she had assumed her bonnet

and shawl.

"All right," said Sophia, pretending to be absorbed in study, as she

sat on the sofa at the foot of her father's bed.

And Constance, having put her head in at the door, drew her mother

after her like a magnet.

Then Sophia heard a remarkable conversation in the passage.

"Are you going up to see the elephant, Mrs. Baines?" asked the voice of

Mr. Povey.

"Yes. Why?"

"I think I had better come with you. The crowd is sure to be very

rough." Mr. Povey's tone was firm; he had a position.

"But the shop?"

"We shall not be long," said Mr. Povey.

"Oh yes, mother," Constance added appealingly.

Sophia felt the house thrill as the side-door banged. She sprang up and

watched the three cross King Street diagonally, and so plunge into the

Wakes. This triple departure was surely the crowning tribute to the

dead elephant! It was simply astonishing. It caused Sophia to perceive

that she had miscalculated the importance of the elephant. It made her

regret her scorn of the elephant as an attraction. She was left behind;

and the joy of life was calling her. She could see down into the Vaults

on the opposite side of the street, where working men--potters and

colliers--in their best clothes, some with high hats, were drinking,

gesticulating, and laughing in a row at a long counter.

She noticed, while she was thus at the bedroom window, a young man

ascending King Street, followed by a porter trundling a flat barrow of

luggage. He passed slowly under the very window. She flushed. She had

evidently been startled by the sight of this young man into no ordinary

state of commotion. She glanced at the books on the sofa, and then at

her father. Mr. Baines, thin and gaunt, and acutely pitiable, still

slept. His brain had almost ceased to be active now; he had to be fed

and tended like a bearded baby, and he would sleep for hours at a

stretch even in the daytime. Sophia left the room. A moment later she

ran into the shop, an apparition that amazed the three young lady

assistants. At the corner near the window on the fancy side a little

nook had been formed by screening off a portion of the counter with

large flower-boxes placed end-up. This corner had come to be known as

"Miss Baines's corner." Sophia hastened to it, squeezing past a young

lady assistant in the narrow space between the back of the counter and

the shelf-lined wall. She sat down in Constance's chair and pretended

to look for something. She had examined herself in the cheval-glass in

the showroom, on her way from the sick-chamber. When she heard a voice

near the door of the shop asking first for Mr. Povey and then for Mrs.

Baines, she rose, and seizing the object nearest to her, which happened

to be a pair of scissors, she hurried towards the showroom stairs as

though the scissors had been a grail, passionately sought and to be

jealously hidden away. She wanted to stop and turn round, but something

prevented her. She was at the end of the counter, under the curving

stairs, when one of the assistants said:

"I suppose you don't know when Mr. Povey or your mother are likely to

be back, Miss Sophia? Here's--"

It was a divine release for Sophia.

"They're--I--" she stammered, turning round abruptly. Luckily she was

still sheltered behind the counter.

The young man whom she had seen in the street came boldly forward.

"Good morning, Miss Sophia," said he, hat in hand. "It is a long time

since I had the pleasure of seeing you."

Never had she blushed as she blushed then. She scarcely knew what she

was doing as she moved slowly towards her sister's corner again, the

young man following her on the customer's side of the counter.

II

She knew that he was a traveller for the most renowned and gigantic of

all Manchester wholesale firms--Birkinshaws. But she did not know his

name, which was Gerald Scales. He was a rather short but extremely

well-proportioned man of thirty, with fair hair, and a distinguished

appearance, as became a representative of Birkinshaws. His broad, tight

necktie, with an edge of white collar showing above it, was

particularly elegant. He had been on the road for Birkinshaws for

several years; but Sophia had only seen him once before in her life,

when she was a little girl, three years ago. The relations between the

travellers of the great firms and their solid, sure clients in small

towns were in those days often cordially intimate. The traveller came

with the lustre of a historic reputation around him; there was no need

to fawn for orders; and the client's immense and immaculate

respectability made him the equal of no matter what ambassador. It was

a case of mutual esteem, and of that confidence-generating phenomenon,

"an old account." The tone in which a commercial traveller of middle

age would utter the phrase "an old account" revealed in a flash all

that was romantic, prim, and stately in mid-Victorian commerce. In the

days of Baines, after one of the elaborately engraved advice-circulars

had arrived ('Our Mr. ---- will have the pleasure of waiting upon you

on ----day next, the ---- inst.') John might in certain cases be expected to

say, on the morning of ----day, 'Missis, what have ye gotten for supper

to-night?'

Mr. Gerald Scales had never been asked to supper; he had never even

seen John Baines; but, as the youthful successor of an aged traveller

who had had the pleasure of St. Luke's Square, on behalf of

Birkinshaws, since before railways, Mrs. Baines had treated him with a

faint agreeable touch of maternal familiarity; and, both her daughters

being once in the shop during his visit, she had on that occasion

commanded the gawky girls to shake hands with him.

Sophia had never forgotten that glimpse. The young man without a name

had lived in her mind, brightly glowing, as the very symbol and

incarnation of the masculine and the elegant.

The renewed sight of him seemed to have wakened her out of a sleep.

Assuredly she was not the same Sophia. As she sat in her sister's chair

in the corner, entrenched behind the perpendicular boxes, playing

nervously with the scissors, her beautiful face was transfigured into

the ravishingly angelic. It would have been impossible for Mr. Gerald

Scales, or anybody else, to credit, as he gazed at those lovely,

sensitive, vivacious, responsive features, that Sophia was not a

character of heavenly sweetness and perfection. She did not know what

she was doing; she was nothing but the exquisite expression of a deep

instinct to attract and charm. Her soul itself emanated from her in an

atmosphere of allurement and acquiescence. Could those laughing lips

hang in a heavy pout? Could that delicate and mild voice be harsh?

Could those burning eyes be coldly inimical? Never! The idea was

inconceivable! And Mr. Gerald Scales, with his head over the top of the

boxes, yielded to the spell. Remarkable that Mr. Gerald Scales, with

all his experience, should have had to come to Bursley to find the

pearl, the paragon, the ideal! But so it was. They met in an equal

abandonment; the only difference between them was that Mr. Scales, by

force of habit, kept his head.

"I see it's your wakes here," said he.

He was polite to the wakes; but now, with the least inflection in the

world, he put the wakes at its proper level in the scheme of things as

a local unimportance! She adored him for this; she was athirst for

sympathy in the task of scorning everything local.

"I expect you didn't know," she said, implying that there was every

reason why a man of his mundane interests should not know.

"I should have remembered if I had thought," said he. "But I didn't

think. What's this about an elephant?"

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Have you heard of that?"

"My porter was full of it."

"Well," she said, "of course it's a very big thing in Bursley."

As she smiled in gentle pity of poor Bursley, he naturally did the

same. And he thought how much more advanced and broad the younger

generation was than the old! He would never have dared to express his

real feelings about Bursley to Mrs. Baines, or even to Mr. Povey (who

was, however, of no generation); yet here was a young woman actually

sharing them.

She told him all the history of the elephant.

"Must have been very exciting," he commented, despite himself.

"Do you know," she replied, "it WAS."

After all, Bursley was climbing in their opinion.

"And mother and my sister and Mr. Povey have all gone to see it. That's

why they're not here."

That the elephant should have caused both Mr. Povey and Mrs. Baines to

forget that the representative of Birkinshaws was due to call was

indeed a final victory for the elephant.

"But not you!" he exclaimed.

"No," she said. "Not me."

"Why didn't you go too?" He continued his flattering investigations

with a generous smile.

"I simply didn't care to," said she, proudly nonchalant.

"And I suppose you are in charge here?"

"No," she answered. "I just happened to have run down here for these

scissors. That's all."

"I often see your sister," said he. "'Often' do I say?--that is,

generally, when I come; but never you."

"I'm never in the shop," she said. "It's just an accident to-day."

"Oh! So you leave the shop to your sister?"

"Yes." She said nothing of her teaching.

Then there was a silence. Sophia was very thankful to be hidden from

the curiosity of the shop. The shop could see nothing of her, and only

the back of the young man; and the conversation had been conducted in

low voices. She tapped her foot, stared at the worn, polished surface

of the counter, with the brass yard-measure nailed along its edge, and

then she uneasily turned her gaze to the left and seemed to be

examining the backs of the black bonnets which were perched on high

stands in the great window. Then her eyes caught his for an important

moment.

"Yes," she breathed. Somebody had to say something. If the shop missed

the murmur of their voices the shop would wonder what had happened to

them.

Mr. Scales looked at his watch. '"I dare say if I come in again about

two--" he began.

"Oh yes, they're SURE to be in then," she burst out before he could

finish his sentence.

He left abruptly, queerly, without shaking hands (but then it would

have been difficult--she argued--for him to have put his arm over the

boxes), and without expressing the hope of seeing her again. She peeped

through the black bonnets, and saw the porter put the leather strap

over his shoulders, raise the rear of the barrow, and trundle off; but

she did not see Mr. Scales. She was drunk; thoughts were tumbling about

in her brain like cargo loose in a rolling ship. Her entire conception

of herself was being altered; her attitude towards life was being

altered. The thought which knocked hardest against its fellows was,

"Only in these moments have I begun to live!"

And as she flitted upstairs to resume watch over her father she sought

to devise an innocent-looking method by which she might see Mr. Scales

when he next called. And she speculated as to what his name was.

III

When Sophia arrived in the bedroom, she was startled because her

father's head and beard were not in their accustomed place on the

pillow. She could only make out something vaguely unusual sloping off

the side of the bed. A few seconds passed--not to be measured in

time--and she saw that the upper part of his body had slipped down, and

his head was hanging, inverted, near the floor between the bed and the

ottoman. His face, neck, and hands were dark and congested; his mouth

was open, and the tongue protruded between the black, swollen, mucous

lips; his eyes were prominent and coldly staring. The fact was that Mr.

Baines had wakened up, and, being restless, had slid out partially from

his bed and died of asphyxia. After having been unceasingly watched for

fourteen years, he had, with an invalid's natural perverseness, taken

advantage of Sophia's brief dereliction to expire. Say what you will,

amid Sophia's horror, and her terrible grief and shame, she had

visitings of the idea: he did it on purpose!

She ran out of the room, knowing by intuition that he was dead, and

shrieked out, "Maggie," at the top of her voice; the house echoed.

"Yes, miss," said Maggie, quite close, coming out of Mr. Povey's

chamber with a slop-pail.

"Fetch Mr. Critchlow at once. Be quick. Just as you are. It's father--"

Maggie, perceiving darkly that disaster was in the air, and instantly

filled with importance and a sort of black joy, dropped her pail in the

exact middle of the passage, and almost fell down the crooked stairs.

One of Maggie's deepest instincts, always held in check by the stern

dominance of Mrs. Baines, was to leave pails prominent on the main

routes of the house; and now, divining what was at hand, it flamed into

insurrection.

No sleepless night had ever been so long to Sophia as the three minutes

which elapsed before Mr. Critchlow came. As she stood on the mat

outside the bedroom door she tried to draw her mother and Constance and

Mr. Povey by magnetic force out of the wakes into the house, and her

muscles were contracted in this strange effort. She felt that it was

impossible to continue living if the secret of the bedroom remained

unknown one instant longer, so intense was her torture, and yet that

the torture which could not be borne must be borne. Not a sound in the

house! Not a sound from the shop! Only the distant murmur of the wakes!

"Why did I forget father?" she asked herself with awe. "I only meant to

tell him that they were all out, and run back. Why did I forget

father?" She would never be able to persuade anybody that she had

literally forgotten her father's existence for quite ten minutes; but

it was true, though shocking.

Then there were noises downstairs.

"Bless us! Bless us!" came the unpleasant voice of Mr. Critchlow as he

bounded up the stairs on his long legs; he strode over the pail.

"What's amiss?" He was wearing his white apron, and he carried his

spectacles in his bony hand.

"It's father--he's--" Sophia faltered.

She stood away so that he should enter the room first. He glanced at

her keenly, and as it were resentfully, and went in. She followed,

timidly, remaining near the door while Mr. Critchlow inspected her

handiwork. He put on his spectacles with strange deliberation, and

then, bending his knees outwards, thus lowered his body so that he

could examine John Baines point-blank. He remained staring like this,

his hands on his sharp apron-covered knees, for a little space; and

then he seized the inert mass and restored it to the bed, and wiped

those clotted lips with his apron.

Sophia heard loud breathing behind her. It was Maggie. She heard a

huge, snorting sob; Maggie was showing her emotion.

"Go fetch doctor!" Mr. Critchlow rasped. "And don't stand gaping there!"

"Run for the doctor, Maggie," said Sophia.

"How came ye to let him fall?" Mr. Critchlow demanded.

"I was out of the room. I just ran down into the shop--"

"Gallivanting with that young Scales!" said Mr. Critchlow, with

devilish ferocity. "Well, you've killed yer father; that's all!"

He must have been at his shop door and seen the entry of the traveller!

And it was precisely characteristic of Mr. Critchlow to jump in the

dark at a horrible conclusion, and to be right after all. For Sophia

Mr. Critchlow had always been the personification of malignity and

malevolence, and now these qualities in him made him, to her, almost

obscene. Her pride brought up tremendous reinforcements, and she

approached the bed.

"Is he dead?" she asked in a quiet tone. (Somewhere within a voice was

whispering, "So his name is Scales.")

"Don't I tell you he's dead?"

"Pail on the stairs!"

This mild exclamation came from the passage. Mrs. Baines, misliking the

crowds abroad, had returned alone; she had left Constance in charge of

Mr. Povey. Coming into her house by the shop and showroom, she had

first noted the phenomenon of the pail--proof of her theory of

Maggie's incurable untidiness.

"Been to see the elephant, I reckon!" said Mr. Critchlow, in fierce

sarcasm, as he recognized Mrs. Baines's voice.

Sophia leaped towards the door, as though to bar her mother's entrance.

But Mrs. Baines was already opening the door.

"Well, my pet--" she was beginning cheerfully.

Mr. Critchlow confronted her. And he had no more pity for the wife than

for the daughter. He was furiously angry because his precious property

had been irretrievably damaged by the momentary carelessness of a silly

girl. Yes, John Baines was his property, his dearest toy! He was

convinced that he alone had kept John Baines alive for fourteen years,

that he alone had fully understood the case and sympathized with the

sufferer, that none but he had been capable of displaying ordinary

common sense in the sick-room. He had learned to regard John Baines as,

in some sort, his creation. And now, with their stupidity, their

neglect, their elephants, between them they had done for John Baines.

He had always known it would come to that, and it had come to that.

"She let him fall out o' bed, and ye're a widow now, missis!" he

announced with a virulence hardly conceivable. His angular features and

dark eyes expressed a murderous hate for every woman named Baines.

"Mother!" cried Sophia, "I only ran down into the shop to--to--"

She seized her mother's arm in frenzied agony.

"My child!" said Mrs. Baines, rising miraculously to the situation with

a calm benevolence of tone and gesture that remained for ever sublime

in the stormy heart of Sophia, "do not hold me." With infinite

gentleness she loosed herself from those clasping hands. "Have you sent

for the doctor?" she questioned Mr. Critchlow.

The fate of her husband presented no mysteries to Mrs. Baines.

Everybody had been warned a thousand times of the danger of leaving the

paralytic, whose life depended on his position, and whose fidgetiness

was thereby a constant menace of death to him. For five thousand nights

she had wakened infallibly every time he stirred, and rearranged him by

the flicker of a little oil lamp. But Sophia, unhappy creature, had

merely left him. That was all.

Mr. Critchlow and the widow gazed, helplessly waiting, at the pitiable

corpse, of which the salient part was the white beard. They knew not

that they were gazing at a vanished era. John Baines had belonged to

the past, to the age when men really did think of their souls, when

orators by phrases could move crowds to fury or to pity, when no one

had learnt to hurry, when Demos was only turning in his sleep, when the

sole beauty of life resided in its inflexible and slow dignity, when

hell really had no bottom, and a gilt-clasped Bible really was the

secret of England's greatness. Mid-Victorian England lay on that

mahogany bed. Ideals had passed away with John Baines. It is thus that

ideals die; not in the conventional pageantry of honoured death, but

sorrily, ignobly, while one's head is turned--

And Mr. Povey and Constance, very self-conscious, went and saw the dead

elephant, and came back; and at the corner of King Street, Constance

exclaimed brightly--

"Why! who's gone out and left the side-door open?"

For the doctor had at length arrived, and Maggie, in showing him

upstairs with pious haste, had forgotten to shut the door.

And they took advantage of the side-door, rather guiltily, to avoid the

eyes of the shop. They feared that in the parlour they would be the

centre of a curiosity half ironical and half reproving; for had they

not accomplished an escapade? So they walked slowly.

The real murderer was having his dinner in the commercial room up at

the Tiger, opposite the Town Hall.

IV

Several shutters were put up in the windows of the shop, to indicate a

death, and the news instantly became known in trading circles

throughout the town. Many people simultaneously remarked upon the

coincidence that Mr. Baines should have died while there was a show of

mourning goods in his establishment. This coincidence was regarded as

extremely sinister, and it was apparently felt that, for the sake of

the mind's peace, one ought not to inquire into such things too

closely. From the moment of putting up the prescribed shutters, John

Baines and his funeral began to acquire importance in Bursley, and

their importance grew rapidly almost from hour to hour. The wakes

continued as usual, except that the Chief Constable, upon

representations being made to him by Mr. Critchlow and other citizens,

descended upon St. Luke's Square and forbade the activities of

Wombwell's orchestra. Wombwell and the Chief Constable differed as to

the justice of the decree, but every well-minded person praised the

Chief Constable, and he himself considered that he had enhanced the

town's reputation for a decent propriety. It was noticed, too, not

without a shiver of the uncanny, that that night the lions and tigers

behaved like lambs, whereas on the previous night they had roared the

whole Square out of its sleep.

The Chief Constable was not the only individual enlisted by Mr.

Critchlow in the service of his friend's fame. Mr. Critchlow spent

hours in recalling the principal citizens to a due sense of John

Baines's past greatness. He was determined that his treasured toy

should vanish underground with due pomp, and he left nothing undone to

that end. He went over to Hanbridge on the still wonderful horse-car,

and saw the editor-proprietor of the Staffordshire Signal (then a

two-penny weekly with no thought of Football editions), and on the very

day of the funeral the Signal came out with a long and eloquent

biography of John Baines. This biography, giving details of his public

life, definitely restored him to his legitimate position in the civic

memory as an ex-chief bailiff, an ex-chairman of the Burial Board, and

of the Five Towns Association for the Advancement of Useful Knowledge,

and also as a "prime mover" in the local Turnpike Act, in the

negotiations for the new Town Hall, and in the Corinthian facade of the

Wesleyan Chapel; it narrated the anecdote of his courageous speech from

the portico of the Shambles during the riots of 1848, and it did not

omit a eulogy of his steady adherence to the wise old English maxims of

commerce and his avoidance of dangerous modern methods. Even in the

sixties the modern had reared its shameless head. The panegyric closed

with an appreciation of the dead man's fortitude in the terrible

affliction with which a divine providence had seen fit to try him; and

finally the Signal uttered its absolute conviction that his native town

would raise a cenotaph to his honour. Mr. Critchlow, being unfamiliar

with the word "cenotaph," consulted Worcester's Dictionary, and when he

found that it meant "a sepulchral monument to one who is buried

elsewhere," he was as pleased with the Signal's language as with the

idea, and decided that a cenotaph should come to pass.

