The Old Wives' Tale
Book II
CONSTANCE
Chapter VII
BRICKS AND MORTAR
I
In the summer of that year the occurrence
of a white rash of posters on hoardings and on certain houses and shops, was
symptomatic of organic change in the town. The posters were iterations of a
mysterious announcement and summons, which began with the august words: "By
Order of the Trustees of the late William Clews Mericarp, Esq." Mericarp had
been a considerable owner of property in Bursley. After a prolonged residence at
Southport, he had died, at the age of eighty-two, leaving his property behind.
For sixty years he had been a name, not a figure; and the news of his death,
which was assuredly an event, incited the burgesses to gossip, for they had come
to regard him as one of the invisible immortals. Constance was shocked, though
she had never seen Mericarp. ("Everybody dies nowadays!" she thought.) He owned
the Baines-Povey shop, and also Mr. Critchlow's shop. Constance knew not how
often her father and, later, her husband, had renewed the lease of those
premises that were now hers; but from her earliest recollections rose a vague
memory of her father talking to her mother about 'Mericarp's rent,' which was
and always had been a hundred a year. Mericarp had earned the reputation of
being 'a good landlord.' Constance said sadly: "We shall never have another as
good!" When a lawyer's clerk called and asked her to permit the exhibition of a
poster in each of her shop-windows, she had misgivings for the future; she was
worried; she decided that she would determine the lease next year, so as to be
on the safe side; but immediately afterwards she decided that she could decide
nothing.
The posters continued: "To be sold by auction, at the Tiger Hotel
at six-thirty for seven o'clock precisely." What six-thirty had to do with seven
o'clock precisely no one knew. Then, after stating the name and credentials of
the auctioneer, the posters at length arrived at the objects to be sold: "All
those freehold messuages and shops and copyhold tenements namely." Houses were
never sold by auction in Bursley. At moments of auction burgesses were reminded
that the erections they lived in were not houses, as they had falsely supposed,
but messuages. Having got as far as 'namely' the posters ruled a line and began
afresh: "Lot I. All that extensive and commodious shop and messuage with the
offices and appurtenances thereto belonging situate and being No. 4 St. Luke's
Square in the parish of Bursley in the County of Stafford and at present in the
occupation of Mrs. Constance Povey widow under a lease expiring in September
1889." Thus clearly asserting that all Constance's shop was for sale, its whole
entirety, and not a fraction or slice of it merely, the posters proceeded: "Lot
2. All that extensive and commodious shop and messuage with the offices and
appurtenances thereto belonging situate and being No. 3 St. Luke's Square in the
parish of Bursley in the County of Stafford and at present in the occupation of
Charles Critchlow chemist under an agreement for a yearly tenancy." The
catalogue ran to fourteen lots. The posters, lest any one should foolishly
imagine that a non-legal intellect could have achieved such explicit and
comprehensive clarity of statement, were signed by a powerful firm of solicitors
in Hanbridge. Happily in the Five Towns there were no metaphysicians; otherwise
the firm might have been expected to explain, in the 'further particulars and
conditions' which the posters promised, how even a messuage could 'be' the thing
at which it was 'situate.'
Within a few hours of the outbreak of the rash, Mr. Critchlow
abruptly presented himself before Constance at the millinery counter; he was
waving a poster.
"Well!" he exclaimed grimly. "What next, eh?"
"Yes, indeed!" Constance responded.
"Are ye thinking o' buying?" he asked. All the assistants,
including
Miss Insull, were in hearing, but he ignored their
presence.
"Buying!" repeated Constance. "Not me! I've got quite enough house
property as it is."
Like all owners of real property, she usually adopted towards her
possessions an attitude implying that she would be willing to pay somebody to
take them from her.
"Shall you?" she added, with Mr. Critchlow's own brusqueness.
"Me! Buy property in St. Luke's Square!" Mr. Critchlow sneered.
And then left the shop as suddenly as he had entered it.
The sneer at St. Luke's Square was his characteristic expression
of an opinion which had been slowly forming for some years. The Square was no
longer what it had been, though individual businesses might be as good as ever.
