The sisters looked at each other, their faces gravely troubled, aghast,

as though they had glimpsed the end of civilized society, as though

they felt that they had lived too long into an age of decadence and

open shame. Constance's face showed despair--she might have been about

to be pitched into the gutter without a friend and without a

shilling--but Sophia's had the reckless courage that disaster breeds.

Sophia jumped up, and stepped to the door. "Maud," she called out.

No answer.

"Maud, do you hear me?"

The suspense was fearful.

Still no answer.

Sophia glanced at Constance. "Either she shuts this door, or she leaves

this house at once, even if I have to fetch a policeman!"

And Sophia disappeared down the kitchen steps. Constance trembled with

painful excitement. The horror of existence closed in upon her. She

could imagine nothing more appalling than the pass to which they had

been brought by the modern change in the lower classes.

In the kitchen, Sophia, conscious that the moment held the future of at

least the next three weeks, collected her forces.

"Maud," she said, "did you not hear me call you?"

Maud looked up from a book--doubtless a wicked book.

"No, ma'am."

"You liar!" thought Sophia. And she said: "I asked you to shut the

parlour door, and I shall be obliged if you will do so."

Now Maud would have given a week's wages for the moral force to disobey

Sophia. There was nothing to compel her to obey. She could have

trampled on the fragile and weak Sophia. But something in Sophia's gaze

compelled her to obey. She flounced; she bridled; she mumbled; she

unnecessarily disturbed the venerable Spot; but she obeyed. Sophia had

risked all, and she had won something.

"And you should light the gas in the kitchen," said Sophia

magnificently, as Maud followed her up the steps. "Your young eyes may

be very good now, but you are not going the way to preserve them. My

sister and I have often told you that we do not grudge you gas."

With stateliness she rejoined Constance, and sat down to the cold

supper. And as Maud clicked the door to, the sisters breathed relief.

They envisaged new tribulations, but for a brief instant there was

surcease.

Yet they could not eat. Neither of them, when it came to the point,

could swallow. The day had been too exciting, too distressing. They

were at the end of their resources. And they did not hide from each

other that they were at the end of their resources. The illness of

Fossette, without anything else, had been more than enough to ruin

their tranquillity. But the illness of Fossette was as nothing to the

ingenious naughtiness of the servant. Maud had a sense of temporary

defeat, and was planning fresh operations; but really it was Maud who

had conquered. Poor old things, they were in such a 'state' that they

could not eat!

"I'm not going to let her think she can spoil my appetite!" said

Sophia, dauntless. Truly that woman's spirit was unquenchable.

She cut a couple of slices off the cold fowl; she cut a tomato into

slices; she disturbed the butter; she crumbled bread on the cloth, and

rubbed bits of fowl over the plates, and dirtied knives and forks. Then

she put the slices of fowl and bread and tomato into a piece of tissue

paper, and silently went upstairs with the parcel and came down again a

moment afterwards empty-handed.

After an interval she rang the bell, and lighted the gas.

"We've finished, Maud. You can clear away."

Constance thirsted for a cup of tea. She felt that a cup of tea was the

one thing that would certainly keep her alive. She longed for it

passionately. But she would not demand it from Maud. Nor would she

mention it to Sophia, lest Sophia, flushed by the victory of the door,

should incur new risks. She simply did without. On empty stomachs they

tried pathetically to help each other in games of Patience. And when

the blithe Maud passed through the parlour on the way to bed, she saw

two dignified and apparently calm ladies, apparently absorbed in a

delightful game of cards, apparently without a worry in the world. They

said "Good night, Maud," cheerfully, politely, and coldly. It was a

heroic scene. Immediately afterwards Sophia carried Fossette up to her

own bedroom.

II

The next afternoon the sisters, in the drawing-room, saw Dr. Stirling's

motor-car speeding down the Square. The doctor's partner, young Harrop,

had died a few years before at the age of over seventy, and the

practice was much larger than it had ever been, even in the time of old

Harrop. Instead of two or three horses, Stirling kept a car, which was

a constant spectacle in the streets of the district.

"I do hope he'll call in," said Mrs. Povey, and sighed.

Sophia smiled to herself with a little scorn. She knew that Constance's

desire for Dr. Stirling was due simply to the need which she felt of

telling some one about the great calamity that had happened to them

that morning. Constance was utterly absorbed by it, in the most

provincial way. Sophia had said to herself at the beginning of her

sojourn in Bursley, and long afterwards, that she should never get

accustomed to the exasperating provinciality of the town, exemplified

by the childish preoccupation of the inhabitants with their own

two-penny affairs. No characteristic of life in Bursley annoyed her

more than this. None had oftener caused her to yearn in a brief madness

for the desert-like freedom of great cities. But she had got accustomed

to it. Indeed, she had almost ceased to notice it. Only occasionally,

when her nerves were more upset than usual, did it strike her.

She went into Constance's bedroom to see whether the doctor's car

halted in King Street. It did.

"He's here," she called out to Constance.

"I wish you'd go down, Sophia," said Constance. "I can't trust that

minx----"

So Sophia went downstairs to superintend the opening of the door by the

minx.

The doctor was radiant, according to custom.

"I thought I'd just see how that dizziness was going on," said he as he

came up the steps.

"I'm glad you've come," said Sophia, confidentially. Since the first

days of their acquaintanceship they had always been confidential.

"You'll do my sister good to-day."

Just as Maud was closing the door a telegraph-boy arrived, with a

telegram addressed to Mrs. Scales. Sophia read it and then crumpled it

in her hand.

"What's wrong with Mrs. Povey to-day?" the doctor asked, when the

servant had withdrawn.

"She only wants a bit of your society," said Sophia. "Will you go up?

You know the way to the drawing-room. I'll follow."

As soon as he had gone she sat down on the sofa, staring out of the

window. Then with a grunt: "Well, that's no use, anyway!" she went

upstairs after the doctor. Already Constance had begun upon her recital.

"Yes," Constance was saying. "And when I went down this morning to keep

an eye on the breakfast, I thought Spot was very quiet--" She paused.

"He was dead in the drawer. She pretended she didn't know, but I'm sure

she did. Nothing will convince me that she didn't poison that dog with

the mice-poison we had last year. She was vexed because Sophia took her

up sharply about Fossette last night, and she revenged herself on the

other dog. It would just be like her. Don't tell me! I know. I should

have packed her off at once, but Sophia thought better not. We couldn't

prove anything, as Sophia says. Now, what do you think of it, doctor?"

Constance's eyes suddenly filled with tears.

"Ye'd had Spot a long time, hadn't ye?" he said sympathetically.

She nodded. "When I was married," said she, "the first thing my husband

did was to buy a fox-terrier, and ever since we've always had a

fox-terrier in the house." This was not true, but Constance was firmly

convinced of its truth.

"It's very trying," said the doctor. "I know when my Airedale died, I

said to my wife I'd never have another dog--unless she could find me

one that would live for ever. Ye remember my Airedale?"

"Oh, quite well!"

"Well, my wife said I should be bound to have another one sooner or

later, and the sooner the better. She went straight off to Oldcastle

and bought me a spaniel pup, and there was such a to-do training it

that we hadn't too much time to think about Piper."

Constance regarded this procedure as somewhat callous, and she said so,

tartly. Then she recommenced the tale of Spot's death from the

beginning, and took it as far as his burial, that afternoon, by Mr.

Critchlow's manager, in the yard. It had been necessary to remove and

replace paving-stones.

"Of course," said Dr. Stirling, "ten years is a long time. He was an

old dog. Well, you've still got the celebrated Fossette." He turned to

Sophia.

"Oh yes," said Constance, perfunctorily. "Fossette's ill. The fact is

that if Fossette hadn't been ill, Spot would probably have been alive

and well now."

Her tone exhibited a grievance. She could not forget that Sophia had

harshly dismissed Spot to the kitchen, thus practically sending him to

his death. It seemed very hard to her that Fossette, whose life had

once been despaired of, should continue to exist, while Spot, always

healthy and unspoilt, should die untended, and by treachery. For the

rest, she had never liked Fossette. On Spot's behalf she had always

been jealous of Fossette.

"Probably alive and well now!" she repeated, with a peculiar accent.

Observing that Sophia maintained a strange silence, Dr. Stirling

suspected a slight tension in the relations of the sisters, and he

changed the subject. One of his great qualities was that he refrained

from changing a subject introduced by a patient unless there was a

professional reason for changing it.

"I've just met Richard Povey in the town," said he. "He told me to tell

ye that he'll be round in about an hour or so to take you for a spin.

He was in a new car, which he did his best to sell to me, but he didn't

succeed."

"It's very kind of Dick," said Constance. "But this afternoon really

we're not--"

"I'll thank ye to take it as a prescription, then," replied the doctor.

"I told Dick I'd see that ye went. Splendid June weather. No dust after

all that rain. It'll do ye all the good in the world. I must exercise

my authority. The truth is, I've gradually been losing all control over

ye. Ye do just as ye like."

"Oh, doctor, how you do run on!" murmured Constance, not quite well

pleased to-day by his tone.

After the scene between Sophia and herself at Buxton, Constance had

always, to a certain extent, in the doctor's own phrase, 'got her knife

into him.' Sophia had, then, in a manner betrayed him. Constance and

the doctor discussed that matter with frankness, the doctor humorously

accusing her of being 'hard' on him. Nevertheless the little cloud

between them was real, and the result was often a faint captiousness on

Constance's part in judging the doctor's behaviour.

"He's got a surprise for ye, has Dick!" the doctor added.

Dick Povey, after his father's death and his own partial recovery, had

set up in Hanbridge as a bicycle agent. He was permanently lamed, and

he hopped about with a thick stick. He had succeeded with bicycles and

had taken to automobiles, and he was succeeding with automobiles.

People were at first startled that he should advertise himself in the

Five Towns. There was an obscure general feeling that because his

mother had been a drunkard and his father a murderer, Dick Povey had no

right to exist. However, when it had recovered from the shock of seeing

Dick Povey's announcement of bargains in the Signal, the district most

sensibly decided that there was no reason why Dick Povey should not

sell bicycles as well as a man with normal parents. He was now supposed

to be acquiring wealth rapidly. It was said that he was a marvellous

chauffeur, at once daring and prudent. He had one day, several years

previously, overtaken the sisters in the rural neighbourhood of Sneyd,

where they had been making an afternoon excursion. Constance had

presented him to Sophia, and he had insisted on driving the ladies

home. They had been much impressed by his cautious care of them, and

their natural prejudice against anything so new as a motorcar had been

conquered instantly. Afterwards he had taken them out for occasional

runs. He had a great admiration for Constance, founded on gratitude to

Samuel Povey; and as for Sophia, he always said to her that she would

be an ornament to any car.

"You haven't heard his latest, I suppose?" said the doctor, smiling.

"What is it?" Sophia asked perfunctorily.

"He wants to take to ballooning. It seems he's been up once."

Constance made a deprecating noise with her lips.

"However, that's not his surprise," the doctor added, smiling again at

the floor. He was sitting on the music-stool, and saying to himself,

behind his mask of effulgent good-nature: "It gets more and more uphill

work, cheering up these two women. I'll try them on Federation."

Federation was the name given to the scheme for blending the Five Towns

into one town, which would be the twelfth largest town in the kingdom.

It aroused fury in Bursley, which saw in the suggestion nothing but the

extinction of its ancient glory to the aggrandizement of Hanbridge.

Hanbridge had already, with the assistance of electric cars that

whizzed to and fro every five minutes, robbed Bursley of two-thirds of

its retail trade--as witness the steady decadence of the Square!--and

Bursley had no mind to swallow the insult and become a mere ward of

Hanbridge. Bursley would die fighting. Both Constance and Sophia were

bitter opponents of Federation. They would have been capable of putting

Federationists to the torture. Sophia in particular, though so long

absent from her native town, had adopted its cause with characteristic

vigour. And when Dr. Stirling wished to practise his curative treatment

of taking the sisters 'out of themselves,' he had only to start the

hare of Federation and the hunt would be up in a moment. But this

afternoon he did not succeed with Sophia, and only partially with

Constance. When he stated that there was to be a public meeting that

very night, and that Constance as a ratepayer ought to go to it and

vote, if her convictions were genuine, she received his chaff with a

mere murmur to the effect that she did not think she should go. Had the

man forgotten that Spot was dead? At length he became grave, and

examined them both as to their ailments, and nodded his head, and

looked into vacancy while meditating upon each case. And then, when he

had inquired where they meant to go for their summer holidays, he

departed.