The house and shop were transformed into a hive of preparation for the

funeral. All was changed. Mr. Povey kindly slept for three nights on

the parlour sofa, in order that Mrs. Baines might have his room. The

funeral grew into an obsession, for multitudinous things had to be

performed and done sumptuously and in strict accordance with precedent.

There were the family mourning, the funeral repast, the choice of the

text on the memorial card, the composition of the legend on the coffin,

the legal arrangements, the letters to relations, the selection of

guests, and the questions of bell-ringing, hearse, plumes, number of

horses, and grave-digging. Nobody had leisure for the indulgence of

grief except Aunt Maria, who, after she had helped in the laying-out,

simply sat down and bemoaned unceasingly for hours her absence on the

fatal morning. "If I hadn't been so fixed on polishing my

candle-sticks," she weepingly repeated, "he mit ha' been alive and well

now." Not that Aunt Maria had been informed of the precise

circumstances of the death; she was not clearly aware that Mr. Baines

had died through a piece of neglect. But, like Mr. Critchlow, she was

convinced that there had been only one person in the world truly

capable of nursing Mr. Baines. Beyond the family, no one save Mr.

Critchlow and Dr. Harrop knew just how the martyr had finished his

career. Dr. Harrop, having been asked bluntly if an inquest would be

necessary, had reflected a moment and had then replied: "No." And he

added, "Least said soonest mended--mark me!" They had marked him. He

was commonsense in breeches.

As for Aunt Maria, she was sent about her snivelling business by Aunt

Harriet. The arrival in the house of this genuine aunt from Axe, of

this majestic and enormous widow whom even the imperial Mrs. Baines

regarded with a certain awe, set a seal of ultimate solemnity on the

whole event. In Mr. Povey's bedroom Mrs. Baines fell like a child into

Aunt Harriet's arms and sobbed:

"If it had been anything else but that elephant!"

Such was Mrs. Baines's sole weakness from first to last.

Aunt Harriet was an exhaustless fountain of authority upon every detail

concerning interments. And, to a series of questions ending with the

word "sister," and answers ending with the word "sister," the

prodigious travail incident to the funeral was gradually and

successfully accomplished. Dress and the repast exceeded all other

matters in complexity and difficulty. But on the morning of the funeral

Aunt Harriet had the satisfaction of beholding her younger sister the

centre of a tremendous cocoon of crape, whose slightest pleat was

perfect. Aunt Harriet seemed to welcome her then, like a veteran,

formally into the august army of relicts. As they stood side by side

surveying the special table which was being laid in the showroom for

the repast, it appeared inconceivable that they had reposed together in

Mr. Povey's limited bed. They descended from the showroom to the

kitchen, where the last delicate dishes were inspected. The shop was,

of course, closed for the day, but Mr. Povey was busy there, and in

Aunt Harriet's all-seeing glance he came next after the dishes. She

rose from the kitchen to speak with him.

"You've got your boxes of gloves all ready?" she questioned him.

"Yes, Mrs. Maddack."

"You'll not forget to have a measure handy?"

"No, Mrs. Maddack."

"You'll find you'll want more of seven-and-three-quarters and eights

than anything."

"Yes. I have allowed for that."

"If you place yourself behind the side-door and put your boxes on the

harmonium, you'll be able to catch every one as they come in."

"That is what I had thought of, Mrs. Maddack."

She went upstairs. Mrs. Baines had reached the showroom again, and was

smoothing out creases in the white damask cloth and arranging glass

dishes of jam at equal distances from each other.

"Come, sister," said Mrs. Maddack. "A last look."

And they passed into the mortuary bedroom to gaze at Mr. Baines before

he should be everlastingly nailed down. In death he had recovered some

of his earlier dignity; but even so he was a startling sight. The two

widows bent over him, one on either side, and gravely stared at that

twisted, worn white face all neatly tucked up in linen.

"I shall fetch Constance and Sophia," said Mrs. Maddack, with tears in

her voice. "Do you go into the drawing-room, sister."

But Mrs. Maddack only succeeded in fetching Constance.

Then there was the sound of wheels in King Street. The long rite of the

funeral was about to begin. Every guest, after having been measured and

presented with a pair of the finest black kid gloves by Mr. Povey, had

to mount the crooked stairs and gaze upon the carcase of John Baines,

going afterwards to the drawing-room to condole briefly with the widow.

And every guest, while conscious of the enormity of so thinking,

thought what an excellent thing it was that John Baines should be at

last dead and gone. The tramping on the stairs was continual, and

finally Mr. Baines himself went downstairs, bumping against corners,

and led a cortege of twenty vehicles.

The funeral tea was not over at seven o'clock, five hours after the

commencement of the rite. It was a gigantic and faultless meal, worthy

of John Baines's distant past. Only two persons were absent from

it--John Baines and Sophia. The emptiness of Sophia's chair was much

noticed; Mrs. Maddack explained that Sophia was very high-strung and

could not trust herself. Great efforts were put forth by the company to

be lugubrious and inconsolable, but the secret relief resulting from

the death would not be entirely hidden. The vast pretence of acute

sorrow could not stand intact against that secret relief and the lavish

richness of the food.

To the offending of sundry important relatives from a distance, Mr.

Critchlow informally presided over that assemblage of grave men in high

stocks and crinolined women. He had closed his shop, which had never

before been closed on a weekday, and he had a great deal to say about

this extraordinary closure. It was due as much to the elephant as to

the funeral. The elephant had become a victim to the craze for

souvenirs. Already in the night his tusks had been stolen; then his

feet disappeared for umbrella-stands, and most of his flesh had

departed in little hunks. Everybody in Bursley had resolved to

participate in the elephant. One consequence was that all the chemists'

shops in the town were assaulted by strings of boys. 'Please a pennorth

o' alum to tak' smell out o' a bit o' elephant.' Mr. Critchlow hated

boys.

"'I'll alum ye!' says I, and I did. I alummed him out o' my shop with a

pestle. If there'd been one there'd been twenty between opening and

nine o'clock. 'George,' I says to my apprentice, 'shut shop up. My old

friend John Baines is going to his long home to-day, and I'll close.

I've had enough o' alum for one day.'"

The elephant fed the conversation until after the second relay of hot

muffins. When Mr. Critchlow had eaten to his capacity, he took the

Signal importantly from his pocket, posed his spectacles, and read the

obituary all through in slow, impressive accents. Before he reached the

end Mrs. Baines began to perceive that familiarity had blinded her to

the heroic qualities of her late husband. The fourteen years of

ceaseless care were quite genuinely forgotten, and she saw him in his

strength and in his glory. When Mr. Critchlow arrived at the eulogy of

the husband and father, Mrs. Baines rose and left the showroom. The

guests looked at each other in sympathy for her. Mr. Critchlow shot a

glance at her over his spectacles and continued steadily reading. After

he had finished he approached the question of the cenotaph.

Mrs. Baines, driven from the banquet by her feelings, went into the

drawing-room. Sophia was there, and Sophia, seeing tears in her

mother's eyes, gave a sob, and flung herself bodily against her mother,

clutching her, and hiding her face in that broad crape, which abraded

her soft skin.

"Mother," she wept passionately, "I want to leave the school now. I

want to please you. I'll do anything in the world to please you. I'll

go into the shop if you'd like me to!" Her voice lost itself in tears.

"Calm yourself, my pet," said Mrs. Baines, tenderly, caressing her. It

was a triumph for the mother in the very hour when she needed a triumph.

CHAPTER V

THE TRAVELLER

I

'Equisite, 1s. 11d.'

These singular signs were being painted in shiny black on an

unrectangular parallelogram of white cardboard by Constance one evening

in the parlour. She was seated, with her left side to the fire and to

the fizzing gas, at the dining-table, which was covered with a checked

cloth in red and white. Her dress was of dark crimson; she wore a cameo

brooch and a gold chain round her neck; over her shoulders was thrown a

white knitted shawl, for the weather was extremely cold, the English

climate being much more serious and downright at that day than it is

now. She bent low to the task, holding her head slightly askew, putting

the tip of her tongue between her lips, and expending all the energy of

her soul and body in an intense effort to do what she was doing as well

as it could be done.

"Splendid!" said Mr. Povey.

Mr. Povey was fronting her at the table; he had his elbows on the

table, and watched her carefully, with the breathless and divine

anxiety of a dreamer who is witnessing the realization of his dream.

And Constance, without moving any part of her frame except her head,

looked up at him and smiled for a moment, and he could see her

delicious little nostrils at the end of her snub nose.

Those two, without knowing or guessing it, were making history--the

history of commerce. They had no suspicion that they were the forces of

the future insidiously at work to destroy what the forces of the past

had created, but such was the case. They were conscious merely of a

desire to do their duty in the shop and to the shop; probably it had

not even occurred to them that this desire, which each stimulated in

the breast of the other, had assumed the dimensions of a passion. It

was ageing Mr. Povey, and it had made of Constance a young lady

tremendously industrious and preoccupied.

Mr. Povey had recently been giving attention to the question of

tickets. It is not too much to say that Mr. Povey, to whom heaven had

granted a minimum share of imagination, had nevertheless discovered his

little parcel of imagination in the recesses of being, and brought it

effectively to bear on tickets. Tickets ran in conventional grooves.

There were heavy oblong tickets for flannels, shirting, and other

stuffs in the piece; there were smaller and lighter tickets for

intermediate goods; and there were diamond-shaped tickets (containing

nothing but the price) for bonnets, gloves, and flimflams generally.

The legends on the tickets gave no sort of original invention. The

words 'lasting,' 'durable,' 'unshrinkable,' 'latest,' 'cheap,'

'stylish,' 'novelty,' 'choice' (as an adjective), 'new,' and

'tasteful,' exhausted the entire vocabulary of tickets. Now Mr. Povey

attached importance to tickets, and since he was acknowledged to be the

best window-dresser in Bursley, his views were entitled to respect. He

dreamed of other tickets, in original shapes, with original legends. In

brief, he achieved, in regard to tickets, the rare feat of ridding

himself of preconceived notions, and of approaching a subject with

fresh, virginal eyes. When he indicated the nature of his wishes to Mr.

Chawner, the wholesale stationer who supplied all the Five Towns with

shop-tickets, Mr. Chawner grew uneasy and worried; Mr. Chawner was

indeed shocked. For Mr. Chawner there had always been certain

well-defined genera of tickets, and he could not conceive the existence

of other genera. When Mr. Povey suggested circular tickets--tickets

with a blue and a red line round them, tickets with legends such as

'unsurpassable,' 'very dainty,' or 'please note,' Mr. Chawner hummed

and hawed, and finally stated that it would be impossible to

manufacture these preposterous tickets, these tickets which would

outrage the decency of trade.

If Mr. Povey had not happened to be an exceedingly obstinate man, he

might have been defeated by the crass Toryism of Mr. Chawner. But Mr.

Povey was obstinate, and he had resources of ingenuity which Mr.

Chawner little suspected. The great, tramping march of progress was not

to be impeded by Mr. Chawner. Mr. Povey began to make his own tickets.

At first he suffered as all reformers and inventors suffer. He used the

internal surface of collar-boxes and ordinary ink and pens, and the

result was such as to give customers the idea that Baineses were too

poor or too mean to buy tickets like other shops. For bought tickets

had an ivory-tinted gloss, and the ink was black and glossy, and the

edges were very straight and did not show yellow between two layers of

white. Whereas Mr. Povey's tickets were of a bluish-white, without

gloss; the ink was neither black nor shiny, and the edges were

amateurishly rough: the tickets had an unmistakable air of having been

'made out of something else'; moreover, the lettering had not the free,

dashing style of Mr. Chawner's tickets.

And did Mrs. Baines encourage him in his single-minded enterprise on

behalf of HER business? Not a bit! Mrs. Baines's attitude, when not

disdainful, was inimical! So curious is human nature, so blind is man

to his own advantage! Life was very complex for Mr. Povey. It might

have been less complex had Bristol board and Chinese ink been less

expensive; with these materials he could have achieved marvels to

silence all prejudice and stupidity; but they were too costly. Still,

he persevered, and Constance morally supported him; he drew his

inspiration and his courage from Constance. Instead of the internal

surface of collar-boxes, he tried the external surface, which was at

any rate shiny. But the ink would not 'take' on it. He made as many

experiments as Edison was to make, and as many failures. Then Constance

was visited by a notion for mixing sugar with ink. Simple, innocent

creature--why should providence have chosen her to be the vessel of

such a sublime notion? Puzzling enigma, which, however, did not

exercise Mr. Povey! He found it quite natural that she should save him.

Save him she did. Sugar and ink would 'take' on anything, and it shone

like a 'patent leather' boot. Further, Constance developed a 'hand' for

lettering which outdid Mr. Povey's. Between them they manufactured

tickets by the dozen and by the score--tickets which, while possessing

nearly all the smartness and finish of Mr. Chawner's tickets, were much

superior to these in originality and strikingness. Constance and Mr.

Povey were delighted and fascinated by them. As for Mrs. Baines, she

said little, but the modern spirit was too elated by its success to

care whether she said little or much. And every few days Mr. Povey

thought of some new and wonderful word to put on a ticket.

His last miracle was the word 'exquisite.' 'Exquisite,' pinned on a

piece of broad tartan ribbon, appeared to Constance and Mr. Povey as

the finality of appropriateness. A climax worthy to close the year! Mr.

Povey had cut the card and sketched the word and figures in pencil, and

Constance was doing her executive portion of the undertaking. They were

very happy, very absorbed, in this strictly business matter. The clock

showed five minutes past ten. Stern duty, a pure desire for the

prosperity of the shop, had kept them at hard labour since before eight

o'clock that morning!

The stairs-door opened, and Mrs. Baines appeared, in bonnet and furs

and gloves, all clad for going out. She had abandoned the cocoon of

crape, but still wore weeds. She was stouter than ever.

"What!" she cried. "Not ready! Now really!"

"Oh, mother! How you made me jump!" Constance protested. "What time is

it? It surely isn't time to go yet!"

"Look at the clock!" said Mrs. Baines, drily.

"Well, I never!" Constance murmured, confused.

"Come, put your things together, and don't keep me waiting," said Mrs.

Baines, going past the table to the window, and lifting the blind to

peep out. "Still snowing," she observed. "Oh, the band's going away at

last! I wonder how they can play at all in this weather. By the way,

what was that tune they gave us just now? I couldn't make out whether

it was 'Redhead,' or--"

"Band?" questioned Constance--the simpleton!

Neither she nor Mr. Povey had heard the strains of the Bursley Town

Silver Prize Band which had been enlivening the season according to its

usual custom. These two practical, duteous, commonsense young and

youngish persons had been so absorbed in their efforts for the welfare

of the shop that they had positively not only forgotten the time, but

had also failed to notice the band! But if Constance had had her wits

about her she would at least have pretended that she had heard it.

"What's this?" asked Mrs. Baines, bringing her vast form to the table

and picking up a ticket.

Mr. Povey said nothing. Constance said: "Mr. Povey thought of it

to-day. Don't you think it's very good, mother?"

"I'm afraid I don't," Mrs. Baines coldly replied.

She had mildly objected already to certain words; but 'exquisite'

seemed to her silly; it seemed out of place; she considered that it

would merely bring ridicule on her shop. 'Exquisite' written upon a

window-ticket! No! What would John Baines have thought of 'exquisite'?

"'Exquisite!'" She repeated the word with a sarcastic inflection,

putting the accent, as every one put it, on the second syllable. "I

don't think that will quite do."

"But why not, mother?"

"It's not suitable, my dear."

She dropped the ticket from her gloved hand. Mr. Povey had darkly

flashed. Though he spoke little, he was as sensitive as he was

obstinate. On this occasion he said nothing. He expressed his feelings

by seizing the ticket and throwing it into the fire.

The situation was extremely delicate. Priceless employes like Mr. Povey

cannot be treated as machines, and Mrs. Baines of course instantly saw

that tact was needed.

"Go along to my bedroom and get ready, my pet," said she to Constance.

"Sophia is there. There's a good fire. I must just speak to Maggie."

She tactfully left the room.

Mr. Povey glanced at the fire and the curling red remains of the

ticket. Trade was bad; owing to weather and war, destitution was

abroad; and he had been doing his utmost for the welfare of the shop;

and here was the reward!

Constance's eyes were full of tears. "Never mind!" she murmured, and

went upstairs.

It was all over in a moment.

II

In the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel on Duck Bank there was a full and

influential congregation. For in those days influential people were not

merely content to live in the town where their fathers had lived,

without dreaming of country residences and smokeless air--they were

content also to believe what their fathers had believed about the

beginning and the end of all. There was no such thing as the unknowable

in those days. The eternal mysteries were as simple as an addition sum;

a child could tell you with absolute certainty where you would be and

what you would be doing a million years hence, and exactly what God

thought of you. Accordingly, every one being of the same mind, every

one met on certain occasions in certain places in order to express the

universal mind. And in the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, for example,

instead of a sparse handful of persons disturbingly conscious of being

in a minority, as now, a magnificent and proud majority had collected,

deeply aware of its rightness and its correctness.

And the minister, backed by minor ministers, knelt and covered his face

in the superb mahogany rostrum; and behind him, in what was then still

called the 'orchestra' (though no musical instruments except the grand

organ had sounded in it for decades), the choir knelt and covered their

faces; and all around in the richly painted gallery and on the

ground-floor, multitudinous rows of people, in easy circumstances of

body and soul, knelt in high pews and covered their faces. And there

floated before them, in the intense and prolonged silence, the clear

vision of Jehovah on a throne, a God of sixty or so with a moustache

and a beard, and a non-committal expression which declined to say

whether or not he would require more bloodshed; and this God, destitute

of pinions, was surrounded by white-winged creatures that wafted

themselves to and fro while chanting; and afar off was an obscene

monstrosity, with cloven hoofs and a tail very dangerous and rude and

interfering, who could exist comfortably in the middle of a coal-fire,

and who took a malignant and exhaustless pleasure in coaxing you by

false pretences into the same fire; but of course you had too much

sense to swallow his wicked absurdities. Once a year, for ten minutes

by the clock, you knelt thus, in mass, and by meditation convinced

yourself that you had too much sense to swallow his wicked absurdities.

And the hour was very solemn, the most solemn of all the hours.

Strange that immortal souls should be found with the temerity to

reflect upon mundane affairs in that hour! Yet there were undoubtedly

such in the congregation; there were perhaps many to whom the vision,

if clear, was spasmodic and fleeting. And among them the inhabitants of

the Baines family pew! Who would have supposed that Mr. Povey, a recent

convert from Primitive Methodism in King Street to Wesleyan Methodism

on Duck Bank, was dwelling upon window-tickets and the injustice of

women, instead of upon his relations with Jehovah and the tailed one?

Who would have supposed that the gentle-eyed Constance, pattern of

daughters, was risking her eternal welfare by smiling at the tailed

one, who, concealing his tail, had assumed the image of Mr. Povey? Who

would have supposed that Mrs. Baines, instead of resolving that Jehovah

and not the tailed one should have ultimate rule over her, was

resolving that she and not Mr. Povey should have ultimate rule over her

house and shop? It was a pew-ful that belied its highly satisfactory

appearance. (And possibly there were other pew-fuls equally deceptive.)

