CORNELL 
 f^'feMlVERSITY 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Joseph Whitmore Barry 
 dramatic library 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 TWO FRIENDS 
 
 OF Cornell University 
 
 1934 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 6003.E59O4 1912 
 
 The old wives' tale, a novel of life. 
 

 Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 41 51 61 1 
 
THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 A Novel of Life 
 
 BY 
 
 ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
 HODDER & STOUGHTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
To 
 W. W. K. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 MRS. BAINES 
 
 CHAFTBIt '*»■ 
 
 I. The Squasb > 
 
 II. The Tooth »* 
 
 III. A Battle • • 33 
 
 IV. Elephant ^S 
 
 V. The Traveller • • 83 
 
 VI. Escapade 'o> 
 
 VII. A Defeat >»> 
 
 BOOK II 
 CONSTANCE 
 
 i. Revolution >34 
 
 II. Christmas and the Future i53 
 
 III. Cyril ^9 
 
 IV. Crime S9 
 
 V. Another Crime a"? 
 
 VI. The Widow «40 
 
 VII. Bricks and Mortar 252 
 
 VIII. The Proudest Mother ..... a6S 
 
viii CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK III 
 SOPHIA 
 
 CHAPTER fAOB 
 
 I. The Elopement ...i.... 276 
 
 II. Suffer , . 289 
 
 III. An Ambition satisfied , . ' , . , , 305 
 
 IV. A Crisis for Gerald , , 324 
 
 V. Fever . . . • • 344 
 
 VI. The Siege 379 
 
 VII. SnccESfl «•••••. ,.405 
 
 BOOK IV 
 WHAT LIFE IS 
 
 I. Frensham's 423 
 
 II. The Meeting ^^^ 
 
 III. Towards Hotel Life 48c 
 
 IV. End of Sophia . . . ■ 520 
 
 V. End of Constance •<••,., 553 
 
THE OLD wives' TALE 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 MRS. BAINES 
 CHAPTEI^ I 
 
 THE SQUARE 
 
 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 respec- 
 tively 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 
 iwollen bump, the Wrekin, and that the exaggerated wildness 
 
 I B 
 
2 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 j perhaps 
 occasionally somewhat sore at this neglect, but how proud in 
 the instinctive cognizance of its representative features and 
 traits 1 
 
 Constance and Sophia, busy with the intense preoccupa- 
 tions 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, orna- 
 mented 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 
 
THE SQUARE 8 
 
 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 non- 
 chalantly 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 suflScient 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 makp them laugh. They are unique and indis- 
 pensable. From the north of the county right down to the 
 south they alone stand for civilization, applied science, organ- 
 ized manufacture, and the century — ^until you come to Wolver- 
 hampton. 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 j 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 com 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 manu- 
 facture, 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 
 
4 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 1 
 
 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 hps 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 
 
THE SQUARE 6 
 
 Square, the remainder being made up of Critchlow's (chemist), 
 the clothier's, and the Hanover Spirit Vaults. (" Vaults " was 
 a iavourite 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 
 indies 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 " pufling," 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 indul- 
 gence 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. 
 
THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 witli 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 dis- 
 appearing : 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 1 " 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 circum- 
 ference at the hem. Through the silent sunlit solitude of the 
 Square (for it was Thursday afternoon, and all the shops shut 
 except tiie 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, some- 
 where, was the soul of Maggie, domestic servant at Baines's. 
 Maggie had^>een at the shop since before the creation of Con- 
 Btai^ce and Sophia. She lived seventeen hours of each day in 
 
THE SQUARE 7 
 
 an underground kitchen and larder, and the other seven in an 
 attic, never going out except to chapel on Sunday evenings, 
 and oncfe a month on Thursday afternoons. " Followers " 
 were most strictly forbidden to her j but on rare occasions an 
 aunt from Longshaw was permitted as a tremendous favour to 
 see her in the subterranean den. Everybody, including her- 
 self, 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 inter- 
 esting announcement that for years they had taken to saying 
 naught in reply but 'Really, Maggie I' 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 comer 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. 
 
 " Weill " cried Constance. " Did you ever see such a 
 thing?" 
 
 While Sophia, short of adequate words, flushed and bit 
 her Up. 
 
8 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 With the profound, instinctive craelty 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 I 
 Because they were. They were tiot 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 1 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 
 
THE SQUARE 9 
 
 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 monoto- 
 nous background, Constance was content to pin the stuff to 
 her knee. With the long needle and several skeins of mus- 
 tard-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 inimicked 
 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 some- 
 times." 
 
 "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 — rcven ecstatically — looking 
 behind the cheval glass, " here's mother's new skirt ! Miss 
 Dunn's been putting the gimp on it 1 Oh, mother, what a 
 proud thing you will be ! " 
 
 Constance heard swishings behind the glass. " What are 
 you doing, Sophia ? " 
 
 " Nothinjg." 
 
 " You surely aren't putting that skirt on ? " 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " You'll catch it finely, I can tell you I " 
 
 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. 
 
10 THE OLD WIVES TALE 
 
 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 air 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 giil, 
 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 ; absurJ 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 pre- 
 posterous 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 
 
THE squ;are 11 
 
 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-crack- 
 ing boy J 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 1 Oh, bUnd, blind I You 
 
12 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 neplus 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 firom 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 Umbs, 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 insignifi- 
 cant town, lost in the central labyrinth of England, if you like ; 
 
THE SQUARE 13 
 
 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 bedtooms. The groans, indicating 
 direst physical torment, grew louder. The two girls stared, 
 wonderstruck and afraid, at the door, Sophia with her dark 
 head raised, and C6nstance 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 show- 
 room to the shop below. He blushed darkly j and the girls 
 ^so blushed. 
 
 " Oh, I beg pardon, I'm sure 1 " said this youngish man 
 
14 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 
 lictle-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 wortL 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 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 Con- 
 stance. 
 
 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 after- 
 noon, 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 gf going to the dentist's. But such was the case. He 
 
THE SQUARE 16 
 
 ha(J 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 1 " 
 
 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 1 " said Constance quickly — for he had 
 
16 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 I " 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 " 
 
 Miseral'ile Mr. Povey 1 
 
 " 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." 
 
 " 1 shall be all right, thank you," said Mr. Povey. And 
 after a pause : " Well, thanks, I will." 
 
 Ill 
 
 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 pro- 
 tected 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 con- 
 stituted him an invalid, and Constance and Sophia his nurses. 
 
THE SQUARE 17 
 
 Constance drew the curtain across the street door. No draught 
 could come from the window, for the window was not ' macie 
 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 serious- 
 ness 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 antima- 
 cassar 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 ex- 
 cellent 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 rockmg-chairs with their antimacassars, 
 
 c 
 
18 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 and the harmonium in rosewood with a Chinese paper-mach6 
 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 Mrk 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 
 
THE SQUARE 19 
 
 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 anJ 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-accusa- 
 tions 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 1 
 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 mterior, was one sizeable fragment of a tooth, that was 
 attached to Mr. Povey by the slenderest tie, so that at each 
 respiration of Mt, Ppvey, yfhcu his body slightly heaved and 
 
20 THE OLD. WIVES' TALE 
 
 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, preoccu- 
 pied, 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 I " 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 1" 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 Hqllins, a professional Irish drunkard, aged in 
 
THE SQUARE 21 
 
 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 1 " 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 HoUins. " Three- 
 pence a pint, and how's your honoured mother to-day ? Yes, 
 fresh, so help me God ! " 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE TOOTH 
 I 
 
 The two girls came up the unlighted stone staircase which led 
 from Maggie's cave to the door of the parlour, Sophia, 
 foremost, vi^as carrying a large tray, and Constance a small 
 one. Constance, who had nothing on her tray but a teapot, 
 a bowl of steaming and balmy-scented mussels and cockles, 
 and a plate of hot buttered toast, went directly into the parlour 
 on the left. Sophia had in her arms the entire material and 
 apparatus of a high tea for two, including eggs, jam, and toast 
 (covered with the slop-basin turned upside down), but not 
 including mussels and cockles. She turned to the right, 
 passed along the corridor by the cutting-out room, up two 
 steps into the sheeted and shuttered gloom of the closed shop, 
 up the show-room stairs, through the show-room, and so into 
 tiie bedroom corridor. Experience had proved it easier to 
 make this long detour than to round the difficult corner of the 
 parlour stairs with a large loaded tray. Sophia knocked with 
 the edge of the tray at the door of the principal bedroom. 
 The muffled oratorical sound from within suddenly ceased, and 
 the door was opened by a very tall, very thin, black-bearded 
 man, who looked down at Sophia as if to demand what she 
 meant by such an interruption. 
 
 " I've brought the tea, Mr. Critchlow," said Sophia. 
 
 And Mr. Critchlow carefully accepted the tray. 
 
 " Is that my little Sophia ? " asked a faint voice from the 
 depths of the bedroom. 
 
 " Yes, father," said Sophia. 
 
 But she did not attempt to enter the room. Mr. Critchlow 
 put the tray on a white-clad chest of drawers near the door, 
 and then he shut the door, with no ceremony. Mr. Critchlow 
 
THE TOOTH 23 
 
 was John Baines's oldest and closest friend, though decidedly 
 younger than the draper. He frequently " popped in " to 
 have a word with the invalid ; but Thursday afternoon was his 
 special afternoon, consecrated by him to the service of the 
 sick. From two o'clock precisely till eight o'clock precisely 
 he took charge of John Barnes, reigning autocratically over the 
 bedroom. It was known that he would not tolerate invasions, 
 nor evep ambassadorial visits. No ! He gave up his weekly 
 holiday to this business of friendship, and he must be allowed 
 to conduct the business in his own way. Mrs. Baines herself 
 avoided disturbing Mr. Critchlow's ministrations on her 
 husband. She was glad to do so ; for Mr. Baines was never 
 to be left alone under any circumstances, and the convenience 
 of being able to rely upon the presence of a staid member of 
 the Pharmaceutical Society for six hours of a given day every 
 week outweighed the slight affront to her prerogatives as wife 
 and house-mistress. Mr. Critchlo)v was an extremely peculiar 
 man, but when he was in the bedroom she could leave the 
 house with an easy mind. Moreover, John Baines enjoyed 
 these Thursday afternoons. For him, there was ' none like 
 Charles Critchlow.' The two old friends experienced a sort 
 of grim, desiccated happiness, cooped up together in the 
 bedroom, secure from women and fools generally. How they 
 spent the time did not seem to be certainly known, but the 
 impression was that politics occupied them. Undoubtedly 
 Mr. Critchlow was an extremely peculiar man. He was a 
 man of habits. He must always have the same things for his 
 tea. Black-currant jam, for instance. (He called it " pre- 
 serve.") The idea of offering Mr. Critchlow a tea which did 
 not comprise black-currant jam was inconceivable by the 
 intelligence of St. Luke's Square. Thus for years past, in the 
 fruit-preserving season, when all the house and all the shop 
 smelt richly of fruit boiling in sugar, Mrs. Baines had filled an 
 extra number of jars with black-currant jam, 'because Mr. 
 Critchlow wouldn't touch any other sort.' 
 
 So Sophia, faced with the shut door of the bedroom, went 
 down to the parlour by the shorter route. She knew that on 
 going up again, after tea, she would find the devastated tray 
 on the doormat. 
 
 Constance was helping Mr. Povey to mussels and cockles. 
 And Mr. Povey still wore one of the antimacassars. It must 
 have stuck to hii shoulders when he sprang up from the sofa, 
 
M THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 woollen antimacassars being notoriously parasitic things. 
 Sophia sat down, somewhat self-consciously. The serious 
 Constance was also perturbed. Mr. Povey did not usually 
 take tea in the house on Thursday afternoons ; his practice 
 was to go out into the great, mysterious world. Never before 
 had he shared a meal with the girls alone. The situation was 
 indubitably unexpected, unforeseen ; it was, too, piquant, ani 
 what added to its piquancy was the fact that Constance and 
 Sophia were, somehow, responsible for Mr. Povey. They felt 
 that they were responsible for him. They had offered the 
 practical sympathy of two intelligent and well-trained young 
 women, born nurses by reason of their sex, and Mr. Povey 
 had accepted; he was now on their hands. Sophia's mon- 
 strous, sly operation in Mr. Povey's mouth did not cause 
 either of them much alarm, Constance having apparently 
 recovered from the first shock of it. They had discussed it 
 in the kitchen while preparing the teas; Constance's extra- 
 ordinarily severe and dictatorial tone in condemning it had 
 led to a certain heat. But the success of the impudent 
 wrench justified it despite any irrefutable argument to the 
 contrary. Mr. Povey was better already, and he evidently 
 remained in ignorance of his loss. 
 
 " Have some ? " Constance asked of Sophia, with a large 
 spoon hovering over the bowl of shells. 
 
 " Yes, please," said Sophia, positively. 
 
 Constance well knew that she would have some, and had 
 only asked from sheer nervousness. 
 
 " Pass your plate, then." 
 
 Now when everybody was served with mussels, cockles, 
 tea, and toast, and Mr. Povey had been persuaded to cut the 
 crust off his toast, and Constance had, quite unnecessarily, 
 warned Sophia against the deadly green stuff in the mussels, 
 and Constance had further pointed out that the evenings were 
 getting longer, and Mr. Povey had agreed that they were, 
 there remained nothing to say. An irksome silence fell on 
 them alj, and no one could lift it off. Tiny clashes of shell 
 and crockery sounded with the terrible clearness of noises 
 heard in the night. Each person avoided the eyes of the 
 others. And both Constance and Sophia kept straightening 
 their bodies at intervals, and expanding their chests, and then 
 looking at their plates ; occasionally a prim cough was dis- 
 charged. It was a sad example of the difference between 
 
THE TOOTH 86 
 
 young women's dreams of social brilliance and the reality of 
 life. These girls got more and more girlish, until, from being 
 women at the administering' of laudanum, they sank back to 
 about eight years of age — perfect children — at the tea-table. 
 
 The tension was snapped by Mr^ Povey. " My God 1 " he 
 muttered, moved by a startling discovery to this impious and 
 disgraceful oath (he, the pattern and exemplar — -and in the 
 presence of innocent girlhood too ! ). " I've swallowed it ! " 
 
 " Swallowed what, Mr. Povey ? " , Constance inquired. 
 
 The tip of Mr. Povey's tongue made a careful voyage of 
 inspection all round the right side of his mouth. 
 
 " Oh yes ! " he said, as if solemnly accepting the inevitable. 
 " I've swallowed it ! " 
 
 Sophia's face was now scarlet ; she seemed to be looking 
 for some place to hide it. Constance could not think of any- 
 thing to say. 
 
 " That tooth has been loose for two years," said Mr. Povey, 
 " and now I've swallowed it with a mussel." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Povey 1 " Constance cried in confusion, and 
 added, " There's one good thing, it can't hurt you any 
 more now." 
 
 " Oh 1 " said Mr. Povey. " It wasn't that tooth that was 
 hurting me. It's an old stump at the back that's upset me so 
 this last day or two. I wish it had been." 
 
 Sophia had her teacup close to her red face. At these 
 words of Mr. Povey her cheeks seemed to fill out like plump 
 apples. She dashed the cup into its' saucer, spilling tea reck- 
 lessly, and then ran from the room with stifled snorts. 
 
 " Sophia ! " Constance protested. 
 
 " I must just " Sophia incoherently spluttered in the 
 
 doorway. " I shall be all right Don't " 
 
 Constance, who had risen, sat down again. 
 
 II 
 
 Sophia fled along the passage leading to the shop and 
 took refuge in the cutting-out room, a room which the 
 astonishing architect had devised upon what must have been 
 a backyard of one of the three constituent houses. It was 
 lighted from its roof, and only a wooden partition, eight feet 
 high, separated it from the passage. Here Sophia gave rein 
 
26 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 to her feelings; she laughed and cried together, weeping 
 generously into her handkerchief and wildly giggling, in a 
 hysteria which she could not control. The spectacle of 
 Mr. Povey mourning for a tooth which he thought he had 
 swallowed, but which in fact lay all the time in her pocket, 
 seemed to her to be by far the most ridiculous, side-splitting 
 thing that had ever happened or could happen on earth. It 
 utterly overcame her. And when she fancied that she had 
 exhausted and conquered its surpassing ridiculousness, this 
 ridiculousness seized her again and rolled her anew in depths 
 of mad, trembling laughter. 
 
 Gradually she grew calmer. She heard the parlour door 
 open, and Constance descend the kitchen steps with a rattling 
 tray of tea-things. Tea, then, was finished, without her ! 
 Constance did not remain in the kitchen, because the cups 
 and saucers were left for Maggie to wash up as a fitting coiia 
 to Maggie's monthly holiday. The parlour door closed. And 
 the vision of Mr. Povey in his antimacassar swept Sophia off 
 into another convulsion of laughter and tears. Upon this the 
 parlour door opened again, and Sophia choked herself into 
 silence while Constance hastened along the passage. In a 
 minute Constance returned with her woolwork, which she had 
 got from the showroom, and the parlour received her. Not 
 the least curiosity on the part of Constance as to what had 
 become of Sophia ! 
 
 At length Sophia, a faint meditative smile being all that 
 was left of the storm in her, ascended slowly to the showroom, 
 through the shop. Nothing there of interest ! Thence she 
 wandered towards the drawing-room, and encountered Mr. 
 Critchlow's tray on the mat. She picked it up and carried it 
 by way of the showroom and shop down to the kitchen, where 
 she dreamily munched two pieces of toast that had cooled to 
 the consistency of leather. She mounted the stone steps and 
 listened at the door of the parlour. No sound ! This seclu- 
 sion of Mr. Povey and Constance was really very strange. 
 She roved right round the house, and descended creepingly 
 by the twisted house-stairs, and listened intently at the other 
 door of the parlour. She now detected a faint regular snore. 
 Mr. Povey, a prey to laudanum and mussels, was sleeping 
 while Constance worked at her fire-screen 1 It was now in 
 the highest degree odd, this seclusion of Mr. Povey and Con- 
 stance ; unlike anythmg in Sophia's experience 1 She wanted 
 
THE TOOTH 27 
 
 to go into the parlour, but she could not bring herself to do 
 so. She crept away again, forlorn and puzzled, and next 
 discovered herself in the bedroom which she shared with 
 Constance at the top of the house j she lay down in the dusk 
 on the bed and began to read " The Days of Bruce ; " but she 
 read only with her eyes. 
 
 Later, she heard movements on the house-stairs, and the 
 familiar whining creak of ihe door at the foot thereof. She 
 skipped lightly to the door of the bedroom. 
 
 " Good night, Mr. Povey. I hope you'll be able to sleep." 
 
 Constance's voice ! 
 
 " It will probably come on again." 
 
 Mr. Povey's voice, pessimistic I 
 
 Then the shutting of doors. It was almost dark. She 
 went back to the^bed, expecting a visit from Constance. But 
 a clock struck eight, and all the various phenomena connected 
 with the departure of Mr. Critchlow occurred one after another. 
 At the same time Maggie came home from the land of romance. 
 Then long silences ! Constance was now immured with her 
 father, it being her " turn " to nurse ; Maggie was washing up 
 in her cave, and Mr. Povey was lost to sight in his bedroom. 
 Then Sophia heard her mother's lively, commanding knock 
 on the King Street door. Dusk had definitely yielded to black 
 night in the bedroom. Sophia dozed and dreamed. When 
 she awoke, her ear caught the sound of knocking. She jumped 
 up, tiptoed to the landing, and looked over the balustrade, 
 whence she had a view of all the first-floor corridor. The gas 
 had been lighted ; through the round aperture at the top of 
 the porcelain globe she could see the wavering flame. It was 
 her mother, still bonneted, who was knocking at the door of 
 Mr. Povey's room. Constance stood in the doorway of her 
 parents' room. Mrs. Baines knocked twice with an interval, 
 and then said to Constance, in a resonant whisper that vibrated 
 up the corridor — 
 
 " He seems to be fast asleep. I'd better not disturb him." 
 
 " But suppose he wants something in the night ? " 
 
 " Well, child, I should hear him moving. Sleep's the best 
 thing for him." 
 
 Mrs. Baines left Mr. Povey to the effects of laudanum, and 
 came along the corridor. She was a stout woman, all black 
 stuff and gold chain, and her skirt more ^han filled the width 
 of the corridor. Sophia watched her habitual heavy mounting 
 
28 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 gesture as she climbed the two- steps that gave variety to the 
 corridor. At the gas-jet she paused, and, putting her hand to 
 the tap, gazed up into the globe. 
 
 " Where's Sophia ? " she demanded, her eyes fixed on the 
 gas as she lowered the flame. 
 
 "I think she must be in bed, mother," said Constance, 
 nonchalantly. 
 
 The returned mistress was point by point resuming know- 
 ledge and control of that compUcated machine — her household. 
 
 Then Constance and her mother disappeared into the bed- 
 room, and the door was shut with a gentle, decisive bang that 
 to the silent watcher on the floor above seemed to create a 
 special excluding intimacy round about the figures of Constance 
 and her father and mother. The watcher wondered, with a 
 little prick of jealousy, what they would be discussing in the 
 large bedroom, her father's beard wagging feebly and his long 
 arms on the counterpane, Constance perched at the foot of 
 the bed, and her mother walking to and fro, putting her cameo 
 brooch on the dressing-table or stretching creases out of her 
 gloves. Certainly, in some subtle way, Constance had a 
 standing with her parents which was more confidential than 
 Sophia's. 
 
 Ill 
 
 When Constance came to bed, half an hour later, Sophia 
 was already in bed. The room was fairly spacious. It had 
 been the girls' retreat and fortress since their earliest years. 
 Its features seemed to them as natural and unalterable as the 
 features of a cave to a cave-dweller. It had been repapered 
 twice in their lives, and each papering stood out in their 
 memories like an epoch ; a third epoch was due to the replacing 
 of a drugget by a resplendent old carpet degraded from the 
 drawing-room. There was only one bed, the bedstead being 
 of painted iron ; they never interfered with each other in that 
 bed, sleeping with a detachment as perfect as if they had slept 
 on opposite sides of St. Luke's Square ; yet if Constance had 
 one night lain down on the half near the window instead of 
 on the half near the door, the secret nature of the universe 
 would have seemed to be altered. The small fire-grate was 
 filled with a mass of shavings of silver paper ; now the rare 
 
THE TOOTH 29 
 
 illnesses which they had suffered were recalled chiefly as 
 periods when that silver paper was crammed into a large 
 sHpper-case which hung by the mantelpiece, and a fire of 
 coals unnaturally reigned in its place — the silver paper was 
 part of the order of the world. The sash of the window 
 would not work quite properly, owing to a slight subsidence 
 in the wall, and even when the window was fastened there 
 was always a narrow slit to the left hand between the window 
 and its frame ; through this slit came draughts, and thus very 
 keen frosts were remembered by the nights when Mrs. Baines 
 caused the sash, to be forced and kept at its full height by 
 means of wedges — the slit of exposure was part of the order of 
 the world. 
 
 They possessed only one bed, one washstand, and one 
 dressing-table ; but in some other respects they were rather 
 fortunate girls, for they had two mahogany wardrobes; this 
 mutual independence as regards wardrobes was due partly 
 to Mrs. Baines's strong commonsense, and partly to their 
 father's tendency to spoil them a little. They had, more- 
 over, a chest of drawers with a curved front, of which struc- 
 ture Constance occupied two short drawers and one long 
 one, and Sophia two long drawers. On it stood two fancy 
 work-boxes, in which each sister kept jewellery, a savings-bank 
 book, and other treasures, and these boxes were absolutely 
 sacred to their respective owners. They were different, but 
 one was not more magnificent than the other. Indeed, a 
 rigid equality was the rule in the chamber, the single exception 
 being that behind the door were three hooks, of which 
 Constance commanded two. 
 
 " Well," Sophia began, when Constance appeared. " How's 
 darling Mr. Povey ? " She was lying on her back, and smiling 
 at her two hands, which she held up in front of her. 
 
 "Asleep," said Constance. "At least mother thinks so. 
 She says sleep is the best thmg for him." 
 
 " ' It will probably come on again,' " said Sophia, 
 
 " What's that you say ? " Constance asked, undressing. 
 
 " ' It will probably come on again.' " 
 
 These words were a quotation from the utterances of 
 darling Mr. Povey on the stairs, and Sophia delivered them 
 with an exact imitation of Mr. Povey's vocal mannerism. 
 
 " Sophia," said Constance, firmly, approaching the bed, " I 
 wish you wouldn't be so silly ! " She had benevolently ignored 
 
30 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 the satirical note in Sophia's first remark, but a strong instinct 
 in her rose up and objected to further derision. " Surely you've 
 done enough for one day ! " she added. 
 
 For answer Sophia exploded into violent laughter, which she 
 made no attempt to control. She laughed too long and too 
 freely while Constance stared at her. 
 
 " / don't know what's come over you ! " said Constance. 
 
 " It's only because I can't look at it without simply going 
 oflf into fits I " Sophia gasped out. And she held up a tiny 
 object in her left hand. 
 
 Constance started, flushing. "You don't mean to say 
 you've kept it ! " she protested earnestly. " How horrid you 
 are, Sophia ! Give it me at once and let me throw it away. 
 I never heard of such doings. Now give it me ! " 
 
 " No," Sophia objected, still laughing. " I wouldn't part 
 with it for worlds. It's too lovely." 
 
 She had laughed away all her secret resentment against 
 Constance for having ignored her during the whole evening 
 and for being on such intimate terms with their parents And 
 she was ready to be candidly jolly with Constance. 
 
 " Give it me/' said Constance, doggedly. 
 
 Sophia hid her hand under the clothes. " You can have his 
 old stump, when it comes out, if you like. But not this. What 
 a pity it's the wrong one ! " 
 
 " Sophia, I'm ashamed of you ! Give it me." 
 
 Then it was that Sophia first perceived Constance's extreme 
 seriousness. She was surprised and a little intimidated by it. 
 For the expression of Constance's face, usually so benign and 
 calm, was harsh, almost fierce. However, Sophia had a great 
 deal of what is called " spirit," and not even ferocity on the face 
 of mild Constance could intimidate her for more than a few 
 seconds. Her gaiety expired and her teeth were hidden. 
 
 " I've said nothing to mother " Constance proceeded. 
 
 " I should hop6 you haven't," Sophia put in tersely. 
 
 " But I certainly shall if you don't throw that away," 
 Constance finished. 
 
 " You can say what you like," Sophia retorted, adding con- 
 temptuously a term of opprobrium which has long since passed 
 out of use : " Cant ! " 
 
 " Will you give it me or won't you?" 
 
 « No ! " 
 
 It was a battle suddenly engaged in the bedroom. The 
 
THE TOOTH • 31 
 
 atmosphere had altered completely with the swiftness of magic. 
 The beauty of Sophia the angelic tenderness of Constance, and 
 the youthful, naive, innocent charm of both of them, were trans- 
 formed into something sinister and cruel. Sophia lay back on 
 the pillow amid her dark-brown hair, and gazed with relentless 
 defiance into the angry eyes of Constance, who stood threaten- 
 ing by the bed. They could hear the gas singing over the 
 pressing-table, and their hearts beating the blood wildly in their 
 veins. They ceased to be young without growing old; ffie:i 
 eternal had leapt up in them from its sleep. 
 
 Constance walked away from the bed to the dressing-table 
 and began to loose her hair and brush it, holding back her 
 head, shaking it, and bending forward, in the changeless 
 gesture of that rite. She was so disturbed that she had un- 
 consciously reversed the customary order of the toilette. After 
 a moment Sophia slipped out of bed and, stepping with her 
 bare feet to the chest of drawers, opened her work-box and 
 deposited the fragment of Mr. Povey therein; she dropped 
 the lid with an uncompromising bang, as if to say, " We shall 
 see if I am to be trod upon, miss I " Their eyes met again 
 in the looking-glass. Then Sophia got back into bed. 
 
 Five minutes later, when her hair was quite finished, Con- 
 stance knelt down and said her prayers. Having said her 
 prayers, she went straight to Sophia's work-box, opened it, 
 seized the fragment of Mr. Povey, ran to the window, and 
 frantically pushed the fragment through the slit into the 
 Square. 
 
 " There 1 " she exclaimed nervously. 
 
 She had accomplished this inconceivable transgression of 
 the code of honour, beyond all undoing, before Sophia could 
 recover from the stupefaction of seeing her sacred work-box 
 impudently violated. In a single moment one of Sophia's 
 chief ideals had been smashed utterly, and that by the sweetest, 
 gentlest creature she had ever known. It was a revealing 
 experience for Sophia — and also for Constance. And it 
 frightened them equally. Sophia, staring at the text, "Thou 
 God seest me," framed in straw over the chest of drawers, did 
 not stir. She was defeated, and so profoundly moved in her 
 defeat that she did not even reflect upon the obvious inefficacy 
 of illuminated texts as a deterrent from evil-doing. Not that 
 she cared a fig for the fragment of Mr. Povey 1 It was the 
 moral aspect of the affair, and the astounding, inexplicable 
 
32 • THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 development in Constance's character, that staggered herinto 
 silent acceptance of the inevitable. 
 
 Constance, trembling, took pains to finish undressing with 
 dignified deliberation. Sophia's behaviour under the blow 
 seemed too good to be true ; but it gave her courage. At 
 length she turned out the gas and lay down by Sophia. And 
 there was a little shufHing, and then stillness for a while. 
 
 " And if you want to know," said Constance in a tone that 
 mingled amicableness with righteousness, "mother's decided 
 with Aunt Harriet that we are both to leave school next 
 term." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 A BATTLE 
 
 The day sanctioned by custom in the Five Towns for th« 
 making of pastry is Saturday. But Mrs. Baines made her 
 pastry on Friday, because Saturday afternoon was, of course, a 
 busy time in the shop. It is true that Mrs. Baines made her 
 pastry in the morning, and that Saturday morning in the shop 
 was scarcely different from any other morning. Nevertheless, 
 Mrs. Baines made her pastry on Friday morning instead of 
 Saturday morning because Saturday afternoon was a busy 
 time in the shop. She was thus free to do her marketing 
 without breath-taking flurry on Saturday morning. 
 
 On the morning after Sophia's first essay in dentistry, 
 therefore, Mrs. Baines was making her pastry in the under- 
 ground kitchen. This kitchen, Maggie's cavern-home, had 
 the mystery of a church, and on dark days it had the mystery 
 of a crypt. The stone steps leading down to it from the level 
 of earth were quite unlighted. You felt for them with the 
 feet of faith, and when you arrived in the kitchen, the kitchen, 
 by contrast, seemed luminous and gay; the architect may 
 have considered and intended this effect of the staircase. 
 The kitchen saw day through a wide, shallow window whose 
 top touched the ceiling and whose bottom had been out of 
 the girls' reach until long after they had begun to go to school. 
 Its panes were small, and about half of them were of the 
 " knot " kind, through which no object could be distinguished ; 
 the other half were of a later date, and stood for the march of 
 civilization. The view from the window consisted of the vast 
 plate-glass windows of the newly built Sun vaults, and of pass- 
 ing legs and skirts. A strong wire grating prevented any 
 excess of illumination, and also protected the glass from the 
 
 33 D 
 
84 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 caprices of wayfarers in King Street. Boys had a habit of 
 stopping to kick with their full strength at the grating. 
 
 Forget-me-nots on a brown field ornamented the walls of 
 the kitchen. Its ceiling was irregular and grimy, and a beam 
 ran across it ; in this beam were two hooks ; from these hooks 
 had once depended the ropes of a swing, much used by 
 Constance and Sophia in the old days before they were grown 
 up. A large range stood out from the wall between the stairs 
 and the window. The rest of the furniture comprised a table 
 — against the wall opposite the range- — 3. cupboard, and two 
 Windsor chairs. Opposite the foot of the steps was a door- 
 way, without a door, leading to two larders, dimmer even than 
 the kitchen, vague retreats made visible by whitewash, where 
 bowls of milk, dishes of cold bones, and remainders of fruit- 
 pies, reposed on stillages ; in the corner nearest the kitchen 
 was a great steen in which the bread was kept. Another 
 doorway on the other side of the kitchen led to the first coal- 
 cellar, where was also the slopstone and tap, and thence a 
 tunnel took you to the second coal-cellar, where coke and 
 ashes were stored ; the tunnel proceeded to a distant, infini- 
 tesimal yard, and from the yard, by ways behind Mr. Critchlow's 
 shop, you could finally emerge, astonished, upon Brougham 
 Street. The sense of the vast-obscure of those regions which 
 began at the top of the kitchen steps and ended in black 
 corners of larders or abruptly in the common dailiness of 
 Brougham Street, a sense which Constance and Sophia had 
 acquired in infancy, remained with them almost unimpaired as 
 they grew old. 
 
 Mrs. Baines wore black alpaca, shielded by a white apron 
 whose string drew attention to the amplitude of her waist. 
 Her sleeves were turned up, and her hands, as far as the 
 knuckles, covered with damp flour. Her ageless smooth 
 paste-board occupied a corner of the table, and near it were 
 her paste-roller, butter, some pie-dishes, shredded apples, 
 sugar, and other things. Those rosy hands were at work 
 among a sticky substance in a large white bowl. 
 
 " Mother, are you there ? " she heard a voice from above. 
 
 " Yes, my chuck." 
 
 Footsteps apparently reluctant and hesitating clinked on 
 the stairs, and Sophia entered the kitchen. 
 
 "Put this curl straight," said Mrs. Baines, lowering her 
 head slightly and holding up her floured hands, which might 
 
A BAITLE 35 
 
 not touch anything but flour. *' Thank you. It bothered me. 
 And now stand out of my light. I'm in a hurry. I must get 
 into the shop so that I can send Mr. Povey off to the dentist's. 
 What is Constance doing?" 
 
 " Helping Maggie to make Mr. Povey's bed." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 Though fat, Mrs. Baines was a comely woman, with fine 
 brown hair, and confidently calm eyes that indicated her belief 
 in her own capacity to accomplish whatever she could be 
 called on to accomplish. She looked neither more nor less 
 than her age, which was forty-five. She was not- a native of 
 the district, having been culled by her husband from the moor- 
 land town of Axe, twelve miles off. Like nearly all women 
 who settle in a strange land upon marriage, at the bottom of 
 her heart she had considered herself just a trifle superior to 
 the strange land and its ways. This feeling, confirmed by 
 long experience, had never left her. It was this feeling which 
 induced her to continue making her own pastry — with two 
 thoroughly trained " great girls " in the house ! Constance 
 could make good pastry, but it was not her mother's pastry. 
 In pastry-making everything can be taught except the " hand," 
 light and firm, which wields the roller. One is born with this 
 hand, or without it. And if one is born without it, the highest 
 flights of pastry are impossible. Constance was born without 
 it. There were days when Sophia seemed to possess it ; but 
 there were other days when Sophia's pastry was uneatable by 
 any one except Maggie. Thus Mrs. Biines, though intensely 
 proud and fond of her daughters, had j ustifiably preserved a 
 certain condescension towards them. She honestly doubted 
 whether either of them would develop into the equal of their 
 mother. 
 
 "Now you little vixen!" she exclaimed. Sophia was 
 stealing and eating slices of half-cooked apple. " This comes 
 of having no breakfast ! And why didn't you come down to 
 supper last night ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I forgot." 
 
 Mrs. Baines scrutinized the child's eyes, which met hers 
 with a sort of difiident boldness. She knew everything that a 
 mother can know of a daughter, and she was sure that Sophia 
 had DO cause to be indisposed. Therefore she scrutinized 
 those eyes with a faint apprehension. 
 
 "If you can't find anything better to do," said she, 
 
86 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " butter me the inside of this dish. Are your hands clean ? 
 No, better not touch it." 
 
 Mrs. Baines was now at the stage of depositing little pats 
 of butter in rows on a large plain of paste. The best fresh 
 butter I Cooking butter, to say naught of lard, was unknown 
 in that kitchen on Friday mornings. She doubled the 
 expanse of paste on itself and rolled the butter in — supreme 
 operation ! 
 
 " Constance has told you about leaving school ? " said Mrs, 
 Baines, in the vein of small-talk, as she trimmed the paste to 
 the shape of a pie-dish. 
 
 "Yes," Sophia replied shortly. Then she moved away 
 from the table to the range. There was a toasting-fork on the 
 rack, and she began to play with it. 
 
 " Well, are you glad ? Your aunt Harriet thinks you are 
 quite old enough to leave. And as we'd decided in any case 
 that Constance was to leave, it's really much simpler that you 
 should both leave together." 
 
 " Mother," said Sophia, rattling the toasting-fork, " what 
 am I going to do after I've left school ? " 
 
 " I hope," Mrs. Biines answered with that sententiousness 
 which even the cleverest of parents are not always clever 
 enough to deny themselves, " I hope that both of jou will do 
 what you can to help your mother — and father," she adtied. 
 
 " Yes," said Sophia, irritated. " But what am I going to doV 
 
 " That must be considered. As Constance is to learn the 
 millinery, I've been thinking that you might begin to make 
 yourself useful in the underwear, gloves, silks, and so on. 
 Then between you, you would one day be able to manage 
 quite nicely all that side of the shop, and I should be — " 
 
 " I don't want to go into the shop, mother." 
 
 This interruption was made in a voice apparently cold and 
 inimical. But Sophia trembled with nervous excitement as 
 she uttered the words. Mrs. Baines gave a brief glance at 
 her, unobserved by the child, whose face was towards the fire. 
 She deemed herself a finished expert in the reading of Sophia's 
 moods ; nevertheless, as she looked at that straight back and 
 proud head, she had no suspicion that the whole essence and 
 being of Sophia was silently but intensely imploring sympathy, 
 
 " I wish you would be quiet with that fork," said Mrs. 
 Baines, with the curious, grim politeness which often cha- 
 racterized her relations with her daughters. 
 
A BATTLE S7 
 
 The toasting-fork fell on the brick floor, after having 
 rebounded from the ash-tin. Sophia hurriedly replaced it on 
 the rack. 
 
 "Then what shall you do?" Mrs. Baines proceeded, 
 conquering the annoyance caused by the toasting-fork. " I 
 think if s me that should ask you instead of you asking me. 
 What shall you do ? Your father and I were both hoping you 
 would take kindly to the shop and try to repay us for all 
 the—" 
 
 Mrs. Baines was unfortunate in her phrasing that morning. 
 She happened to be, in truth, rather an exceptional parent, 
 but that morning she seemed unable to avoid the absurd pre- 
 tensions which parents of those days assumed quite sincei:ely 
 and which every good child with meekness accepted. 
 
 Sophia was not a good child, and she obstinately denied 
 in her heart the cardinal principle of family life, namely, that 
 the parent has conferred on the offspring a supreme favour by 
 bringing it into the world. She interrupted her mother again, 
 rudely. 
 
 " I don't want to leave school at all," she said passionately. 
 
 " But you will have to leave school sooner or later," argued 
 Mrs. Baines, with an air of quiet reasoning, of putting herself 
 on a level with Sophia. " You can't stay at school for ever, 
 my pet, can you ? Out of my way 1 " 
 
 She hurried across the kitchen with a pie, which she 
 whipped into the oven, shutting the iron door with a careful 
 gesture. 
 
 "Yes," said Sophia. "I should like to be a teacher. 
 That's what I want to be." 
 
 The tap in the coal-cellar, out of repair, could be heard 
 distinctly and systematically dropping water into a jar on the 
 slopstone. 
 
 " A school-teacher ? " inquired Mrs. Baines. 
 
 "Of course. What other kind is there?" said Sophia, 
 sharply. " With Miss Chetwynd." 
 
 " I don't think your father would like that," Mrs. Baines 
 replied. " I'm sure he wouldn't like it." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " It wouldn't be quite suitable." 
 
 "Why not, mother?" the girl demanded with a sort of 
 ferocity. She had now quitted the range. A man's feet 
 twinkled past the window. 
 
88 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Mrs. Baines was startled and surprised. Sophia's attitude 
 was really very trying ; her manners deserved correction. But 
 it was not these phenomena which seriously affected Mrs. 
 Baines ; she was used to them and had come to regard them 
 as somehow the inevitable accompaniment of Sophia's beauty, 
 as the penalty of that surpassing charm which occasionally 
 emanated from the girl like a radiance. What startled and 
 surprised Mrs. Baines was the perfect and unthinkable mad- 
 ness of Sophia's infantile scheme. It was a revelation to Mrs. 
 Baines. Why in the name of heaven had the girl taken such 
 a notion into her head ? /Orphans, widows, and spinsters of a 
 certain age suddenly thrown on the world — these were the 
 women who, naturally, became teachers, because they had to 
 become something. But that the daughter of comfortable 
 parents, surrounded by love and the pleasures of an excellent 
 home, should wish to teach in a school was beyond the 
 horizons of Mrs. Baines's common sense. V Comfortable parents 
 of to-day who have a difficulty in sympathizing with Mrs. 
 Baines, should picture what theit feelings would be if their 
 Sophias showed a rude desire to adopt the vocation of chauffeur. 
 
 " It would take you too much away from home," said Mrs. 
 Baines, achieving a second pie. 
 
 She spoke softly. The experience of being Sophia's 
 mother for nearly sixteen years had not been lost on Mrs. 
 Baines, and though she was now discovering undreamt-of 
 dangers in Sophia's erratic temperament, she kept her presence 
 of mind sufficiently well to behave with diplomatic smoothness. 
 It was undoubtedly humiliating to a mother to be forced to 
 use diplomacy in dealing with a girl in short sleeves. In Aer 
 day mothers had been autocrats. But Sophia was Sophia. 
 
 " What if it did ? " Sophia curtly demanded. 
 
 " And there's no opening in Bursley," said Mrs. Baines. 
 
 " Miss Chetwynd would have me, and then after a time I 
 could go to her sister." 
 
 " Her sister ? What sister ? " 
 
 " Her sister that has a big school in London somewhere." 
 
 Mrs. Baines covered her unprecedented emotions by gazing 
 into the oven at the first pie. The pie was doing well, under 
 all the circumstances. In those few seconds she reflected 
 rapidly and decided that to a desperate disease a desperate 
 remedy must be applied. 
 
 London I She herself had never been further than 
 
A BATTLE 89 
 
 Manchester. London, ' after a time ' ! No, diplomacy would 
 be misplaced in this crisis of Sophia's development 1 
 
 "Sophia," she said, in a changed and solemn voice, front- 
 ing her daughter, and holding away from her apron those 
 floured, ringed hands, "I don't know what has come over 
 you. Truly I don't ! Your father and I are prepared to put 
 up with a certain amount, but the line must be drawn. The 
 fact is, we've spoilt you, and instead of getting better as you 
 grow up, you're getting worse. Now let me hear no more of 
 this, please. I wish you would imitate your sister a little 
 more. Of course if you won't do your share in the shop, no 
 one can make you. If you choose to be an idler about the 
 house, we shall have to endure it. We can only advise you for 
 your own good. But as for this . . ." She stopped, and 
 let silence speak, and then finished ; " Let me hear no more 
 of it." 
 
 It was a powerful and impressive speech, enunciated clearly 
 in such a tone as Mrs. Baines had not employed since dismissing 
 a young lady assistant five years ago for light conduct. 
 
 " But, mother " 
 
 A commotion of pails resounded at the top of the stone 
 steps. It was Maggie in descent from ihe bedrooms. Now, 
 the Baines family passed its life in doing its best to keep its 
 affairs to itself, the assumption being that Maggie and all the 
 shop-staff (Mr. Povey possibly excepted) were obsessed by a 
 ravening appetite for that which did not concern them. There- 
 fore the voices of the Baineses always. died away, or fell to a 
 hushed, mysterious whisper, whenever the foot of the eaves- 
 dropper was heard. 
 
 Mrs. Baines put a floured finger to her double chin. " That 
 will do," said she, with finality. 
 
 Maggie appeared, and Sophia, with a brusque precipitation 
 of herself, vanished "upstairs. 
 
 II 
 
 " Now, really, Mr. Povey, this is not like you," said Mrs. 
 Baines, who, on her way into the shop, had discovered the 
 Indispensable in the cutting-out room. 
 
 It is true that the cutting-out room was almost Mr. Povey's 
 sanctum, whither he retired from time to time to cut out suits 
 
40 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 of clothes and odd garments for the tailoring department. It 
 is true that the tailoring department flourished with orders, 
 employing several tailors who crossed legs in their own homes, 
 and that appointments were continually being made with 
 customers for trying-on in that room. But these considerations 
 did not affect Mrs. Baines's attitude of disapproval. 
 
 "I'm just cutting out that suit for the minister," said Mr. 
 Povey. 
 
 The Reverend Mr. Murley, superintendent of the Wesleyan 
 Methodist circuit, called on Mr. Baines every week. On a 
 recent visit Mr. Baines had remarked that the parson's coat 
 was Elgeing into green, and had commanded that a new suit 
 should be built and presented to Mr. Murley. Mr. Murley, 
 who had a genuine mediaeval passion for souls, and who spent 
 his money and health freely in gratifying the passion, had 
 accepted the offer strictly on behalf of Christ, and had carefully 
 explained to Mr. Povey Christ's use for multifarious pockets. 
 
 " I see you are," said Mrs. Baines tartly. " But that's no 
 reason why you should be without a coat — and in this cold 
 room too. You with toothache ! " 
 
 The fact was that Mr. Povey always doffed his coat hen 
 cutting out. Instead of a coat he wore a tape-measure. . 
 
 " My tooth doesn't hurt me," said he, sheepishly, dropping 
 the great scissors and picking up a cake of chalk. 
 
 " Fiddlesticks ! " said Mrs. Baines. 
 
 This exclamation shocked Mr. Povey. It was not unknown 
 on the lips of Mrs. Baines, but she usually reserved it for mem- 
 bers of her own sex. Mr. Povey could not recall that she had 
 ever applied it to any statement of his. " What's the matter 
 with the woman ? " he thought. The redness of her face did 
 not help him to answer the question, for her face was always 
 red after the operations of Friday in the kitchen. 
 
 " You men are all alike," Mrs. Baines continued. " The 
 very thought of the dentist's cures you. Why don't you go in 
 at once to Mr. Critchlow and have it out — ^like a man ? " 
 
 Mr. Critchlow extracted teeth, and -his shop sign said 
 " Bone-setter and chemist." But Mr. Povey had his views. 
 
 " I make no account of Mr. Critchlow as a dentist," said he. 
 
 " Then for goodness' sake go up to Oulsnam's." 
 
 " When ? I can't very well go now, and to-morrow is 
 Saturday." 
 
 " Why can't you go now?" 
 
A HAITLE 41 
 
 " Well, of course, I could go now," he admitted 
 
 " Let me advise you to go, then, and don't come back with 
 that tooth in your head. I shall be having you laid up next. 
 Show some pluck, do 1 " 
 
 " Oh ! pluck— ! " he protested, hurt. 
 
 At that moment Constance came down the passage singing. 
 
 " Constance, my pet ! " Mrs, Baines called. 
 
 " Yes, mother." She put her head into the room. " Oh I " 
 Mr. Povey was assuming his coat. 
 
 " Mr. Povey is going to the dentist's." 
 
 " Yes, I'm going at once," Mr. Povey confirmed. 
 
 "Oh! I'm so glad I" Constance exclaimed. Her face 
 expressed a pure sympathy, uncomplicated by critical senti- 
 ments. Mr. Povey rapidly bathed in that sympathy, and then 
 decided that he must show himself a man of oak and iron. 
 
 " It's always best to get these things done with," said he, 
 with stern detachment. " I'll just slip my overcoat on." 
 
 " Here it is," said Constance, quickly. Mr. Povey's over- 
 coat and hat were hung on a hook immediately outside the 
 room, in the passage. She gave him the overcoat, anxious to 
 be of service. 
 
 " I didn't call you in here to be Mr. Povey's valet," said 
 Mrs. Baines to herself with mild grimness; and aloud: "I 
 can't stay in the shop long, Constance, but you can be ihere, 
 can't you, till Mr. Povey comes back? And if anything hap- 
 pens run upstairs and tell me." 
 
 " Yes, mother," Constance eagerly consented. She hesitated 
 and then turned to obey at once. 
 