For nearly twelve months two shops had been to let in it. And once, bankruptcy
had stained its annals. The tradesmen had naturally searched for a cause in
every direction save the right one, the obvious one; and naturally they had
found a cause. According to the tradesmen, the cause was 'this football.' The
Bursley Football Club had recently swollen into a genuine rival of the ancient
supremacy of the celebrated Knype Club. It had transformed itself into a limited
company, and rented a ground up the Moorthorne Road, and built a grand stand.
The Bursley F.C. had 'tied' with the Knype F.C. on the Knype ground—a prodigious
achievement, an achievement which occupied a column of the Athletic News one
Monday morning! But were the tradesmen civically proud of this glory? No! They
said that 'this football' drew people out of the town on Saturday afternoons, to
the complete abolition of shopping. They said also that people thought of
nothing but 'this football;' and, nearly in the same breath, that only roughs
and good-for-nothings could possibly be interested in such a barbarous game. And
they spoke of gate-money, gambling, and professionalism, and the end of all true
sport in England. In brief, something new had come to the front and was
submitting to the ordeal of the curse.
The sale of the Mericarp estate had a particular interest for
respectable stake-in-the-town persons. It would indicate to what extent, if at
all, 'this football' was ruining Bursley. Constance mentioned to Cyril that she
fancied she might like to go to the sale, and as it was dated for one of Cyril's
off-nights Cyril said that he fancied he might like to go too. So they went
together; Samuel used to attend property sales, but he had never taken his wife
to one. Constance and Cyril arrived at the Tiger shortly after seven o'clock,
and were directed to a room furnished and arranged as for a small public meeting
of philanthropists. A few gentlemen were already present, but not the
instigating trustees, solicitors, and auctioneers. It appeared that 'six-thirty
for seven o'clock precisely' meant seven-fifteen. Constance took a Windsor chair
in the corner nearest the door, and motioned Cyril to the next chair; they dared
not speak; they moved on tiptoe; Cyril inadvertently dragged his chair along the
floor, and produced a scrunching sound; he blushed, as though he had desecrated
a church, and his mother made a gesture of horror. The remainder of the company
glanced at the corner, apparently pained by this negligence. Some of them
greeted Constance, but self-consciously, with a sort of shamed air; it might
have been that they had all nefariously gathered together there for the
committing of a crime. Fortunately Constance's widowhood had already lost its
touching novelty, so that the greetings, if self-conscious, were at any rate
given without unendurable commiseration and did not cause awkwardness.
When the official world arrived, fussy, bustling, bearing
documents and a hammer, the general feeling of guilty shame was intensified.
Useless for the auctioneer to try to dissipate the gloom by means of bright
gestures and quick, cheerful remarks to his supporters! Cyril had an idea that
the meeting would open with a hymn, until the apparition of a tapster with wine
showed him his error. The auctioneer very particularly enjoined the tapster to
see to it that no one lacked for his thirst, and the tapster became
self-consciously energetic. He began by choosing Constance for service. In
refusing wine, she blushed; then the fellow offered a glass to Cyril, who went
scarlet, and mumbled 'No' with a lump in his throat; when the tapster's back was
turned, he smiled sheepishly at his mother. The majority of the company accepted
and sipped. The auctioneer sipped and loudly smacked, and said: "Ah!"
Mr. Critchlow came in.
And the auctioneer said again: "Ah! I'm always glad when the
tenants come. That's always a good sign."
He glanced round for approval of this sentiment. But everybody
seemed too stiff to move. Even the auctioneer was self-conscious.
"Waiter! Offer wine to Mr. Critchlow!" he exclaimed bullyingly, as
if saying: "Man! what on earth are you thinking of, to neglect Mr.
Critchlow?"
"Yes, sir; yes, sir," said the waiter, who was dispensing wine as
fast as a waiter can.
The auction commenced.
Seizing the hammer, the auctioneer gave a short biography of
William Clews Mericarp, and, this pious duty accomplished, called upon a
solicitor to read the conditions of sale. The solicitor complied and made a
distressing exhibition of self-consciousness. The conditions of sale were very
lengthy, and apparently composed in a foreign tongue; and the audience listened
to this elocution with a stoical pretence of breathless interest.
