The Old Wives' Tale
Book I
MRS. BAINES
Chapter I
THE SQUARE
I
Those two girls, Constance and Sophia
Baines, paid no heed to the manifold interest of their situation, of which,
indeed, they had never been conscious. They were, for example, established
almost precisely on the fifty-third parallel of latitude. A little way to the
north of them, in the creases of a hill famous for its religious orgies, rose
the river Trent, the calm and characteristic stream of middle England. Somewhat
further northwards, in the near neighbourhood of the highest public-house in the
realm, rose two lesser rivers, the Dane and the Dove, which, quarrelling in
early infancy, turned their backs on each other, and, the one by favour of the
Weaver and the other by favour of the Trent, watered between them the whole
width of England, and poured themselves respectively into the Irish Sea and the
German Ocean. What a county of modest, unnoticed rivers! What a natural, simple
county, content to fix its boundaries by these tortuous island brooks, with
their comfortable names—Trent, Mease, Dove, Tern, Dane, Mees, Stour, Tame, and
even hasty Severn! Not that the Severn is suitable to the county! In the county
excess is deprecated. The county is happy in not exciting remark. It is content
that Shropshire should possess that swollen bump, the Wrekin, and that the
exaggerated wildness of the Peak should lie over its border. It does not desire
to be a pancake like Cheshire. It has everything that England has, including
thirty miles of Watling Street; and England can show nothing more beautiful and
nothing uglier than the works of nature and the works of man to be seen within
the limits of the county. It is England in little, lost in the midst of England,
unsung by searchers after the extreme; perhaps occasionally somewhat sore at
this neglect, but how proud in the instinctive cognizance of its representative
features and traits!
Constance and Sophia, busy with the intense preoccupations of
youth, recked not of such matters. They were surrounded by the county. On every
side the fields and moors of Staffordshire, intersected by roads and lanes,
railways, watercourses and telegraph-lines, patterned by hedges, ornamented and
made respectable by halls and genteel parks, enlivened by villages at the
intersections, and warmly surveyed by the sun, spread out undulating. And trains
were rushing round curves in deep cuttings, and carts and waggons trotting and
jingling on the yellow roads, and long, narrow boats passing in a leisure
majestic and infinite over the surface of the stolid canals; the rivers had only
themselves to support, for Staffordshire rivers have remained virgin of keels to
this day. One could imagine the messages concerning prices, sudden death, and
horses, in their flight through the wires under the feet of birds. In the inns
Utopians were shouting the universe into order over beer, and in the halls and
parks the dignity of England was being preserved in a fitting manner. The
villages were full of women who did nothing but fight against dirt and hunger,
and repair the effects of friction on clothes. Thousands of labourers were in
the fields, but the fields were so broad and numerous that this scattered
multitude was totally lost therein. The cuckoo was much more perceptible than
man, dominating whole square miles with his resounding call. And on the airy
moors heath-larks played in the ineffaceable mule-tracks that had served
centuries before even the Romans thought of Watling Street. In short, the usual
daily life of the county was proceeding with all its immense variety and
importance; but though Constance and Sophia were in it they were not of it.
The fact is, that while in the county they were also in the
district; and no person who lives in the district, even if he should be old and
have nothing to do but reflect upon things in general, ever thinks about the
county. So far as the county goes, the district might almost as well be in the
middle of the Sahara. It ignores the county, save that it uses it nonchalantly
sometimes as leg-stretcher on holiday afternoons, as a man may use his back
garden. It has nothing in common with the county; it is richly sufficient to
itself. Nevertheless, its self-sufficiency and the true salt savour of its life
can only be appreciated by picturing it hemmed in by county. It lies on the face
of the county like an insignificant stain, like a dark Pleiades in a green and
empty sky. And Hanbridge has the shape of a horse and its rider, Bursley of half
a donkey, Knype of a pair of trousers, Longshaw of an octopus, and little
Turnhill of a beetle. The Five Towns seem to cling together for safety. Yet the
idea of clinging together for safety would make them laugh. They are unique and
indispensable. From the north of the county right down to the south they alone
stand for civilization, applied science, organized manufacture, and the
century—until you come to Wolverhampton. They are unique and indispensable
because you cannot drink tea out of a teacup without the aid of the Five Towns;
because you cannot eat a meal in decency without the aid of the Five Towns. For
this the architecture of the Five Towns is an architecture of ovens and
chimneys; for this its atmosphere is as black as its mud; for this it burns and
smokes all night, so that Longshaw has been compared to hell; for this it is
unlearned in the ways of agriculture, never having seen corn except as packing
straw and in quartern loaves; for this, on the other hand, it comprehends the
mysterious habits of fire and pure, sterile earth; for this it lives crammed
together in slippery streets where the housewife must change white
window-curtains at least once a fortnight if she wishes to remain respectable;
for this it gets up in the mass at six a.m., winter and summer, and goes to bed
when the public-houses close; for this it exists—that you may drink tea out of a
teacup and toy with a chop on a plate. All the everyday crockery used in the
kingdom is made in the Five Towns—all, and much besides. A district capable of
such gigantic manufacture, of such a perfect monopoly—and which finds energy
also to produce coal and iron and great men—may be an insignificant stain on a
county, considered geographically, but it is surely well justified in treating
the county as its back garden once a week, and in blindly ignoring it the rest
of the time.