 " I want to speak to you first, ray pet," Mrs. Baines stopped 
 her. And her tone was peculiar, charged with import, confi- 
 dential, and therefore very flattering to Constance. 
 
 "I think I'll go out by the side-door," said Mr. Povey. 
 " It'll be nearer." 
 
 This was truth. He would save about ten yards, in two 
 miles, by going out through the side-door instead of through 
 the shop. Who could have guessed that he was ashamed to be 
 seen going to the dentist's, afraid lest, if he went through the 
 shop, Mrs. Baines might follow him and utter some remark 
 prejudicial to his dignity before the assistants ? (Mrs. Baines 
 could have guessed, and did.) 
 
 " You won't want that tape-roeasure," said Mrs. Baines, dryly, 
 as Mr. Povey dragged open the side-door. The ends of the 
 
42 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 forgotten tape-measure were dangling beneath coat and 
 overcoat. 
 
 " Oh ! " Mr. Povey scowled at his forgetfulness. 
 
 " I'll put it in its place," said Constance, offering to receive 
 the tape-measure. 
 
 " Thank you," said Mr. Povey, gravely. " I don't suppose 
 they'll be long over my bit of a job," he added, with a difficult, 
 miserable smile. 
 
 Then he went off down King Street, with an exterior of gay 
 briskness and dignified joy in the fine May morning. But 
 there was no May morning in his cowardly human heart.\ 
 
 " Hi 1 Povey ! " cried a voice from the Square. 
 
 But Mr. Povey disregarded all appeals. He had put his 
 hand to the plough and he would not look back. 7 
 
 " Hi ! Povey ! " • ' 
 
 Useless ! 
 
 Mrs. Baines and Constance were both at the door. A 
 middle-aged man was crossing the road from Boulton Terrace, 
 the lofty erection of new shops which the envious rest of the 
 Square had decided to call " showy." He waved a hand to 
 Mrs. Baines, who kept the door open. 
 
 " It's Dr. Harrop," she said to Constance. " I shouldn't 
 be surprised if that baby's come at last, and he wanted to tell 
 Mr. Povey." 
 
 Constance blushed, full of pride. Mrs. Povey, wife of "our 
 Mr. Povey's " renowned cousin, the high-class confectioner and 
 baker in Boulton Terrace, was a frequent subject of discussion 
 in the Baines family, but this was absolutely the first time that 
 Mrs- Baines had acknowledged, in presence of Constance, the 
 marked and growing change which had characterized Mrs. 
 Povey's condition during recent months. Such frankness on 
 the part of her mother, coming after the decision about leaving 
 school, proved indeed that Constance had ceased to be a mere 
 girl. 
 
 " Good morning, doctor." 
 
 The doctor, who carried a little bag and wore riding- 
 breeches (he was the last doctor in Bursley to abandon the 
 saddle for the dog-cart), saluted and straightened his high, 
 black stock. 
 
 " Morning I Morning, missy ! Well, it's a boy." 
 
 "What? Yonder?" asked Mrs. Baines, indicating the 
 confectioner's. 
 
A BATTLE 43 
 
 Dr. Harrop nodded. " I wanted to inform him," said he, 
 jerking his shoulder in the direction of the swaggering coward. 
 
 "What did I tell you, Constance?" said Mrs. Baines, 
 turning to her daughter. 
 
 Constance's confusion was equal to her pleasure. The alert 
 doctor had halted at the foot of the two steps, and with one 
 hand in the pocket of his "full-fall" breeches, he gazed up,, 
 smiling out of little eyes, at the ample matron and the slender 
 virgin. 
 
 " Yes," he said. " Been up most of th' night. Difficult ! 
 Difficult!" 
 
 " It's all «^^/, I hope?" 
 
 "Oh yes. Fine child! Fine child! But he put his 
 mother to some trouble, for all that. Nothing fresh ? " This 
 time he lifted his eyes to indicate Mr. Baines's bedroom. 
 
 " No," said Mrs. Baines, with a different expression. 
 
 " Keeps cheerful ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Good 1 A very good morning to you." 
 
 He strode off towards his house, which was lower down the 
 street. 
 
 " I hope she'll turn over a new leaf now," observed Mrs. 
 Baines to Constance as she closed the door. Constance knew 
 that her mother was referring to the confectioner's wife ; she 
 gathered that the hope was slight in the extreme. 
 
 " What did you want to speak to me about, mother ? " she 
 asked, as a way out of her delicious confusion. 
 
 " Shut that door," Mrs. Baines replied, pointing to the door 
 which led to the passage ; and while Constance obeyed, Mrs. 
 Baines herself shut the staircase-door. She then said, in a low, 
 guarded voice — 
 
 " What's all this about Sophia wanting to be a school- 
 teacher ? " 
 
 " Wanting to be a school-teacher?" Constance repeated, in 
 tones of amazement. 
 
 " Yes. Hasn't she said anything to you ? " 
 
 " Not a word ! " 
 
 " Well, I never ! She wants to keep on with Miss Chet- 
 wynd and be a teacher." Mrs. Baines had half a mind to add 
 that Sophia had mentioned London. But she restrained her- 
 self. There are some things which one cannot bring one's 
 self to say. She added, " Instead of going into the shop I " 
 
44 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " I never heard of such a thing ! " Constance murmured 
 brpkenly, ih the excess of her astonishment. She was rolling 
 up Mr. Povey's tape-measure. 
 
 " Neither did 1 1 " said Mrs. Baines. 
 
 " And shall you let her, mother ? " 
 
 " Neither your father nor I would ever dream of it I " Mrs. 
 Baines replied, with calm and yet terrible decision. " I only 
 mentioned it to you because I thought Sophia would have told 
 you something." 
 
 " No, mother 1 " 
 
 As Constance put Mr. Povey's tape-measure neatly away 
 in its drawer under the cutting-out counter, she thought how 
 serious life was — what with babies and Sophias. She was very 
 proud of her mother's confidence in her ; this simple pride 
 filled her ardent breast with a most agreeable commotion. 
 And she wanted to help everybody, to show in some way how 
 much she sympathized with and loved everybody. Even the 
 madness of Sophia did not weaken her longing to comfort 
 Sophia. 
 
 Ill 
 
 That afternoon there was a search for Sophia, whom no 
 one had seen since dinner. She was discovered by her mother, 
 sitting alone and unoccupied in the drawing-room. The cir- 
 cumstance was in itself sufficiently peculiar, for on weekdays 
 the drawing-room was never used, even by the girls during 
 their holidays, except for the purpose of playing the piano. 
 However, Mrs. Baines offered no comment on Sophia's 
 geographical situation, nor on her idleness. 
 
 " My dear," she said, standing at the door, with a self- 
 conscious effort to behave as though nothing had happened, 
 " will you come and sit with your father a bit ? " 
 
 " Yes, mother," answered Sophia, with a sort of cold 
 alacrity. 
 
 " Sophia is coming, father," said Mrs. Baines at the open 
 door of the bedroom, which was at right-angles with, and close 
 to, the drawing-room door. Then she surged swishing along 
 the corridor and went into the showroom, whither she had 
 been called. 
 
 Sophia passed to the bedroom, the eternal prison of John 
 
A BATTLE 45 
 
 Baines. Although, on account of his nervous restlessness, 
 Mr. Baines was never left alone, it was not a part of the usual 
 duty of the girls to sit with him. The person who undertook 
 the main portion of the vigils was a certain Aunt Maria — 
 whom the girls knew to be not a real aunt, not a powerful, 
 effective aunt like Aunt Harriet of Axe — but a poor second 
 cousin of John Baines ; one of those necessitous, pitiful rela- 
 tives who so often make life difficult for a great family in a 
 small town. The existence of Aunt Maria, after being rather 
 a " trial " to the Baineses, had for twelve years past developed 
 into something absolutely " providential " for them. (It is to 
 be remembered that in those days Providence was still busying 
 himself with everybody's affairs, and foreseeing the future 11 
 the most extraordinary manner. Thus, having foreseen that 
 John Baines would have a " stroke " and need a faithful, tire- 
 less nurse, he had begun fifty years in advance by creating 
 Aunt Maria, and had kept her carefully in misfortune's way, 
 so that at the proper moment she would be ready to cope with 
 the stroke. Such at least is the only theory which will explain 
 the use by the Baineses, and indeed by all thinking Bursley, 
 of the word "providential" in connection, with Aunt Maria.) 
 She was a shrivelled little woman, capable of sitting twelve 
 hours a day in a bedroom and thriving on the rtgitne. At 
 nights she went home to her little cottage in Brougham Street ; 
 she had her Thursday afternoons and generally her Sundays, 
 and during the school vacations she was supposed to come 
 only when she felt inclined, or when the cleaning of her cottage 
 permitted her to come. Hence, in holiday seasons, Mr. 
 Baines weighed more heavily on his household than at other 
 times, and his nurses relieved each other according to the 
 contingencies of the moment rather than by a set programme 
 of hours. 
 
 The tragedy in ten thousand acts of which that bedroom 
 was the scene, almost entirely escaped Sophia's perception, as 
 it did Constance's. .Sophia went into the bedroom as though 
 it were a mere bedroom, with its majestic mahogany furniture, 
 its crimson rep curtains (edged with gold), and its white, 
 heavily tasselled counterpane. She was aged four when Joha 
 Baines had s.uddenly been seized with giddiness on the steps 
 of his shop, and had fallen, and, without losing consciousness, 
 had been transformed from John Baines into a curious and 
 pathetic survival of John Baines. She had no notion of the 
 
46 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 thrill which ran through the town on that night when it was 
 known that John Baines had had a stroke, and that his left 
 arm and left leg and his right eyelid were paralyzed, and that 
 the active member of the Local Board, the orator, the religious 
 worker, the very life of the town's life, was permanently done 
 for. She had never heard of the crisis through which her 
 mother, assisted by Aunt Harriet, had passed, and out of 
 which she had triumphantly emerged. She was not yet old 
 enough even to suspect it. She possessed only the vaguest 
 memory of her father before he had finished with the world. 
 She knew him simply as an organism on a bed, whose left side 
 was wasted, whose eyes were often inflamed, whose mouth 
 was crooked, who had no creases from the nose to the corners 
 of the mouth like other people, who experienced difficulty in 
 eating because the food would somehow get between his gums 
 and his cheek, who slept a great deal but was excessively 
 fidgety while awakS, who seemed to hear what was said to 
 him a long time after it was uttered, as if the sense had to 
 travel miles by labyrinthine passages to his brain, and who 
 talked very, very slowly in a weak, trembling voice. 
 
 And she had an image of that remote brain as something 
 with a red spot on it, for once Constance had said : " Mother, 
 why did father have a stroke ? " and Mrs. Baines had replied : 
 " It was a haemorrhage of the brain, my dear, here " — ^putting 
 a thimbled finger on a particular part of Sophia's head. 
 
 Not merely had Constance and Sophia never really felt 
 their father's tragedy; Mrs. Baines herself had largely lost 
 the sense of it — such is the effect of use. Even the ruined 
 organism only remembered fitfully and partially that it had 
 once been John Baines. And if Mrs. Baines had not, by 
 the habit of years, gradually built up a gigantic fiction that the 
 organism remained ever the supreme consultative head of the 
 family ; if Mr. Critchlow had not obstinately continued to treat 
 it as a crony, the mass of living and dead nerves on the rich 
 Victorian bedstead would have been of no more account than 
 some Aunt Maria in similar case. These two persons, his 
 wife and his friend, just managed to keep him morally alive 
 by indefatigably feeding his importance and his dignity. The 
 feat was a miracle of stubborn self- deceiving, splendidly blind 
 devotion, and incorrigible pride. 
 
 When Sophia entered the room, the paralytic followed her 
 with his nervous gaze until she had sat down on the end of 
 
A BATTLE 47 
 
 the sofa at the foot of the bed. He seemed to study her for 
 a long time, and then he murmured in his slow, enfeebled, 
 irregular voice : 
 
 " Is that Sophia ? " 
 
 " Yes, father," she answered cheerfully. 
 
 And after another pause, the old man said : " Ay I It's 
 Sophia." 
 
 And later : " Your mother said she should send ye." 
 
 Sophia saw that this was one of his bad, dull days. He 
 had, occasionally, days of comparative nimbleness, when his 
 wits seized almost easily the meanings of external phenomena. 
 
 Presently his sallow face and long white beard began to 
 slip down the steep slant of the pillows, and a troubled look 
 came into his left eye. Sophia rose and, putting her hands 
 under his armpits, lifted him higher in the bed. He was not 
 heavy, but only a strong girl of her years could have done it. 
 
 " Ay ! " he muttered. " That's it. That's it." 
 
 And, with his controllable right hand, he took her hand as 
 she stood by the bed. She was so young and fresh, such an 
 incarnation of the spirit of health, and he was so far gone in 
 decay and corruption, that there seemed in this contact of 
 body with body something unnatural and repulsive. But 
 Sophia did not so feel it. 
 
 " Sophia," he addressed her, and made preparatory noises 
 in his throat while she waited. 
 
 He continued after an interval, now clutching her arm, 
 " Your mother's been telling me you don't want to go in the 
 shop." 
 
 She turned her eyes on him, and his anxious, dim gaze 
 met hers. She nodded. 
 
 " Nay, Sophia," he mumbled, with the extreme of slowness. 
 " I'm surprised at ye . . . Trade's bad, bad 1 Ye know trade's 
 bad ? " He was still clutching her arm. 
 
 She nodded. She was, in fact, aware of the badness of 
 trade, caused by a vague war in the United States. The 
 words " North " and " South " had a habit of recurring in the 
 conversation of adult persons. That was all she knew, though 
 people were starving in the Five Towns as they were starving 
 in Manchester. 
 
 " There's your mother," his thought struggled on, like an 
 aged horse over a hilly road. "There's your mother!" he 
 repeated, as if wishful to direct Sophia's attention to the 
 
48 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 spectacle of her mother. " Working hard ! Con — Constance 
 and you must help her . . . Trade's bad. What can I do . . • 
 lying here ? " 
 
 The' heat from his dry fingers was warming her arm. She 
 wanted to move, but she could not have withdrawn her arm 
 without appearing impatient. For a similar reason she would 
 not avert her glance. A deepening flush increased the lustre 
 of her immature loveliness as she bent over him. But though 
 it was so close he did not feel that radiance. He had long 
 outlived a susceptibility to the strange influences of youth 
 and beauty. 
 
 " Teaching ! " he muttered. " Nay, nay 1 I canna' allow 
 that." 
 
 Then his white beard rose at the tip as he looked up at 
 the ceiling above his head, reflectively. 
 
 " You understand me ? " he questioned finally. 
 
 She noiided again; he loosed her arm, and she turned 
 away. She could not have spoken. Glittering tears enriched 
 her eyes. She was saddened into a profound and sudden 
 grief by the ridiculousness of the scene. She had youth, 
 /physical perfection; she brimmed with energy, with the 
 sense of vital power; aJLexistence-lay-trcforeJier ; when she 
 put her lips together she felt capablg^f outvying no matter 
 whom in fortitude of resolution. She had always hated the 
 shop. She did not understand how her mother and Constance 
 could bring themselves to be deferential and flattering to every 
 customer that entered. No, she did not understand it ; but 
 her mother (though a proud woman) and Constance seemed 
 to practise such behaviour so naturally, so unquestioningly, 
 that she had never imparted to either of them her feelings ; 
 she guessed that she would not be comprehended. But long 
 ago she had decided that she would never " go into the shop." 
 She knew that she would be expected to do something, and 
 she had fixed on teaching as the one possibility. These 
 decisions had formed part of her inner life for years past. She 
 had not mentioned ihem, being secretive and scarcely anxious 
 for unpleasantness. But she had been slowly preparing her- 
 self to mention them. The extraordinary announcement that 
 she was to leave school at the same time as Constance had 
 taken her unawares, before the preparations ripening in her 
 mind were complete — before, as it were, she had girded up 
 her loins for the fray. She had been caught unready, and the 
 
A BAITLE 49 
 
 opposing forces had obtained the advantage of her. But did 
 they suppose she was beaten ? 
 
 No argument frona her mother 1 No hearing, even ! Just 
 a curt and haughty ' Let me hear no more of this ' ! And so 
 the great desire of her Hfe, nourished year after year in her 
 inmost bosom, was to be flouted and sacrificed with a word ! 
 Her mother did not appear ridiculous in the atfair, for her 
 mother was a genuine power, commanding by turns genuine 
 love and genuine hate, and always, till then, obedience and 
 the respect of reason. It was her father who appeared 
 tragically ridiculous; and, in turn, the whole movement 
 against her grew grotesque in its absurdity. Here was this 
 antique wreck, helpless, useless, powerless — merely pathetic — 
 actually thinking that he had only to mumble in order to make 
 her ' understand ' ! He knew nothing ; he perceived nothing ; 
 he was a ferocious egoist, like most bedridden invalids, out 
 of touch with life, — and he thought himself justified in making 
 destinies, and capable of making them! Sophia could not, 
 perhaps, define the feelings which overwhelmed her ; but she 
 was conscious of their tendency. They aged her, by years. 
 They aged her so that, in a kind of momentary ecstasy of 
 insight, she felt older than her father himself. 
 
 " You will be a good girl," he said. " I'm sure o' that." 
 
 It was too painful. The grotesqueness of her father's 
 complacency humiliated her past bearing. She was humiliated, 
 not for herself, but for him. Singular creature 1 She ran out 
 of the room. 
 
 Fortunately Constance was passing in the corridor, other- 
 wise Sophia had been found guilty of a great breach of duty. 
 
 " Go to father," she whispered hysterically to Constance, 
 and fled upwards to the second floor. 
 
 IV 
 
 At supper, with her red, downcast eyes, she had returned 
 to sheer girlishness again, overawed by her mother. The 
 meal had an unusual aspect. Mr. Povey, safe from the 
 dentist's, but having lost two teeth in two days, was being 
 fed on ' slops ' — bread and milk, to wit ; he sat near the fire. 
 The others had cold pork, half a cold apple-pie, and cheese ; 
 but Sophia only pretended to eat; each time she tried to 
 
60 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 swallow, the tears came into her eyes, and her throat shut 
 itself up. Mrs. Baines and Constance had a too careful air 
 of eating just as usual. Mrs. Baines's handsome ringlets 
 dominated the table under the gas. 
 
 " I'm not so set up with my pastry to-day," observed Mrs. 
 Baines, critically munching a fragment of pie-crust. 
 
 She rang a little hand-bell. Maggie appeared from the 
 cave. She wore a plain white bib-less apron, but no cap. 
 
 " Maggie, will you have some pie ? " 
 
 " Yes, if you can spare it, ma'am." 
 
 This was Maggie's customary answer to offers of food. 
 
 "We can always spare it, Maggie," said her mistress, as 
 usual. " Sophia, if you aren't going to use that plate, give it 
 to me.'' 
 
 Maggie disappeared with liberal pie. 
 
 Mrs. Baines then talked to Mr. Povey about his condition, 
 and in particular as to the need for precautions against taking 
 cold in the bereaved gum. She was a brave and determined 
 woman ; from start to finish she behaved as though nothing 
 whatever in the household except her pastry and Mr. Povey 
 had deviated that day from the normal She kissed Constance 
 and Sophia with the most exact equality, and called them 
 ' my chucks ' when they went up to bed. 
 
 Constance, excellent kind heart, tried to imitate her 
 mother's tactics as the girls undressed in their room. She 
 thought she could not do better than ignore Sophia's deplor- 
 able state. 
 
 " Mother's new dress is quite finished, and she's going to 
 wear it on Sunday," said she, blandly. 
 
 " If you say another word I'll scratch your eyes out ! " 
 Sophia turned on her viciously, with a catch in her voice, and 
 then began to sob at intervals. She did not mean this threat, 
 but its utterance gave her relief. Constance, faced with the 
 fact that her mother's shoes were too big for her, decided to 
 preserve her eyesight. 
 
 Long after the gas was out, rare sobs from Sophia shook 
 the bed, and they both lay awake in silence. 
 
 " I suppose you and mother have been talking me over 
 finely to-day ? " Sophia burst forth, to Constance's surprise in 
 a wet voice. 
 
 "No," said Constance soothingly. "Mother only told 
 me." ' 
 
A BATTLE 61 
 
 "Told you what?" 
 
 " That you wanted to be a teacher." 
 
 " And I will be, too ! " said Sophia, bitterly. 
 
 "You don't know mother," thought Constance J but she 
 made no audible comment. 
 
 There was another detached, hard sob. And then, such 
 is the astonishing talent of youth, they both fell asleep. 
 
 The next morning, early, Sophia stood gazing out of the 
 window at the Square. It was Saturday, and all over the 
 Square little stalls, with yellow linen roofs, were being erected 
 for the principal market of the week. In those barbaric days 
 Bursley had a majestic edifice, black as basalt, for the sale of 
 dead animals by the limb and rib — it was entitled 'the 
 Shambles' — but vegetables, fruit, cheese, eggs, and pikelets 
 were still sold under canvas. Eggs are now offered at five 
 farthings apiece in a palace that cost twenty-five thousand 
 pounds. Yet you will find people in Bursley ready to assert 
 that things generally are not what they were, and that in 
 particular the romance of life has gone. But until it has gone 
 it is never romance. To Sophia, though she was in a mood 
 which usually stimulates the sense of the romantic, there was 
 nothing of romance in this picturesque tented field. It was 
 just the market. HoU's, the leading grocer's, was already 
 open, at the extremity of the Square, and a boy apprentice 
 was sweeping the pavement in front of it The public-houses 
 were open, several of them specializing in hot rum at 
 5.30 a.m. The town-crier, in his blue coat with red facings, 
 crossed the Square, carrying his big bell by the tongue. 
 There was the same shocking hole in one of Mrs. Povey's 
 (confectioner's) window-curtains — a hole which even her recent 
 travail could scarcely excuse. Such matters it was that Sophia 
 noticed with dull, smarting eyes. 
 
 " Sophia, you'll take your death of cold standing there like 
 that ! " 
 
 She jumped. The voice was her mother's. That vigorous 
 woman, after a calm night by the side of the paralytic, was 
 already up and neatly dressed. She carried a bottle and an 
 egg-cup, and a small quantity of jam in a table-spoon. 
 
 " Get into bed again, do ! There's a dear ! You're shivering." 
 
 White Sophia obeyed. It was true; she was shivering. 
 Constance awoke. Mrs. Baines went to the dressing-table 
 and filled the, egg-cup out of the bottle. 
 
62 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " Who's that for, mother ? " Constance asked sleepily. 
 
 " It's for Sophia," said Mrs. Baines, with good cheer. 
 " Now, Sophia ! " And she advanced with the egg-cup in 
 one hand and the table-spoon in the other, 
 
 " What is it, mother ? " asked Sophia, who well knew what 
 it was. 
 
 " Castor-oil, my dear," said Mrs. Baines, winningly. 
 
 The ludicrousness of attempting to cure obstinacy and 
 yearnings for a freer life by means of castor-oil is perhaps less 
 real than apparent. The strange interdependence of spirit 
 and body, though only understood mtelligently in these 
 intelligent days, was guessed at by sensible mediaeval mothers. 
 And certainly, at the period when Mrs. Baines represented 
 modernity, castor-oil was still the remedy of remedies. It 
 had supplanted cupping. And, if part of its vogue was due 
 to its extreme unpleasantness, it had at least proved its 
 qualities in many a contest with disease. Less than two years 
 previously old Dr. Harrop (father of him who told Mrs. Baines 
 about Mrs. Povey), being then aged eighty-six, had fallen from 
 top to bottom of his staircase. He had scrambled up, taken 
 a dose of castor oil at once, and on the morrow was as well 
 as if he had never seen a staircase. This episode was town 
 property and had sunk deep into all hearts. 
 
 "I don't want any, mother," said Sophia, in dejection. 
 » I'm quite well." 
 
 "You simply ate nothing all day yesterday," said Mrs. 
 Baines. And she added, " Come ! " As if to say, " There's 
 always this silly fuss with castor-oil. Don't keep me waiting." 
 
 "I don't wani any," said Sophia, irritated and captious. 
 
 The two girls lay side by side, on their backs. They 
 seemed very thin and fragile in comparison with the solidity 
 of their mother. Constance wisely held her peace. 
 
 Mrs. Baines put her lips together, meaning: "This is 
 becoming tedious. I shall have to be angry in another 
 moment." 
 
 " Come ! " said she again. 
 
 The girls could hear her foot tapping on the floor. 
 "I really don't want it, mamma," Sophia fought. "I 
 suppose I ought to know whether I need it or not 1 " This 
 was insolence. 
 
 " Sophia, will you take this medicine, or won't you ?" 
 
 In conflicts with her children, the mother's ultimatum 
 
A BATTI-E 53 
 
 always took the formula in which this phrase was cast. The 
 girls knew, when things had arrived at the pitch of ' or won't 
 you,' spoken in Mrs. Baines's firmest tone, that the end was 
 upon them. Never had the ultimatum failed. 
 
 There was a silence. 
 
 " And I'll thank you to mind your manners," Mrs. Baines 
 added. 
 
 " I won't take it," said Sophia, sullenly and flatly ; and she 
 hid her face in the pillow. 
 
 It was a historic moment in the family life. Mrs. Baines 
 thought the last day had come. But still she held herself in 
 dignity while the apocalypse roared in her ears. 
 
 " Of course I caritforce you to take it" she said with superb 
 evenness, masking anger by compassionate grief. " You're 
 a big girl and a naughty girl. And if you will be ill you 
 must." 
 
 Upon this immense admission, Mrs. Baines departed. 
 
 Constance trembled. 
 
 Nor was that all. In the middle of the morning, when 
 Mrs. Baines was pricing new potatoes at a stall at the top end 
 of the Square, and Constance choosing threepennyworth of 
 flowers at the same stall, whom should they both see, walking 
 all alone across the empty corner by the Bank, but Sophia 
 Baines 1 The Square was busy and populous, and Sophia was 
 only visible behind a foreground of restless, chattering figures. 
 But she was unmistakably seen. She had been beyond the 
 Square and was returning. Constance could scarcely believe 
 her eyes. Mrs. Baines's heart jumped. For let it be said 
 that the girls never under any circumstances went forth with- 
 out permission, and scarcely ever alone. That Sophia should 
 be at large in the town, without leave, without notice, exactly 
 as if she were her own mistress, was a proposition which 
 a day earlier had been inconceivable. Yet there she was, 
 and moving with a leisureliness that must be described as 
 efirontery ! 
 
 Red with apprehension, Constance wondered what would 
 happen. Mrs. Baines said nought of her feelings, did not 
 even indicate that she had seen the scandalous, the breath- 
 taking sight. And they descended the Square laden with 
 the lighter portions of what they had bought during an hour 
 of buying. They went into the house by the King Street 
 door ; and the first thing they heard was the sound of the 
 
54 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 piano upstairs. Nothing happened. Mr. Povey had his 
 dinner alone; then the table was laid for them, and the bell 
 rung, and Sophia came insolently downstairs to join her 
 mother and sister. And nothing happened. The dinner was 
 silently eaten, and Constance having rendered thanks to God, 
 Sophia rose abruptly to go. 
 
 " Sophia 1" 
 
 " Yes, mother." 
 
 " Constance, stay where you are," said Mrs. Baines suddenly 
 to Constance, who had meant to flee. Constance was there- 
 fore destined to be present at the happening, doubtless in 
 order to emphasize its importance and seriousness. 
 
 "Sophia," Mrs. Baines resumed to her younger daughter 
 in an ominous voice. "No, please shut the door. There 
 is no reason why everybody in the house should hear. Come 
 right into the room — right in 1 Thaf s it. Now, what were 
 you doing out in the town this morning ? " 
 
 Sophia was fidgeting nervously with the edge of her little 
 black apron, and worrying a seam of the carpet with her toes. 
 She bent her head towards her left shoulder, at first smiling 
 vaguely. She said nothing, but every limb, every glance, 
 every curve, was speaking. Mrs. Baines sat firmly in her own 
 Tocking-chair, full of the sensation that she had Sophia, as it 
 were, writhing on the end of a skewer. Constance was braced 
 into a moveless anguish. 
 
 " I will have an answer," pursued Mrs. Baines. " What 
 were you doing out in the town this morning ? " 
 
 "I just went out," answered Sophia at length, still with 
 eyes downcast, and in a rather simpering tone. 
 
 " Why did you go out ? You said nothing to me about 
 going out. I heard Constance ask you if you were coming with 
 us to the market, and you said, very rudely, that you weren't." 
 
 " I didn't say it rudely," Sophia objected. 
 
 " Yes you did. And I'll thank you not to answer back." 
 
 "I didn't mean to say it rudely, did I, Constance?" 
 Sophia's head turned sharply to her sister. Constance knew 
 not where to look. 
 
 " Don't answer back," Mrs. Baines repeated sternly. " And 
 don't try to drag Constance into this, for I won't have it." 
 
 "Oh, of course Constance is always right 1 " observed 
 Sophia, with an irony whose unparalleled impudence shook 
 Mrs. Baines to her massive foundations. 
 
A BATTLE 55 
 
 " Do you want me to have to smack you, child ? " 
 
 Her temper flashed out and you could see ringlets vibrating 
 under the provocation of Sophia's sauciness. Then Sophia's 
 lower lip began to fall and to bulge outwards, and all the 
 muscles of her face seemed to slacken. 
 
 "You are a very naughty girl," said Mrs. Baines, with 
 restraint. (" I've got her," said Mrs. Baines to herself. " I 
 may just as well keep my temper.") 
 
 And a sob broke out of Sophia. She was behaving like a 
 little child. She bore no trace of the young maiden sedately 
 crossing the Square without leave and without an escort. 
 
 (" I knew she was going to cry," said Mrs. Baines, breath- 
 ing relief.) 
 
 " I'm waiting," said Mrs. Baines aloud. 
 
 A second sob. Mrs. Baines manufactured patience to 
 meet the demand. 
 
 " You tell me not to answer back, and then you say you're 
 waiting," Sophia blubbered thickly. 
 
 "What's that you say? How can I tell what you say if 
 you talk like that ? " (But Mrs. Baines failed to hear out of 
 discretion, which is better than valour.) 
 
 " It's of no consequence," Sophia blurted forth in a sob. 
 She was weeping now, and tears were ricocheting off her 
 lovely crimson cheeks on to the carpet ; her whole body was 
 trembling. 
 
 "Don't be a great baby," Mrs. Baines enjoined, with a 
 touch of rough persuasiveness in her voice. 
 
 " It's you who make me cry," said Sophia, bitterly. " You 
 make me cry and then you call me a great baby ! " And sobs 
 ran through her frame like waves one after another. She 
 spoke so indistinctly that her mother now really had some 
 difficulty in catching her words. 
 
 " Sophia," said Mrs. Baines, with god-like calm, " it is 
 not I who make you cry. It is your guilty conscience makes 
 you cry. I have merely asked you a question, and I intend to 
 have an answer." 
 
 " I've told you." Here Sophia checked the sobs with an 
 immense effort. 
 
 " What have you told me ? " 
 
 " I just went out." 
 
 "I will have no trifling," said Mrs. Baines. "What did 
 you go out for, and without telling me ? If you had told me 
 
66 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 afterwards, when I came in, of your own accord, it rpight have 
 been different. But no, not a word! It is I who have to 
 ask ! Now, quick 1 I can't wait any longer." 
 
 (" I gave way over the castor-oil, my girl," Mrs. Baines 
 said in her own breast. " But not again ! Not again 1 ") 
 
 " I don't know," Sophia murmured. 
 
 "What do you mean — you don't know?" 
 
 The sobbing recommenced tempestuously. "I mean I 
 don't know. I just went out." Her voice rose ; it was noisy, 
 but scarcely articulate. " What if I did go out ? " 
 
 " Sophia, I am not going to be talked to like this. If you 
 think because you're leaving school you can do exactly as 
 you like " 
 
 " Do I want to leave school ? " yelled Sophia, stamping. 
 In a moment a hurricane of emotion overwhelmed her, as 
 though that stamping of the foot had released the demons of 
 the storm. Her face was transfigured by uncontrollable" 
 passion. " You all want to make me miserable ! " she 
 shrieked with terrible violence. " And now I can't even go 
 out ! You are a horrid, cruel woman, and I hate you ! And 
 you can do what you like ! Put me in prison if you like ! I 
 know you'd be glad if I was dead ! " 
 
 She dashed from the room, banging the door with a shock 
 that made the house rattle. And she had shouted so loud 
 that she might have been heard in the shop, and even in the 
 kitchen. It was a startling experience for Mrs. Baines. Mrs. 
 Baines, why did you saddle yourself with a witness ? Why did 
 you so positively say that you intended to have an answer ? 
 
 "Really," she stammered, pulling her dignity about hei 
 shoulders like a garment that the wind has snatched off. " 1 
 never dreamed that poor girl had such a dreadful temper! 
 What a pity it is,^ for her own sake ! " It was the best she 
 could do. 
 
 Constance, who could not bear to witness her mother's 
 humiliation, vanished very quietly from the room. She got 
 halfway upstairs to the second floor, and then, hearing the 
 loud, rapid, painful, regular intake of sobbing breaths, she 
 hesitated and crept down again. 
 
 This was Mrs. Baines's first costly experience of the child 
 thankless for having been brought into the world. It robbed 
 her of her profound, absolute belief in herself. She had 
 thought she knew everything in her house and could do 
 
A BATTLE 57 
 
 everything there. And lo 1 she had suddenly stumbled against 
 an unsuspected personality at large in her house, a sort of hard 
 marble affair that informed her by means of bumps that if she 
 did not want to be hurt she must keep out of the way. 
 
 On the Sunday afternoon Mrs. Baines was trying to repose 
 a little in the drawing-room, where she had caused a fire to be 
 lighted. Constance was in the adjacent, bedroom with her 
 father. Sophia lay between blankets in the room overhead 
 with a feverish cold. This cold and her new dress were Mrs. 
 Baines's sole consolations at the moment She had prophe- 
 sied a cold for Sophia, refuser of castor-oil, and it had come. 
 Sophia had received, for standing in her nightdress at a 
 draughty window of a May morning, what Mrs. Baines called 
 ' nature's slap in the face.' As for the dress, she had 
 worshipped God in it, and prayed for Sophia in it, before 
 dinner; and its four double rows of gimp on the skirt had 
 been accounted a great success. With her lace-bordered' 
 mantle and her low, stringed bonnet she had assuredly given 
 a unique lustre to the congregation, at chapel. She was stout ; 
 but the fashions, prescribing vague outlines, broad downward 
 slopes, and vast amplitudes, were favourable to her shape. It 
 must not be supposed that stout women of a certain age never 
 seek to seduce the eye and trouble the meditations of man by 
 other than moral charms. Mrs. Baines knew that she was 
 comely, natty, imposing, and elegant ; and the knowledge gave 
 her real pleasure. She would look over her shoulder in the 
 glass as anxious as a girl : make no mistake. 
 
 She did not repose; she could not. She sat thinking, in 
 exactly the same posture as Sophia's two afternoons previously. 
 She would have been surprised to hear that her attitude, 
 bearing, and expression powerfully recalled those of her 
 reprehensible daughter. But it was so. A good angel made 
 her restless, and she went idly to the window and glanced 
 upon the empty, shuttered Square. She too, majestic matron, 
 had strange, brief yearnings for an existence more romantic 
 than this; shootings across her spirit's firmament of tailed 
 comets; soft, inexplicable melancholies. The good angel, 
 
58 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 withdrawing her from such a mood, directed her gaze to a 
 particular spot at the top of the square. 
 
 She passed at once out of the room — not precisely in a 
 hurry, yet without wasting time. In a recess under the stairs, 
 immediately outside the door, was a box about a foot square 
 and eighteen inches deep covered with black American cloth. 
 She bent down and unlocked this box, which was padded 
 within and contained the Baines silver tea-service. She drew 
 from the box teapot, sugar-bowl, milk-jug, sugar-tongs, hot- 
 water jug, and cake-stand (a flattish dish with an arching 
 semicircular handle) — chased vessels, silver without and 
 silver-gilt within ; glittering heirlooms that shone in the dark 
 comer like the secret pride of respectable families. These 
 she put on a tray that always stood on end in the recess. 
 Then she looked upwards through the banisters to the 
 second floor. 
 
 " Maggie I " she piercingly whispered. 
 
 " Yes, mum," came a voice. 
 
 " Are you dressed ? " 
 
 " Yes, mum. I'm just coming." 
 
 "Well, put on your muslin." "Apron," Mrs. Baines 
 implied. 
 
 Maggie understood. 
 
 " Take these for tea," said Mrs. Baines when Maggie 
 descended. " Better rub them over. You know where the 
 cake is — that new one. The best cups. And the silver 
 spoons." 
 
 They both heard a knock at the side-door, far off, below. 
 
 " There I " exclaimed Mrs. Baines. " Now take these right 
 down into the kitchen before you open." 
 
 " Yes, mum," said Maggie, departing. 
 
 Mrs. Baines was wearing a black alpaca apron. She 
 removed it and put on another one of black satin embroidered 
 with yellow flowers, which, by merely inserting her arm into 
 the chamber, she had taken from off the chest of drawers in 
 her bedroom. Then she fixed herself in the drawing-room. 
 
 Maggie returned, rather short of breath, convoying the 
 visitor. 
 
 "Ah! Miss Chetwynd," said Mrs. Baines, rising to 
 welcome. "I'm sure I'm delighted to see you. I saw you 
 coming down the Square, and I said to myself, ' Now, I do 
 hope Miss Chetwynd isn't going to forget us.' " 
 
A BATTLE 69 
 
 Miss Chetwynd, simpering momentarily, came forward 
 with that self-conscious, slightly histrionic air, which is one of 
 the penalties of pedagogy. She lived under the eyes of her 
 pupils. Her life was one ceaseless effort to avoid doing any- 
 thing which might influence her charges for evil or shock the 
 natural sensitiveness of their parents. She had to wind her 
 earthly way through a forest of the most delicate suscepti- 
 bilities — fern-fronds that stretched across the path, and that 
 she must not even accidentally disturb with her skirt as she 
 passed. No wonder she walked mincingly 1 No wonder she 
 had a habit of keeping her elbows close to her sides, and 
 drawing her mantle tight in the streets ! Her prospectus 
 talked about 'a sound and religious pourse of training,' 
 ' study embracing the usual branches of English, with music 
 by a talented master, drawing, dancing, and calisthenics.' 
 AJso ' needlework plain and ornamental ; ' also ' moral 
 influence;' and finally about terms, 'which are very mode- 
 rate, and every particular, with references to parents and 
 others, furnished on application.' (Sometimes, too, without 
 application.) As an illustration of the delicacy of fern-fronds, 
 that single word ' dancing ' had nearly lost her Constance and 
 Sophia seven years before ! 
 
 She was a pinched virgin, aged forty, and not 'well off";' 
 in her family the gift of success had been monopolized by her 
 elder sister. For these characteristics Mrs. Baines, as a 
 matron in easy circumstances, pitied Miss Chetwynd. On the 
 other hand, Miss Chetwynd could choose ground from which 
 to look down upon Mrs. Baines, who after all was in trade. 
 Miss Chetwynd had no trace of the local accent ; she spoke 
 with a southern refinement which the Five Towns, while 
 making fun of it, envied. All her O's had a genteel lean- 
 ing towards ' ow,' as ritualism leans towards Romanism. 
 And she was the fount of etiquette, a wonder of correctness; 
 in the eyes of her pupils' parents not so much ' a perfect 
 lady ' as ' a perfect lady.' So that it was an extremely nice 
 question whether, upon the whole, Mrs. Baines secretly con- 
 descended to Miss Chetwynd or Miss Chetwynd to Mrs. 
 Baines. Perhaps Mrs. Baines, by virtue of her wifehood, 
 carried the day. 
 
 Miss Chetwynd, carefully and precisely seated, opened the 
 conversation by explaining that even if Mrs. Baines had not 
 written she should have called in any case, as she made a 
 
60 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 practice of calling at the homes of her pupils in vacation time : 
 which was true. Mrs. Baines, it should be stated, had on 
 Friday afternoon sent to Miss Chetwynd one of her most 
 luxurious notes — lavender-coloured paper with scalloped 
 edgep, the selectest mode of the day — to announce, in her 
 Italian hand, that Constance and Sophia would both leave 
 school at the end of the next term, and giving reasons in 
 regard to Sophia. 
 
 Before the visitor had got very far, Maggie came in with a 
 lacquered tea-caJdy and the silver teapot and a silver spoon 
 on a lacquered tray. Mrs. Baines, while continuing to talk, 
 chose a key from her bunch, unlocked the tea-caddy, and 
 transferred four teaspoonfuls of tea from it to the teapot and 
 relocked the caddy. 
 
 " Strawberry," she mysteriously whispered to Maggie j and 
 Maggie disappeared, bearing the tray and its contents. 
 
 " And how is your sister ? It is quite a long time since 
 she was'down here," Mrs. Baines went on to Miss Chetwynd, 
 after whispering "strawberry." 
 
 The remark was merely in the way of small-talk — for the 
 hostess felt a certain unwilling hesitation to approach the topic 
 of daughters — but it happened to suit the social purpose of 
 Miss Chetwynd to a nicety. Miss Chetwynd was a vessel 
 brimming with great tidings. 
 
 " She is very well, thank you," said Miss Chetwynd, and 
 her expression grew exceedingly vivacious. Her face glowed 
 with pri(Je as she added, "Of course everything is changed 
 now." 
 
 "Indeed?" murmured Mrs. Baines, with polite curiosity. 
 
 " Yes," said Miss Chetwynd. " You've not heard ? " 
 
 " No," said Mrs. Baines, Miss Chetwynd knew that she 
 had not heard. 
 
 "About Elizabeth's engagement? To the Reverend 
 Archibald Jones ? " 
 
 It is the fact that Mrs. Baines was taken aback. She did 
 nothing indiscreet; she did not give vent to her excusable 
 amazement that the elder Miss Chetwynd should be engaged 
 to any one at all, as some women would have done in the stress 
 of the moment. She kept her presence of mind. 
 
 " This is really most interesting 1 " said she. 
 
 It was. For Archibald Jones was one of the idols of 
 the Wesleyan Methodist Connexion, a special preacher 
 
A BATTLE 61 
 
 famous throughout England. At ' Anniversaries ' and ' Trust 
 sermons,' Archibald Jones had probably no rival. His Christian 
 name helped him ; it was a luscious, resounding mouthful for 
 admirers. He was not an itinerant minister, migrating every 
 three years. His function was to direct the affairs of the 
 ' Book Room,' the publishing department of the Connexion. 
 He lived in London, and shot out into the provinces at week- 
 ends, preaching on Sundays and giving a lecture, tinctured 
 with bookishness, ' in the chapel ' on Monday evenings. In 
 every town he visited there was competition for the privilege 
 of entertaining him. He had zeal, indefatigable energy, and 
 a breezy wit. He was a widower of fifty, and his wife had been 
 dead for twenty years. It had seemed as if women were not 
 for this bright star. And hete Elizabeth Chetwynd, who had 
 left the Five Towns a quarter of a ceniury before at the age of 
 twenty, had caught him ! Austere, moustached, formidable, 
 desiccated, she must have done it with her powerful intellect ! 
 It must be a union of intellects 1 He had been impressed by 
 hers, and she by his, and then their intellects had kissed. 
 Within a week fifty thousand women in forty counties had 
 pictured to themselves this osculation of intellects, and shrugged 
 their shoulders, and decided once more that men were incom- 
 prehensible. These great ones in London, falling in love like 
 the rest ! But no ! Love was a ribald and voluptuous word to 
 use in such a matter as this. It was generally felt that the 
 Reverend Archibald Jones and Miss Chetwynd the elder 
 would lift marriage to what would now be termed an astral 
 plane. 
 
 After tea had been served, Mrs. Baines gradually recovered 
 her position, both in her own private esteem and in the 
 deference of Miss Aline Chetwynd. 
 
 "Yes," said she. "You can talk about your sister, and 
 you can call him Archibald, and you can mince up your 
 words. But have you got a tea-service like this? Can you 
 conceive more perfect strawberry jam than this ? Did not my 
 dress cost more than you spend on your clothes in a year? 
 Has a man ever looked at you ? After all, is there not some- 
 thing about my situation . . , in short, something . . . ? " 
 
 She did not say this aloud. She in no way deviated from 
 the scrupulous politeness of a hostess. There was nothing in 
 even her tone to indicate that Mrs. John Baines was a personage. 
 Yet it suddenly occurred to Miss Chetwynd that her pride in 
 
62 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 being the prospective sister-in-law of the Rev. Archibald Jones 
 would be better for a while in her pocket And she inquired 
 after Mr. Baines. After this the conversation limped somewhat. 
 
 " I suppose you weren't surprised by my letter ? " said Mrs. 
 Baines. 
 
 "I was and I wasn't," answered Miss Chetwynd, in her 
 professional manner and not her manner of a prospective 
 sister-in-law, " Of course I am naturally sorry to lose two such 
 good pupils, but we can't keep our pupils for ever." She 
 smiled ; she was not without fortitude — it is easier to lose 
 pupils than to replace them. " Still " — a. pause — " what you 
 say of Sophia is perfectly true, perfectly. She is quite as 
 advanced as Constance. Still" — another pause and a more 
 rapid enunciation — " Sophia is by no means an ordinary girl." 
 
 " I hope she hasn't been a very great trouble to you ? " 
 
 "Oh no/" exclaimed Miss Chetwynd. "Sophia and I 
 have got on very well together. I have always tried to appeal 
 to her reason. I have fx^vex forced her . . . Now, with some 
 girls ... In some ways I look on Sophia as the most remark- 
 able girl — not pupil — but the most remarkable — what shall I 
 say? — individuality, that I have ever met with." And her 
 demeanour added, " And, mind you, this is something — from 
 me!" 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Mrs. Baines. She told herself, " I am not 
 your common foolish parent. I see my children impartially 
 I am incapable of being flattered concerning them." 
 
 Nevertheless she was flattered, and the thought shaped 
 itself that really Sophia was no ordinary girl. 
 
 "I suppose she has talked to you about becoming a 
 teacher?" asked Miss Chetwynd, taking a morsel of the 
 unparalleled jam. 
 
 She held the spoon with her thumb and three fingers. 
 Her fourth finger, in matters of honest labour, would never 
 associate with the other three; delicately curved, it always 
 drew proudly away from them. 
 
 " Has she mentioned that to you ? " Mrs, Baines demanded, 
 startled. 
 
 " Oh yes I " said Miss Chetwynd. " Several times. Sophia 
 is a very secretive girl, very — but I think I may say I have 
 always had her confidence. There have been times when 
 Sophia and I have been very near each other. Elizabeth was 
 mucn struck with her. Indeed, I may tell you that in one of 
 
A BAITLE 63 
 
 her last letters to me she spoke of Sophia and said she had 
 mentioned her to Mr. Jones, and Mr. Jones remembered her 
 quite well." 
 
 Impossible for even a wise, uncommon parent not to be 
 affected by such an announcement ! 
 
 "I dare say your sister will give up her school now," 
 observed Mrs. Baines, to divert attention from her self- 
 consciousness. 
 
 "Oh no I" And this time Mrs. Baines had genuinely 
 shocked Miss Chetwynd. " Nothing would induce Elizabeth 
 to give up the cause of education. Archibald takes the keenest 
 interest in the school. Oh no ! Not for worlds ! " 
 
 " Then you think Sophia wotUd make a good teacher 9 " asked 
 Mrs. Baines with apparent inconsequence, and with a smile. 
 But the words marked an epoch in her mind. All was over. 
 
 " I think she is very much set on it and " 
 
 " That wouldn't affect her father — or me," said Mrs. Baines 
 quickly. 
 
 " Certainly not 1 1 merely say that she is very much set on it. 
 Yes, she would, at any rate, make a teacher far superior to the 
 average." (" That girl has got the better of her mother with- 
 out me 1 " she reflected.) " Ah ! Here is dear Constance 1 " 
 
 Constance, tempted beyond her strength by the sounds of 
 the visit and the colloquy, had slipped into the room. 
 