Then the auctioneer put up all that extensive and commodious
messuage and shop situate and being No. 4, St. Luke's Square. Constance and
Cyril moved their limbs surreptitiously, as though being at last found out. The
auctioneer referred to John Baines and to Samuel Povey, with a sense of personal
loss, and then expressed his pleasure in the presence of 'the ladies;' he meant
Constance, who once more had to blush.
"Now, gentlemen," said the auctioneer, "what do you say for these
famous premises? I think I do not exaggerate when I use the word 'famous.'"
Some one said a thousand pounds, in the terrorized voice of a
delinquent.
"A thousand pounds," repeated the auctioneer, paused, sipped, and
smacked.
"Guineas," said another voice self-accused of iniquity.
"A thousand and fifty," said the auctioneer.
Then there was a long interval, an interval that tightened the
nerves of the assembly.
"Now, ladies and gentlemen," the auctioneer adjured.
The first voice said sulkily: "Eleven hundred."
And thus the bids rose to fifteen hundred, lifted bit by bit, as
it were, by the magnetic force of the auctioneer's personality. The man was now
standing up, in domination. He bent down to the solicitor's head; they whispered
together.
"Gentlemen," said the auctioneer, "I am happy to inform you that
the sale is now open." His tone translated better than words his calm
professional beatitude. Suddenly in a voice of wrath he hissed at the waiter:
"Waiter, why don't you serve these gentlemen?"
"Yes, sir; yes, sir."
The auctioneer sat down and sipped at leisure, chatting with his
clerk and the solicitor and the solicitor's clerk.
When he rose it was as a conqueror. "Gentlemen, fifteen hundred is
bid.
Now, Mr. Critchlow."
Mr. Critchlow shook his head. The auctioneer threw a courteous
glance at Constance, who avoided it.
After many adjurations, he reluctantly raised his hammer,
pretended to let it fall, and saved it several times.
And then Mr. Critchlow said: "And fifty."
"Fifteen hundred and fifty is bid," the auctioneer informed the
company, electrifying the waiter once more. And when he had sipped he said, with
feigned sadness: "Come, gentlemen, you surely don't mean to let this magnificent
lot go for fifteen hundred and fifty pounds?"
But they did mean that.
The hammer fell, and the auctioneer's clerk and the solicitor's
clerk took Mr. Critchlow aside and wrote with him.
Nobody was surprised when Mr. Critchlow bought Lot No. 2, his own
shop.
Constance whispered then to Cyril that she wished to leave. They
left, with unnatural precautions, but instantly regained their natural demeanour
in the dark street.
"Well, I never! Well, I never!" she murmured outside, astonished
and disturbed.
She hated the prospect of Mr. Critchlow as a landlord. And yet she
could not persuade herself to leave the place, in spite of decisions.
The sale demonstrated that football had not entirely undermined
the commercial basis of society in Bursley; only two Lots had to be
withdrawn.
II
On Thursday afternoon of the same week the youth whom Constance
had ended by hiring for the manipulation of shutters and other jobs unsuitable
for fragile women, was closing the shop. The clock had struck two. All the
shutters were up except the last one, in the midst of the doorway. Miss Insull
and her mistress were walking about the darkened interior, putting dust-sheets
well over the edges of exposed goods; the other assistants had just left. The
bull-terrier had wandered into the shop as he almost invariably did at closing
time—for he slept there, an efficient guard—and had lain down by the dying
stove; though not venerable, he was stiffening into age.
"You can shut," said Miss Insull to the youth.
But as the final shutter was ascending to its position, Mr.
Critchlow appeared on the pavement.
"Hold on, young fellow!" Mr. Critchlow commanded, and stepped
slowly, lifting up his long apron, over the horizontal shutter on which the
perpendicular shutters rested in the doorway.
"Shall you be long, Mr. Critchlow?" the youth asked, posing the
shutter. "Or am I to shut?"
"Shut, lad," said Mr. Critchlow, briefly. "I'll go out by th' side
door."