Even the majestic thought that whenever and wherever in all
England a woman washes up, she washes up the product of the district; that
whenever and wherever in all England a plate is broken the fracture means new
business for the district—even this majestic thought had probably never occurred
to either of the girls. The fact is, that while in the Five Towns they were also
in the Square, Bursley and the Square ignored the staple manufacture as
perfectly as the district ignored the county. Bursley has the honours of
antiquity in the Five Towns. No industrial development can ever rob it of its
superiority in age, which makes it absolutely sure in its conceit. And the time
will never come when the other towns—let them swell and bluster as they may—will
not pronounce the name of Bursley as one pronounces the name of one's mother.
Add to this that the Square was the centre of Bursley's retail trade (which
scorned the staple as something wholesale, vulgar, and assuredly filthy), and
you will comprehend the importance and the self-isolation of the Square in the
scheme of the created universe. There you have it, embedded in the district, and
the district embedded in the county, and the county lost and dreaming in the
heart of England!
The Square was named after St. Luke. The Evangelist might have
been startled by certain phenomena in his square, but, except in Wakes Week,
when the shocking always happened, St. Luke's Square lived in a manner passably
saintly—though it contained five public-houses. It contained five public-houses,
a bank, a barber's, a confectioner's, three grocers', two chemists', an
ironmonger's, a clothier's, and five drapers'. These were all the catalogue. St.
Luke's Square had no room for minor establishments. The aristocracy of the
Square undoubtedly consisted of the drapers (for the bank was impersonal); and
among the five the shop of Baines stood supreme. No business establishment could
possibly be more respected than that of Mr. Baines was respected. And though
John Baines had been bedridden for a dozen years, he still lived on the lips of
admiring, ceremonious burgesses as 'our honoured fellow-townsman.' He deserved
his reputation.
The Baines's shop, to make which three dwellings had at intervals
been thrown into one, lay at the bottom of the Square. It formed about one-third
of the south side of the Square, the remainder being made up of Critchlow's
(chemist), the clothier's, and the Hanover Spirit Vaults. ("Vaults" was a
favourite synonym of the public-house in the Square. Only two of the
public-houses were crude public-houses: the rest were "vaults.") It was a
composite building of three storeys, in blackish-crimson brick, with a
projecting shop-front and, above and behind that, two rows of little windows. On
the sash of each window was a red cloth roll stuffed with sawdust, to prevent
draughts; plain white blinds descended about six inches from the top of each
window. There were no curtains to any of the windows save one; this was the
window of the drawing-room, on the first floor at the corner of the Square and
King Street. Another window, on the second storey, was peculiar, in that it had
neither blind nor pad, and was very dirty; this was the window of an unused room
that had a separate staircase to itself, the staircase being barred by a door
always locked. Constance and Sophia had lived in continual expectation of the
abnormal issuing from that mysterious room, which was next to their own. But
they were disappointed. The room had no shameful secret except the incompetence
of the architect who had made one house out of three; it was just an empty,
unemployable room. The building had also a considerable frontage on King Street,
where, behind the shop, was sheltered the parlour, with a large window and a
door that led directly by two steps into the street. A strange peculiarity of
the shop was that it bore no signboard. Once it had had a large signboard which
a memorable gale had blown into the Square. Mr. Baines had decided not to
replace it. He had always objected to what he called "puffing," and for this
reason would never hear of such a thing as a clearance sale. The hatred of
"puffing" grew on him until he came to regard even a sign as "puffing."
Uninformed persons who wished to find Baines's must ask and learn. For Mr.
Baines, to have replaced the sign would have been to condone, yea, to
participate in, the modern craze for unscrupulous self-advertisement. This
abstention of Mr. Baines's from indulgence in signboards was somehow accepted by
the more thoughtful members of the community as evidence that the height of Mr.
Baines's principles was greater even than they had imagined.
Constance and Sophia were the daughters of this credit to human
nature.
He had no other children.
II
They pressed their noses against the window of the show-room, and
gazed down into the Square as perpendicularly as the projecting front of the
shop would allow. The show-room was over the millinery and silken half of the
shop. Over the woollen and shirting half were the drawing-room and the chief
bedroom. When in quest of articles of coquetry, you mounted from the shop by a
curving stair, and your head gradually rose level with a large apartment having
a mahogany counter in front of the window and along one side, yellow linoleum on
the floor, many cardboard boxes, a magnificent hinged cheval glass, and two
chairs. The window-sill being lower than the counter, there was a gulf between
the panes and the back of the counter, into which important articles such as
scissors, pencils, chalk, and artificial flowers were continually disappearing:
another proof of the architect's incompetence.