 " I've left both doors open, mother," she excused herself for 
 quitting her father, and kissed Miss Chetwynd. 
 
 She blushed, but she blushed happily, and really made a 
 most creditable dSbtet as a young lady. Her mother rewarded hei 
 by taking her into the conversation. And history was soon made. 
 
 So Sophia was apprenticed to Miss Aline Chetwynd. Mrs. 
 Baines bore herself greatly. It was Miss Chetwynd who had 
 urged, and her respect for Miss Chetwynd . . . Also somehow the 
 Reverend Archibald Jones came into the cause. ... Of course 
 the idea of Sophia ever going to London was ridiculous, ridi- 
 culous 1 (Mrs. Baines secretly feared that the ridiculous might 
 happen ; but, with the Reverend Archibald Jones on the spot, 
 the worst could be faced.; Sophia must understand that even 
 the apprenticeship in Bursley was merely a trial. They would 
 see how things went on. She had to thank Miss Chetwynd . . . 
 
 " I made Miss Chetwynd come and talk to mother," said 
 Sophia magnificently one night to simple Constance, as if to 
 imply, ' Your Miss Chetwynd is my washpot.' 
 
64 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 To Constance, Sophia's mere enterprise was just as stagger- 
 ing as her success. Fancy her deliberately going out that 
 Saturday morning, after her mother's definite decision, to enlist 
 Miss Chetwynd in her aid ! 
 
 There is no need to insist on the tragic grandeur of Mrs. 
 Baines's renunciation — a renunciation which implied her 
 acceptance of a change in the balance of power in her realm. 
 Part of its tragedy was that none, not even Constance, could 
 divine the intensity of Mrs. Baines's sufifering. She had no 
 confidant ; she was incapable of showing a wound. But when 
 she lay awake at night by the organism which had once been 
 her husband, she dwelt long and deeply on the martyrdom of 
 her life. What had she done to deserve it ? Always had she 
 conscientiously endeavoured to be kind, just, patient. And 
 she knew herself to be sagacious and prudent. In the frightful ' 
 and unguessed trials of her existence as a wife, surely she might 
 have been granted consolations as a mother ! Yet no ; it had 
 not been I And she felt all the bitterness of age against youth 
 — ^youth egotistic, harsh, cruel, uncompromising ; youth that is 
 so crude, so ignorant of life, so slow to understand ! She had 
 Constance. Yes, but it would be twenty years before Constance 
 could appreciate the sacrifice of judgment and of pride which 
 her mother had made, in a sudden decisiiin, during that ram- 
 bling, starched, simpering interview with Miss Aline Chetwynd. 
 Probably Constance thought that she had yielded to Sophia's 
 passionate temper ! Impossible to explain to Constance that 
 she had yielded to nothing but a perception of Sophia's com- 
 plete inability to hear reason and wisdom. Ah ! Sometinies 
 as she lay in the dark, she would, in fancy, snatch her heart 
 from her bosom and fling it down before Sophia, bleeding, and 
 cry : " See what I carry about with me, on your account ! " 
 Then she would take it back and hide it again, and sweeten her 
 bitterness with wise admonitions to herself. 
 
 All this because Sophia, aware that if she stayed in the 
 house she would be compelled to help in the shop, chose an 
 honourable activity which freed her from the danger. Hearty 
 bow absurd of you to bleed 1 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 ELEPHANT 
 
 " Sophia, will you come and see the elephant ? Do come 1 " 
 Constance entered the drawing-room with this request on her 
 eager lips. 
 
 " No," said Sophia, with a touch of condescension. " I'm 
 far too busy for elephants." 
 
 Only two years had passed ; but both girls were grown up 
 now j long sleeves, long skirts, hair that had settled down in 
 life ; and a demeanour immensely serious, as though existence 
 were terrific in its responsibilities j yet sometimes childhood 
 surprisingly broke through the crust of gravity, as now in Con- 
 stance, aroused by such things as elephants, and proclaimed 
 with vivacious gestures that it was not dead after all. The 
 sisters were sharply differentiated. Constance wore the black 
 alpaca apron and the scissors at the end of a long black elastic, - 
 which indicated her vocation in the shop. She was proving 
 a considerable success in the millinery department. She had 
 learnt how to talk to people, and was, in her modest way, very 
 self-possessed. She was getting a little stouter. Everybody 
 liked her. Sophia had developed into the student. Time had 
 accentuated her reserve. Her sole friend was Miss Chetwynd, 
 with whom she was, having regard to the dispairity of their ages, 
 very intimate At home she spoke Utile. She lacked ami- 
 ability ; as her mother said, she was ' touchy.' She required 
 diplomacy from others, but did not render it again. Her atti- 
 tude, indeed, was one of half-hidden disdain, now gentle, now 
 coldly bitter. She would not wear an apron, in an age when 
 aprons were almost essential to decency. No I She would 
 not wear an apron, and there was an end of it. She was not 
 so tidy as Constance, and if Constance's hands had taken on 
 
 6s r 
 
66 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 the coarse texture which comes from commerce with needles, 
 pins, artificial flowers, and stuffs, Sophia's fine hands were 
 seldom innocent of ink. But Sophia was splendidly beautiful. 
 And even her mother and Constance had an instinctive idea 
 that that face was, at any rate, a partial excuse for her asperity. 
 
 "Well," said Constance, "if you won't, I do believe I 
 shall ask mother if she will." 
 
 Sophia, bending over her books, made no answer. But 
 the top of her head said : " This has no interest for me what- 
 ever." 
 
 Constance left the room, and in a inoment returned with her 
 mother. 
 
 "Sophia," said her mother, with gay excitement, "you 
 might go and sit with your father for a bit while Constance 
 and I just run up to the playground to see the elephant. 
 Yo"u can work just as well in there as here. Your father's 
 asleep." 
 
 " Oh, very well ! " Sophia agreed haughtily. " Whatever is 
 all this fuss about an elephant ? Anyhow, it'll be quieter in 
 your room. The noise here is splitting." She gave a super- 
 cilious glance into the Square as she languidly rose. 
 
 It was the morning of the third day of Bursley Wakes ; not 
 the modern finicking and respectable, but an orgiastic carnival, 
 gross in all its manifestations of joy. The whole centre of the 
 town was given over to the furious pleasures of the people. 
 Most of the Square was occupied by Wombwell's Menagerie, in 
 a vast oblong tent, whose raging beasts roared and growled day 
 and night. And spreading away from this supreme attraction, 
 right up through the market-place past the Town Hall to Duck 
 Bank, Duck Square and the waste land called the ' playground,' 
 were hundreds of booths with banners displaying all the delights 
 of the horrible. You could see the atrocities of the French 
 Revolution, and of the Fiji Islands, and the ravages of unspeak- 
 able diseases, and the living flesh of a nearly nude human 
 female guaranteed to turn the scale at twenty-two stone, and 
 the skeletons of the mysterious phantoscope, and the bloody 
 contests of champions naked to the waist (with the chance of 
 picking up a red tooth as a relic). You could try your strength 
 by hitting an image of a fellow-creature in the stomach, and 
 test your aim by knocking off the heads of other images with 
 a wooden ball. You could also shoot with rifles at various 
 targets. All the streets were lined with stalls loaded with 
 
ELEPHANT 67 
 
 food in heaps, chiefly dried fish, the entrails of animals, and 
 ginger-bread. All the pubLc-houses were crammed, and frenzied 
 jolly drunkards, men and women, lunged along the pavements 
 everywhere, their shouts vying with the trumpets, horns, and 
 drums of the booths, and the shrieking, rattling toys that the 
 children carried. 
 
 It was a glorious spectacle, but not a spectacle for the 
 leading families. Miss Chetwynd's school was closed, so that 
 the daughters of leading families might remain in seclusion till 
 the worst was over. The Baineses ignored the Wakes in every 
 possible way, choosing that week to have a show of mourning 
 goods in the left-hand window, and refusing to let Maggie 
 outside on any pretext. Therefore the dazzling social success 
 of the elephant, which was quite easily drawing Mrs. Baines 
 into the vortex, cannot imaginably be over-estimated. 
 
 On the previous night one of the three Wombwell elephants 
 had suddenly knelt on a man in the tent ; he had then walked 
 out of the tent and picked up another man at haphazard from 
 the crowd which was staring at the great pictures in front, and 
 tried to put this second man into his mouth. Being stopped 
 by his Indian attendant with a pitchfork, he placed the man on 
 the ground and stuck his tusk through an artery of the victim's 
 arm. He then, amid unexampled excitement, suflFered himself 
 to be led away. He was conducted to the rear of the tent, 
 just in front of Baines's shuttered windows, and by means 
 of stakes, pulleys, and ropes forced to his knees. His head 
 was whitewashed, and six men of the Rifle Corps were engaged 
 to shoot at him at a distance of five yards, while constables 
 kept the crowd oflf with truncheons. He died instantly, 
 rolling over with a soft thud. The crowd cheered, and, 
 intoxicated by their importance, the Volunteers fired three 
 more volleys into the carcase, and were then borne off as 
 heroes to different inns. The elephant, by the help of his 
 two companions, was got on to a railway lorry and disappeared 
 into the night. Such was the greatest sensation that has ever 
 occurred, or perhaps will ever occur, in Bursley. The excite- 
 ment about the repeal of the Corn Laws, or about Inkerman, 
 was feeble compared to that excitement. Mr. Critchlow, who 
 had been called on to put a hasty tourniquet round the arm 
 of the second victim, had popped in afterwards to tell John 
 Baines all about it. Mr. Baines's interest, however, had been 
 slight. Mr. Critchlow succeeded better with the ladies, who, 
 
68 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 though they had witnessed the shooting from the drawing-room, 
 were thirsty for the most trifling details. 
 
 The next day it was known that the elephant lay near the 
 playground, pending the decision of the Chief Bailiff and the 
 Medical Officer as to his burial. And everybody had to visit 
 the corpse. No social exclusiveness could withstand the 
 seduction of that dead elephant. Pilgrims travelled from 
 all the Five Towns to see him. 
 
 "We're going now," said Mrs. Baines, after she had 
 assumed her bonnet and shawl. 
 
 "All right," said Sophia, pretending to be absorbed in 
 study, as she sat on the sofa at the foot of her father's bed. 
 
 And Constance, having put her head in at the door, drew 
 her mother alter her like a magnet. 
 
 Then Sophia heard a remarkable conversation in the passage. 
 
 "Are you going up to see the elephant, Mrs. Baines?" 
 asked the voice of Mr. Povey. 
 
 " Yes. Why ? " 
 
 " I think I had better come with you. The crowd is sure to 
 be very rough." Mr. Povey's tone was firm ; he had a positioni 
 
 " But the shop ? " 
 
 " We shall. not be long," said Mr. Povey. 
 
 " Oh yes, mother," Constance added appealingly. 
 
 Sophia felt the house thrill as the side-door banged. She 
 sprang up and watched the three cross King Street diagonally, 
 and so plunge into the Wakes. This triple departure was 
 surely the crowning tribute to the dead elephant I It was 
 simply astonishing. It caused Sophia to perceive that she 
 had miscalculated the importance of the elephant. It made 
 her regret her scorn of the elephant as an attraction. She 
 was left behind ; and the joy of life was calling her. She could 
 see down into the Vaults on the opposite side of the street, 
 where working jnen — potters and colliers — in their best clothes, 
 some with high hats, were drinking, gesticulating, and laughing 
 in a row at a long counter. 
 
 She noticed, while she was thus at the bedroom window, a 
 young man ascending King Street, followed by a porter 
 trundling a flat barrow of luggage. He passed slowly under 
 the very window. She flushed. She had evidently been 
 startled by the sight of this young man into no ordinary state 
 of commotion. She glanced at the books on the sofa, and 
 then at her father. Mr. Baines, thin and gaunt, and acutely 
 
ELEPHANT 69 
 
 pitiable, still slept. His brain had almost ceased to be active 
 now; he had to be fed and tended like a bearded baby, and 
 he would sleep for hours at a stretch even in the daytime. 
 Sophia left the room. A moment later she ran into the shop, 
 an apparition that amazed the three young lady assistants. At 
 the corner near the window on the fancy side a little nook had 
 been formed by screening off a portion of the counter with 
 large flower-boxes placed end-up. This corner had come to 
 be knovyn as " Miss Baines's corner." Sophia hastened to it, 
 squeezing past a young lady assistant in the narrow space 
 between the back of the counter and the shelf-lined wall. She 
 sat down in Constance's chair and pretended to look for 
 something. She had examined herself in the cheval-glass in 
 the showroom, on her way from the sick-chamber. When she 
 heard a voice near the door of the shop asking first for Mr. 
 Povey and then for Mrs. Baines, she rose, and seizing the 
 object nearest to her, which happened to be a pair of scissors, 
 she hurried towards the showroom stairs as though the scissors 
 had been a grail, passionately sought and to be jealously 
 hidden away. She wanted to stop and turn round, biut 
 something prevented her. She was at the end of the counter, 
 under the curving stairs, when one of the assistants said : 
 
 " I suppose you don't know when Mr. Povey or your 
 mother are likely to be back, Miss Sophia ? Here's — " 
 
 It was a divine release for Sophia. 
 
 " They're — I — " she stammered, turning round abruptly. 
 Luckily she was still sheltered behind the counter. 
 
 The young man whom she had seen in the street came 
 boldly forward. 
 
 "Good morning. Miss Sophia," said he, hat in hand. " It 
 is a long time since I had the pleasure of seeing you." 
 
 Never had she blushed as she blushed then. She scarcely 
 knew what she was doing as she moved slowly towards her 
 sister's corner again, the young man following her on the 
 customer's side of the counter. 
 
 II 
 
 She knew that he was a traveller for the most renowned 
 and gigantic of all Manchester wholesale firms — Birkinshaws. 
 But she did not know his name, which was Gerald Scales. 
 
;0 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 He was a rather short but extremely well-proportioned man of 
 thirty, with fair hair, and a distinguished appearance, _ as 
 became a representative of Birkinshaws. His broad, tight - 
 necktie, with an edge of white collar showing above it, was 
 particularly elegant. He had been on the road for Birkin- 
 shaws for several years ; but Sophia had only seen him once 
 before in her life, when she was a little girl, three years ago. 
 The relations between the travellers of the great firms and 
 their solid, sure clients in small towns were in those days often 
 cordially intimate. The traveller came with the lustre of a 
 historic reputation around him ; there was no need to fawn 
 for orders ; and the client's immense and immaculate respect- 
 ability made him the equal of no matter what ambassador. 
 It was a case of mutual esteem, and of that confidence-gene- 
 rating phenomenon, " an old account." The tone in which a 
 commercial traveller of middle age would utter the phrase "an 
 old account " revealed in a flash all that was romantiCj_grim, 
 and stately in mid- Victorian commerce. In the days of Baines, 
 after one of the elaborately engraved advice-circulars had 
 
 arrived (' Our Mr. will have the pleasure of waiting upon 
 
 you on — day nejct, the — inst.') John might in certain cases 
 be expected to say, on the morning of — day, ' Missis, what 
 have ye gotten for supper to-night ? ' 
 
 Mr. Gerald Scales had never been asked to supper; he 
 had never even seen John Baines; but, as the youthful suc- 
 cessor of an aged traveller who had had the pleasure of St, 
 Luke's Square, on behalf of Birkinshaws, since before railways, 
 Mrs. Baines had treated him with a faint agreeable touch of 
 maternal familiarity ; and, both her daughters being once in 
 the shop during his visit, she had on that occasion commanded 
 the gawky girls to shake hands with him. 
 
 Sophia had never forgotten that glimpse. The young man 
 without a name had lived in her mind, brightly glowing, as 
 the very symbol and incarnation of the masculine and the 
 elegant 
 
 The renewed sight of him seemed to have wakened her 
 out of a sleep. Assuredly she was not the same Sophia. As 
 she sat in her sister's chair in the corner, entrenched behind 
 the perpendicular boxes, playing nervously with the scissors, 
 her beautiful face was transfigured into the ravishingly angelic 
 It would have been impossible for Mr. Gerald Scales, or any- 
 body else, to credit, as he gazed at those lovely, sensitive, 
 
ELEPHANT 71 
 
 vivacious, responsive features, that Sophia was not a character 
 of heavenly sweetness and perfectioi). She did not know 
 what she was doing ; she was nothing but the exquisite expres 
 sion of a deep instinct to attract and charm. Her soul itself 
 emanated from her in an atmosphere of allurement and 
 acquiescence. Could those laughing lips hang in a heavy 
 pout ? Could that delicate and mild voice be harsh ? Could 
 I those burning eyes be coldly inimical ? Never ! The idea 
 was inconceivable 1 And Mr. Gerald Scales, with his head 
 over the top of the boxes, yielded to the spell Remarkable 
 that Mr. Gerald Scales, with all his experience, should have 
 had to come to Bursley to find the pearl, the paragon, the 
 ideal ! But so it was. They met in an equal abandonment ; 
 the only difference between them was that Mr. Scales, by force 
 of habit, kept his head. 
 
 " I see it's your wakes here," said he. 
 
 He was polite to the wakes; but now, with the least 
 inflection in the world, he put the wakes at its proper level in 
 the scheme of things as a local unimportance ! She adored 
 him for this; she was athirst for sympathy in the task of 
 scorning everything local. 
 
 " I expect you didn't know," she said, implying that there 
 was every reason why a man of his mundane interests should 
 not know. 
 
 " I should have remembered if I had thought," said he. 
 " But I didn't think. What's this about an elephant ? " 
 
 " Oh ! " she exclaimed. " Have you heard of that ? " 
 
 " My porter was full of it." 
 
 "Well," she said, "of course it's a very big thing in 
 Bursley." 
 
 As she smiled in gentle pity of poor Bursley, he naturally 
 did the same. And he thought how much more advanced 
 and broad the younger generation was than the old ! He 
 would never have dared to express his real feelings about 
 Bursley to Mrs. Baines, or even to Mr. Povey (who was, how- 
 ever, of no generation) ; yet here was a young woman actually 
 sharing them. 
 
 She told him all the history of the elephant. 
 
 " Must have been very exciting," he commented, despite 
 himself. 
 
 " Do you know," she replied, " it was." 
 
 After all, Bursley was climbing in their opinion. 
 
72 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " And mother and my sister and Mr, Povey have all gone 
 to see it. That's why they're not here." 
 
 That the elephant should have caused both Mr. Poyey and 
 Mrs. Baines to forget that the representative of Birkinshaws 
 was due to call was indeed a final victory for the elephant. 
 
 " But not you ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 " No," she said. " Not me." 
 
 " Why didn't you go too ? " He continued his flattering 
 investigations with a generous smile. 
 
 " I simply didn't care to," said she, proudly nonchalant 
 
 "And I suppose you are in charge here ? " 
 
 " No," she answered. " I just happened to have run down 
 here for these scissors. That's all." 
 
 " I often see your sister," said he. " ' Often ' do I say ? — 
 that is, generally, when I come ; but never you." 
 
 " I'm never in the shop," she said. " It's just an accident 
 to-day." 
 
 " Oh I So you leave the shop to your sister? " 
 
 " Yes." She said nothing of her teaching. 
 
 Then there was a silence. Sophia was very thankful to be 
 hidden from the curiosity of the shop. The shop could see 
 nothing of her, and only the back of the young man ; and the 
 conversation had been conducted in low voices. She tapped 
 her foot, stared at the worn, polished surface of the counter, 
 with the brass yard-measure nailed along its edge, and then 
 she uneasily turned her gaze to the left and seemed to be 
 examining the backs of the black bonnets which were perched 
 on high stands in the great window. Then her eyes caught 
 his for an important momen't. 
 
 " Yes," she breathed. Somebody had to say something. 
 If the shop missed the murmur of their voices the shop would 
 wonder what had happened to them. 
 
 Mr. Scales looked at his watch. " I dare say if I come in 
 again about two — " he began. 
 
 " Oh yes, they're sure to be in then," she burst out before 
 he could finish his sentence. 
 
 He left abruptly, queerly, without shaking hands (but then 
 it would have been difficult — she argued — for him to have put 
 his arm over the boxes), and without expressing the hope of 
 seeing her again. She peeped through the black bonnets, and 
 saw the porter put the leather strap over his shoulders, raise 
 the rear of the barrow, and trundle off ; but she did not see 
 
ELEPHANT 73 
 
 Mr. Scales. She was drunk ; thoughts were tumbling about 
 in her brain like cargo loose in a rolling ship. Her entire 
 conception of herself was being altered ; her attitude towards 
 life was being altered. The thought which knocked hardest 
 against its fellows was, " Only in these moments have I begun 
 to live ! " 
 
 And as she flitted upstairs to resume watch over her father 
 she sought to devise an innocent-looking method by which she 
 might see Mr. Scales when he next called. And she speculated 
 as to what his name was. 
 
 Ill 
 
 When Sophia arrived in the bedroom, she was startled 
 because her father's head and beard were not in their accus- 
 tomed place on the pillow. She could only make out 
 something vaguely unusual sloping off the side of the bed. A 
 few seconds passed — ^not to be measured in time — and she 
 saw that the upper part of his body had slipped down, and his 
 head was hangmg, inverted, near the floor between the bed 
 and the ottoman. His face, neck, and hands were dark and 
 congested ; his mouth was open, and the tongue protruded 
 between the black, swollen, mucous lips;, his eyes were 
 prominent and coldly staring. The fact was that Mr. Baines 
 had wakened up, and, being restless, had slid out partially from 
 his bed and died of asphyxia. After having been unceasingly 
 watched for fourteen years, he had, with an invalid's natural 
 perverseness, taken advantage of Sophia's brief dereliction to 
 expire. Say what you will, amid Sophia's horror, and her 
 terrible grief and shame, she had visitings of the idea : he did 
 it on purpose ! 
 
 She ran out of the room, knowing by intuition that he was 
 dead, and shrieked out, " Maggie," at the top of her voice ; 
 the house echoed. 
 
 " Yes, miss," said Maggie, quite close, coming out of Mr. 
 Povey's chamber with a slop-pail. 
 
 " Fetch Mr. Critchlow at once. Be quick. Just as you 
 are. It's father—" 
 
 Maggie, perceiving darkly that disaster was in the air, and 
 instantly filled with importance and a sort of black joy, 
 dropped her pail in the exact middle of the passage, and 
 
74 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 almost fell down the crooked stairs. One of Maggie's deepest 
 instincts, always held in check by the stern dominance of Mrs. 
 Baines, was to leave pails prominent on the main routes of the 
 house; and now, divining what was at hand, it flamed into 
 insurrection. 
 
 No sleepless night had ever been so long to Sophia as the 
 three minutes which elapsed before Mr. Critchlow came. As 
 she stood on the mat outside the bedroom door she tried to 
 draw her mother and Constance and Mr. Povey by magnetic 
 force out of the wakes into the house, and her muscles 
 were contracted in this strange effort. She felt that it was 
 impossible to continue living if the secret of the bedroom 
 remained unknown one instant longer, so intense was her 
 torture, and yet that the torture which could not be borne 
 must be borne. Not a sound in the house! Not a sound 
 from the shop ! Only the distant murmur of the wakes ! 
 
 " Why did I forget father ? " she asked herself with awe. 
 " I only meant to tell him that they were all out, and run back. 
 Why did I forget father?" She would never be able to 
 persuade anybody that she had literally forgotten her father's 
 existence for quite ten minutes; but it was true, though 
 shocking. 
 - Then there were noises downstairs. 
 
 " Bless us 1 Bless us 1 " came the unpleasant voice of Mr. 
 Critchlow as he bounded up the stairs on his long legs; he 
 strode over the pail. " What's amiss ? " He was wearing his 
 white apron, and he carried his spectacles in his bony hand. 
 
 " It's father — he's— " Sophia faltered. 
 
 She stood away so that he should enter the room first. He 
 glanced at her keenly and as it were resentfully, and went 
 in. She followed, timidly, remaining near the door while Mr. 
 Critchlow inspected her handiwork. He put on his spectacles 
 with strange deliberation, and then, bending his knees outwards, 
 thus lowered his body so that he could examine John Baines 
 point-blank. He remained staring like this, his hands on his 
 sharp apron-covered knees, for a little space; and then he 
 seized the inert mass and restored it to the bed, and wiped 
 those clotted lips with his apron. 
 
 Sophia heard loud breathing behind her. It was Maggie. She 
 heard a huge, snorting sob ; Maggie was showing her emotion. 
 
 « Go fetch doctor 1 " Mr. Critchlow rasped, « And don't 
 stand gaping there 1 " 
 
ELEPHANT 76 
 
 " Run for the doctor, Maggie," said Sophia. 
 
 " How came ye to let him fall ? " Mr. Critchlow demanded. 
 
 "I was out of the room. I just ran down into the 
 shop—" 
 
 " Gallivanting with that young Scales 1 " said Mr. Critch- 
 low, with devilish ferocity. " Well, you've killed yer father ; 
 that's all!" 
 
 He must have been at his shop door and seen the entry 
 of the traveller ! And it was precisely characteristic of Mr. 
 Critchlow to jump in the dark at a horrible conclusion, and to 
 be right after all. For Sophia Mr. Critchlow had always been 
 the personification of malignity and malevolence, and now 
 these qualities in him made him, to her, almost obscene. Her 
 pride brought up tremendous reinforcements, and she 
 approached the bed. 
 
 " Is he dead ? " she asked in a quiet tone. (Somewhere 
 within a voice was whispering, " So his name is Scales.") 
 
 « Don't I tell you he's dead ? " 
 
 " Pail on the stairs ! " 
 
 This mild exclamation came from the passage. Mrs. 
 liaines, misliking the crowds abroad, had returned alone; 
 ;he had left Constance in charge of Mr. Povey. Coming 
 into her house by the shop and showroom, she had first noted 
 the phenomenon of the pail — proof of her theory of Maggie's 
 incurable untidiness. 
 
 " Been to see the elephant, I reckon ! " said Mr. Critchlow, 
 in fierce sarcasm, as he recognized Mrs. Baines's voice. 
 
 Sophia leaped towards the door, as though to bar her 
 mother's entrance. But Mrs. Baines was already opening the 
 door. 
 
 " Well, my pet — " she was beginning cheerfully. 
 
 Mr. Critchlow confronted her. And he had no more pity 
 for the wife than for the daughter. He was furiously angry 
 because his precious property had been irretrievably damaged 
 by the momentary carelessness of a silly girl. Yes, John 
 Baines was his property, his dearest toy ! He was convinced 
 that he alone had kept John Baiues alive for fourteen years, 
 that he alone had fully understood the case and sympathized 
 with the sufferer, that none but he had been capable of dis- 
 playing ordinary common sense in the sick-roora. He had 
 learned to regard John Baines as, in some sort, his creation. 
 And now, with their stupidity, their neglect, their elephants, 
 
76 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 between them they had done for John Baines. He had 
 always known it would come to that, and it had come to that. 
 
 "She let him fall out o' bed, and ye're a widow now, 
 missis 1" he announced with a virulence hardly conceivable. 
 His angular features and dark eyes expressed a murderous 
 hate for every woman named Baines. ' 
 
 " Mother 1 " cried Sophia, " I only ran down into the 
 shop to — to — " 
 
 She seized her mother's arm in frenzied agony. 
 
 " My child ! " said Mrs. Baines, rising miraculously to . the 
 situation with a calm benevolence of tone and gesture that 
 remained for ever sublime in the stormy heart of Sophia, " do 
 not hold me." With infinite gentleness she loosed herself 
 from those clasping hands. " Have you sent for the doctor?" 
 she questioned Mr. Critchlow. 
 
 The fate of her husband presented no mysteries to Mrs. 
 Baines. Everybody had been warned a thousand times of the 
 danger of leaving the paralytic, whose life depended on his 
 position, and whose fidgetiness was thereby a constant 
 menace of death to him. For five thousand nights she had 
 wakened infallibly every time he stirred, and rearranged him 
 by the flicker of a little oil lamp. But Sophia, unhappy 
 creature, had merely left him. That was all. 
 
 Mr. Critchlow and the widow gazed, helplessly waiting, 
 at the pitiable corpse, of which the salient part was the white 
 beard. They knew not that they were gazing at a vanished 
 era. John Baines had belonged to the past, to the age when 
 men really did think of their souls, when orators by phrases 
 could move crowds to fury or to pity, when no one had learnt 
 to hurry, when Demos was only turning in his sleep, when the 
 sole beauty of life resided in its inflexible and slow dignity, when 
 hell really had no bottom, and a gilt-clasped Bible really was 
 the secret of England's greatness. Mid-Victorian England 
 lay on that mahogany bed. Ideals had passed away with 
 John Baines. It is thus that ideals die; not in the con- 
 ventional pageantry of honoured death, but sorrily, ignobly, 
 while one's head is turned — 
 
 And Mr. Povey and Constance, very self-conscious, went 
 and saw the dead elephant, and came back ; and at the corner 
 of King Street, Constance ! xclaimed brightly — 
 
 " Why I who's gone out and left the side-door open ? " 
 
 For the doctor had at length arrived, and Maggie, in 
 
ELEPHANT 77 
 
 showing him upstairs with pious haste, had forgotten to shut 
 the door. 
 
 And they took advantage of the side-door, rather guiltily, 
 to avoid the eyes of the shop. They feared that in the parlour 
 they would be the centre of a curiosity half ironical and half 
 reproving ; for had they not accomplished an escapade ? So 
 they walked slowly. 
 
 The real murderer was having his dinner in the commercial 
 room up at the Tiger, opposite the Town Hall, 
 
 IV 
 
 Several shutters were put up in the windows of the shop, 
 to indicate a death, and the news instantly became known in 
 trading circles throughout the town. Many people simul- 
 taneously remarked upon the coincidence that Mr. Baines 
 should have died while there was a show of mourning goods 
 in his establishment. This coincidence was regarded as 
 extremely sinister, and it was apparently felt that, for the sake 
 of the mind's peace, one ought not to inquire into such things 
 too closely. From the moment of putting up the prescribed 
 shutters, John Baines and his funeral began to acquire import- 
 ance in Bursley, and their importance grew rapidly almost from 
 hour to hour. The wakes continued as usual, except that the 
 Chief Constable, upon representations being made to him by 
 Mr, Critchlow and other citizens, descended upon St, Luke's 
 Square and forbade the activities of Wombwell's orchestra, 
 Wombwell and the Chief Constable differed as to the justice 
 of the decree, but every well-minded person praised the Chief 
 Constable, and he himself considered that he had enhanced the 
 town's reputation for a decent propriety. It was noticed, too, 
 not without a shiver of the uncanny, that that night the lions 
 and tigers behaved like lambs, whereas on the previous night 
 they had roared the whole Square out of its sleep. 
 
 The Chief Constable was not the only individual enlisted 
 by Mr, Critchlow in the service of his friend's fame, Mr. 
 Critchlow spent hours in recalling the principal citizens to 
 a due sense of John Baines's past greatness. He was deter- 
 mined that his treasured toy should vanish underground with 
 due pomp, and he left nothing undone to that end. He went 
 over to Hanbridge on the still wonderful horse-car, and saw 
 
78 THE OLD WIVES^ TALE 
 
 the editor-proprietor of the Staffordshire Signal (then , a two- 
 penny weekly with no thought of Football editions), and on 
 the very day of the funeral the Signal came out with a long 
 and eloquent biography of John Baines. This biography, 
 giving details of his public life, definitely restored him to 
 his legitimate position in the civic memory as an ex-chief 
 bailiff, an ex-chairman of the Burial Board, and of the Five 
 Towns Association for the Advancement of Useful Know- 
 ledge, and also as a "prime mover" in the local Turnpike 
 Act, in the negotiations for the new Town Hall, and in the 
 Corinthian fagade of the Wesleyan Chapel ; it narrated the anec- 
 dote of his courageous speech from the portico of the Shambles 
 during the riots of 1848, and it did not omit a eulogy of his 
 steady adherence to the wise old English maxims of com- 
 merce and his avoidance of dangerous modern methods. Even 
 in the sixties the modern had reared its shameless head. The 
 panegyric closed with an appreciation of the dead man's forti- 
 tude in the terrible affliction with which a divine providence 
 had seen fit to try him ; and finally the Signal uttered its 
 absolute conviction that his native town would raise a cenotaph 
 to his honour. Mr. Critchlow, being unfamiliar with the word 
 " cenotaph," consulted Worcester's Dictionary, and when he 
 found that it meant " a sepulchral monument to one who is 
 buried elsewhere," he was as pleased with the Signal's language 
 as with the idea, and decided that a cenotaph should come 
 to pass. 
 
 The house and shop were transformed into a hive of pre- 
 paration for the funeraL All was changed. Mr. Povey kindly 
 slept for three nights on the parlour sofa, in order that Mrs. 
 Baines might have his room. The funeral grew into an obses- 
 sion, for multitudinous things had to be performed and done 
 sumptuously and in strict accord with precedent. There were 
 the family mourning, the funeral repast, the choice of the text 
 on the memorial card, the composition of the legend on the 
 coffin, the legal arrangements, the letters to relations, the 
 selection of guests, and the questions of bell-ringing, hearse, 
 plumes, number of horses, and grave-digging. Nobody had 
 leisure for the indulgence of grief except Aunt Maria, who, 
 after she had helped in the laying-out, simply sat down and 
 bemoaned unceasingly for hours her absence on the fatal 
 morning. " If I hadn't been so fixed on polishing my candle- 
 sticks," she weepingly repeated, " he mit ha' been alive and 
 
ELEPHANT 79 
 
 well now." Not that Aunt Maria had been informed of the 
 precise circumstances of the death ; she was not clearly aware 
 that Mr. Baines had died through a piece of neglect. Bat, 
 like Mr. Critchlow, she was convinced that there had been 
 only one person in the world truly capable of nursing Mr. 
 Baines. Beyond the family, no one save Mr. Critchlow and 
 Dr. Harrop knew just how the martyr had finished his career. 
 Dr. Harrop, having been asked bluntly if an inquest would 
 be necessary, had reflected a moment and had then replied : 
 "No." And he added, "Least said soonest mended — mark 
 me ! " They had marked him. He was commonsense in'' 
 breeches. 
 
 As for Aunt Maria, she was sent about her snivelling 
 business by Aunt Harriet. The arrival in the house of this 
 genuine aunt from Aze, of this majestic and enormous widow 
 whom even the imperial Mrs. Baines regarded with a certain 
 awe, set a seal of ultimate solemnity on the whole event. In 
 Mr. Povey's bedroom Mrs. Baines fell hke a child into Aunt 
 Harriet's arms and sobbed : 
 
 •' If it had been anything else but that elephant I " 
 
 Such was Mrs. Baines's sole weakness from first to last. 
 
 Aunt Harriet was an exhaustless fountain of authority upon 
 every detail concerning interments. And, to a series of 
 questions ending with the word " sister," and answers ending 
 with the word "sister," the prodigious travail incident to the 
 funeral was gradually and successfully accomplished. Dress 
 and the repast exceeded all other matters in complexity and 
 difficulty. But on the morning of the funeral Aunt Harriet 
 had the satisfaction of beholding her younger sister the centre 
 of a tremendous cocoon of crape, whose slightest pleat was 
 perfect. Aunt Harriet seemed to welcome her then, like a 
 veteran, formally into the august army of relicts. As they 
 stood side by side surveying the special table which was being 
 laid in the showroom for the repast, it appeared incon- 
 ceivable that they had reposed together in Mr. Povey's hmited 
 bed. They descended from the showroom to the kitchen, 
 where the last delicate dishes were inspected. The shop was, 
 of course, closed for the day, but Mr. Povey was busy there, 
 and in Aunt Harriet's all-seeing glance he came next after 
 the dishes. She rose from the kitchen to speak with him. 
 
 " You've got your boxes of gloves all ready ? " she ques- 
 tioned him. 
 
80 THE, OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 "Yes, Mrs. Maddack." 
 
 " You'll not forget to hare a measure handy ? " 
 
 « No, Mrs. Maddack." 
 
 " You'll find you'll want more of seven-and-three-quarters 
 and eights than anything." 
 
 " Yes. I have allowed for that" 
 
 " If you place yourself behind the side-door and put your 
 boxes on the harmonium, you'll be able to catch every one 
 as they come in." 
 
 " That is what I had thought of, Mrs. Maddack." 
 
 She went upstairs. Mrs. Baines had reached the show- 
 room again, and was smoothing out creases in the white 
 damask cloth and arranging glass dishes of jam at equal 
 distances from each other. 
 
 " Come, sister," said Mrs. Maddack. " A last look." 
 
 And they passed into the mortuary bedroom to gaze at Mr. 
 Baines before he should be everlastingly nailed down. In 
 death he had recovered some of his earlier dignity ; but even 
 so he was a startling sight The two widows bent over him, 
 one on either side, and gravely stared at that twisted, worn 
 white face all neatly tucked up in linen. 
 
 " I shall fetch Constance and Sophia," said Mrs. Maddack, 
 with tears in her voice. " Do you go into the drawing-room, 
 sister." 
 
 But Mrs. Maddack only succeeded in fetching Constance. 
 
 Then there was the sound of wheels in King Street. The 
 long rite of the funeral was about to begin. Every guest, after 
 having been measured and presented with a pair of the finest 
 black kid gloves by Mr. Povey, had to mount the crooked 
 stairs and gaze upon the carcase of John Baines, going after- 
 wards to the drawing-room to condole briefly with the widow. 
 And every guest, while conscious of the enormity of so 
 thinking, thought what an excellent thing it was that John 
 Baines should be at last dead and gone. The tramping on 
 the stairs was continual, and finally Mr. Baines himself went 
 downstairs, bumping against corners, and led a eoriige of 
 twenty vehicles. 
 
 The funeral tea was not over at seven o'clock, five hours 
 after the commencement of the rite. It was a gigantic and 
 faultless meal, worthy of John Baines's distant past. Only 
 two persons were absent from it — John Baines and Sophia. 
 The emptiness of Sophia's chair was much noticed; Mrs. 
 
ELEPHANT 81 
 
 Maddack explained that Sophia was very high-strung and 
 could not trust herself. Great efforts were put forth by the 
 company to be lugubrious and inconsolable, but the secret 
 relief resulting from the death would not be entirely hidden. 
 The vast pretence of acute sorrow, could not stand intact 
 against that secret relief and the lavish richness of the 
 food. 
 
 To the offending of sundry important relatives from a 
 distance, Mr. Critchlow informally presided over that 
 assemblage of grave men in high stocks and crinolined 
 women. He had closed his shop, which had never before 
 been closed on a week-day, and he had a great deal to say 
 about this extraordinary closure. It was due as much to the 
 elephant as to the funeral. The elephant had become a victim 
 to the craze for souvenirs. Already in the night his tusks had 
 been stolen ; then his feet disappeared for umbrella-stands, and 
 most of. his flesh departed in little hunks. Everybody in 
 Bursley had resolved to participate in the elephant. One 
 consequence was that all the chemists' shops in the town were 
 assaulted by strings of boys. 'Please a pennorth o' alum 
 to tak' smell out o' a bit o' elephant.' Mr. Critchlow 
 hated boys. 
 
 " ' I'll alum ye 1 ' says I, and I did. I alummed him out 
 o' my shop with a pestle. If there'd been one there'd been 
 twenty between opening and nine o'clock. 'George,' I says 
 to my apprentice, 'shut shop up. My old friend John 
 Baines is going to his long home to-day, and I'll close. I've 
 had enough o' alum for one day.' " 
 
 The elephant fed the conversation until after the second 
 relay of hot muffins. When Mr. Critchlow had eaten to his 
 capacity, he took the Signal importantly from his pocket, 
 posed his spectacles, and read the obituary all through in slow, 
 impressive accents. Before he reached the end Mrs. Baines 
 began to perceive that familiarity had blinded her to the 
 heroic qualities of her late husband. The fourteen years of 
 ceaseless care were quite genuinely forgotten, and she saw him 
 in his strength and in his glory. When Mr. Critchlow arrived 
 at the eulogy of the husband and father, Mrs. Baines rose and 
 left the showroom. The guests looked at each other in 
 sympathy for her. Mr. Critchlow shot a glance at her over 
 his spectacles and continued steadily reading. After he had 
 finished he approached the question of the cenotaph. 
 
82 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Mrs. Baines, driven from the banquet by her feelings, went 
 into the drawing-room. Sophia was there, and Sophia, seeing 
 tears in her mother's eyes, gave a sob, and flung herself bodily 
 against her mother, clutching her, and hiding her face in that 
 broad crape, which abraded her soft skin. 
 
 " Mother," she wept passionately, " I want to leave the 
 school now. I want to please you. I'll do anything in the 
 world to please you. I'll go into the shop if you'd like me 
 to 1 " Her voice lost itself in tears. 
 
 "Calm yourself, my pet," said Mrs. Baines, tenderly, 
 caressing her. It was a triumph for the mother in the yeiy 
 hour when she needed a triumph. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 tHE TRAVELLER 
 I 
 
 'Exquisite, is. iirf.' 
 
 These singular signs were being painted in shiny black on 
 an unrectangular parallelogram of white cardboard by Con 
 stance one evening in the parlour. She was seated, with her 
 left side to the fire and to the fizzing gas, at the dining-table, 
 which was covered with a checked cloth in red and white. 
 Her dress was of dark crimson ; she wore a cameo brooch and 
 a gold chain round her neck ; over her shoulders was thrown a 
 white knitted shawl, for the weather was extremely cold, the 
 English climate being much more serious and downright at 
 that day than it is now. She bent low to the task, holding her 
 head slightly askew, putting the tip of her tongue between her 
 lips, and expending all the energy of her soul and body in 
 an intense effort to do what she was doing as well as it could 
 be done. 
 
 "Splendid !" said Mr. Povey. 
 
 Mr. Povey was fronting her at the table ; he had his elbows 
 on the table, and watched her carefully, with the breathless 
 and divine anxiety of a dreamer who is witnessing the realiza- 
 tion of his dream. And Constance, without moving any part 
 of her frame except her head, looked up at him and smiled 
 for a moment, and he could see her delicious little nostrils at 
 the end of her snub nose. 
 
 Those two, without knowing or guessing it, were making 
 history — the history of commerce. They had no suspicion 
 that diey were the forces of the future insidiously at work 
 to destroy what the forces of the past had created, but such 
 was the case. They were conscious merely of a desire to 
 do their duty in the shop a,nd to the shop ; probably it had not 
 
 83 
 
84 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 even occurred to them that this desire, which each stimulated 
 in the breast of the other, had assumed the dimensions of a 
 passion. It was ageing Mr. Povey, and it had made of 
 Constance a young lady tremendously industrious and pre- 
 occupied. 
 
 Mr. Povey had recently been giving attention to the 
 question of tickets. It is not too much to say that Mr, 
 Povey, to whom heaven had granted a minimum share of 
 imagination, had nevertheless discovered his httle parcel of 
 imagination in the recesses of being, and brought it eflfectively 
 to bear on tickets. Tickets ran in conventional grooves. 
 There were heavy oblong tickets for flannels, shirting, and 
 other stuffs in the piece ; there were smaller and lighter tickets 
 for intermediate goods ; and there were diamond-shaped tickets 
 (containing nothing but the price) for bonnets, gloves, and 
 flimflams generally. The legends on the tickets gave no sort 
 of original invention. The words ' lasting,' ' durable,' ' un- 
 shrinkable,' 'latest,' 'cheap,' 'stylish,' 'novelty,' 'choice' 
 (as an adjective), ' new,' and ' tasteful,' exhausted the entire 
 vocabulary of tickets. Now Mr. Povey attached importance 
 to tickets, and since he was acknowledged to be the best 
 window-dresser in Bursley, his views were entitled to respect. 
 He dreamed of other tickets, in original shapes, with original 
 legends. In brief, he achieved, in regard to tickets, the rare 
 feat of ridding himself of preconceived notions, and of ap- 
 proaching a subject with fresh, virginal eyes. When he 
 indicated the nature of his wishes to Mr. Chawner, the whole- 
 sale stationer who supplied all the Five Towns with shop- 
 tickets, Mr. Chawner grew uneasy and worried ; Mr. Chawner 
 was indeed shocked. For Mr. Chawner there liad always 
 been certain well-defined genera of tickets, and he could not 
 conceive the existence of other genera. When Mr. Povey 
 suggested circular tickets — tickets with a blue and a red line 
 round them, tickets with legends such as 'unsurpassable,' 
 'very dainty,' or 'please note,' Mr. Chawner hummed and 
 hawed, and finally stated that it would be impossible to 
 manufacture these preposterous tickets, these tickets which 
 would outrage the decency of trade. 
 
 If Mr. Povey had not happened to be an exceedingly 
 obstinate man, he might have been defeated by the crass 
 Toryism of Mr. Chawner. But Mr. Povey was obstinate, and 
 he had resources of ingenuity which Mr. Chawner little 
 
. THE TRAVEIJJER 85 
 
 suspected. The great, tramping march of progress was not to 
 be impeded by Mr. Chawner. Mr. Povey began to make his 
 own tickets. At first he suffered as all reformers and inventors 
 suffer. He used the internal surface of collar-boxes and 
 ordinary ink and pens, and the result was such as to give 
 customers the idea that Baineses were too poor or too mean 
 to buy tickets like other shops. For bought tickets had an 
 ivory-tinted gloss, and the ink was black and glossy, and the 
 edges were very straight and did not show yellow between 
 two layers of white. Whereas Mr. Povey's tickets were of a 
 bluish-white, without gloss; the ink was neither black nor 
 shiny, and the edges were amateurishly rough : the tickets 
 had an unmistakable air of having been ' made out of some- 
 thing else ; ' moreover, the lettering had not the free, dashing 
 style of Mr. Chawner's tickets. 
 
 And 'did Mrs. Baines encourage him in his single- 
 minded enterprise on behalf of her business? Not a bitl 
 Mrs. Baines's attitude, when not disdainful, was inimical 1 So 
 curious is human nature, so blind is man to his own advan- 
 tage ! Life was very complex for Mr. Povey. It might have 
 been less complex had Bristol board and Chinese ink been 
 less expensive; with these materials he could have achieved 
 marvels to silence all prejudice and stupidity ; but they were 
 too costly. Still, he persevered, and Constance morally sup- 
 ported him; he drew his inspiration and his courage from 
 Constance. Instead of the internal surface of collar-boxes, he 
 tried the external surface, which was at any rate shiny. But 
 the ink would not ' take ' on it. He made as many experi- 
 ments as Edison was to make, and as many failures. Then 
 Constance was visited by a notion for mixing sugar with 
 ink. Simple, innocent creature — why should providence 
 have chosen her to be the vessel of such a sublime notion? 
 Puzzling enigma, which, however, did not exercise Mr. 
 Povey ! He found it quite natural that she should save him. 
 Save him she did. Sugar and ink would ' take ' on anything, 
 and it shone like a ' patent leather ' boot. Further, Constance 
 developed a 'hand' for lettering which outdid Mr. Povey's. 
 Between them they manufactured tickets by the dozen and 
 by the score — tickets which, while possessing nearly all the 
 smartness and finish of Mr. Chawner's tickets, were much 
 superior to these in originality and strikingness, Constance 
 and Mr. Povey were delighted and fascinated by them. As 
 
86 THE OLD WIVES* TALE 
 
 for Mrs. Baines, she said little, but the modern spirit was 
 too elated by its success to care whether she said little or 
 much. And every few days Mr. Povey thought of some new 
 and wonderful word to put on a ticket. 
 
 His last miracle was the word 'exquisite.' 'Exquisite,' 
 pinned on a piece of broad tartan ribbon, appeared to Con- 
 stance and Mr. Povey as the finality of appropi lateness. A 
 climax worthy to close the year ! Mr. Povey had cut the card 
 and sketched the word and figures in pencil, and Constance 
 was doing her executive portion of the undertaking. They were 
 very happy, very absorbed, in this strictly business matter. 
 The clock showed five minutes past ten. Stern duty, a 
 pure desire for the prosperity of the shop, had kept them at 
 hard labour since before eight o'clock that morning ! 
 
 The stairs-door opened, and Mrs. Baines appeared, in 
 bonnet and furs and gloves, all clad for going out. She had 
 abandoned the cocoon of crape, but still wore weeds. She 
 was stouter than ever. 
 