"Aren't you going to see him out?" Constance whispered to Sophia, who

had shaken hands with him at the drawingroom door. It was Sophia who

did the running about, owing to the state of Constance's sciatic nerve.

Constance had, indeed, become extraordinarily inert, leaving everything

to Sophia.

Sophia shook her head. She hesitated; then approached Constance,

holding out her hand and disclosing the crumpled telegram.

"Look at that!" said she.

Her face frightened Constance, who was always expectant of new

anxieties and troubles. Constance straightened out the paper with

difficulty, and read--

"Mr. Gerald Scales is dangerously ill here. Boldero, 49, Deansgate,

Manchester."

All through the inexpressibly tedious and quite unnecessary call of Dr.

Stirling--(Why had he chosen to call just then? Neither of them was

ill)--Sophia had held that telegram concealed in her hand and its

information concealed in her heart. She had kept her head up, offering

a calm front to the world. She had given no hint of the terrible

explosion--for an explosion it was. Constance was astounded at her

sister's self-control, which entirely passed her comprehension.

Constance felt that worries would never cease, but would rather go on

multiplying until death ended all. First, there had been the frightful

worry of the servant; then the extremely distressing death and burial

of Spot--and now it was Gerald Scales turning up again! With what

violence was the direction of their thoughts now shifted! The

wickedness of maids was a trifle; the death of pets was a trifle. But

the reappearance of Gerald Scales! That involved the possibility of

consequences which could not even be named, so afflictive was the mere

prospect to them. Constance was speechless, and she saw that Sophia was

also speechless.

Of course the event had been bound to happen. People do not vanish

never to be heard of again. The time surely arrives when the secret is

revealed. So Sophia said to herself--now!

She had always refused to consider the effect of Gerald's reappearance.

She had put the idea of it away from her, determined to convince

herself that she had done with him finally and for ever. She had

forgotten him. It was years since he had ceased to disturb her

thoughts--many years. "He MUST be dead," she had persuaded herself. "It

is inconceivable that he should have lived on and never come across me.

If he had been alive and learnt that I had made money, he would

assuredly have come to me. No, he must be dead!"

And he was not dead! The brief telegram overwhelmingly shocked her. Her

life had been calm, regular, monotonous. And now it was thrown into an

indescribable turmoil by five words of a telegram, suddenly, with no

warning whatever. Sophia had the right to say to herself: "I have had

my share of trouble, and more than my share!" The end of her life

promised to be as awful as the beginning. The mere existence of Gerald

Scales was a menace to her. But it was the simple impact of the blow

that affected her supremely, beyond ulterior things. One might have

pictured fate as a cowardly brute who had struck this ageing woman full

in the face, a felling blow, which however had not felled her. She

staggered, but she stuck on her legs. It seemed a shame--one of those

crude, spectacular shames which make the blood boil--that the gallant,

defenceless creature should be so maltreated by the bully, destiny.

"Oh, Sophia!" Constance moaned. "What trouble is this?"

Sophia's lip curled with a disgusted air. Under that she hid her

suffering.

She had not seen him for thirty-six years. He must be over seventy

years of age, and he had turned up again like a bad penny, doubtless a

disgrace! What had he been doing in those thirty-six years? He was an

old, enfeebled man now! He must be a pretty sight! And he lay at

Manchester, not two hours away!

Whatever feelings were in Sophia's heart, tenderness was not among

them. As she collected her wits from the stroke, she was principally

aware of the sentiment of fear. She recoiled from the future.

"What shall you do?" Constance asked. Constance was weeping.

Sophia tapped her foot, glancing out of the window.

"Shall you go to see him?" Constance continued.

"Of course," said Sophia. "I must!"

She hated the thought of going to see him. She flinched from it. She

felt herself under no moral obligation to go. Why should she go? Gerald

was nothing to her, and had no claim on her of any kind. This she

honestly believed. And yet she knew that she must go to him. She knew

it to be impossible that she should not go.

"Now?" demanded Constance.

Sophia nodded.

"What about the trains? ... Oh, you poor dear!" The mere idea of the

journey to Manchester put Constance out of her wits, seeming a business

of unparalleled complexity and difficulty.

"Would you like me to come with you?"

"Oh no! I must go by myself."

Constance was relieved by this. They could not have left the servant in

the house alone, and the idea of shutting up the house without notice

or preparation presented itself to Constance as too fantastic.

By a common instinct they both descended to the parlour.

"Now, what about a time-table? What about a time-table?" Constance

mumbled on the stairs. She wiped her eyes resolutely. "I wonder

whatever in this world has brought him at last to that Mr. Boldero's in

Deansgate?" she asked the walls.

As they came into the parlour, a great motor-car drove up before the

door, and when the pulsations of its engine had died away, Dick Povey

hobbled from the driver's seat to the pavement. In an instant he was

hammering at the door in his lively style. There was no avoiding him.

The door had to be opened. Sophia opened it. Dick Povey was over forty,

but he looked considerably younger. Despite his lameness, and the fact

that his lameness tended to induce corpulence, he had a dashing air,

and his face, with its short, light moustache, was boyish. He seemed to

be always upon some joyous adventure.

"Well, aunties," he greeted the sisters, having perceived Constance

behind Sophia; he often so addressed them. "Has Dr. Stirling warned you

that I was coming? Why haven't you got your things on?"

Sophia observed a young woman in the car.

"Yes," said he, following her gaze, "you may as well look. Come down,

miss. Come down, Lily. You've got to go through with it." The young

woman, delicately confused and blushing, obeyed. "This is Miss Lily

Holl," he went on. "I don't know whether you would remember her. I

don't think you do. It's not often she comes to the Square. But, of

course, she knows you by sight. Granddaughter of your old neighbour,

Alderman Holl! We are engaged to be married, if you please."

Constance and Sophia could not decently pour out their griefs on the

top of such news. The betrothed pair had to come in and be

congratulated upon their entry into the large realms of mutual love.

But the sisters, even in their painful quandary, could not help

noticing what a nice, quiet, ladylike girl Lily Holl was. Her one fault

appeared to be that she was too quiet. Dick Povey was not the man to

pass time in formalities, and he was soon urging departure.

"I'm sorry we can't come," said Sophia. "I've got to go to Manchester

now. We are in great trouble."

"Yes, in great trouble," Constance weakly echoed.

Dick's face clouded sympathetically. And both the affianced began to

see that to which the egotism of their happiness had blinded them. They

felt that long, long years had elapsed since these ageing ladies had

experienced the delights which they were feeling.

"Trouble? I'm sorry to hear that!" said Dick.

"Can you tell me the trains to Manchester?" asked Sophia.

"No," said Dick, quickly, "But I can drive you there quicker than any

train, if it's urgent. Where do you want to go to?"

"Deansgate," Sophia faltered.

"Look here," said Dick, "it's half-past three. Put yourself in my

hands; I'll guarantee at Deansgate you shall be before half-past five.

I'll look after you."

"But----"

"There isn't any 'but.' I'm quite free for the afternoon and evening."

At first the suggestion seemed absurd, especially to Constance. But

really it was too tempting to be declined. While Sophia made ready for

the journey, Dick and Lily Holl and Constance conversed in low, solemn

tones. The pair were waiting to be enlightened as to the nature of the

trouble; Constance, however, did not enlighten them. How could

Constance say to them: "Sophia has a husband that she hasn't seen for

thirty-six years, and he's dangerously ill, and they've telegraphed for

her to go?" Constance could not. It did not even occur to Constance to

order a cup of tea.

III

Dick Povey kept his word. At a quarter-past five he drew up in front of

No. 49, Deansgate, Manchester. "There you are!" he said, not without

pride. "Now, we'll come back in about a couple of hours or so, just to

take your orders, whatever they are." He was very comforting, with his

suggestion that in him Sophia had a sure support in the background.

Without many words Sophia went straight into the shop. It looked like a

jeweller's shop, and a shop for bargains generally. Only the

conventional sign over a side-entrance showed that at heart it was a

pawnbroker's. Mr. Till Boldero did a nice business in the Five Towns,

and in other centres near Manchester, by selling silver-ware

second-hand, or nominally second hand, to persons who wished to make

presents to other persons or to themselves. He would send anything by

post on approval. Occasionally he came to the Five Towns, and he had

once, several years before, met Constance. They had talked. He was the

son of a cousin of the late great and wealthy Boldero, sleeping partner

in Birkinshaws, and Gerald's uncle. It was from Constance that he had

learnt of Sophia's return to Bursley. Constance had often remarked to

Sophia what a superior man Mr. Till Boldero was.

The shop was narrow and lofty. It seemed like a menagerie for trapped

silver-ware. In glass cases right up to the dark ceiling silver vessels

and instruments of all kinds lay confined. The top of the counter was a

glass prison containing dozens of gold watches, together with

snuff-boxes, enamels, and other antiquities. The front of the counter

was also glazed, showing vases and large pieces of porcelain. A few

pictures in heavy gold frames were perched about. There was a case of

umbrellas with elaborate handles and rich tassels. There were a couple

of statuettes. The counter, on the customers' side, ended in a glass

screen on which were the words 'Private Office.' On the seller's side

the prospect was closed by a vast safe. A tall young man was fumbling

in this safe. Two women sat on customers' chairs, leaning against the

crystal counter. The young man came towards them from the safe, bearing

a tray.

"How much is that goblet?" asked one of the women, raising her parasol

dangerously among such fragility and pointing to one object among many

in a case high up from the ground.

"That, madam?"

"Yes."

"Thirty-five pounds."

The young man disposed his tray on the counter. It was packed with more

gold watches, adding to the extraordinary glitter and shimmer of the

shop. He chose a small watch from the regiment.

"Now, this is something I can recommend," he said. "It's made by

Cuthbert Butler of Blackburn. I can guarantee you that for five years."

He spoke as though he were the accredited representative of the Bank of

England, with calm and absolute assurance.

The effect upon Sophia was mysteriously soothing. She felt that she was

among honest men. The young man raised his head towards her with a

questioning, deferential gesture.

"Can I see Mr. Boldero?" she asked. "Mrs. Scales."

The young man's face changed instantly to a sympathetic comprehension.

"Yes, madam. I'll fetch him at once," said he, and he disappeared

behind the safe. The two customers discussed the watch. Then the door

opened in the glass screen, and a portly, middle-aged man showed

himself. He was dressed in blue broad-cloth, with a turned-down collar

and a small black tie. His waistcoat displayed a plain but heavy gold

watch-chain, and his cuff-links were of plain gold. His eye-glasses

were gold-rimmed. He had grey hair, beard and moustache, but on the

backs of his hands grew a light brown hair. His appearance was

strangely mild, dignified, and confidence-inspiring. He was, in fact,

one of the most respected tradesmen in Manchester.

He peered forward, looking over his eye-glasses, which he then took

off, holding them up in the air by their short handle. Sophia had

approached him.

"Mrs. Scales?" he said, in a very quiet, very benevolent voice. Sophia

nodded. "Please come this way." He took her hand, squeezing it

commiseratingly, and drew her into the sanctum. "I didn't expect you so

soon," he said. "I looked up th' trains, and I didn't see how you could

get here before six."

Sophia explained.

He led her further, through the private office, into a sort of parlour,

and asked her to sit down. And he too sat down. Sophia waited, as it

were, like a suitor.

"I'm afraid I've got bad news for you, Mrs. Scales," he said, still in

that mild, benevolent voice.

"He's dead?" Sophia asked.

Mr. Till Boldero nodded. "He's dead. I may as well tell you that he had

passed away before I telegraphed. It all happened very, very suddenly."

He paused. "Very, very suddenly!"

"Yes," said Sophia, weakly. She was conscious of a profound sadness

which was not grief, though it resembled grief. And she had also a

feeling that she was responsible to Mr. Till Boldero for anything

untoward that might have occurred to him by reason of Gerald.

"Yes," said Mr. Till Boldero, deliberately and softly. "He came in last

night just as we were closing. We had very heavy rain here. I don't

know how it was with you. He was wet, in a dreadful state, simply

dreadful. Of course, I didn't recognize him. I'd never seen him before,

so far as my recollection goes. He asked me if I was the son of Mr.

Till Boldero that had this shop in 1866. I said I was. 'Well,' he says,

'you're the only connection I've got. My name's Gerald Scales. My

mother was your father's cousin. Can you do anything for me?' he says.