Sophia alone, in the corner next to the wall, with her beautiful stern

face pressed convulsively against her hands, was truly busy with

immortal things. Turbulent heart, the violence of her spiritual life

had made her older! Never was a passionate, proud girl in a harder case

than Sophia! In the splendour of her remorse for a fatal forgetfulness,

she had renounced that which she loved and thrown herself into that

which she loathed. It was her nature so to do. She had done it

haughtily, and not with kindness, but she had done it with the whole

force of her will. Constance had been compelled to yield up to her the

millinery department, for Sophia's fingers had a gift of manipulating

ribbons and feathers that was beyond Constance. Sophia had accomplished

miracles in the millinery. Yes, and she would be utterly polite to

customers; but afterwards, when the customers were gone, let mothers,

sisters, and Mr. Poveys beware of her fiery darts!

But why, when nearly three months had elapsed after her father's death,

had she spent more and more time in the shop, secretly aflame with

expectancy? Why, when one day a strange traveller entered the shop and

announced himself the new representative of Birkinshaws--why had her

very soul died away within her and an awful sickness seized her? She

knew then that she had been her own deceiver. She recognized and

admitted, abasing herself lower than the lowest, that her motive in

leaving Miss Chetwynd's and joining the shop had been, at the best,

very mixed, very impure. Engaged at Miss Chetwynd's, she might easily

have never set eyes on Gerald Scales again. Employed in the shop, she

could not fail to meet him. In this light was to be seen the true

complexion of the splendour of her remorse. A terrible thought for her!

And she could not dismiss it. It contaminated her existence, this

thought! And she could confide in no one. She was incapable of showing

a wound. Quarter had succeeded quarter, and Gerald Scales was no more

heard of. She had sacrificed her life for worse than nothing. She had

made her own tragedy. She had killed her father, cheated and shamed

herself with a remorse horribly spurious, exchanged content for misery

and pride for humiliation--and with it all, Gerald Scales had vanished!

She was ruined.

She took to religion, and her conscientious Christian virtues,

practised with stern inclemency, were the canker of the family. Thus a

year and a half had passed.

And then, on this last day of the year, the second year of her shame

and of her heart's widowhood, Mr. Scales had reappeared. She had gone

casually into the shop and found him talking to her mother and Mr.

Povey. He had come back to the provincial round and to her. She shook

his hand and fled, because she could not have stayed. None had noticed

her agitation, for she had held her body as in a vice. She knew the

reason neither of his absence nor of his return. She knew nothing. And

not a word had been said at meals. And the day had gone and the night

come; and now she was in chapel, with Constance by her side and Gerald

Scales in her soul! Happy beyond previous conception of happiness!

Wretched beyond an unutterable woe! And none knew! What was she to pray

for? To what purpose and end ought she to steel herself? Ought she to

hope, or ought she to despair? "O God, help me!" she kept whispering to

Jehovah whenever the heavenly vision shone through the wrack of her

meditation. "O God, help me!" She had a conscience that, when it was in

the mood for severity, could be unspeakably cruel to her.

And whenever she looked, with dry, hot eyes, through her gloved

fingers, she saw in front of her on the wall a marble tablet inscribed

in gilt letters, the cenotaph! She knew all the lines by heart, in

their spacious grandiloquence; lines such as:

EVER READY WITH HIS TONGUE HIS PEN AND HIS PURSE TO HELP THE CHURCH OF

HIS FATHERS IN HER HE LIVED AND IN HER HE DIED CHERISHING A DEEP AND

ARDENT AFFECTION FOR HIS BELOVED FAITH AND CREED.

And again:

HIS SYMPATHIES EXTENDED BEYOND HIS OWN COMMUNITY HE WAS ALWAYS TO THE

FORE IN GOOD WORKS AND HE SERVED THE CIRCUIT THE TOWN AND THE DISTRICT

WITH GREAT ACCEPTANCE AND USEFULNESS.

Thus had Mr. Critchlow's vanity been duly appeased.

As the minutes sped in the breathing silence of the chapel the

emotional tension grew tighter; worshippers sighed heavily, or called

upon Jehovah for a sign, or merely coughed an invocation. And then at

last the clock in the middle of the balcony gave forth the single

stroke to which it was limited; the ministers rose, and the

congregation after them; and everybody smiled as though it was the

millennium, and not simply the new year, that had set in. Then,

faintly, through walls and shut windows, came the sound of bells and of

steam syrens and whistles. The superintendent minister opened his

hymn-book, and the hymn was sung which had been sung in Wesleyan

Chapels on New Year's morn since the era of John Wesley himself. The

organ finished with a clanguor of all its pipes; the minister had a few

last words with Jehovah, and nothing was left to do except to persevere

in well-doing. The people leaned towards each other across the high

backs of the pews.

"A happy New Year!"

"Eh, thank ye! The same to you!"

"Another Watch Night service over!"

"Eh, yes!" And a sigh.

Then the aisles were suddenly crowded, and there was a good-humoured,

optimistic pushing towards the door. In the Corinthian porch occurred a

great putting-on of cloaks, ulsters, goloshes, and even pattens, and a

great putting-up of umbrellas. And the congregation went out into the

whirling snow, dividing into several black, silent-footed processions,

down Trafalgar Road, up towards the playground, along the market-place,

and across Duck Square in the direction of St. Luke's Square.

Mr. Povey was between Mrs. Baines and Constance.

"You must take my arm, my pet," said Mrs. Baines to Sophia.

Then Mr. Povey and Constance waded on in front through the drifts.

Sophia balanced that enormous swaying mass, her mother. Owing to their

hoops, she had much difficulty in keeping close to her. Mrs. Baines

laughed with the complacent ease of obesity, yet a fall would have been

almost irremediable for her; and so Sophia had to laugh too. But,

though she laughed, God had not helped her. She did not know where she

was going, nor what might happen to her next.

"Why, bless us!" exclaimed Mrs. Baines, as they turned the corner into

King Street. "There's some one sitting on our door-step!"

There was: a figure swathed in an ulster, a maud over the ulster, and a

high hat on the top of all. It could not have been there very long,

because it was only speckled with snow. Mr. Povey plunged forward.

"It's Mr. Scales, of all people!" said Mr. Povey.

"Mr. Scales!" cried Mrs. Baines.

And, "Mr. Scales!" murmured Sophia, terribly afraid.

Perhaps she was afraid of miracles. Mr. Scales sitting on her mother's

doorstep in the middle of the snowy night had assuredly the air of a

miracle, of something dreamed in a dream, of something pathetically and

impossibly appropriate--'pat,' as they say in the Five Towns. But he

was a tangible fact there. And years afterwards, in the light of

further knowledge of Mr. Scales, Sophia came to regard his being on the

doorstep as the most natural and characteristic thing in the world.

Real miracles never seem to be miracles, and that which at the first

blush resembles one usually proves to be an instance of the extremely

prosaic.

III

"Is that you, Mrs. Baines?" asked Gerald Scales, in a half-witted

voice, looking up, and then getting to his feet. "Is this your house?

So it is! Well, I'd no idea I was sitting on your doorstep."

He smiled timidly, nay, sheepishly, while the women and Mr. Povey

surrounded him with their astonished faces under the light of the

gas-lamp. Certainly he was very pale.

"But whatever is the matter, Mr. Scales?" Mrs. Baines demanded in an

anxious tone. "Are you ill? Have you been suddenly--"

"Oh no," said the young man lightly. "It's nothing. Only I was set on

just now, down there,"--he pointed to the depths of King Street.

"Set on!" Mrs. Baines repeated, alarmed.

"That makes the fourth case in a week, that we KNOW of!" said Mr.

Povey. "It really is becoming a scandal."

The fact was that, owing to depression of trade, lack of employment,

and rigorous weather, public security in the Five Towns was at that

period not as perfect as it ought to have been. In the stress of hunger

the lower classes were forgetting their manners--and this in spite of

the altruistic and noble efforts of their social superiors to relieve

the destitution due, of course, to short-sighted improvidence. When

(the social superiors were asking in despair) will the lower classes

learn to put by for a rainy day? (They might have said a snowy and a

frosty day.) It was 'really too bad' of the lower classes, when

everything that could be done was being done for them, to kill, or even

attempt to kill, the goose that lays the golden eggs! And especially in

a respectable town! What, indeed, were things coming to? Well, here was

Mr. Gerald Scales, gentleman from Manchester, a witness and victim to

the deplorable moral condition of the Five Towns. What would he think

of the Five Towns? The evil and the danger had been a topic of

discussion in the shop for a week past, and now it was brought home to

them.

"I hope you weren't--" said Mrs. Baines, apologetically and

sympathetically.

"Oh no!" Mr. Scales interrupted her quite gaily. "I managed to beat

them off. Only my elbow--"

Meanwhile it was continuing to snow.

"Do come in!" said Mrs. Baines.

"I couldn't think of troubling you," said Mr. Scales. "I'm all right

now, and I can find my way to the Tiger."

"You must come in, if it's only for a minute," said Mrs. Baines, with

decision. She had to think of the honour of the town.

"You're very kind," said Mr. Scales.

The door was suddenly opened from within, and Maggie surveyed them from

the height of the two steps.

"A happy New Year, mum, to all of you."

"Thank you, Maggie," said Mrs. Baines, and primly added:

"The same to you!" And in her own mind she said that Maggie could best

prove her desire for a happy new year by contriving in future not to

'scamp her corners,' and not to break so much crockery.

Sophia, scarce knowing what she did, mounted the steps.

"Mr. Scales ought to let our New Year in, my pet," Mrs. Baines stopped

her.

"Oh, of course, mother!" Sophia concurred with, a gasp, springing back

nervously.

Mr. Scales raised his hat, and duly let the new year, and much snow,

into the Baines parlour. And there was a vast deal of stamping of feet,

agitating of umbrellas, and shaking of cloaks and ulsters on the

doormat in the corner by the harmonium. And Maggie took away an armful

of everything snowy, including goloshes, and received instructions to

boil milk and to bring 'mince.' Mr. Povey said "B-r-r-r!" and shut the

door (which was bordered with felt to stop ventilation); Mrs. Baines

turned up the gas till it sang, and told Sophia to poke the fire, and

actually told Constance to light the second gas.

Excitement prevailed.

The placidity of existence had been agreeably disturbed (yes,

agreeably, in spite of horror at the attack on Mr. Scales's elbow) by

an adventure. Moreover, Mr. Scales proved to be in evening-dress. And

nobody had ever worn evening-dress in that house before.

Sophia's blood was in her face, and it remained there, enhancing the

vivid richness of her beauty. She was dizzy with a strange and

disconcerting intoxication. She seemed to be in a world of unrealities

and incredibilities. Her ears heard with indistinctness, and the edges

of things and people had a prismatic colouring. She was in a state of

ecstatic, unreasonable, inexplicable happiness. All her misery, doubts,

despair, rancour, churlishness, had disappeared. She was as softly

gentle as Constance. Her eyes were the eyes of a fawn, and her gestures

delicious in their modest and sensitive grace. Constance was sitting on

the sofa, and, after glancing about as if for shelter, she sat down on

the sofa by Constance's side. She tried not to stare at Mr. Scales, but

her gaze would not leave him. She was sure that he was the most perfect

man in the world. A shortish man, perhaps, but a perfect. That such

perfection could be was almost past her belief. He excelled all her

dreams of the ideal man. His smile, his voice, his hand, his

hair--never were such! Why, when he spoke--it was positively music!

When he smiled--it was heaven! His smile, to Sophia, was one of those

natural phenomena which are so lovely that they make you want to shed

tears. There is no hyperbole in this description of Sophia's

sensations, but rather an under-statement of them. She was utterly

obsessed by the unique qualities of Mr. Scales. Nothing would have

persuaded her that the peer of Mr. Scales existed among men, or could

possibly exist. And it was her intense and profound conviction of his

complete pre-eminence that gave him, as he sat there in the

rocking-chair in her mother's parlour, that air of the unreal and the

incredible.

"I stayed in the town on purpose to go to a New Year's party at Mr.

Lawton's," Mr. Scales was saying.

"Ah! So you know Lawyer Lawton!" observed Mrs. Baines, impressed, for

Lawyer Lawton did not consort with tradespeople. He was jolly with

them, and he did their legal business for them, but he was not of them.

His friends came from afar.

"My people are old acquaintances of his," said Mr. Scales, sipping the

milk which Maggie had brought.

"Now, Mr. Scales, you must taste my mince. A happy month for every tart

you eat, you know," Mrs. Baines reminded him.

He bowed. "And it was as I was coming away from there that I got into

difficulties." He laughed.

Then he recounted the struggle, which had, however, been brief, as the

assailants lacked pluck. He had slipped and fallen on his elbow on the

kerb, and his elbow might have been broken, had not the snow been so

thick. No, it did not hurt him now; doubtless a mere bruise. It was

fortunate that the miscreants had not got the better of him, for he had

in his pocket-book a considerable sum of money in notes--accounts paid!

He had often thought what an excellent thing it would be if commercials

could travel with dogs, particularly in winter. There was nothing like

a dog.

"You are fond of dogs?" asked Mr. Povey, who had always had a secret

but impracticable ambition to keep a dog.

"Yes," said Mr. Scales, turning now to Mr. Povey.

"Keep one?" asked Mr. Povey, in a sporting tone.

"I have a fox-terrier bitch," said Mr. Scales, "that took a first at

Knutsford; but she's getting old now."

The sexual epithet fell queerly on the room. Mr. Povey, being a man of

the world, behaved as if nothing had happened; but Mrs. Baines's curls

protested against this unnecessary coarseness. Constance pretended not

to hear. Sophia did not understandingly hear. Mr. Scales had no

suspicion that he was transgressing a convention by virtue of which

dogs have no sex. Further, he had no suspicion of the local fame of

Mrs. Baines's mince-tarts. He had already eaten more mince-tarts than

he could enjoy, before beginning upon hers, and Mrs. Baines missed the

enthusiasm to which she was habituated from consumers of her pastry.

Mr. Povey, fascinated, proceeded in the direction of dogs, and it grew

more and more evident that Mr. Scales, who went out to parties in

evening dress, instead of going in respectable broad-cloth to

watch night-services, who knew the great ones of the land, and who kept

dogs of an inconvenient sex, was neither an ordinary commercial

traveller nor the kind of man to which the Square was accustomed. He

came from a different world.

"Lawyer Lawton's party broke up early--at least I mean, considering--"

Mrs. Baines hesitated.

After a pause Mr. Scales replied, "Yes, I left immediately the clock

struck twelve. I've a heavy day to-morrow--I mean to-day."

It was not an hour for a prolonged visit, and in a few minutes Mr.

Scales was ready again to depart. He admitted a certain feebleness

('wankiness,' he playfully called it, being proud of his skill in the

dialect), and a burning in his elbow; but otherwise he was quite

well--thanks to Mrs. Baines's most kind hospitality ... He really

didn't know how he came to be sitting on her doorstep. Mrs. Baines

urged him, if he met a policeman on his road to the Tiger, to furnish

all particulars about the attempted highway robbery, and he said he

decidedly would.

He took his leave with distinguished courtliness.

"If I have a moment I shall run in to-morrow morning just to let you

know I'm all right," said he, in the white street.

"Oh, do!" said Constance. Constance's perfect innocence made her

strangely forward at times.

"A happy New Year and many of them!"

"Thanks! Same to you! Don't get lost."

"Straight up the Square and first on the right," called the commonsense

of Mr. Povey.

Nothing else remained to say, and the visitor disappeared silently in

the whirling snow. "Brrr!" murmured Mr. Povey, shutting the door.

Everybody felt: "What a funny ending of the old year!"

"Sophia, my pet," Mrs. Baines began.

But Sophia had vanished to bed.

"Tell her about her new night-dress," said Mrs. Baines to Constance.

"Yes, mother."

"I don't know that I'm so set up with that young man, after all," Mrs.

Baines reflected aloud.

"Oh, mother!" Constance protested. "I think he's just lovely."

"He never looks you straight in the face," said Mrs. Baines.

"Don't tell ME!" laughed Constance, kissing her mother good night.

"You're only on your high horse because he didn't praise your mince.

_I_ noticed it."

IV

"If anybody thinks I'm going to stand the cold in this showroom any

longer, they're mistaken," said Sophia the next morning loudly, and in

her mother's hearing. And she went down into the shop carrying bonnets.

She pretended to be angry, but she was not. She felt, on the contrary,

extremely joyous, and charitable to all the world. Usually she would

take pains to keep out of the shop; usually she was preoccupied and

stern. Hence her presence on the ground-floor, and her demeanour,

excited interest among the three young lady assistants who sat sewing

round the stove in the middle of the shop, sheltered by the great pile

of shirtings and linseys that fronted the entrance.

Sophia shared Constance's corner. They had hot bricks under their feet,

and fine-knitted wraps on their shoulders. They would have been more

comfortable near the stove, but greatness has its penalties. The

weather was exceptionally severe. The windows were thickly frosted

over, so that Mr. Povey's art in dressing them was quite wasted.

And--rare phenomenon!--the doors of the shop were shut. In the ordinary

way they were not merely open, but hidden by a display of 'cheap

lines.' Mr. Povey, after consulting Mrs. Baines, had decided to close

them, foregoing the customary display. Mr. Povey had also, in order to

get a little warmth into his limbs, personally assisted two casual

labourers to scrape the thick frozen snow off the pavement; and he wore

his kid mittens. All these things together proved better than the

evidence of barometers how the weather nipped.

Mr. Scales came about ten o'clock. Instead of going to Mr. Povey's

counter, he walked boldly to Constance's corner, and looked over the

boxes, smiling and saluting. Both the girls candidly delighted in his

visit. Both blushed; both laughed--without knowing why they laughed.

Mr. Scales said he was just departing and had slipped in for a moment

to thank all of them for their kindness of last night--'or rather this

morning.' The girls laughed again at this witticism. Nothing could have

been more simple than his speech. Yet it appeared to them magically

attractive. A customer entered, a lady; one of the assistants rose from

the neighbourhood of the stove, but the daughters of the house ignored

the customer; it was part of the etiquette of the shop that customers,

at any rate chance customers, should not exist for the daughters of the

house, until an assistant had formally drawn attention to them.

Otherwise every one who wanted a pennyworth of tape would be expecting

to be served by Miss Baines, or Miss Sophia, if Miss Sophia were there.

Which would have been ridiculous.

Sophia, glancing sidelong, saw the assistant parleying with the

customer; and then the assistant came softly behind the counter and

approached the corner.

"Miss Constance, can you spare a minute?" the assistant whispered

discreetly.

Constance extinguished her smile for Mr. Scales, and, turning away,

lighted an entirely different and inferior smile for the customer.

"Good morning, Miss Baines. Very cold, isn't it?"

"Good morning, Mrs. Chatterley. Yes, it is. I suppose you're getting

anxious about those--" Constance stopped.

Sophia was now alone with Mr. Scales, for in order to discuss the

unnameable freely with Mrs. Chatterley her sister was edging up the

counter. Sophia had dreamed of a private conversation as something

delicious and impossible. But chance had favoured her. She was alone

with him. And his neat fair hair and his blue eyes and his delicate

mouth were as wonderful to her as ever. He was gentlemanly to a degree

that impressed her more than anything had impressed her in her life.