 " What ! " she cried. " Not ready 1 Now really ! " 
 
 "Oh, mother! How you made me jump!" Constance 
 protested. " What time is it ? It surely isn't time to go yet 1 " 
 
 " Look at the clock ! " said Mrs. Baines, drily. 
 
 " Well, I never ! " Constance murmured, confused. 
 
 " Come, put your things together, and don't keep me 
 waiting," said Mrs. Baines, going past the table to the window, 
 and lifting the blind to peep out. " Still snowing," she 
 observed, "Oh, ihe band's going away at last! I wonder 
 how they can play at all in this weather. By the way, what 
 was that tune they gave us just now? I couldn't make out 
 whether it was ' Redhead,' or—- " 
 
 " Band ? " questioned Constance — the simpleton ! 
 
 Neither she nor Mr. Povey had heard the strains of the 
 Bursley Town Silver Prize Band which had been enlivening 
 the season according to its usual custom. These two practical, 
 duteous, commonsense young and youngish persons had been 
 so absorbed in their efforts for the welfare of the shop that 
 they had positively not only forgotten the time, but had also 
 failed to notice the band 1 But if Constance had had her wits 
 about her she would at least have pretended that she had 
 heard it. 
 
 "What's this?" asked Mrs. Baines, bringing her vast form 
 to the table and' picking up a ticket 
 
THE TRAVELLER 87 
 
 Mr. Povey said nothing. Constance said; "Mr. Povey 
 thought of it to-day. Don't you think it's very good, mother ?" 
 
 " I'm afraid I don't," Mrs. Baines c'oldly replied. 
 
 She had mildly objected already to certain words; but 
 ' exquisite ' seemed to her silly ; it seemed out of place ; she 
 considered that it would merely bring ridicule on her shop. 
 ' Exquisite ' written upon a window-ticket ! No 1 What would 
 John Baines have thought of ' exquisite ' ? 
 
 " ' Exquisite ! ' " She repeated the word with a sarcastic in- 
 flection, putting the accent, as every one put it, on the second 
 syllable. " I don't think that will quite do." 
 
 " But why not, mother ? " 
 
 " It's not suitable, my dear." 
 
 She dropped the ticket from her gloved hand. Mr. Povey 
 had darkly flashed. Though he spoke little, he was as sensitive 
 as he was obstinate. On this occasion he said nothing. He 
 expressed his feelings by seizing the ticket and throwing it into 
 the fire. 
 
 The situation was extremely delicate. Priceless employes 
 like Mr. Povey cannot be treated as machines, and Mrs. Baines 
 of course instantly saw that tact was needed. 
 
 " Go along to my bedroom and get ready, my pet," said she 
 to Constance. " Sophia is there. There's a good fire. I must 
 just speak to Maggie." She tactfully left the room. 
 
 Mr. Povey glanced at the fire and the curling red remains 
 ot the ticket. Trade was bad ; owing to weather and war, 
 destitution was abroad ; and he had been doing his utmost for 
 the welfare of the shop ; and here was the reward ! 
 
 Constance's eyes were full of tears. " Never mind I " she 
 murmured, and went upstairs. 
 It was all over in a moment. 
 
 II 
 
 In the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel on Duck Bank there 
 was a full and influential congregation. For in those days 
 influential people were not merely content to live in the town 
 where their fathers had lived, without dreaming of country resi- 
 dences and smokeless air — they were content also to believe 
 what their fathers had believed about the beginning and the 
 end of all. There was no such thing as the unknowable, in 
 
88 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 those days. The eternal mysteries were as simple as an addi- 
 tion sum J a child could tell you with absolute certainty where 
 you would be and what you would be doing a million years 
 hence, and exactly what God thought of you. Accordingly, 
 every one being of the same mind, every one met on certain 
 occasions in certain places in order to express the universal 
 mind. And in the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, for example, 
 instead of a sparse handful of persons disturbingly conscious of 
 being in a minority, as now, a magnificent and proud majority 
 had collected, deeply aware of its rightness and its correctness. 
 
 And the minister, backed by minor ministers, knelt and 
 covered his face in the superb mahogany rostrum ; and behind 
 him, in what was then still called the ' orchestra ' (though no 
 musical instruments except the ^and organ had sounded in it 
 for decades), the choir knelt and covered their faces ; and all 
 around, in the richly painted gallery and on the ground-floor, 
 multitudinous rows of people, in easy circumstances of body 
 and soul, knelt in high pews and covered their faces. And 
 there floated before them, in the intense and prolonged silence, 
 the clear vision of Jehovah on a throne, a God of sixty or so 
 with a moustache and a beard, and a non-committal expression 
 which declined to say whether or not he would require more 
 bloodshed j and this God, destitute of pinions, was surrounded 
 by white-winged creatures that wafted themselves to and fro 
 while chanting ; and afar off was an obscene monstrosity, with 
 cloven hoofs and a tail, very dangerous and rude and interfering, 
 who could exist comfortably in the middle of a coal-fire, and 
 who took* a malignant and exhaustless pleasure in coaxing you 
 by false pretences into the same fire; but of course you had 
 too much sense to swallow his wicked absurdities. Once a 
 year, for ten minutes by the clock, you knelt thus, in mass, and 
 by meditation convinced yourself that you had too much sense 
 to swallow his wicked absurdities. And the hour was very 
 solemn, the most solemn of all the hours. 
 
 Strange that immortal souls should be found with the 
 temerity to reflect upon mundane affairs in that hour I Yet 
 there were undoubtedly such in the congregation ; there were 
 perhaps many to whom the vision, if clear, was spasmodic and 
 fleeting. And among them the inhabitants of the Baines family 
 pew ! Who would have supposed that Mr. Povey, a recent 
 convert from Primitive Methodism in King Street to Wesleyan 
 Methodism on Duck Bank, was dwelling upon window-tickets 
 
THE TRAVELLER 89 
 
 and the injustice of women, instead of upon his relations with 
 Jehovah and the tailed one ? Who would have supposed that 
 the gentle-eyed Constance, pattern of daughters, was risking 
 her eternal welfare by smiling at the tailed one, who, concealing 
 his tail, had assumed the image of Mr. Povey ? Who would 
 have supposed that Mrs. Baines, instead of resolving |hat 
 Jehovah and not the tailed one should, have ultimate rule ove?i 
 her, was resolving that she and not Mr. Povey should have^ 
 ultimate rule over her house and shop ? It was a pew-ful that 
 belied its highly satisfactory appearance. (And possibly there 
 were other pew-fuls equally deceptive.) 
 
 Sophia alone, in the corner next to the wall, with her 
 beautiful stern face pressed convulsively against her hands, was 
 truly busy with immortal things. Turbulent heart, the violence 
 of her spiritual life had made her older ! Never was a passion- 
 ate, proud girl in a harder case than Sophia ! In the splendour 
 of her remorse for a fatal forgetfulness, she had renounced that 
 which she loved and thrown herself into that which she loathed. 
 It was her nature so to do. She had done it haughtily, and not 
 with kindness, but she had done it with the whole force of her 
 will. Constance had been compelled to yield up to her the 
 millinery department, for Sophia's fingers had a gift of manipu- 
 lating ribbons and feathers that was beyond Constance. Sophia 
 had accomplished miracles in the millinery. Yes, and she would 
 be utterly polite to customers ; but afterwards, when the cus- 
 tomers were gone, let mothers, sisters, and Mr. Poveys beware 
 of her fiery darts ! 
 
 But why, when nearly three months had elapsed after her 
 father's death, had she spent more and more time in the shop, 
 secretly aflame with expectancy ? Why, when one day a strange 
 traveller entered the shop and announced himself the new 
 representative of Birkinshaws — why had her very soul died 
 away within her and an awful sickness seized her ? She knew 
 then that she had been her own deceiver. She recognized and 
 admitted, abasing herself lower than, the lowest, that her motive 
 in leaving Miss Chetwynd's and joining the shop had been, at 
 the best, very mixed, very impure. Engaged at Miss Chet- 
 wynd's, she might easily have never set eyes on Gerald Scales 
 again. Employed in the shop, she could not fail to meet him. 
 In this light was to be seen the true complexion of the splen- 
 dour of her remorse. A terrible thought for her ! And she 
 could not dismiss it. It contaminated her existence, this 
 
90 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 thought ! And she could confide in no one. She was incapable 
 of showing a wound. Quarter had succeeded quarter, and 
 Gerald Scales was no more heard of. She had sacrificed her 
 life for worse than nothing. She had made her own tragedy. 
 She had killed her father, cheated and shamed herself with 
 ^^ remorse horribly spurious, exchanged content for misery and 
 pijide for humiliation-^and with it all, Gerald Scales had 
 vanished ! She was ruined. 
 
 She took to religion, and her conscientious Christian virtues, 
 practised with stern inclemency, were the canker of the family. 
 Thus a year and a half had passed. 
 
 And then, on this last day of the year, the second year of 
 her shame and of her heart's widowhood, Mr. Scales had re- 
 appeared. She had gone casually into the shop and found him 
 talking to her mother and Mr. Povey. He had come back to 
 the provincial round and to her. She sho k his hand and fled, 
 because she could not have stayed. None had noticed her 
 agitation, for she had held her body as in a vice. She knew 
 the reason neither of his absence nor of his return. She knew 
 nothing. And not a word had been said at meals. And the 
 day had gone and the night come j and now she was in chapel, 
 with Constance by her side and Gerald Scales in her soul ! 
 Happy beyond previous conception of happiness ! Wretched 
 beyond an unutterable woe ! And none knew ! What was 
 she to pray for ? To what purpose and end ought she to steel 
 herself? Ought she to hope, or ought she to despair ? " O 
 God, help qie ! " she kept whispering to Jehovah whenever the 
 heavenly vision shone through the wrack of her meditation. 
 " O God, help me ! " She had a conscience that, when it 
 was in the mood for severity, could be unspeakably cruel 
 to her. 
 
 And whenever she looked, with dry, hot eyes, through her 
 gloved fingers, she saw in front of her on the wall a marble 
 tablet inscribed in gilt letters, the cenotaph! She knew all 
 the lines by heart, in their spacious grandiloquence; lines 
 such as : 
 
 EVER READY WITH HIS TONGUE HIS PEN AND HIS PURSE 
 
 TO HELP THE CHURCH OF HIS FATHERS 
 
 IN HER HE LIVED AND IN HER HE DIED 
 
 CHERISHING A DEEP AND ARDENT AFFECTION 
 
 FOR HIS BELOVED FAITH AND CREED. 
 
THE TRAVELLER 91 
 
 And again : 
 
 HIS SVMPATHIES EXTENDED BEYOND HIS OWN COMMUNITY 
 
 HE WAS ALWAYS TO THE FORE IN GOOD WORKS 
 
 AND HE SERVED THE CIRCUIT THE TOWN AND THE DISTRICT 
 
 WITH GREAT ACCEPTANCE AND USEFULNESS. 
 
 Thus had Mr. Critchlow's vanity been duly appeased. 
 
 As the minutes sped in the breathing silence of the chapel 
 the emotional tension grew tighter ; worshippers sighed heavily, 
 or called upon Jehovah for a sign, or merely coughed an invo- 
 cation. And then at last the clock in the middle of the 
 balcony gave forth the single stroke to which it was limiied ; 
 the ministers rose, and the congregation after them; and 
 everybody smiled as though it was the millennium, and not 
 simply the new year, that had set in. Then, faintly, through 
 walls and shut windows, came the sound of bells and of steam 
 syrens and whistles. The superintendent minister opened his 
 hymn-book, and the hymn was sung which had been sung in 
 Wesleyan Chapels on New Year's mom since the era of John 
 Wesley himself. The organ finished with a clangour of all its 
 pipes; the minister had a few last words with Jehovah, and 
 nothing was left to do except to persevere in well-doing. The 
 people leaned towards each other across the high backs of 
 the pews. 
 
 " A happy New Year ! " 
 
 " Eh, thank ye ! The same to you ! " 
 
 "Another Watch Night service over !" 
 
 •' Eh, yes I " And a sigh. 
 
 Then the aisles were suddenly crowded, and there was a 
 good-humoured, optimistic pushing towards the door. In the 
 Corinthian porch occurred a great putting-on of cloaks, ulsters, 
 goloshes, and even pattens, and a great putting-up of umbrellas. 
 And the congregation went out into the whirling snow, dividing 
 into several black, silent-footed processions, down Trafalgar 
 Road, up towards the playground, along the market-place, and 
 across Duck Square in the direction of St. Luke's Square. 
 
 Mr. Povey was between Mrs. Baines and Constance. 
 
 "You must take my arm, my pet," said Mrs. Baines to 
 Sophiia. 
 
 Then Mr. Povey and Constance waded on in front 
 through the drifts. Sophia balanced that enormous swaying 
 mass, her mother. Owing to their hoops, she had much 
 
92 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 difficulty in keeping close to her. Mrs. Baines laughed with the 
 complacent ease of obesity, yet a fall would have been almost 
 irremediable for her ; and so Sophia had to laugh too. But, 
 though she laughed, God had not helped her. She did not 
 know where she was going, nor what might happen to her 
 next. 
 
 " Why, bless us ! " exclaimed Mrs. Baines, as they turned 
 the corner into King Street. " There's some one sitting on 
 our doorstep ! " 
 
 There was : a figure swathed in an ulster, a maud over the 
 ulste--, and a high hat on the top of all. It could not have 
 been there very long, because it was only speckled with snow. 
 Mr. Povey plunged forward. 
 
 " It's Mr. Scales, of all people ! " said Mr. Povey. 
 
 " Mr. Scales ! " cried Mrs. Baines. 
 
 And, " Mr. Scales ! " murmured Sophia, terribly afraid. 
 
 Perhaps she was afraid of miracles. Mr. Scales sitting on 
 her mother's doorstep in the middle of the snowy night had 
 assuredly the air of a miracle, of something dreamed in a 
 dream, of something pathetically and impossibly appropriate 
 — ' pat,' as they say in the Five Towns. But he was a tangible 
 fact there. And years afterwards, in the light of further know- 
 ledge of Mr. Scales, Sophia came to regard his being on the 
 doorstep as the most natural and characteristic thing in the 
 world. Real miracles never seem to be miracles, and that 
 which at the first blush resembles one usually proves to be an 
 instance of the extremely prosaic 
 
 III 
 
 " Is that you, Mrs. Baines ? " asked Gerald Scales, in a half- 
 witted voice, looking up, and then getting to his feet. " Is 
 this your house ? So it is ! Well, I'd no idea I was sitting 
 on your doorstep.'' 
 
 He smiled timidly, nay, sheepishly, while the women and 
 Mr. Povey surrounded him with their astonished faces under 
 the light of the gas-lamp. Certainly he was very pale. 
 
 "But whatever is the matter, Mr. Scales?" Mrs. Baines 
 demanded in an anxious tone. "Are you ill? Have you 
 been suddenly — " 
 
 "Oh no," said the young man lightly. "It's nothing. 
 
THE TRAVELLER 93 
 
 Only I was set on just now, down there," — he pointed to the 
 depths of King Street. 
 
 " Set on ! " Mrs. Baines repeated, alarmed. 
 
 " That makes the fourth case in a week, that we know of 1 " 
 said Mr. Povey. " It really is becoming a scandal." 
 
 The fact was that, owing to depression of trade, lack of 
 employment, and rigorous weather, public security in the Five 
 Towns was at that period not as perfect as it ought to have 
 been. In the stress of hunger the lower classes were forgetting 
 their manners — and this in spite of the altruistic and noble 
 efforts of their social superiors to relieve the destitution due, 
 of course, to short-sighted improvidence. When (the social 
 superiors were asking in despair) will the lower classes learn 
 to put by for a rainy day ? (They might have said a snowy 
 and a frosty day.) It was 'really too bad' of the lower 
 classes, when everything that could be done was being done 
 for them, to kill, or even attempt to kill, the goose that lays 
 the golden eggs ! And especially in a respectable town ! 
 What, indeed, were things coming to ? Well, here was Mr. 
 Gerald Scales, gentleman from Manchester, a witness and 
 victim to the deplorable moral condition of the Five Towns. 
 What would he think of the Five Towns? The evil and the 
 danger had been a topic of discussion in the shop for a week 
 past, and now it was brought home to them. 
 
 " I hope you weren't^— " said Mrs. Baines, apologetically 
 and sympathetically. 
 
 " Oh no ! " Mr. Scales interrupted her quite gaily. " I 
 managed to beat them off. Only my elbow — " 
 
 Meanwhile it was continuing to snow. 
 
 " Do come in ! " said Mrs. Baines. 
 
 " I couldn't think of troubling you," said Mr. Scales. " I'm 
 all right now, and I can find my way to the Tiger." 
 
 " You must come in, if it's only for a minute," said Mrs. 
 Baines, with decision.' She had to think of the honour of 
 the town. 
 
 " You're very kind," said Mr. Scales. 
 
 The door was suddenly opened from within, and Maggie 
 surveyed them from the height of the two steps. 
 
 " A happy New Year, mum, to all of you." 
 
 " Thank you, Maggie," said Mrs. Baines, and primly added : 
 " The same to you 1 " And in her own mind she said that 
 Maggie could best prove her desire for a happy new year by 
 
94. THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 contriving in future not to 'scamp her corners,' and not to 
 break so much crockery, 
 
 Sophia, scarce knowing what she did, mounted the steps. 
 
 " Mr. Scales ought to let our New Year in, my pet," Mrs. 
 Baint's stopped her. 
 
 " Oh, of course, mother ! " Sophia concurred with a gasp, 
 springing back nervously. 
 
 Mr. Scales raised his hat, and duly let the new year, and 
 much snow, into the Baines parlour. And there was a vast 
 deal of stamping of feet, agitating of umbrellas, and shaking 
 of cloaks and ulsters on the doormat in the corner by the 
 harmonium. And Maggie took away an armful of everything 
 inowy, including goloshes, and received instructions to boil 
 milk and to bring ' mince.' Mr. Povey said " B-r-r-r ! " and 
 shut the door (wiiich was bordered wiih felt to stop ventila- 
 tion) ; Mrs. Baines turned up the gas till it sang, and told 
 Sophia to poke the fire, and actually told Constance to light 
 the second gas. 
 
 Excitement prevailed. 
 
 The placidity of existence had been agreeably disturbed 
 (yes-, agreeably, in spite of horror at the attack on Mr. Scales's 
 elbow) by an adventure. Moreover, Mr. Scales proved to be 
 in evening-dress. And nobody had ever worn evening-dress 
 in that house before. 
 
 Sophia's blood was in her face, and it remained there, 
 enhancing the vivid richness of her beauty. She was dizzy 
 with a strange and disconcerting intoxication. She seemed to 
 be in a world of unrealities and incredibilities. Her ears heard 
 with indistinctness, and the edges of things and people had a 
 prismatic colouring. She was in a state of ecstatic, unreason- 
 able, inexplicable happiness. All her misery, doubts, despair, 
 rancour, churlishness, had disappeared. She was as softly 
 gentle as Constance. Her eyes were the eyes of a fawn, and 
 her gestures delicious in their modest and sensitive grace. 
 Constance was sitting on the sofa, and, after glancing about 
 as if for shelter, she sat down on the sofa by Constance's side. 
 She tried not to stare at Mr. Scales, but her gaze would not 
 leave him. She was sure that he was the most ptTfect man in 
 the world. A shortish man, perhaps, but a perfect. That 
 such perfection could be was almost past her belief. He 
 excelled all her dreams of the ideal man. His smile, his 
 voice, his hand, his hair — never were such I Why, when he 
 
THE TRAVELLER 95 
 
 spoke — it was positively music ! When he smiled — it was 
 heaven 1 His smile, to Sophia, was one of those natural 
 phenomena which are so lovely that they make you want to 
 shed tears. There is no hyperbole in this description of 
 Sophia's sensations, but rather an under-statement of them. 
 She was utterly obsessed by the unique qualities of Mr. Scales. 
 Nothing would have persuaded her that the peer of Mr. Scales 
 existed among men, or could possibly exist. And it was her 
 intense and profound conviction of his complete pre-eminence 
 that gave him, as he sat there in the rocking-chair in her 
 mother's parlour, that air of the unreal and the incredible. 
 
 " I stayed in the town on purpose to go to a New Year's 
 party at Mr. Lawton's," Mr. Scales was saying. 
 
 " Ah 1 So you know Lawyer Lawton ! " observed Mrs. 
 Baines, impressed, for Lawyer Lawton did not consort with 
 tradespeople. He was jolly with them, and he did their legal 
 business for them, but he was not of them. His friends came 
 from afar. 
 
 " My people are old acquaintances of his," said Mr, 
 Scales, sipping the milk which Maggie had brought 
 
 "Now, Mr. Scales, you must taste my mince. A happ" 
 month for every tart you eat, you know," Mrs. Baines 
 reminded him. 
 
 He bowed. " And it was as I was coming away from there 
 that I got into difficulties." He laughed. 
 
 Then he recounted the struggle, which had, however, been 
 brief, as the assailants lacked pluck. He had slipped and 
 fallen on his elbow on the kerb, and his elbow might have 
 been broken, had not the snow been so thick. No, it did not 
 hurt him now ; doubtless a mere bruise. It was fortunate that 
 the miscreants had not got the better of him, for he had in his 
 pocket-book a considerable sum of money in notes — accounts 
 paid ! He had often thought what an excellent thing it would 
 be if commercials could travel with dogs, particularly in winter. 
 There was nothing like a dog. 
 
 "You are fond of dogs?" asked Mr. Povey, who had 
 always had a secret but impracticable ambition to keep a dog; 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Scales, turning now to Mr. Povey. 
 
 " Keep one ? " asked Mr. Povey, in a sporting tone. 
 
 " I have a fox-terrier bitch," said Mr. Scales, " that took a 
 first at Knutsford ; but she's getting old now." 
 
 The sexual epithet fell queerly on the room. Mr. Povey, 
 
96 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 being a man of the wOrld, behaved as if nothing had happened ; 
 but Mrs. Baines's curls protested against this unnecessary 
 coarseness. Constance pretended not to hear. Sophia did 
 not understandingly hear. Mr. Scales had no suspicion that 
 he was transgressing a convention by virtue of which dOgs 
 have no sex. Further, he had no suspicion of the local fame 
 of Mrs. Baines's mince-tarts. He had already eaten more 
 mince-tarts than he could enjoy, before beginning upon hers, 
 and Mrs. Baines missed the enthusiasm to which she was 
 habituated from consumers of her pastry. 
 
 Mr. Povey, fascinated, proceeded in the direction of dogs, 
 and it grew more and more evident that Mr. Scales, who went 
 out to parties in evening dress, instead of going in respectable 
 broad-cloth to watch-night services, who knew the great ones 
 of the land, and who kept dogs of an iriconvenient sex, was 
 neither an ordinary commercial traveller nor the kind of man 
 to which the Square was accustomed. He came from a 
 different world. 
 
 " Lawyer Lawlon's party broke up early — at least I mean, 
 considering — " Mrs. Baines hesitated. 
 
 After a pause Mr. Scales replied, " Yes, I left immediately 
 the clock struck twelve. I've a heavy day to-morrow — I mean 
 to-day." 
 
 It was not an hour for a prolonged visit, and in a few 
 minutes Mr. Scales was ready again to depart. He admitted 
 a certain feebleness (' wankiness,' he p'ayfully called it, being 
 proud of his skill in the dialect), and a burning in his elbow ; 
 but otherwise he was quite well — thanks to Mrs. Baines's 
 most kind hospitality . . .'He really didn't know how he 
 came to be sitting on her doorstep. • Mrs. Baines urged him, 
 if he met a policeman on his road to the Tiger, to furnish all 
 particulars about the attempted highway robbery, and he said 
 he decidedly would. 
 
 He took his leave with distinguished courtliness. 
 
 " If I have a moment I shall run in to-morrow morning 
 just to let you know I'm all right," said he, in the white street. 
 
 " Oh, do ! " said Constance. Constance's perfect innocence 
 made her strangely forward at times. 
 
 " A happy New Year and many of them ! " 
 
 " Thanks ! Same to you I Don't get lost." 
 
 " Straight up the Square and first on the right," called the 
 commonsense of Mr. Povey. 
 
THE TRAVELLER 97 
 
 Nothing else remainei! to say, and the visitor disappeared 
 silently in the whirhng snow. " Brrr ! " murmured Mr. Povey, 
 shutting the door. Everybody felt : " What a funny ending 
 of the old year ! " 
 
 "Sophia, my pet," Mrs. Baines began. 
 
 But So|>hia had vanished to bed. 
 
 "Tell her about her new night-dress," said Mrs. Baines to 
 Constance. 
 
 " Yes, mother." 
 
 " I don't know that I'm so set up with that young man, 
 after all," Mrs. Brines reflected aloud. 
 
 " Oh, mother ! " Constance protested. " I think he's just 
 lovely." 
 
 "He never looks you straight in the face," said Mrs. 
 Baines. 
 
 " Don't tell me I" laughed Constance, kissing her mother 
 good nitrht. "You're only on your high horse because he 
 didn't praise your mince. / noticed it." 
 
 IV 
 
 " If anybody thinks I'm going to stand the cold in this 
 showroom any longer, they're mistaken," said Sophia the next 
 morning loudly, and in her mother's hearing. And she went 
 down into the shop carrying bonnets. 
 
 She pretended to be angry, but she was not. She felt, on 
 the contrary, extremely joyous, and charitable to all the world. 
 Usually she would take pains to keep out of the shop j usually 
 she was preoccupied and stern. Hence her presence on the 
 ground-floor, and her demeanour, excited interest among the 
 three young lady assistants who sat sewing round the stove in 
 the middle of the shop, sheltered by the great pile of shirtings 
 and linseys that fronted the entrance. 
 
 Sophia shared Constance's corner. They had hot bri^-ks 
 under their feet, and fine-knitted wraps on their shoulders. 
 They would have been more comfortable near the stove, but 
 greatness has its penalties. The weather was exceptionally 
 severe. The windows were thickly frosted over, so that Mr. 
 Povey's art in dressing them was quite wasted. And — rare 
 phenomenon 1 — the doors of the shop were shut. In the 
 ordinary way they were not merely open, but hidden by a 
 
 H 
 
98 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 display of • cheap lines.' Mr. Povey, after consulting Mrs, 
 Baines, had decided to close them, foregoing the customary 
 display. Mr. Povey had also, in order to get a little warmth 
 into his limbs, personally assisted two casual labourers to 
 scrape the thick frozen snow off the pavement ; and he wore 
 his kid mittens. All these things together proved better than 
 the evidence of barometers how the weather nipped. 
 
 Mr. Scales came about ten o'clock. Instead of going 
 to Mr. Povey's counter, he walked boldly to Constance's 
 corner, and looked over the boxes, smiling and saluting. 
 Both the girls candidly delighted in his visit. Both blushed ; 
 both laughed — ^without knowing why they laughed. Mr. 
 Scales said he was just departing and had slipped in for a 
 moment to thank all of them for their kindness of last night — 
 ' or rather this morning.' The girls laughed again at this 
 witticism. Nothing could have been more simple than his 
 speech. Yet it appeared to them magically attractive. A 
 customer entered, a lady ; one of the assistants rose from the 
 neighbourhood of the stove, but the daughters of the house 
 ignored the customer ; it was part of the etiquette of the shop 
 that customers, at any rate chance customers, should not exist 
 for the daughters of the house, until an assistant had formally 
 drawn attention to them. Otherwise every one who wanted 
 a pennyworth of tape would be expecting to be served by 
 Miss Baines, or Miss Sophia if Miss Sophia were there. 
 Which would have been ridiculous. 
 
 Sophia, glancing sidelong, saw the assistant parleying with 
 the customer ; and then the assistant came softly behind the 
 counter and approached the corner. 
 
 " Miss Constance, can you spare a minute ? " the assistant 
 whispered discreetly. 
 
 Constance extinguished her smile for Mr. Scales, and, 
 turning away, lighted an entirely different and inferior smile 
 for the customer. 
 
 " Good morning. Miss Baines. Very cold, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Good morning, Mrs. Chatterley. Yes, it is. I suppose 
 you're getting anxious about those — " Constance stopped. 
 
 Sophia was now alone with Mr. Scales, for in order to 
 discuss the unnameable freely with Mrs. Chatterley her sister 
 was edging up the counter. Sophia had dreamed of a private 
 conversation as something deUcious and impossible. But 
 chance had favoured her. She was alone with him. And his 
 
THE TRAVELLER 99 
 
 neat fair hair and his blue eyes and his delicate mouth were 
 as wonderful to her as ever. He was gentlemanly to a degree 
 that impressed her hiore than anything had impressed her in 
 her life. And all the proud and aristocratic instinct that was 
 at the base of her character spran-^ up and seized on his 
 gelitlemanliness like a famished animal seizing on food. 
 
 "The last time I saw you," said Mr. Scales, in a new tone, 
 " you said you were never in the shop." 
 
 "What? Yesterday? Did I?" 
 
 " No, I mean the last time I saw you alone," said he. 
 
 " Oh ! " she exclaimed. " It's just an accident." 
 
 "That's exactly what you said last time." 
 
 "Is it?" 
 
 Was it his manner, or what he said, that flattered her, that 
 intensified her beautiful vivacity ? 
 
 " I suppose you don't often go out? " he went on. 
 
 " What ? In this weather ? " 
 
 " Any time." 
 
 " I go to chapel," said she, " and marketing with mother." 
 There was a little pause. " And to the Free Library." 
 
 " Oh yes. You've got a Free Library here now, haven't 
 you?" 
 
 "Yes. We've had it over a year." 
 
 " And you belong to it ? What do you read ? " 
 
 " Oh, stories, you know. I get a fresh book out once 
 a week." 
 
 " Saturdays, I suppose ? " 
 
 " No," she said. " Wednesdays." And she smiled. 
 "Usually." 
 
 " It's Wednesday to-day," said he. " Not been already ? " 
 
 She shook her head. " I don't think I shall go to-day. 
 It's too cold. I don't think I shall venture out to-day." 
 
 " You must be very fond of reading," said he. 
 
 Then Mr. Povey appeared, rubbing his mittened hands. 
 And Mrs. Chatterley went. 
 
 " I'll run and fetch mother," said Constance. 
 
 Mrs. Baines was very polite to the young man. He related 
 his interview with the police, whose opinion was that he had 
 been attacked by stray members of a gang from Hanbridge. 
 The young lady assistants, with ears cocked, gathered the 
 nature of Mr. Scales's adventure, and were thrilled to the point 
 of questioning Mr. Povey about it after Mr. Scales had gon». 
 
100 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 His farewell was marked by much handshaking, and finally 
 Mr. Povey ran after him into the Square to mention something 
 about dogs. 
 
 At half-past one, while Mrs. Baines was dozing after 
 dinner, Sophia wrapped herself up, and with a book under her 
 arm went forth into the world, through the shop. She returned 
 in less than twenty minutes. But her mother had already 
 awakened, and was hovering about the back of the shop. 
 Mothers have supernatural gifts. 
 
 Sophia nonchalantly passed her and hurried into the 
 parlour, where she threw down her muff and a book and 
 knelt before the fire to warm herself. 
 
 Mrs. Baines followed her. "Been to the Library?" 
 questioned Mrs. Baines. 
 
 " Yes, mother. And it's simply perishing." 
 
 " I wonder at your going on a day like to-day. I thought 
 you always went on Thursdays ?" 
 
 " So I do. But I'd finished my book." 
 
 "What is this?" Mrs. Baines picked up the volume, 
 which was covered with black oil-cloth. 
 
 She picked it up with a hostile air. For her attitude 
 
 E wards the Free Library was obscurely inimical. She never 
 ad anything herself except The Sunday at Home, and Con- 
 mce never read anything except The Sunday at Home. 
 There were scriptural commentaries, Dugdale's Gazetteer, 
 Culpepper's Herbal, and works by Bunyan and Flavius 
 Josephus in the drawing-room bookcase ; also Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin. And Mrs. Baines, in considering the welfare of her 
 daughters, looked askance at the whole remainder of printed 
 literature. If the Free Library had not formed part of the 
 Famous Wedgwood Institution, which had been opened with 
 immense klat by the semi-divine Gladstone ; if the first book 
 had not been ceremoniously ' taken out ' of the Free Library 
 by the Chief Bailiff in person — a grandfather of stainless 
 renown — Mrs. Baines would probably have risked her authority 
 in forbidding the Free Library. 
 
 "You needn't be afraid," said Sophia, laughing. "It's 
 Miss Sewell's Experience of Life." 
 
 " A novel, I see," observed Mrs. Baines, dropping the book. 
 Gold and jewels would probably not tempt a Sophia of 
 these days to read Experience of Life ; but to Sophia Baines 
 the bland story had the piquancy of the disapproved. 
 
THE TRAVELLER 101 
 
 The next day Mrs. Baines summoned Sophia into her 
 bedroom. 
 
 " Sophia," said she, trembling, " I shall be glad if you will 
 not walk about the streets with young men until you have my 
 permission." 
 
 The girl blushed violently. " I— I— " 
 
 " You were seen in Wedgwood Street," said Mrs. Baines. 
 
 "Who's been gossiping — Mr. Critchlow, I suppose?" 
 Sophia exclaimed scornTully. 
 
 " No one has been ' gossiping,' " said Mrs. Baines. 
 
 " Well, if I meet some one by accident in the street I can't 
 help it, can I ? " Sophia's voice shook. 
 
 "You know what I mean, my child," said Mrs. Baines, 
 with careful calm. 
 
 Sophia dashed angnily from the room. 
 
 "I like the idea of him having 'a heavy day'!" Mrs. 
 Baines reflected ironically, recalling a phrase which had 
 lodged in her mind. And very vaguely, with an uneasiness 
 scarcely perceptible, she remembered that ' he,' and no oth^r, 
 had been in the shop on the day her husband died. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 ESCAPADE} 
 
 The uneasiness of Mrs. Baines flowed and ebbed, during the 
 next three months, influenced by Sophia's moods. There 
 were days when Sophia was the old Sophia — the forbidding, 
 difficult, waspish, and even hedgehog Sophia. But there were 
 other days on which Sophia seemed to be drawing joy and 
 gaiety and goodwill from some secret source, from some fount 
 whose natiire and origin none could divine. It was on these 
 days that the uneasiness of Mrs. Baines waxed. She had the 
 wildest suspicions ; she was almost capable of accusing Sophia 
 of carrying on a clandestine correspondence ; she saw Sophia 
 and Gerald Scales deeply and wickedly in love ; she saw them 
 with their arms round each other's necks, . . . And then she 
 called herself a middle-aged fool, to base such a structure of 
 suspicion on a brief encounter in the street and on an idea, 
 a fancy, a curious and irrational notion ! Sophia had a certain 
 streak of pure nobility in that exceedingly heterogeneous thing, 
 her character. Moreover, Mrs. Baines watched the posts, and 
 she also watched Sophia — she was not the woman to trust 
 to a streak of pure nobility — and she came to be sure that 
 Sophia's sinfulness, if any, was not such as could be weighed 
 in a balance, or collected together by stealth and then 
 suddenly placed before the girl on a charger. 
 
 Still, she would have given much to see inside Sophia's 
 lovely head. Ah ! • Could she have done so, what sleep- 
 destroying wonders she would have witnessed ! By what 
 bright lamps burning in what mysterious grottoes and caverns 
 of the brain would her mature eyes have been dazzled ! 
 Sophia was living for months on the exhaustless ardent vitality 
 absorbed during a magical two minutes in Wedgwood Street 
 
ESCAPADE 103 
 
 She was living chiefly on the flaming fire struck in her soul 
 by the shock of seeing Gerald Scales in the porch of the 
 Wedgwood Institution as she came out of the Free Library 
 with Experience of Life tucked into her large astrakhan muff. 
 He had stayed to meet her, then : she knew it ! " After all," 
 her heart said, " I must be very beautiful, for I have attracted 
 the pearl of men ! " And she remembered her face in the 
 glass. The value and the power of beauty were tremendously 
 proved to her. He, the great man of the world, the handsome 
 and elegant man with a thousand strange friends and a thou- 
 sand interests far remote flrom her, had remained in Bursley 
 on the mere chance of meeting her ! She was proud, but her 
 pride was drowned in bliss. " I was just looking at this 
 inscription about Mr. Gladstone." " So you decided to come 
 out as usual ! " " And may I ask what book you have 
 chosen?" These were the phrases she heard, and to which 
 she responded with similar phrases. And meanwhile a 
 miracle of ecstasy had opened^-opened like a flower. She 
 was walking along Wedgwood Street by his side, slowly, on 
 the scraped pavements, where marble bulbs of snow had defied 
 the spade and remained. She and he were exactly of the 
 same height, and she kept looking into his face and he into 
 hers. This was all the miracle. Except that she was not 
 walking on the pavement — she was walking on the intangible 
 sward of paradise ! Except that the houses had receded and 
 faded, and the passers-by were subtilized into unnoticeable 
 ghosts ! Except that her mother and Constance had become 
 phantasmal beings existing at an immense "distance I 
 
 What had happened ? Nothing ! The most commonplace 
 occurrence 1 The eternal cause had picked up a commercial 
 traveller (it might have been a clerk or curate, but it in fact 
 was a commercial traveller), and endowed him with all the 
 glorious, unique, incredible attributes of a god, and planted 
 him down before Sophia in order to produce the eternal 
 effect. A miracle performed specially for Sophia's benefit ! 
 No one else in Wedgwood Street saw the god walking along 
 by her side. No one else saw anything but a simple com- 
 mercial traveller. Yes, the most commonplace occurrence ! 
 
 Of course at the cortier of the street he had to go. " Till 
 next time 1 " he murmured. And fire came out of his eyes 
 and lighted in Sophia's lovely head those lamps which Mrs. 
 Baines was mercifully spared from seeing. And he had 
 
104 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 shaken hands and raised his hat Imagine a god raising 
 his hat I And he went off on two legs, precisely like a 
 dashing little commercial traveller. 
 
 And, escorted by the equivocal Angel of Eclipses, she had 
 turned into King Street, and arranged her face, and courage- 
 ously met her mother. Her mother had not at first perceived 
 the unusual; for mothers, despite their reputation to the con- 
 trary, really are the blindest creatures. Sophia, the naive 
 ninny, had actually supposed that her walking along a 
 hundred yards of pavement with a god by her side was not 
 going to excite remark ! What a delusion ! It is true, cer- 
 tainly, that no one saw the god by direct vision. But Sophia's 
 cheeks, Sophia's eyes, the curve of Sophia's neck as her soul 
 yearned towards the soul of the god-|-these phenomena were 
 immeasurably more notable than Sophia guessed. An account 
 of them, in a modified form to respect Mrs. Baines's notorious 
 dignity, had healed the mother of her blindness and led to 
 that characteristic protest from her, " I shall be glad if you 
 will not walk about the streets with young men," etc. 
 
 When the period came for the reappearance of Mr. Scales, 
 Mrs. Barnes outlined a plan, and when the circular announcing 
 the exact time of his arrival was dropped into the letter-box, 
 she formulated the plan in detail. In the first place, she was 
 determined to be indisposed and invisible herself, so that 
 Mr. Scales might be foiled in any possible design to renew 
 social relations in the parlour. In the second place, she 
 flattered Constance with a single hint — oh, the vaguest and 
 briefest 1 — and Constance understood that she was not to quit 
 the shop on the appointed morning. In the third place, she 
 invented a way ' of explaining to Mr. Povey that the ap- 
 prbaching advent of Gerald Scales must not be mentioned. 
 And in the fourth place, she deliberately made appointments 
 for Sophia with two millinery customers in the showroom, so 
 that Sophia might be imprisoned in the showroom. 
 
 Having thus left nothing to chance, she told herself that 
 she was a foolish woman full of nonsense. But this did not 
 prevent her from putting her lips together firmly and resolving 
 that Mr. Scales should have no finger in the pie of her family. 
 She had acquired information concerning Mr. Scales, at second- 
 hand, from Lawyer Pratt. More than this, she posed the 
 question in a broader form — why should a young girl be 
 permitted any interest in any young man whatsoever? The 
 
ESCAPADE 105 
 
 everlasting purpose had made use of Mrs. Baines and cast her 
 off, and, like most persons in a similar situation, she was, 
 unconsciously and quite honestly, at odds with the everlastmg 
 purpose. 
 
 II 
 
 On the day of Mr. Scales's visit to the shop to obtain 
 orders and money on, behalf of Birkinshaws, a singular success 
 seemed to attend the machinations of Mrs. Baines. With Mr. 
 Scales punctuality was not an inveterate habit, and he had 
 rarely been known, ih the past, to fulfil exactly the prophecy 
 of the letter of advice concerning his arrival. But that morn- 
 ing his promptitude was unexampled He entered the shop, 
 and by chance Mr. Povey was arranging unshrinkable flannels 
 in the doorway. The two youngish little men talked amiably 
 about flannels, dogs, and quarter-day (which was just past), 
 and then Mr. Povey led Mr. Scales to his desk in the dark 
 corner behind the high pile of twills, and paid the quarterly 
 bill, in notes and gold — as always ; and then Mr. Scales off"ered 
 for the august inspection of Mr. Povey all that Manchester 
 had recently invented for the temptation of drapers, and Mr. 
 Povey gave him an order which, if not reckless, was nearer 
 'handsome' than 'good.' During the process Mr. Scales had 
 to go out of the shop twice or three times in order to bring in 
 from his barrow at the kerbstone certain small black boxes 
 edged with brass. On none of these excursions did Mr. Scales 
 glance wantonly about him in satisfaction of the lust of the 
 eye. Even if he had permitted himself this freedom he would 
 have seen nothing more interesting than three young lady 
 assistants seated round the stove and sewing with pricked 
 fingers from which the chilblains were at last deciding to 
 depart. When Mr. JScales had finished writing down the 
 details of the order with his ivory-handled stylo, and repacked 
 his boxes, he drew the interview to a conclusion after the 
 manner of a capable commercial traveller ; that is to say, he 
 implanted in Mr. Povey his opinion that Mr. Povey was a 
 wise, a shrewd and an upright man, and that the world would 
 be ail the better for a few more like him. He inquired for 
 Mrs. Baines, and was deeply pained to heai of her indisposition 
 while finding consolation in the assurance that the Misses 
 
106 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Baines were well. Mr, Povey was on the point of accompany- 
 ing the pattern of commercial travellers to the door, when two 
 customers simultaneously came in — ladies. One made straight 
 for Mr. Povey, whereupon Mr. Scales parted from him at 
 once, it being a universal maxim in shops that even the most 
 distinguished commercial shall not hinder the business of even 
 the least distinguished customer. The other customer had the 
 effect of causing Constance to pop up from her cloistral 
 corner. Constance had been there all the time, but of course, 
 though she heard the remembered voice, her maidenliness 
 had not permitted that she should show herself to Mr. Scales. 
 
 Now, as he was leaving, Mr. Scales saw her, with her 
 agreeable snub nose and her kind, simple eyes. She was 
 requesting the second customer to mount to the showroom, 
 where was Miss Sophia. Mr. Scales hesitated a moment, and 
 in that moment Constance, catching his eye, smiled upon him, 
 and nodded. What else could she do ? Vaguely aware though 
 she was that her mother was not ' set up ' with Mr. Scales, and 
 even feared the possible influence of the young man on Sophia, 
 she could not exclude him from her general benevolence 
 towards the universe. Moreover, she liked him; she liked him 
 very much and thought him a very fine specimen of a man. 
 
 He left the door and went across to her. They shook 
 hands and opened a conversation instantly; for Constance, 
 while retaining all her modesty, had lost all her shyness in the 
 shop, and could chatter with anybody. She sidled towards 
 her corner, precisely as Sophia had done on another occasion, 
 and Mr. Scales put his chin over the screening boxes, and 
 eagerly prosecuted the conversation. 
 
 There was absolutely nothing in the fact of the interview 
 itself to cause alarm to a mother, nothing to render futile the 
 precautions of Mrs. Baines on behalf of the flower of Sophia's 
 innocence. And yet it held danger for Mrs. Baines, all un- 
 conscious in her parlour. Mrs. Baines could rely utterly on 
 Constance not to be led away by the dandiacal charms of Mr. 
 Scales (she kuew in what quarter sat the wind for Constance) ; 
 in her plan she had forgotten nothing, except Mr. Povey ; and 
 it must be said that she could not possibly have foreseen the 
 efifect on the situation of Mr. Povey's character. 
 
 Mr. Povey, attending to his customer, had noticed the 
 bright smile of Constance on the traveller, and his heart did 
 not like it. And when he saw the lively gestures of a Mr. 
 
ESCAPADE 107 
 
 Scales in apparently intimate talk with a Constance hidden 
 behind boxes, his uneasiness grew into fury. He was a m^ 
 capable of black and terrible furies. Outwardly insignificant 
 possessing a mind as little as his body, easily abashed, he was 
 none the less a very susceptible young man, soon offended, 
 proud, vain, and obscurely passionate. You might offend Mr. 
 Povey without guessing it, and only discover your sin when 
 Mr. Povey had done something too decisive as a result of it. 
 
 The reason of his fury was jealousy. Mr. Povey had made 
 great advances since the death of John Baines. He had 
 consolidated his position, and he was in every way a personage 
 of the first importance. His misfortune was that he could 
 never translate his importance, or his sense of his importance, 
 into terms of outward demeanour. Most people, had they 
 been told that Mr. Povey was seriously aspiring to enter the 
 Baines family, would have laughed. But they would have 
 been wrong. To laugh at Mr. Povey was invariably wrong. 
 Only Constance knew what inroads he had effected upon her. 
 
 The customer went, but Mr. Scales did not go. Mr. Povey, 
 free to reconnoitre, did so. From the shadow of the till he 
 could catch glimpses of Constance's blushing, vivacious face. 
 She was obviously absorbed in Mr. Scales. She and he had 
 a tremendous air of intimacy. And the murmur of their 
 chatter continued. Their chatter was nothing,, and about 
 nothing, but Mr. Povey imagined that they were exchanging 
 eternal vows. He endured Mr. Scales's odious freedom until 
 it became insuflFerable, until it deprived him of all his self- 
 control; and then he retired into his cutting-out room. He 
 meditated there in a condition of insanity for perhaps a 
 minute, and excogitated a device. Dashing back into the 
 shop, he spoke up, half across the shop, in a loud, curt tone : 
 
 " Miss Baines, your mother wants you at once." 
 
 He was launched on the phrase before he noticed that, 
 during his absence, Sophia had descended from the showroom 
 and joined her sister and Mr. Scales. The danger and scandal 
 were now less, he perceived, but he was glad he had summoned 
 Constance away, and he was in a state to despise consequences. 
 
 The three chatterers, startled, looked at Mr. Povey, who 
 left the shop abruptly. Constance could do nothing but obey 
 the call. 
 
 She met him at the door of the cutting-out room in the 
 passage leading to the parlour. 
 
.108 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " Where is mother ? In the parlour ? " Constance inquired 
 innocently. 
 
 There was a dark flush on Mr. Povey's face. " If you 
 wish to know," said he in a hard voice, "she hasn't asked 
 for you and she doesn't want you." 
 
 He turned his back on her, and retreated into his lair. 
 
 "Then what — ?" she began, puzzled. 
 
 He fronted her. " Haven't you been gabbling long enough 
 with that jackanapes ? " he spit at her. There were tears in 
 his eyes. 
 
 Constance, though without experience in these matters, 
 comprehended. She comprehended perfectly and immediately. 
 She ought to have put Mr. Povey into his place. She ought 
 to have protested with firm, dignified finality against such a 
 ridiculous and monstrous outrage as that which Mr. Povey had 
 committed. Mr. Povey ought to have been ruined for ever 
 in her esteem and in her heart. But she hesitated. 
 
 " And only last Sunday — " afternoon Mr. Povey 
 blubbered. 
 
 (Not that anything overt had occurred, or been articulately 
 said, between them last Sunday afternoon. But they had been 
 alone together, and had each witnessed strange and disturbing 
 matters in the eyes of the other.) 
 