"Here's Mr. Critchlow!" Miss Insull called out to Constance, in a
peculiar tone. And a flush, scarcely perceptible, crept very slowly over her
dark features. In the twilight of the shop, lit only by a few starry holes in
the shutters, and by the small side-window, not the keenest eye could have
detected that flush.
"Mr. Critchlow!" Constance murmured the exclamation. She resented
his future ownership of her shop. She thought he was come to play the landlord,
and she determined to let him see that her mood was independent and free, that
she would as lief give up the business as keep it. In particular she meant to
accuse him of having deliberately deceived her as to his intentions on his
previous visit.
"Well, missis!" the aged man greeted her. "We've made it up
between us. Happen some folk'll think we've taken our time, but I don't know as
that's their affair."
His little blinking eyes had a red border. The skin of his pale
small face was wrinkled in millions of minute creases. His arms and legs were
marvellously thin and sharply angular. The corners of his heliotrope lips were
turned down, as usual, in a mysterious comment on the world; and his smile, as
he fronted Constance with his excessive height, crowned the mystery.
Constance stared, at a loss. It surely could not after all be
true, the substance of the rumours that had floated like vapours in the Square
for eight years and more!
"What…?" she began.
"Me, and her!" He jerked his head in the direction of Miss
Insull.
The dog had leisurely strolled forward to inspect the edges of the
fiance's trousers. Miss Insull summoned the animal with a noise of fingers, and
then bent down and caressed it. A strange gesture proving the validity of
Charles Critchlow's discovery that in Maria Insull a human being was buried!
Miss Insull was, as near as any one could guess, forty years of
age. For twenty-five years she had served in the shop, passing about twelve
hours a day in the shop; attending regularly at least three religious services
at the Wesleyan Chapel or School on Sundays, and sleeping with her mother, whom
she kept. She had never earned more than thirty shillings a week, and yet her
situation was considered to be exceptionally good. In the eternal fusty dusk of
the shop she had gradually lost such sexual characteristics and charms as she
had once possessed. She was as thin and flat as Charles Critchlow himself. It
was as though her bosom had suffered from a prolonged drought at a susceptible
period of development, and had never recovered. The one proof that blood ran in
her veins was the pimply quality of her ruined complexion, and the pimples of
that brickish expanse proved that the blood was thin and bad. Her hands and feet
were large and ungainly; the skin of the fingers was roughened by coarse
contacts to the texture of emery-paper. On six days a week she wore black; on
the seventh a kind of discreet half-mourning. She was honest, capable, and
industrious; and beyond the confines of her occupation she had no curiosity, no
intelligence, no ideas. Superstitions and prejudices, deep and violent, served
her for ideas; but she could incomparably sell silks and bonnets, braces and
oilcloth; in widths, lengths, and prices she never erred; she never annoyed a
customer, nor foolishly promised what could not be performed, nor was late nor
negligent, nor disrespectful. No one knew anything about her, because there was
nothing to know. Subtract the shop-assistant from her, and naught remained.
Benighted and spiritually dead, she existed by habit.
But for Charles Critchlow she happened to be an illusion. He had
cast eyes on her and had seen youth, innocence, virginity. During eight years
the moth Charles had flitted round the lamp of her brilliance, and was now
singed past escape. He might treat her with what casualness he chose; he might
ignore her in public; he might talk brutally about women; he might leave her to
wonder dully what he meant, for months at a stretch: but there emerged
indisputable from the sum of his conduct the fact that he wanted her. He desired
her; she charmed him; she was something ornamental and luxurious for which he
was ready to pay—and to commit follies. He had been a widower since before she
was born; to him she was a slip of a girl. All is relative in this world. As for
her, she was too indifferent to refuse him. Why refuse him? Oysters do not
refuse.
"I'm sure I congratulate you both," Constance breathed, realizing
the import of Mr. Critchlow's laconic words. "I'm sure I hope you'll be
happy."
"That'll be all right," said Mr. Critchlow.
"Thank you, Mrs. Povey," said Maria Insull.
Nobody seemed to know what to say next. "It's rather sudden," was
on Constance's tongue, but did not achieve utterance, being patently absurd.
"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Critchlow, as though himself contemplating
anew the situation.