And all the proud and aristocratic instinct that was at the base of her

character sprang up and seized on his gentlemanliness like a famished

animal seizing on food.

"The last time I saw you," said Mr. Scales, in a new tone, "you said

you were never in the shop."

"What? Yesterday? Did I?"

"No, I mean the last time I saw you alone," said he.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "It's just an accident."

"That's exactly what you said last time."

"Is it?"

Was it his manner, or what he said, that flattered her, that

intensified her beautiful vivacity?

"I suppose you don't often go out?" he went on.

"What? In this weather?"

"Any time."

"I go to chapel," said she, "and marketing with mother." There was a

little pause. "And to the Free Library."

"Oh yes. You've got a Free Library here now, haven't you?"

"Yes. We've had it over a year."

"And you belong to it? What do you read?"

"Oh, stories, you know. I get a fresh book out once a week."

"Saturdays, I suppose?"

"No," she said. "Wednesdays." And she smiled. "Usually."

"It's Wednesday to-day," said he. "Not been already?"

She shook her head. "I don't think I shall go to-day. It's too cold. I

don't think I shall venture out to-day."

"You must be very fond of reading," said he.

Then Mr. Povey appeared, rubbing his mittened hands. And Mrs.

Chatterley went.

"I'll run and fetch mother," said Constance.

Mrs. Baines was very polite to the young man. He related his interview

with the police, whose opinion was that he had been attacked by stray

members of a gang from Hanbridge. The young lady assistants, with ears

cocked, gathered the nature of Mr. Scales's adventure, and were

thrilled to the point of questioning Mr. Povey about it after Mr.

Scales had gone. His farewell was marked by much handshaking, and

finally Mr. Povey ran after him into the Square to mention something

about dogs.

At half-past one, while Mrs. Baines was dozing after dinner, Sophia

wrapped herself up, and with a book under her arm went forth into the

world, through the shop. She returned in less than twenty minutes. But

her mother had already awakened, and was hovering about the back of the

shop. Mothers have supernatural gifts.

Sophia nonchalantly passed her and hurried into the parlour where she

threw down her muff and a book and knelt before the fire to warm

herself.

Mrs. Baines followed her. "Been to the Library?" questioned Mrs. Baines.

"Yes, mother. And it's simply perishing."

"I wonder at your going on a day like to-day. I thought you always went

on Thursdays?"

"So I do. But I'd finished my book."

"What is this?" Mrs. Baines picked up the volume, which was covered

with black oil-cloth.

She picked it up with a hostile air. For her attitude towards the Free

Library was obscurely inimical. She never read anything herself except

The Sunday at Home, and Constance never read anything except The Sunday

at Home. There were scriptural commentaries, Dugdale's Gazetteer,

Culpepper's Herbal, and works by Bunyan and Flavius Josephus in the

drawing-room bookcase; also Uncle Tom's Cabin. And Mrs. Baines, in

considering the welfare of her daughters, looked askance at the whole

remainder of printed literature. If the Free Library had not formed

part of the Famous Wedgwood Institution, which had been opened with

immense eclat by the semi-divine Gladstone; if the first book had not

been ceremoniously 'taken out' of the Free Library by the Chief Bailiff

in person--a grandfather of stainless renown--Mrs. Baines would

probably have risked her authority in forbidding the Free Library.

"You needn't be afraid," said Sophia, laughing. "It's Miss Sewell's

Experience of Life."

"A novel, I see," observed Mrs. Baines, dropping the book.

Gold and jewels would probably not tempt a Sophia of these days to read

Experience of Life; but to Sophia Baines the bland story had the

piquancy of the disapproved.

The next day Mrs. Baines summoned Sophia into her bedroom.

"Sophia," said she, trembling, "I shall be glad if you will not walk

about the streets with young men until you have my permission."

The girl blushed violently. "I--I--"

"You were seen in Wedgwood Street," said Mrs. Baines.

"Who's been gossiping--Mr. Critchlow, I suppose?" Sophia exclaimed

scornfully.

"No one has been 'gossiping,'" said Mrs. Baines. "Well, if I meet some

one by accident in the street I can't help it, can I?" Sophia's voice

shook.

"You know what I mean, my child," said Mrs. Baines, with careful calm.

Sophia dashed angrily from the room.

"I like the idea of him having 'a heavy day'!" Mrs. Baines reflected

ironically, recalling a phrase which had lodged in her mind. And very

vaguely, with an uneasiness scarcely perceptible, she remembered that

'he,' and no other, had been in the shop on the day her husband died.

CHAPTER VI

ESCAPADE

I

The uneasiness of Mrs. Baines flowed and ebbed, during the next three

months, influenced by Sophia's moods. There were days when Sophia was

the old Sophia--the forbidding, difficult, waspish, and even hedgehog

Sophia. But there were other days on which Sophia seemed to be drawing

joy and gaiety and goodwill from some secret source, from some fount

whose nature and origin none could divine. It was on these days that

the uneasiness of Mrs. Baines waxed. She had the wildest suspicions;

she was almost capable of accusing Sophia of carrying on a clandestine

correspondence; she saw Sophia and Gerald Scales deeply and wickedly in

love; she saw them with their arms round each other's necks.... And

then she called herself a middle-aged fool, to base such a structure of

suspicion on a brief encounter in the street and on an idea, a fancy, a

curious and irrational notion! Sophia had a certain streak of pure

nobility in that exceedingly heterogeneous thing, her character.

Moreover, Mrs. Baines watched the posts, and she also watched

Sophia--she was not the woman to trust to a streak of pure

nobility--and she came to be sure that Sophia's sinfulness, if any, was

not such as could be weighed in a balance, or collected together by

stealth and then suddenly placed before the girl on a charger.

Still, she would have given much to see inside Sophia's lovely head.

Ah! Could she have done so, what sleep-destroying wonders she would

have witnessed! By what bright lamps burning in what mysterious

grottoes and caverns of the brain would her mature eyes have been

dazzled! Sophia was living for months on the exhaustless ardent

vitality absorbed during a magical two minutes in Wedgwood Street. She

was living chiefly on the flaming fire struck in her soul by the shock

of seeing Gerald Scales in the porch of the Wedgwood Institution as she

came out of the Free Library with Experience Of Life tucked into her

large astrakhan muff. He had stayed to meet her, then: she knew it!

"After all," her heart said, "I must be very beautiful, for I have

attracted the pearl of men!" And she remembered her face in the glass.

The value and the power of beauty were tremendously proved to her. He,

the great man of the world, the handsome and elegant man with a

thousand strange friends and a thousand interests far remote from her,

had remained in Bursley on the mere chance of meeting her! She was

proud, but her pride was drowned in bliss. "I was just looking at this

inscription about Mr. Gladstone." "So you decided to come out as

usual!" "And may I ask what book you have chosen?" These were the

phrases she heard, and to which she responded with similar phrases. And

meanwhile a miracle of ecstasy had opened--opened like a flower. She

was walking along Wedgwood Street by his side, slowly, on the scraped

pavements, where marble bulbs of snow had defied the spade and

remained. She and he were exactly of the same height, and she kept

looking into his face and he into hers. This was all the miracle.

Except that she was not walking on the pavement--she was walking on the

intangible sward of paradise! Except that the houses had receded and

faded, and the passers-by were subtilized into unnoticeable ghosts!

Except that her mother and Constance had become phantasmal beings

existing at an immense distance!

What had happened? Nothing! The most commonplace occurrence! The

eternal cause had picked up a commercial traveller (it might have been

a clerk or curate, but it in fact was a commercial traveller), and

endowed him with all the glorious, unique, incredible attributes of a

god, and planted him down before Sophia in order to produce the eternal

effect. A miracle performed specially for Sophia's benefit! No one else

in Wedgwood Street saw the god walking along by her side. No one else

saw anything but a simple commercial traveller. Yes, the most

commonplace occurrence!

Of course at the corner of the street he had to go. "Till next time!"

he murmured. And fire came out of his eyes and lighted in Sophia's

lovely head those lamps which Mrs. Baines was mercifully spared from

seeing. And he had shaken hands and raised his hat. Imagine a god

raising his hat! And he went off on two legs, precisely like a dashing

little commercial traveller.

And, escorted by the equivocal Angel of Eclipses, she had turned into

King Street, and arranged her face, and courageously met her mother.

Her mother had not at first perceived the unusual; for mothers, despite

their reputation to the contrary, really are the blindest creatures.

Sophia, the naive ninny, had actually supposed that her walking along a

hundred yards of pavement with a god by her side was not going to

excite remark! What a delusion! It is true, certainly, that no one saw

the god by direct vision. But Sophia's cheeks, Sophia's eyes, the curve

of Sophia's neck as her soul yearned towards the soul of the god--these

phenomena were immeasurably more notable than Sophia guessed. An

account of them, in a modified form to respect Mrs. Baines's notorious

dignity, had healed the mother of her blindness and led to that

characteristic protest from her, "I shall be glad if you will not walk

about the streets with young men," etc.

When the period came for the reappearance of Mr. Scales, Mrs. Baines

outlined a plan, and when the circular announcing the exact time of his

arrival was dropped into the letter-box, she formulated the plan in

detail. In the first place, she was determined to be indisposed and

invisible herself, so that Mr. Scales might be foiled in any possible

design to renew social relations in the parlour. In the second place,

she flattered Constance with a single hint--oh, the vaguest and

briefest!--and Constance understood that she was not to quit the shop

on the appointed morning. In the third place, she invented a way of

explaining to Mr. Povey that the approaching advent of Gerald Scales

must not be mentioned. And in the fourth place, she deliberately made

appointments for Sophia with two millinery customers in the showroom,

so that Sophia might be imprisoned in the showroom.

Having thus left nothing to chance, she told herself that she was a

foolish woman full of nonsense. But this did not prevent her from

putting her lips together firmly and resolving that Mr. Scales should

have no finger in the pie of HER family. She had acquired information

concerning Mr. Scales, at secondhand, from Lawyer Pratt. More than

this, she posed the question in a broader form--why should a young girl

be permitted any interest in any young man whatsoever? The everlasting

purpose had made use of Mrs. Baines and cast her off, and, like most

persons in a similar situation, she was, unconsciously and quite

honestly, at odds with the everlasting purpose.

II

On the day of Mr. Scales's visit to the shop to obtain orders and money

on behalf of Birkinshaws, a singular success seemed to attend the

machinations of Mrs. Baines. With Mr. Scales punctuality was not an

inveterate habit, and he had rarely been known, in the past, to fulfil

exactly the prophecy of the letter of advice concerning his arrival.

But that morning his promptitude was unexampled. He entered the shop,

and by chance Mr. Povey was arranging unshrinkable flannels in the

doorway. The two youngish little men talked amiably about flannels,

dogs, and quarter-day (which was just past), and then Mr. Povey led Mr.

Scales to his desk in the dark corner behind the high pile of twills,

and paid the quarterly bill, in notes and gold--as always; and then Mr.

Scales offered for the august inspection of Mr. Povey all that

Manchester had recently invented for the temptation of drapers, and Mr.

Povey gave him an order which, if not reckless, was nearer 'handsome'

than 'good.' During the process Mr. Scales had to go out of the shop

twice or three times in order to bring in from his barrow at the

kerb-stone certain small black boxes edged with brass. On none of these

excursions did Mr. Scales glance wantonly about him in satisfaction of

the lust of the eye. Even if he had permitted himself this freedom he

would have seen nothing more interesting than three young lady

assistants seated round the stove and sewing with pricked fingers from

which the chilblains were at last deciding to depart. When Mr. Scales

had finished writing down the details of the order with his

ivory-handled stylo, and repacked his boxes, he drew the interview to a

conclusion after the manner of a capable commercial traveller; that is

to say, he implanted in Mr. Povey his opinion that Mr. Povey was a

wise, a shrewd and an upright man, and that the world would be all the

better for a few more like him. He inquired for Mrs. Baines, and was

deeply pained to hear of her indisposition while finding consolation in

the assurance that the Misses Baines were well. Mr. Povey was on the

point of accompanying the pattern of commercial travellers to the door,

when two customers simultaneously came in--ladies. One made straight

for Mr. Povey, whereupon Mr. Scales parted from him at once, it being a

universal maxim in shops that even the most distinguished commercial

shall not hinder the business of even the least distinguished customer.

The other customer had the effect of causing Constance to pop up from

her cloistral corner. Constance had been there all the time, but of

course, though she heard the remembered voice, her maidenliness had not

permitted that she should show herself to Mr. Scales.

Now, as he was leaving, Mr. Scales saw her, with her agreeable snub

nose and her kind, simple eyes. She was requesting the second customer

to mount to the showroom, where was Miss Sophia. Mr. Scales hesitated a

moment, and in that moment Constance, catching his eye, smiled upon

him, and nodded. What else could she do? Vaguely aware though she was

that her mother was not 'set up' with Mr. Scales, and even feared the

possible influence of the young man on Sophia, she could not exclude

him from her general benevolence towards the universe. Moreover, she

liked him; she liked him very much and thought him a very fine specimen

of a man.

He left the door and went across to her. They shook hands and opened a

conversation instantly; for Constance, while retaining all her modesty,

had lost all her shyness in the shop, and could chatter with anybody.

She sidled towards her corner, precisely as Sophia had done on another

occasion, and Mr. Scales put his chin over the screening boxes, and

eagerly prosecuted the conversation.

There was absolutely nothing in the fact of the interview itself to

cause alarm to a mother, nothing to render futile the precautions of

Mrs. Baines on behalf of the flower of Sophia's innocence. And yet it

held danger for Mrs. Baines, all unconscious in her parlour. Mrs.

Baines could rely utterly on Constance not to be led away by the

dandiacal charms of Mr. Scales (she knew in what quarter sat the wind

for Constance); in her plan she had forgotten nothing, except Mr.

Povey; and it must be said that she could not possibly have foreseen

the effect on the situation of Mr. Povey's character.

Mr. Povey, attending to his customer, had noticed the bright smile of

Constance on the traveller, and his heart did not like it. And when he

saw the lively gestures of a Mr. Scales in apparently intimate talk

with a Constance hidden behind boxes, his uneasiness grew into fury. He

was a man capable of black and terrible furies. Outwardly

insignificant, possessing a mind as little as his body, easily abashed,

he was none the less a very susceptible young man, soon offended,

proud, vain, and obscurely passionate. You might offend Mr. Povey

without guessing it, and only discover your sin when Mr. Povey had done

something too decisive as a result of it.

The reason of his fury was jealousy. Mr. Povey had made great advances

since the death of John Baines. He had consolidated his position, and

he was in every way a personage of the first importance. His misfortune

was that he could never translate his importance, or his sense of his

importance, into terms of outward demeanour. Most people, had they been

told that Mr. Povey was seriously aspiring to enter the Baines family,

would have laughed. But they would have been wrong. To laugh at Mr.

Povey was invariably wrong. Only Constance knew what inroads he had

effected upon her.

The customer went, but Mr. Scales did not go. Mr. Povey, free to

reconnoitre, did so. From the shadow of the till he could catch

glimpses of Constance's blushing, vivacious face. She was obviously

absorbed in Mr. Scales. She and he had a tremendous air of intimacy.

And the murmur of their chatter continued. Their chatter was nothing,

and about nothing, but Mr. Povey imagined that they were exchanging

eternal vows. He endured Mr. Scales's odious freedom until it became

insufferable, until it deprived him of all his self-control; and then

he retired into his cutting-out room. He meditated there in a condition

of insanity for perhaps a minute, and excogitated a device. Dashing

back into the shop, he spoke up, half across the shop, in a loud, curt

tone:

"Miss Baines, your mother wants you at once."

He was launched on the phrase before he noticed that, during his

absence, Sophia had descended from the showroom and joined her sister

and Mr. Scales. The danger and scandal were now less, he perceived, but

he was glad he had summoned Constance away, and he was in a state to

despise consequences.

The three chatterers, startled, looked at Mr. Povey, who left the shop

abruptly. Constance could do nothing but obey the call.

She met him at the door of the cutting-out room in the passage leading

to the parlour.

"Where is mother? In the parlour?" Constance inquired innocently.

There was a dark flush on Mr. Povey's face. "If you wish to know," said

he in a hard voice, "she hasn't asked for you and she doesn't want you."

He turned his back on her, and retreated into his lair.

"Then what--?" she began, puzzled.

He fronted her. "Haven't you been gabbling long enough with that

jackanapes?" he spit at her. There were tears in his eyes.

Constance, though without experience in these matters, comprehended.

She comprehended perfectly and immediately. She ought to have put Mr.

Povey into his place. She ought to have protested with firm, dignified

finality against such a ridiculous and monstrous outrage as that which

Mr. Povey had committed. Mr. Povey ought to have been ruined for ever

in her esteem and in her heart. But she hesitated.

"And only last Sunday--afternoon," Mr. Povey blubbered.

(Not that anything overt had occurred, or been articulately said,

between them last Sunday afternoon. But they had been alone together,

and had each witnessed strange and disturbing matters in the eyes of

the other.)

Tears now fell suddenly from Constance's eyes. "You ought to be

ashamed--" she stammered.

Still, the tears were in her eyes, and in his too. What he or she

merely said, therefore, was of secondary importance.

Mrs. Baines, coming from the kitchen, and hearing Constance's voice,

burst upon the scene, which silenced her. Parents are sometimes

silenced. She found Sophia and Mr. Scales in the shop.

III

That afternoon Sophia, too busy with her own affairs to notice anything

abnormal in the relations between her mother and Constance, and quite

ignorant that there had been an unsuccessful plot against her, went

forth to call upon Miss Chetwynd, with whom she had remained very

friendly: she considered that she and Miss Chetwynd formed an

aristocracy of intellect, and the family indeed tacitly admitted this.

She practised no secrecy in her departure from the shop; she merely

dressed, in her second-best hoop, and went, having been ready at any

moment to tell her mother, if her mother caught her and inquired, that

she was going to see Miss Chetwynd. And she did go to see Miss

Chetwynd, arriving at the house-school, which lay amid trees on the

road to Turnhill, just beyond the turnpike, at precisely a quarter-past

four. As Miss Chetwynd's pupils left at four o'clock, and as Miss

Chetwynd invariably took a walk immediately afterwards, Sophia was able

to contain her surprise upon being informed that Miss Chetwynd was not

in. She had not intended that Miss Chetwynd should be in.

She turned off to the right, up the side road which, starting from the

turnpike, led in the direction of Moorthorne and Red Cow, two mining

villages. Her heart beat with fear as she began to follow that road,

for she was upon a terrific adventure. What most frightened her,

perhaps, was her own astounding audacity. She was alarmed by something

within herself which seemed to be no part of herself and which produced

in her curious, disconcerting, fleeting impressions of unreality.

In the morning she had heard the voice of Mr. Scales from the

showroom--that voice whose even distant murmur caused creepings of the

skin in her back. And she had actually stood on the counter in front of

the window in order to see down perpendicularly into the Square; by so

doing she had had a glimpse of the top of his luggage on a barrow, and

of the crown of his hat occasionally when he went outside to tempt Mr.