The girls could only press their noses against the window by
kneeling on the counter, and this they were doing. Constance's nose was snub,
but agreeably so. Sophia had a fine Roman nose; she was a beautiful creature,
beautiful and handsome at the same time. They were both of them rather like
racehorses, quivering with delicate, sensitive, and luxuriant life; exquisite,
enchanting proof of the circulation of the blood; innocent, artful, roguish,
prim, gushing, ignorant, and miraculously wise. Their ages were sixteen and
fifteen; it is an epoch when, if one is frank, one must admit that one has
nothing to learn: one has learnt simply everything in the previous six
months.
"There she goes!" exclaimed Sophia.
Up the Square, from the corner of King Street, passed a woman in a
new bonnet with pink strings, and a new blue dress that sloped at the shoulders
and grew to a vast circumference at the hem. Through the silent sunlit solitude
of the Square (for it was Thursday afternoon, and all the shops shut except the
confectioner's and one chemist's) this bonnet and this dress floated northwards
in search of romance, under the relentless eyes of Constance and Sophia. Within
them, somewhere, was the soul of Maggie, domestic servant at Baines's. Maggie
had been at the shop since before the creation of Constance and Sophia. She
lived seventeen hours of each day in an underground kitchen and larder, and the
other seven in an attic, never going out except to chapel on Sunday evenings,
and once a month on Thursday afternoons. "Followers" were most strictly
forbidden to her; but on rare occasions an aunt from Longshaw was permitted as a
tremendous favour to see her in the subterranean den. Everybody, including
herself, considered that she had a good "place," and was well treated. It was
undeniable, for instance, that she was allowed to fall in love exactly as she
chose, provided she did not "carry on" in the kitchen or the yard. And as a
fact, Maggie had fallen in love. In seventeen years she had been engaged eleven
times. No one could conceive how that ugly and powerful organism could softly
languish to the undoing of even a butty-collier, nor why, having caught a man in
her sweet toils, she could ever be imbecile enough to set him free. There are,
however, mysteries in the souls of Maggies. The drudge had probably been
affianced oftener than any woman in Bursley. Her employers were so accustomed to
an interesting announcement that for years they had taken to saying naught in
reply but 'Really, Maggie!' Engagements and tragic partings were Maggie's
pastime. Fixed otherwise, she might have studied the piano instead.
"No gloves, of course!" Sophia criticized.
"Well, you can't expect her to have gloves," said Constance.
Then a pause, as the bonnet and dress neared the top of the
Square.
"Supposing she turns round and sees us?" Constance suggested.
"I don't care if she does," said Sophia, with a haughtiness almost
impassioned; and her head trembled slightly.
There were, as usual, several loafers at the top of the Square, in
the corner between the bank and the "Marquis of Granby." And one of these
loafers stepped forward and shook hands with an obviously willing Maggie.
Clearly it was a rendezvous, open, unashamed. The twelfth victim had been
selected by the virgin of forty, whose kiss would not have melted lard! The
couple disappeared together down Oldcastle Street.
"WELL!" cried Constance. "Did you ever see such a thing?"
While Sophia, short of adequate words, flushed and bit her
lip.
With the profound, instinctive cruelty of youth, Constance and
Sophia had assembled in their favourite haunt, the show-room, expressly to
deride Maggie in her new clothes. They obscurely thought that a woman so ugly
and soiled as Maggie was had no right to possess new clothes. Even her desire to
take the air of a Thursday afternoon seemed to them unnatural and somewhat
reprehensible. Why should she want to stir out of her kitchen? As for her tender
yearnings, they positively grudged these to Maggie. That Maggie should give rein
to chaste passion was more than grotesque; it was offensive and wicked. But let
it not for an instant be doubted that they were nice, kind-hearted,
well-behaved, and delightful girls! Because they were. They were not angels.
"It's too ridiculous!" said Sophia, severely. She had youth,
beauty, and rank in her favour. And to her it really was ridiculous.
"Poor old Maggie!" Constance murmured. Constance was foolishly
good-natured, a perfect manufactory of excuses for other people; and her
benevolence was eternally rising up and overpowering her reason.
"What time did mother say she should be back?" Sophia asked.
"Not until supper."
"Oh! Hallelujah!" Sophia burst out, clasping her hands in joy. And
they both slid down from the counter just as if they had been little boys, and
not, as their mother called them, "great girls."
"Let's go and play the Osborne quadrilles," Sophia suggested (the
Osborne quadrilles being a series of dances arranged to be performed on
drawing-room pianos by four jewelled hands).
"I couldn't think of it," said Constance, with a precocious
gesture of seriousness. In that gesture, and in her tone, was something which
conveyed to Sophia: "Sophia, how can you be so utterly blind to the gravity of
our fleeting existence as to ask me to go and strum the piano with you?" Yet a
moment before she had been a little boy.
"Why not?" Sophia demanded.