 Tears now fell suddenly from Constance's eyes. " You 
 ought to be ashamed — " she stammered. 
 
 Still, the tears were in her eyes, and in his too. What he 
 or she merely said, therefore, was of secondary importance. 
 
 Mrs. Baines, coming from the kitchen, and hearing Con- 
 stance's voice, burst upon the scene, which silenced her. 
 Parents are sometimes silenced. She found Sophia and Mr. 
 Scales in the shop. 
 
 Ill 
 
 That afternoon Sophia, too busy with her own aflfairs to 
 notice anything abnormal in the relations between her mother 
 and Constance, and quite ignorant that there had been an 
 unsuccessful plot against her, went forth to call upon Miss 
 Chetwynd, with whom she had remained very friendly : she 
 considered that she and Miss Chetwynd formed an aristocracy 
 of intellect, and the family indeed tacitly admitted this. She 
 
ESCAPADE 109 
 
 practised no secrecy in her departure from the shop; she 
 merely dressed, in her second-best hoop, and went, having 
 been ready at any moment to tell her mother, if her mother 
 caught her and inquired, that she was going to see Miss Chet- 
 wynd. And she did go to see Miss Chetwynd, arriving at the 
 house-school, which lay amid trees on the road to Tumhill, 
 just beyond the turnpike, at precisely a quarter-past four. As 
 Miss Chetwynd's pupils left at four o'clock, and as Miss Chet- 
 wynd invariably took a walk immediately afterwards, Sophia 
 was able to contain her surprise upon being informed that 
 Miss Chetwynd was not in. She had not intended that Miss 
 Chetwynd should be in. 
 
 She turned oflf to the right, up the side road which, starting 
 from the turnpike, led in the direction of Moorthorne and 
 Red Cow, two mining villages. Her heart beat with fear as 
 she began to follow that road, for she was upon a terrific 
 adventure. What most frightened her, perhaps, was her own 
 astounding audacity. She was alarmed by something within her- 
 self which seemed to be no part of herself and which produced 
 in her curious, disconcerting, fleeting impressions of unreality. 
 
 In the morning she had heard the voice of Mr. Scales from 
 the showroom — ^that voice whose even distant murmur caused 
 creepings of the skin in her back. And she had actually stood 
 on the counter in front of the window in order to see down 
 perpendicularly into the Square ; by so doing she had had a 
 glimpse of the top of his luggage on a barrow, and of the 
 crown of his hat occasionally when he went outside to tempt 
 Mr. Povey. She might have gone down into the shop — there 
 was no slightest reason why she should not ; three months 
 had elapsed since the name of Mr. Scales had been mentioned, 
 and her mother had evidently forgotten the trifling incident of 
 New Year's Day — but she was incapable of descending the 
 stairs ! She went to the head of the stairs and peeped through 
 the balustrade — and she could not get fiu'ther. For nearly a 
 hundred days those extraordinary lamps had been brightly 
 burning in her head ; and now the light-giver had come again, 
 and her feet would not move to the meeting ; now the moment 
 had arrived for which alone she had lived, and she could not 
 seize it as it passed ! " Why don't I go downstairs ? " she 
 asked herself. " Am I afraid to meet him ? " 
 
 The customer sent up by Constance had occupied the 
 surface of her life for ten minutes, trymg on hats; and during 
 
110 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 this time she was praying wildly that Mr. Scales might not go, 
 and asserting that it was impossible he should go without at 
 least asking for her. Had she not counted the days to this 
 day ? When the customer left Sophia followed her downstairs, 
 and saw Mr. Scales chatting with Constance, All her self- 
 possession instantly returned to her, and she joined them with 
 a rather mocking smile. After Mr. Povey's strange summons 
 had withdrawn Constance from the corner, Mr. Scales's tone 
 had changed ; it had thrilled her. " You are you^' it had said, 
 " there is you — and there is the rest of the universe ! " Then 
 he had not forgotten ; she had lived in his heart ; she had not 
 for three months been the victim of her own fancies 1 . . , 
 She saw him put a piece of folded white paper on the top 
 edge of the screening box and flick it down to her. She 
 blushed scarlet, staring at it as it lay on the counter. He said 
 nothing, and she could not speak. ... He had prepared that 
 paper, then, beforehand, on the chance of being able to give 
 it to her ! This thought was exquisite but full of terror. " I 
 must really go," he had said, lamely, with emotion in his voice, 
 and he had gone — ^like that ! And she put the piece of paper 
 into the pocket of her apron, and hastened away. She had 
 not even seen, as she turned up the stairs, her mother standing 
 by the till — that spot which was the conning-tower of the whole 
 shop. She ran, ran, breathless to the bedroom. , . . 
 
 " I am a wicked girl ! " she said quite frankly, on the road 
 to the rendezvous. " It is a dream that I am going to meet 
 him. It cannot be true. There is time to go back. If I go 
 back I am safe. I have simply called at Miss Chetwynd's and 
 she wasn't in, and no'one can say a word. But if I go on — 
 if I'm seen ! What a fool I am to go on ! " 
 
 And she went on, impelled by, amongst other things, an 
 immense, naive curiosity, and the vanity which the bare fact 
 of his note had excited. The Loop railway was being con- 
 structed at that period, and hundreds of navvies were at work 
 on it between Bursley and Turnhill. When she came to the 
 new bridge over the cutting, he was there, as he had written 
 that he would be. 
 
 They were very nervous, they greeted each other stiffly 
 and as though they had met then for the first time that day. 
 Nothing was said about his note, nor about her response to it. 
 Her presence was treated by both of them as a basic fact of 
 the situation which it would be well not to disturb by comment. 
 
ESCAPADE 111 
 
 Sophia could not hide her shame, but her shame only aggra- 
 vated the stinging charm of her beauty. She was wearing a 
 hard Amazonian hat, with a lifted veil, the final word of 
 fashion that spring in the Five Towns ; her face, beaten by 
 the fresh breeze, shone rosily; her eyes glittered under the 
 dark hat, and the violent colours of her Vic'orian frock-^ 
 green and crimson — could not spoil those cheeks. If she 
 looked earthwards, frowning, she was the more adorable so. 
 He had come down the clayey incline from the unfi ished red 
 bridge to welcome her, and when the salutations were over 
 they stood still, he gazing apparently at the horizon and she 
 at the yellow marl round the edges of his boots. The encounter 
 was as far away from Sophia's ideal conception as Manchester 
 from Venice. 
 
 " So this is the new railway 1 " said she. 
 
 " Yes," said he. " This is your new railway. You can 
 see it better from the bridge." 
 
 " But it's very sludgy up there," she objected with a pout. 
 
 " Further on it's quite dry," he reassured her. 
 
 From the bridge they had a sudden view of a raw gash in 
 the earth ; and hundreds of men were crawling about in it, 
 busy with minute operations, like flies in a great wound. 
 There was a continuous rattle of picks, resembling a muffled 
 shower of hail, and in the distance a tiny locomotive was 
 leading a procession of tiny waggons. 
 
 " And those are the navvies I " she murmured. 
 
 The unspeakable doings of the navvies in the Five Towns 
 had reached even her : how they drank and swore all day on 
 Sundays, how their huts and houses were dens of the most 
 appalling infamy, how they were the curse of a God-fearing 
 and respectable district 1 She and Gerald Scales glanced down 
 at these dangerous beasts of prey in their yellow corduroys 
 and their open shirts revealing hairy chests. No doubt they 
 both thought how inconvenient it was that railways could not 
 be brought into existence without the aid of such revolting 
 and swinish animals. They glanced down from the height of 
 their nice decorum and felt the powerful attraction of similar 
 superior manners. The manners of the navvies were such that 
 Sophia could not even regard them, nor Gerald Scales permit 
 her to regard them, without blushing. 
 
 In a united blush they turned away, up the gradual slope. 
 Sophia knew no longer what she was doing. For some 
 
112 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 minutes she was as helpless as though she had been in a 
 balloon with him. 
 
 '' I got' my work done early," he said ; and added com- 
 placently, " As a matter of fact I've had a pretty good day." 
 
 She was reassured to learn that he was not neglecting his 
 duties. To be philandering with a commercial traveller who 
 has finished a good day's work seemed less shocking than dal- 
 liance with a neglecter of business ; it seemed indeed, by 
 comparison, respiectable. 
 
 " It must be very interesting," she said primly. 
 
 "What, my trad.e ? " 
 
 " Yes. Always seeing new places and so on." 
 
 " In a way it is," he admitted judicially. " But I can tell 
 you it was much more agreeable being in Paris." 
 
 " Oh 1 Have you been to Paris ? " 
 
 " Lived there for nearly two years," he said carelessly. 
 Then, looking at her, " Didn't you notice I never came for a 
 long time ? " 
 
 " I didn't know you were in Paris,'' she evaded him. 
 
 "I went to start a sort of agency for Birkinshaws," he 
 said. 
 
 " I suppose you talk French like anything,'' 
 
 " Of course one has to talk French," said he. " I learnt 
 French when I was a child from a governess — my uncle made 
 me — but I forgot most of it at school, and at the Varsity you 
 never learn anything — precious little, anyhow ! Certainly not 
 French I" 
 
 She was deeply impressed. He was a much greater per- 
 sonage than she had guessed. It had never occurred to her 
 that commercial travellers had to go to a university to finish 
 their complex education. And then, Paris ! Paris meant abso- 
 lutely nothing to her but pure, impossible, unattainable romance. 
 And he had been there I The clouds of glory were around 
 him. He was a hero, dazzling. He had come to her out of 
 another world. He was her miracle. He was almost too 
 miraculous to be true. 
 
 She, living her humdrum life at the shop ! And he, elegant, 
 brilliant, coming from far cities ! They together, side by side, 
 strolling up the road towards the Moorthorne ridge ! There 
 was nothing quite like this in the stories of Miss Sewell. 
 
 " Your uncle . . . ? " she questioned vaguely. 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Boldero. He's a partner in Birkinshaws." 
 
ESCAPADE 118 
 
 "Ohl" 
 
 " You've heard of hira ? He's a great Wesleyan." 
 
 " Oh yes," she said. "When we had the Wesjeyan Con- 
 ference here, he — " 
 
 " He's always very great at Conferences," said Gerald 
 Scales. 
 
 " I didn't know he had anything to do with. Birkinshaws." 
 
 " He isn't a working partner of course," Mr. Scales ex- 
 plained. "But he means me to be one. I have to learn 
 the business from the bottom. So now you understand why 
 I'm a traveller." 
 
 " I see," she said, still more deeply impressed. 
 
 " I'm an orphan," said Gerald. " And Uncle Boldero took 
 me in hand when I was three." 
 
 " I see I " she repeated. 
 
 It seemed strange to her that Mr. Scales should be a Wes- 
 leyan — ^just like herself. She would have been sure that he was 
 ' Church.' Her notions of Wesleyanism, with her notions of 
 various other things, were sharply modified. 
 
 " Now tell me about you," Mr. Scales suggested. 
 
 " Oh 1 I'm nothing I " she burst out. 
 
 The exclamation was perfectly sincere. Mr. Scales's dis- 
 closures concerning himself, while they excited her, discouraged 
 her. 
 
 " You're the finest girl I've ever met, anyhow," said Mr. 
 Scales with gallant emphasis, and he dug his stick into the soft 
 ground. 
 
 She blushed and made no answer. 
 
 They walked on in silence, each wondering apprehensively 
 what might happen next. 
 
 Suddenly Mr. Scales stopped at a dilapidated low brick 
 wall, built in a circle, close to the side of the road. 
 
 " I expect that's an old pit-shaft," said he. 
 
 " Yes, I expect it is." 
 
 He picked up a rafther large stone and approached the 
 wall 
 
 " Be careful I " she enjoined him. 
 
 " Oh I If s all right," he said lightly. " Let's listen. Come 
 near and listen." 
 
 She reluctantly obeyed, and he threw the stone over the 
 dirty ruined wall, the top of which was about level with his hat. 
 For two or three seconds there was no sound. Then a faint 
 
 I 
 
114 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 reverberation echoed from the depths of the shaft. And on 
 Sophia's brain arose dreadful images of the ghosts of miners 
 wandering for ever in subterranean passages, far, far beneath. 
 The noise of the falling stone had awakened for her the secret 
 terrors of the earth. She could scarcely even look at the wall 
 without a spasm of fear. 
 
 " How strange," said Mr. Scales, a little awe in his voice, 
 too, "that that should be left there like that I I suppose it's 
 very deep." 
 
 " Some of them are," she trembled. 
 
 " I must just have a look," he said, and put his hands on 
 the top of the wall. 
 
 " Come away ! " she cried. 
 
 " Oh 1 It's all right ! " he said again, soothingly. " The 
 wall's as firm as a rock." And he took a slight spring and 
 looked over. 
 
 She shrieked loudly. She saw him at the distant bottom 
 of the shaft, mangled, drowning. The ground seemed to 
 quake under her feet. A horrible sickness seized her. And 
 she shrieked again. Never had she guessed that existence 
 could be such pain. 
 
 He slid down from the wall, and turned to her. " No 
 bottom to be seen ! " he said. Then, observing her trans- 
 formed face, he came close to her, with a superior masculine 
 smile. " Silly little thing ! " he said coaxingly, endearingly, 
 putting forth all his power to charm. 
 
 He perceived at once that he had miscalculated the effects 
 of his action. H^r alarm changed swiftly to angry offence. 
 She drew back with a haughty gesture, as if he had intended 
 actually to touch her. Did he suppose, because she chanced 
 to be walking with him, that he had the right to address her 
 familiarly, to tease her, to call her ' silly little thing ' and to 
 put his face against hers 7 She resented his freedom with quick 
 and passionate indignation. 
 
 She showed him her proud back and nodding head and 
 wrathful skirts ; and hurried ofif without a word, almost running. 
 As for him, he was so startled by unexpected phenomena that 
 he did nothing for a moment — merely stood looking and feeling 
 foolish. 
 
 Then she heard him in pursuit. She was too proud to stop 
 or even to reSuce her speed. 
 
 " I didn't mean to — " he muttered behind her. 
 
ESCAPADE lis 
 
 No recognition from her. 
 
 " I suppose I ought to apologize," he said. 
 
 " I should just think you ought," she answered, furious. 
 
 " Well, I do I " said he, " Do stop a minute." 
 
 " I'll thank you not to follow me, Mr. Scales." She 
 paused, and scorched him with her displeasure. Then she 
 went forward. And her heart was in torture because it could 
 not persuade her to remain with him, and smile and forgive, 
 and win his smile. 
 
 " I shall write to you," he shouted down the slope. 
 
 She kept on, the ridiculous child. But the agony she had 
 suffered as he dung to the frail wall was not ridiculous, nor 
 her dark vision of the mine, nor her tremendous indignation 
 when, after HignhpyingtJiarj.TiP fnrgnf that she wa s-a queen. To 
 her the scene was sublimely tragic. Soon she had recrossed 
 the bridge, but not the same she 1 So this was the end of the 
 incredible adventure 1 
 
 When she reached the turnpike she thought of her mother 
 and of Constance. She had completely forgotten them ; for a 
 space they had utterly ceased to exist for her. 
 
 IV 
 
 " You've been out, Sophia ? " said Mrs. Baines in the par- 
 lour, questioningly. Sopliia had taken off her hat and mantle 
 hurriedly in the cutting-out room, for she was in danger of 
 being late for tea ; but her hair and face showed traces of the 
 March breeze. Mrs. Baines, whose stoutness seemed to in- 
 crease, sat in the rocking-chair with a number of TAe Sunday 
 at Home in her hand. Tea was set. 
 
 " Yes, mother. I called to see Miss Chetwynd." 
 " I wish you'd tell me when you are going out." 
 "I looked all over for you before I started." 
 " No, you didn't, for I haven't stirred from this room since 
 four o'clock. . . . You should not say things like that," Mrs. 
 Baines added in a gentler tone. 
 
 Mrs. Baines had suffered much that day. She knew that 
 she was in an irritable, nervous state, and therefore she said to 
 herself, in her quality of wise woman, " I must watch myself. 
 I mustn't let myself go." And she thought how reasonable 
 she was. She did not guess that all her gestures betrayed her ; 
 
116 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 nor did it occur to her that few things are more galling than 
 the spectacle of a person, actuated by lofty motives, obviously 
 trying to be kind and patient under what he considers to be 
 extreme provocation. 
 
 Maggie blundered up the kitchen stairs with the teapot and 
 hot toast; and so Sophia had an excuse for silence. Sophia 
 too had suffered much, suffered excruciatingly ; she carried at 
 that moment a whole tragedy in her young soul, unaccustomed 
 to such burdens. Her attitude towards her mother was half 
 fearful and half defiant ; it might be summed up in the phrase 
 which she had repeated again and again under her breath on 
 the way home, " Well, mother can't kill me ! " 
 
 Mrs. Baines put down the blue-covered magazine and 
 twisted her rocking-chair towards the table. 
 
 " You can pour out the tea," said Mrs. Baines. 
 " Where's Constance? " 
 " She's not very well. She's lying down." 
 " Anything the matter with her ? " 
 « No." 
 
 This was inaccurate. Nearly everything was the matter with 
 Constance, who had never been less Constance than during that 
 afternoon. But Mrs. Baines had no intention of discussing 
 Constance's love-affairs with Sophia. The less said to Sophia 
 about love, the better ! Sophia was excitable enough already ! 
 They sat opposite to each other, on either side of the fire 
 — the monumental matron .whose black bodice heavily over- 
 hung the table, whose large rounded face was creased and 
 wrinkled by what seemed countless years of joy and disillusion ; 
 and the young, slim girl, so' fresh, so virginal, so ignorant, 
 with all the pathos of an unsuspecting victim about to be 
 sacrificed to tiie minotaur of Time ! They both atie hot toast, 
 with careless haste, in silence, preoccupied, worried, and 
 outwardly nonchalant. 
 
 " And what ha,s Miss Chetwynd got to say ? " Mrs. Baines 
 inquired. 
 
 " She wasn't in." 
 , Here was a blow for Mrs. Baines, whose suspicions about 
 Sophia, driven off by her certainties regarding Constance, 
 suddenly sprang forward in her mind, and prowled to and fro 
 like a band of tigers. 
 
 Still, Mrs. Baines was determined to be calm and careful 
 " Oh I What time did you call ? " 
 
ESCAPADE 117 
 
 "I don't know. About half-past four." Sophia finished 
 her tea quickly, and rose. "Shall I tell Mr. Povey he can 
 come ? " 
 
 (Mr. Povey had his tea after the ladies of the house.) 
 
 " Yes, if you will stay in the shop till I come. Light me 
 the gas before you go." 
 
 Sophia took a wax taper from a vase on the mantelpiece, 
 stuck it ill the (ire and lit the gas, which exploded in its crystal 
 cloister with a mild report. 
 
 "What's all that clay on your boots, child?" asked Mrs. 
 Baines. 
 
 " Clay?" repeated Sophia, staring foolishly at her boots. 
 
 "Yes," said Mrs. Baines. "It looks like marl. Where 
 on earth have you been ? " 
 
 She interrogated her daughter with an upward gaze, frigid 
 and unconsciously hostile, through her gold-rimmed glasses. 
 
 " I must have picked it up on the roads," said Sophia, and 
 hastened to the door. 
 
 "Sophia!" 
 
 " Yes, mother." 
 
 " Shut the door." 
 
 Sophia unwillingly shut the door which she had half opened. 
 
 " Come here." 
 
 Sophia obeyed, with falling lip. 
 
 " You are deceiving me, Sophia," said Mrs. Baines, with 
 fierce solemnity. " Where have you been this afternoon ? " 
 
 Sophia's foot was restless on the carpet behind the table. 
 " I haven't been anywhere," she murmured glumly. 
 
 " Have you seen young Scales ? " 
 
 "Yes," said Sophia with grimness, glancing audaciously 
 for an instant at her mother. ("She can't kill me. She 
 can't kill me," her heart muttered. And she had youth and 
 beauty in her favour, while her mother was only a fat middle- 
 aged woman. " She can't kill me," said her heart, with the 
 trembling, cruel insolence of the mirror-flattered child.) 
 
 " How came you to meet him ? " 
 
 No answer. 
 
 " Sophia, you heard what I said ! " 
 
 Still no answer. Sophia looked down at the table. ("She 
 can't kill me.") 
 
 " If you are going to be sullen, I shall have to suppose 
 the worst," said Mrs. Baines. 
 
118 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Sophia kept her silence, 
 
 " Of course," Mrs. Baines resumed, " if you choose to be 
 wicked, neither your mother nor any one else can stop you. 
 There are certain things I can do, and these I shall do. . . . Let 
 me warn you that young Scales is a thoroughly bad lot. I 
 know all about him. He has been living a wild life abroad, 
 and if it hadn't been that his uncle is a partner in Birkinshaws, 
 they would never have taken him on again." A pause. " I 
 hope that one day you will be a happy wife, but you are much 
 too young yet to be meeting young men, and nothing would 
 ever induce me to let you have anything to do with this 
 Scales. I won't have it. In future you are not to go out 
 alone. You understand me ? " 
 
 Sophia kept silence. 
 
 " I hope you will be in a better frame of mind to-morrow. 
 I can only hope so. But if you aren't, I shall take very severe 
 measures. You think you can defy me. But you never were 
 more mistaken in your life. I don't want to see any more of 
 you now. Go and tell Mr. Povey ; and call Maggie for the 
 fresh tea. You make me almost glad that your father died 
 even as he did. He has, at any rate, been spared this." 
 
 Those words ' died even as he did ' achieved the intimida- 
 tion of Sophia. They seemed to indicate that Mrs. Baines, 
 though she had magnanimously never mentioned the subject 
 to Sophia, knew exactly how the old man had died. Sophia 
 escaped from the room in fear, cowed. Nevertheless, her 
 thought was, " She hasn't killed me. I made up my mind I 
 wouldn't talk, and I didn't." 
 
 In the evening, as she sat in the shop primly and sternly 
 sewing at hats — while her mother wept in secret on the first 
 floor, and Constance remained hidden on the second — Sophia 
 lived over again the scene at the old shaft; but she lived it 
 differently, admitting that she had been wrong, guessing by 
 instinct diat she had shown a foolish mistrust of love. As she 
 sat in the shop, she adopted just the right attitude and said 
 just the right things. Instead of being a silly baby she was an 
 accomplished and dazzling woman, then. When customers 
 came in, and the young lady assistants unobtrusively turned 
 higher the central gas, according to the rigime of the shop, it 
 was really extraordinary that they could not read in the heart 
 of the beautiful Miss Baines the words which blazed there : 
 " Yot^re the finest i^rl I ever met," and " / shall write to you" 
 
ESCAPADE 119 
 
 The young lady assistants had their notions as to both Con- 
 stance and Sophia, but the truth, at least as regarded Sophia, 
 was beyond the flight of their imaginations. When eight 
 o'clock struck and she gave the formal order for dust-sheets, 
 the shop being empty, they never supposed that she was 
 dreaming about posts and plotting how to get hold of the 
 morning's letters before Mr. Povey. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 A DEFEAT 
 
 It was during the month of June that Aunt Harriet came over 
 from Axe to spend a few days with her little sister, Mrs. Baines. 
 The railway between Axe and the Five Towns had not yet' 
 been opened; but even if it had been opened Aunt Harriet 
 would probably not have used it. She had always travelled 
 from Axe to Bursley in the same vehicle, a small waggonette 
 which she hired from Bratt's livery stables at Axe, driven by a 
 coachman who thoroughly understood the importance, and 
 the peculiarities, of Aunt Harriet 
 
 Mrs. Baines had increased in stoutness, so that now Aunt 
 Harriet had very little advantage over her, physically. But 
 the moral ascendency of the elder still persisted. The two 
 vast widows shared Mrs. Baines's bedroom, spending much of 
 their time there in long, hushed conversations — interviews from 
 which Mrs. Baines emerged with the air of one who has 
 received enlightenment and Aunt Harriet with the air of one 
 who has rendered it. The pair went about together, in the 
 shop, the showroom, the parlour, the kitchen, and also into 
 the town, addressing each other as ' Sister,' ' Sister.' Every- 
 where it was ' sister,' • sister,' ' my sister,' ' your dear mother,' 
 ' your Aunt Harriet.' They referred to each other as oracular 
 sources of wisdom and good taste. Respectability stalked 
 abroad when they were afoot. The whole Square wriggled 
 uneasily as though God's eye were peculiarly upon it. The 
 meals in the parlour became solemn collations, at which shone 
 the best silver and the finest diaper, but from which gaiety 
 and naturalness seemed to be banished. (I say 'seemed' 
 because it cannot be doubted that Aunt Harriet was natural, 
 and there were moments when she possibly considered herself 
 
A DEFEAT 121 
 
 to be practising gaiety— a gaiety more desolating than her 
 severity.) The younger generation was extinguished, 
 pressed flat and lifeless under the ponderosity of the 
 widows. 
 
 Mr. Povey was not the man to be easily flattened by 
 ponderosity of any kind, and his suppression was a striking 
 proof of the prowess of the widows j who, indeed, went over 
 Mr, Povey like traction-engines, with the sublime unconscious- 
 ness of traction-engines, leaving an inanimate object in the 
 road behind them, and scarce aware even of the jolt. Mr. 
 Povey hated Aunt Harriet, but, lying crushed there in the 
 road, how could he rebel? He ftlt all the time that Aunt 
 Harriet was adding him up, and reporting the result at frequent 
 intervals to Mrs. Baines in the bedroom. He felt that she 
 knew everything about him — even to those tears which had 
 been in his eyes. He felt that he could hope to do nothing 
 right for Aunt Harriet, that absolute perfection in the per- 
 formance of duty would make no more impression on her 
 than a caress on the fly-wheel of a traction-engine. Constance, 
 the dear Constance, was also looked at askance. There was 
 nothing in Aunt Harriet's demeanour to her that you could 
 take hold of, but there was emphatically something that you 
 could not take hold of — a hint, an inkling, that insinuated to 
 Constance, " Have a care, lest peradventure you become the 
 second cousin of the scarlet woman." 
 
 Sophia was pet ted. Sophia was liable to be playfully 
 tapped by~Aunt Harriet's thimble when Aunt Harriet was 
 hemming dusters (for the elderly lady could lift a duster to her 
 own dignity). Sophia was called on two separate occasions, 
 ' My httle butterfly.' And Sophia was entrusted with the 
 trimming of Aunt Harriet's new summer bonnet. Aunt Harriet 
 deemed that Sophia was looking pale. As the days passed, 
 Sophia's pallor was emphasized by Aunt Harriet until it 
 developed into an article of faith, to which you were com- 
 pelled to subscribe on pain of excommunication. Then 
 dawned the day when Aunt Harriet said, staring at Sophia 
 as an afiectionate aunt may : " That cliild would do with 
 a change." And then there dawned another day when 
 Aunt Harriet, staring at Sophia compassionately, as a devoted 
 aunt may, said : " It's a pity that child can't have a change." 
 And Mrs. Baines also stared and said : " It is." 
 
 And on another day Aunt Harriet said: "I've been 
 
122 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 wondering whether my little Sophia would care to come and 
 keep her old aunt company a while." 
 
 There were few things for which Sophia would have cared 
 less. The girl swore to herself angrily that she would not go, 
 that no allurement would induce her to go. But she was in a 
 net J she was in the meshes of family correctness. Do what 
 she would, she could not invent a reason for not going.. 
 Certainly she could not tell her aunt that she merely did not 
 want to go. She was capable of enormities, but not of that. 
 And then began Aunt Harriet's intricate preparations for going. 
 Aunt Harriet never did anything simply. -And she couU not 
 be hurried. Seventy-two hours before leaving she had to 
 commence upon her trunk ; but first the trunk had to be wiped 
 by Maggie with a damp cloth under the eye and direction of 
 Aunt Harriet. And the liveryman at Axe had to be written 
 to, and the servants at Axe written to, and the weather 
 prospects weighed and considered. And somehow, by the 
 time these matters were accomplished, it was tacitly under- 
 stood that Sophia should accompany her kind aunt into 
 the bracing moorland air of Axe. No smoke at Axe! No 
 stuffiness at Axe ! The spacious existence of a wealthy widow 
 in a residential town with a low death-rate and famous scenery ! 
 " Have you packed your box, Sophia ? " No, she had not. 
 " Well, I will come and help you." 
 
 Impossible to bear up against the momentum of a massive 
 body like Aunt Harriet's ! It was irresistible. 
 
 The day of departure came, throwing the entire household 
 into a commotion. Dinner was put a quarter of an hour 
 earlier than usual so that Aunt Harriet might achieve Axe at 
 her accustomed hour of tea. After dinner Maggie was the 
 recipient of three amazing muslin aprons, given with a regal 
 gesture. And the trunk and the box were brought down, and 
 there was a slight odour of black kid gloves in the parlour. 
 The waggonette was due and the waggonette appeared (" I 
 can always rely upon Bladen ! " said Aunt Harriet), and the 
 door was opened, and Bladen, stiff on his legs, descended from 
 the box and touched his hat to Aunt Harriet as she filled up 
 the doorway. 
 
 "Have you baited, Bladen?" asked she. 
 
 " Yes'm," said he, assuringly. 
 
 Bladen and Mr. Povey carried out the trunk and the box, 
 and Constance charged herself with parcels which she bestowed 
 
A DEFEAT 123 
 
 in the corners of the vehicle according to her aunt's pre- 
 scription; it was like stowing the cargo of a vessel. 
 
 " Now, Sophia, my chuck ! " Mrs. Baines called up the 
 stairs. And Sophia came slowly downstairs. Mrs. Baines 
 offered her mouth. Sophia glanced at her. 
 
 "You needn't think I don't see why you're sending me 
 away 1 " exclaimed Sophia in a hard, furious voice, with 
 glistening eyes. " I'm not so blind as all that ! " She kissed 
 her mother — nothing but a contemptuous peck. Then, as she 
 turned away she added: "But you let Constance do just as 
 she likes ! " 
 
 This was her sole bitter comment on the episode, but into 
 it she put all the profound bitterness accumulated during many 
 mutinous nights. 
 
 Mrs. Baines concealed a sigh. The explosion certainly 
 disturbed her. She had hoped that the smooth surface of 
 things would not be ruffled. 
 
 Sophia bounced out. And the assembly, including several 
 urchins, watched with held breath while Aunt Harriet, after 
 having bid majestic good-byes, got on to the step and in- 
 troduced herself through the doorway of the waggonette into 
 the interior of the vehicle; it was an operation like threading 
 a needle with cotton too thick. Once within, her hoops 
 distended in sudden release, filling the waggonette. Sophia 
 followed, agilely. 
 
 As, with due formalities, the equipage drove off, Mrs. 
 Baines gave another sigh, one of relief. The sisters had won. 
 She could now await the imminent next advent of Mr. Gerald 
 Scales with tranquillity. 
 
 II 
 
 Those singular words of Sophia's, ' But you let Constance 
 do just as she likes/ Ivad disturbed Mrs. Baines more than was 
 at first apparent. They worried her like a late fly in autumn. 
 For she had said nothing to any one about Constance's case, 
 Mrs. Maddack of course excepted. She had instinctively felt 
 that she could not show the slightest leniency towards the ro- 
 mantic impulses of her elder daughter without seeming unjust to 
 the younger, and she had acted accordingly. On the memorable 
 morn of Mr. Povey's acute jealousy, she had, temporarily at 
 any rate, slaked the fire, banked it down, and hidden it ; and 
 
124 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 since then no word had passed as to the state of Constance'] 
 heart. In the great peril to be feared from Mr. Scales 
 Constance's heart had been put aside as a thing that coulc 
 
 ' wait ; so one puts aside the mending of linen whei 
 earthquake shocks are about. Mrs. Baines was sure tha 
 Constance had not chattered to Sophia concerning Mr. Povey, 
 Constance, who understood her mother, had too mud 
 commonsense and too nice a sense of propriety to do that— 
 and yet here was Sophia exclaiming, ' But you let Constance 
 do just as she likes." Were the relations between Constance 
 and Mr. Povey, then, common property ? Did the young lad] 
 assistants discuss them ? 
 
 As a fact, the young lady assistants did discuss them j no 
 in the shop — for either one of the principal parties, or Mrs 
 Baines herself, was always in the shop, but elsewhere. The) 
 discussed little else, when they were free ; how she had lookec 
 at him to-day, and how he had blushed, and so forth inter 
 minably. Yet Mrs. Baines really thought that she alone knew 
 Such is the power of the ineradicable delusion that one's owr 
 affairs, and especially one's own children, are mysteriousl} 
 different from those of others. 
 
 After Sophia's departure Mrs. Baines surveyed her daughte: 
 and her manager at supper-time with a curious and a difSden 
 eye. They worked, talked, and ate just as though Mrs. Bainei 
 had never caught them weeping together in the cutting-ou 
 room. They had the most matter-of-fact air. They migh 
 never have heard whispered the name of love. And ther( 
 could be no deceit beneath that decorum; for Constanc( 
 would not deceive. Still, Mrs. Baines's conscience was un 
 ruly. Order reigned, but nevertheless she knew that she ough 
 to do something, find out something, decide something ; sh( 
 ought, if she did her duty, to take Constance aside and say 
 "Now, Constance, my mind is freer now. Tell me frankl; 
 what has been going on between you and Mr. Povey. I hav 
 never understood the meaning of that scene in the cutting-ou 
 room. Tell me." She ought to have talked in this strain 
 But she could not. That energetic woman had not sufficien 
 (giergy left. She wanted rest, rest — even though it were ; 
 
 (Boyard's rest, an ostrich's tranquillity — after the turmoil o 
 apprehensions caused by Sophia. Her soul cried out for peace 
 She was not, however, to have peace. 
 
 On the very first Sunday after Sophia's deoarture, Mi 
 
A DEFEAT 125 
 
 Povey did not go to chapel in the morning, and he offered no 
 reason for his unusual conduct. He ate his breakfast with 
 appetite, but there was something peculiar in his glance that 
 made Mrs. Baines a little uneasy; this something she could 
 not seize upon and define. When she and Constance returned 
 from chapel Mr. Povey was playing " Rock of Ages " on the 
 harmonium — again unusual I The serious part of the dinner 
 comprised roast beef and Yorkshire pudding — the pudding 
 being served as a sweet course before the meat. Mrs, Baines' 
 ate freely of these things, for she loved them, and she was 
 always hungry after a sermon. She also did well with the 
 Cheshire cheese. Her intention was to sleep in the drawing- 
 room after the repast. On Sunday afternoons she invariably 
 tried to sleep in the drawing-room, and she did not often fail. 
 As a rule the girls accompanied her thither from the table, 
 and either ' settled down ' likewise or crept out of the room 
 when they perceived the gradual sinking of the majestic form 
 into the deep hollows of the easy-chair. Mrs. Baines was 
 anticipating with pleasure her somnolent Sunday afternoon. 
 
 Constance said grace after meat, and the formula on this 
 particular occasion ran thus — 
 
 " Thank God for our good dinner, Amen. — Mother, I must 
 just run upstairs to my room." (' My room ' — Sophia being 
 far away.) 
 
 And off she ran, strangely girlish. 
 
 " Well, child, you needn't be in such a hurry," said Mrs. 
 Baines, ringing the bell and rising. 
 
 She hoped that Constance would remember the conditions 
 precedent to sleep. 
 
 " I should like to have a word with you, if it's all the same 
 to you, Mrs. Baines," said Mr. Povey suddenly, with obvious 
 nervousness. And his tone struck a rude unexpected blow at 
 Mrs. Baines's peace of mind. It was a portentous tone. 
 
 "What about?" asked she, with an inflection subtly to 
 remind Mr. Povey what day it was. 
 
 " About Constance," said the astonishing man. 
 
 " Constance ! " exclaimed Mrs. Baines with a histrionic air 
 of bewilderment. 
 
 Maggie entered the room, solely in response to the bell, 
 yet a thought jumped up in Mrs. Baines's brain, " How prying 
 servants are, to be sure ! " For quite five seconds she had a 
 grievance against Maggie. She was compelled to sit down 
 
126 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 again and wait while Maggie cleared the table. Mr. Povey 
 put both his hands in his pockets, got up, went to the window, 
 whistled, and generally behaved in a nnanner which foretold 
 the worst. 
 
 At last Maggie vanished, shutting the door. 
 
 "What is it, Mr. Povey?" 
 
 " Oh ! " said Mr. Povey, facing her with absurd nervous 
 brusqueness, as though pretending: "Ah, yes! We have 
 something to say— I was forgetting ! " Then he began : " It's 
 about Constance and me." 
 
 Yes, they had evidently plotted this interview. Constance 
 had evidently taken herself off on purpose to leave Mr. Povey 
 unhampered. They were in league. The inevitable had come. 
 No sleep ! No repose 1 Nothing but worry once more I 
 
 " I'm not at all satisfied with the present situation,'' said 
 Mr. Povey, in a tone that corresponded to his words. 
 
 "I don't know what you mean, Mr. Povey," said Mrs. 
 Baines stiffly. This was a simple lie. 
 
 " Well, really, Mrs. Baines ! " Mr. Povey protested, " I 
 suppose you won't deny that you know there is something 
 between me and Constance ? I suppose you won't deny that ? " 
 
 "What is there between you and Constance? I can assure 
 you I—" 
 
 " That depends on you," Mr. Povey interrupted her. 
 When he was nervous his manners deteriorated into a behaviour 
 that resembled rudeness. " That dependson you ! " he repeated 
 grimly. 
 
 " But— " 
 
 " Are we to be engaged or are we not ? " pursued Mr. 
 Povey, as though Mrs. Baines had been guilty of some grave 
 lapse and he was determined not to spare her. " That's what 
 I ihink ought to be settled, one way or the other. I wish to 
 be perfectly open and aboveboard — in the future, as I have 
 been in the past." 
 
 " But you have said nothing to me at all ! " Mrs. Baines 
 remonstrated, lifting her eyebrows. The way in which the 
 man had sprung this matter upon her was truly too audacious. 
 
 Mr. Povey approached her as she sat at the table, shaking 
 her ringlets and looking at her hands. 
 
 " You know there's something between us ! " he insisted. 
 
 "How should I know there is something between you? 
 Constance has never said a word to me. And have you?" 
 
A DEFEAT 127 
 
 " Well," said he. " We've hidden nothing." 
 
 " What is there between you and Constance ? If I may ask I " 
 
 " That depends on you," said he again. 
 
 " Have you asked her to be your wife ? " 
 
 " No. I haven't exactly asked her to be my wife." He 
 hesitated. " You see — " 
 
 Mrs. Baines collected her forces. "Have you kissed 
 her? " This in a cold voice. 
 
 Mr. Povey now blushed. " I haven't exactly kissed her," 
 he stammered, apparently shocked by the inquisition. " No, 
 I should not say that I had kissed her." 
 
 It might have been that before committing himself he felt 
 a desire for Mrs. Baines's definition of a kiss. 
 
 " You are very extraordinary," she said loftily. It was no 
 less than the truth. 
 
 " All I want to know is — have you got anything against 
 me ? " he demanded roughly. " Because if so " 
 
 " Anything against you, Mr. Povey ? Why should I have 
 anything against you ? " 
 
 " Then why can't we be engaged ? " 
 
 She considered that he was bullying her, " That's another 
 question," said she. 
 
 " Why can't we be engaged ? An't I good enough ? " 
 
 The fact was that he was not regarded as good enougL 
 Mrs. Maddack had certainly deemed that he was not good 
 enough. He was a solid mass of excellent qualities ; but he 
 lacked brilliance, importance, dignity. He could not impose 
 himself. Such had been the verdict. 
 
 And now, while Mrs. Baines was secretly reproaching Mr. 
 Povey for his inability to impose himself, he was most patently 
 imposing himself on her — and the phenomenon escaped her ! 
 She felt that he was bullying her, but somehow she could not 
 perceive his power. Yet the man who could bully Mrs. 
 Baines was surely no common soul ! 
 
 " You know my very high opinion of you," she said. 
 
 Mr. Povey pursued in a mollified tone. " Assuming that 
 Constance is willing to be engaged, do I understand you 
 consent ? " 
 
 " But Constance is too young." 
 
 " Constance is twenty. She is more than twenty." 
 
 " In any case you won't expect me to give you an answer 
 now." 
 
128 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " Why not ? You know my position." 
 
 She did. From a practical point of view the match wouM 
 be ideal : no fault could be found with it on that side. But 
 Mrs. Baines could not extinguish the idea that it -would be a 
 • come-down ' for her daughter. Who, after all, was Mr. Povey ? 
 Mr. Povey was nobody. 
 
 " I must think things over," she said firmly, putting her 
 lips together. "I can't reply like this. It is a serious 
 matter." 
 
 " When can I have your answer ? To-morrow ? " 
 
 "No— really— " 
 
 "In a week, then?" 
 
 " I cannot bind myself to a date," said Mrs. Baines, 
 haughtily. She felt that she was gaining ground, \ 
 
 " Because I Can't stay on here indefinitely as things are," 
 Mr. Povey burst out, and there was a touch of hysteria in his 
 tone. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Povey, please do be reasonable." 
 
 " That?s all very well," he went on. " That's all very well. 
 But what I say is that employers have no right to have male 
 assistants in their houses unless they are prepared to let their 
 daughters marry ! That's what I say I No right I" 
 
 Mrs. Baines did not know what to answer. 
 
 The aspirant wound up : " I must leave if that's the case." 
 
 " If what's the case ? " she asked herself. " What has 
 come over him?" And aloud : "You know you would place 
 me in a very awkward position by leaving, and I hope you 
 don't want to mix up two quite different things. I hope you 
 aren't trying to threaten me." 
 
 " Threaten you 1 " he cried. " Do you suppose I should 
 leave here for fun ? If I leave it will be because I can't stand 
 it. Thaf s all. I can't stand it. I want Constance, and if I 
 can't have her, then I can't stand it. v/What do you think I'm 
 made of? " 
 
 " I'm sure — " she began. 
 
 " That's all very well 1 " he almost shouted. 
 
 " But please let me speak," she said quietly. 
 
 " All I say is I can't stand it. That's all. . . . Employers 
 have no right. . . . We have our feelings like other men." 
 
 He was deeply moved. He might have appeared some- 
 what grotesque to the strictly impartial observer of human 
 nature. Nevertheless he was deeply and genuinely moved, 
 
A DEFEAT 129 
 
 and possibly human nature could have shown nothing more 
 human than Mr. Povey at the moment when, unable any 
 longer to restrain the paroxysm which had so surprisingly 
 overtaken him, he fled from the parlour, passionately, to the 
 retreat of his bedroom. 
 
 " That's the worst of those quiet calm ones," said Mrs. 
 Baines to herself. " You never know if they won't give way. 
 And when they do, it's awful — awful. . . . What did I do, 
 what did I say, to bring it on ? Nothing ! Nothing ! " 
 
 And where was her afternoon sleep ? What was going to 
 happen to her daughter? What could she say to Constance? 
 How next could she meet Mr. Povey ? Ah ! It needed a 
 brave, indomitable woman not to cry out brokenly : " I've 
 suffered too much. Do anything you like ; only let me die in 
 peace 1 " And so saying, to let everything indifferently slide ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 Neither Mr. Povey nor Constance introduced the delicate 
 subject to her again, and she was determined not to be the 
 first to speak of it. She considered that Mr. Povey had taken 
 advantage of his position, and that he had also been infantile 
 and impolite. And somehow she privately blamed Constance 
 for his behaviour. So the matter hurig, as it were, sus- 
 pended in the ether between the opposmg forces of pride 
 and passion. 
 
 Shortly afterwards events occurred compared to which the 
 vicissitudes of Mr. Povey's heart were of no more account 
 than a shower of rain in April. And fate gave no warning of 
 them ; it rather indicated a complete absence of events. When 
 the customary advice circular arrived from Birkinshaws, the 
 name of ' our Mr. Gerald Scales ' was replaced on it by another 
 and an unfamihar name. Mrs. Baines, seeing the circular by 
 accident, experienced a sense of relief, mingled with the 
 professional disappointment of a diplomatist who has elabo- 
 rately provided for Contingencies which have failed to happen. 
 She had sent Sophia away for nothing; and no doubt her 
 maternal affection had exaggerated a molehill into a mountain. 
 Really, when she reflected on the past, she could not recall a 
 single fact that would justify her theory of an attachment 
 secretly budding between Sophia and the young man Scales ! 
 
 K 
 
130 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Not a single little fact ! All she could bring forward was that 
 Sophia had twice encountered Scales in the street. 
 
 She felt a curious interest in the fate of Scales, for whom 
 in her own mind she had long prophesied evil, and when 
 Birkinshaws' representative came she took care to be in the 
 shop ; her intention was to converse with him, and ascertain 
 as much as was ascertainable, after Mr. Povey had transacted 
 business. For this purpose, at a suitable moment, she 
 traversed the shop to Mr. Povey's side, and in so doing she 
 had a fleeting view of King Street, and in King Street of a 
 familiar vehicle. She stopped, and seemed to catch the dis- 
 tant sound of knocking. Abandoning the traveller, she 
 hurried towards the parlour, in the passage she assuredly did 
 hear knocking, angry and impatient knocking, the knocking of 
 someone who thinks he has knocked too long. 
 
 " Of course Maggie is at the top of the house 1 " she 
 muttered sarcastically. 
 
 She unchained, unbolted, and unlocked the side-door. 
 
 " At last 1 " It was Aunt Harriet's voice, exacerbated. 
 " What I You, sister ? You're soon up. What a blessing 1 " 
 
 The two majestic and imposing creatures met on the mat, 
 craning forward so that their lips might meet above their 
 terrific bosoms. 
 
 " Whaf s the matter ? " Mrs. Baines asked, fearfully. 
 
 " Well, I do declare ! " said Mrs. Maddack. " And I've 
 driven specially over to ask you/" 
 
 "Where's Sophia?" demanded Mrs. Baines. 
 
 " You don't mean to say she's not come, sister ? " Mrs. 
 Maddack sank down on to the sofa. 
 
 " Come ?i' Mrs. Baines repeated. " Of course she's not 
 come ! What do you mean, sister ? " 
 
 " The very moment she got Constance's letter yesterday, 
 saying you were ill in bed and she'd better come over to 
 help in the shop, she started. I got Bratt's dog-cart for 
 her." 
 
 Mrs. Baines in her turn also sank down on to the sofa. 
 
 " I've not been ill," she said. " And Constance hasn't 
 written for a week 1 Only yesterday I was telling her — " 
 
 "Sister-— it can't be ! Sophia had letters from Constance 
 every morning. At least she said they were from Constance. 
 I told her to be sure and write me how you were last night, 
 and she promised faithfully she would. And it was because I 
 
A DEFEAT 131 
 
 got nothing by this morning's post that I decided to come 
 over myself, to see if it was anything serious." 
 
 " Serious it is ! " murmured Mrs. Baines. 
 
 "What—" 
 
 " Sophia's run off. That's the plain English of it I " said 
 Mrs. Baines with frigid calm. 
 
 " Nay ! That I'll never believe. I've looked after Sophia 
 night and day as if she was my own, and — " 
 
 " If she hasn't run off, where is she ? " 
 
 Mrs. Maddack opened the door with a' tragic gesture. 
 
 " Bladen," she called in a loud voice to the driver of the 
 waggonette, who was standing on the pavement. 
 
 "Yes'm." 
 
 " It was Pember drove Miss Sophia yesterday, wasn't it ? " 
 
 "Yes'm." 
 
 She hesitated. A clumsy question might enlighten a mem- 
 ber of the class which ought never to be enlightened about 
 one's private affairs. 
 
 " He didn't come all the way here ? " 
 
 " No'm. He happened to say last night when he got back 
 as Miss Sophia had told him to set her down at Knype 
 Station." 
 
 " I thought so ! " said Mrs. Maddack, courageously. 
 
 "Yes'm." 
 
 " Sister ! " she moaned, after carefully shutting the door. 
 
 They clung to each other. 
 