Povey. She might have gone down into the shop--there was no slightest

reason why she should not; three months had elapsed since the name of

Mr. Scales had been mentioned, and her mother had evidently forgotten

the trifling incident of New Year's Day--but she was incapable of

descending the stairs! She went to the head of the stairs and peeped

through the balustrade--and she could not get further. For nearly a

hundred days those extraordinary lamps had been brightly burning in her

head; and now the light-giver had come again, and her feet would not

move to the meeting; now the moment had arrived for which alone she had

lived, and she could not seize it as it passed! "Why don't I go

downstairs?" she asked herself. "Am I afraid to meet him?"

The customer sent up by Constance had occupied the surface of her life

for ten minutes, trying on hats; and during this time she was praying

wildly that Mr. Scales might not go, and asserting that it was

impossible he should go without at least asking for her. Had she not

counted the days to this day? When the customer left Sophia followed

her downstairs, and saw Mr. Scales chatting with Constance. All her

self-possession instantly returned to her, and she joined them with a

rather mocking smile. After Mr. Povey's strange summons had withdrawn

Constance from the corner, Mr. Scales's tone had changed; it had

thrilled her. "You are YOU," it had said, "there is you--and there is

the rest of the universe!" Then he had not forgotten; she had lived in

his heart; she had not for three months been the victim of her own

fancies! ... She saw him put a piece of folded white paper on the top

edge of the screening box and flick it down to her. She blushed

scarlet, staring at it as it lay on the counter. He said nothing, and

she could not speak.... He had prepared that paper, then, beforehand,

on the chance of being able to give it to her! This thought was

exquisite but full of terror. "I must really go," he had said, lamely,

with emotion in his voice, and he had gone--like that! And she put the

piece of paper into the pocket of her apron, and hastened away. She had

not even seen, as she turned up the stairs, her mother standing by the

till--that spot which was the conning-tower of the whole shop. She ran,

ran, breathless to the bedroom.

"I am a wicked girl!" she said quite frankly, on the road to the

rendezvous. "It is a dream that I am going to meet him. It cannot be

true. There is time to go back. If I go back I am safe. I have simply

called at Miss Chetwynd's and she wasn't in, and no one can say a word.

But if I go on--if I'm seen! What a fool I am to go on!"

And she went on, impelled by, amongst other things, an immense, naive

curiosity, and the vanity which the bare fact of his note had excited.

The Loop railway was being constructed at that period, and hundreds of

navvies were at work on it between Bursley and Turnhill. When she came

to the new bridge over the cutting, he was there, as he had written

that he would be.

They were very nervous, they greeted each other stiffly and as though

they had met then for the first time that day. Nothing was said about

his note, nor about her response to it. Her presence was treated by

both of them as a basic fact of the situation which it would be well

not to disturb by comment. Sophia could not hide her shame, but her

shame only aggravated the stinging charm of her beauty. She was wearing

a hard Amazonian hat, with a lifted veil, the final word of fashion

that spring in the Five Towns; her face, beaten by the fresh breeze,

shone rosily; her eyes glittered under the dark hat, and the violent

colours of her Victorian frock--green and crimson--could not spoil

those cheeks. If she looked earthwards, frowning, she was the more

adorable so. He had come down the clayey incline from the unfinished

red bridge to welcome her, and when the salutations were over they

stood still, he gazing apparently at the horizon and she at the yellow

marl round the edges of his boots. The encounter was as far away from

Sophia's ideal conception as Manchester from Venice.

"So this is the new railway!" said she.

"Yes," said he. "This is your new railway. You can see it better from

the bridge."

"But it's very sludgy up there," she objected with a pout.

"Further on it's quite dry," he reassured her.

From the bridge they had a sudden view of a raw gash in the earth; and

hundreds of men were crawling about in it, busy with minute operations,

like flies in a great wound. There was a continuous rattle of picks,

resembling a muffled shower of hail, and in the distance a tiny

locomotive was leading a procession of tiny waggons.

"And those are the navvies!" she murmured.

The unspeakable doings of the navvies in the Five Towns had reached

even her: how they drank and swore all day on Sundays, how their huts

and houses were dens of the most appalling infamy, how they were the

curse of a God-fearing and respectable district! She and Gerald Scales

glanced down at these dangerous beasts of prey in their yellow

corduroys and their open shirts revealing hairy chests. No doubt they

both thought how inconvenient it was that railways could not be brought

into existence without the aid of such revolting and swinish animals.

They glanced down from the height of their nice decorum and felt the

powerful attraction of similar superior manners. The manners of the

navvies were such that Sophia could not even regard them, nor Gerald

Scales permit her to regard them, without blushing.

In a united blush they turned away, up the gradual slope. Sophia knew

no longer what she was doing. For some minutes she was as helpless as

though she had been in a balloon with him.

"I got my work done early," he said; and added complacently, "As a

matter of fact I've had a pretty good day."

She was reassured to learn that he was not neglecting his duties. To be

philandering with a commercial traveller who has finished a good day's

work seemed less shocking than dalliance with a neglecter of business;

it seemed indeed, by comparison, respectable.

"It must be very interesting," she said primly.

"What, my trade?"

"Yes. Always seeing new places and so on."

"In a way it is," he admitted judicially. "But I can tell you it was

much more agreeable being in Paris."

"Oh! Have you been to Paris?"

"Lived there for nearly two years," he said carelessly. Then, looking

at her, "Didn't you notice I never came for a long time?"

"I didn't know you were in Paris," she evaded him.

"I went to start a sort of agency for Birkinshaws," he said.

"I suppose you talk French like anything."

"Of course one has to talk French," said he. "I learnt French when I

was a child from a governess--my uncle made me--but I forgot most of it

at school, and at the Varsity you never learn anything--precious

little, anyhow! Certainly not French!"

She was deeply impressed. He was a much greater personage than she had

guessed. It had never occurred to her that commercial travellers had to

go to a university to finish their complex education. And then, Paris!

Paris meant absolutely nothing to her but pure, impossible,

unattainable romance. And he had been there! The clouds of glory were

around him. He was a hero, dazzling. He had come to her out of another

world. He was her miracle. He was almost too miraculous to be true.

She, living her humdrum life at the shop! And he, elegant, brilliant,

coming from far cities! They together, side by side, strolling up the

road towards the Moorthorne ridge! There was nothing quite like this in

the stories of Miss Sewell.

"Your uncle...?" she questioned vaguely.

"Yes, Mr. Boldero. He's a partner in Birkinshaws."

"Oh!"

"You've heard of him? He's a great Wesleyan."

"Oh yes," she said. "When we had the Wesleyan Conference here, he--"

"He's always very great at Conferences," said Gerald Scales.

"I didn't know he had anything to do with Birkinshaws."

"He isn't a working partner of course," Mr. Scales explained. "But he

means me to be one. I have to learn the business from the bottom. So

now you understand why I'm a traveller."

"I see," she said, still more deeply impressed.

"I'm an orphan," said Gerald. "And Uncle Boldero took me in hand when I

was three."

"I SEE!" she repeated.

It seemed strange to her that Mr. Scales should be a Wesleyan--just

like herself. She would have been sure that he was 'Church.' Her

notions of Wesleyanism, with her notions of various other things, were

sharply modified.

"Now tell me about you," Mr. Scales suggested.

"Oh! I'm nothing!" she burst out.

The exclamation was perfectly sincere. Mr. Scales's disclosures

concerning himself, while they excited her, discouraged her.

"You're the finest girl I've ever met, anyhow," said Mr. Scales with

gallant emphasis, and he dug his stick into the soft ground.

She blushed and made no answer.

They walked on in silence, each wondering apprehensively what might

happen next.

Suddenly Mr. Scales stopped at a dilapidated low brick wall, built in a

circle, close to the side of the road.

"I expect that's an old pit-shaft," said he.

"Yes, I expect it is."

He picked up a rather large stone and approached the wall.

"Be careful!" she enjoined him.

"Oh! It's all right," he said lightly. "Let's listen. Come near and

listen."

She reluctantly obeyed, and he threw the stone over the dirty ruined

wall, the top of which was about level with his hat. For two or three

seconds there was no sound. Then a faint reverberation echoed from the

depths of the shaft. And on Sophia's brain arose dreadful images of the

ghosts of miners wandering for ever in subterranean passages, far, far

beneath. The noise of the falling stone had awakened for her the secret

terrors of the earth. She could scarcely even look at the wall without

a spasm of fear.

"How strange," said Mr. Scales, a little awe in his voice, too, "that

that should be left there like that! I suppose it's very deep."

"Some of them are," she trembled.

"I must just have a look," he said, and put his hands on the top of the

wall.

"Come away!" she cried.

"Oh! It's all right!" he said again, soothingly. "The wall's as firm as

a rock." And he took a slight spring and looked over.

She shrieked loudly. She saw him at the distant bottom of the shaft,

mangled, drowning. The ground seemed to quake under her feet. A

horrible sickness seized her. And she shrieked again. Never had she

guessed that existence could be such pain.

He slid down from the wall, and turned to her. "No bottom to be seen!"

he said. Then, observing her transformed face, he came close to her,

with a superior masculine smile. "Silly little thing!" he said

coaxingly, endearingly, putting forth all his power to charm.

He perceived at once that he had miscalculated the effects of his

action. Her alarm changed swiftly to angry offence. She drew back with

a haughty gesture, as if he had intended actually to touch her. Did he

suppose, because she chanced to be walking with him, that he had the

right to address her familiarly, to tease her, to call her 'silly

little thing' and to put his face against hers? She resented his

freedom with quick and passionate indignation.

She showed him her proud back and nodding head and wrathful skirts; and

hurried off without a word, almost running. As for him, he was so

startled by unexpected phenomena that he did nothing for a

moment--merely stood looking and feeling foolish.

Then she heard him in pursuit. She was too proud to stop or even to

reduce her speed.

"I didn't mean to--" he muttered behind her.

No recognition from her.

"I suppose I ought to apologize," he said.

"I should just think you ought," she answered, furious.

"Well, I do!" said he. "Do stop a minute."

"I'll thank you not to follow me, Mr. Scales." She paused, and scorched

him with her displeasure. Then she went forward. And her heart was in

torture because it could not persuade her to remain with him, and smile

and forgive, and win his smile.

"I shall write to you," he shouted down the slope.

She kept on, the ridiculous child. But the agony she had suffered as he

clung to the frail wall was not ridiculous, nor her dark vision of the

mine, nor her tremendous indignation when, after disobeying her, he

forgot that she was a queen. To her the scene was sublimely tragic.

Soon she had recrossed the bridge, but not the same she! So this was

the end of the incredible adventure!

When she reached the turnpike she thought of her mother and of

Constance. She had completely forgotten them; for a space they had

utterly ceased to exist for her.

IV

"You've been out, Sophia?" said Mrs. Baines in the parlour,

questioningly. Sophia had taken off her hat and mantle hurriedly in the

cutting-out room, for she was in danger of being late for tea; but her

hair and face showed traces of the March breeze. Mrs. Baines, whose

stoutness seemed to increase, sat in the rocking-chair with a number of

The Sunday at Home in her hand. Tea was set.

"Yes, mother. I called to see Miss Chetwynd."

"I wish you'd tell me when you are going out."

"I looked all over for you before I started."

"No, you didn't, for I haven't stirred from this room since four

o'clock.... You should not say things like that," Mrs. Baines added in

a gentler tone.

Mrs. Baines had suffered much that day. She knew that she was in an

irritable, nervous state, and therefore she said to herself, in her

quality of wise woman, "I must watch myself. I mustn't let myself go."

And she thought how reasonable she was. She did not guess that all her

gestures betrayed her; nor did it occur to her that few things are more

galling than the spectacle of a person, actuated by lofty motives,

obviously trying to be kind and patient under what he considers to be

extreme provocation.

Maggie blundered up the kitchen stairs with the teapot and hot toast;

and so Sophia had an excuse for silence. Sophia too had suffered much,

suffered excruciatingly; she carried at that moment a whole tragedy in

her young soul, unaccustomed to such burdens. Her attitude towards her

mother was half fearful and half defiant; it might be summed up in the

phrase which she had repeated again and again under her breath on the

way home, "Well, mother can't kill me!"

Mrs. Baines put down the blue-covered magazine and twisted her

rocking-chair towards the table.

"You can pour out the tea," said Mrs. Baines.

"Where's Constance?"

"She's not very well. She's lying down."

"Anything the matter with her?"

"No."

This was inaccurate. Nearly everything was the matter with Constance,

who had never been less Constance than during that afternoon. But Mrs.

Baines had no intention of discussing Constance's love-affairs with

Sophia. The less said to Sophia about love, the better! Sophia was

excitable enough already!

They sat opposite to each other, on either side of the fire--the

monumental matron whose black bodice heavily overhung the table, whose

large rounded face was creased and wrinkled by what seemed countless

years of joy and disillusion; and the young, slim girl, so fresh, so

virginal, so ignorant, with all the pathos of an unsuspecting victim

about to be sacrificed to the minotaur of Time! They both ate hot

toast, with careless haste, in silence, preoccupied, worried, and

outwardly nonchalant.

"And what has Miss Chetwynd got to say?" Mrs. Baines inquired.

"She wasn't in."

Here was a blow for Mrs. Baines, whose suspicions about Sophia, driven

off by her certainties regarding Constance, suddenly sprang forward in

her mind, and prowled to and fro like a band of tigers.

Still, Mrs. Baines was determined to be calm and careful. "Oh! What

time did you call?"

"I don't know. About half-past four." Sophia finished her tea quickly,

and rose. "Shall I tell Mr. Povey he can come?"

(Mr. Povey had his tea after the ladies of the house.)

"Yes, if you will stay in the shop till I come. Light me the gas before

you go."

Sophia took a wax taper from a vase on the mantelpiece, stuck it in the

fire and lit the gas, which exploded in its crystal cloister with a

mild report.

"What's all that clay on your boots, child?" asked Mrs. Baines.

"Clay?" repeated Sophia, staring foolishly at her boots.

"Yes," said Mrs. Baines. "It looks like marl. Where on earth have you

been?"

She interrogated her daughter with an upward gaze, frigid and

unconsciously hostile, through her gold-rimmed glasses.

"I must have picked it up on the roads," said Sophia, and hastened to

the door.

"Sophia!"

"Yes, mother."

"Shut the door."

Sophia unwillingly shut the door which she had half opened.

"Come here."

Sophia obeyed, with falling lip.

"You are deceiving me, Sophia," said Mrs. Baines, with fierce

solemnity. "Where have you been this afternoon?"

Sophia's foot was restless on the carpet behind the table. "I haven't

been anywhere," she murmured glumly.

"Have you seen young Scales?"

"Yes," said Sophia with grimness, glancing audaciously for an instant

at her mother. ("She can't kill me: She can't kill me," her heart

muttered. And she had youth and beauty in her favour, while her mother

was only a fat middle-aged woman. "She can't kill me," said her heart,

with the trembling, cruel insolence of the mirror-flattered child.)

"How came you to meet him?"

No answer.

"Sophia, you heard what I said!"

Still no answer. Sophia looked down at the table. ("She can't kill me.")

"If you are going to be sullen, I shall have to suppose the worst,"

said Mrs. Baines.

Sophia kept her silence.

"Of course," Mrs. Baines resumed, "if you choose to be wicked, neither

your mother nor any one else can stop you. There are certain things I

CAN do, and these I SHALL do ... Let me warn you that young Scales is a

thoroughly bad lot. I know all about him. He has been living a wild

life abroad, and if it hadn't been that his uncle is a partner in

Birkinshaws, they would never have taken him on again." A pause. "I

hope that one day you will be a happy wife, but you are much too young

yet to be meeting young men, and nothing would ever induce me to let

you have anything to do with this Scales. I won't have it. In future

you are not to go out alone. You understand me?"

Sophia kept silence.

"I hope you will be in a better frame of mind to-morrow. I can only

hope so. But if you aren't, I shall take very severe measures. You

think you can defy me. But you never were more mistaken in your life. I

don't want to see any more of you now. Go and tell Mr. Povey; and call

Maggie for the fresh tea. You make me almost glad that your father died

even as he did. He has, at any rate, been spared this."

Those words 'died even as he did' achieved the intimidation of Sophia.

They seemed to indicate that Mrs. Baines, though she had magnanimously

never mentioned the subject to Sophia, knew exactly how the old man had

died. Sophia escaped from the room in fear, cowed. Nevertheless, her

thought was, "She hasn't killed me. I made up my mind I wouldn't talk,

and I didn't."

In the evening, as she sat in the shop primly and sternly sewing at

hats--while her mother wept in secret on the first floor, and Constance

remained hidden on the second--Sophia lived over again the scene at the

old shaft; but she lived it differently, admitting that she had been

wrong, guessing by instinct that she had shown a foolish mistrust of

love. As she sat in the shop, she adopted just the right attitude and

said just the right things. Instead of being a silly baby she was an

accomplished and dazzling woman, then. When customers came in, and the

young lady assistants unobtrusively turned higher the central gas,

according to the regime of the shop, it was really extraordinary that

they could not read in the heart of the beautiful Miss Baines the words

which blazed there; "YOU'RE THE FINEST GIRL I EVER MET," and "I SHALL

WRITE TO YOU." The young lady assistants had their notions as to both

Constance and Sophia, but the truth, at least as regarded Sophia, was

beyond the flight of their imaginations. When eight o'clock struck and

she gave the formal order for dust-sheets, the shop being empty, they

never supposed that she was dreaming about posts and plotting how to

get hold of the morning's letters before Mr. Povey.

CHAPTER VII

A DEFEAT

I

It was during the month of June that Aunt Harriet came over from Axe to

spend a few days with her little sister, Mrs. Baines. The railway

between Axe and the Five Towns had not yet been opened; but even if it

had been opened Aunt Harriet would probably not have used it. She had

always travelled from Axe to Bursley in the same vehicle, a small

waggonette which she hired from Bratt's livery stables at Axe, driven

by a coachman who thoroughly understood the importance, and the

peculiarities, of Aunt Harriet.

Mrs. Baines had increased in stoutness, so that now Aunt Harriet had

very little advantage over her, physically. But the moral ascendency of

the elder still persisted. The two vast widows shared Mrs. Baines's

bedroom, spending much of their time there in long, hushed

conversations--interviews from which Mrs. Baines emerged with the air

of one who has received enlightenment and Aunt Harriet with the air of

one who has rendered it. The pair went about together, in the shop, the

showroom, the parlour, the kitchen, and also into the town, addressing

each other as 'Sister,' 'Sister.' Everywhere it was 'sister,' 'sister,'

'my sister,' 'your dear mother,' 'your Aunt Harriet.' They referred to

each other as oracular sources of wisdom and good taste. Respectability

stalked abroad when they were afoot. The whole Square wriggled uneasily

as though God's eye were peculiarly upon it. The meals in the parlour

became solemn collations, at which shone the best silver and the finest

diaper, but from which gaiety and naturalness seemed to be banished. (I

say 'seemed' because it cannot be doubted that Aunt Harriet was

natural, and there were moments when she possibly considered herself to

be practising gaiety--a gaiety more desolating than her severity.) The

younger generation was extinguished, pressed flat and lifeless under

the ponderosity of the widows.

Mr. Povey was not the man to be easily flattened by ponderosity of any

kind, and his suppression was a striking proof of the prowess of the

widows; who, indeed, went over Mr. Povey like traction-engines, with

the sublime unconsciousness of traction-engines, leaving an inanimate

object in the road behind them, and scarce aware even of the jolt. Mr.