"I shall never have another chance like to-day for getting on with
this," said Constance, picking up a bag from the counter.
She sat down and took from the bag a piece of loosely woven
canvas, on which she was embroidering a bunch of roses in coloured wools. The
canvas had once been stretched on a frame, but now, as the delicate labour of
the petals and leaves was done, and nothing remained to do but the monotonous
background, Constance was content to pin the stuff to her knee. With the long
needle and several skeins of mustard-tinted wool, she bent over the canvas and
resumed the filling-in of the tiny squares. The whole design was in squares—the
gradations of red and greens, the curves of the smallest buds—all was contrived
in squares, with a result that mimicked a fragment of uncompromising Axminster
carpet. Still, the fine texture of the wool, the regular and rapid grace of
those fingers moving incessantly at back and front of the canvas, the gentle
sound of the wool as it passed through the holes, and the intent, youthful
earnestness of that lowered gaze, excused and invested with charm an activity
which, on artistic grounds, could not possibly be justified. The canvas was
destined to adorn a gilt firescreen in the drawing-room, and also to form a
birthday gift to Mrs. Baines from her elder daughter. But whether the enterprise
was as secret from Mrs. Baines as Constance hoped, none save Mrs. Baines
knew.
"Con," murmured Sophia, "you're too sickening sometimes."
"Well," said Constance, blandly, "it's no use pretending that this
hasn't got to be finished before we go back to school, because it has." Sophia
wandered about, a prey ripe for the Evil One. "Oh," she exclaimed joyously—even
ecstatically—looking behind the cheval glass, "here's mother's new skirt! Miss
Dunn's been putting the gimp on it! Oh, mother, what a proud thing you will be!"
Constance heard swishings behind the glass. "What are you doing, Sophia?"
"Nothing."
"You surely aren't putting that skirt on?"
"Why not?"
"You'll catch it finely, I can tell you!"
Without further defence, Sophia sprang out from behind the immense
glass. She had already shed a notable part of her own costume, and the flush of
mischief was in her face. She ran across to the other side of the room and
examined carefully a large coloured print that was affixed to the wall.
This print represented fifteen sisters, all of the same height and
slimness of figure, all of the same age—about twenty-five or so, and all with
exactly the same haughty and bored beauty. That they were in truth sisters was
clear from the facial resemblance between them; their demeanour indicated that
they were princesses, offspring of some impossibly prolific king and queen.
Those hands had never toiled, nor had those features ever relaxed from the smile
of courts. The princesses moved in a landscape of marble steps and verandahs,
with a bandstand and strange trees in the distance. One was in a riding-habit,
another in evening attire, another dressed for tea, another for the theatre;
another seemed to be ready to go to bed. One held a little girl by the hand; it
could not have been her own little girl, for these princesses were far beyond
human passions. Where had she obtained the little girl? Why was one sister going
to the theatre, another to tea, another to the stable, and another to bed? Why
was one in a heavy mantle, and another sheltering from the sun's rays under a
parasol? The picture was drenched in mystery, and the strangest thing about it
was that all these highnesses were apparently content with the most ridiculous
and out-moded fashions. Absurd hats, with veils flying behind; absurd bonnets,
fitting close to the head, and spotted; absurd coiffures that nearly lay on the
nape; absurd, clumsy sleeves; absurd waists, almost above the elbow's level;
absurd scolloped jackets! And the skirts! What a sight were those skirts! They
were nothing but vast decorated pyramids; on the summit of each was stuck the
upper half of a princess. It was astounding that princesses should consent to be
so preposterous and so uncomfortable. But Sophia perceived nothing uncanny in
the picture, which bore the legend: "Newest summer fashions from Paris. Gratis
supplement to Myra's Journal." Sophia had never imagined anything more stylish,
lovely, and dashing than the raiment of the fifteen princesses.
For Constance and Sophia had the disadvantage of living in the
middle ages. The crinoline had not quite reached its full circumference, and the
dress-improver had not even been thought of. In all the Five Towns there was not
a public bath, nor a free library, nor a municipal park, nor a telephone, nor
yet a board-school. People had not understood the vital necessity of going away
to the seaside every year. Bishop Colenso had just staggered Christianity by his
shameless notions on the Pentateuch. Half Lancashire was starving on account of
the American war. Garroting was the chief amusement of the homicidal classes.
Incredible as it may appear, there was nothing but a horse-tram running between
Bursley and Hanbridge—and that only twice an hour; and between the other towns
no stage of any kind! One went to Longshaw as one now goes to Pekin. It was an
era so dark and backward that one might wonder how people could sleep in their
beds at night for thinking about their sad state.