 The horror of what had occurred did not instantly take 
 full possession of them, because the power of credence, of 
 imaginatively realizing a supreme event, whether of great grief 
 or of great happiness, is ridiculously finite. But every minute 
 the horror grew more clear, more intense, more tragically 
 dominant over them. There were many things that they 
 could not say to each other, — from pride, from shame, from 
 the inadequacy of words. Neither could utter the name of 
 Gerald Scales. And Aunt Harriet could not stoop to defend 
 herself from a possible charge of neglect; nor could Mrs. 
 Baines stoop to assure her sister that she was incapahle of 
 preferring such a charge. And the sheer, immense criminal 
 folly of Sophia could not even be referred to : it was unspeak- 
 able. So the interview proceeded, lamely, clumsily, ircon- 
 sequently, leading to naught. 
 
 Sophia was gone. She was gone with Gerald Scales. 
 
132 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 That beautiful child, that incalculable, untamable, impossible 
 creature, had. committed the final folly ; without pretext or 
 excuse, and with what elaborate deceit ! Yes, without excuse ! 
 She had not been treated harshly ; she had had a degree of 
 liberty which would have astounded and shocked her grand- 
 mothers ; she had been petted, humoured, spoilt. And her 
 answer was to disgrace the family by an act as irrevocable 
 as it was utterly vicious. If among her desires was the 
 d^re to humiliate those majesties, her mother and Aunt 
 Harriet, she would have been content could she have seen 
 them on the. sofa there, humbled, shamed, mortally wounded! 
 Ah, the monstrous Chinese cruelty of youth ! 
 
 What was to be done ? Tell dear Constance ? No, this 
 was not, at the moment, an affair for the younger generation. 
 It was too new and raw for the younger generation. More- 
 over, capable, proud, and experienced as they were, they felt 
 the need of a man's voice, and a man's hard, callous ideas. 
 It was a case for Mr. Critchlow. Maggie was sent to fetch 
 him, with a particular request that he should come to the side- 
 door. He came expectant, with the pleasurable anticipation 
 of disaster, and he was not disappointed. He passed with 
 the sisters the happiest hour that had fallen to him for years. 
 Quickly he arranged the alternatives for them. Would they 
 tell the police, or would they take the risks of waiting? 
 They shied away, but with fierce brutality he brought them 
 again and again to the immediate point of decision. . . . Well, 
 they could not tell the police ! They simply could not. . . . 
 Then they must face another danger. ... He had no mercy 
 for them. And while he was torturing them there arrived 
 a telegram, despatched from Charing Cross, " I am all right, 
 Sophia." That proved, at any rate, that the child was not 
 heartless, not merely careless. 
 
 Only yesterday, it seemed to Mrs. Baines, she had borne 
 Sophia; only yesterday she was a baby, a 'schoolgirl to be 
 smacked. The years rolled up in a few hours. And now 
 she was sending telegrams from a place called Charing Cross ! 
 How unlike was the hand of the telegram to Sophia's hand ! 
 How mysteriously curt and inhuman was that official hand, 
 as Mrs. Baines stared at it through red, wet eyes 1 
 
 Mr. Critchlow said some one should go to Manchester, to 
 ascertain about Scales. He went himself, that afternoon, and 
 returned with the news that an aunt of Scales hadv^acently 
 
A DEFEAT 133 
 
 died, leaving him twelve thousand pounds, and jthat he had, 
 after quarrelling with his uncle Boldero, abandoned Birkin- 
 shaws at an hour's notice and vanished with his inheritance. 
 
 " It's as plain as a pikestaflf," said Mr. Critchlow. " I could 
 ha' warned ye o' all this years ago, ever since she killed her 
 father 1 " 
 
 Mr. Critchlow left nothing unsaid. 
 
 During the night Mrs. Baines lived through all Sophia's 
 life, lived through it more intensely than ever Sophia had 
 done. 
 
 The next day people began to know. A whisper almost 
 inaudible went across the Square, and into the town : and in 
 the stillness every one heard it " Sophia Baines run off with 
 a commercial ! " 
 
 In another fortnight a note came, also dated from London. 
 
 " Dear Mother, I am married to^ Gerald Scales. Please 
 don't worry about me. We are going abroad. Your affec- 
 tionate Sophia. Love to Constance." No tear-stains on that 
 pale blue sheet I No sign of agitation ! 
 
 And Mrs. Baines said : " My life is over." It was, thouglT/ 
 she was scarcely fifty. She felt old, old and beaten. She had' 
 fought and been vanquished. The everlasting purpose ha^; 
 been too much for her. Virtue had gone out of her — thei 
 virtue to hold up her head and look the Square in the face.l 
 She, the wife of John Baines 1 She, a Syme of Axe ! -^ 
 
 Old houses, in the_course_of. their. history, see sad sights, ■ 
 and 'never forget them i And ever since, in the solemn 
 physiognomy of the triple house of John Baines at the corner 
 of St. Luke's Square and King Street, have remained the 
 traces of the sight it saw on the morning of the afternoon 
 when Mr. and Mrs. Povey returned from their honeymoon — 
 the sight of Mrs. Baines getting into the waggonette for Axe ; 
 Mrs. Baines, encumbered with trunks and parcels, leaving the 
 scene of her struggles and her defeat, whither she had once 
 come as slim as a" wand, to return stout and heavy, and heavy- 
 hearted, to her childhood ; content to live with her grandiose 
 sister until such time as she should be ready for burial 1 The 
 grimy and impassive old house perhaps heard her heart saying : 
 " Only yesterday they were little girls, ever so tiny, and 
 now — " The driving-oflF of a waggonette can be a dreadful 
 thing. 
 
BOOK II 
 
 CONSTANCE 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 REVOLUTION 
 
 " Well," said Mr. Povey, rising from the rocking-chair that in 
 a previous age had been John Baines's, "I've got to make 
 a start some time, so I may as well begin now I " 
 
 And he went from the parlour into the shop. Constance's 
 eye followed him as far as the door, where their glances met 
 for an instant in the transient gaze which expresses the tender- 
 ness of people who feel more than they kiss. " • 
 
 It was on the morning of this day that Mrs. Baines, relin- 
 quishing the sovereignty of St. Luke's Square, had gone to live 
 as a younger sister in the house of Harriet Maddack at Axe. 
 Constance guessed little of the secret anguish of that departure, 
 She only knew that it was just like her mother, having perfectly 
 arranged the entire house for the arrival of the honeymoon 
 couple from Buxton, to flit early away so as to spare the natural 
 blushing diffidence of the said couple. It was like her mother's 
 commonsense and her mother's sympathetic comprehension. 
 Further, Constance did not pursue her mother's feelings, being 
 far too busy with her own. She sat there full of new know- 
 ledge and new importance, brimming with experience and 
 strange, unexpected aspirations, purposes, yes — and cunnings 1 
 And yet, though the very curves of her cheeks seemed to be 
 mysteriously altering, the old Constance still lingered in that 
 frame, an innocent soul hesitating to spread its wings and quit 
 
 «34 
 
REVOLUTION 135 
 
 for ever the body which had been its home ; you could see the 
 timid thing peeping wistfully out of the eyes of the married 
 woman. 
 
 Constance rang the bell for Mag!j;ie to clear the table ; and 
 as she did so she had the illusion that she was not really a 
 married woman and a house-mistress, but only a kind of 
 counterfeit. She did most fervently hope that all would go 
 right in the house — at any rate until she had grown more 
 accustomed to her situation. 
 
 The hope was to be disappointed. Maggie's rather silly, 
 obsequious smile concealed but for a moment the ineffable 
 tragedy that had lain in wait for unarmed Constance. 
 
 " If you please, Mrs. Povey," said Maggie, as she crushed 
 cups together on the tin tray with her great, red hands, which 
 always looked like something out of a butcher's shop ; then a 
 pause, " Will you please accept of this ? " 
 
 Now, before the wedding Maggie had already, with tears of 
 aifection, given Constance a pair of blue glass vases (in order 
 to purchase which she had been obliged to ask for special per- 
 mission to go out), and Constance wondered what was coming 
 now from Maggie's pocket. A imall piece of folded paper 
 came from Maggie's pocket. Constance accepted of it, and 
 read : " I begs to give one month's notice to leave. Signed 
 Maggie. June lo, 1867." 
 
 " Maggie ! " exclaimed the old Constance, terrified by this 
 incredible occurrence, ere the married woman could strangle her. 
 
 " I never give notice before, Mrs. Povey," said Maggie, 
 " so I don't know as I know how it ought for be done — not 
 rightly. But I hope as you'll accept of it, Mrs. Povey." 
 
 " Oh ! of course," said Mrs. Povey, primly, just as if 
 Maggie was not the central supporting pillar of the house, just 
 as if Maggie had not assisted at her birth, just as if the end of 
 the world had not abruptly been announced, just as if St. 
 Luke's Square were not inconceivable without Maggie. " But 
 why—" 
 
 "Well, Mrs. Povey, I've been a-thinking it over in my 
 kitchen, and I said to myself: 'If there's going to be one 
 change there'd better be two,' I says. Not but what I 
 wouldn't work my fingers to the bone for ye. Miss Constance." 
 
 Here Maggie began to cry into the tray. 
 
 Constance looked at her. Despite the special muslin of 
 that day she had traces of the slatternliness of which Mrs. 
 
136 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Baines had never been able to cure her. She was over forty, 
 big, gawky. She had no figure, no charms of any kind. She 
 was what was left of a woman after twenty-two years in the 
 cave of a philanthropic family. And in her cave she had 
 actually been thinking things over ! Constance detected for 
 the first time, beneath the dehumanized drudge, the stirrings 
 of a separate and perhaps capricious individuality. Maggie's 
 engagements had never been real to her employers. Within 
 the house she had never been, in practice, anything but 
 ' Maggie ' — an organism. And now she was permitting herself 
 ideas about changes ! 
 
 " You'll soon be suited with another, Mrs. Povey," said 
 Maggie. "There's many a — many a — " She burst into 
 sobs. 
 
 " But if you really want to leave, what are you crying for, 
 Maggie? " asked Mrs. Povey, at her wisest. " Have you told 
 mother?" 
 
 " No, miss," Maggie whimpered, absently wiping her 
 wrinkled cheeks with ineffectual muslin. " I couldn't seem to 
 fancy telling your mother. And as you're the mistress now, I 
 thought as I'd save it for you when you come home. I hope 
 you'll excuse me, Mrs. Povey." 
 
 " Of course I'm very sorry. You've been a very good 
 servant. And in these days — " 
 
 The child had acquired this turn of speech from her mother. 
 It did not appear to occur to either of them that they were 
 living in the sixties. 
 
 " Thank ye, miss." 
 
 " And what are you thinking of doing, Maggie ? You know 
 you won't get many places like this." 
 
 " To tell ye the truth, Mrs. Povey, I'm going to get married 
 mysen." 
 
 " Indeed 1 " murmured Constance, with the perfunctoriness 
 of habit in replying to these tidings. 
 
 " Oh 1 but I am, mum," Maggie insisted. " It's all settled. 
 Mr. Hollins, mum." 
 
 " Not Hollins, the fish-hawker 1 " 
 
 " Yes, mum. I seem to fancy him. You don't remember 
 as him and me was engaged in '48. He was my first, like. I 
 broke it off because he was in that Chartist lot, and I knew as 
 Mr. Baines would never stand that. Now he's asked me again. 
 He's been a widower this long time." 
 
REVOLITTION 137 
 
 "I'm sure I hope you'll be happy, Maggie. But what 
 about his habits ? " 
 
 " He won't have no habits with me, Mrs. Povey." 
 
 A woman was definitely emerging from the drudge. 
 
 When Maggie, having entirely ceased sobbing, had put the 
 folded cloth in the table-drawer and departed with the tray, her 
 mistress became frankly the girl again. No primness about 
 her as she stood alone there in the parlour; no pretence that 
 Maggie's notice to leave was an everyday document, to be 
 casually glanced at as one glances at an unpaid bill ! She 
 would be compelled to find a new servant, making solemn 
 inquiries into character, and to train the new servant, and to 
 talk' to her from heights from which she had never addressed 
 Maggie. At that moment she had an illusion that there were 
 no other available, suitable servants in the whole world. And 
 the arranged marriage ? She felt that this time — the thirteenth 
 or fourteenth time — the engagement was serious and would 
 only end at the altar. The vision of Maggie and HoUins 
 at the altar shocked her. Marriage was a series of phenomena, 
 , and a general state, very holy and wonderful — too sacred, 
 someho*, for such creatures as Maggie and Hollins. Her 
 vague, instinctive revolt against such a usage of matrimony 
 centred round the idea of a strong, eternal smell of fish. 
 However, the projecied outrage on a hallowed institution 
 troubled her much less than the imminent problem of domestic 
 service. 
 
 She ran into the shop — or she would have run if she had 
 not checked her girlishness betimes — and on her lips, ready 
 to be whispered importantly into a husband's astounded ear, 
 were the words, " Maggie has given notice ! Yes ! Truly ! " 
 But Samuel Povey was engaged. He was leaning over the 
 counter and staring at an outspread paper upon which a 
 certain Mr. Yardley was making strokes with a thick pencil. 
 Mr. Yardley, who had a long red beard, painted houses and 
 rooms. She knew him only by sight. In her mind she always 
 associated him with the sign over his premises in Trafalgar 
 Road, "Yardley Bros., Authorised plumbers. Painters. 
 Decorators. Paper-hangers. Facia writers." For years, in 
 childhood, she had passed that sign without knowing what 
 sort of things ' Bros,' and ' Facia ' were, and what was the 
 mysterious similarity between a plumber and a version of the 
 Bible. She could ftot- interrupt her husband, he was wholly 
 
138 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 absorbed; nor could she stay in the shop (which appeared 
 just a little smaller than usual), for that would have meant 
 an unsuccessful endeavour to front the young lady-assistants 
 as though nothing in particular had happened to her. So 
 she went sedately up the showroom stairs and thus to the 
 bedroom floors of the house — her house ! Mrs. Povey's house ! 
 She even climbed to Constance's old bedroom ; her mother 
 had stripped the bed — that was all, except a slight diminution 
 of this room, corresponding to that of the shop ! Then to the 
 drawing-room. In the recess outside the drawing-room door 
 the black box of silver plate still lay. She had expected her 
 mother to take it; but no! Assuredly her mother was one 
 to do things handsomely — when she did them. In the drawing- 
 room, not a tassel of an antimacassar touched ! Yes, the fire- 
 screen, the luscious bunch of roses on an expanse of mustard, 
 which Constance had worked for her mother years ago, was 
 gone ! That her mother should have clung to just that one 
 souvenir, out of all the heavy opulence of the drawing-room, 
 touched Constance intimately. She perceived that if she 
 could not talk to her husband she must write to her mother. 
 And she sat down at the oval table and wrote, " Darling 
 mother, I am sure you will be very surprised to hear . . , 
 She means it. ... I think she is making a serious mistake. 
 Ought I to put an advertisement in the Signal, or will it do 
 if . . . Please write by return. We are back and have 
 enjoyed ourselves very much. Sam says he enjoys getting 
 up late. . . ." And so on to the last inch of the fourth 
 scolloped page. 
 
 She was obliged to revisit the shop for a stamp, stamps 
 being kept in Mr. Povey's desk in the corner — ^a high desk, 
 at which you stood. Mr. Povey was now in earnest converse 
 with Mr. Yardley at the door, and twilight, which began a 
 full hour earlier in the shop than in the Square, had cast faint 
 shadows in corners behind counters. 
 
 "Will you just run out with this to the pillar. Miss Dadd?" 
 
 " With pleasure, Mrs. Povey." 
 
 "Where are you going to?" Mr. Povey interrupted his 
 conversation to stop the flying girl. 
 
 " She's just going to the post for me," ConsUnce called 
 out from the region of the till, 
 
 "Oh! All right!" 
 
 A trifle! A nothing! Yet somehow, in the quiet customerless 
 
REVOLUTION 139 
 
 shsp, the episode, with the scarce perceptible difference in 
 Samuel's tone at his second remark, was delicious to Con- 
 stance, Somehow it was the real beginning of her wifehood. 
 (There had been about nine other real beginnings in the past 
 fortnight.) 
 
 Mr. Povey came in to supper, laden with ledgers and similar 
 works which Constance had never even pretended to under- 
 stand. It was a sign from him that the honeymoon was over. 
 He was proprietor now, and his ardour for ledgers most justi- 
 fiable. Still, there was the question of her servant. 
 
 " Never ! " he exclaimed, when she told him all about the 
 end of the world. A 'never' which expressed extreme 
 astonishment and the liveliest concern ! 
 
 But Constance had anticipated that he would have been 
 just a little more knocked down, bowled over, staggered, 
 stunned, flabbergasted. , In a swift gleam of insight she saw 
 that she had been in danger of forgetting her rtle of experi- 
 enced, capable married woman. 
 
 " I shall have to set about getting a fresh one," she said 
 hastily, with an admirable assumption of light and easy 
 casualness. 
 
 Mr. Povey seemed to think that Hollins would suit Maggie 
 pretty well. He made no remark to the betrothed when she 
 answered the final bell of the night 
 
 He opened his ledgers, whistling. 
 
 " I think I shall go up, dear," said Constance. " I've a 
 lot of things to put away." 
 
 " Do," said he. " Call out when you've donfe" 
 
 II 
 
 " Sam ! " she cried from the top of the crooked stairs. 
 
 No answer. The door at the foot was closed. 
 
 « Sam ! " 
 
 '« Hello ? " Distantly, faintly. 
 
 " I've done all I'm going to do to-night." 
 
 And she ran back along the corridor, a white figure in the 
 deep gloom, and hurried into bed, and drew the clothes up to 
 her chin. 
 
 In the life of a bride there are some dramatic moments. 
 If she has married the industrious apprentice, one of those 
 
140 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 moments occurs when she first occupies the sacred bed- 
 chamber of her ancestors, and the bed on which she was born. 
 Her parents' room had always been to Constance, if not 
 sacred, at least invested with a certain moral solemnity. She 
 could not enter it as she would enter another room. The 
 course of nature, with its succession of deaths, conceptions, 
 and births, slowly makes such a room august with a mysterious 
 quality which interprets the grandeur of mere existence and 
 imposes itself on all. Constance had the strangest sensations 
 in that bed, whose heavy dignity of ornament symbolized a past 
 age ; sensations of sacrilege and trespass, of being a naughty 
 girl to whom punishment would accrue for this shocking freak. 
 Not since she was quite tiny had she slept in that bed — one 
 night with her mother, before her father's seizure, when he had 
 been away. What a limitless, unfathomable bed it was then I 
 Now it was just a bed — so she had to tell herself — like any 
 other bed. The tiny child that, safely touching its mother, 
 had slept in the vast expanse, seemed to her now a pathetic 
 little thing ; its image made her feel melancholy. And her 
 mind dwelt on sad events : the death of her father, the flight 
 of darling Sophia; the immense grief, and the exile, of her 
 mother. She esteemed that she knew what life was, and that 
 it was grim. And she sighed. But the sigh was an affectation, 
 meant partly to convince herself that she was grown-up, and 
 partly to keep her in countenance in the intimidating bed. 
 This melancholy was factitious, was less than transient foam 
 on the deep sea of her joy. Death and sorrow and sin were 
 dim shapes to her ; the ruthless egoism of happiness blew them 
 away with a puff, and their wistful faces vanished. To see her 
 there in the bed, framed in mahogany and tassels, lying on her 
 side, with her young glowing cheeks, and honest but not artless 
 gaze, and the rich curve of her hip lifting the counterpane, 
 one would have said that she had never heard of aught but 
 love. 
 
 Mr. Povey entered, the bridegroom, quickly, firmly, carrying 
 it off rather well, but still self-conscious. "After all," his 
 shoulders were trying to say, " what's the difference between 
 this bedroom and the bedroom of a boarding-house ? Indeed, 
 ought we not to feel more at home here ? Besides, confound 
 it, we've been married a fortnight ! " 
 
 " Doesn't it give you a funny feeling, sleeping in this room ? 
 It does me," said Constance. Women, even experiencei 
 
REVOLUTION 141 
 
 women, are so foolishly frank. They have no decency, no 
 self-respect. 
 
 " Really ? " replied Mr. Povey, with loftiness, as who should 
 say ; " What an extraordinary thing that a reasonable creature 
 can have such fancies ! Now to me this room is exactly like 
 any other room." And he added aloud, glancing away from 
 the glass, where he was unfastening his necktie : " It's not a 
 bad room at all." This, with the judicial air of an auctioneer. 
 
 Not for an instant did he deceive Constance, who read his 
 real sensations with accuracy. But his futile poses did not in 
 the slightest degree lessen her respect for him. On the con- 
 trary, she admired him the more for them ; they were a sort of 
 embroidery on the solid stuff of his character. At that period 
 he could not do wrong for her. The basis of her regard for 
 him was, she often thought, his honesty, his industry, his 
 genuine kindliness of act, his grasp of the business, his per- 
 severance, his passion for doing at once that which had to be 
 done. She had the greatest admiration for his qualities, and 
 he was in her eyes an indivisible whole; she could not admire 
 one part of him and frown upon another. Whatever he did 
 was good because he did it. She knew that some people were 
 apt to smile at certain phases of his individuality ; she knew 
 that far down in her mother's heart was a suspicion that she 
 had married ever so little beneath her. But this knowledge 
 did not disturb her. She had no doubt as to the correctness 
 of her own estimate. 
 
 Mr. Povey was an exceedingly methodical person, and he 
 was also one of those persons who must always be * before- 
 hand ' with time. Thus at night he would arrange his raiment 
 so that in the morning it might be reassumed in the minimum 
 of minutes. He was not a man, for example, to leave the 
 changing of studs from one shirt to another till the morrow. 
 Had it been practicable, he would have brushed his hair the 
 night before. Constance already loved to watch his meticulous 
 preparations. She saw him now go into his old bedroom and 
 return with a paper collar, which he put on the dressing-table 
 next to a black necktie. His shop-suit was laid out on a 
 chair. 
 
 " Oh, Sam 1 " she exclaimed iripulsively, " you surely 
 aren't going to begin wearing those horrid paper collars 
 again I " During the honeymoon he had worn linen collars. 
 
 Her tone was perfectly gentle, but the remark, nevertheless. 
 
142 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 showed a lack of tact. It implied that all his life Mr. Povey 
 had been enveloping his neck in something which was horrid. 
 Like all persons with a tendency to fall into the ridiculous, 
 Mr. Povey was exceedingly sensitive to personal criticisms. 
 He flushed darkly. 
 
 " I didn't know they were ' horrid,' " he snapped. He was 
 hurt and angry. Anger had surprised him unawares. 
 
 Both of them suddenly saw that they were standing on the 
 edge of a chasm, and drew back. They had imagined them- 
 selves to be wandering safely in a flowered meadow, and here 
 was this bottomless chasm 1 It was most disconcerting. 
 
 Mr. Povey's hand hovered undecided over the collar. 
 " However — " he muttered. 
 
 She could feel that he was trying with all his might to be 
 gentle and pacific. And she was aghast at her own stupid 
 clumsiness, she so experienced ! 
 
 " Just as you like, dear," she said quickly. " Please 1 " 
 
 " Oh no ! " And he did his best to smile, and went off 
 gawkily with the collar and came back with a linen one. 
 
 Her passion for him burned stronger than ever. She knew 
 then that she did not love him for his good qualities, but for 
 something boyish and naive that there was about him, an 
 indescribable something that occasionally, when his face was 
 close to hers, made her dizzy. 
 
 The chasm had disappeared. In such moments, when 
 each must pretend not to have seen or even suspected the 
 chasm, small-talk is essential. 
 
 " Wasn't that Mr. Yardley in the shop to-night ? " began 
 Constance. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "What did he want?" 
 
 *' I'd sent for him. He's going to paint us a signboard." 
 
 Useless for Samuel to make-believe that nothing in this 
 world is more ordinary than a signboard. 
 
 " Oh I " murmured ConsTarSg: She said no more, the 
 episode of the paper collar having weakened her self- 
 confidence. 
 
 But a signboard ! 
 
 What with servants, chasms, and signboards, Constance 
 considered that her life as a married woman would not be 
 deficient in excitement. Long afterwards, she fell asleep, 
 thinking of Sophia. 
 
REVOLUTION 143 
 
 III 
 
 A few days later Constance was arranging the more 
 precious of her wedding presents in the parlour; some had 
 to be wrapped in tissue and in brown paper and then tied 
 . with string and labelled ; others had special cases of their 
 own, leather without and velvet within. Among the latter was 
 the resplendent egg-stand holding twelve silver-gilt egg-cups 
 and twelve chased spoons to match, presented by Aunt 
 Harriet. In the Five Towns' phrase, 'it must have cost 
 money.' Even if Mr. and Mrs. Povey had ten guests or ten 
 children, and all the twelve of them were simultaneously 
 gripped by a desire to eat eggs at breakfast or tea — even in 
 this remote contingency Aunt Harriet would have been pained 
 to see the egg-stand in use ; such treasures are not designed 
 for use. The presents, few in number, were mainly of this 
 character, because, owing to her mother's heroic cession of 
 the entire interior, Constance already possessed every neces- 
 sary. The fewness of the presents was accounted for by the 
 fact that the wedding had been strictly private and had taken 
 place at Axe. There is nothing like secrecy in marriage for 
 discouraging the generous impulses of one's friends. It was 
 Mrs. Baines, abetted by both the chief parties, who had 
 decided that the wedding should be private and secluded. 
 Sophia's wedding had been altogether too private and 
 secluded ; but the casting of a veil over Constance's (whose 
 union was irreproachable) somehow justified, after the event, 
 the circumstances of Sophia's, indicating as it did that Mrs. 
 Baines believed in secret weddings on principle. In such 
 matters Mrs. Baines was capable of extraordinary subtlety. 
 
 And while Constance was thus taking her wedding presents 
 with due seriousness, Maggie was cleaning the steps that led 
 from the pavement of King Street to the side-door, and the 
 door was ajar. It was a fine June morning. 
 
 Suddenly, over the sound of scouring, Constance heard a 
 dog's low growl and then the hoarse voice of a man : 
 
 " Mester in, wench ? " 
 
 " Happen he is, happen he isn't," came Maggie's answer. 
 She had no fancy for being called wench. 
 
 Constance went to the door, not merely from curiosity, 
 but from a feeling that her authority and her responsibilities 
 
144 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 as house-mistress extended to the pavement surrounding the 
 house. 
 
 The famous James Boon, of Buck Row, the greatest dog- 
 fancier in the Five Towns, stood at the bottom of the steps : 
 a tall, fat man, clad in stiff, stained brown and smoking a black 
 clay pipe less than three inches long. Behind him attended 
 two bull-dogs. 
 
 " Morning, missis ! " cried Boon, cheerfully. " I've heard 
 tell as th' mister is looking out for a dog, as you might say." 
 
 " I don't stay here with them animals a-sniffing at me — no, 
 that I don't ! " observed Maggie, picking herself up. 
 
 " Is he ? " Constance hesitated. She knew that Samuel 
 had vaguely referred to dogs ; she had not, however, imagined 
 that he regarded a dog as aught but a beautiful dream. No 
 dog had ever put paw into that house, and it seemed impossible 
 that one should ever do so. As for those beasts of prey on 
 the pavement • . . ! 
 
 " Ay ! " said James Boon, calmly. 
 
 " I'll tell him you're here," said Constance. " But I don't 
 know if he's at liberty. He seldom is at this time of day. 
 Maggie, you'd better come in." 
 
 She went slowly to the shop, full of fear for the future, 
 
 "Sam," she whispered to her husband, who was writing 
 at his desk, " here's a man come to see you about a dog." 
 
 Assuredly he was taken aback. Still, he behaved with 
 much presence of mind. 
 
 " Oh, about a dog ! Who is it ? " 
 
 " It's that Jim Boon. He says he's heard you want one." 
 
 The renowned name of Jim Boon gave him pause ; but he 
 had to go through with the afiair, and he went through with 
 it, though nervously. Constance followed his agitated footsteps 
 to the side-door. 
 
 " Morning, Boon." 
 
 " Morning, mester." 
 
 They began to talk dogs, Mr. Povey, for his part, with due 
 caution. 
 
 " Now, there's a dog ! " said Boon, pointing to one of the 
 bull-dogs, a miracle of splendid ugliness. 
 
 " Yes," responded Mr. Povey, insincerely. " He is a 
 beauty. What's it worth now, at a venture ? " 
 
 " I'll tak' a hundred and twenty sovereigns for her," said 
 Boon. " Th' other's a bit cheaper — a hundred." 
 
REVOLUTION 145 
 
 " Oh, Sam ! " gasped Constance. 
 
 And even Mr. Tovey nearly lost his nerve. " That" s more 
 than I want to give," said he timidly. 
 
 •' But look at her ! " Boon persisted, roughly snatching up 
 the more expensive animal, and displaying her cannibal teeth. 
 
 Mr. Povey shook his head. Constance glanced away. 
 
 " That's not quite the sort of dog I want," said Mr. Povey. 
 
 " Fox-terrier ? " 
 
 " Yes, that's more like," Mr. Povey agreed eagerly. 
 
 "What'llyerunto?" 
 
 " Oh," said Mr. Povey, largely, " I don't know." 
 
 " Will ye run to a tenner ? " 
 
 •' I thought of something cheaper." 
 
 " Well, hoo much ? Out wi' it, mester." 
 
 " Not more than two pounds," said Mr. Povey. He would 
 have said one pound had he dared. The prices of dogs 
 amazed him. 
 
 " I thowt it was a dog as ye wanted I " said Boon. " Look 
 'ere, mester. Come up to my yard and see what I've got." 
 
 " I will," said Mr. Povey. 
 
 " And bring missis along too. Now, what about a cat for 
 th' missis ? Or a gold-fish ? " 
 
 The end of the episode was that a young lady aged some 
 twelve *months entered the Povey household on triaL Her 
 exiguous legs twinkled all over the parlour, and she had the 
 oddest appearance in the parlour. But she was so confiding, 
 so affectionate, so timorous, and her black nose was so icy in 
 that hot weather, that Constance loved her violently within an 
 hour. Mr. Povey made rules for her. He explained to her 
 that she must never, never go into the shop. But she went, 
 and he whipped her to the squealing point, and Constance 
 cried an instant, while admiring her husband's firmness. 
 
 The dog was not alL 
 
 On another day Constance, prying into the least details 
 of the parlour, discovered a box of cigars inside the lid of 
 the harmonium, on the keyboard. She was so unaccustomed 
 to cigars that at first she did not realize what the object was. 
 Her father had never smoked, nor drunk intoxicants ; nor had 
 Mr. Critchlow. Nobody had ever smoked in that house, 
 where tobacco had always been regarded as equally licentious 
 with cards, 'the devil's playthings.' Certainly Samuel had 
 never smoked in the house, though the sight of the cigar-box 
 
 L 
 
146 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 reminded Constance of an occasion when her mother had 
 announced an incredulous suspicion that Mr. Povey, fresh 
 from an excursion into the world on a Thursday evening, 
 ' smelt of smoke.' 
 
 She closed the harmonium and kept silence. 
 That very night, coming suddenly into the parlour, she 
 caught Samuel at the harmonium. The lid went down with 
 a resonant bang that awoke sympathetic vibrations in every 
 corner of the room. 
 
 " What is it?" Constance inquired, jumping. 
 " Oh, nothing !" replied Mr. Povey, carelessly. 
 Each was deceiving the other : Mr. Povey hid his crime, 
 and Constance hid her knowledge of his crime. False, false ! 
 But this is what marriage is. 
 
 And the next day Constagce had a visit in the shop from 
 a possible new servant, recommended to her by. Mr. HoU, 
 the grocer. 
 
 "Will you please step this way?" said Constance, with 
 affable primness, steeped in the novel sense of what it is to 
 be the sole responsible mistress of a vast household. She 
 preceded the girl to the parlour, and as they passed the 
 open door of Mr. Povey's cutting-out room, Constance had 
 the clear vision and titillating odour of her husband smoking 
 a cigar. He was in his shirt-sleeves, calmly cutting out, and 
 Fan (the lady companion), at watch on the bench, yapped at 
 the possible new servant. 
 
 " I think I shall try that girl," said she to Samuel at tea. 
 She said nothing as to the cigar ; nor did he. 
 
 On the following evening, after supper, Mr. Povey burst 
 out : 
 
 " I think I'll have a weed 1 You didn't know I smoked, 
 did you?" 
 
 Thus Mr. Povey came out in his true colours as a blood, 
 a blade, and a gay spark. 
 
 But dogs and cigars, disconcerting enough in their degree, 
 were to the signboard, when the signboard at last came, as 
 skim milk is to hot brandy. |lt was the signboard that, more 
 startlingly than anything else, marked the dawn of a new era 
 in St. Luke's Square^ Four men spent a day and a half in 
 fixing it; they had ladders, ropes, and pulleys, and two of 
 them dined on the flat lead roof of the projecting shop- 
 windows. The signboard was thirty-five feet long and two 
 
REVOLUTION 147 
 
 feet in depth ; over its centre was a semicircle about three 
 feet in radius ; this semicircle bore the legend, judiciously 
 disposed, " S. Povey. Late." All the signboard proper was 
 devoted to the words, " John Baines," in gold letters a foot 
 and a half high, on a green ground. 
 
 The Square watched and wondered ; and murmured : 
 « Well, bless us ! What next ? " 
 
 It was agreed that in giving paramount importance to the 
 name of his late father-in-law, Mr. Povey had displayed a very 
 nice feeling. 
 
 Some asked with glee : " What'U the old lady have to say?" 
 
 Constance asked herself this, but not with glee. When 
 Constance walked down the Square homewards, she could 
 scarcely bear to look at the sign; the thought of what her 
 mother might say frightened her. Her mother's first visit of 
 state was imminent, and Aunt Harriet was to accompany her, 
 Constance felt almost sick as the day approached. When she 
 faintly hinted her apprehensions to Samuel, he demanded, as 
 if surprised — 
 
 " Haven't you mentioned it in one of your letters ? " 
 
 "Oh no/" 
 
 " If that's all," said he, with bravado, " I'll write and tell 
 her myself." # 
 
 IV 
 
 So that Mrs. Baines was duly apprised of the signboard 
 before her arrival. The letter written by her to Constance 
 after receiving Samuel's letter, which was merely the amiable 
 epistle of a son-in-law knxious to be a little more than correct, 
 contained no reference to the signboard. This silence, how- 
 ever, did not in the least allay Constance's apprehensions as to 
 what might occur when her mother and Samuel met beneath 
 the signboard itself. It was therefore with a fearful as well as 
 an eager, loving heart that Constance opened her side-door and 
 ran down the steps when the waggonette stopped in King Street 
 on the Thursday morning of the great visit of the sisters. But 
 a surprise awaited her. Aunt Harriet had not come. Mrs. 
 Baines explained, as she soundly kissed her daughter, that at 
 the last moment Aunt Harriet had not felt well enough to 
 undertake the JQumey, She sent her fondest love, and cake.. 
 
148 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Her pains had recurred. It was these mysterious pains which 
 had prevented the sisters from coming to Bursley earlier. The 
 word "cancer" — the continual terror of stout women — had 
 been on their lips, without having been actually uttered ; then 
 there was a surcease, and each was glad that she had refrained 
 from the dread syllables. In view of the recurrence, it was 
 not unnatural that Mrs. Baines's vigorous cheerfulness should 
 be somewhat forced. 
 
 " What is it, do you think ? " Constance inquired. 
 
 Mrs. Baines pushed her lips out and raised her eyebrows — 
 a gesture which meant that the pains might mean God knew 
 what. 
 
 " I hope she'll be all right alone," observed Constance. 
 
 " Of course," said Mrs. Baines, quickly. " But you don't 
 suppose I was going to disappoint you, do you?" she added, 
 looking round as if to defy the fates in general. 
 
 This speech, and its tone, gave intense pleasure to Con- 
 stance; and, laden with parcels, they mounted the stairs 
 together, very content with each other, very happy in the 
 discovery that they were still mother and daughter, very 
 intimate in an inarticulate way. 
 
 Constance had imagined long, detailed, absorbing, and 
 highly novel conversations between herself and her mother 
 upon this their first meeting after her marriage. But alone in 
 the bedroom, and with a clear half-hour to dinner, they neither 
 ot them seemed to have a great deal to impart. 
 
 Mrs. Baines slowly^ removed her light mantle and laid it 
 with precautions on the white damask counterpme. Then, 
 fingering her weeds, she glanced about the chamlier. Nothing 
 was changed. Though Constance had, previous to her 
 marriage, envisaged certain alterations, she had determined to 
 postpone them, feeUng that one revoluuonist in a house was 
 enough. 
 
 "Well, my chick, you all right?" said Mrs. Baines, with 
 hearty and direct energy, gazing straight into her daughter's eyes. 
 
 Constance perceived that the question was universal in its 
 comprehensiveness, the one unique expression that the mother 
 would give to her maternal concern and curiosity, and that it 
 condensed into six words as much interest as would have over- 
 flowed into a whole day of the chatter of some mothers. She 
 met the candid glance, flushing. 
 
 " Ohyes I " she answered with ecstatic fervour. " Perfectly 1 " 
 
REVOLUTION 149 
 
 And Mrs. Baines nodded, as if dismissing that. " You're 
 stouter," said she, curtly, " If you aren't careful you'll be as 
 big as any of us." 
 
 "Oh, mother!" 
 
 The interview fell to a lower plane of emotion. It even fell 
 as far as Maggie. What chiefly preoccupied Constance was a 
 subtle change in her mother. She found her mother fussy in 
 trifles. Her manner of laying down her mantle, of smoothing 
 out her gloves, and her anxiety that her bonnet should not 
 come to harm, were rather trying, were perhaps, in the very 
 slightest degree, pitiable. It was nothing; it was barely 
 perceptible,_and yet it was enough to alter Constance's mental 
 attitude to her mother. " Poor dear ! " thought Constance. 
 " I'm afraid she's not what she was." Cincredible that her 
 mother could have aged in less than six weeks I Constance 
 did not allow for the chemistry that had beeiT going on in 
 herself. 
 
 The encounter between Mrs. Baines and her son-in-law 
 was of the most satisfactory nature. He was waiting in the 
 parlour for her to descend. He made himself exceedingly 
 agreeable, kissing her, and flattering her by his evidently 
 sincere desire to please. He explained that he had kept an 
 eye open for the waggonette, but had been called away. His 
 "Dear me !" on learning about Aunt Harriet lacked nothing 
 in conviction, though both women knew that his affection for 
 Aunt Harriet would never get the better of his reason. To 
 Constance, her husband's behaviour was marvellously perfect. 
 She had not suspected him to be such a man of the world. 
 And her eyes said to her mother, quite unconsciously : " You 
 see, after all, you didn't rate Sam as high as you ought to have 
 done. Now you see your mistake." 
 
 As they sat waiting for dinner, Constance and Mrs. Baines 
 on the sofa, and Samuel on the edge of the nearest rocking- 
 chair, a small scuffling noise was heard outside the door which 
 gave on the kitchen steps, the door yielded to pressure, and 
 Fan rushed importantly in, deranging mats. Fan's nose had 
 been hinting to her that she was behind the times, not up-to- 
 date in the affairs of the household, and she had hurried from 
 the kitchen to make inquiries. It occurred to hpr en route 
 that she had been washed that morning. The spectacle of 
 Mrs. Baines stopped her. She stood, with her legs slightly 
 outstretched, her nose lifted, her ears raking forward, her 
 
150 THE OLD ^VIVES' TALE 
 
 bright eyes blinking, and her tail undecided. " I was sure I'd 
 never smelt anything like that before," she was saying to 
 herself, as she stared at Mrs. Baines. 
 
 And Mrs, Baines, staring at Fan, had a similar though not 
 the same sentiment. The silence was terrible. Constance 
 took on the mien of a culprit, and Sam had obviously lost his 
 easy bearing of a man of the world. Mrs. Baines was merely 
 thunderstruck. 
 
 A dog! 
 
 Suddenly Fan's tail began to wag more quickly ; and then, 
 having looked in vain for encouragement to her master and 
 mistress, she gave one mighty spring and alighted in Mrs. 
 Baines's lap. It was an aim she could not have missed. 
 Constance emitted an " Oh, Fan I " of shocked terror, and 
 Samuel betrayed his nervous tension by an involuntary move- 
 ment. But Fan had settled down into that titanic lap as into 
 heaven. It was a greater flattery than Mr. Povey's. 
 
 " So your name's Fan ! " murmured Mrs. Baines, stroking 
 the animal. " You are a dear ! " 
 
 "Yes, isn't she?" said Constance, with inconceivable 
 rapidity. 
 
 The danger was past. Thus, without any explanation, Fan 
 became an accepted fact. 
 
 The next moment Maggie served the Yorkshire pudding. 
 
 " Well, Maggie," said Mrs. Baines. " So you are going to 
 get married this time ? When is it ? " 
 
 " Sunday, ma'am." 
 
 " And you leave here on Saturday ? " 
 
 " Yes, ma'am." 
 
 " Well, I must have a talk with you before I go." 
 
 During the dinner, not a word as to the signboard I 
 Several times the conversation curved towards that signboard 
 in the most alarming fashion, but invariably it curved away 
 again, like a train from another train when two trains are 
 simultaneously leaving a station. Constance had frights, so 
 serious as to destroy her anxiety about the cookery. In the 
 end she comprehended that her mother had adopted a silently 
 disapproving attitude. Fan was socially very useful throughout 
 the repast. 
 
 After dinner Constance was on pins lest Samuel should 
 light a cigar. She had not requested him not to do so, for 
 though she was entirely sure of his affection, she had already 
 
REVOLUTION 151 
 
 learned that a husband is possessed by a demon of contrariety 
 which often forces him to violate his higher feelings. However, 
 Samuel did not light a cigar. He went ofiF to superintend the 
 shutting-up of the shop, while Mrs. Baines chatted with 
 Maggie and gave her _;^5 for a wedding present. Then Mr. 
 Critchlow called to oflfer his salutations. 
 
 A little before tea Mrs. Baines announced that she would 
 go out for a short walk by herself. 
 
 " Where has she gone to ? " smiled Samuel, superiorly, as 
 with Constance at the window he watched her turn down 
 King Street towards the church. 
 
 "I expect she has gone to look at father's grave," said 
 Constance. 
 
 " Oh ! " muttered Samuel, apologetically. 
 
 Constance was mistaken. Before reaching the church, 
 Mrs. Baines deviated to the right, got into Brougham Street 
 and thence, by Acre Lane, into Oldcastle Street, whose 
 steep she climbed. Now, Oldcastle Street ends at the top of 
 •St. Luke's Square, and from the corner Mrs. Baines had an 
 excellent view of the signboard. It being Thursday afternoon, 
 scarce a soul was about. She returned to her daughter's by 
 the same extraordinary route, and said not a word on entering. 
 But she was markedly cheerful 
 
 The waggonette came after tea, and Mrs. Baines made her 
 final preparations to depart. The visit had proved a wonder- 
 ful success; it would have been utterly perfect if /Samuel had 
 not marred it at the very door of the waggonette. Somehow, 
 he contrived to be talking of Christmas. Only a person of 
 Samuel's native clumsiness would have mentioned Christmas 
 in July. 
 
 " You know you'll spend Christmas with us ! " said he into 
 the waggonette. 
 
 " Indeed I shan't ! " replied Mrs. Baines. " Aunt Harriet 
 and I will expect you at Axe. We've already settled that." 
 
 Mr. Povey bridled. " Oh no 1 " he protested, hurt by this 
 summariness. 
 
 Having had no relatives, except his cousin the confec- 
 tioner, for many years, he had dreamt of at last establishing a 
 family Christmas under his own roof, and the dream was dear 
 to him. 
 
 Mrs. Baines said nothing. " We couldn't possibly leave 
 the shop," said Mr. Povey. 
 
152 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " Nonsense ! " Mrs. Baines retorted, putting her lips 
 together. " Christmas Day is on a Monday." 
 
 The waggonette in starting jerked her head towards the 
 door and set all her curls shaking. No white in those curls 
 yet, scarcely a touch of grey ! 
 
 " I shall take good care we don't go there anyway," 
 Mr. Povey mumbled, in his heat, half to himself and half 
 to Constance. 
 
 He had stained the brightness of the day. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 CHKISTMAS AND THE FUTURE 
 I 
 
 Mr. PqvEY was playing a hymn tune on the harmonium, it 
 having been decided that no one should go to chapel. Con- 
 stance, in mourning, with a white apron over her dress, sat on 
 a hassock in front of the fire ; and near her, in a rocking-chair, 
 Mrs. Baines swayed very gently to and fro. The weather was 
 extremely cold. Mr. Povey's mittened hands were blue and 
 red ; but, like many shopkeepers, he had apparently grown 
 almost insensible to vagaries of temperature. Although the 
 fire was immense and furious, its influence, owing to the fact 
 that the mediaeval grate was designed to heat the flue rather 
 than the room, seemed to die away at the borders of the 
 fender. Constance could not have been much closer to it 
 without being a salamander. The era of good old-fashioned 
 Christmases, so agreeably picturesque for the poor, was not 
 yet at an end. 
 
 Yes, Samuel Povey had won the battle concerning the 
 locus of the family Christmas. But he had received the help 
 of a formidable ally, death. Mrs. Harriet Maddack had 
 passed away, after an operation, leaving her house and her 
 moaey to her sister. The solemn rite of her interment had 
 deeply affected all the respectability of the town of Axe, 
 where the late Mr. Maddack had been a figure of consequence ; 
 it had even shut up the shop iii St. Luke's Square for a whole 
 day. It was such a funeral as Aunt Harriet herself would 
 have approved, a tremendous ceremonial which left on the 
 crushed mind an ineffaceable, intricate impression of shiny 
 cloth, crape, horses with arching necks and long manes, 
 the drawl of parsons, cake, port, sighs, and Christian sub- 
 mission to the inscrutable decrees of Providence. Mrs. 
 
 IS3 
 
164 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Baines had borne herself with unnatural calmness until the 
 funeral was over : and then Constance perceived that the 
 remembered mother of her girlhood existed no longer. For 
 the majority of human souls it would have been easier to love 
 a virtuous principle, or a mountain, than to love Aunt 
 Harriet, who was assuredly less a woman than an institution. 
 But Mrs. Baines had loved her, and she had been the one 
 person to whom Mrs. Baines looked for support and guidance. 
 When she died, Mrs. Baines paid the tribute of respect with 
 the last hoarded remains of her proud fortitude, and weepingly 
 confessed that the unconquerable had been conquered, the 
 inexhaustible exhausted ; and became old with whitening hair. 
 
 She had persisted in her refusal to spend Christmas in 
 Bursley, but both Constance and Samuel knew that the 
 resistance was only formal. She soon yielded. When Con- 
 stance's second new servant took it into her head to leave 
 a week before Christmas, Mrs. Baines might have pointed out 
 the finger of Providence at work again, and this time in her 
 favour. But no ! With amazing pliancy she suggested that 
 she should bring one of her own servants to ' tide Constance 
 over ' Christmas. She was met with all the forms of loving 
 solicitude, and she found that her daughter and son-in-law had 
 ' turned out of the state bedroom in her favour. Intensely 
 flattered by this attention (which was Mr. Povey's magnani- 
 mous idea), she nevertheless protested strongly. Indeed she 
 • would not hear of it.' 
 
 " Now, mother, don't be silly," Constance had said firmly. 
 " You don't expect us to be at all the trouble of moving back 
 again, do you ? " And Mrs. Baines had surrendered in tears. 
 
 Thus had come Christmas. Perhaps it was fortunate that, 
 the Axe servant being not quite the ordinary servant, but a 
 benefactor where a benefactor was needed, both Constance 
 and her mother thought it well to occupy themselves in 
 household work, • sparing ' the benefactor as much as possible. 
 Hence Constance's white apron. 
 
 " There he is I " said Mr. Povey, still playing, but with his 
 eye on the street. 
 
 Constance sprang up eagerly. Then there was a knock on 
 the door. Constance opened, and an icy blast swept into the 
 room. The postman stood on the steps, his instrument for 
 knocking (like a drumstick) in one hand, a large bundle of letters 
 in the other, and a yawning bag across the pit of his stomach. 
 