Povey hated Aunt Harriet, but, lying crushed there in the road, how

could he rebel? He felt all the time that Aunt Harriet was adding him

up, and reporting the result at frequent intervals to Mrs. Baines in

the bedroom. He felt that she knew everything about him--even to those

tears which had been in his eyes. He felt that he could hope to do

nothing right for Aunt Harriet, that absolute perfection in the

performance of duty would make no more impression on her than a caress

on the fly-wheel of a traction-engine. Constance, the dear Constance,

was also looked at askance. There was nothing in Aunt Harriet's

demeanour to her that you could take hold of, but there was

emphatically something that you could not take hold of--a hint, an

inkling, that insinuated to Constance, "Have a care, lest peradventure

you become the second cousin of the scarlet woman."

Sophia was petted. Sophia was liable to be playfully tapped by Aunt

Harriet's thimble when Aunt Harriet was hemming dusters (for the

elderly lady could lift a duster to her own dignity). Sophia was called

on two separate occasions, 'My little butterfly.' And Sophia was

entrusted with the trimming of Aunt Harriet's new summer bonnet. Aunt

Harriet deemed that Sophia was looking pale. As the days passed,

Sophia's pallor was emphasized by Aunt Harriet until it developed into

an article of faith, to which you were compelled to subscribe on pain

of excommunication. Then dawned the day when Aunt Harriet said, staring

at Sophia as an affectionate aunt may: "That child would do with a

change." And then there dawned another day when Aunt Harriet, staring

at Sophia compassionately, as a devoted aunt may, said: "It's a pity

that child can't have a change." And Mrs. Baines also stared--and said:

"It is."

And on another day Aunt Harriet said: "I've been wondering whether my

little Sophia would care to come and keep her old aunt company a while."

There were few things for which Sophia would have cared less. The girl

swore to herself angrily that she would not go, that no allurement

would induce her to go. But she was in a net; she was in the meshes of

family correctness. Do what she would, she could not invent a reason

for not going. Certainly she could not tell her aunt that she merely

did not want to go. She was capable of enormities, but not of that. And

then began Aunt Harriet's intricate preparations for going. Aunt

Harriet never did anything simply. And she could not be hurried.

Seventy-two hours before leaving she had to commence upon her trunk;

but first the trunk had to be wiped by Maggie with a damp cloth under

the eye and direction of Aunt Harriet. And the liveryman at Axe had to

be written to, and the servants at Axe written to, and the weather

prospects weighed and considered. And somehow, by the time these

matters were accomplished, it was tacitly understood that Sophia should

accompany her kind aunt into the bracing moorland air of Axe. No smoke

at Axe! No stuffiness at Axe! The spacious existence of a wealthy widow

in a residential town with a low death-rate and famous scenery! "Have

you packed your box, Sophia?" No, she had not. "Well, I will come and

help you."

Impossible to bear up against the momentum of a massive body like Aunt

Harriet's! It was irresistible.

The day of departure came, throwing the entire household into a

commotion. Dinner was put a quarter of an hour earlier than usual so

that Aunt Harriet might achieve Axe at her accustomed hour of tea.

After dinner Maggie was the recipient of three amazing muslin aprons,

given with a regal gesture. And the trunk and the box were brought

down, and there was a slight odour of black kid gloves in the parlour.

The waggonette was due and the waggonette appeared ("I can always rely

upon Bladen!" said Aunt Harriet), and the door was opened, and Bladen,

stiff on his legs, descended from the box and touched his hat to Aunt

Harriet as she filled up the doorway.

"Have you baited, Bladen?" asked she.

"Yes'm," said he, assuringly.

Bladen and Mr. Povey carried out the trunk and the box, and Constance

charged herself with parcels which she bestowed in the corners of the

vehicle according to her aunt's prescription; it was like stowing the

cargo of a vessel.

"Now, Sophia, my chuck!" Mrs. Baines called up the stairs. And Sophia

came slowly downstairs. Mrs. Baines offered her mouth. Sophia glanced

at her.

"You needn't think I don't see why you're sending me away!" exclaimed

Sophia in a hard, furious voice, with glistening eyes. "I'm not so

blind as all that!" She kissed her mother--nothing but a contemptuous

peck. Then, as she turned away she added: "But you let Constance do

just as she likes!"

This was her sole bitter comment on the episode, but into it she put

all the profound bitterness accumulated during many mutinous nights.

Mrs. Baines concealed a sigh. The explosion certainly disturbed her.

She had hoped that the smooth surface of things would not be ruffled.

Sophia bounced out. And the assembly, including several urchins,

watched with held breath while Aunt Harriet, after having bid majestic

good-byes, got on to the step and introduced herself through the

doorway of the waggonette into the interior of the vehicle; it was an

operation like threading a needle with cotton too thick. Once within,

her hoops distended in sudden release, filling the waggonette. Sophia

followed, agilely.

As, with due formalities, the equipage drove off, Mrs. Baines gave

another sigh, one of relief. The sisters had won. She could now await

the imminent next advent of Mr. Gerald Scales with tranquillity.

II

Those singular words of Sophia's, 'But you let Constance do just as she

likes,' had disturbed Mrs. Baines more than was at first apparent. They

worried her like a late fly in autumn. For she had said nothing to any

one about Constance's case, Mrs. Maddack of course excepted. She had

instinctively felt that she could not show the slightest leniency

towards the romantic impulses of her elder daughter without seeming

unjust to the younger, and she had acted accordingly. On the memorable

morn of Mr. Povey's acute jealousy, she had, temporarily at any rate,

slaked the fire, banked it down, and hidden it; and since then no word

had passed as to the state of Constance's heart. In the great peril to

be feared from Mr. Scales, Constance's heart had been put aside as a

thing that could wait; so one puts aside the mending of linen when

earthquake shocks are about. Mrs. Baines was sure that Constance had

not chattered to Sophia concerning Mr. Povey. Constance, who understood

her mother, had too much commonsense and too nice a sense of propriety

to do that--and yet here was Sophia exclaiming, 'But you let Constance

do just as she likes.' Were the relations between Constance and Mr.

Povey, then, common property? Did the young lady assistants discuss

them?

As a fact, the young lady assistants did discuss them; not in the

shop--for either one of the principal parties, or Mrs. Baines herself,

was always in the shop, but elsewhere. They discussed little else, when

they were free; how she had looked at him to-day, and how he had

blushed, and so forth interminably. Yet Mrs. Baines really thought that

she alone knew. Such is the power of the ineradicable delusion that

one's own affairs, and especially one's own children, are mysteriously

different from those of others.

After Sophia's departure Mrs. Baines surveyed her daughter and her

manager at supper-time with a curious and a diffident eye. They worked,

talked, and ate just as though Mrs. Baines had never caught them

weeping together in the cutting-out room. They had the most

matter-of-fact air. They might never have heard whispered the name of

love. And there could be no deceit beneath that decorum; for Constance

would not deceive. Still, Mrs. Baines's conscience was unruly. Order

reigned, but nevertheless she knew that she ought to do something, find

out something, decide something; she ought, if she did her duty, to

take Constance aside and say: "Now, Constance, my mind is freer now.

Tell me frankly what has been going on between you and Mr. Povey. I

have never understood the meaning of that scene in the cutting-out

room. Tell me." She ought to have talked in this strain. But she could

not. That energetic woman had not sufficient energy left. She wanted

rest, rest--even though it were a coward's rest, an ostrich's

tranquillity--after the turmoil of apprehensions caused by Sophia. Her

soul cried out for peace. She was not, however, to have peace.

On the very first Sunday after Sophia's departure, Mr. Povey did not go

to chapel in the morning, and he offered no reason for his unusual

conduct. He ate his breakfast with appetite, but there was something

peculiar in his glance that made Mrs. Baines a little uneasy; this

something she could not seize upon and define. When she and Constance

returned from chapel Mr. Povey was playing "Rock of Ages" on the

harmonium--again unusual! The serious part of the dinner comprised

roast beef and Yorkshire pudding--the pudding being served as a sweet

course before the meat. Mrs. Baines ate freely of these things, for she

loved them, and she was always hungry after a sermon. She also did well

with the Cheshire cheese. Her intention was to sleep in the

drawing-room after the repast. On Sunday afternoons she invariably

tried to sleep in the drawing-room, and she did not often fail. As a

rule the girls accompanied her thither from the table, and either

'settled down' likewise or crept out of the room when they perceived

the gradual sinking of the majestic form into the deep hollows of the

easy-chair. Mrs. Baines was anticipating with pleasure her somnolent

Sunday afternoon.

Constance said grace after meat, and the formula on this particular

occasion ran thus--

"Thank God for our good dinner, Amen.--Mother, I must just run upstairs

to my room." ('MY room'-Sophia being far away.)

And off she ran, strangely girlish.

"Well, child, you needn't be in such a hurry," said Mrs. Baines,

ringing the bell and rising.

She hoped that Constance would remember the conditions precedent to

sleep.

"I should like to have a word with you, if it's all the same to you,

Mrs. Baines," said Mr. Povey suddenly, with obvious nervousness. And

his tone struck a rude unexpected blow at Mrs. Baines's peace of mind.

It was a portentous tone.

"What about?" asked she, with an inflection subtly to remind Mr. Povey

what day it was.

"About Constance," said the astonishing man.

"Constance!" exclaimed Mrs. Baines with a histrionic air of

bewilderment.

Maggie entered the room, solely in response to the bell, yet a thought

jumped up in Mrs. Baines's brain, "How prying servants are, to be

sure!" For quite five seconds she had a grievance against Maggie. She

was compelled to sit down again and wait while Maggie cleared the

table. Mr. Povey put both his hands in his pockets, got up, went to the

window, whistled, and generally behaved in a manner which foretold the

worst.

At last Maggie vanished, shutting the door.

"What is it, Mr. Povey?"

"Oh!" said Mr. Povey, facing her with absurd nervous brusqueness, as

though pretending: "Ah, yes! We have something to say--I was

forgetting!" Then he began: "It's about Constance and me."

Yes, they had evidently plotted this interview. Constance had evidently

taken herself off on purpose to leave Mr. Povey unhampered. They were

in league. The inevitable had come. No sleep! No repose! Nothing but

worry once more!

"I'm not at all satisfied with the present situation," said Mr. Povey,

in a tone that corresponded to his words.

"I don't know what you mean, Mr. Povey," said Mrs. Baines stiffly. This

was a simple lie.

"Well, really, Mrs. Baines!" Mr. Povey protested, "I suppose you won't

deny that you know there is something between me and Constance? I

suppose you won't deny that?"

"What is there between you and Constance? I can assure you I--"

"That depends on you," Mr. Povey interrupted her. When he was nervous

his manners deteriorated into a behaviour that resembled rudeness.

"That depends on you!" he repeated grimly.

"But--"

"Are we to be engaged or are we not?" pursued Mr. Povey, as though Mrs.

Baines had been guilty of some grave lapse and he was determined not to

spare her. "That's what I think ought to be settled, one way or the

other. I wish to be perfectly open and aboveboard--in the future, as I

have been in the past."

"But you have said nothing to me at all!" Mrs. Baines remonstrated,

lifting her eyebrows. The way in which the man had sprung this matter

upon her was truly too audacious.

Mr. Povey approached her as she sat at the table, shaking her ringlets

and looking at her hands.

"You know there's something between us!" he insisted.

"How should I know there is something between you? Constance has never

said a word to me. And have you?"

"Well," said he. "We've hidden nothing."

"What is there between you and Constance? If I may ask!"

"That depends on you," said he again.

"Have you asked her to be your wife?"

"No. I haven't exactly asked her to be my wife." He hesitated. "You

see--"

Mrs. Baines collected her forces. "Have you kissed her?" This in a cold

voice.

Mr. Povey now blushed. "I haven't exactly kissed her," he stammered,

apparently shocked by the inquisition. "No, I should not say that I had

kissed her."

It might have been that before committing himself he felt a desire for

Mrs. Baines's definition of a kiss.

"You are very extraordinary," she said loftily. It was no less than the

truth.

"All I want to know is--have you got anything against me?" he demanded

roughly. "Because if so--"

"Anything against you, Mr. Povey? Why should I have anything against

you?"

"Then why can't we be engaged?"

She considered that he was bullying her. "That's another question,"

said she.

"Why can't we be engaged? Ain't I good enough?"

The fact was that he was not regarded as good enough. Mrs. Maddack had

certainly deemed that he was not good enough. He was a solid mass of

excellent qualities; but he lacked brilliance, importance, dignity. He

could not impose himself. Such had been the verdict.

And now, while Mrs. Baines was secretly reproaching Mr. Povey for his

inability to impose himself, he was most patently imposing himself on

her--and the phenomenon escaped her! She felt that he was bullying her,

but somehow she could not perceive his power. Yet the man who could

bully Mrs. Baines was surely no common soul!

"You know my very high opinion of you," she said.

Mr. Povey pursued in a mollified tone. "Assuming that Constance is

willing to be engaged, do I understand you consent?"

"But Constance is too young."

"Constance is twenty. She is more than twenty."

"In any case you won't expect me to give you an answer now."

"Why not? You know my position."

She did. From a practical point of view the match would be ideal: no

fault could be found with it on that side. But Mrs. Baines could not

extinguish the idea that it would be a 'come-down' for her daughter.

Who, after all, was Mr. Povey? Mr. Povey was nobody.

"I must think things over," she said firmly, putting her lips together.

"I can't reply like this. It is a serious matter."

"When can I have your answer? To-morrow?"

"No--really--"

"In a week, then?"

"I cannot bind myself to a date," said Mrs. Baines, haughtily. She felt

that she was gaining ground.

"Because I can't stay on here indefinitely as things are," Mr. Povey

burst out, and there was a touch of hysteria in his tone.

"Now, Mr. Povey, please do be reasonable."

"That's all very well," he went on. "That's all very well. But what I

say is that employers have no right to have male assistants in their

houses unless they are prepared to let their daughters marry! That's

what I say! No RIGHT!"

Mrs. Baines did not know what to answer.

The aspirant wound up: "I must leave if that's the case."

"If what's the case?" she asked herself. "What has come over him?" And

aloud: "You know you would place me in a very awkward position by

leaving, and I hope you don't want to mix up two quite different

things. I hope you aren't trying to threaten me."

"Threaten you!" he cried. "Do you suppose I should leave here for fun?

If I leave it will be because I can't stand it. That's all. I can't

stand it. I want Constance, and if I can't have her, then I can't stand

it. What do you think I'm made of?"

"I'm sure--" she began.

"That's all very well!" he almost shouted.

"But please let me speak,' she said quietly.

"All I say is I can't stand it. That's all.... Employers have no

right.... We have our feelings like other men."

He was deeply moved. He might have appeared somewhat grotesque to the

strictly impartial observer of human nature. Nevertheless he was deeply

and genuinely moved, and possibly human nature could have shown nothing

more human than Mr. Povey at the moment when, unable any longer to

restrain the paroxysm which had so surprisingly overtaken him, he fled

from the parlour, passionately, to the retreat of his bedroom.

"That's the worst of those quiet calm ones," said Mrs. Baines to

herself. "You never know if they won't give way. And when they do, it's

awful--awful.... What did I do, what did I say, to bring it on?

Nothing! Nothing!"

And where was her afternoon sleep? What was going to happen to her

daughter? What could she say to Constance? How next could she meet Mr.

Povey? Ah! It needed a brave, indomitable woman not to cry out

brokenly: "I've suffered too much. Do anything you like; only let me

die in peace!" And so saying, to let everything indifferently slide!

III

Neither Mr. Povey nor Constance introduced the delicate subject to her

again, and she was determined not to be the first to speak of it. She

considered that Mr. Povey had taken advantage of his position, and that

he had also been infantile and impolite. And somehow she privately

blamed Constance for his behaviour. So the matter hung, as it were,

suspended in the ether between the opposing forces of pride and passion.

Shortly afterwards events occurred compared to which the vicissitudes

of Mr. Povey's heart were of no more account than a shower of rain in

April. And fate gave no warning of them; it rather indicated a complete

absence of events. When the customary advice circular arrived from

Birkinshaws, the name of 'our Mr. Gerald Scales' was replaced on it by

another and an unfamiliar name. Mrs. Baines, seeing the circular by

accident, experienced a sense of relief, mingled with the professional

disappointment of a diplomatist who has elaborately provided for

contingencies which have failed to happen. She had sent Sophia away for

nothing; and no doubt her maternal affection had exaggerated a molehill

into a mountain. Really, when she reflected on the past, she could not

recall a single fact that would justify her theory of an attachment

secretly budding between Sophia and the young man Scales! Not a single

little fact! All she could bring forward was that Sophia had twice

encountered Scales in the street.

She felt a curious interest in the fate of Scales, for whom in her own

mind she had long prophesied evil, and when Birkinshaws' representative

came she took care to be in the shop; her intention was to converse

with him, and ascertain as much as was ascertainable, after Mr. Povey

had transacted business. For this purpose, at a suitable moment, she

traversed the shop to Mr. Povey's side, and in so doing she had a

fleeting view of King Street, and in King Street of a familiar vehicle.

She stopped, and seemed to catch the distant sound of knocking.

Abandoning the traveller, she hurried towards the parlour, in the

passage she assuredly did hear knocking, angry and impatient knocking,

the knocking of someone who thinks he has knocked too long.

"Of course Maggie is at the top of the house!" she muttered

sarcastically.

She unchained, unbolted, and unlocked the side-door.

"At last!" It was Aunt Harriet's voice, exacerbated. "What! You,

sister? You're soon up. What a blessing!"

The two majestic and imposing creatures met on the mat, craning forward

so that their lips might meet above their terrific bosoms.

"What's the matter?" Mrs. Baines asked, fearfully.

"Well, I do declare!" said Mrs. Maddack. "And I've driven specially

over to ask you!"

"Where's Sophia?" demanded Mrs. Baines.

"You don't mean to say she's not come, sister?" Mrs. Maddack sank down

on to the sofa.

"Come?" Mrs. Baines repeated. "Of course she's not come! What do you

mean, sister?"

"The very moment she got Constance's letter yesterday, saying you were

ill in bed and she'd better come over to help in the shop, she started.

I got Bratt's dog-cart for her."

Mrs. Baines in her turn also sank down on to the sofa.

"I've not been ill," she said. "And Constance hasn't written for a

week! Only yesterday I was telling her--"

"Sister--it can't be! Sophia had letters from Constance every morning.

At least she said they were from Constance. I told her to be sure and

write me how you were last night, and she promised faithfully she

would. And it was because I got nothing by this morning's post that I

decided to come over myself, to see if it was anything serious."

"Serious it is!" murmured Mrs. Baines.

"What--"

"Sophia's run off. That's the plain English of it!" said Mrs. Baines

with frigid calm.

"Nay! That I'll never believe. I've looked after Sophia night and day

as if she was my own, and--"

"If she hasn't run off, where is she?"

Mrs. Maddack opened the door with a tragic gesture.

"Bladen," she called in a loud voice to the driver of the waggonette,

who was standing on the pavement.

"Yes'm."

"It was Pember drove Miss Sophia yesterday, wasn't it?"

"Yes'm."