Happily the inhabitants of the Five Towns in that era were
passably pleased with themselves, and they never even suspected that they were
not quite modern and quite awake. They thought that the intellectual, the
industrial, and the social movements had gone about as far as these movements
could go, and they were amazed at their own progress. Instead of being humble
and ashamed, they actually showed pride in their pitiful achievements. They
ought to have looked forward meekly to the prodigious feats of posterity; but,
having too little faith and too much conceit, they were content to look behind
and make comparisons with the past. They did not foresee the miraculous
generation which is us. A poor, blind, complacent people! The ludicrous
horse-car was typical of them. The driver rang a huge bell, five minutes before
starting, that could be heard from the Wesleyan Chapel to the Cock Yard, and
then after deliberations and hesitations the vehicle rolled off on its rails
into unknown dangers while passengers shouted good-bye. At Bleakridge it had to
stop for the turnpike, and it was assisted up the mountains of Leveson Place and
Sutherland Street (towards Hanbridge) by a third horse, on whose back was
perched a tiny, whip-cracking boy; that boy lived like a shuttle on the road
between Leveson Place and Sutherland Street, and even in wet weather he was the
envy of all other boys. After half an hour's perilous transit the car drew up
solemnly in a narrow street by the Signal office in Hanbridge, and the ruddy
driver, having revolved many times the polished iron handle of his sole brake,
turned his attention to his passengers in calm triumph, dismissing them with a
sort of unsung doxology.
And this was regarded as the last word of traction! A
whip-cracking boy on a tip horse! Oh, blind, blind! You could not foresee the
hundred and twenty electric cars that now rush madly bumping and thundering at
twenty miles an hour through all the main streets of the district!
So that naturally Sophia, infected with the pride of her period,
had no misgivings whatever concerning the final elegance of the princesses. She
studied them as the fifteen apostles of the ne plus ultra; then, having taken
some flowers and plumes out of a box, amid warnings from Constance, she
retreated behind the glass, and presently emerged as a great lady in the style
of the princesses. Her mother's tremendous new gown ballooned about her in all
its fantastic richness and expensiveness. And with the gown she had put on her
mother's importance—that mien of assured authority, of capacity tested in many a
crisis, which characterized Mrs. Baines, and which Mrs. Baines seemed to impart
to her dresses even before she had regularly worn them. For it was a fact that
Mrs. Baines's empty garments inspired respect, as though some essence had
escaped from her and remained in them.
"Sophia!"
Constance stayed her needle, and, without lifting her head, gazed,
with eyes raised from the wool-work, motionless at the posturing figure of her
sister. It was sacrilege that she was witnessing, a prodigious irreverence. She
was conscious of an expectation that punishment would instantly fall on this
daring, impious child. But she, who never felt these mad, amazing impulses,
could nevertheless only smile fearfully.
"Sophia!" she breathed, with an intensity of alarm that merged
into condoning admiration. "Whatever will you do next?"
Sophia's lovely flushed face crowned the extraordinary structure
like a blossom, scarcely controlling its laughter. She was as tall as her
mother, and as imperious, as crested, and proud; and in spite of the pigtail,
the girlish semi-circular comb, and the loose foal-like limbs, she could support
as well as her mother the majesty of the gimp-embroidered dress. Her eyes
sparkled with all the challenges of the untried virgin as she minced about the
showroom. Abounding life inspired her movements. The confident and fierce joy of
youth shone on her brow. "What thing on earth equals me?" she seemed to demand
with enchanting and yet ruthless arrogance. She was the daughter of a respected,
bedridden draper in an insignificant town, lost in the central labyrinth of
England, if you like; yet what manner of man, confronted with her, would or
could have denied her naive claim to dominion? She stood, in her mother's hoops,
for the desire of the world. And in the innocence of her soul she knew it! The
heart of a young girl mysteriously speaks and tells her of her power long ere
she can use her power. If she can find nothing else to subdue, you may catch her
in the early years subduing a gate-post or drawing homage from an empty chair.
Sophia's experimental victim was Constance, with suspended needle and soft
glance that shot out from the lowered face.
Then Sophia fell, in stepping backwards; the pyramid was
overbalanced; great distended rings of silk trembled and swayed gigantically on
the floor, and Sophia's small feet lay like the feet of a doll on the rim of the
largest circle, which curved and arched above them like a cavern's mouth. The
abrupt transition of her features from assured pride to ludicrous astonishment
and alarm was comical enough to have sent into wild uncharitable laughter any
creature less humane than Constance. But Constance sprang to her, a single
embodied instinct of benevolence, with her snub nose, and tried to raise
her.
"Oh, Sophia!" she cried compassionately—that voice seemed not to
know the tones of reproof—"I do hope you've not messed it, because mother would
be so—"
The words were interrupted by the sound of groans beyond the door
leading to the bedrooms. The groans, indicating direst physical torment, grew
louder. The two girls stared, wonder-struck and afraid, at the door, Sophia with
her dark head raised, and Constance with her arms round Sophia's waist. The door
opened, letting in a much-magnified sound of groans, and there entered a
youngish, undersized man, who was frantically clutching his head in his hands
and contorting all the muscles of his face. On perceiving the sculptural group
of two prone, interlocked girls, one enveloped in a crinoline, and the other
with a wool-work bunch of flowers pinned to her knee, he jumped back, ceased
groaning, arranged his face, and seriously tried to pretend that it was not he
who had been vocal in anguish, that, indeed, he was just passing as a casual,
ordinary wayfarer through the showroom to the shop below. He blushed darkly; and
the girls also blushed.