I could see he was ill. I had him in here. When I found he couldn't eat

nor drink I thought I'd happen better send for th' doctor. The doctor

got him to bed. He passed away at one o'clock this afternoon. I was

very sorry my wife wasn't here to look after things a bit better. But

she's at Southport, not well at all."

"What was it?" Sophia asked briefly.

Mr. Boldero indicated the enigmatic. "Exhaustion, I suppose," he

replied.

"He's here?" demanded Sophia, lifting her eyes to possible bedrooms.

"Yes," said Mr. Boldero. "I suppose you would wish to see him?"

"Yes," said Sophia.

"You haven't seen him for a long time, your sister told me?" Mr.

Boldero murmured, sympathetically.

"Not since 'seventy," said Sophia.

"Eh, dear! Eh, dear!" ejaculated Mr. Boldero. "I fear it's been a sad

business for ye, Mrs. Scales. Not since 'seventy!" He sighed. "You must

take it as well as you can. I'm not one as talks much, but I

sympathize, with you. I do that! I wish my wife had been here to

receive you."

Tears came into Sophia's eyes.

"Nay, nay!" he said. "You must bear up now!"

"It's you that make me cry," said Sophia, gratefully. "You were very

good to take him in. It must have been exceedingly trying for you."

"Oh," he protested, "you mustn't talk like that. I couldn't leave a

Boldero on the pavement, and an old man at that! ... Oh, to think that

if he'd only managed to please his uncle he might ha' been one of the

richest men in Lancashire. But then there'd ha' been no Boldero

Institute at Strangeways!" he added.

They both sat silent a moment.

"Will you come now? Or will you wait a bit?" asked Mr. Boldero, gently.

"Just as you wish. I'm sorry as my wife's away, that I am!"

"I'll come now," said Sophia, firmly. But she was stricken.

He conducted her up a short, dark flight of stairs, which gave on a

passage, and at the end of the passage was a door ajar. He pushed the

door open. "I'll leave you for a moment," he said, always in the same

very restrained tone. "You'll find me downstairs, there, if you want

me." And he moved away with hushed, deliberate tread.

Sophia went into the room, of which the white blind was drawn. She

appreciated Mr. Boldero's consideration in leaving her. She was

trembling. But when she saw, in the pale gloom, the face of an aged man

peeping out from under a white sheet on a naked mattress, she started

back, trembling no more--rather transfixed into an absolute rigidity.

That was no conventional, expected shock that she had received. It was

a genuine unforeseen shock, the most violent that she had ever had. In

her mind she had not pictured Gerald as a very old man. She knew that

he was old; she had said to herself that he must be very old, well over

seventy. But she had not pictured him. This face on the bed was

painfully, pitiably old. A withered face, with the shiny skin all drawn

into wrinkles! The stretched skin under the jaw was like the skin of a

plucked fowl. The cheek-bones stood up, and below them were deep

hollows, almost like egg-cups. A short, scraggy white beard covered the

lower part of the face. The hair was scanty, irregular, and quite

white; a little white hair grew in the ears. The shut mouth obviously

hid toothless gums, for the lips were sucked in. The eyelids were as if

pasted down over the eyes, fitting them like kid. All the skin was

extremely pallid; it seemed brittle. The body, whose outlines were

clear under the sheet, was very small, thin, shrunk, pitiable as the

face. And on the face was a general expression of final fatigue, of

tragic and acute exhaustion; such as made Sophia pleased that the

fatigue and exhaustion had been assuaged in rest, while all the time

she kept thinking to herself horribly: "Oh! how tired he must have

been!"

Sophia then experienced a pure and primitive emotion, uncoloured by any

moral or religious quality. She was not sorry that Gerald had wasted

his life, nor that he was a shame to his years and to her. The manner

of his life was of no importance. What affected her was that he had

once been young, and that he had grown old, and was now dead. That was

all. Youth and vigour had come to that. Youth and vigour always came to

that. Everything came to that. He had ill-treated her; he had abandoned

her; he had been a devious rascal; but how trivial were such

accusations against him! The whole of her huge and bitter grievance

against him fell to pieces and crumbled. She saw him young, and proud,

and strong, as for instance when he had kissed her lying on the bed in

that London hotel--she forgot the name--in 1866; and now he was old,

and worn, and horrible, and dead. It was the riddle of life that was

puzzling and killing her. By the corner of her eye, reflected in the

mirror of a wardrobe near the bed, she glimpsed a tall, forlorn woman,

who had once been young and now was old; who had once exulted in

abundant strength, and trodden proudly on the neck of circumstance, and

now was old. He and she had once loved and burned and quarrelled in the

glittering and scornful pride of youth. But time had worn them out.

"Yet a little while," she thought, "and I shall be lying on a bed like

that! And what shall I have lived for? What is the meaning of it?" The

riddle of life itself was killing her, and she seemed to drown in a sea

of inexpressible sorrow.

Her memory wandered hopelessly among those past years. She saw Chirac

with his wistful smile. She saw him whipped over the roof of the Gare

du Nord at the tail of a balloon. She saw old Niepce. She felt his

lecherous arm round her. She was as old now as Niepce had been then.

Could she excite lust now? Ah! the irony of such a question! To be

young and seductive, to be able to kindle a man's eye--that seemed to

her the sole thing desirable. Once she had been so! ... Niepce must

certainly have been dead for years. Niepce, the obstinate and hopeful

voluptuary, was nothing but a few bones in a coffin now!

She was acquainted with affliction in that hour. All that she had

previously suffered sank into insignificance by the side of that

suffering.

She turned to the veiled window and idly pulled the blind and looked

out. Huge red and yellow cars were swimming in thunder along Deansgate;

lorries jolted and rattled; the people of Manchester hurried along the

pavements, apparently unconscious that all their doings were vain.

Yesterday he too had been in Deansgate, hungry for life, hating the

idea of death! What a figure he must have made! Her heart dissolved in

pity for him. She dropped the blind.

"My life has been too terrible!" she thought. "I wish I was dead. I

have been through too much. It is monstrous, and I cannot stand it. I

do not want to die, but I wish I was dead."

There was a discreet knock on the door.

"Come in," she said, in a calm, resigned, cheerful voice. The sound had

recalled her with the swiftness of a miracle to the unconquerable

dignity of human pride.

Mr. Till Boldero entered.

"I should like you to come downstairs and drink a cup of tea," he said.

He was a marvel of tact and good nature. "My wife is unfortunately not

here, and the house is rather at sixes and sevens; but I have sent out

for some tea."

She followed him downstairs into the parlour. He poured out a cup of

tea.

"I was forgetting," she said. "I am forbidden tea. I mustn't drink it."

She looked at the cup, tremendously tempted. She longed for tea. An

occasional transgression could not harm her. But no! She would not

drink it.

"Then what can I get you?"

"If I could have just milk and water," she said meekly.

Mr. Boldero emptied the cup into the slop basin, and began to fill it

again.

"Did he tell you anything?" she asked, after a considerable silence.

"Nothing," said Mr. Boldero in his low, soothing tones. "Nothing except

that he had come from Liverpool. Judging from his shoes I should say he

must have walked a good bit of the way."

"At his age!" murmured Sophia, touched.

"Yes," sighed Mr. Boldero. "He must have been in great straits. You

know, he could scarcely talk at all. By the way, here are his clothes.

I have had them put aside."

Sophia saw a small pile of clothes on a chair. She examined the suit,

which was still damp, and its woeful shabbiness pained her. The linen

collar was nearly black, its stud of bone. As for the boots, she had

noticed such boots on the feet of tramps. She wept now. These were the

clothes of him who had once been a dandy living at the rate of fifty

pounds a week.

"No luggage or anything, of course?" she muttered.

"No," said Mr. Boldero. "In the pockets there was nothing whatever but

this."

He went to the mantelpiece and picked up a cheap, cracked letter case,

which Sophia opened. In it were a visiting card--'Senorita Clemenzia

Borja'--and a bill-head of the Hotel of the Holy Spirit, Concepcion del

Uruguay, on the back of which a lot of figures had been scrawled.

"One would suppose," said Mr. Boldero, "that he had come from South

America."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing."

Gerald's soul had not been compelled to abandon much in the haste of

its flight.

A servant announced that Mrs. Scales's friends were waiting for her

outside in the motor-car. Sophia glanced at Mr. Till Boldero with an

exacerbated anxiety on her face.

"Surely they don't expect me to go back with them tonight!" she said.

"And look at all there is to be done!"

Mr. Till Boldero's kindness was then redoubled. "You can do nothing for

HIM now," he said. "Tell me your wishes about the funeral. I will

arrange everything. Go back to your sister to-night. She will be

nervous about you. And return tomorrow or the day after.... No! It's no

trouble, I assure you!"

She yielded.

Thus towards eight o'clock, when Sophia had eaten a little under Mr.

Boldero's superintendence, and the pawnshop was shut up, the motor-car

started again for Bursley, Lily Holl being beside her lover and Sophia

alone in the body of the car. Sophia had told them nothing of the

nature of her mission. She was incapable of talking to them. They saw

that she was in a condition of serious mental disturbance. Under cover

of the noise of the car, Lily said to Dick that she was sure Mrs.

Scales was ill, and Dick, putting his lips together, replied that he

meant to be in King Street at nine-thirty at the latest. From time to

time Lily surreptitiously glanced at Sophia--a glance of apprehensive

inspection, or smiled at her silently; and Sophia vaguely responded to

the smile.

In half an hour they had escaped from the ring of Manchester and were

on the county roads of Cheshire, polished, flat, sinuous. It was the

season of the year when there is no night--only daylight and twilight;

when the last silver of dusk remains obstinately visible for hours. And

in the open country, under the melancholy arch of evening, the sadness

of the earth seemed to possess Sophia anew. Only then did she realize

the intensity of the ordeal through which she was passing.

To the south of Congleton one of the tyres softened, immediately after

Dick had lighted his lamps. He stopped the car and got down again. They

were two miles from Astbury, the nearest village. He had just, with

the resignation of experience, reached for the tool-bag, when Lily

exclaimed: "Is she asleep, or what?" Sophia was not asleep, but she was

apparently not conscious.

It was a difficult and a trying situation for two lovers. Their voices

changed momentarily to the tone of alarm and consternation, and then

grew firm again. Sophia showed life but not reason. Lily could feel the

poor old lady's heart.

"Well, there's nothing for it!" said Dick, briefly, when all their

efforts failed to rouse her.

"What--shall you do?"

"Go straight home as quick as I can on three tyres. We must get her

over to this side, and you must hold her. Like that we shall keep the

weight off the other side."

He pitched back the tool-bag into its box. Lily admired his decision.

It was in this order, no longer under the spell of the changing beauty

of nocturnal landscapes, that they finished the journey. Constance had

opened the door before the car came to a stop in the gloom of King

Street. The young people considered that she bore the shock well,

though the carrying into the house of Sophia's inert, twitching body,

with its hat forlornly awry, was a sight to harrow a soul sturdier than

Constance.

When that was done, Dick said curtly: "I'm off. You stay here, of

course."

"Where are you going?" asked Lily.

"Doctor!" snapped Dick, hobbling rapidly down the steps.

IV

The extraordinary violence of the turn in affairs was what chiefly

struck Constance, though it did not overwhelm her. Less than twelve

hours before--nay, scarcely six hours before--she and Sophia had been

living their placid and monotonous existence, undisturbed by anything

worse than the indisposition or death of dogs, or the perversity of a

servant. And now, the menacing Gerald Scales having reappeared,

Sophia's form lay mysterious and affrightening on the sofa; and she and

Lily Holl, a girl whom she had not met till that day, were staring at

Sophia side by side, intimately sharing the same alarm. Constance rose

to the crisis. She no longer had Sophia's energy and decisive

peremptoriness to depend on, and the Baines in her was awakened. All

her daily troubles sank away to their proper scale of unimportance.

Neither the young woman nor the old one knew what to do. They could

loosen clothes, vainly offer restoratives to the smitten mouth: that

was all. Sophia was not unconscious, as could be judged from her eyes;

but she could not speak, nor make signs; her body was frequently

convulsed. So the two women waited, and the servant waited in the

background. The sight of Sophia had effected an astonishing

transformation in Maud. Maud was a changed girl. Constance could not

recognize, in her eager deferential anxiety to be of use, the pert

naughtiness of the minx. She was altered as a wanton of the middle ages

would have been altered by some miraculous visitation. It might have

been the turning-point in Maud's career!