She hesitated. A clumsy question might enlighten a member of the class

which ought never to be enlightened about one's private affairs.

"He didn't come all the way here?"

"No'm. He happened to say last night when he got back as Miss Sophia

had told him to set her down at Knype Station."

"I thought so!" said Mrs. Maddack, courageously.

"Yes'm."

"Sister!" she moaned, after carefully shutting the door.

They clung to each other.

The horror of what had occurred did not instantly take full possession

of them, because the power of credence, of imaginatively realizing a

supreme event, whether of great grief or of great happiness, is

ridiculously finite. But every minute the horror grew more clear, more

intense, more tragically dominant over them. There were many things

that they could not say to each other,--from pride, from shame, from

the inadequacy of words. Neither could utter the name of Gerald Scales.

And Aunt Harriet could not stoop to defend herself from a possible

charge of neglect; nor could Mrs. Baines stoop to assure her sister

that she was incapable of preferring such a charge. And the sheer,

immense criminal folly of Sophia could not even be referred to: it was

unspeakable. So the interview proceeded, lamely, clumsily,

inconsequently, leading to naught.

Sophia was gone. She was gone with Gerald Scales.

That beautiful child, that incalculable, untamable, impossible

creature, had committed the final folly; without pretext or excuse, and

with what elaborate deceit! Yes, without excuse! She had not been

treated harshly; she had had a degree of liberty which would have

astounded and shocked her grandmothers; she had been petted, humoured,

spoilt. And her answer was to disgrace the family by an act as

irrevocable as it was utterly vicious. If among her desires was the

desire to humiliate those majesties, her mother and Aunt Harriet, she

would have been content could she have seen them on the sofa there,

humbled, shamed, mortally wounded! Ah, the monstrous Chinese cruelty of

youth!

What was to be done? Tell dear Constance? No, this was not, at the

moment, an affair for the younger generation. It was too new and raw

for the younger generation. Moreover, capable, proud, and experienced

as they were, they felt the need of a man's voice, and a man's hard,

callous ideas. It was a case for Mr. Critchlow. Maggie was sent to

fetch him, with a particular request that he should come to the

side-door. He came expectant, with the pleasurable anticipation of

disaster, and he was not disappointed. He passed with the sisters the

happiest hour that had fallen to him for years. Quickly he arranged the

alternatives for them. Would they tell the police, or would they take

the risks of waiting? They shied away, but with fierce brutality he

brought them again and again to the immediate point of decision....

Well, they could not tell the police! They simply could not. Then they

must face another danger.... He had no mercy for them. And while he was

torturing them there arrived a telegram, despatched from Charing Cross,

"I am all right, Sophia." That proved, at any rate, that the child was

not heartless, not merely careless.

Only yesterday, it seemed to Mrs. Baines, she had borne Sophia; only

yesterday she was a baby, a schoolgirl to be smacked. The years rolled

up in a few hours. And now she was sending telegrams from a place

called Charing Cross! How unlike was the hand of the telegram to

Sophia's hand! How mysteriously curt and inhuman was that official

hand, as Mrs. Baines stared at it through red, wet eyes!

Mr. Critchlow said some one should go to Manchester, to ascertain about

Scales. He went himself, that afternoon, and returned with the news

that an aunt of Scales had recently died, leaving him twelve thousand

pounds, and that he had, after quarrelling with his uncle Boldero,

abandoned Birkinshaws at an hour's notice and vanished with his

inheritance.

"It's as plain as a pikestaff," said Mr. Critchlow. "I could ha' warned

ye o' all this years ago, even since she killed her father!"

Mr. Critchlow left nothing unsaid.

During the night Mrs. Baines lived through all Sophia's life, lived

through it more intensely than ever Sophia had done.

The next day people began to know. A whisper almost inaudible went

across the Square, and into the town: and in the stillness every one

heard it. "Sophia Baines run off with a commercial!"

In another fortnight a note came, also dated from London.

"Dear Mother, I am married to Gerald Scales. Please don't worry about

me. We are going abroad. Your affectionate Sophia. Love to Constance."

No tear-stains on that pale blue sheet! No sign of agitation!

And Mrs. Baines said: "My life is over." It was, though she was

scarcely fifty. She felt old, old and beaten. She had fought and been

vanquished. The everlasting purpose had been too much for her. Virtue

had gone out of her--the virtue to hold up her head and look the Square

in the face. She, the wife of John Baines! She, a Syme of Axe!

Old houses, in the course of their history, see sad sights, and never

forget them! And ever since, in the solemn physiognomy of the triple

house of John Baines at the corner of St. Luke's Square and King

Street, have remained the traces of the sight it saw on the morning of

the afternoon when Mr. and Mrs. Povey returned from their

honeymoon--the sight of Mrs. Baines getting into the waggonette for

Axe; Mrs. Baines, encumbered with trunks and parcels, leaving the scene

of her struggles and her defeat, whither she had once come as slim as a

wand, to return stout and heavy, and heavy-hearted, to her childhood;

content to live with her grandiose sister until such time as she should

be ready for burial! The grimy and impassive old house perhaps heard

her heart saying: "Only yesterday they were little girls, ever so tiny,

and now--" The driving-off of a waggonette can be a dreadful thing.

BOOK II

CONSTANCE

CHAPTER I

REVOLUTION

I

"Well," said Mr. Povey, rising from the rocking-chair that in a

previous age had been John Baines's, "I've got to make a start some

time, so I may as well begin now!"

And he went from the parlour into the shop. Constance's eye followed

him as far as the door, where their glances met for an instant in the

transient gaze which expresses the tenderness of people who feel more

than they kiss.

It was on the morning of this day that Mrs. Baines, relinquishing the

sovereignty of St. Luke's Square, had gone to live as a younger sister

in the house of Harriet Maddack at Axe. Constance guessed little of the

secret anguish of that departure. She only knew that it was just like

her mother, having perfectly arranged the entire house for the arrival

of the honeymoon couple from Buxton, to flit early away so as to spare

the natural blushing diffidence of the said couple. It was like her

mother's commonsense and her mother's sympathetic comprehension.

Further, Constance did not pursue her mother's feelings, being far too

busy with her own. She sat there full of new knowledge and new

importance, brimming with experience and strange, unexpected

aspirations, purposes, yes--and cunnings! And yet, though the very

curves of her cheeks seemed to be mysteriously altering, the old

Constance still lingered in that frame, an innocent soul hesitating to

spread its wings and quit for ever the body which had been its home;

you could see the timid thing peeping wistfully out of the eyes of the

married woman.

Constance rang the bell for Maggie to clear the table; and as she did

so she had the illusion that she was not really a married woman and a

house-mistress, but only a kind of counterfeit. She did most fervently

hope that all would go right in the house--at any rate until she had

grown more accustomed to her situation.

The hope was to be disappointed. Maggie's rather silly, obsequious

smile concealed but for a moment the ineffable tragedy that had lain in

wait for unarmed Constance.

"If you please, Mrs. Povey," said Maggie, as she crushed cups together

on the tin tray with her great, red hands, which always looked like

something out of a butcher's shop; then a pause, "Will you please

accept of this?"

Now, before the wedding Maggie had already, with tears of affection,

given Constance a pair of blue glass vases (in order to purchase which

she had been obliged to ask for special permission to go out), and

Constance wondered what was coming now from Maggie's pocket. A small

piece of folded paper came from Maggie's pocket. Constance accepted of

it, and read: "I begs to give one month's notice to leave. Signed

Maggie. June 10, 1867."

"Maggie!" exclaimed the old Constance, terrified by this incredible

occurrence, ere the married woman could strangle her.

"I never give notice before, Mrs. Povey," said Maggie, "so I don't know

as I know how it ought for be done--not rightly. But I hope as you'll

accept of it, Mrs. Povey."

"Oh! of course," said Mrs. Povey, primly, just as if Maggie was not the

central supporting pillar of the house, just as if Maggie had not

assisted at her birth, just as if the end of the world had not abruptly

been announced, just as if St. Luke's Square were not inconceivable

without Maggie. "But why--"

"Well, Mrs. Povey, I've been a-thinking it over in my kitchen, and I

said to myself: 'If there's going to be one change there'd better be

two,' I says. Not but what I wouldn't work my fingers to the bone for

ye, Miss Constance."

Here Maggie began to cry into the tray.

Constance looked at her. Despite the special muslin of that day she had

traces of the slatternliness of which Mrs. Baines had never been able

to cure her. She was over forty, big, gawky. She had no figure, no

charms of any kind. She was what was left of a woman after twenty-two

years in the cave of a philanthropic family. And in her cave she had

actually been thinking things over! Constance detected for the first

time, beneath the dehumanized drudge, the stirrings of a separate and

perhaps capricious individuality. Maggie's engagements had never been

real to her employers. Within the house she had never been, in

practice, anything but 'Maggie'--an organism. And now she was

permitting herself ideas about changes!

"You'll soon be suited with another, Mrs. Povey," said Maggie. "There's

many a--many a--" She burst into sobs.

"But if you really want to leave, what are you crying for, Maggie?"

asked Mrs. Povey, at her wisest. "Have you told mother?"

"No, miss," Maggie whimpered, absently wiping her wrinkled cheeks with

ineffectual muslin. "I couldn't seem to fancy telling your mother. And

as you're the mistress now, I thought as I'd save it for you when you

come home. I hope you'll excuse me, Mrs. Povey."

"Of course I'm very sorry. You've been a very good servant. And in

these days--"

The child had acquired this turn of speech from her mother. It did not

appear to occur to either of them that they were living in the sixties.

"Thank ye, miss."

"And what are you thinking of doing, Maggie? You know you won't get

many places like this."

"To tell ye the truth, Mrs. Povey, I'm going to get married mysen."

"Indeed!" murmured Constance, with the perfunctoriness of habit in

replying to these tidings.

"Oh! but I am, mum," Maggie insisted. "It's all settled. Mr. Hollins,

mum."

"Not Hollins, the fish-hawker!"

"Yes, mum. I seem to fancy him. You don't remember as him and me was

engaged in '48. He was my first, like. I broke it off because he was in

that Chartist lot, and I knew as Mr. Baines would never stand that. Now

he's asked me again. He's been a widower this long time."

"I'm sure I hope you'll be happy, Maggie. But what about his habits?"

"He won't have no habits with me, Mrs. Povey."

A woman was definitely emerging from the drudge.

When Maggie, having entirely ceased sobbing, had put the folded cloth

in the table-drawer and departed with the tray, her mistress became

frankly the girl again. No primness about her as she stood alone there

in the parlour; no pretence that Maggie's notice to leave was an

everyday document, to be casually glanced at--as one glances at an

unpaid bill! She would be compelled to find a new servant, making

solemn inquiries into character, and to train the new servant, and to

talk to her from heights from which she had never addressed Maggie. At

that moment she had an illusion that there were no other available,

suitable servants in the whole world. And the arranged marriage? She

felt that this time--the thirteenth or fourteenth time--the engagement

was serious and would only end at the altar. The vision of Maggie and

Hollins at the altar shocked her. Marriage was a series of phenomena,

and a general state, very holy and wonderful--too sacred, somehow, for

such creatures as Maggie and Hollins. Her vague, instinctive revolt

against such a usage of matrimony centred round the idea of a strong,

eternal smell of fish. However, the projected outrage on a hallowed

institution troubled her much less than the imminent problem of

domestic service.

She ran into the shop--or she would have run if she had not checked her

girlishness betimes--and on her lips, ready to be whispered importantly

into a husband's astounded ear, were the words, "Maggie has given

notice! Yes! Truly!" But Samuel Povey was engaged. He was leaning over

the counter and staring at an outspread paper upon which a certain Mr.

Yardley was making strokes with a thick pencil. Mr. Yardley, who had a

long red beard, painted houses and rooms. She knew him only by sight.

In her mind she always associated him with the sign over his premises

in Trafalgar Road, "Yardley Bros., Authorised plumbers. Painters.

Decorators. Paper-hangers. Facia writers." For years, in childhood, she

had passed that sign without knowing what sort of things 'Bros,' and

'Facia' were, and what was the mysterious similarity between a plumber

and a version of the Bible. She could not interrupt her husband, he was

wholly absorbed; nor could she stay in the shop (which appeared just a

little smaller than usual), for that would have meant an unsuccessful

endeavour to front the young lady-assistants as though nothing in

particular had happened to her. So she went sedately up the showroom

stairs and thus to the bedroom floors of the house--her house! Mrs.

Povey's house! She even climbed to Constance's old bedroom; her mother

had stripped the bed--that was all, except a slight diminution of this

room, corresponding to that of the shop! Then to the drawing-room. In

the recess outside the drawing-room door the black box of silver plate

still lay. She had expected her mother to take it; but no! Assuredly

her mother was one to do things handsomely--when she did them. In the

drawing-room, not a tassel of an antimacassar touched! Yes, the

fire-screen, the luscious bunch of roses on an expanse of mustard,

which Constance had worked for her mother years ago, was gone! That her

mother should have clung to just that one souvenir, out of all the

heavy opulence of the drawing-room, touched Constance intimately. She

perceived that if she could not talk to her husband she must write to

her mother. And she sat down at the oval table and wrote, "Darling

mother, I am sure you will be very surprised to hear.... She means

it.... I think she is making a serious mistake. Ought I to put an

advertisement in the Signal, or will it do if.... Please write by

return. We are back and have enjoyed ourselves very much. Sam says he

enjoys getting up late...." And so on to the last inch of the fourth

scolloped page.

She was obliged to revisit the shop for a stamp, stamps being kept in

Mr. Povey's desk in the corner--a high desk, at which you stood. Mr.

Povey was now in earnest converse with Mr. Yardley at the door, and

twilight, which began a full hour earlier in the shop than in the

Square, had cast faint shadows in corners behind counters.

"Will you just run out with this to the pillar, Miss Dadd?"

"With pleasure, Mrs. Povey."

"Where are you going to?" Mr. Povey interrupted his conversation to

stop the flying girl.

"She's just going to the post for me," Constance called out from the

region of the till.

"Oh! All right!"

A trifle! A nothing! Yet somehow, in the quiet customerless shop, the

episode, with the scarce perceptible difference in Samuel's tone at his

second remark, was delicious to Constance. Somehow it was the REAL

beginning of her wifehood. (There had been about nine other real

beginnings in the past fortnight.)

Mr. Povey came in to supper, laden with ledgers and similar works which

Constance had never even pretended to understand. It was a sign from

him that the honeymoon was over. He was proprietor now, and his ardour

for ledgers most justifiable. Still, there was the question of her

servant.

"Never!" he exclaimed, when she told him all about the end of the

world. A 'never' which expressed extreme astonishment and the liveliest

concern!

But Constance had anticipated that he would have been just a little

more knocked down, bowled over, staggered, stunned, flabbergasted. In a

swift gleam of insight she saw that she had been in danger of

forgetting her role of experienced, capable married woman.

"I shall have to set about getting a fresh one," she said hastily, with

an admirable assumption of light and easy casualness.

Mr. Povey seemed to think that Hollins would suit Maggie pretty well.

He made no remark to the betrothed when she answered the final bell of

the night.

He opened his ledgers, whistling.

"I think I shall go up, dear," said Constance. "I've a lot of things to

put away."

"Do," said he. "Call out when you've done."

II

"Sam!" she cried from the top of the crooked stairs.

No answer. The door at the foot was closed.

"Sam!"

"Hello?" Distantly, faintly.

"I've done all I'm going to do to-night."

And she ran back along the corridor, a white figure in the deep gloom,

and hurried into bed, and drew the clothes up to her chin.

In the life of a bride there are some dramatic moments. If she has

married the industrious apprentice, one of those moments occurs when

she first occupies the sacred bed-chamber of her ancestors, and the bed

on which she was born. Her parents' room had always been to Constance,

if not sacred, at least invested with a certain moral solemnity. She

could not enter it as she would enter another room. The course of

nature, with its succession of deaths, conceptions, and births, slowly

makes such a room august with a mysterious quality which interprets the

grandeur of mere existence and imposes itself on all. Constance had the

strangest sensations in that bed, whose heavy dignity of ornament

symbolized a past age; sensations of sacrilege and trespass, of being a

naughty girl to whom punishment would accrue for this shocking freak.

Not since she was quite tiny had she slept in that bed--one night with

her mother, before her father's seizure, when he had been away. What a

limitless, unfathomable bed it was then! Now it was just a bed--so she

had to tell herself--like any other bed. The tiny child that, safely

touching its mother, had slept in the vast expanse, seemed to her now a

pathetic little thing; its image made her feel melancholy. And her mind

dwelt on sad events: the death of her father, the flight of darling

Sophia; the immense grief, and the exile, of her mother. She esteemed

that she knew what life was, and that it was grim. And she sighed. But

the sigh was an affectation, meant partly to convince herself that she

was grown-up, and partly to keep her in countenance in the intimidating

bed. This melancholy was factitious, was less than transient foam on

the deep sea of her joy. Death and sorrow and sin were dim shapes to

her; the ruthless egoism of happiness blew them away with a puff, and

their wistful faces vanished. To see her there in the bed, framed in

mahogany and tassels, lying on her side, with her young glowing cheeks,

and honest but not artless gaze, and the rich curve of her hip lifting

the counterpane, one would have said that she had never heard of aught

but love.

Mr. Povey entered, the bridegroom, quickly, firmly, carrying it off

rather well, but still self-conscious. "After all," his shoulders were

trying to say, "what's the difference between this bedroom and the

bedroom of a boarding-house? Indeed, ought we not to feel more at home

here? Besides, confound it, we've been married a fortnight!"

"Doesn't it give you a funny feeling, sleeping in this room? It does

me," said Constance. Women, even experienced women, are so foolishly

frank. They have no decency, no self-respect.

"Really?" replied Mr. Povey, with loftiness, as who should say: "What

an extraordinary thing that a reasonable creature can have such

fancies! Now to me this room is exactly like any other room." And he

added aloud, glancing away from the glass, where he was unfastening his

necktie: "It's not a bad room at all." This, with the judicial air of

an auctioneer.

Not for an instant did he deceive Constance, who read his real

sensations with accuracy. But his futile poses did not in the slightest

degree lessen her respect for him. On the contrary, she admired him the

more for them; they were a sort of embroidery on the solid stuff of his

character. At that period he could not do wrong for her. The basis of

her regard for him was, she often thought, his honesty, his industry,

his genuine kindliness of act, his grasp of the business, his

perseverance, his passion for doing at once that which had to be done.

She had the greatest admiration for his qualities, and he was in her

eyes an indivisible whole; she could not admire one part of him and

frown upon another. Whatever he did was good because he did it. She

knew that some people were apt to smile at certain phases of his

individuality; she knew that far down in her mother's heart was a

suspicion that she had married ever so little beneath her. But this

knowledge did not disturb her. She had no doubt as to the correctness

of her own estimate.

Mr. Povey was an exceedingly methodical person, and he was also one of

those persons who must always be 'beforehand' with time. Thus at night

he would arrange his raiment so that in the morning it might be

reassumed in the minimum of minutes. He was not a man, for example, to

leave the changing of studs from one shirt to another till the morrow.

Had it been practicable, he would have brushed his hair the night

before. Constance already loved to watch his meticulous preparations.