"Oh, I beg pardon, I'm sure!" said this youngish man suddenly; and
with a swift turn he disappeared whence he had come.
He was Mr. Povey, a person universally esteemed, both within and
without the shop, the surrogate of bedridden Mr. Baines, the unfailing comfort
and stand-by of Mrs. Baines, the fount and radiating centre of order and
discipline in the shop; a quiet, diffident, secretive, tedious, and obstinate
youngish man, absolutely faithful, absolutely efficient in his sphere; without
brilliance, without distinction; perhaps rather little-minded, certainly
narrow-minded; but what a force in the shop! The shop was inconceivable without
Mr. Povey. He was under twenty and not out of his apprenticeship when Mr. Baines
had been struck down, and he had at once proved his worth. Of the assistants, he
alone slept in the house. His bedroom was next to that of his employer; there
was a door between the two chambers, and the two steps led down from the larger
to the less.
The girls regained their feet, Sophia with Constance's help. It
was not easy to right a capsized crinoline. They both began to laugh nervously,
with a trace of hysteria.
"I thought he'd gone to the dentist's," whispered Constance.
Mr. Povey's toothache had been causing anxiety in the microcosm
for two days, and it had been clearly understood at dinner that Thursday morning
that Mr. Povey was to set forth to Oulsnam Bros., the dentists at Hillport,
without any delay. Only on Thursdays and Sundays did Mr. Povey dine with the
family. On other days he dined later, by himself, but at the family table, when
Mrs. Baines or one of the assistants could "relieve" him in the shop. Before
starting out to visit her elder sister at Axe, Mrs. Baines had insisted to Mr.
Povey that he had eaten practically nothing but "slops" for twenty-four hours,
and that if he was not careful she would have him on her hands. He had replied
in his quietest, most sagacious, matter-of-fact tone—the tone that carried
weight with all who heard it—that he had only been waiting for Thursday
afternoon, and should of course go instantly to Oulsnams' and have the thing
attended to in a proper manner. He had even added that persons who put off going
to the dentist's were simply sowing trouble for themselves.
None could possibly have guessed that Mr. Povey was afraid of
going to the dentist's. But such was the case. He had not dared to set forth.
The paragon of commonsense, pictured by most people as being somehow unliable to
human frailties, could not yet screw himself up to the point of ringing a
dentist's door-bell.
"He did look funny," said Sophia. "I wonder what he thought. I
couldn't help laughing!"
Constance made no answer; but when Sophia had resumed her own
clothes, and it was ascertained beyond doubt that the new dress had not
suffered, and Constance herself was calmly stitching again, she said, poising
her needle as she had poised it to watch Sophia:
"I was just wondering whether something oughtn't to be done for
Mr.
Povey."
"What?" Sophia demanded.
"Has he gone back to his bedroom?"
"Let's go and listen," said Sophia the adventuress.
They went, through the showroom door, past the foot of the stairs
leading to the second storey, down the long corridor broken in the middle by two
steps and carpeted with a narrow bordered carpet whose parallel lines increased
its apparent length. They went on tiptoe, sticking close to one another. Mr.
Povey's door was slightly ajar. They listened; not a sound.
"Mr. Povey!" Constance coughed discreetly.
No reply. It was Sophia who pushed the door open. Constance made
an elderly prim plucking gesture at Sophia's bare arm, but she followed Sophia
gingerly into the forbidden room, which was, however, empty. The bed had been
ruffled, and on it lay a book, "The Harvest of a Quiet Eye."
"Harvest of a quiet tooth!" Sophia whispered, giggling very
low.
"Hsh!" Constance put her lips forward.
From the next room came a regular, muffled, oratorical sound, as
though some one had begun many years ago to address a meeting and had forgotten
to leave off and never would leave off. They were familiar with the sound, and
they quitted Mr. Povey's chamber in fear of disturbing it. At the same moment
Mr. Povey reappeared, this time in the drawing-room doorway at the other
extremity of the long corridor. He seemed to be trying ineffectually to flee
from his tooth as a murderer tries to flee from his conscience.
"Oh, Mr. Povey!" said Constance quickly—for he had surprised them
coming out of his bedroom; "we were just looking for you."
"To see if we could do anything for you," Sophia added.
"Oh no, thanks!" said Mr. Povey.
Then he began to come down the corridor, slowly.
"You haven't been to the dentist's," said Constance
sympathetically.
"No, I haven't," said Mr. Povey, as if Constance was indicating a
fact which had escaped his attention. "The truth is, I thought it looked like
rain, and if I'd got wet—you see—"
Miserable Mr. Povey!
"Yes," said Constance, "you certainly ought to keep out of
draughts. Don't you think it would be a good thing if you went and sat in the
parlour? There's a fire there."