THE FUTURE 155 
 
 * Merry Christmas, ma'am 1 " cried the postman, trying to 
 keep warm by cheerfulness. 
 
 Constance, taking the letters, responded, while Mr. Povey, 
 playing the harmonium with his right hand, drew half a crown 
 from his pocket with the left. 
 
 " Here you are 1 " he said, giving it to Constance, who gave 
 it to the postman. 
 
 Fan, who had been keeping her muzzle warm with the 
 extremity of her tail on the sofa, jumped down to superintend 
 the transaction. 
 
 " Brrr ! " vibrated Mr. Povey as Constance shut the door. 
 
 "What lotsl" Constance exclaimed, rushing to the fire. 
 " Here, mother 1 Here, Sam 1 " 
 
 The girl had resumed possession of the woman's body. 
 
 Though the Baines family had few friends (sustained hospi- 
 tality being little practised in those days) they had, of course, 
 many acquaintances, and, like other families, they counted their 
 Christmas cards as an Indian counts scalps. The tale was 
 satisfactory. There were between thirty and forty envelopes. 
 Constance extracted Christmas cards rapidly, reading their 
 contents aloud, and then propping them up on the mantel- 
 piece. Mrs. Baines assisted. Fan dealt with the envelopes on 
 the floor. Mr. Povey, to prove that his soul was above toys 
 and gewgaws, continued to play the harmonium. 
 
 " Oh, mother 1 " Constance murmured in a startled, hesitant 
 voice, holding an envelope. 
 
 " What is it, my chuck ? " 
 
 "It's " 
 
 The envelope was addressed to " Mrs. and Miss Baines " 
 in large, perpendicular, dashing characters which Constance 
 instantly recognized as Sophia's. The stamps were strange, 
 the postmark ' Paris.' Mrs. Baines leaned forward and looked. 
 
 " Open it, child," she said. 
 
 The envelope contained an English Christmas card of 
 a common type, a spray of holly with greetings, and on it was 
 written, " I do hope this will reach you on Christmas morning. 
 Fondest love." No signature, nor address. 
 
 Mrs. Baines took it with a trembling hand, and adjusted 
 her spectacles. She gazed at it a long time. 
 
 " And it has done ! " she said, and wept. 
 
 She tried to speak again, but not being able to command 
 herself, held forth the card to Constance and jerked her head 
 
156 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 in the direction of Mr. Povey. Constance rose and put the 
 card on the keyboard of the harmonium. 
 
 " Sophia ! " she whispered. 
 
 Mr. Povey stopped playing. " Dear, dear 1 " he muttered. 
 
 Fan, perceiving that nobody was interested in her feats-, 
 suddenly stood still. 
 
 Mrs. Baines tried once more to speak, but could not. 
 Then, her ringlets shaking beneath the band of her weeds, she 
 found her feet, stepped to the harmonium, and, with a movement 
 almost convulsive, snatched the card from Mr. Povey, and 
 returned to her chair. 
 
 Mr. Povey abruptly left the room, followed by Fan. Both 
 the women were in tears, and he was tremendously surprised to 
 discover a dangerous lump in his own throat. The beautiful 
 and imperious vision of Sophia, Sophia as she had left them, 
 innocent, wayward, had swiftly risen up before him and made 
 even him a woman too I Yet he had never liked Sophia. The 
 awful secret wound in the family pirde revealed itself to him as 
 never before, and he felt intensely the mother's tragedy, which 
 she carried in her breast as Aunt Harriet had carried a 
 cancer. 
 
 At dinner he said suddenly to Mrs. Baines, who still wept : 
 " Now, mother, you must cheer up, you know." 
 
 " Yes, I must," she said quickly. And she did do. 
 
 Neither Samuel nor Constance saw the card again. Little 
 was said. There was nothing to say. As Sophia had given no 
 address she must be still ashamed of her situation. But she 
 had thought of her mother and sister. She . . . she did not 
 even know that Constance was married. . . . What sort of a 
 place was Paris ? To Bursley, Paris was nothing but the site of 
 a great exhibition which had recently closed. 
 
 Through the influence of Mrs. Baines a new servant was 
 found for Constance in a village near Axe, a raw, comely girl 
 who had never been in a ' place? And through the post it was 
 arranged that this innocent should come to the cave on the 
 thirty-first of December. In obedience to the safe rule that 
 servants should never be allowed to meet for the interchange 
 of opinions, Mrs. Baines decided to leave with her own servant 
 on the thirtieth. She would not be persuaded to spend the 
 New Year in the Square. On the twenty-ninth poor Aunt 
 Maria died all of a sudden in her cottage in Brougham Street. 
 Everybody was duly distressed, and in particular Mrs. Baines's 
 
THE FUTURE 157 
 
 demeanour under this affliction showed the perfection of cor- 
 rectness. But she caused it to be understood that she should 
 not remain for the funeral. Her nerves would be unequal to 
 the ordeal ; and, moreover, her servant must not stay to corrupt 
 the new girl, nor could Mrs. Baines think of sending her servant 
 to Axe in advance, to spend several days in idle gossip with her 
 colleague. 
 
 This decision took the backbone out of Aunt Maria's 
 funeral, which touched the extreme of modesty ; a hearse and 
 a one-horse coach. Mr. Povey was glad, because he happened 
 to be very busy. An hour before his mother-in-law's departure 
 he came into the parlour with the proof of a poster. 
 
 " What is that, Samuel ? " asked Mrs. Baines, not dreaming 
 of the blow that awaited her. 
 
 "It's for my first Annual Sale," replied Mr. Povey with false 
 tranquillity. 
 
 Mrs. Baines merely tossed her head. Constance,_happily 
 for Constance, was jnot-^iresent .at this -final defeat of the old 
 order. Had she been there, she would certainly not have known 
 where to look. 
 
 II 
 
 " Forty next birthday ! " Mr. Povey exclaimed one day, 
 with an expression and in a tone that were at once mock- 
 serious and serious. This was on his thirty-ninth birthday. 
 
 Constance was ' startled. She had, of course, been aware 
 that they were getting older, but she had never realized the 
 phenomenon. Though customers occasionally remarked that 
 Mr. Povey was stouter, and though when she helped him to 
 measure himself for a new suit of clothes the tape proved the 
 fact, he had not changed for her. She knew that she too had 
 become somewhat stouter; but for herself, she remained exactly 
 the same Constance. Only by recalling dates and by calcula- 
 tions could she really grasp that she had been married a little 
 over six years and not a little over six months. She had to 
 admit that, if Samuel would be forty next birthday, she would 
 be twenty-seven next birthday. But it would not be a real 
 twenty-seven ; nor would Sam's forty be a real forty, like other 
 people's twenty-sevens and forties. Not long since she had 
 been in the habit of regarding a man of forty as senile, as 
 practically in his grave. 
 
168 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 She reflected, and the more she reflected the more clearly 
 she saw that after all the almanacs had not lied. Look at 
 Fan ! Yes, it must be five years since the memorable morning 
 when doubt first crossed the minds of Samuel and Constance 
 as to Fan's moral principles. Samuel's enthusiasm for dogs 
 was equalled by his ignorance of the dangers to which a young 
 female of temperament may be exposed, and he was much dis- 
 turbed as doubt developed into certainty. Fan, indeed, was 
 the one being who did not sufier from shock and who had no 
 fears as to the results. The animal, having a pure mind, was 
 bereft of modesty. Sundry enormities had she committed, 
 but none to rank with this one I The result was four quadru- 
 peds recognizable as fox-terriers. Mr. Povey breathed again. 
 Fan had had more' luck than she deserved, for the result 
 might have been simply anything. Her owners forgave her 
 and disposed of these fruits of iniquity, and then married her 
 lawfully to a husband who was so high up in the world that he 
 could demand a dowry. And now Fan was a grandmother, 
 with fixed ideas and habits, and a son in the house, and various 
 grandchildren scattered over the town. Fan was a sedate 
 and disillusioned dog. She knew the world as it was, and in 
 learning it she had taught her owners above a bit. 
 
 Then there was Maggie HoUins. Constance could still 
 vividly recall the self-consciousness with which she had one day 
 received Maggie and the heir of the HoUinses ; but it was a 
 long time ago. After staggering half the town by the produc- 
 tion of this infant (of which she nearly died) Maggie allowed 
 the angels to waft it away to heaven, and everybody said that she 
 ought to be very thankful — at her age. Old women dug up 
 out of their minds forgotten histories of the eccentricities of 
 the goddess Lucina. Mrs. Baines was most curiously inter- 
 ested ; she talked freely to Constance, and Constance began 
 to see what an incredible town Bursley had always been — and 
 she never suspected it ! Maggie was now mother of other 
 children, and the draggled, lame mistress of a drunken home, 
 and looked sixty. Despite her prophec/, her husband had 
 conserved his 'habits.' The Poveys ate all the fish they 
 could, and sometimes more than they enjoyed, because, on his 
 sober days HoUins invariably started his round at the shop, 
 and Constance had to buy for Maggie's sake. The worst of 
 the worthless husband was that he sellom failed to be cheery 
 and polite. He never missed asking after the health of Mrs. 
 
THE FUTURE 159 
 
 Baines. And when Constance replied that her mother was 
 ' pretty well considering,' but that she would not come over 
 to Bursley again until the Axe railway was opened, as she 
 could not stand the drive, he would shaJce his grey head and 
 be sympathetically gloomy for an instant. 
 
 All these changes in six years 1 The almanacs were in 
 the right of it. 
 
 But nothing had happened to her. Gradually she had 
 obtained a sure ascendency over her mother, yet without seek- 
 ing it, merely as the outcome of time's influences on her and 
 on her mother respectively. Gradually she had gained skill 
 and use in the management of her household and of her share 
 of the shop, so that these machines ran smoothly and effec- 
 tively and a sudden contretemps no longer frightened her. 
 Gradually she had constructed a chart of Samuel's individuality, 
 with the submerged rocks and perilous currents all carefully 
 marked, so that she could now voyage unalarmed in those 
 seas. But nothing happened. Unless their visits to E»uxtoh > 
 could be called happenings I Decidedly the visit to Buxton 
 was the one little hill that rose out of the level plain of the 
 year. They "had formed the annual habit of going to Buxton 
 for ten days. They had a way of saying : " Yes, we always go 
 to Buxton. We went there for our honeymoon, you know." 
 They had become confirmed Buxtonites, with views concerning 
 St. Anne's Terrace, the Broad Walk and Peel's Cavern. They 
 could not dream of deserting their Buxton. It was the sole 
 possible resort. Was it not the highest town in England? 
 Well, then 1 They always stayed at the same lodgings, and 
 grew to be special favourites of the landlady, who whispered 
 of them to all her other guests as having come to her house 
 for their honeymoon, and as never missing a year, and as 
 being most respectable, superior pgople in quite a large way of 
 business. Each year they walked out of Buxton station 
 behind their luggage on a truck, full of joy and pride because 
 they knew all the landmarks, and the lie of all the streets, and 
 which were the best shops. 
 
 At the beginning, the notion of leaving the shop to hired 
 custody had seemed almost fantastic, and the preparations for 
 absence had been very complicated. Then it was that Miss 
 InsuU had detached herself from the other young lady assist- 
 ants as a creature who could be absolutely trusted. Miss 
 InsuU was older than Constance ; she had a bad complexion, 
 
160 THE OI.D WIVES' TAI.E 
 
 and she was not clever, but she was one of your reliable ones. 
 The six years had witnessed the slow, steady rise of Miss 
 InsuU. Her employers said 'Miss InsuU' in a tone quite 
 different from that in which they said ' Miss Hawkins,' or 
 ' Miss Dadd.' ' Miss InsuU ' meant the end of a discussion. 
 'Better tell Miss InsuU.' 'Miss Insull will see to that.' 
 ' I shall ask Miss Insull.' Miss Insull slept in the house ten 
 nights every year. Miss Insull had been called into consulta- 
 tion when it was decided to engage a fourth hand in the shape 
 of an apprentice. 
 
 Trade had improved in the point of excellence. It was 
 now admitted to be good — a rare honour for trade 1 The 
 coal-mining boom was at its height, and colliers, in addition to 
 getting dtunk, were buying American organs and expensive 
 bull-terriers. Often they would come to the shop to purchase 
 cloth for coats for their dogs. And they would have good 
 cloth. Mr. Povey did not like this. One day a butty chose 
 for his dog the best cloth of Mr. Povey's shop — at 12s. a 
 yard. " Will ye make it up ? I've gotten th' measurements," 
 asked the collier. " No, I *on't ! " said Mr. Povey, hotly. 
 " And what's more, I won't sell you the cloth either ! Cloth 
 at I2S. a yard on a dog's back indeed ! I'll thank you to get 
 out of my shop 1 " The incident became historic, in the 
 Square. It finally established that Mr. Povey was a worthy 
 son-in-law and a solid and successful man. It vindicated the 
 old pre-eminence of " Baines's." Some surprise was expressed 
 that Mr. Povey showed no desire nor tendency towards enter- 
 ing the public life of the town. But he never would, though a 
 keen satirical critic of the Local Board in private. And at the 
 chapel he remained a simple private worshipper, refusing 
 stewardships and trusteeiships. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Was Constance happy ? Of course there was always some- 
 thing on her mind, something that had to be dealt with, either 
 in the shop or in the house, something to employ all the skill 
 and experience which she had acquired. Her life had much in 
 it of laborious tedium — tedium never-ending and monotonous. 
 And both she and Simuel worked consistently hard, rising 
 early, ' pushing forward,' as the phrase ran, and going to bed 
 
THE FUTURE 161 
 
 early from sheer fatigue ; week after week and month after 
 month as season changed imperceptibly into season. In June 
 and July it would happen to them occasionally to retire before 
 the last silver of dusk was out of the sky. They would lie in 
 bed and talk placidly of their daily affairs. There would be a 
 noise in the street below. "Vaults closing !" Samuel would 
 say, and yawn. " Yes, it's quite late," Constance would say. 
 And the Swiss clock would rapidly strike eleven on its coil 
 of resonant wire. And then, just before she went to sleep, 
 Constance might reflect upon her destiny, as even the busiest 
 and smoothest women do, and she would decide that it was 
 kind. Her mother's gradual decline and lonely life at Axe 
 saddened her. The cards which came now and then at 
 extremely long intervals from Sophia had been the cause of 
 more sorrow than joy. The naive ecstasies of her girlhood 
 had long since departed — the price paid for experience and 
 self-possession and a true vision of things. The vast inherent 
 melancholy of the universe did not exempt her. But as she 
 went to sleep she would be conscious of a vague contentment. 
 The basis of this contentment was the fact that she and Samuel 
 comprehended and esteemed each other, and made allowances 
 for each other. Their characters had been tested and had 
 stood the test Affection, love, was not to them a salient 
 phenomenon in their relations. Habit had inevitably dulled 
 its glitter. It was hke a flavouring, scarce remarked; but 
 had it been absent, how they would have turned from that 
 dish ! 
 
 Samuel never, or hardly ever, set himself to meditate upon 
 the problem whether or not Ufe had come up to his expecta- 
 tions. But he had, at times, strange sensations which he did 
 not analyze, and which approached nearer to ecstasy than any 
 feeling of Constance's. Thus, when he was in one of his dark 
 furies, molten within and -black without, the sudden thought of 
 his wife's unalterable benignant calm, which nothing could over-, 
 throw, might strike him into a wondering cold. For him she 
 was astoundingly feminine. She would put flowers on the 
 mantelpiece, and then, hours afterwards, in the middle of a ' 
 meal, ask him unexpectedly what he thought of her ' garden ; ' 
 and he gradually divined that a perfunctory reply left her 
 unsatisfied ; she wanted a genuine opinion ; a genuine opinion 
 mattered to her. Fancy calling flowers on a mantelpiece a 
 ' garden '1 How charming, how childlike I Then she had a 
 
 If 
 
162 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 way, on Sunday mornings, when she descended to the parlour 
 all ready for chapel, of shutting the door at the foot of the 
 stairs with a little bang, shaking herself, and turning round 
 swiftly as if for his inspection, as if saying: " Well, what about 
 this ? Will this do ? " A phenomenon always associated in his 
 mind with the smell of kid gloves ! Invariably she asked him 
 about the colours and cut of her dresses. Would he prefer 
 this, or that ? He could not take such questions seriously until 
 one day he happened to hint, merely hint, that he was not 
 a thorough-going admirer of a certain new dress — it was her 
 first new dress after the definite abandonment of crinolines. 
 She never wore it again. He thought she was not serious at 
 first, and remonstrated against a joke being carried too far. 
 She said : " It's not a bit of use you talking, I shan't wear it 
 again." And then he so far appreciated her seriousness as to 
 refrain, by discretion, from any comment. The incident affected 
 him for days. It flattered him ; it thrilled him ; but it baffled 
 him. Strange that a woman subject to such caprices should 
 be so sagacious, capable, and utterly reliable as Constance was I 
 For the practical and commonsense side of her eternally com- 
 pelled his admiration. The very first example of it — her 
 insistence that the simultaneous absence of both of them from 
 the shop for half an hour or an hour twice a day would not 
 mean the immediate downfall of the business — had remained 
 in his mind ever since. Had she not been obstinate — in her 
 benevolent way — against the old superstition which he had 
 acquired from his employers, they might have been eating 
 separately to that day. Then her handling of her mother 
 during the months of the siege of Paris, when Mrs. Baines was 
 convinced that her sinful daughter was in hourly danger of 
 death, had been extraordinarily fine, he considered. And the 
 sequel, a card for Constance's birthday, had completely justified 
 her attitude. 
 
 Sometimes some blundering fool would jovially exclaim to 
 them: 
 
 " What about that baby ? " 
 
 Or a woman would remark quietly : " I often feel sorry 
 you've no children." 
 
 And they would answer that really they did not know 
 what they would do if there was a baby. What with the 
 shop and one thing or another ... I And they were quite 
 sincere. 
 
THE FUTURE IgS 
 
 IV 
 
 It is remarkable what a little thing will draw even the most 
 regular and serious people from the deep groove of their habits. 
 One morning in March, a boneshaker, an affair on two equal 
 wooden wheels joined by a bar of iron, in the middle of which 
 was a wooden saddle, disturbed the gravity of St. Luke's 
 Square. True, it was probably the first boneshaker that had 
 ever attacked the gravity of St. Luke's Square. It came out 
 of the shop of Daniel Povey, the confectioner and baker, and 
 Samuel Povey's celebrated cousin, in Boulton Terrace. Boulton 
 Terrace formed nearly a right angle with the Baines premises, 
 and at the corner of the angle Wedgwood Street and King 
 Street left the Square. The boneshaker was brought forth by 
 Dick Povey, the only son of Daniel, now aged eleven years, 
 under the superintendence of his father, and the Square soon 
 perceived that Dick had a natural talent for breaking-in an 
 untrained boneshaker. After a few attempts he could remain 
 on the back of the machine for at least ten yards, and his feats 
 had the effect of endowing St. Luke's Square with the attractive- 
 ness of a circus. Samuel Povey watched with candid interest 
 from the ambush of his door, while the unfortunate young lady 
 assistants, though aware of the performance that was going 
 on, dared not stir from the stove. Samuel was tremendously 
 tempted to sally out boldly, and chat with his cousin about 
 the toy ; he had surely a better right to do so than any other- 
 tradesman in the Square, since he was of the family ; but his 
 diffidence prevented him from moving. Presently Daniel 
 Povey and Dick went to the top of the Square with the 
 machine, opposite HoU's, and Dick, being carefully installed 
 in the saddle, essayed to descend the gentle paven slopes of 
 the Square. He failed time after time ; the machine had an 
 astonishing way of turning round, running uphill, and then 
 lying calmly on its side. At this point of Dick's life-history 
 every shop-door in the Square was occupied by an audience. 
 At last the boneshaker displayed less unwillingness to obey, 
 and lo 1 in a moment Dick was riding down the Square, and 
 the spectators held their breath as if he had been Blondin 
 crossing Niagara. Every second he ought to have fallen off, 
 but he contrived to keep upright. Already he had accom- 
 plished twenty yards — thirty yards ! It was a miracle that 
 
164 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 he was performing I The transit continued, and seemed to 
 occupy hours. And then a faint hope rose in the breast 
 of the watchers that the prodigy might arrive at the bottom 
 of the Square. His speed was increasing with his 'knack.' 
 But the Square was enormous, boundless. Samuel Povey gazed 
 at the approaching phenomenon as a bird at a serpent, with 
 bulging, beady eyes. The child's speed went on increasing 
 and his path grew straighter. Yes, he would arrive; he would 
 do it ! Samuel Povey involuntarily Hfted one leg in his nervous 
 tension. And now the hope that Dick would arrive became 
 a fear, as his pace grew still more rapid. Everybody lifted one 
 leg, and gaped. And the intrepid child surged on, and, finally 
 victorious, crashed into the pavement in front of Samuel at 
 the rate of quite six miles an hour. 
 
 Samuel picked him up, unscathed. And somehow this 
 picking up of Dick invested Samuel with importance, gave 
 him a share in the glory of the feat itself. ' 
 
 Daniel Povey came running and joyous. " Not so bad 
 for a start, eh ? " exclaimed the great Daniel. Though by no 
 means a simple man, his pride in his offspring sometimes 
 made him a little naive. 
 
 Father and son explained the machine to Samuel, Dick 
 incessantly repeating the exceedingly strange truth that if you 
 felt you were falling to your right you must turn to your right 
 and vice versa. Samuel found himself suddenly admitted, as 
 it were, to the inner fellowship of the boneshaker, exalted 
 above the rest of the Square. In another adventure more 
 thrilling events occurred. The fair-haired Dick was one of 
 those dangerous, frenzied madcaps who are born without fear. 
 The secret of the machine had been revealed to him in his 
 recent transit, and he was silently determining to surpass him- 
 self. Precariously balanced, he descended the Square again, 
 frowning hard, his teeth set, and actually managed to swerve 
 into King Street. Constance, in the parlour, saw an incom- 
 prehensible winged thing fly past the window. The cousins 
 Povey sounded an alarm and protest and ran in pursuit ; for 
 the gradient of King Street is, in the strict sense, steep. 
 Half-way down King Street Dick was travelling at twenty 
 miles an hour, and heading straight for the church, as though 
 he meant to disestablish it and perish. The main gate of the 
 churchyard was open, and that affrighting child, with a lunatic's 
 luck, whizzed safely through the portals into God's acre. The 
 
THE FUTURE 165 
 
 cousins Povey discovered him lying on a green grave, clothed 
 in pride. His first words were : " Dad, did you pick my cap 
 up?" The symbolism of the amazing ride did not escape 
 the Square ; indeed, it was much discussed. 
 
 This ifKident led to a friendship between the cousins. 
 They formed a habit of meeting in the Square for a chat. 
 The meetings were the subject of comment, for Samuel's 
 relations with the greater Daniel had always been of the most 
 distant. It was understood that Samuel disapproved of Mrs. 
 Daniel Povey even more than the majority of people dis- 
 approved of her. Mrs. Daniel Povey, however, was away from 
 home ; probably, had she not been, Samuel would not even 
 have gone to the lerigth of joining Daniel on the neutral 
 ground of the open Square. But havir g once broken the ice, 
 Samuel was glad to be on terms of growing intimacy with his 
 cousin. The friendship flittered him, for Daniel, despite his 
 wife, was a figure in a world larger than Samutl's; moreover, 
 it consecrated his position as the equal of no matter what 
 tradesman (apprentice though he had been), and also he 
 genuinely liked and admired Daniel, rather to his own 
 astonishment. 
 
 Every one liked Daniel Povey ; he was a favourite among 
 all ranks. The leading confectioner, a member of the Local 
 Board, and a sidesman at St. Luke's, he was, and had been 
 for twenty-five years, very prominent in the town. He was 
 a tall, handsome man, with a trimmed, greying beard, a jolly 
 smile, and a flashing, dark eye. His good humour seemed 
 to be permanent. He had dignity without the slightest stiff- 
 ness; he was welcomed 'by his equals and frankly adored by 
 his inferiors. He ought to have been Chief Bailiff, for he was 
 rich enough ; but there intervened a mysterious obstacle 
 between Daniel Povey and the supreme honour, a scarcely 
 tangible impediment which could not be definitely stated. 
 He was capable, honest, industrious, successful, and an 
 excellent speaker; and if he did not belong to the austerer 
 section of society, if, for example, he thought nothing of 
 dropping into the Tiger for a glass of beer, or of using an 
 oath occasionally, or of telling a facetious story-7-well, in a 
 busy, broad-minded town of thirty thousand inhabitants, siicn 
 proclivities are no bar whatever to perfect esteem. But — how 
 is one to phrase it without wronging Daniel Povey ? He was 
 entirely moral ; his views were unexceptionable. The truth is 
 
166 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 that, for the ruling classes of Bursley, Daniel Povey was jinl 
 a little too fanatical a worshipper of the god Pan. He wa» 
 one of the remnant who had kept alive the great Pan tradition 
 from the days of the Regency through the vast, arid Victorian 
 expanse of years. The flighty character of his wife was 
 regarded by many as a judgment upon him for the robust 
 Riibelaisianism of his more private conversation, for his frank 
 interest in, his eternal preoccupation with, aspects of life and 
 human activity which, though essential to the divine purpose, 
 are not openly recognized as such — even by Daniel Poveys. 
 It was not a question of his conduct ; it was a question of the 
 cast of his mind. If it did not explain his friendship with 
 the rector of St Luke's, it explained his departure from the 
 Primitive Methodist connexion, to which the Poveys as a 
 family had belonged since Primitive Methodism was created 
 in Tumhill in 1807. 
 
 D.aniel Povey had a way of assuming that every male was 
 boiling over with interest in the sacred cult of Pan. The 
 assumption, though sometimes causing inconvenience at first, 
 usually conquered by virtue of its inherent truthfulness. Thus 
 it fell out with Samuel. Samuel had not suspected that Pan 
 had silken cords to draw him. He had always averted his 
 eyes from the god — that is to say, within reason. Yet now 
 Daniel, on perhaps a couple of fine mornings a week, in full 
 Square, with Fan sitting behind on the cold stones, and Mr. 
 Critchlow ironic at his door in a long white apron, would 
 entertain Samuel Povey for half an hour with Pan's most 
 intimate lore, and Samuel Povey would not blench. He 
 would, on the contrary, stand up to Daniel hke a little man, 
 and pretend with all his might to be, potentially, a perfect 
 arch-priest of the god. Daniel taught him a lot j turned over 
 the page of life for him, as it were, and, showing the reverse 
 side, seemed to say: "You were missing all that." Samuel 
 gazed upwards at the handsome long nose and rich lips of his 
 elder cousin, so experienced, so agreeable, so renowned, so 
 esteemed, so philosophic, and admitted to himself that he had 
 lived to the age of forty in a state of comparative boobyism. 
 And then he would gaze downwards at the faint patch of flour 
 on Daniel's right leg, and conceive that life was, and must 
 be, life. 
 
 Not many weeks after his initiation into the cult he was 
 startled by Constance's preoccupied face one evening. Now, 
 
THE FUTITRE 167 
 
 a husband of six years' standing, to whom it has not happened 
 to become a father, is not easily startled by slich a face as 
 Constance wore. Years ago he had frequently been startled, 
 had frequently lived in suspense for a few days. But he had 
 long since grown impervious to these alarms. And now he 
 was startled again — but as a man may be startled who is not 
 altogether surprised at being startled. And seven endless 
 days passed, and Samuel and Constance glanced at each other 
 like guilty things, whose secret refuses to be kept. Then 
 three more days passed, and another three. Then Samuel 
 Povey remarked, in a firm, mascuUne, fact-fronting tone : 
 
 " Oh, there's no doubt about it !" 
 
 And they glanced at each other like conspirators who have 
 lighted a fuse and cannot take refuge in flight. Their eyes 
 said continually, with a delicious, an enchanting mixture of 
 ingenuous modesty and fearful joy : 
 
 " Well, we've gone and done it ! " 
 
 There it was, the incredible, incomprehensible future — 
 coming ! 
 
 Samuel had never correctly imagined the manner of its 
 heralding. He had imagined in his early simplicity that one 
 day Constance, blushing, might put her mouth to his ear and 
 whisper — something positive. It hafi not occurred in the 
 least like that. But things are so obstinately, so incurably 
 unsentimental. 
 
 "I think we ought to drive over and tell mother, on 
 Sunday," said Constance. 
 
 His impulse was to reply, in his grand, offhand style : 
 «0h, a letter will do I" 
 
 But he checked himself and said, with careful deference : 
 " You think that will be better than writing ? " 
 
 All was changed. He braced every fibre to meet destiny, 
 and to help Constance to meet it. 
 
 The weather threatened on Sunday. He went to Axe 
 without Constance. His cousin drove him there in a dog- 
 cart, and he announced that he should walk home, as the 
 exercise would do him good. During the drive Daniel, in 
 whom he had not confided, chattered as usual, and Samuel 
 pretended to listen with the same attitude as usual ; but 
 secretly he despised Daniel for a man who has got something 
 not of the first importance on the brain. His perspective was 
 truer than Daniel's. 
 
168 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 He walked home, as he had decided, over the wavy moor- 
 land of the county dreaming in the heart of England. Night 
 fell on him in mid-career, and he was tired. But the earth, 
 as it whirled through naked space, whirled up the moon 
 for him, and he pressed on at a good, speed. A wind from 
 Arabia wandering cooled his face. And at last, over the 
 brow of Toft End, he saw suddenly the Five Towns a-twinkle 
 on their little hills down in the vast amphitheatre. And one 
 of those lamps was Constance's lamp — one, somewhere. He 
 lived, then. He entered into the shadow of nature. The 
 mysteries made him solemn. What ! A boneshaker, his 
 cousin, and then this ! 
 
 "Well, I'm damned! Well, I'm damned I" he kept 
 repeating, he who never swore. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CYRIL 
 
 Constance stood at the large, many-paned window in the 
 parlour. She was stouter. Although always plump, her 
 figure had been comely, with a neat, well-marked waist. But 
 now the shapeliness had gone ; the waist-line no longer existed, 
 and there were no more crinolines to create it artificially. An 
 observer not under the charm of her face might have been 
 excused for calling her fat and lumpy. The face, grave, kind, 
 and expectant, with its radiant, fresh cheeks, and the rounded 
 softness of its curves, atoned for the figure. She was nearly 
 twenty-nine years of age. 
 
 It was late in October. In Wedgwood Street, next to 
 Boulton Terrace, all the little brown houses had been pulled 
 down to make room for a palatial covered market, whose 
 foundations were then being dug. This destruction exjjosed 
 a vast area of sky to the north-east A great dark cloud with 
 an untidy edge rose massively out of the depths and curtained 
 off the tender blue of approaching dusk ; while in the west, 
 behind Constance, the sun was setting in calm and gorgeous 
 melancholy on the Thursday hush of the town. It was one of 
 those afternoons which gather up all the sadness of the moving 
 earth and transform it into beauty. 
 
 Samuel Povey turned the corner from Wedgwood Street, 
 and crossed King Street obliquely to the front-door, which 
 Constance opened. He seemed tired and anxious. 
 
 " Well ? " demanded Constance, as he entered. 
 
 " She's no better. There's no getting away from it, she's 
 worse. I should have stayed, only I knew you'd be worrying. 
 So I caught the three-fifty." ' 
 
 •♦ How is that Mrs. Gilchrist shaping as a nurse ? " 
 169 
 
170 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 "She's very good," said Samuel, with conviction. "Very 
 good!" 
 
 " What a blessing I I suppose you didn't happen to see 
 the doctor ? " 
 
 " Yes, I did."! 
 
 " What did he say to you?" 
 
 Samuel gave a deprecating gesture. ■" Didn't say anything 
 particular. With dropsy, at that stage, you know . . ." 
 
 Constance had returned to the window, her expectancy 
 apparently unappeased, 
 
 " I don't like the look of that cloud," she murmured. 
 
 " What ! Are they out still ? " Samuel inquired, taking off 
 his overcoat. 
 
 " Here they are ! " cried Constance. Her features sud- 
 denly transfigured, she sprang to the door, pulled it open, and 
 descended the steps. 
 
 A perambulator was being rapidly pushed up the slope by 
 a breathless girl. 
 
 " Amy," Constance gently protested, " I told you not to 
 venture far." 
 
 " I hurried all I could, mum, soon as I seed that cloud," 
 the girl puffed, with the air of one who is seriously thankful to 
 have escaped a great disaster. 
 
 Constance dived . into the recesses of the perambulator 
 and extricated from its cocoon the centre of the universe, 
 and scrutinized him with quiet passion, and then rushed 
 with him into the house, though not a drop of rain had 
 yet fallen. 
 
 " Precious ! " exclaimed Amy, in ecstasy, her young virginal 
 eyes following him till he disappeared. Then she wheeled 
 away the perambulator, which now had no more value nor 
 interest than an egg-shell. It was necessary to take it right 
 round to the Brougham Street }'ard entrance, past the front of 
 the closed shop. 
 
 Constance sat down on the horsehair sofa and hugged and 
 kissed her prize before removing his bonnet. 
 
 " Here's Daddy ! " she said to him, as if imparting strange 
 and rapturous tidings. " Here's Daddy come back from 
 hanging up his coat in the passage 1 Daddy rubbing his 
 hands ! " And then, with a swift transition of voice and 
 features : " Do look at him, Sam ! " 
 
 Samuel, preoccupied, stooped forward. "Ob) you little 
 
CYRIL 171 
 
 scoundrel I Oh, you little scoundrel ! " he greeted the baby, 
 advancing his finger towards the baby's nose. 
 
 The baby, who had hitherto maintained a passive in- 
 difference to external phenomena, lifted elbows and toes, blew 
 bubbles from his tiny mouth, and stared at the finger with the 
 most ravishing, roguish smile, as though saying : " I know that 
 great slicking-out limb, and there is a joke about it which no 
 one but me can see, and which is my secret joy that you shall 
 never share." 
 
 V ''Tea ready?" Samuel asked, resuming his gravity and his 
 ordinary pose. 
 
 " You must give the girl time to take her things off," said 
 Constance. " We'll have the table drawn away fi-om the fire, 
 and baby can lie on his shawl on the hearthrug while we're 
 having tea." Then to the baby, in rapture : " And play with 
 his toys ; all his nice, nice toys ! " 
 
 " You know Miss Insull is staying for tea ? " 
 
 Constance, her head bent over the baby, who formed a 
 white patch on her comfortable brown frock, nodded without 
 speaking. 
 
 Samuel Povey, walking to and fro, began to enter into 
 details of his hasty journey to Axe. Old Mrs. Baines, having 
 beheld her grandson, was preparing to quit this world. Never 
 again would she exclaim, in her brusque tone of genial rutb- 
 lessness : ' Fiddlesticks 1 ' The situation was very difficult and 
 distressing, for Constance could not leave her baby, and she 
 would not, until the last urgency, run the risksof a journey with 
 him to Axe. He was being weaned. In any case Constance 
 could not have undertaken the nursing of her mother. A nurse 
 had to be found. Mr. Povey had discovered one in the person 
 of Mrs. Gilchrist, the second wife of a farmer at Malpas in 
 Cheshire, whose first wife had been a sister of the late John 
 Baines. All the credit of Mrs. Gilchrist was due to Samuel 
 Povey. Mrs. Baines fretted seriously about Sophia, who had 
 given no sign of life for a very long time. Mr. Povey went to 
 Manchester and ascertained definitely from the relatives of 
 Scales that nothing was known of the pair. He did not go to 
 Manchester especially on this errand. About once in three 
 weeks, on Tuesdays, he had to visit the Manchester ware- 
 houses ; but the tracking of Scales's relative cost him so much 
 trouble and time that, curiously, he came to believe that he 
 had gone to Manchester one Tuesday for no other end. 
 
172 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Although he was very busy indeed in the shop, he flew over 
 to Axe and back whenever he possibly could, to the neglect 
 of his affairs. He was glad to do all that was in his power; 
 even if he had not done it graciously his sensitive, tyrannic 
 conscience would have forced him to do it. But nevertheless 
 he felt rather virtuous, and worry and fatigue and loss of sleep 
 intensified this sense of virtue. 
 
 " So that if there is any sudden change they will telegraph," 
 he finished, to Constance. 
 
 She raised her head. The words, clinching what had led 
 up to them, drew her from her dream and she saw, for a 
 moment, her mother in an agony. 
 
 " But you don't surely mean — ? " she began, trying to 
 disperse the painful vision as unjustified by the facts. 
 
 "My dear girl," said Samuel, with head singing, and hot 
 eyes, and a consciousness of high tension in every nerve of his 
 body, " I simply mean that if there's any sudden change they 
 will telegraph." 
 
 While they had tea, Samuel sitting opposite to his wife, 
 and Miss Insull nearly against the wall (owing to the moving 
 of the table), the baby rolled about on the hearthrug, which 
 had been covered with a large soft woollen shawl, originally 
 the property of his great-grandmother. He had no cares, no 
 responsibilities. The shawl was so vast that he could not 
 clearly distinguish objects beyond its confines. On it lay 
 an indiarubber ball, an indiarubber doll, a rattle, and fan. 
 He vaguely recollected all four items, with their respective 
 properties. The fire also was an old friend. He had occa' 
 sionally tried to touch it, but a high bright fence always came 
 in between. For ten months he had never spent a day with- 
 out making experiments on this shifting universe in which he 
 alone remained firm and stationary. The experiments were 
 ctiiefly conducted out of idle amusement, but he was serious 
 on the subject of food. Lately the behaviour of the universe 
 in regard to his food had somewhat perplexed him, had indeed 
 annoyed him. However, he was of a forgetful, happy disposi- 
 tion, and so long as the universe continued to fulfil its sole 
 end as a machinery for the satisfaction, somehow, of his 
 imperious desires, he was not inclined to remonstrate. He 
 gazed at the flames and laughed, and laughed because he had 
 laughed. He pushed the ball away and wriggled after it, and 
 captured it with the assurance of practice. He tried to swallow 
 
CYRIL 173 
 
 the doll, and it was not until he had tried several times to 
 swallow it that he remembered the failure of previous efforts 
 and philosophically desisted. He rolled with a fearful shock, 
 arms and legs in air, against the mountainous flank of that 
 mammoth Fan, and clutched at Fan's ear. The whole mass 
 of Fan upheaved and vanished from his view, and was instantly 
 forgotten by him. He seized the doll and tried to swallow it, 
 and repeated the exhibition of his skill with the ball. Then 
 he saw the fire again and laughed And so he existed for 
 centuries : no responsibilities, no appetites ; and the shawl 
 was vast. Terrific operations went on over his head. Giants 
 moved to and fro. Great vessels were carried off and great 
 books were brought and deep voices rumbled regularly in the 
 spaces beyond the shawl. But he remained oblivious. At 
 last he became aware that a face was looking down at his. 
 He recognized it, and immediately an uncomfortable sensa- 
 tion in his stomach disturbed him; he tolerated it for fifty 
 years or so, and then he gave a little cry. Life had resumed 
 its seriousness. 
 
 "Black alpaca. B quality. Width 20, t.a. 23 yards," 
 Miss InsuU read out of a great book. She and Mr. Povey 
 were checking stock. 
 
 And Mr. Povey responded, "Black alpaca B quality. 
 Width 20, t.a. 22 yards. It wants ten minutes yet." He had 
 glanced at the clock. 
 
 " Does it ? " said Constance, well knowing that it wanted 
 ten minutes. 
 
 The baby did not guess that a high invisible god named 
 Samuel Povey, whom nothing escaped, and who could do 
 everything at once, was controlling his universe from an incon- 
 ceivable distance. On the contrary, the baby was crying to 
 himself, There is no God. 
 
 His weaning had reached the stage at which a baby really 
 does not know what will happen iiext. The annoyance had 
 begun exactly three months after his first tooth, such being 
 the rule of the gods, and it had grown more and more discon- 
 certing. No sooner did he accustom himself to a new 
 phenomenon than it mysteriously ceased, and an old one took 
 its place which he had utterly forgotten. This afternoon 
 his mother nursed him, but not until she had foolishly 
 attempted to divert him from the seriousness of life by means 
 of gewgaws of which he was sick. Still, once at her rich 
 
174. THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 breast, he forgave and forgot all. He preferred her simple 
 natural breast to more modern inventions. And he had no 
 shame, no modesty. Nor had his mother. It was an indecent 
 carouse at which his father and Miss Insull had to assist. But 
 his father had shame. His father would have preferred that, 
 as Miss Insull had kindly offered to stop and work on Thurs- 
 day afternoon, and as the shop was chilly, the , due rotation 
 should have brought the bottle round at halfrpast five o'clock, 
 and not the mother's breast. He was a self-conscious parent, 
 rather apologetic to the world, rather apt to . stand off and 
 pretend that he had nothing to do with the affair; and he 
 genuinely disliked that anybody should witness the intimate 
 scene of his wife feeding his baby. Especially Miss Insull, 
 that prim, dark, moustached spinster ! He would not have 
 called it an outrage on Miss Insull, to force her to witness the 
 scene, but his idea approached within sight of the word. 
 
 Constance blandly offered herself to the child, with the 
 unconscious primitive savagery of a young mother, and as the 
 baby fed, thoughts of her own mother flitted lo and fro cease- 
 lessly like vague shapes over the deep sea of content which 
 filled her mind. This illness of her mother's was abnormal, 
 and the baby was now, for the first time perhaps, entirely 
 normal in her consciousness. The baby was something which 
 could be disturbed, not something which did disturb. What 
 a change ! What a change that had seemed impossible until 
 its full accomplishment ! 
 
 For months before the birth, she had glimpsed at nights 
 and in other silent hours the tremendous upset. She had not 
 allowed herself to be silly in advance; by temperament she 
 was too sagacious, too well balanced for that; but she had 
 had fitful instants of terror, when solid ground seemed to 
 sink away from her, and imagination shook at what faced her. 
 Instants only ! Usually she could play the comedy of sensible 
 calmness to almost perfection. Then the appointed time drew 
 nigh. And still she smiled, and Samuel smiled. But the 
 preparations, meticulous, intricate, revolutionary, belied their 
 smiles. The intense resolve to keep Mrs. Baines, by methods 
 scrupulous or unscrupulous, away from Bursley until aU was 
 over, belied their smiles. And then the first pains, sharp, 
 shocking, cruel, heralds of torture ! But when they had 
 withdrawn, she smiled, again, palely. Then she was in bed, 
 full of the sensation that the whole house was inverted and 
 
CYRIL 17« 
 
 disorganized, hopelessly. And the doctor came into the room. 
 She smiled at the doctor apologetically, foolishly, as if saying : 
 "We all come to it. Here I am." She was calm without. 
 Gh, but what a prey of abject fear within! "I am at the 
 edge of the precipice," her thought ran; "in a moment I 
 shall be over." And then the pains— not the heralds but the 
 shattering army, endless, increasing in terror as they thundered 
 across her. Yet she could think, quite clearly: "Now I'm 
 in the middle of it. This is it, the horror that I have not 
 dared to look at. My life's in the balance. I may never get 
 " up again. All has at last come to pass. It seemed as if it 
 would never come, as if this thing could not happen to me. 
 But at last it has come to pass ! " 
 
 Ah I Some one put the twisted end of a towel into her 
 hand again — she had loosed it ; and she pulled, pulled, enouglt^ 
 to break cables. And then she shrieked. It was for pity. " 
 It was for some one to help her, at any rate to take notice of 
 her. She was dying. Her soul was leaving her. And she 
 was alone, panic-stricken, in the midst of a cataclysm a 
 thousand times surpassing all that she had imagined of 
 sickening horror. •' I cannot endure this," she thought 
 passionately. "It is impossible that I should be asked to 
 endure this ! " And then she wept ; beaten, terrorized, smashed 
 and riven. No commonsense now ! No wise calmness now 1 
 No self respect now 1 Why, not even a woman now ! Nothing 
 but a kind of animalized victim ! And then the supreme 
 endless spasm, during which she gave up the ghost and bade 
 good-bye to her very self. . . . 
 
 She was lying quite comfortable in the soft bed; idle, 
 silly ; happiness forming like a thin crust over the lava of her 
 anguish and her fright. And by her side was the soul that 
 had fought its way out of her, ruthlessly ; the secret disturber 
 revealed to the light of morning. Curious to look at I Not 
 like any baby that she had ever seen ; red, creased, brutish ! 
 But — for some reason that she did not examme — she folded it 
 in an immense tenderness. 
 
 Sam was by the bed, away from her eyes. She was so 
 comfortable and silly that she could not move her head nor 
 even ask him to come round to her eyes. She had to wait 
 till he came. 
 
 In the afternoon the doctor returned, and astounded her 
 by saying that hers had been an ideal confinement. She was 
 
176 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 too weary to rebuke him for a senseless, blind, callous old 
 man. But she knew what she knew. "No one will ever 
 guess," she thought, "no one ever can guess, what I've been 
 through 1 Talk as you like. I know, now." 
 
 Gradually she had resumed cognizance of her household, 
 perceiving that it was demoralized from top to bottom, and 
 that when the time came to begin upon it she would not be 
 able to settle where to begin, even supposing that the baby 
 were not there to monopolize her attention. The task 
 appalled her. Then she wanted to get up. Then she got up. 
 What a blow to self-confidence ! She went back to bed like 
 a little scared rabbit to its hole, glad, glad to be on the soft 
 pillows again. She said : " Yet the time must come when I 
 shall be downstairs, and walking about and meeting people, 
 and cooking and superintending the millinery." Well, it did 
 come — except that she had to renounce the millinery to Miss 
 InsuU — ^but it was not the same. No, different ! The baby 
 pushed everything else on to another plane. He was a 
 terrific intruder ; not one minute of her old daily life was left j 
 he made no compromise whatever. If she turned away her 
 gaze from him he might pop off into eternity and leave her. 
 
 And now she was calmly and sensibly giving him suck in 
 presence of Miss Insull. She was used to his importance, to 
 the fragility of his organism, to waking twice every night, to 
 being fat. She was strong again. The convulsive twitching 
 that for six months had worried her repose, had quite dis- 
 appeared. The state of being a mother was normal, and the 
 baby was so normal that she could not conceive the house 
 without him. 
 
 All in ten months ! 
 
 When the baby was installed in his cot for the night, she 
 came downstairs and found Miss Insull and Samuel still 
 working, and harder than ever, but at addition sums now. 
 She sat down, leaving the door open at the foot of the stairs. 
 She had embroidery in hand : a cap. And while Miss Insull 
 and Samuel combined pounds, shillings, and pence, whispering 
 at great speed, she bent over the delicate, intimate, wasteful 
 handiwork, drawing the needle with slow exactitude. Then 
 she would raise her head and listen. 
 
 " Excuse me," said Miss Insull, " I think I hear baby crying." 
 
 " And two are eight and three are eleven. He must cry," 
 said Mr. Povey, rapidly, without looking up. 
 
CYRIL 177 
 
 The baby's parents did not make a practice of discussing 
 their domestic existence even with Miss Insull ; but Constance 
 had to justify herself as a mother. 
 
 " I've made perfectly sure he's comfortable," said Constance. 
 " He's only crying because he fancies he's neglected. And we 
 think he can't begin too early to learn." , 
 
 " How right you are 1 " said Miss Insull. " Two and 
 carry three." 
 
 That distant, feeble, querulous, pitiful cry continued 
 obstinately. It continued for thirty minutes. Constance 
 could not proceed with her work. The cry disintegrated her 
 will, dissolved her hard sagacity. 
 
 Without a word she crept upstairs, having carefully deposed 
 the cap on her rocking-chair. 
 
 Mr. Povey hesitated a moment and then bounded up after 
 her, startling Fan. He shut the door on Miss Insull, but Fan 
 was too quick for him. He saw Constance with her hand on 
 the bedroom door. 
 
 " My dear girl," he protested, holding himself in. " Now 
 what are you going to do ? " 
 
 " I'm just listening," said Constance. 
 
 " Do be reasonable and come downstairs." 
 
 He spoke in a low voice, scarcely masking his nervous 
 irritation, and tiptoed along the corridor towards her and up 
 the two steps past the gas-burner. Fan followed, wagging her 
 tail expectant. 
 