Miss Insull gave the dog a final pat.
"So that's settled," said Mr. Critchlow. "Now, missis, ye want to
give up this shop, don't ye?"
"I'm not so sure about that," Constance answered uneasily.
"Don't tell me!" he protested. "Of course ye want to give up the
shop."
"I've lived here all my life," said Constance.
"Ye've not lived in th' shop all ye're life. I said th' shop.
Listen here!" he continued. "I've got a proposal to make to you. You can keep on
the house, and I'll take the shop off ye're hands. Now?" He looked at her
inquiringly.
Constance was taken aback by the brusqueness of the suggestion,
which, moreover, she did not understand.
"But how—" she faltered.
"Come here," said Mr. Critchlow, impatiently, and he moved towards
the house-door of the shop, behind the till.
"Come where? What do you want?" Constance demanded in a maze.
"Here!" said Mr. Critchlow, with increasing impatience. "Follow
me, will ye?"
Constance obeyed. Miss Insull sidled after Constance, and the dog
after Miss Insull. Mr. Critchlow went through the doorway and down the corridor,
past the cutting-out room to his right. The corridor then turned at a
right-angle to the left and ended at the parlour door, the kitchen steps being
to the left.
Mr. Critchlow stopped short of the kitchen steps, and extended his
arms, touching the walls on either side.
"Here!" he said, tapping the walls with his bony knuckles. "Here!
Suppose I brick ye this up, and th' same upstairs between th' showroom and th'
bedroom passage, ye've got your house to yourself. Ye say ye've lived here all
your life. Well, what's to prevent ye finishing up here? The fact is," he added,
"it would only be making into two houses again what was two houses to start
with, afore your time, missis."
"And what about the shop?" cried Constance.
"Ye can sell us th' stock at a valuation."
Constance suddenly comprehended the scheme. Mr. Critchlow would
remain the chemist, while Mrs. Critchlow became the head of the chief drapery
business in the town. Doubtless they would knock a hole through the separating
wall on the other side, to balance the bricking-up on this side. They must have
thought it all out in detail. Constance revolted.
"Yes!" she said, a little disdainfully. "And my goodwill? Shall
you take that at a valuation too?"
Mr. Critchlow glanced at the creature for whom he was ready to
scatter thousands of pounds. She might have been a Phryne and he the infatuated
fool. He glanced at her as if to say: "We expected this, and this is where we
agreed it was to stop."
"Ay!" he said to Constance. "Show me your goodwill. Lap it up in a
bit of paper and hand it over, and I'll take it at a valuation. But not afore,
missis! Not afore! I'm making ye a very good offer. Twenty pound a year, I'll
let ye th' house for. And take th' stock at a valuation. Think it over, my
lass."
Having said what he had to say, Charles Critchlow departed,
according to his custom. He unceremoniously let himself out by the side door,
and passed with wavy apron round the corner of King Street into the Square and
so to his own shop, which ignored the Thursday half-holiday. Miss Insull left
soon afterwards.
III
Constance's pride urged her to refuse the offer. But in truth her
sole objection to it was that she had not thought of the scheme herself. For the
scheme really reconciled her wish to remain where she was with her wish to be
free of the shop.
"I shall make him put me in a new window in the parlour—one that
will open!" she said positively to Cyril, who accepted Mr. Critchlow's idea with
fatalistic indifference.
After stipulating for the new window, she closed with the offer.