She saw him now go into his old bedroom and return with a paper collar,

which he put on the dressing-table next to a black necktie. His

shop-suit was laid out on a chair.

"Oh, Sam!" she exclaimed impulsively, "you surely aren't going to begin

wearing those horrid paper collars again!" During the honeymoon he had

worn linen collars.

Her tone was perfectly gentle, but the remark, nevertheless, showed a

lack of tact. It implied that all his life Mr. Povey had been

enveloping his neck in something which was horrid. Like all persons

with a tendency to fall into the ridiculous, Mr. Povey was exceedingly

sensitive to personal criticisms. He flushed darkly.

"I didn't know they were 'horrid,'" he snapped. He was hurt and angry.

Anger had surprised him unawares.

Both of them suddenly saw that they were standing on the edge of a

chasm, and drew back. They had imagined themselves to be wandering

safely in a flowered meadow, and here was this bottomless chasm! It was

most disconcerting.

Mr. Povey's hand hovered undecided over the collar. "However--" he

muttered.

She could feel that he was trying with all his might to be gentle and

pacific. And she was aghast at her own stupid clumsiness, she so

experienced!

"Just as you like, dear," she said quickly. "Please!"

"Oh no!" And he did his best to smile, and went off gawkily with the

collar and came back with a linen one.

Her passion for him burned stronger than ever. She knew then that she

did not love him for his good qualities, but for something boyish and

naive that there was about him, an indescribable something that

occasionally, when his face was close to hers, made her dizzy.

The chasm had disappeared. In such moments, when each must pretend not

to have seen or even suspected the chasm, small-talk is essential.

"Wasn't that Mr. Yardley in the shop to-night?" began Constance.

"Yes."

"What did he want?"

"I'd sent for him. He's going to paint us a signboard."

Useless for Samuel to make-believe that nothing in this world is more

ordinary than a signboard.

"Oh!" murmured Constance. She said no more, the episode of the paper

collar having weakened her self-confidence.

But a signboard!

What with servants, chasms, and signboards, Constance considered that

her life as a married woman would not be deficient in excitement. Long

afterwards, she fell asleep, thinking of Sophia.

III

A few days later Constance was arranging the more precious of her

wedding presents in the parlour; some had to be wrapped in tissue and

in brown paper and then tied with string and labelled; others had

special cases of their own, leather without and velvet within. Among

the latter was the resplendent egg-stand holding twelve silver-gilt

egg-cups and twelve chased spoons to match, presented by Aunt Harriet.

In the Five Towns' phrase, 'it must have cost money.' Even if Mr. and

Mrs. Povey had ten guests or ten children, and all the twelve of them

were simultaneously gripped by a desire to eat eggs at breakfast or

tea--even in this remote contingency Aunt Harriet would have been

pained to see the egg-stand in use; such treasures are not designed for

use. The presents, few in number, were mainly of this character,

because, owing to her mother's heroic cession of the entire interior,

Constance already possessed every necessary. The fewness of the

presents was accounted for by the fact that the wedding had been

strictly private and had taken place at Axe. There is nothing like

secrecy in marriage for discouraging the generous impulses of one's

friends. It was Mrs. Baines, abetted by both the chief parties, who had

decided that the wedding should be private and secluded. Sophia's

wedding had been altogether too private and secluded; but the casting

of a veil over Constance's (whose union was irreproachable) somehow

justified, after the event, the circumstances of Sophia's, indicating

as it did that Mrs. Baines believed in secret weddings on principle. In

such matters Mrs. Baines was capable of extraordinary subtlety.

And while Constance was thus taking her wedding presents with due

seriousness, Maggie was cleaning the steps that led from the pavement

of King Street to the side-door, and the door was ajar. It was a fine

June morning.

Suddenly, over the sound of scouring, Constance heard a dog's low growl

and then the hoarse voice of a man:

"Mester in, wench?"

"Happen he is, happen he isn't," came Maggie's answer. She had no fancy

for being called wench.

Constance went to the door, not merely from curiosity, but from a

feeling that her authority and her responsibilities as house-mistress

extended to the pavement surrounding the house.

The famous James Boon, of Buck Row, the greatest dog-fancier in the

Five Towns, stood at the bottom of the steps: a tall, fat man, clad in

stiff, stained brown and smoking a black clay pipe less than three

inches long. Behind him attended two bull-dogs.

"Morning, missis!" cried Boon, cheerfully. "I've heerd tell as th'

mister is looking out for a dog, as you might say."

"I don't stay here with them animals a-sniffing at me--no, that I

don't!" observed Maggie, picking herself up.

"Is he?" Constance hesitated. She knew that Samuel had vaguely referred

to dogs; she had not, however, imagined that he regarded a dog as aught

but a beautiful dream. No dog had ever put paw into that house, and it

seemed impossible that one should ever do so. As for those beasts of

prey on the pavement...!

"Ay!" said James Boon, calmly.

"I'll tell him you're here," said Constance. "But I don't know if he's

at liberty. He seldom is at this time of day. Maggie, you'd better come

in."

She went slowly to the shop, full of fear for the future.

"Sam," she whispered to her husband, who was writing at his desk,

"here's a man come to see you about a dog."

Assuredly he was taken aback. Still, he behaved with much presence of

mind.

"Oh, about a dog! Who is it?"

"It's that Jim Boon. He says he's heard you want one."

The renowned name of Jim Boon gave him pause; but he had to go through

with the affair, and he went through with it, though nervously.

Constance followed his agitated footsteps to the side-door.

"Morning, Boon."

"Morning, master."

They began to talk dogs, Mr. Povey, for his part, with due caution.

"Now, there's a dog!" said Boon, pointing to one of the bull-dogs, a

miracle of splendid ugliness.

"Yes," responded Mr. Povey, insincerely. "He is a beauty. What's it

worth now, at a venture?"

"I'll tak' a hundred and twenty sovereigns for her," said Boon. "Th'

other's a bit cheaper--a hundred."

"Oh, Sam!" gasped Constance.

And even Mr. Povey nearly lost his nerve. "That's more than I want to

give," said he timidly.

"But look at her!" Boon persisted, roughly snatching up the more

expensive animal, and displaying her cannibal teeth.

Mr. Povey shook his head. Constance glanced away.

"That's not quite the sort of dog I want," said Mr. Povey.

"Fox-terrier?"

"Yes, that's more like," Mr. Povey agreed eagerly.

"What'll ye run to?"

"Oh," said Mr. Povey, largely, "I don't know."

"Will ye run to a tenner?"

"I thought of something cheaper."

"Well, hoo much? Out wi' it, mester."

"Not more than two pounds," said Mr. Povey. He would have said one

pound had he dared. The prices of dogs amazed him.

"I thowt it was a dog as ye wanted!" said Boon. "Look 'ere, mester.

Come up to my yard and see what I've got."

"I will," said Mr. Povey.

"And bring missis along too. Now, what about a cat for th' missis? Or a

gold-fish?"

The end of the episode was that a young lady aged some twelve months

entered the Povey household on trial. Her exiguous legs twinkled all

over the parlour, and she had the oddest appearance in the parlour. But

she was so confiding, so affectionate, so timorous, and her black nose

was so icy in that hot weather, that Constance loved her violently

within an hour. Mr. Povey made rules for her. He explained to her that

she must never, never go into the shop. But she went, and he whipped

her to the squealing point, and Constance cried an instant, while

admiring her husband's firmness.

The dog was not all.

On another day Constance, prying into the least details of the parlour,

discovered a box of cigars inside the lid of the harmonium, on the

keyboard. She was so unaccustomed to cigars that at first she did not

realize what the object was. Her father had never smoked, nor drunk

intoxicants; nor had Mr. Critchlow. Nobody had ever smoked in that

house, where tobacco had always been regarded as equally licentious

with cards, 'the devil's playthings.' Certainly Samuel had never smoked

in the house, though the sight of the cigar-box reminded Constance of

an occasion when her mother had announced an incredulous suspicion that

Mr. Povey, fresh from an excursion into the world on a Thursday

evening, 'smelt of smoke.'

She closed the harmonium and kept silence.

That very night, coming suddenly into the parlour, she caught Samuel at

the harmonium. The lid went down with a resonant bang that awoke

sympathetic vibrations in every corner of the room.

"What is it?" Constance inquired, jumping.

"Oh, nothing!" replied Mr. Povey, carelessly. Each was deceiving the

other: Mr. Povey hid his crime, and Constance hid her knowledge of his

crime. False, false! But this is what marriage is.

And the next day Constance had a visit in the shop from a possible new

servant, recommended to her by Mr. Holl, the grocer.

"Will you please step this way?" said Constance, with affable primness,

steeped in the novel sense of what it is to be the sole responsible

mistress of a vast household. She preceded the girl to the parlour, and

as they passed the open door of Mr. Povey's cutting-out room, Constance

had the clear vision and titillating odour of her husband smoking a

cigar. He was in his shirt-sleeves, calmly cutting out, and Fan (the

lady companion), at watch on the bench, yapped at the possible new

servant.

"I think I shall try that girl," said she to Samuel at tea. She said

nothing as to the cigar; nor did he.

On the following evening, after supper, Mr. Povey burst out:

"I think I'll have a weed! You didn't know I smoked, did you?"

Thus Mr. Povey came out in his true colours as a blood, a blade, and a

gay spark.

But dogs and cigars, disconcerting enough in their degree, were to the

signboard, when the signboard at last came, as skim milk is to hot

brandy. It was the signboard that, more startlingly than anything else,

marked the dawn of a new era in St. Luke's Square. Four men spent a day

and a half in fixing it; they had ladders, ropes, and pulleys, and two

of them dined on the flat lead roof of the projecting shop-windows. The

signboard was thirty-five feet long and two feet in depth; over its

centre was a semicircle about three feet in radius; this semicircle

bore the legend, judiciously disposed, "S. Povey. Late." All the

sign-board proper was devoted to the words, "John Baines," in gold

letters a foot and a half high, on a green ground.

The Square watched and wondered; and murmured: "Well, bless us! What

next?"

It was agreed that in giving paramount importance to the name of his

late father-in-law, Mr. Povey had displayed a very nice feeling.

Some asked with glee: "What'll the old lady have to say?"

Constance asked herself this, but not with glee. When Constance walked

down the Square homewards, she could scarcely bear to look at the sign;

the thought of what her mother might say frightened her. Her mother's

first visit of state was imminent, and Aunt Harriet was to accompany

her. Constance felt almost sick as the day approached. When she faintly

hinted her apprehensions to Samuel, he demanded, as if surprised--

"Haven't you mentioned it in one of your letters?"

"Oh NO!"

"If that's all," said he, with bravado, "I'll write and tell her

myself."

IV

So that Mrs. Baines was duly apprised of the signboard before her

arrival. The letter written by her to Constance after receiving

Samuel's letter, which was merely the amiable epistle of a son-in-law

anxious to be a little more than correct, contained no reference to the

signboard. This silence, however, did not in the least allay

Constance's apprehensions as to what might occur when her mother and

Samuel met beneath the signboard itself. It was therefore with a

fearful as well as an eager, loving heart that Constance opened her

side-door and ran down the steps when the waggonette stopped in King

Street on the Thursday morning of the great visit of the sisters. But a

surprise awaited her. Aunt Harriet had not come. Mrs. Baines explained,

as she soundly kissed her daughter, that at the last moment Aunt

Harriet had not felt well enough to undertake the journey. She sent her

fondest love, and cake. Her pains had recurred. It was these mysterious

pains which had prevented the sisters from coming to Bursley earlier.

The word "cancer"--the continual terror of stout women--had been on

their lips, without having been actually uttered; then there was a

surcease, and each was glad that she had refrained from the dread

syllables. In view of the recurrence, it was not unnatural that Mrs.

Baines's vigorous cheerfulness should be somewhat forced.

"What is it, do you think?" Constance inquired.

Mrs. Baines pushed her lips out and raised her eyebrows--a gesture

which meant that the pains might mean God knew what.

"I hope she'll be all right alone," observed Constance. "Of course,"

said Mrs. Baines, quickly. "But you don't suppose I was going to

disappoint you, do you?" she added, looking round as if to defy the

fates in general.

This speech, and its tone, gave intense pleasure to Constance; and,

laden with parcels, they mounted the stairs together, very content with

each other, very happy in the discovery that they were still mother and

daughter, very intimate in an inarticulate way.

Constance had imagined long, detailed, absorbing, and highly novel

conversations between herself and her mother upon this their first

meeting after her marriage. But alone in the bedroom, and with a clear

half-hour to dinner, they neither of them seemed to have a great deal

to impart.

Mrs. Baines slowly removed her light mantle and laid it with

precautions on the white damask counterpane. Then, fingering her weeds,

she glanced about the chamber. Nothing was changed. Though Constance

had, previous to her marriage, envisaged certain alterations, she had

determined to postpone them, feeling that one revolutionist in a house

was enough.

"Well, my chuck, you all right?" said Mrs. Baines, with hearty and

direct energy, gazing straight into her daughter's eyes.

Constance perceived that the question was universal in its

comprehensiveness, the one unique expression that the mother would give

to her maternal concern and curiosity, and that it condensed into six

words as much interest as would have overflowed into a whole day of the

chatter of some mothers. She met the candid glance, flushing.

"Oh YES!" she answered with ecstatic fervour. "Perfectly!"

And Mrs. Baines nodded, as if dismissing THAT. "You're stouter," said

she, curtly. "If you aren't careful you'll be as big as any of us."

"Oh, mother!"

The interview fell to a lower plane of emotion. It even fell as far as

Maggie. What chiefly preoccupied Constance was a subtle change in her

mother. She found her mother fussy in trifles. Her manner of laying

down her mantle, of smoothing out her gloves, and her anxiety that her

bonnet should not come to harm, were rather trying, were perhaps, in

the very slightest degree, pitiable. It was nothing; it was barely

perceptible, and yet it was enough to alter Constance's mental attitude

to her mother. "Poor dear!" thought Constance. "I'm afraid she's not

what she was." Incredible that her mother could have aged in less than

six weeks! Constance did not allow for the chemistry that had been

going on in herself.

The encounter between Mrs. Baines and her son-in-law was of the most

satisfactory nature. He was waiting in the parlour for her to descend.

He made himself exceedingly agreeable, kissing her, and flattering her

by his evidently sincere desire to please. He explained that he had

kept an eye open for the waggonette, but had been called away. His

"Dear me!" on learning about Aunt Harriet lacked nothing in conviction,

though both women knew that his affection for Aunt Harriet would never

get the better of his reason. To Constance, her husband's behaviour was

marvellously perfect. She had not suspected him to be such a man of the

world. And her eyes said to her mother, quite unconsciously: "You see,

after all, you didn't rate Sam as high as you ought to have done. Now

you see your mistake."

As they sat waiting for dinner, Constance and Mrs. Baines on the sofa,

and Samuel on the edge of the nearest rocking-chair, a small scuffling

noise was heard outside the door which gave on the kitchen steps, the

door yielded to pressure, and Fan rushed importantly in, deranging

mats. Fan's nose had been hinting to her that she was behind the times,

not up-to-date in the affairs of the household, and she had hurried

from the kitchen to make inquiries. It occurred to her en route that

she had been washed that morning. The spectacle of Mrs. Baines stopped

her. She stood, with her legs slightly out-stretched, her nose lifted,

her ears raking forward, her bright eyes blinking, and her tail

undecided. "I was sure I'd never smelt anything like that before," she

was saying to herself, as she stared at Mrs. Baines.

And Mrs. Baines, staring at Fan, had a similar though not the same

sentiment. The silence was terrible. Constance took on the mien of a

culprit, and Sam had obviously lost his easy bearing of a man of the

world. Mrs. Baines was merely thunderstruck.

A dog!

Suddenly Fan's tail began to wag more quickly; and then, having looked

in vain for encouragement to her master and mistress, she gave one

mighty spring and alighted in Mrs. Baines's lap. It was an aim she

could not have missed. Constance emitted an "Oh, FAN!" of shocked

terror, and Samuel betrayed his nervous tension by an involuntary

movement. But Fan had settled down into that titanic lap as into

heaven. It was a greater flattery than Mr. Povey's.

"So your name's Fan!" murmured Mrs. Baines, stroking the animal. "You

are a dear!"

"Yes, isn't she?" said Constance, with inconceivable rapidity.

The danger was past. Thus, without any explanation, Fan became an

accepted fact.

The next moment Maggie served the Yorkshire pudding.

"Well, Maggie," said Mrs. Baines. "So you are going to get married this

time? When is it?"

"Sunday, ma'am."

"And you leave here on Saturday?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Well, I must have a talk with you before I go."

During the dinner, not a word as to the signboard! Several times the

conversation curved towards that signboard in the most alarming

fashion, but invariably it curved away again, like a train from another

train when two trains are simultaneously leaving a station. Constance

had frights, so serious as to destroy her anxiety about the cookery. In

the end she comprehended that her mother had adopted a silently

disapproving attitude. Fan was socially very useful throughout the

repast.

After dinner Constance was on pins lest Samuel should light a cigar.

She had not requested him not to do so, for though she was entirely

sure of his affection, she had already learned that a husband is

possessed by a demon of contrariety which often forces him to violate

his higher feelings. However, Samuel did not light a cigar. He went off

to superintend the shutting-up of the shop, while Mrs. Baines chatted

with Maggie and gave her L5 for a wedding present. Then Mr. Critchlow

called to offer his salutations.

A little before tea Mrs. Baines announced that she would go out for a

short walk by herself.

"Where has she gone to?" smiled Samuel, superiorly, as with Constance

at the window he watched her turn down King Street towards the church.

"I expect she has gone to look at father's grave," said Constance.

"Oh!" muttered Samuel, apologetically.

Constance was mistaken. Before reaching the church, Mrs. Baines

deviated to the right, got into Brougham Street and thence, by Acre

Lane, into Oldcastle Street, whose steep she climbed. Now, Oldcastle

Street ends at the top of St. Luke's Square, and from the corner Mrs.

Baines had an excellent view of the signboard. It being Thursday

afternoon, scarce a soul was about. She returned to her daughter's by

the same extraordinary route, and said not a word on entering. But she

was markedly cheerful.

The waggonette came after tea, and Mrs. Baines made her final

preparations to depart. The visit had proved a wonderful success; it

would have been utterly perfect if Samuel had not marred it at the very

door of the waggonette. Somehow, he contrived to be talking of

Christmas. Only a person of Samuel's native clumsiness would have

mentioned Christmas in July.

"You know you'll spend Christmas with us!" said he into the waggonette.

"Indeed I shan't!" replied Mrs. Baines. "Aunt Harriet and I will expect

you at Axe. We've already settled that."

Mr. Povey bridled. "Oh no!" he protested, hurt by this summariness.

Having had no relatives, except his cousin the confectioner, for many

years, he had dreamt of at last establishing a family Christmas under

his own roof, and the dream was dear to him.

Mrs. Baines said nothing. "We couldn't possibly leave the shop," said

Mr. Povey.

"Nonsense!" Mrs. Baines retorted, putting her lips together. "Christmas

Day is on a Monday."

The waggonette in starting jerked her head towards the door and set all

her curls shaking. No white in those curls yet, scarcely a touch of

grey!

"I shall take good care we don't go there anyway," Mr. Povey mumbled,

in his heat, half to himself and half to Constance.

He had stained the brightness of the day.