"I shall be all right, thank you," said Mr. Povey. And after a
pause:
"Well, thanks, I will."
III
The girls made way for him to pass them at the head of the
twisting stairs which led down to the parlour. Constance followed, and Sophia
followed Constance.
"Have father's chair," said Constance.
There were two rocking-chairs with fluted backs covered by
antimacassars, one on either side of the hearth. That to the left was still
entitled "father's chair," though its owner had not sat in it since long before
the Crimean war, and would never sit in it again.
"I think I'd sooner have the other one," said Mr. Povey, "because
it's on the right side, you see." And he touched his right cheek.
Having taken Mrs. Baines's chair, he bent his face down to the
fire, seeking comfort from its warmth. Sophia poked the fire, whereupon Mr.
Povey abruptly withdrew his face. He then felt something light on his shoulders.
Constance had taken the antimacassar from the back of the chair, and protected
him with it from the draughts. He did not instantly rebel, and therefore was
permanently barred from rebellion. He was entrapped by the antimacassar. It
formally constituted him an invalid, and Constance and Sophia his nurses.
Constance drew the curtain across the street door. No draught could come from
the window, for the window was not 'made to open.' The age of ventilation had
not arrived. Sophia shut the other two doors. And, each near a door, the girls
gazed at Mr. Povey behind his back, irresolute, but filled with a delicious
sense of responsibility.
The situation was on a different plane now. The seriousness of Mr.
Povey's toothache, which became more and more manifest, had already wiped out
the ludicrous memory of the encounter in the showroom. Looking at these two big
girls, with their short-sleeved black frocks and black aprons, and their smooth
hair, and their composed serious faces, one would have judged them incapable of
the least lapse from an archangelic primness; Sophia especially presented a
marvellous imitation of saintly innocence. As for the toothache, its action on
Mr. Povey was apparently periodic; it gathered to a crisis like a wave,
gradually, the torture increasing till the wave broke and left Mr. Povey
exhausted, but free for a moment from pain. These crises recurred about once a
minute. And now, accustomed to the presence of the young virgins, and having
tacitly acknowledged by his acceptance of the antimacassar that his state was
abnormal, he gave himself up frankly to affliction. He concealed nothing of his
agony, which was fully displayed by sudden contortions of his frame, and frantic
oscillations of the rocking-chair. Presently, as he lay back enfeebled in the
wash of a spent wave, he murmured with a sick man's voice:
"I suppose you haven't got any laudanum?"
The girls started into life. "Laudanum, Mr. Povey?"
"Yes, to hold in my mouth."
He sat up, tense; another wave was forming. The excellent fellow
was lost to all self-respect, all decency.
"There's sure to be some in mother's cupboard," said Sophia.
Constance, who bore Mrs. Baines's bunch of keys at her girdle, a
solemn trust, moved a little fearfully to a corner cupboard which was hung in
the angle to the right of the projecting fireplace, over a shelf on which stood
a large copper tea-urn. That corner cupboard, of oak inlaid with maple and ebony
in a simple border pattern, was typical of the room. It was of a piece with the
deep green "flock" wall paper, and the tea-urn, and the rocking-chairs with
their antimacassars, and the harmonium in rosewood with a Chinese paper-mache
tea-caddy on the top of it; even with the carpet, certainly the most curious
parlour carpet that ever was, being made of lengths of the stair-carpet sewn
together side by side. That corner cupboard was already old in service; it had
held the medicines of generations. It gleamed darkly with the grave and genuine
polish which comes from ancient use alone. The key which Constance chose from
her bunch was like the cupboard, smooth and shining with years; it fitted and
turned very easily, yet with a firm snap. The single wide door opened sedately
as a portal.
The girls examined the sacred interior, which had the air of being
inhabited by an army of diminutive prisoners, each crying aloud with the full
strength of its label to be set free on a mission.
"There it is!" said Sophia eagerly.
And there it was: a blue bottle, with a saffron label,
"Caution.
POISON. Laudanum. Charles Critchlow, M.P.S. Dispensing Chemist.
St.
Luke's Square, Bursley."
Those large capitals frightened the girls. Constance took the
bottle as she might have taken a loaded revolver, and she glanced at Sophia.
Their omnipotent, all-wise mother was not present to tell them what to do. They,
who had never decided, had to decide now. And Constance was the elder. Must this
fearsome stuff, whose very name was a name of fear, be introduced in spite of
printed warnings into Mr. Povey's mouth? The responsibility was terrifying.
"Perhaps I'd just better ask Mr. Critchlow," Constance
faltered.
The expectation of beneficent laudanum had enlivened Mr. Povey,
had already, indeed, by a sort of suggestion, half cured his toothache.
"Oh no!" he said. "No need to ask Mr. Critchlow … Two or three
drops in a little water." He showed impatience to be at the laudanum.
The girls knew that an antipathy existed between the chemist and
Mr.
Povey.
"It's sure to be all right," said Sophia. "I'll get the
water."