Then there was the stock-taking, which endured for weeks. And then a carpenter
came and measured for the window. And a builder and a mason came and inspected
doorways, and Constance felt that the end was upon her. She took up the carpet
in the parlour and protected the furniture by dustsheets. She and Cyril lived
between bare boards and dustsheets for twenty days, and neither carpenter nor
mason reappeared. Then one surprising day the old window was removed by the
carpenter's two journeymen, and late in the afternoon the carpenter brought the
new window, and the three men worked till ten o'clock at night, fixing it. Cyril
wore his cap and went to bed in his cap, and Constance wore a Paisley shawl. A
painter had bound himself beyond all possibility of failure to paint the window
on the morrow. He was to begin at six a.m.; and Amy's alarm-clock was altered so
that she might be up and dressed to admit him. He came a week later,
administered one coat, and vanished for another ten days. Then two masons
suddenly came with heavy tools, and were shocked to find that all was not
prepared for them. (After three carpetless weeks Constance had relaid her
floors.) They tore off wall-paper, sent cascades of plaster down the kitchen
steps, withdrew alternate courses of bricks from the walls, and, sated with
destruction, hastened away. After four days new red bricks began to arrive,
carried by a quite guiltless hodman who had not visited the house before. The
hodman met the full storm of Constance's wrath. It was not a vicious wrath,
rather a good-humoured wrath; but it impressed the hodman. "My house hasn't been
fit to live in for a month," she said in fine. "If these walls aren't built
to-morrow, upstairs AND down—to-morrow, mind!—don't let any of you dare to show
your noses here again, for I won't have you. Now you've brought your bricks. Off
with you, and tell your master what I say!"
It was effective. The next day subdued and plausible workmen of
all sorts awoke the house with knocking at six-thirty precisely, and the two
doorways were slowly bricked up. The curious thing was that, when the barrier
was already a foot high on the ground-floor Constance remembered small
possessions of her own which she had omitted to remove from the cutting-out
room. Picking up her skirts, she stepped over into the region that was no more
hers, and stepped back with the goods. She had a bandanna round her head to keep
the thick dust out of her hair. She was very busy, very preoccupied with
nothings. She had no time for sentimentalities. Yet when the men arrived at the
topmost course and were at last hidden behind their own erection, and she could
see only rough bricks and mortar, she was disconcertingly overtaken by a misty
blindness and could not even see bricks and mortar. Cyril found her, with her
absurd bandanna, weeping in a sheet-covered rocking-chair in the sacked parlour.
He whistled uneasily, remarked: "I say, mother, what about tea?" and then,
hearing the heavy voices of workmen above, ran with relief upstairs. Tea had
been set in the drawing-room, he was glad to learn that from Amy, who informed
him also that she should 'never get used to them there new walls,' not as long
as she lived.
He went to the School of Art that night. Constance, alone, could
find nothing to do. She had willed that the walls should be built, and they had
been built; but days must elapse before they could be plastered, and after the
plaster still more days before the papering. Not for another month, perhaps,
would her house be free of workmen and ripe for her own labours. She could only
sit in the dust-drifts and contemplate the havoc of change, and keep her eyes as
dry as she could. The legal transactions were all but complete; little bills
announcing the transfer of the business lay on the counters in the shop at the
disposal of customers. In two days Charles Critchlow would pay the price of a
desire realized. The sign was painted out and new letters sketched thereon in
chalk. In future she would be compelled, if she wished to enter the shop, to
enter it as a customer and from the front. Yes, she saw that, though the house
remained hers, the root of her life had been wrenched up.
And the mess! It seemed inconceivable that the material mess could
ever be straightened away!
Yet, ere the fields of the county were first covered with snow
that season, only one sign survived of the devastating revolution, and that was
a loose sheet of wall-paper that had been too soon pasted on to new plaster and
would not stick. Maria Insull was Maria Critchlow. Constance had been out into
the Square and seen the altered sign, and seen Mrs. Critchlow's taste in
window-curtains, and seen—most impressive sight of all—that the grimy window of
the abandoned room at the top of the abandoned staircase next to the bedroom of
her girlhood, had been cleaned and a table put in front of it. She knew that the
chamber, which she herself had never entered, was to be employed as a storeroom,
but the visible proof of its conversion so strangely affected her that she had
not felt able to go boldly into the shop, as she had meant to do, and make a few
purchases in the way of friendliness. "I'm a silly woman!" she muttered. Later,
she did venture, timidly abrupt, into the shop, and was received with fitting
state by Mrs. Critchlow (as desiccated as ever), who insisted on allowing her
the special trade discount. And she carried her little friendly purchases round
to her own door in King Street. Trivial, trivial event! Constance, not knowing
whether to laugh or cry, did both. She accused herself of developing a
hysterical faculty in tears, and strove sagely against it.