Doctor Stirling arrived in less than ten minutes. Dick Povey had had

the wit to look for him at the Federation meeting in the Town Hall. And

the advent of the doctor and Dick, noisily, at breakneck speed in the

car, provided a second sensation. The doctor inquired quickly what had

occurred. Nobody could tell him anything. Constance had already

confided to Lily Holl the reason of the visit to Manchester; but that

was the extent of her knowledge. Not a single person in Bursley, except

Sophia, knew what had happened in Manchester. But Constance conjectured

that Gerald Scales was dead--or Sophia would never have returned so

soon. Then the doctor suggested that on the contrary Gerald Scales

might be out of danger. And all then pictured to themselves this

troubling Gerald Scales, this dark and sinister husband that had caused

such a violent upheaval.

Meanwhile the doctor was at work. He sent Dick Povey to knock up

Critchlow's, if the shop should be closed, and obtain a drug. Then,

after a time, he lifted Sophia, just as she was, like a bundle on his

shoulder, and carried her single-handed upstairs to the second floor.

He had recently been giving a course of instruction to enthusiasts of

the St. John's Ambulance Association in Bursley. The feat had an air of

the superhuman. Above all else it remained printed on Constance's mind:

the burly doctor treading delicately and carefully on the crooked,

creaking stairs, his precautions against damaging Sophia by brusque

contacts, his stumble at the two steps in the middle of the corridor;

Sophia's horribly limp head and loosened hair; and then the tender

placing of her on the bed, and the doctor's long breath and flourish of

his large handkerchief, all that under the crude lights and shadows of

gas jets! The doctor was nonplussed. Constance gave him a second-hand

account of Sophia's original attack in Paris, roughly as she had heard

it from Sophia. He at once said that it could not have been what the

French doctor had said it was. Constance shrugged her shoulders. She

was not surprised. For her there was necessarily something of the

charlatan about a French doctor. She said she only knew what Sophia had

told her. After a time Dr. Stirling determined to try electricity, and

Dick Povey drove him up to the surgery to fetch his apparatus. The

women were left alone again. Constance was very deeply impressed by

Lily Holl's sensible, sympathetic attitude. "Whatever I should have

done without Miss Lily I don't know!" she used to exclaim afterwards.

Even Maud was beyond praise. It seemed to be the middle of the night

when Dr. Stirling came back, but it was barely eleven o'clock, and

people were only just returning from Hanbridge Theatre and Hanbridge

Music Hall. The use of the electrical apparatus was a dead spectacle.

Sophia's inertness under it was agonizing. They waited, as it were,

breathless for the result. And there was no result. Both injections and

electricity had entirely failed to influence the paralysis of Sophia's

mouth and throat. Everything had failed. "Nothing to do but wait a

bit!" said the doctor quietly. They waited in the chamber. Sophia

seemed to be in a kind of coma. The distortion of her handsome face was

more marked as time passed. The doctor spoke now and then in a low

voice. He said that the attack had ultimately been determined by cold

produced by rapid motion in the automobile. Dick Povey whispered that

he must run over to Hanbridge and let Lily's parents know that there

was no cause for alarm on her account, and that he would return at

once. He was very devoted. On the landing out-side the bedroom, the

doctor murmured to him: "U.P." And Dick nodded. They were great friends.

At intervals the doctor, who never knew when he was beaten, essayed new

methods of dealing with Sophia's case. New symptoms followed. It was

half-past twelve when, after gazing with prolonged intensity at the

patient, and after having tested her mouth and heart, he rose slowly

and looked at Constance.

"It's over?" said Constance.

And he very slightly moved his head. "Come downstairs, please," he

enjoined her, in a pause that ensued. Constance was amazingly

courageous. The doctor was very solemn and very kind; Constance had

never before seen him to such heroic advantage. He led her with

infinite gentleness out of the room. There was nothing to stay for;

Sophia had gone. Constance wanted to stay by Sophia's body; but it was

the rule that the stricken should be led away, the doctor observed this

classic rule, and Constance felt that he was right and that she must

obey. Lily Holl followed. The servant, learning the truth by the

intuition accorded to primitive natures, burst into loud sobs, yelling

that Sophia had been the most excellent mistress that servant ever had.

The doctor angrily told her not to stand blubbering there, but to go

into her kitchen and shut the door if she couldn't control herself. All

his accumulated nervous agitation was discharged on Maud like a

thunderclap. Constance continued to behave wonderfully. She was the

admiration of the doctor and Lily Holl. Then Dick Povey came back. It

was settled that Lily should pass the night with Constance. At last the

doctor and Dick departed together, the doctor undertaking the mortuary

arrangements. Maud was hunted to bed.

Early in the morning Constance rose up from her own bed. It was five

o'clock, and there had been daylight for two hours already. She moved

noiselessly and peeped over the foot of the bed at the sofa. Lily was

quietly asleep there, breathing with the softness of a child. Lily

would have deemed that she was a very mature woman, who had seen life

and much of it. Yet to Constance her face and attitude had the

exquisite quality of a child's. She was not precisely a pretty girl,

but her features, the candid expression of her disposition, produced an

impression that was akin to that of beauty. Her abandonment was

complete. She had gone through the night unscathed, and was now

renewing herself in calm, oblivious sleep. Her ingenuous girlishness

was apparent then. It seemed as if all her wise and sweet behaviour of

the evening could have been nothing but so many imitative gestures. It

seemed impossible that a being so young and fresh could have really

experienced the mood of which her gestures had been the expression. Her

strong virginal simplicity made Constance vaguely sad for her.

Creeping out of the room, Constance climbed to the second floor in her

dressing-gown, and entered the other chamber. She was obliged to look

again upon Sophia's body. Incredible swiftness of calamity! Who could

have foreseen it? Constance was less desolated than numbed. She was as

yet only touching the fringe of her bereavement. She had not begun to

think of herself. She was drenched, as she gazed at Sophia's body, not

by pity for herself, but by compassion for the immense disaster of her

sister's life. She perceived fully now for the first time the greatness

of that disaster. Sophia's charm and Sophia's beauty--what profit had

they been to their owner? She saw pictures of Sophia's career,

distorted and grotesque images formed in her untravelled mind from

Sophia's own rare and compressed recitals. What a career! A brief

passion, and then nearly thirty years in a boarding-house! And Sophia

had never had a child; had never known either the joy or the pain of

maternity. She had never even had a true home till, in all her sterile

splendour, she came to Bursley. And she had ended--thus! This was the

piteous, ignominious end of Sophia's wondrous gifts of body and soul.

Hers had not been a life at all. And the reason? It is strange how fate

persists in justifying the harsh generalizations of Puritan morals, of

the morals in which Constance had been brought up by her stern parents!

Sophia had sinned. It was therefore inevitable that she should suffer.

An adventure such as she had in wicked and capricious pride undertaken

with Gerald Scales, could not conclude otherwise than it had concluded.

It could have brought nothing but evil. There was no getting away from

these verities, thought Constance. And she was to be excused for

thinking that all modern progress and cleverness was as naught, and

that the world would be forced to return upon its steps and start again

in the path which it had left.

Up to within a few days of her death people had been wont to remark

that Mrs. Scales looked as young as ever, and that she was as bright

and as energetic as ever. And truly, regarding Sophia from a little

distance--that handsome oval, that erect carriage of a slim body, that

challenging eye!--no one would have said that she was in her sixtieth

year. But look at her now, with her twisted face, her sightless orbs,

her worn skin--she did not seem sixty, but seventy! She was like

something used, exhausted, and thrown aside! Yes, Constance's heart

melted in an anguished pity for that stormy creature. And mingled with

the pity was a stern recognition of the handiwork of divine justice. To

Constance's lips came the same phrase as had come to the lips of Samuel

Povey on a different occasion: God is not mocked! The ideas of her

parents and her grandparents had survived intact in Constance. It is

true that Constance's father would have shuddered in Heaven could he

have seen Constance solitarily playing cards of a night. But in spite

of cards, and of a son who never went to chapel, Constance, under the

various influences of destiny, had remained essentially what her father

had been. Not in her was the force of evolution manifest. There are

thousands such.

Lily, awake, and reclothed with that unreal mien of a grown and

comprehending woman, stepped quietly into the room, searching for the

poor old thing, Constance. The layer-out had come.

By the first post was delivered a letter addressed to Sophia by Mr.

Till Boldero. From its contents the death of Gerald Scales was clear.

There seemed then to be nothing else for Constance to do. What had to

be done was done for her. And stronger wills than hers put her to bed.

Cyril was telegraphed for. Mr. Critchlow called, Mrs. Critchlow

following--a fussy infliction, but useful in certain matters. Mr.

Critchlow was not allowed to see Constance. She could hear his high

grating voice in the corridor. She had to lie calm, and the sudden

tranquillity seemed strange after the feverish violence of the night.

Only twenty-four hours since, and she had been worrying about the death

of a dog! With a body crying for sleep, she dozed off, thoughts of the

mystery of life merging into the incoherence of dreams.

The news was abroad in the Square before nine o'clock. There were

persons who had witnessed the arrival of the motorcar, and the transfer

of Sophia to the house. Untruthful rumours had spread as to the manner

of Gerald Scales's death. Some said that he had dramatically committed

suicide. But the town, though titillated, was not moved as it would

have been moved by a similar event twenty years, or even ten years

earlier. Times had changed in Bursley. Bursley was more sophisticated

than in the old days.

Constance was afraid lest Cyril, despite the seriousness of the

occasion, might exhibit his customary tardiness in coming. She had long

since learnt not to rely upon him. But he came the same evening. His

behaviour was in every way perfect. He showed quiet but genuine grief

for the death of his aunt, and he was a model of consideration for his

mother. Further, he at once assumed charge of all the arrangements, in

regard both to Sophia and to her husband. Constance was surprised at

the ease which he displayed in the conduct of practical affairs, and

the assurance with which he gave orders. She had never seen him direct

anything before. He said, indeed, that he had never directed anything

before, but that there appeared to him to be no difficulties. Whereas

Constance had figured a tiresome series of varied complications. As to

the burial of Sophia, Cyril was vigorously in favour of an absolutely

private funeral; that is to say, a funeral at which none but himself

should be present. He seemed to have a passionate objection to any sort

of parade. Constance agreed with him. But she said that it would be

impossible not to invite Mr. Critchlow, Sophia's trustee, and that if

Mr. Critchlow were invited certain others must be invited. Cyril asked:

"Why impossible?" Constance said: "Because it would be impossible.

Because Mr. Critchlow would be hurt." Cyril asked: "What does it matter

if he is hurt?" and suggested that Mr. Critchlow would get over his

damage. Constance grew more serious. The discussion threatened to be

warm. Suddenly Cyril yielded. "All right, Mrs. Plover, all right! It

shall be exactly as you choose," he said, in a gentle, humouring tone.

He had not called her 'Mrs. Plover' for years. She thought the hour

badly chosen for verbal pleasantry, but he was so kind that she made no

complaint. Thus there were six people at Sophia's funeral, including

Mr. Critchlow. No refreshments were offered. The mourners separated at

the church. When both funerals were accomplished Cyril sat down and

played the harmonium softly, and said that it had kept well in tune. He

was extraordinarily soothing.

He had now reached the age of thirty-three. His habits were as

industrious as ever, his preoccupation with his art as keen. But he had

achieved no fame, no success. He earned nothing, living in comfort on

an allowance from his mother. He seldom spoke of his plans and never of

his hopes. He had in fact settled down into a dilletante, having learnt

gently to scorn the triumphs which he lacked the force to win. He

imagined that industry and a regular existence were sufficient

justification in themselves for any man's life. Constance had dropped

the habit of expecting him to astound the world. He was rather grave

and precise in manner, courteous and tepid, with a touch of

condescension towards his environment; as though he were continually

permitting the perspicacious to discern that he had nothing to

learn--if the truth were known! His humour had assumed a modified form.

He often smiled to himself. He was unexceptionable.

On the day after Sophia's funeral he set to work to design a simple

stone for his aunt's tomb. He said he could not tolerate the ordinary

gravestone, which always looked, to him, as if the wind might blow it

over, thus negativing the idea of solidity. His mother did not in the

least understand him. She thought the lettering of his tombstone

affected and finicking. But she let it pass without comment, being

secretly very flattered that he should have deigned to design a stone

at all.

Sophia had left all her money to Cyril, and had made him the sole

executor of her will. This arrangement had been agreed with Constance.