With youthful cries and alarms they succeeded in pouring four
mortal dark drops (one more than Constance intended) into a cup containing a
little water. And as they handed the cup to Mr. Povey their faces were the faces
of affrighted comical conspirators. They felt so old and they looked so
young.
Mr. Povey imbibed eagerly of the potion, put the cup on the
mantelpiece, and then tilted his head to the right so as to submerge the
affected tooth. In this posture he remained, awaiting the sweet influence of the
remedy. The girls, out of a nice modesty, turned away, for Mr. Povey must not
swallow the medicine, and they preferred to leave him unhampered in the solution
of a delicate problem. When next they examined him, he was leaning back in the
rocking-chair with his mouth open and his eyes shut.
"Has it done you any good, Mr. Povey?"
"I think I'll lie down on the sofa for a minute," was Mr. Povey's
strange reply; and forthwith he sprang up and flung himself on to the horse-hair
sofa between the fireplace and the window, where he lay stripped of all his
dignity, a mere beaten animal in a grey suit with peculiar coat-tails, and a
very creased waistcoat, and a lapel that was planted with pins, and a paper
collar and close-fitting paper cuffs.
Constance ran after him with the antimacassar, which she spread
softly on his shoulders; and Sophia put another one over his thin little legs,
all drawn up.
They then gazed at their handiwork, with secret self-accusations
and the most dreadful misgivings.
"He surely never swallowed it!" Constance whispered.
"He's asleep, anyhow," said Sophia, more loudly.
Mr. Povey was certainly asleep, and his mouth was very wide
open—like a shop-door. The only question was whether his sleep was not an
eternal sleep; the only question was whether he was not out of his pain for
ever.
Then he snored—horribly; his snore seemed a portent of
disaster.
Sophia approached him as though he were a bomb, and stared,
growing bolder, into his mouth.
"Oh, Con," she summoned her sister, "do come and look! It's too
droll!"
In an instant all their four eyes were exploring the singular
landscape of Mr. Povey's mouth. In a corner, to the right of that interior, was
one sizeable fragment of a tooth, that was attached to Mr. Povey by the
slenderest tie, so that at each respiration of Mr. Povey, when his body slightly
heaved and the gale moaned in the cavern, this tooth moved separately, showing
that its long connection with Mr. Povey was drawing to a close.
"That's the one," said Sophia, pointing. "And it's as loose as
anything. Did you ever see such a funny thing?"
The extreme funniness of the thing had lulled in Sophia the fear
of Mr.
Povey's sudden death.
"I'll see how much he's taken," said Constance, preoccupied, going
to the mantelpiece.
"Why, I do believe—" Sophia began, and then stopped, glancing at
the sewing-machine, which stood next to the sofa.
It was a Howe sewing-machine. It had a little tool-drawer, and in
the tool-drawer was a small pair of pliers. Constance, engaged in sniffing at
the lees of the potion in order to estimate its probable deadliness, heard the
well-known click of the little tool-drawer, and then she saw Sophia nearing Mr.
Povey's mouth with the pliers.
"Sophia!" she exclaimed, aghast. "What in the name of goodness are
you doing?"
"Nothing," said Sophia.
The next instant Mr. Povey sprang up out of his laudanum
dream.
"It jumps!" he muttered; and, after a reflective pause, "but it's
much better." He had at any rate escaped death.
Sophia's right hand was behind her back.
Just then a hawker passed down King Street, crying mussels and
cockles.
"Oh!" Sophia almost shrieked. "Do let's have mussels and cockles
for tea!" And she rushed to the door, and unlocked and opened it, regardless of
the risk of draughts to Mr. Povey.
In those days people often depended upon the caprices of hawkers
for the tastiness of their teas; but it was an adventurous age, when errant
knights of commerce were numerous and enterprising. You went on to your
doorstep, caught your meal as it passed, withdrew, cooked it and ate it, quite
in the manner of the early Briton.
Constance was obliged to join her sister on the top step. Sophia
descended to the second step.
"Fresh mussels and cockles all alive oh!" bawled the hawker,
looking across the road in the April breeze. He was the celebrated Hollins, a
professional Irish drunkard, aged in iniquity, who cheerfully saluted
magistrates in the street, and referred to the workhouse, which he occasionally
visited, as the Bastile.
Sophia was trembling from head to foot.
"What ARE you laughing at, you silly thing?" Constance
demanded.
Sophia surreptitiously showed the pliers, which she had partly
thrust into her pocket. Between their points was a most perceptible, and even
recognizable, fragment of Mr. Povey.
This was the crown of Sophia's career as a perpetrator of the
unutterable.
"What!" Constance's face showed the final contortions of that
horrified incredulity which is forced to believe.
Sophia nudged her violently to remind her that they were in the
street, and also quite close to Mr. Povey.
"Now, my little missies," said the vile Hollins. "Three pence a
pint, and how's your honoured mother to-day? Yes, fresh, so help me God!"