The sisters thought it was the best plan. Cyril ignored Mr. Critchlow

entirely, and went to a young lawyer at Hanbridge, a friend of his and

of Matthew Peel-Swynnerton's. Mr. Critchlow, aged and unaccustomed to

interference, had to render accounts of his trusteeship to this young

man, and was incensed. The estate was proved at over thirty-five

thousand pounds. In the main, Sophia had been careful, and had even

been parsimonious. She had often told Constance that they ought to

spend money much more freely, and she had had a few brief fits of

extravagance. But the habit of stern thrift, begun in 1870 and

practised without any intermission till she came to England in 1897,

had been too strong for her theories. The squandering of money pained

her. And she could not, in her age, devise expensive tastes.

Cyril showed no emotion whatever on learning himself the inheritor of

thirty-five thousand pounds. He did not seem to care. He spoke of the

sum as a millionaire might have spoken of it. In justice to him it is

to be said that he cared nothing for wealth, except in so far as wealth

could gratify his eye and ear trained to artistic voluptuousness. But,

for his mother's sake, and for the sake of Bursley, he might have

affected a little satisfaction. His mother was somewhat hurt. His

behaviour caused her to revert in meditation again and again to the

futility of Sophia's career, and the waste of her attributes. She had

grown old and hard in joyless years in order to amass this money which

Cyril would spend coldly and ungratefully, never thinking of the

immense effort and endless sacrifice which had gone to its collection.

He would spend it as carelessly as though he had picked it up in the

street. As the days went by and Constance realized her own grief, she

also realized more and more the completeness of the tragedy of Sophia's

life. Headstrong Sophia had deceived her mother, and for the deception

had paid with thirty years of melancholy and the entire frustration of

her proper destiny.

After haunting Bursley for a fortnight in elegant black, Cyril said,

without any warning, one night: "I must go the day after to-morrow,

mater." And he told her of a journey to Hungary which he had long since

definitely planned with Matthew Peel-Swynnerton, and which could not be

postponed, as it comprised 'business.' He had hitherto breathed no word

of this. He was as secretive as ever. As to her holiday, he suggested

that she should arrange to go away with the Holls and Dick Povey. He

approved of Lily Holl and of Dick Povey. Of Dick Povey he said: "He's

one of the most remarkable chaps in the Five Towns." And he had the air

of having made Dick's reputation. Constance, knowing there was no

appeal, accepted the sentence of loneliness. Her health was singularly

good.

When he was gone she said to herself: "Scarcely a fortnight and Sophia

was here at this table!" She would remember every now and then, with a

faint shock, that poor, proud, masterful Sophia was dead.

CHAPTER V

END OF CONSTANCE

I

When, on a June afternoon about twelve months later, Lily Holl walked

into Mrs. Povey's drawing-room overlooking the Square, she found a

calm, somewhat optimistic old lady--older than her years--which were

little more than sixty--whose chief enemies were sciatica and

rheumatism. The sciatica was a dear enemy of long standing, always

affectionately referred to by the forgiving Constance as 'my sciatica';

the rheumatism was a new-comer, unprivileged, spoken of by its victim

apprehensively and yet disdainfully as 'this rheumatism.' Constance was

now very stout. She sat in a low easy-chair between the oval table and

the window, arrayed in black silk. As the girl Lily came in, Constance

lifted her head with a bland smile, and Lily kissed her, contentedly.

Lily knew that she was a welcome visitor. These two had become as

intimate as the difference between their ages would permit; of the two,

Constance was the more frank. Lily as well as Constance was in

mourning. A few months previously her aged grandfather, 'Holl, the

grocer,' had died. The second of his two sons, Lily's father, had then

left the business established by the brothers at Hanbridge in order to

manage, for a time, the parent business in St. Luke's Square. Alderman

Holl's death had delayed Lily's marriage. Lily took tea with Constance,

or at any rate paid a call, four or five times a week. She listened to

Constance.

Everybody considered that Constance had 'come splendidly through' the

dreadful affair of Sophia's death. Indeed, it was observed that she was

more philosophic, more cheerful, more sweet, than she had been for many

years. The truth was that, though her bereavement had been the cause of

a most genuine and durable sorrow, it had been a relief to her. When

Constance was over fifty, the energetic and masterful Sophia had burst

in upon her lethargic tranquillity and very seriously disturbed the

flow of old habits. Certainly Constance had fought Sophia on the main

point, and won; but on a hundred minor points she had either lost or

had not fought. Sophia had been 'too much' for Constance, and it had

been only by a wearying expenditure of nervous force that Constance had

succeeded in holding a small part of her own against the unconscious

domination of Sophia. The death of Mrs. Scales had put an end to all

the strain, and Constance had been once again mistress in Constance's

house. Constance would never have admitted these facts, even to

herself; and no one would ever have dared to suggest them to her. For

with all her temperamental mildness she had her formidable side.

She was slipping a photograph into a plush-covered photograph album.

"More photographs?" Lily questioned. She had almost exactly the same

benignant smile that Constance had. She seemed to be the

personification of gentleness--one of those feather-beds that some

capricious men occasionally have the luck to marry. She was capable,

with a touch of honest, simple stupidity. All her character was

displayed in the tone in which she said: "More photographs?" It showed

an eager responsive sympathy with Constance's cult for photographs,

also a slight personal fondness for photographs, also a dim perception

that a cult for photographs might be carried to the ridiculous, and a

kind desire to hide all trace of this perception. The voice was thin,

and matched the pale complexion of her delicate face.

Constance's eyes had a quizzical gleam behind her spectacles as she

silently held up the photograph for Lily's inspection.

Lily, sitting down, lowered the corners of her soft lips when she

beheld the photograph, and nodded her head several times, scarce

perceptibly.

"Her ladyship has just given it to me," whispered Constance.

"Indeed!" said Lily, with an extraordinary accent.

'Her ladyship' was the last and best of Constance's servants, a really

excellent creature of thirty, who had known misfortune, and who must

assuredly have been sent to Constance by the old watchful Providence.

They 'got on together' nearly perfectly. Her name was Mary. After ten

years of turmoil, Constance in the matter of servants was now at rest.

"Yes," said Constance. "She's named it to me several times--about

having her photograph taken, and last week I let her go. I told you,

didn't I? I always consider her in every way, all her little fancies

and everything. And the copies came to-day. I wouldn't hurt her

feelings for anything. You may be sure she'll take a look into the

album next time she cleans the room."

Constance and Lily exchanged a glance agreeing that Constance had

affably stretched a point in deciding to put the photograph of a

servant between the same covers with photographs of her family and

friends. It was doubtful whether such a thing had ever been done before.

One photograph usually leads to another, and one photograph album to

another photograph album.

"Pass me that album on the second shelf of the Canterbury; my dear,"

said Constance.

Lily rose vivaciously, as though to see the album on the second shelf

of the Canterbury had been the ambition of her life.

They sat side by side at the table, Lily turning over the pages.

Constance, for all her vast bulk, continually made little nervous

movements. Occasionally she would sniff and occasionally a mysterious

noise would occur in her chest; she always pretended that this noise

was a cough, and would support the pretence by emitting a real cough

immediately after it.

"Why!" exclaimed Lily. "Have I seen that before?"

"I don't know, my dear," said Constance. "HAVE you?"

It was a photograph of Sophia taken a few years previously by 'a very

nice gentleman,' whose acquaintance the sisters had made during a

holiday at Harrogate. It portrayed Sophia on a knoll, fronting the

weather.

"It's Mrs. Scales to the life--I can see that," said Lily.

"Yes," said Constance. "Whenever there was a wind she always stood like

that, and took long deep breaths of it."

This recollection of one of Sophia's habits recalled the whole woman to

Constance's memory, and drew a picture of her character for the girl

who had scarcely known her.

"It's not like ordinary photographs. There's something special about

it," said Lily, enthusiastically. "I don't think I ever saw a

photograph like that."

"I've got another copy of it in my bedroom," said Constance. "I'll give

you this one."

"Oh, Mrs. Povey! I couldn't think--!"

"Yes, yes!" said Constance, removing the photograph from the page.

"Oh, THANK you!" said Lily.

"And that reminds me," said Constance, getting up with great difficulty

from her chair.

"Can I find anything for you?" Lily asked.

"No, no!" said Constance, leaving the room.

She returned in a moment with her jewel-box, a receptacle of ebony with

ivory ornamentations.

"I've always meant to give you this," said Constance, taking from the

box a fine cameo brooch. "I don't seem to fancy wearing it myself. And

I should like to see you wearing it. It was mother's. I believe they're

coming into fashion again. I don't see why you shouldn't wear it while

you're in mourning. They aren't half so strict now about mourning as

they used to be."

"Truly!" murmured Lily, ecstatically. They kissed. Constance seemed to

breathe out benevolence, as with trembling hands she pinned the brooch

at Lily's neck. She lavished the warm treasure of her heart on Lily,

whom she regarded as an almost perfect girl, and who had become the

idol of her latter years.

"What a magnificent old watch!" said Lily, as they delved together in

the lower recesses of the box. "AND the chain to it!"

"That was father's," said Constance. "He always used to swear by it.

When it didn't agree with the Town Hall, he used to say: 'Then th' Town

Hall's wrong.' And it's curious, the Town Hall WAS wrong. You know the

Town Hall clock has never been a good timekeeper. I've been thinking of

giving that watch and chain to Dick."

"HAVE you?" said Lily.

"Yes. It's just as good as it was when father wore it. My husband never

would wear it. He preferred his own. He had little fancies like that.

And Cyril takes after his father." She spoke in her 'dry' tone. "I've

almost decided to give it to Dick--that is, if he behaves himself. Is

he still on with this ballooning?"

Lily Smiled guiltily: "Oh yes!"

"Well," said Constance, "I never heard the like! If he's been up and

come down safely, that ought to be enough for him. I wonder you let him

do it, my dear."

"But how can I stop him? I've no control over him."

"But do you mean to say that he'd still do it if you told him seriously

you didn't want him to?"

"Yes," said Lily; and added: "So I shan't tell him."

Constance nodded her head, musing over the secret nature of men. She

remembered too well the cruel obstinacy of Samuel, who had nevertheless

loved her. And Dick Povey was a thousand times more bizarre than

Samuel. She saw him vividly, a little boy, whizzing down King Street on

a boneshaker, and his cap flying off. Afterwards it had been

motor-cars! Now it was balloons! She sighed. She was struck by the

profound instinctive wisdom just enunciated by the girl.

"Well," she said, "I shall see. I've not made up my mind yet. What's

the young man doing this afternoon, by the way?"

"He's gone to Birmingham to try to sell two motor-lorries. He won't be

back home till late. He's coming over here to-morrow."

It was an excellent illustration of Dick Povey's methods that at this

very moment Lily heard in the Square the sound of a motor-car, which

happened to be Dick's car. She sprang up to look.

"Why!" she cried, flushing. "Here he is now!"

"Bless us, bless us!" muttered Constance, closing the box.

When Dick, having left his car in King Street, limped tempestuously

into the drawing-room, galvanizing it by his abundant vitality into a

new life, he cried joyously: "Sold my lorries! Sold my lorries!" And he

explained that by a charming accident he had disposed of them to a

chance buyer in Hanbridge, just before starting for Birmingham. So he

had telephoned to Birmingham that the matter was 'off,' and then, being

'at a loose end,' he had come over to Bursley in search of his

betrothed. At Holl's shop they had told him that she was with Mrs.

Povey. Constance glanced at him, impressed by his jolly air of success.

He seemed exactly like his breezy and self-confident advertisements in

the Signal. He was absolutely pleased with himself. He triumphed over

his limp--that ever-present reminder of a tragedy. Who would dream, to

look at his blond, laughing, scintillating face, astonishingly young

for his years, that he had once passed through such a night as that on

which his father had killed his mother while he lay immovable and

cursing, with a broken knee, in bed? Constance had heard all about that

scene from her husband, and she paused in wonder at the contrasting

hazards of existence.

Dick Povey brought his hands together with a resounding smack, and then

rubbed them rapidly.

"AND a good price, too!" he exclaimed blithely. "Mrs. Povey, I don't

mind telling you that I've netted seventy pounds odd this afternoon."

Lily's eyes expressed her proud joy.

"I hope pride won't have a fall," said Constance, with a calm smile out

of which peeped a hint of a rebuke. "That's what I hope. I must just go

and see about tea."

"I can't stay for tea--really," said Dick.

"Of course you can," said Constance, positively. "Suppose you'd been at

Birmingham? It's weeks since you stayed to tea."

"Oh, well, thanks!" Dick yielded, rather snubbed.

"Can't I save you a journey, Mrs. Povey?" Lily asked, eagerly

thoughtful.

"No, thank you, my dear. There are one or two little things that need

my attention." And Constance departed with her jewel-box.

Dick, having assured himself that the door was closed, assaulted Lily

with a kiss.

"Been here long?" he inquired.

"About an hour and a half."

"Glad to see me?"

"Oh, Dick!" she protested.

"Old lady's in one of her humours, eh?"

"No, no! Only she was just talking about balloons--you know. She's very

much up in arms."

"You ought to keep her off balloons. Balloons may be the ruin of her

wedding-present to us, my child."

"Dick! How can you talk like that? ... It's all very well saying I

ought to keep her off balloons. You try to keep her off balloons when

once she begins, and see!"

"What started her?"

"She said she was thinking of giving you old Mr. Baines's gold watch

and chain--if you behaved yourself."

"Thank you for nothing!" said Dick. "I don't want it."

"Have you seen it?"

"Have I seen it? I should say I had seen it. She's mentioned it once or

twice before."

"Oh! I didn't know."

"I don't see myself carting that thing about. I much prefer my own.

What do you think of it?"

"Of course it is rather clumsy," said Lily. "But if she offered it to

you, you couldn't refuse it, and you'd simply have to wear it."

"Well, then," said Dick, "I must try to behave myself just badly enough

to keep off the watch, but not badly enough to upset her notions about

wedding-presents."

"Poor old thing!" Lily murmured, compassionately.

Then Lily put her hand silently to her neck.

"What's that?"

"She's just given it to me."

Dick approached very near to examine the cameo brooch. "Hm!" he

murmured. It was an adverse verdict. And Lily coincided with it by a

lift of the eyebrows.

"And I suppose you'll have to wear that!" said Dick.

"She values it as much as anything she's got, poor old thing!" said

Lily. "It belonged to her mother. And she says cameos are coming into

fashion again. It really is rather good, you know."

"I wonder where she learnt that!" said Dick, drily. "I see you've been

suffering from the photographs again."

"Well," said Lily, "I much prefer the photographs to helping her to

play Patience. The way she cheats herself--it's too silly! I--"

She stopped. The door which had after all not been latched, was pushed

open, and the antique Fossette introduced herself painfully into the

room. Fossette had an affection for Dick Povey.

"Well, Methusaleh!" he greeted the animal loudly. She could scarcely

wag her tail, nor shake the hair out of her dim eyes in order to look

up at him. He stooped to pat her.

"That dog does smell," said Lily, bluntly.

"What do you expect? What she wants is the least dose of prussic acid.

She's a burden to herself."

"It's funny that if you venture to hint to Mrs. Povey that the dog is

offensive she gets quite peppery," said Lily.

"Well, that's very simple," said Dick. "Don't hint, that's all! Hold

your nose and your tongue too."

"Dick, I do wish you wouldn't be so absurd."

Constance returned into the room, cutting short the conversation.

"Mrs. Povey," said Dick, in a voice full of gratitude, "Lily has just

been showing me her brooch--"

He noticed that she paid no heed to him, but passed hurriedly to the

window.

"What's amiss in the Square?" Constance exclaimed. "When I was in the

parlour just now I saw a man running along Wedgwood Street, and I said

to myself, what's amiss?"

Dick and Lily joined her at the window.

Several people were hurrying down the Square, and then a man came

running with a doctor from the market-place. All these persons

disappeared from view under the window of Mrs. Povey's drawing-room,

which was over part of Mrs. Critchlow's shop. As the windows of the

shop projected beyond the walls of the house it was impossible, from

the drawing-room window, to see the pavement in front of the shop.

"It must be something on the pavement--or in the shop!" murmured

Constance.

"Oh, ma'am!" said a startled voice behind the three. It was Mary,

original of the photograph, who had run unperceived into the

drawing-room. "They say as Mrs. Critchlow has tried to commit suicide!"

Constance started back. Lily went towards her, with an instinctive

gesture of supporting consolation.

"Maria Critchlow tried to commit suicide!" Constance muttered.

"Yes, ma'am! But they say she's not done it."

"By Jove! I'd better go and see if I can help, hadn't I?" cried Dick

Povey, hobbling off, excited and speedy. "Strange, isn't it?" he

exclaimed afterwards, "how I manage to come in for things? Sheer chance

that I was here to-day! But it's always like that! Somehow something

extraordinary is always happening where I am." And this too ministered

to his satisfaction, and to his zest for life.

II

When, in the evening, after all sorts of comings and goings, he finally

returned to the old lady and the young one, in order to report the

upshot, his demeanour was suitably toned to Constance's mood. The old

lady had been very deeply disturbed by the tragedy, which, as she said,

had passed under her very feet while she was calmly talking to Lily.

The whole truth came out in a short space of time. Mrs. Critchlow was

suffering from melancholia. It appeared that for long she had been

depressed by the failing trade of the shop, which was none of her

fault. The state of the Square had steadily deteriorated. Even the

'Vaults' were not what they once were. Four or five shops had been shut

up, as it were definitely, the landlords having given up hope of

discovering serious tenants. And, of those kept open, the majority were

struggling desperately to make ends meet. Only Holl's and a new upstart

draper, who had widely advertised his dress-making department, were

really flourishing. The confectionery half of Mr. Brindley's business

was disappearing. People would not go to Hanbridge for their bread or

for their groceries, but they would go for their cakes. These electric

trams had simply carried to Hanbridge the cream, and much of the milk,

of Bursley's retail trade. There were unprincipled tradesmen in

Hanbridge ready to pay the car-fares of any customer who spent a crown

in their establishments. Hanbridge was the geographical centre of the

Five Towns, and it was alive to its situation. Useless for Bursley to

compete! If Mrs. Critchlow had been a philosopher, if she had known

that geography had always made history, she would have given up her

enterprise a dozen years ago. But Mrs. Critchlow was merely Maria

Insull. She had seen Baines's in its magnificent prime, when Baines's

almost conferred a favour on customers in serving them. At the time

when she took over the business under the wing of her husband, it was

still a good business. But from that instant the tide had seemed to

turn. She had fought, and she kept on fighting, stupidly. She was not

aware that she was fighting against evolution, not aware that evolution

had chosen her for one of its victims! She could understand that all

the other shops in the Square should fail, but not that Baines's should

fail! She was as industrious as ever, as good a buyer, as good a

seller, as keen for novelties, as economical, as methodical! And yet

the returns dropped and dropped.

She naturally had no sympathy from Charles, who now took small interest

even in his own business, or what was left of it, and who was coldly

disgusted at the ultimate cost of his marriage. Charles gave her no

money that he could avoid giving her. The crisis had been slowly

approaching for years. The assistants in the shop had said nothing, or

had only whispered among themselves, but now that the crisis had

flowered suddenly in an attempted self-murder, they all spoke at once,

and the evidences were pieced together into a formidable proof of the

strain which Mrs. Critchlow had suffered. It appeared that for many

months she had been depressed and irritable, that sometimes she would

sit down in the midst of work and declare, with every sign of

exhaustion, that she could do no more. Then with equal briskness she

would arise and force herself to labour. She did not sleep for whole

nights. One assistant related how she had complained of having had no

sleep whatever for four nights consecutively. She had noises in the

ears and a chronic headache. Never very plump, she had grown thinner

and thinner. And she was for ever taking pills: this information came

from Charles's manager. She had had several outrageous quarrels with

the redoubtable Charles, to the stupefaction of all who heard or saw

them.... Mrs. Critchlow standing up to her husband! Another strange

thing was that she thought the bills of several of the big Manchester

firms were unpaid, when as a fact they had been paid. Even when shown

the receipts she would not be convinced, though she pretended to be

convinced. She would recommence the next day. All this was sufficiently

disconcerting for female assistants in the drapery. But what could they

do?

Then Maria Critchlow had gone a step further. She had summoned the

eldest assistant to her corner and had informed her, with all the

solemnity of a confession made to assuage a conscience which has been

tortured too long, that she had on many occasions been guilty of sexual

irregularity with her late employer, Samuel Povey. There was no truth

whatever in this accusation (which everybody, however, took care not to

mention to Constance); it merely indicated, perhaps, the secret

aspirations of Maria Insull, the virgin. The assistant was properly

scandalized, more by the crudity of Mrs. Critchlow's language than by

the alleged sin buried in the past. Goodness knows what the assistant

would have done! But two hours later Maria Critchlow tried to commit

suicide by stabbing herself with a pair of scissors. There was blood in

the shop.

With as little delay as possible she had been driven away to the

asylum. Charles Critchlow, enveloped safely in the armour of his senile

egotism, had shown no emotion, and very little activity. The shop was

closed. And as a general draper's it never opened again. That was the

end of Baines's. Two assistants found themselves without a livelihood.

The small tumble with the great.

Constance's emotion was more than pardonable; it was justified. She

could not eat and Lily could not persuade her to eat. In an unhappy

moment Dick Povey mentioned--he never could remember how,

afterwards--the word Federation! And then Constance, from a passive

figure of grief became a menace. She overwhelmed Dick Povey with her

anathema of Federation, for Dick was a citizen of Hanbridge, where this

detestable movement for Federation had had its birth. All the

misfortunes of St. Luke's Square were due to that great, busy,

grasping, unscrupulous neighbour. Had not Hanbridge done enough,

without wanting to merge all the Five Towns into one town, of which of

course itself would be the centre? For Constance, Hanbridge was a

borough of unprincipled adventurers, bent on ruining the ancient

'Mother of the Five Towns' for its own glory and aggrandizement. Let

Constance hear no more of Federation! Her poor sister Sophia had been

dead against Federation, and she had been quite right! All really

respectable people were against it! The attempted suicide of Mrs.

Critchlow sealed the fate of Federation and damned it for ever, in

Constance's mind. Her hatred of the idea of it was intensified into

violent animosity; insomuch that in the result she died a martyr to the

cause of Bursley's municipal independence.

III

It was on a muddy day in October that the first great battle for and

against Federation was fought in Bursley. Constance was suffering

severely from sciatica. She was also suffering from disgust with the

modern world.

Unimaginable things had happened in the Square. For Constance, the

reputation of the Square was eternally ruined. Charles Critchlow, by

that strange good fortune which always put him in the right when fairly

he ought to have been in the wrong, had let the Baines shop and his own

shop and house to the Midland Clothiers Company, which was establishing

branches throughout Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, and

adjacent counties. He had sold his own chemist's stock and gone to live

in a little house at the bottom of Kingstreet. It is doubtful whether

he would have consented to retire had not Alderman Holl died earlier in

the year, thus ending a long rivalry between the old men for the

patriarchate of the Square. Charles Critchlow was as free from

sentiment as any man, but no man is quite free from it, and the ancient

was in a position to indulge sentiment had he chosen. His business was

not a source of loss, and he could still trust his skinny hands and

peering eyes to make up a prescription. However, the offer of the

Midland Clothiers Company tempted him, and as the undisputed 'father'

of the Square he left the Square in triumph.

The Midland Clothiers Company had no sense of the proprieties of trade.

Their sole idea was to sell goods. Having possessed themselves of one

of the finest sites in a town which, after all was said and done,

comprised nearly forty thousand inhabitants, they set about to make the

best of that site. They threw the two shops into one, and they caused

to be constructed a sign compared to which the spacious old 'Baines'

sign was a postcard. They covered the entire frontage with posters of a

theatrical description--coloured posters! They occupied the front page

of the Signal, and from that pulpit they announced that winter was

approaching, and that they meant to sell ten thousand overcoats at

their new shop in Bursley at the price of twelve and sixpence each. The

tailoring of the world was loudly and coarsely defied to equal the

value of those overcoats. On the day of opening they arranged an

orchestra or artillery of phonographs upon the leads over the window of

that part of the shop which had been Mr. Critchlow's. They also

carpeted the Square with handbills, and flew flags from their upper

storeys. The immense shop proved to be full of overcoats; overcoats

were shown in all the three great windows; in one window an overcoat

was disposed as a receptacle for water, to prove that the Midland

twelve-and-sixpenny overcoats were impermeable by rain. Overcoats

flapped in the two doorways. These devices woke and drew the town, and

the town found itself received by bustling male assistants very

energetic and rapid, instead of by demure anaemic virgins. At moments

towards evening the shop was populous with custom; the number of

overcoats sold was prodigious. On another day the Midland sold trousers

in a like manner, but without the phonographs. Unmistakably the Midland

had shaken the Square and demonstrated that commerce was still possible

to fearless enterprise.

Nevertheless the Square was not pleased. The Square was conscious of

shame, of dignity departed. Constance was divided between pain and

scornful wrath. For her, what the Midland had done was to desecrate a

shrine. She hated those flags, and those flaring, staring posters on

the honest old brick walls, and the enormous gilded sign, and the

windows all filled with a monotonous repetition of the same article,

and the bustling assistants. As for the phonographs, she regarded them

as a grave insult; they had been within twenty feet of her drawing-room

window! Twelve-and-sixpenny overcoats! It was monstrous, and equally

monstrous was the gullibility of the people. How could an overcoat at

twelve and sixpence be 'good.' She remembered the overcoats made and

sold in the shop in the time of her father and her husband, overcoats

of which the inconvenience was that they would not wear out! The

Midland, for Constance, was not a trading concern, but something

between a cheap-jack and a circus. She could scarcely bear to walk down

the Square, to such a degree did the ignoble frontage of the Midland

offend her eye and outrage her ancestral pride. She even said that she

would give up her house.

But when, on the twenty-ninth of September, she received six months'

notice, signed in Critchlow's shaky hand, to quit the house--it was

wanted for the Midland's manager, the Midland having taken the premises

on condition that they might eject Constance if they chose--the blow

was an exceedingly severe one. She had sworn to go--but to be turned

out, to be turned out of the house of her birth and out of her father's

home, that was different! Her pride, injured as it was, had a great

deal to support. It became necessary for her to recollect that she was

a Baines. She affected magnificently not to care. But she could not

refrain from telling all her acquaintances that she was being turned

out of her house, and asking them what they thought of THAT; and when

she met Charles Critchlow in the street she seared him with the heat of

her resentment. The enterprise of finding a new house and moving into

it loomed before her gigantic, terrible, the idea of it was alone

sufficient to make her ill.

Meanwhile, in the matter of Federation, preparations for the pitched

battle had been going forward, especially in the columns of the Signal,

where the scribes of each one of the Five Towns had proved that all the

other towns were in the clutch of unscrupulous gangs of self-seekers.

After months of argument and recrimination, all the towns except

Bursley were either favourable or indifferent to the prospect of

becoming a part of the twelfth largest town in the United Kingdom. But

in Bursley the opposition was strong, and the twelfth largest town in

the United Kingdom could not spring into existence without the consent

of Bursley. The United Kingdom itself was languidly interested in the

possibility of suddenly being endowed with a new town of a quarter of a

million inhabitants. The Five Towns were frequently mentioned in the

London dailies, and London journalists would write such sentences as:

"The Five Towns, which are of course, as everybody knows, Hanbridge,

Bursley, Knype, Longshaw, and Turnhill...." This was renown at last,

for the most maligned district in the country! And then a Cabinet

Minister had visited the Five Towns, and assisted at an official

inquiry, and stated in his hammering style that he meant personally to

do everything possible to accomplish the Federation of the Five Towns:

an incautious remark, which infuriated, while it flattered, the

opponents of Federation in Bursley. Constance, with many other

sensitive persons, asked angrily what right a Cabinet Minister had to

take sides in a purely local affair. But the partiality of the official

world grew flagrant. The Mayor of Bursley openly proclaimed himself a

Federationist, though there was a majority on the Council against him.

Even ministers of religion permitted themselves to think and to express

opinions. Well might the indignant Old Guard imagine that the end of

public decency had come! The Federationists were very ingenious

individuals. They contrived to enrol in their ranks a vast number of

leading men. Then they hired the Covered Market, and put a platform in

it, and put all these leading men on the platform, and made them all

speak eloquently on the advantages of moving with the times. The

meeting was crowded and enthusiastic, and readers of the Signal next

day could not but see that the battle was won in advance, and that

anti-Federation was dead. In the following week, however, the

anti-Federationists held in the Covered Market an exactly similar

meeting (except that the display of leading men was less brilliant),

and demanded of a floor of serried heads whether the old Mother of the

Five Towns was prepared to put herself into the hands of a crew of

highly-paid bureaucrats at Hanbridge, and was answered by a wild

defiant "No," that could be heard on Duck Bank. Readers of the Signal

next day were fain to see that the battle had not been won in advance.

Bursley was lukewarm on the topics of education, slums, water, gas,

electricity. But it meant to fight for that mysterious thing, its

identity. Was the name of Bursley to be lost to the world? To ask the

question was to give the answer.

Then dawned the day of battle, the day of the Poll, when the burgesses

were to indicate plainly by means of a cross on a voting paper whether

or not they wanted Federation. And on this day Constance was almost

incapacitated by sciatica. It was a heroic day. The walls of the town

were covered with literature, and the streets dotted with motor-cars

and other vehicles at the service of the voters. The greater number of

these vehicles bore large cards with the words, "Federation this time."

And hundreds of men walked briskly about with circular cards tied to

their lapels, as though Bursley had been a race-course, and these cards

too had the words, "Federation this time." (The reference was to a

light poll which had been taken several years before, when no interest

had been aroused and the immature project yet defeated by a six to one

majority.) All partisans of Federation sported a red ribbon; all

Anti-Federationists sported a blue ribbon. The schools were closed and

the Federationists displayed their characteristic lack of scruple in

appropriating the children. The Federationists, with devilish skill,

had hired the Bursley Town Silver Prize Band, an organization of

terrific respectability, and had set it to march playing through the

town followed by wagonettes crammed with children, who sang:

Vote, vote, vote for Federation, Don't be stupid, old and slow, We are

sure that it will be Good for the communitie, So vote, vote, vote, and

make it go.

How this performance could affect the decision of grave burgesses at

the polls was not apparent; but the Anti-Federationists feared that it

might, and before noon was come they had engaged two bands and had

composed in committee, the following lyric in reply to the first one:

Down, down, down, with Federation, As we are we'd rather stay; When the

vote on Saturday's read Federation will be dead, Good old Bursley's

sure to win the day.

They had also composed another song, entitled "Dear old Bursley,"

which, however, they made the fatal error of setting to the music of

"Auld Lang Syne." The effect was that of a dirge, and it perhaps

influenced many voters in favour of the more cheerful party. The

Anti-Federationists, indeed, never regained the mean advantage filched

by unscrupulous Federationists with the help of the Silver Prize Band

and a few hundred infants. The odds were against the

Anti-Federationists. The mayor had actually issued a letter to the

inhabitants accusing the Anti-Federationists of unfair methods! This

was really too much! The impudence of it knocked the breath out of its

victims, and breath is very necessary in a polling contest. The

Federationists, as one of their prominent opponents admitted, 'had it

all their own way,' dominating both the streets and the walls. And

when, early in the afternoon, Mr. Dick Povey sailed over the town in a

balloon that was plainly decorated with the crimson of Federation, it

was felt that the cause of Bursley's separate identity was for ever

lost. Still, Bursley, with the willing aid of the public-houses,

maintained its gaiety.

IV

Towards dusk a stout old lady, with grey hair, and a dowdy bonnet, and

an expensive mantle, passed limping, very slowly, along Wedgwood Street

and up the Cock Yard towards the Town Hall. Her wrinkled face had an

anxious look, but it was also very determined. The busy, joyous

Federationists and Anti-Federationists who knew her not saw merely a

stout old lady fussing forth, and those who knew her saw merely Mrs.

Povey and greeted her perfunctorily, a woman of her age and gait being

rather out of place in that feverish altercation of opposed principles.

But it was more than a stout old lady, it was more than Mrs. Povey that

waddled with such painful deliberation through the streets--it was a

miracle.

In the morning Constance had been partially incapacitated by her

sciatica; so much so, at any rate, that she had perceived the

advisability of remaining on the bedroom floor instead of descending to

the parlour. Therefore Mary had lighted the drawing-room fire, and

Constance had ensconced herself by it, with Fossette in a basket. Lily

Holl had called early, and had been very sympathetic, but rather vague.

The truth was that she was concealing the imminent balloon ascent which

Dick Povey, with his instinct for the picturesque, had somehow

arranged, in conjunction with a well-known Manchester aeronaut, for the

very day of the poll. That was one of various matters that had to be

'kept from' the old lady. Lily herself was much perturbed about the

balloon ascent. She had to run off and see Dick before he started, at

the Football Ground at Bleakridge, and then she had to live through the

hours till she should receive a telegram to the effect that Dick had

come down safely or that Dick had broken his leg in coming down, or

that Dick was dead. It was a trying time for Lily. She had left

Constance after a brief visit, with a preoccupied unusual air, saying

that as the day was a special day, she should come in again 'if she

could.' And she did not forget to assure Constance that Federation

would beyond any question whatever be handsomely beaten at the poll;

for this was another matter as to which it was deemed advisable to keep

the old lady 'in the dark,' lest the foolish old lady should worry and

commit indiscretions.

After that Constance had been forgotten by the world of Bursley, which

could pay small heed to sciatical old ladies confined to sofas and

firesides. She was in acute pain, as Mary could see when at intervals

she hovered round her. Assuredly it was one of Constance's bad days,

one of those days on which she felt that the tide of life had left her

stranded in utter neglect. The sound of the Bursley Town Silver Prize

Band aroused her from her mournful trance of suffering. Then the high

treble of children's voices startled her. She defied her sciatica, and,

grimacing, went to the window. And at the first glimpse she could see

that the Federation Poll was going to be a much more exciting affair

than she had imagined. The great cards swinging from the wagonettes

showed her that Federation was at all events still sufficiently alive

to make a formidable impression on the eye and the ear. The Square was

transformed by this clamour in favour of Federation; people cheered,

and sang also, as the procession wound down the Square. And she could

distinctly catch the tramping, martial syllables, "Vote, vote, vote."

She was indignant. The pother, once begun, continued. Vehicles flashed

frequently across the Square, most of them in the crimson livery.

Little knots and processions of excited wayfarers were a recurring

feature of the unaccustomed traffic, and the large majority of them

flaunted the colours of Federation. Mary, after some errands of

shopping, came upstairs and reported that 'it was simply "Federation"

everywhere,' and that Mr. Brindley, a strong Federationist, was 'above

a bit above himself'; further, that the interest in the poll was

tremendous and universal. She said there were 'crowds and crowds' round

the Town Hall. Even Mary, generally a little placid and dull, had

caught something of the contagious vivacity.

Constance remained at the window till dinner, and after dinner she went

to it again. It was fortunate that she did not think of looking up into

the sky when Dick's balloon sailed westwards; she would have guessed

instantly that Dick was in that balloon, and her grievances would have

been multiplied. The vast grievance of the Federation scheme weighed on

her to the extremity of her power to bear. She was not a politician;

she had no general ideas; she did not see the cosmic movement in large

curves. She was incapable of perceiving the absurdity involved in

perpetuating municipal divisions which the growth of the district had

rendered artificial, vexatious, and harmful. She saw nothing but

Bursley, and in Bursley nothing but the Square. She knew nothing except

that the people of Bursley, who once shopped in Bursley, now shopped in

Hanbridge, and that the Square was a desert infested by cheap-jacks.

And there were actually people who wished to bow the neck to Hanbridge,

who were ready to sacrifice the very name of Bursley to the greedy

humour of that pushing Chicago! She could not understand such people.

Did they know that poor Maria Critchlow was in a lunatic asylum because

Hanbridge was so grasping? Ah, poor Maria was al-ready forgotten! Did

they know that, as a further indirect consequence, she, the daughter of

Bursley's chief tradesman, was to be thrown out of the house in which

she was born? She wished, bitterly, as she stood there at the window,

watching the triumph of Federation, that she had bought the house and

shop at the Mericarp sale years ago. She would have shown them, as

owner, what was what! She forgot that the property which she already

owned in Bursley was a continual annoyance to her, and that she was

always resolving to sell it at no matter what loss.

She said to herself that she had a vote, and that if she had been 'at

all fit to stir out' she would certainly have voted. She said to

herself that it had been her duty to vote. And then by an illusion of

her wrought nerves, tightened minute by minute throughout the day, she

began to fancy that her sciatica was easier. She said: "If only I could

go out!" She might have a cab, of any of the parading vehicles would be

glad to take her to the Town Hall, and, perhaps, as a favour, to bring

her back again. But no! She dared not go out. She was afraid, really

afraid that even the mild Mary might stop her. Otherwise, she could

have sent Mary for a cab. And supposing that Lily returned, and caught

her going out or coming in! She ought not to go out. Yet her sciatica

was strangely better. It was folly to think of going out. Yet...! And

Lily did not come. She was rather hurt that Lily had not paid her a

second visit. Lily was neglecting her.... She would go out. It was not

four minutes' walk for her to the Town Hall, and she was better. And

there had been no shower for a long time, and the wind was drying the

mud in the roadways. Yes, she would go.

Like a thief she passed into her bedroom and put on her things; and

like a thief she crept downstairs, and so, without a word to Mary, into

the street. It was a desperate adventure. As soon as she was in the

street she felt all her weakness, all the fatigue which the effort had

already cost her. The pain returned. The streets were still wet and

foul, the wind cold, and the sky menacing. She ought to go back. She

ought to admit that she had been a fool to dream of the enterprise. The

Town Hall seemed to be miles off, at the top of a mountain. She went

forward, however, steeled to do her share in the killing of Federation.

Every step caused her a gnashing of her old teeth. She chose the Cock

Yard route, because if she had gone up the Square she would have had to

pass Holl's shop, and Lily might have spied her.

This was the miracle that breezy politicians witnessed without being

aware that it was a miracle. To have impressed them, Constance ought to

have fainted before recording her vote, and made herself the centre of

a crowd of gapers. But she managed, somehow, to reach home again on her

own tortured feet, and an astounded and protesting Mary opened the door

to her. Rain was descending. She was frightened, then, by the hardihood

of her adventure, and by its atrocious results on her body. An

appalling exhaustion rendered her helpless. But the deed was done.

V

The next morning, after a night which she could not have described,

Constance found herself lying flat in bed, with all her limbs stretched

out straight. She was conscious that her face was covered with

perspiration. The bell-rope hung within a foot of her head, but she had

decided that, rather than move in order to pull it, she would prefer to

wait for assistance until Mary came of her own accord. Her experiences

of the night had given her a dread of the slightest movement; anything

was better than movement. She felt vaguely ill, with a kind of subdued

pain, and she was very thirsty and somewhat cold. She knew that her

left arm and leg were extraordinarily tender to the touch. When Mary at

length entered, clean and fresh and pale in all her mildness, she found

the mistress the colour of a duck's egg, with puffed features, and a

strangely anxious expression.

"Mary," said Constance, "I feel so queer. Perhaps you'd better run up

and tell Miss Holl, and ask her to telephone for Dr. Stirling."

This was the beginning of Constance's last illness. Mary most

impressively informed Miss Holl that her mistress had been out on the

previous afternoon in spite of her sciatica, and Lily telephoned the

fact to the Doctor. Lily then came down to take charge of Constance.

But she dared not upbraid the invalid.

"Is the result out?" Constance murmured.

"Oh yes," said Lily, lightly. "There's a majority of over twelve

hundred against Federation. Great excitement last night! I told you

yesterday morning that Federation was bound to be beaten."

Lily spoke as though the result throughout had been a certainty; her

tone to Constance indicated: "Surely you don't imagine that I should

have told you untruths yesterday morning merely to cheer you up!" The

truth was, however, that towards the end of the day nearly every one

had believed Federation to be carried. The result had caused great

surprise. Only the profoundest philosophers had not been surprised to

see that the mere blind, deaf, inert forces of reaction, with faulty

organization, and quite deprived of the aid of logic, had proved far

stronger than all the alert enthusiasm arrayed against them. It was a

notable lesson to reformers.

"Oh!" murmured Constance, startled. She was relieved; but she would

have liked the majority to be smaller. Moreover, her interest in the

question had lessened. It was her limbs that pre-occupied her now.

"You look tired," she said feebly to Lily.

"Do I?" said Lily, shortly, hiding the fact that she had spent half the

night in tending Dick Povey, who, in a sensational descent near

Macclesfield, had been dragged through the tops of a row of elm trees

to the detriment of an elbow-joint; the professional aeronaut had

broken a leg.

Then Dr. Stirling came.

"I'm afraid my sciatica's worse, Doctor," said Constance,

apologetically.

"Did you expect it to be better?" said he, gazing at her sternly. She

knew then that some one had saved her the trouble of confessing her

escapade.

However, her sciatica was not worse. Her sciatica had not behaved

basely. What she was suffering from was the preliminary advances of an

attack of acute rheumatism. She had indeed selected the right month and

weather for her escapade! Fatigued by pain, by nervous agitation, and

by the immense moral and physical effort needed to carry her to the

Town Hall and back, she had caught a chill, and had got her feet damp.

In such a subject as herself it was enough. The doctor used only the

phrase 'acute rheumatism.' Constance did not know that acute rheumatism

was precisely the same thing as that dread disease, rheumatic fever,

and she was not informed. She did not surmise for a considerable period

that her case was desperately serious. The doctor explained the

summoning of two nurses, and the frequency of his own visits, by saying

that his chief anxiety was to minimise the fearful pain as much as

possible, and that this end could only be secured by incessant

watchfulness. The pain was certainly formidable. But then Constance was

well habituated to formidable pain. Sciatica, at its most active,

cannot be surpassed even by rheumatic fever. Constance had been in

nearly continuous pain for years. Her friends, however sympathetic,

could not appreciate the intensity of her torture. They were just as

used to it as she was. And the monotony and particularity of her

complaints (slight though the complaints were in comparison with their

cause) necessarily blunted the edge of compassion. "Mrs. Povey and her

sciatica again! Poor thing, she really is a little tedious!" They were

apt not to realise that sciatica is even more tedious than complaints

about sciatica.

She asked one day that Dick should come to see her. He came with his

arm in a sling, and told her charily that he had hurt his elbow through

dropping his stick and slipping downstairs.

"Lily never told me," said Constance, suspiciously.

"Oh, it's simply nothing!" said Dick. Not even the sick room could

chasten him of his joy in the magnificent balloon adventure.

"I do hope you won't go running any risks!" said Constance.

"Never you fear!" said he. "I shall die in my bed."

And he was absolutely convinced that he would, and not as the result of

any accident, either! The nurse would not allow him to remain in the

room.

Lily suggested that Constance might like her to write to Cyril. It was

only in order to make sure of Cyril's correct address. He had gone on a

tour through Italy with some friends of whom Constance knew nothing.

The address appeared to be very uncertain; there were several

addresses, poste restante in various towns. Cyril had sent postcards to

his mother. Dick and Lily went to the post-office and telegraphed to

foreign parts. Though Constance was too ill to know how ill she was,

though she had no conception of the domestic confusion caused by her

illness, her brain was often remarkably clear, and she could reflect in

long, sane meditations above the uneasy sea of her pain. In the earlier

hours of the night, after the nurses had been changed, and Mary had

gone to bed exhausted with stair-climbing, and Lily Holl was recounting

the day to Dick up at the grocer's, and the day-nurse was already

asleep, and the night-nurse had arranged the night, then, in the

faintly-lit silence of the chamber, Constance would argue with herself

for an hour at a time. She frequently thought of Sophia. In spite of

the fact that Sophia was dead she still pitied Sophia as a woman whose

life had been wasted. This idea of Sophia's wasted and sterile life,

and of the far-reaching importance of adhering to principles, recurred

to her again and again. "Why did she run away with him? If only she had

not run away!" she would repeat. And yet there had been something so

fine about Sophia! Which made Sophia's case all the more pitiable!

Constance never pitied herself. She did not consider that Fate had

treated her very badly. She was not very discontented with herself. The

invincible commonsense of a sound nature prevented her, in her best

moments, from feebly dissolving in self-pity. She had lived in honesty

and kindliness for a fair number of years, and she had tasted

triumphant hours. She was justly respected, she had a position, she had

dignity, she was well-off. She possessed, after all, a certain amount

of quiet self-conceit. There existed nobody to whom she would 'knuckle

down,' or could be asked to 'knuckle down.' True, she was old! So were

thousands of other people in Bursley. She was in pain. So there were

thousands of other people. With whom would she be willing to exchange

lots? She had many dissatisfactions. But she rose superior to them.

When she surveyed her life, and life in general, she would think, with

a sort of tart but not sour cheerfulness: "Well, that is what life is!"

Despite her habit of complaining about domestic trifles, she was, in

the essence of her character, 'a great body for making the best of

things.' Thus she did not unduly bewail her excursion to the Town Hall

to vote, which the sequel had proved to be ludicrously supererogatory.

"How was I to know?" she said.

The one matter in which she had gravely to reproach herself was her

indulgent spoiling of Cyril after the death of Samuel Povey. But the

end of her reproaches always was: "I expect I should do the same again!

And probably it wouldn't have made any difference if I hadn't spoiled

him!" And she had paid tenfold for the weakness. She loved Cyril, but

she had no illusions about him; she saw both sides of him. She

remembered all the sadness and all the humiliations which he had caused

her. Still, her affection was unimpaired. A son might be worse than

Cyril was; he had admirable qualities. She did not resent his being

away from England while she lay ill. "If it was serious," she said, "he

would not lose a moment." And Lily and Dick were a treasure to her. In

those two she really had been lucky. She took great pleasure in

contemplating the splendour of the gift with which she would mark her

appreciation of them at their approaching wedding. The secret attitude

of both of them towards her was one of good-natured condescension,

expressed in the tone in which they would say to each other, 'the old

lady.' Perhaps they would have been startled to know that Constance

lovingly looked down on both of them. She had unbounded admiration for

their hearts; but she thought that Dick was a little too brusque, a

little too clownish, to be quite a gentleman. And though Lily was

perfectly ladylike, in Constance's opinion she lacked backbone, or

grit, or independence of spirit. Further, Constance considered that the

disparity of age between them was excessive. It is to be doubted

whether, when all was said, Constance had such a very great deal to

learn from the self-confident wisdom of these young things.

After a period of self-communion, she would sometimes fall into a

shallow delirium. In all her delirium she was invariably wandering to

and fro, lost, in the long underground passage leading from the

scullery past the coal-cellar and the cinder-cellar to the backyard.

And she was afraid of the vast-obscure of those regions, as she had

been in her infancy.

It was not acute rheumatism, but a supervening pericarditis that in a

few days killed her. She died in the night, alone with the night-nurse.

By a curious chance the Wesleyan minister, hearing that she was

seriously ill, had called on the previous day. She had not asked for

him; and this pastoral visit, from a man who had always said that the

heavy duties of the circuit rendered pastoral visits almost impossible,

made her think. In the evening she had requested that Fossette should

be brought upstairs.

Thus she was turned out of her house, but not by the Midland Clothiers

Company. Old people said to one another: "Have you heard that Mrs.

Povey is dead? Eh, dear me! There'll be no one left soon." These old

people were bad prophets. Her friends genuinely regretted her, and

forgot the tediousness of her sciatica. They tried, in their

sympathetic grief, to picture to themselves all that she had been

through in her life. Possibly they imagined that they succeeded in this

imaginative attempt. But they did not succeed. No one but Constance

could realize all that Constance had been through, and all that life

had meant to her.

Cyril was not at the funeral. He arrived three days later. (As he had

no interest in the love affairs of Dick and Lily, the couple were

robbed of their wedding-present. The will, fifteen years old, was in

Cyril's favour.) But the immortal Charles Critchlow came to the

funeral, full of calm, sardonic glee, and without being asked. Though

fabulously senile, he had preserved and even improved his faculty for

enjoying a catastrophe. He now went to funerals with gusto, contentedly

absorbed in the task of burying his friends one by one. It was he who

said, in his high, trembling, rasping, deliberate voice: "It's a pity

her didn't live long enough to hear as Federation is going on after

all! That would ha' worritted her." (For the unscrupulous advocates of

Federation had discovered a method of setting at naught the decisive

result of the referendum, and that day's Signal was fuller than ever of

Federation.)

When the short funeral procession started, Mary and the infirm Fossette

(sole relic of the connection between the Baines family and Paris) were

left alone in the house. The tearful servant prepared the dog's dinner

and laid it before her in the customary soup-plate in the customary

corner. Fossette sniffed at it, and then walked away and lay down with

a dog's sigh in front of the kitchen fire. She had been deranged in her

habits that day; she was conscious of neglect, due to events which

passed her comprehension. And she did not like it. She was hurt, and

her appetite was hurt. However, after a few minutes, she began to

reconsider the matter. She glanced at the soup-plate, and, on the

chance that it might after all contain something worth inspection, she

awkwardly balanced herself on her old legs and went to it again.

THE END