 " Suppose he's not well ? " Constance suggested. 
 
 " Pshaw ! " Mr. Povey exclaimed contemptuously. " You 
 remember what happened last night and what you said ! " 
 
 They argued, subduing their tones to the false semblance 
 of good-will, there in the closeness of the corridor. Fan, 
 deceived, ceased to wag her tail and then trotted away. The 
 baby's cry, behind the door, rose to a m>sterious despairing 
 howl, which had ,such an effect on Constance's heart that she 
 could have walked through fire to reach the baby. But Mr. 
 Povey's will held her. Apd she rebelled, angry, hurt, resent- 
 ful. Commonsense, the ideal of mutual forbearance, had 
 winged away Irom that excited pair. It would have assuredly 
 ended in a quarrel, with Samuel glaring at her in black fury 
 from the other side of a bottomless chasm, had not Miss 
 Insull most surprisingly burst up the stairs. 
 
 Mr. Povey turned to face her, swallowing his emotion. 
 
 N 
 
178 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " A telegram 1 " said Miss InsuU. "The postmaster brought 
 it down himself — " 
 
 " What ? Mr. Deny ? " asked Samuel, opening the telegram 
 with an affectation of majesty. 
 
 " Yes. He said it was too late for delivery by rights. But 
 as it seemed very important ..." 
 
 Samuel scanned it and nodded gravely ; then gave it to his 
 wife. Tears came into her eyes. 
 
 " I'll get Cousin Daniel to drive me over at once," said 
 Samuel, master of himself and of the situation. 
 
 "Wouldn't it be better to hire?" Constance suggested. 
 She had a prejudice against Daniel, 
 
 Mr, Povey shook his head. " He offered," he replied. " I 
 can't refuse his offer," 
 
 " Put your 'thick overcoat on, dear," said Constance, in 
 a dream, descending with him, 
 
 " I hope it isn't — " Miss InsuU stopped, 
 
 " Yes it is, Miss Insull," said Samuel, deliberately. 
 
 In less than a minute he was gone. 
 
 Constance ran upstairs. But the cry had ceased. She 
 turned the door-knob softly, slowly, and crept into the chamber. 
 A night-light made large shadows among the heavy mahogany 
 and the crimson, tasselled rep in the close-curtained room. 
 And between the bed and the ottoman (on which lay Samuel's 
 newly-bought family Bible) the cot loomed in the shadows. She 
 picked up the night-light and stole round the bed. Yes, he 
 had decided to fall asleep. The hazard of death afar off had 
 just defeated his devilish obstinacy. Fate had bested him. 
 How marvellously soft and delicate that tear-stained cheek ! 
 How frail that tiny, tiny clenched hand I In Constance grief 
 and joy were mystically united. 
 
 II 
 
 The drawing-room was full of visitors, in frocks of ceremony. 
 The old drawing-room, but newly and massively arranged with 
 the finest Victorian furniture from dead Aunt Harriet's house 
 at Axe ; two " Canterburys," a large bookcase, a splendid scin- 
 tiUant table solid beyond lifting, intricately tortured chairs and 
 armchairs 1 The original furniture of the drawing-room was 
 now down in the parlour, making it grand. All the house 
 
CYRIL 179 
 
 breathed opulence; it was gorged with quiet, restrained expen- 
 siveness ; the least considerable objects, in the most modest 
 corners, were what Mrs. Baines would havj termed ' good.' 
 Constance and Samuel had half of all Aunt Harriet's money 
 and half of Mrs. Baines's ; the other half was accumulating for 
 a hypothetical Sophia, Mr. Critchlow being the trustee. The 
 business continued to flourish. People knew that Samuel 
 Povey was buying houses. Yet Samuel and Constance had 
 not made friends j they had not, in the Five Towns phrase, 
 ' branched out socially,' though they had very meetly branched 
 out on subscription lists. They kept themselves to themselves 
 (einphasizing the preposition). These guests were not their 
 guests ; they were the guests of Cyril. 
 
 He had been named Samuel because Constance would have 
 him named after his father, and Cyril because his father secretly 
 despised the name of Samuel ; and he was called Cyril ; 
 ' Master Cyril,' by Amy, definite successor to Maggie. His 
 mother's thoughts were on Cyril as long as she was awake. His 
 father, when not planning Cyril's welfare, was earning money 
 whose unique object could be nothing but Cyril's welfare. 
 Cyril was the pivot of the house ; every desire ended some- 
 where in Cyril. The shop existed now solely for him. And 
 those houses that Samuel bought by private treaty, or with 
 a shamefaced air at auctions — somehow they were aimed at 
 Cyril. Samuel and Constance had ceased to be self-justifying 
 beings ; they never thought of themselves save as the parents 
 of Cyril. 
 
 They realized this by no means fully. Had they been 
 accused of monomania they would have smiled the smile of 
 people confident in their commonsense and their mental 
 balance. Nevertheless, they were monomaniacs. Instinctively 
 they concealed the fact as much as possible. They never 
 admitted it even to themselves. Samuel, indeed, would often 
 say : " That child is not everybody. That child must be kept 
 in his place." Constance was always teaching him consideration 
 for his father as the most important person in the household. 
 Samuel was always teaching him consideration for his mother 
 as the most important person in the household. Nothing was 
 left undone to convince him that he was a cipher, a nonentity, 
 who ought to be very glad to be alive. But he knew all about 
 his importance. He knew that the entire town was his. He 
 knew that his parents were deceiving themselves. Even when 
 
180 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 he was punished he well knew that it was because he was so 
 important. He never imparted any portion of this knowledge 
 to his parents ; a primeval wisdom prompted him to retain it 
 strictly in his own bosom. 
 
 He was four and a half years old, dark, like his father ; 
 handsome like his aunt, and tall for his age ; not one of his 
 features resembled a feature of his mother's, but sometimes 
 he ' had her look.' From the capricious production of inar- 
 ticulate sounds, and then a few monosyllables that described 
 concrete things and obvious desires, he had gradually acquired 
 an astonishing idiomatic command over the most difficult of 
 Teutonic languages ; there was nothing that he could not say. 
 He could walk and run, was full of exact knowledge about God, 
 and entertained no doubt concerning the special partiality of a 
 minor deity called Jesus towards himself. 
 
 Now, this party was his mother's invention and scheme. 
 His father, after flouting it, had said that if it was to be done at 
 all, it should be done well, and had brought to the doing all his 
 organizing skill. Cyril had accepted it at first — merely accepted 
 it ; but, as the day approached and the preparations increased 
 in magnitude, he had come to look on it with favour, then with 
 enthusiasm. His father having taken him to Daniel Povey's 
 opposite, to choose cakes, he had sjiown, by his solemn and 
 fastidious waverings, how seriously he regarded the affair. 
 
 Of course it had to occur on a Thursday afternoon. The 
 season was summer, suitable for pale and fragile toilettes. 
 And the eight children who sat round Aunt Harriet's great 
 table glittered like the sun. Not Constance's specially pro- 
 vided napkins could hide that wealth and profusion of white 
 lace and stitchery. Never in after-life are the genteel children 
 of the Five Towns so richly clad as at the age of four or five 
 years. Weeks of labour, thousands of cubic feet of gas, whole 
 nights stolen from repose, eyesight, and general health, will 
 disappear into the manufacture of a single frock that accidental 
 jam may ruin in ten seconds. Thus it was in those old days ; 
 (and thus it is to-day. Cyril's guests ranged in years from four 
 to six; they were chiefly older than their host; this was a pity, 
 it impaired his importance; but up to four years a child's 
 sense of propriety, even of common decency, is altogether too 
 unreliable for a respectable party. 
 
 Round about the outskirts of the table were the elders, 
 ladies the majority; they also m their best, for they had to 
 
CYRIL 181 
 
 meet each other. Constance displayed a new dress, of crimson 
 silk; after having mourned for her mother she had definitely 
 abandoned the black which, by reason of her duties in the 
 shop, she had constantly worn from the age of sixteen to 
 within a few months of Cyril's birth ; she never went into the 
 shop now, except casually, on brief visits of inspection. She 
 was still fat ; the destroyer of her figure sat at the head of the 
 table. Samuel kept close to her; he was the only male, until 
 Mr. Critchlow astonishingly arrived ; among the company Mr. 
 Critchlow had a grand-niece. Samuel, if not in his best, was 
 certainly not in his everyday suit. With, his large frilled 
 shirt-front, and small black tie, and his little black beard and 
 dark face over that, he looked very nervous and self-conscious. 
 He had not the habit of entertaining. Nor had Constance ; 
 but her benevolence ever bubbling up to the calm surface of 
 her personality made self-consciousness impossible for her. 
 Miss Insull was also present, in shop-black, ' to help.' Lastly 
 there was Amy, now as the years passed slowly assuming the 
 character of a faithful retainer, though she was only twenty- 
 three. An ugly, abrupt, downright girl, with convenient 
 notions of pleasure ! For she would rise early and retire late 
 in order to contrive an hour to go out with Master Cyril; and 
 to be allowed to put Master Cyril to bed was, really, her 
 highest bliss. 
 
 All these elders were continually inserting arms into the 
 fringe of fluflFy children that surrounded the heaped table; 
 removing dangerous spoons out of cups into saucers, replacing 
 plates, passing cakes, spreading jam, whispering consolations, 
 explanations, and sage counsel. Mr. Critchlow, snow-white 
 now but unbent, remarked that there was ' a pretty cackle,' 
 and he sniffed. Although the window was slightly open, the 
 air was h6avy with the natural human odour which young 
 children transpire. More than one mother, pressing her nose 
 into a lacy mass, to whisper, inhaled that pleasant perfume 
 with a voluptuous thrill. 
 
 Cyril, while attending steadily to the demands of his body, 
 was in a mood which approached the ideal. Proud and 
 radiant, he combined urbanity with a certain fine conde- 
 scension. His bright eyes, and his manner of scraping up 
 jam with a spoon, said : " I am the king of this party. This 
 party is solely in my honour. I know that. We all know it. 
 Still, I will pretend that we are equals, jou and I." He 
 
182 THE OLD WIVES' TAI-E 
 
 talked about his picture-books to a young woman on his right 
 named Jennie, aged four, pale, pretty, the belle in fact, and 
 Mr. Critchlow's grand-niece. The boy's attractiveness was 
 indisputable; he could put on quite anv^rjstceratic air. It 
 was the most delicious sight to see them, Cyril and Jennie, so 
 soft and delicate, so infantile on their piles of cushions and ■ 
 books, with their white socks and black shoes darigling 
 far distant from the carpet ; and yet so old, so self-contained ! 
 And they were merely an epitome of the whole table. The 
 whole table was bathed in the charm and mystery of young 
 years, of helpless fragility, gentle forms, timid elegance, 
 unshamed instincts, and waking souls. Constance and 
 Samuel were very satisfied ; full of praise for other people's 
 children, but with the reserve that of course Cyril was hors 
 concours. They both really did believe, at that moment, that 
 Cyril was, in some subtle way which they felt but could not 
 define, superior to all other infants. 
 
 Some one, some officious relative of a visitor, began to pass 
 a certain cake which had brown walls, a roof of cocoa-nut 
 icing, and a yellow body studded with crimson globules. Not 
 a conspicuously gorgeous cake, not a cake to which a catholic 
 child would be likely to attach particular importance ; a good, 
 average cake ! Who could have guessed that it stood, in 
 Cyril's esteem, as the cake of cakes? He had insisted on his 
 father buying it at Cousin Daniel's, and perhaps Samuel ought 
 to have divined that for Cyril that cake was the gleam that an 
 ardent spirit would follow through the wilderness. Samuel, 
 however, was not a careful observer, and seriously lacked 
 imagination. Constance knew only that Cyril had mentioned 
 the cake once or twice. Now by the hazard of destiny that 
 cake found much favour, helped into popularity as it was 
 by the blundering officious relative who, not dreaming what 
 volcano she was treading on, urged its merits with simpering 
 enthusiasm. One boy took two slices, a slice in each hand ; 
 he happened to be the visitor of whom the cake-distributor 
 was a relative, and she protested; she expressed the shock 
 she suffered. Whereupon both Constance and Samuel sprang 
 forward and swore with angelic smiles that nothing could be 
 more perfect than the propriety of that dear little fellow taking 
 two slices of that cake. It was this hullaballoo that drew 
 Cyril's attention to the evanescence of the cake of cakes. 
 His face at once changed from calm pride to a dreadful 
 
CYRIL 183 
 
 anxiety. His eyes bulged out. His tiny mouth grew and 
 grew, like a mouth in a nightmare. He was no longer human ; 
 he was a cake-eating tiger being balked of his prey. Nobody 
 noticed him. The offirious fool of a woman persuaded Jennie 
 to take the last slice of the cake, which was quite a thin slice. 
 
 Then every one simultaneously noticed Cyril, for he gave 
 a yell. It was not the cry of a despairing soul who sees his 
 beautiful iridescent dream shattered at his feet ; it was the cry 
 of the strong, masterful spirit, furious. He turned upon 
 Jennie, sobbing, and snatched at her cake. Unaccustomed to 
 such behaviour from hosts, and being besides a haughty put- 
 you-in-your-place beauty of the future, Jennie defended her 
 cake. After all, it was not she who had taken two slices at 
 once. Cyril hit her in the eye, and then crammed most of the 
 slice of cake into his enormous mouth. He could not swallow 
 it, nor even masticate it, for his throat was rigid and tight. 
 So the cake projected from his red lips, and big tears watered 
 it. The most awful mess you can conceive ! Jennie wept 
 loudly, and one or two others joined her in sympathy, but the 
 rest went on eating tranquilly, unmoved by the horror which 
 transfixed their ejders. 
 
 A host to snatch food from a guest I A host to strike a 
 guest ! A gentleman to strike a lady ! 
 
 Constance whipped up Cyril from his chair and flew with 
 him to his own room (once Samuel's), where she smacked him 
 on the arm and told him he was a very, very naughty boy and 
 that she didn't know what his father would say. She tpok the 
 food out of his disgusting mouth — or as much of it as she 
 could get at — and then she left him, on the bed. Miss Jennie 
 was still in tears when, blushing scarlet and trying to smile, 
 Constance returned to the drawing-room. Jennie would not 
 be appeased. Happily Jennie's mother (being about to 
 present Jennie with a little brother — she hoped) was not 
 present. Miss InsuU had promised to see Jennie home, and 
 it was decided that she should go. Mr. Critchlow, in high 
 sardonic spirits, said that he would go too; the three 
 departed together, heavily charged with Constance's love and 
 apologies. Then all pretended, and said loudly, that what 
 had happened was nought, that such things were always 
 happening at children's parties. And visitors' relatives 
 asseverated that Cyril was a perfect darling and that really 
 Mrs. Povey must not . . . 
 
184 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 But the attempt to keep up appearances was a failure. 
 
 The Methuselah of visitors, a gaping girl of nearly eight 
 years, walked across the room to where Constance was stand- 
 ing, and said in a loud, confidential, fatuous voice : 
 
 " Cyril has been a rude boy, hasn't he, Mrs. Povey?" 
 
 The clumsiness of children is sometimes tragic. 
 
 Later, there was a trickling stream of fluffy bundles 
 down the crooked stairs and through the parlour and so 
 out into King Street. And Constance received many com- 
 pliments and sundry appeals that darling Cyril should be 
 forgiven. 
 
 " I thought you said that boy was in his bedroom," said 
 Samuel to Constance, coming into the parlour when the last 
 guest had gone. Each avoided the other's eyes. 
 
 "Yes, isn't he?" 
 
 « No." 
 
 " The little jockey ! " (' Jockey,' an essay in the playful, 
 towards making light of the jockey's sin !) "I expect he's 
 been in search of Amy." 
 
 She went to the top of the kitchen stairs and called out : 
 " Amy, is Master Cyril down there ? " 
 
 "Master Cyril? No, mum. But he was in the parlour 
 a bit ago, after the first and second lot had gone. I told him 
 to go upstairs and be a good boy." 
 
 Not for a few moments did the suspicion enter the minds 
 of Samuel and Constance that Cyril might be missing, that 
 the house might not contain Cyril. But having once entered, 
 the suspicion became a certainty. Amy, cross-examined, burst 
 into sudden tears, admitting that the side-door might have 
 been open when, having sped ' the second lot,' she criminally 
 left Cyril alone in the parlour in order to descend for an 
 instant to her kitchen. Dusk was gathering. Amy saw the 
 defenceless innocent wandering about all night in the deserted 
 streets of a great city. A similar vision with precise details 
 of canals, tramcar-wheels, and cellar-flaps, disturbed Con- 
 stance. Samuel said that anyhow he could not have got far, 
 that some one was bound to remark and recognize him, and 
 restore him. " Yes, of course," thought sensible Constance. 
 " But supposing — " 
 
 They all three searched the entire house again. Then, 
 in the drawing-room (which was in a sad condition of anti- 
 climax) Amy exclaimed : 
 
CYRIL 185 
 
 " Eh, master I There's town-crier crossing the Square. 
 Hadn't ye better have him cried ? " 
 
 " Run out and stop him," Constance commanded. 
 
 And Amy flew. 
 
 Samuel and the aged town-crier parleyed at the side door, 
 the women in the background. 
 
 "I canna' cry him without my bell," drawled the crier, 
 stroking his shabby uniform. ,"My bell's at wura (home). 
 I mun go and fetch my bell. Yo' write it down on a bit 
 o' paper for me so as I can read it, and I'll foot off for my 
 belL Folk wouldna' listen to me if I hadna' gotten my belL" 
 
 Thus was Cyril cried. 
 
 " Amy," said Constance, when she and the girl were alone, 
 "there's no use in you standing blubbering there. Get to 
 work and clear up that drawing-room, do 1 The child is 
 sure to be found soon. Your master's gone out, too." 
 
 Brave words ! Constance aided in the drawing-room and,^ 
 kitchen. Theirs was the woman's lot in a great crisis. Plates) 
 have always to be washed. , 
 
 Very shortly afterwards, Samuel Povey came into the 
 kitchen by the underground passage which led past the two 
 cellars to the yard and to Brougham Street. He was 
 carrying in his arms an obscene black mass. This mass 
 was Cyril, once white. 
 
 Constance screamed. She was at liberty to give way to 
 her feelings, because Amy happened to be upstairs. 
 
 " Stand away ! " cried Mr. Povey. " He isn't fit to touch." 
 
 And Mr. Povey made as if to pass directly onward, ignoring 
 the mother. 
 
 "Wherever did you find him?" 
 
 " I found him in the far cellar," said Mr. Povey, compelled 
 to stop, after all. " He was down there with me yesterday, 
 and it just occurred to me that he might have gone there 
 again." 
 
 "What! All in the dark?" 
 
 " He'd lighted a canc^le, if you please ! I'd left a candle- 
 stick and a box of matches handy because I hadn't finished 
 that shelving." 
 
 " Well ! " Constance murmured. " I can't think how ever 
 he dared go there all alone 1 " 
 
 " Can't you ? " said Mr. Povey, cynically. " I can. He 
 simply did it to frighten us." 
 
186 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 "Oh, Cyril!" Constance admonished the child. "Cyril!" 
 
 The child showed no emotion. His face was an enigma. 
 It might have hidden sullenness or mere callous indifference, 
 or a perfect unconsciousness of sin. 
 
 " Give him to me," said Constance. 
 
 " I'll look after him this evening," said Samuel, grimly. 
 
 " But you can't wash him," said Constance, her relief 
 yielding to apprehension. 
 
 " Why not ? " demanded Mr. Povey. And he moved off. 
 
 " But Sam— " 
 
 " I'll look after him, I tell you 1 " Mr. Povey repeated, 
 threateningly. 
 
 " But wliat are you going to do ? " Constance asked with 
 fear. 
 
 "Well," said Mr. Povey, "has this sort of thing got to 
 be dealt with, or hasn't it ? " He departed upstairs. 
 
 Constance overtook him at the door of Cyril's bedroom. 
 
 Mr. Povey did not wait for her to speak. His eyes were 
 blazing. 
 
 " See here ! " he admonished her cruelly. " You get away 
 downstairs, mother ! " 
 
 And he disappeared into the bedroom with his vile and 
 helpless victim. 
 
 A moment later he popped his head out of the door. 
 Constance was disobeying him. He stepped into the passage 
 and shut the door so that Cyril should not hear. 
 
 " Now please do as I tell you," he hissed at his wife. 
 " Don't let's have a scene, please." 
 
 She descended, slowly, weeping. And Mr. Povey retired 
 again to the place of execution. 
 
 Amy nearly fell on the top of Constance with a final tray 
 of things from the drawing-room. And Constance had to tell 
 the girl that Cyril was found. Somehow she could not resist 
 the instinct to tell her also that the master had the affair in 
 hand. Amy then wept. 
 
 After about an hour Mr. Povey at last reappeared. 
 Constance was trying to count silver teaspoons in the 
 parlour. 
 
 " He's in bed now," said Mr. Povey, with a magnificent 
 attempt to be nonchalant. " You mustn't go near him." 
 " But have you washed him ? " Constance whimpered. 
 " I've washed him," replied the astonishing Mr. Povey. 
 
CYRIL 187 
 
 " What have you done to him ? " 
 
 " I've punished him, of course," said Mr. Povey, hice a 
 god who is above human weaknesses. " What did you expect 
 me to do ? Someone had to do it." 
 
 Constance wiped her eyes with the edge of the white 
 apron which she was wearing over her new silk dress. She 
 surrendered ; she accepted the situation ; she made the best 
 of it. And all the evening was spent in dismally and horribly 
 pretending that their hearts were beating as one. Mr. Povey's 
 elaborate, cheery kindliness was extremely painful. 
 
 They went to bed, and in their bedroom Constance, as 
 she stood close to Samuel, suddenly dropped the pretence, 
 and with eyes and voice of anguish said : 
 
 " You must let me look at him." 
 
 They faced each other. For a brief instant Cyril did not 
 exist for Constance. Samuel alone obsessed her, and yet 
 Samuel seemed a strange, unknown man. It was in Con- 
 stance's life one of those crises when the human soul seems 
 to be on the very brink of mysterious and disconcerting 
 cognitions, and then the wave recedes as inexplicably as it 
 surged up. 
 
 " Why, of course 1 " said Mr. Povey, turning away lightly, 
 as though to imply that she was making tragedies out of 
 nothing. 
 
 She gave an involuntary gesture of almost childish relief. 
 
 Cyril slept calmly. It was a triumph for Mr. Povey. 
 
 Constance could not sleep. As she lay darkly awake by 
 her husband, her secret being seemed to be a-quiver with 
 emotion. Not exactly sorrow ; not exactly joy ; an emotion 
 more elemental than these ! A sensation of the intensity of 
 her life in that hour ; troubling, anxious, yet not sad I She 
 said that Samuel was quite right, quite right. And then she 
 said that the poor little thing wasn't yet five years old, and 
 that it was monstrous. The two had to be reconciled. And 
 they never could be reconciled. Always she would be between 
 them, to reconcile them, and to be crushed by their impact. 
 Always she would have to bear the burden of both of them. 
 There could be no ease for her, no surcease from a tremendous 
 preoccupation and responsibility. She could not change 
 Samuel ; besides, he was right ! And though Cyril was not 
 yet five, she felt that she could not change Cyril either. He 
 WIS just as unchangeable as a growing plant. The thought 
 
188 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 of her mother and Sophia did not present itself to her; she 
 felt, however, somewhat as Mrs. Baines had felt on historic 
 occasions ; but, being more softly kind, younger, and less 
 chafed by destiny, she was conscious of no bitterness, con- 
 scious rather of a solemn blessedness^ 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 CRIMB 
 
 "Now, Master Cyril," Amy protested, "will you leave that 
 fire alone ? It's not you that can mend my fires." 
 
 A boy of nine, great and heavy for his years, with a full 
 face and very short hair, bent over the smoking grate. It was 
 about five minutes to eight on a chilly morning after Easter., 
 Amy, hastily clad in blue, with a rough brown apron, was 
 setting the breakfast table. The boy turned his head, still 
 bending. 
 
 " Shut up. Ame," he replied, smiling. Life being short, he 
 usually called her Ame when they were alone together. " Or 
 I'll catch you one in the eye with the poker." 
 
 " You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Amy. ♦' And 
 you know your mother told you to wash your feet this morning, 
 and you haven't done. Fine clothes is all very well, but — " 
 
 " Who says I haven't washed my feet ? " asked Cyril, guiltily. 
 
 Amy's mention of fine clothes referred to the fact that he 
 was that morning wearing his Sunday suit for the first time on 
 a. week-day. 
 
 " I say you haven't," said Amy. 
 
 She was more than three times his age still, but they had 
 been treating each other as intellectual equals for years. 
 
 " And how dp you know ? " asked Cyril, tired of the fire. 
 
 " I know," said Amy. 
 
 "Well, you just don't, then!" said Cyril. "And what 
 about your feet ? I should be sorry to see your feet, Ame." 
 
 Amy was excusably annoyed. She tossed her head. " My 
 feet are as clean as yours any day," she said. " And I shall 
 tell your mother." 
 
 But he would not leave her feet alone, and there ensued 
 189 
 
190 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 one of those endless monotonous altercations on a single theme 
 which occur so often between intellectual equals when one is 
 a young son of the house and the other an established servant 
 who adores him. Refined minds would have found the talk 
 disgusting, but the sentiment of disgust seemed to be unknown 
 to either of the wranglers. At last, when Amy by superior 
 tactics had cornered him, Cyril said suddenly : 
 
 "Oh, go to hell!" 
 
 Amy banged down the spoon for the bacon gravy. " Now 
 I shall tell your mother. Mark my words, this time I shall 
 tell your mother." 
 
 Cyril felt that in truth he had gone rather far. He was 
 perfectly sure that Amy would not tell his mother. And yet, 
 supposing that by some freak of her nature she did ! The 
 consequences would be unutterable ; the consequences would 
 more than extinguish his private glory in the use of such a 
 dashing word. So he laughed, a rather silly, giggling laugh, to 
 reassure himself. 
 
 " You daren't," he said. 
 
 " Daren't I ? " she said grimly. " You'll see. / don't 
 know \yhere you learn ! It fair beats me. But it isn't Amy 
 Bates as is going to be sworn at. As soon as ever your mother 
 comes into this room ! " 
 
 The door at the foot of the stairs creaked and Constance 
 came into the room. She was wearing a dress of majenta 
 merino, and a gold chain descended from her neck over her 
 rich bosom. She had scarcely aged in five years. It would 
 have been surprising if she had altered much, for the years 
 had passed over her head at an incredible rate. To her it 
 appeared only a few months since Cyril's first and last party. 
 
 "Are you all ready, my pet? Let me look at you." 
 Constance greeted the boy with her usual bright, soft energy. 
 
 Cyril glanced at Amy, who averted her head, putting 
 spoons into three saucers. 
 
 " Yes, mother," he replied in a new voice. 
 
 " Did you do what I told you ? " 
 
 " Yes, mother," he said simply. 
 
 "That's right." 
 
 Amy made a faint noise with her lips, and departed. 
 
 He was saved once more. He said to himself that never 
 again would he permit his soul to be disturbed by any threat 
 of old Ame's. 
 
CHIME 191 
 
 Constance's hand descended into her pocket and drew out 
 a hard paper packet, which she clapped on to her son's head. 
 
 " Oh, mother 1 " He pretended that she had hurt him, and 
 then he opened the packet. It contained Congleton -butter- 
 scotch, reputed a harmless sweetmeat. 
 
 " Good ! " he cried, " good ! Oh I Thanks, mother." 
 
 " Now don't begin eating them at once." 
 
 " Just one, mother." 
 
 " No 1 And how often have I told you to keep your feet 
 off that fender. See how it's bent. And it's nobody but you." 
 
 " Sorry." 
 
 " It's no use being sorry if you persist in doing it." 
 
 " Oh, mother, I had such a funny dream ! " 
 
 They chatted until Amy came up the stairs with tea and 
 bacon. The fire had developed from black to clear red. 
 
 " Run and tell father that breakfast is ready." 
 
 After a little delay a spectacled man of fifty, short and 
 stoutish, with grey hair and a small beard half grey and half 
 black, entered from the shop. Samuel had certainly very much 
 aged, especially in his gestures, which, however, were still 
 quick. He sat down at once — ^his wife and son were already 
 seated — and served the bacon with the rapid assurance of one 
 who needs not to inquire about tastes and appetites. Not a 
 word was said, except a brief grace by Samuel. But there was 
 no restraint. Samuel had a mild, benignant air. Constance's 
 eyes were a fountain of cheerfulness. The boy sat between 
 them and ate steadily. 
 
 Mysterious creature, this child, mysteriously growing and 
 growing in the house 1 To his mother he was a delicious joy 
 at all times save when he disobeyed his father. But now for 
 quite a considerable period there had been no serious collision. 
 The boy seemed to be acquiring virtue as well as sense. And 
 really he was charming. So big, truly enormous (every one 
 remarked on it), and yet graceful, lithe, with a smile that could 
 ravish. And he was distinguished in his bearing. Without de- 
 preciating Samuel in her faithful heart, Constance saw plainly 
 the singular differences between Samuel and the boy. Save 
 that he was dark, and that his father's ' dangerous look' came 
 into those childish eyes occasionally, Cyril had now scarcely 
 any obvious resemblance to his father. He was a Baines. 
 This naturally deepened Constance's family pride. Yes, he 
 was mysterious to Constance, though probably not more so 
 
192 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 than any other boy to any other parent. He was equally 
 mysterious to Samuel, but otherwise Mr. Povey had learned 
 to regard him in the light of a parcel which he was always 
 attempting to wrap up in a piece of paper imperceptibly too 
 small. When he successfully covered the parcel at one comer 
 it burst out at another, and this went on for ever, and he could 
 never get the string on. Nevertheless, Mr. Povey had unabated 
 confidence in his skill as a parcel- wrapper. The boy was 
 strangely subtle at times, but then at times he was astoundingly 
 ingenuous, and then his dodges would not deceive the dullest. 
 Mr. Povey knew himself more than a match for his son. He 
 was proud of him because he regarded him as not an ordinary 
 boy ; he took it as a matter of course that his boy should not 
 be an ordinary boy. He never, or very rarely, praised Cyril. 
 Cyril thought of his father as a man who, in response to any 
 request, always began by answering with a thoughtful, serious 
 ' No, I'm afraid not.' 
 
 " So you haven't lost your appetite ! " his mother commented. 
 
 Cyril grinned. "Did you expect me to, mother?" 
 
 " Let me see," said Samuel, as if vaguely recalling an un- 
 important fact. "It's to-day you begin to go to school, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 " I wish father wouldn't be such a chump 1 " Cyril reflected. 
 And, considering that this commencement of school (real 
 school, not a girls' school, as once) had been the chief topic 
 in the house for days, weeks ; considering that it now occupied 
 and filled all hearts, Cyril's reflection was excusable. 
 
 "Now, there's one thing you must always remember, my 
 boy," said Mr. Povey. " Promptness. Never be late either 
 in going to school or in coming home. And in order that 
 you may have no excuse" — Mr. Povey pressed on the word 
 'excuse,' as though condemning Cyril in advance — "here's 
 something for you ! " He said the last words quickly, with a 
 sort of modest shame. 
 
 It was a silver watch and chain. 
 
 Cyril was staggered. So also was Constance, for Mr. 
 Povey could keep his own counsel. At long intervals he would 
 prove, thus, that he was a mighty soul, capable of sublime 
 d«eds. The watch was the unique flowering of Mr. Povev's 
 profound but harsh affection. It lay on the table Uke a miracle. 
 This day was a great day, a supremely exciting day in Cyril's 
 history, and not less so in the history of his parents. 
 
CRIME 193 
 
 The watch killed its owner's appetite dead. 
 
 Routine was ignored that morning. Father did not go 
 back into the shop. At length the moment came when father 
 put on his hat and overcoat to take Cyril, and Cyril's watch 
 and satchel, to the Endowed School, which had quarters in 
 th*e Wedgwood Institution close by. A solemn departure, and 
 Cyril could not pretend by his demeanour that it was not ! 
 Constance desired to kiss him, but refrained. He would not 
 have liked it. She watched them from the window. Cyril 
 was nearly as tall as his father ; that is to say, not nearly as 
 tall, but creeping up his father's shoulder. She felt that the 
 eyes of the town must be on the pair. She was very happy, 
 and nervous. 
 
 At dinner-time a triumph seemed probable, and at tea-time, 
 when Cyril came home under a mortar-board hat and with a 
 satchel full of new books and a head full of new ideas, the 
 triumph was actually and definitely achieved. He had been 
 put into the third form, and he announced that he should 
 soon be at the top of it. He was enchanted with the life of 
 school; he liked the other boys, and it appeared that the 
 other boys liked him. The fact was that, with a new silver 
 watch and a packet of sweets, he had begun his new career in 
 the most advantageous circumstances. Moreover, he possessed 
 qualities which ensure success at school. He was big, and 
 easy, with a captivating smile and a marked aptitude to learn 
 those things which boys insist on teaching to their new com- 
 rades. He had muscle, a brave demeanour, and no conceit. 
 
 During tea the parlour began to accustom itself to a new 
 vocabulary, containing such words as ' fellows,' ' kept in,' ' lines,' 
 'rot,' 'recess,' 'jolly.' To some of these words the parents, 
 especially Mr. Povey, had an instinct to object, but they could 
 not object, somehow they did not seem to get an opportunity 
 to object J they were carried away on the torrent, and after 
 aU, their excitement and pleasure in the exceeding romantic 
 novelty of existence were just as intense and nearly as ingenuous 
 as their son's. 
 
 He demonstrated that unless he was allowed to stay up 
 later than aforetime he would not be able to do his home-work, 
 and hence would not keep that place in the school to which 
 his talents entitled him. Mr. Povey suggested, but only with 
 half a heart, that he should get up earlier in the morning. 
 The proposal fell flat. Everybody knew and admitted that 
 
194 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 nothing save the scorpions of absolute necessity, or a tremendous 
 occasion such as that particular morning's, would drive Cyril 
 from his bed until the smell of bacon rose to him from the 
 kitchen. The parlour table was consecrated to his lessons. 
 It became generally known that ' Cyril was doing his lessons.' 
 His father scanned the new text-books while . Cyril con- 
 descendingly explained to him that all others were superseded 
 and worthless. His father contrived to maintain an air of 
 preserving his mental equilibrium, but not his mother; she 
 gave it up, she who till that day had under his father's 
 direction taught him nearly all that he knew, and Cyril passed 
 above her into regions of knowledge where she made no 
 pretence of being able to follow him. 
 
 When the lessons were done, and Cyril had wiped his 
 fingers on bits of blotting-paper, and his father had expressed 
 qualified approval and had gone into the shop-, Cyiil said to 
 his mother, with that delicious hesitation whieh overtook him 
 sometimes : 
 
 " IVTother." 
 
 "Well, my pet." 
 
 " I want you to do something for me." 
 
 "Well, what is it?" 
 
 " No, you must promise." 
 
 " I'll do it if I can." 
 
 "But you can. It isn't doing. It's not doing." 
 
 " Come, Cyril, out with it." 
 
 " I don't want you to come in and look at me after I'm 
 asleep any more." 
 
 '• But, you silly boy, what difference can it make to you if 
 you're asleep ? " 
 
 " I don't want you to. It's like as if I was a baby. You'll 
 have to stop doing it some day, and so you may as well 
 stop now." 
 
 It was thus that he meant to turn his back on his youth. 
 
 She smiled. She was incomprehensibly happy. She con- 
 tinued to smile. 
 
 " Now you'll promise, won't you, mother? " 
 
 She rapped him on the head witb her thimble, lovingly. 
 He took the gesture for consent. 
 
 " You are a baby," she murmured. 
 
 "Now I shall trust you," he said, ignoring this. "Say 
 • honour bright.' " 
 
CRIME 19i 
 
 " Hononr bright* 
 
 With what a long caress her eyes followed him, as he went 
 up to bed on his great sturdy legs ! She was thankful that 
 school had not contaminated her adorable innocent. If she 
 could have been Ame for twenty-four hours, she perhaps would 
 not have hesitated to put butter into his mouth lest it should 
 melt 
 
 Mr. Povey and Constance talked late and low that night. 
 They could neither of them sleep; they had little desire to 
 sleep. Constance's face said to her husband : " I've always 
 stuck up for that boy, in spite of your severities, and you see 
 how right I was ! " And Mr. Povey's face said : " You see now 
 the brilliant success of my system. You see how my educa- 
 tional theories have justified themselves. Never been to a 
 school before, except that wretched little dame's school, and 
 he goes practically straight to the top of the third form — at 
 nine years of age ! " They discussed his future. There could 
 be no sign of lunacy in discussing his future up to a certain 
 point, but each felt that to discuss the ultimate career of a 
 child nine years old would not be the act of a sensible parent ; 
 only foolish parents would be so fond. Yet each was dying 
 to discuss his ultimate career. Constance yielded first to the 
 temptation, as became her. Mr. Povey scoffed, and then, to 
 humour Constance, yielded also. The matter was soon fairly 
 on the carpet. Constance was relieved to find that Mr. 
 Povey had no thought whatever of putting Cyril in the shop. 
 No; Mr. Povey did not desire to chop wood with a razor. 
 Their son must and would ascend. Doctor! Solicitor! 
 Barrister ! Not barrister — barrister was fantastic. When they 
 had argued for about half an hour Mr. Povey intimated suddenly 
 that the conversation was unworthy of their practical common- 
 sense, and went to sleep. 
 
 n 
 
 Nobody really thought that this almost ideal condition of 
 things would persist : an enterprise commenced in such glory 
 must surely traverse periods of difficulty and even of temporary 
 disaster. But no ! Cyril seemed to be made specially for 
 school. Before Mr. Povey and Constance had quite accus- 
 tomed .them selves to being the parents of ' a great lad,' before 
 Cyril had broken the glass of his miraculous watch more than 
 
196 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 once, the summer term had come to an end and there arrived 
 the excitations of the prize-giving, as it was called ; for at that 
 epoch the smaller schools had not found the eflfrontery to dub 
 the breaking-up ceremony a ' speech-day.' This prize-giving 
 furnished a particular joy to Mr. and Mrs. Povey. Although 
 the prizes were notoriously few in number — partly to add to 
 their significance, and partly to diminish their cost (the foun- 
 dation was poor) — Cyril won a prize, a box of geometrical 
 instruments of precision ; also he reached the top of his form, 
 and was marked for promotion to the formidable Fourth. 
 Samuel and Constance were bidden to the large hall of the 
 Wedgwood Institution of a summer afternoon, and they saw 
 the whole Board of Governors raised on a rostrum, and in the 
 middle, in front of what he referred to, in his aristocratic 
 London accent, as ' a beggarly array of rewards,' the aged and 
 celebrated Sir Thomas Wilbraham Wilbraham, ex-M.P., last 
 respectable member of his ancient line. And Sir Thomas 
 gave the box of instruments to Cyril, and shook hands with 
 him. And everybody was very well dressed. Samuel, who 
 had never attended anything but a National School, recalled 
 the simple rigours of his own boyhood, and swelled. For 
 certainly, of all the parents present, he was among the richest 
 When, in the informal promiscuities which followed the prize 
 distribution, Cyril joined his father and mother, sheepishly, 
 they duly did their best to make light of his achievements, and 
 failed. The walls of the hall were covered with specimens of 
 the pupils' skill, and the headmaster was observed to direct 
 the attention of the mighty to a map done by Cyril. Of 
 course it was a map of Ireland, Ireland being the map chosen 
 by every map-drawing schoolboy who is free to choose. For 
 a third-form boy it was considered a masterpiece. In the 
 shading of mountains Cyril was already a prodigy. Never, it 
 was said, had the Macgillycuddy Reeks been indicated by 
 a member of that school with a more amazing subtle refine- 
 ment than by the young Povey. From a proper pride in 
 themselves, from a proper fear lest they should be secretly 
 accused of ostentation by other parents, Samuel and Constance 
 did not go near that map. For the rest, they had lived with 
 it for weeks, and Samuel (who, after all, was determined not to 
 be dirt under his son's feet) had scratched a blot from it with 
 a completeness that defied inquisitive examination. 
 
 The fame of this map, added to the box of compasses and 
 
CRIME 197 
 
 Cyril's own desire, pointed to an artistic career. Cyril had 
 always drawn and daubed, and the drawing-master of the 
 Endowed School, who was also headmaster of the Art School, 
 had suggested that the youth should attend the Art School one 
 night a week. Samuel, however, would not listen to the idea ; 
 Cyril was too young. It is true that Cyril was too young, but 
 Samuel's real objection was to Cyril's going out alone in the 
 evening. On that he was adamant. 
 
 The Governors had recently made the discovery that a 
 sports department was necessary to a good school, and had 
 rented a field for cricket, football, and rounders up at Bleak- 
 ridge, an innovation which demonstrated that the town was 
 moving with the rapid times. In June this field was open 
 after school hours till eight p.m. as well as on Saturdays. 
 The Squire learnt that Cyril had a talent for cricket, and 
 Cyril wished to practise in the evenings, and was quite ready 
 to bind himself with Bible oaths to rise at no matter what 
 hour in the morning for the purpose of home lessons. He 
 scarcely expected his father to say ' Yes,' as his father never 
 did say ' Yes,' but he was obliged to ask. Samuel nonplussed 
 him by replying that on fine evenings, when he could spare 
 time from the shop, he would go up to Bleakridge with his 
 son. Cyril did not like this in the least. Still, it might 
 be tried. One evening they went, actually, in the new steam- 
 car which had superseded the old horse-cars, and which 
 travelled all the way to Longshaw, a place that Cyril had only 
 heard of. Simuel talked of the games played in the Five 
 Towns in his day, of the Titanic sport of prison-bars, when 
 the team of one ' bank ' went forth fo the challenge of another, 
 'bank,' preceded by a drum-and-fife band, and when, in the 
 heat of the chase, a man might jump into the canal to escape 
 his pursuer ; Samuel had never played at cricket. 
 
 Samuel, with a very young grandson of Fan (deceased), 
 sat in dignity on the grass and watched his cricketer for an 
 hour and a half (while Constance kept an eye on the shop and 
 superintended its closing). Samuel then conducted Cyril 
 home again. Two days later the father of his own accord 
 offered to repeat the experience. Cyril refused. Disagreeable 
 insinuations that he was a baby in arms had been made at 
 school in the meantime. 
 
 Nevertheless, in other directions Cyril sometimes sur- 
 prisingly conquered. For instance, he came home one day 
 
198 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 with the information that a dog that was not a bull-terrier was 
 not worth calling a dog. Fan's grandson had been carried off 
 in earliest prime by a chicken-bone that had pierced his vitals, 
 and Cyril did indeed persuade his father to buy a bull-terrier. 
 The animal was a superlative of forbidding ugliness, but father 
 and son vied with each other in stern critical praise of his 
 surpassing beauty, and Constance, from good nature, joined 
 in the pretence. He was called Lion, and the shop, after one 
 or two untoward episodes, was absolutely closed to him. 
 
 But the most striking of Cyril's successes had to do with 
 the question of the annual holiday. He spoke of the sea soon 
 after becoming a schoolboy. It appeared that his complete 
 ignorance of the sea prejudicially affected him at school. 
 Further, he had always loved the sea ; he had drawn hundreds 
 of three-masted ships with studding-sails set, and knew the 
 difference between a brig and a brigantine. When he first 
 said : " I say, mother, why can't we go to Llandudno instead 
 of Buxton this year ? " his mother thought he was out of his 
 senses. For the idea of going to any place other than Buxton 
 was inconceivable ! Had they not always been to Buxton ? 
 What would their landlady say ? How could they ever look 
 her in the face again ? Besides . . . well . . . ! They went 
 to Llandudno, rather scared, and hardly knowing how the 
 change had come about. But they went. And it was the 
 force of Cyril's will, Cyril the theoretic cypher, that took 
 them. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The removal of the Endowed School to more commodious 
 premises in the shape of Shawport Hall, an ancient mansion 
 with fifty rooms and five acres of land round about it, was 
 not a change that quite pleased Samuel or Constance. They 
 admitted the hygienic advantages, but Shawport Hall was three- 
 quarters of a mile distant from St. Luke's Square— in the hollow 
 that separates Bursley from its suburb of Hillport ; whereas the 
 Wedgwood Institution was scarcely a minute away. It was as 
 if Cyril, when he set off to Shawport Hall of a morning, passed 
 out of their sphere of influence. He was leagues off, doing 
 they knew not what Further, his dinner-hour was cut short 
 by the extra time needed for the journey to and fro, and he 
 
CRIME 199 
 
 MTfved late for tea ; it may be said that he often arrived very 
 late for tea; the whole machinery of the meal was disturbed. 
 These matters seemed to Samuel and Constance to be of tre- 
 mendous import, seemed to threaten the very foundations of 
 existence. Then they grew accustomed to the new order, and 
 wondered sometimes, when they passed the Wedgwood Insti- 
 tution and the insalubrious Cock Yard — once sole playground 
 of the boys — that the school could ever have ' managed ' in the 
 narrow quarters once allotted to it. 
 
 Cyril, though constantly successful at school, a rising man, 
 an infallible bringer-home of excellent reports, and a regular 
 taker of prizes, became gradually less satisfactory in the house. 
 He was ' kept in ' occasionally, and although his father pre- 
 tended to hold that to be kept in was to slur the honour 
 of a spotless family, Cyril continued to be kept in ; a hardened 
 sinner, lost to shame. But this was not the worst The worst 
 undoubtedly was that Cyril was ' getting rough.' No definite 
 accusation could be laid against him ; the offence was general, 
 vague, everlasting ; it was in all he did and said, in every ges- 
 ture and movement. He shouted, whistled, sang, stamped, 
 stumbled, lunged. He omitted such empty rites as saying 
 ' Yes ' or ' Please,' and wiping his nose. He replied gruffly 
 and nonchalantly to polite questions, or he didn't reply until 
 the questions were repeated, and even then with a ' lost ' air 
 that was not genuine. His shoe-laces were a sad sight, and 
 his finger-nails no sight at all for a decent woman ; his hair 
 was as rough as his conduct; hardly at the pistol's point could 
 he be forced to put oil on it. In brief, he was no longer the 
 nice boy that he used to be. He had unmistakably deterio- 
 rated. Grievous ! But what can you expect when your boy is 
 obliged, month after month and year after year, to associate 
 with other boys ? After all, he was a good boy, said Constance, 
 often to herself and now and then to Samuel, For Constance, 
 his charm was eternally renewed. His smile, his frequent 
 ingenuousness, his funny self-conscious gesture when he wanted 
 to 'get round' her — these characteristics remained; and his 
 pure heart remained ; she could read that in his eyes. Samuel 
 was inimical to his tastes for sports and his triumphs therein. 
 But Constance had pride in all that. She liked to feel him 
 and to gaze at him, and to smell that faint, uncleanly odour 
 of sweat that hung in his clothes. 
 
 In these conditions he reached the advanced age of thirteen. 
 
200 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 And his parents, who despite their notion of themselves as 
 wide-awake parents were a simple pair, never suspected that 
 his heart, conceived to be still pure, had become a crawling, 
 horrible mass of corruption. 
 
 One day the head-master called at the shop. Now, to see 
 a head-master walking about the town during school-hours is a 
 startling spectacle, and is apt to give you the same uncanny 
 sensation as when, alone in a room, you think you see some- 
 thing move which ought not to move. Mr. Povey was startled. 
 Mr. Ppvey had a thumping within his breast as he rubbed his 
 hands and drew the head-master to the private corner where 
 his desk was. "What can I do for you to-day?" he almost 
 said to the head-master. But he did not say it. The boot was 
 emphatically not on that leg. The head-master talked to Mr. 
 Povey, in tones carefully low, for about a quarter of an hour, 
 and then he closed the interview. Mr. Povey escorted him 
 across the shop, and the head-master said with ordinary loud- 
 ness : " Of course it's nothing. But my experience is that it's 
 just as well to be on the safe side, and I thought I'd tell you. 
 Forewarned is forearmed. I have other parents to see." They 
 shook hands at the door. Then Mr. Povey stepped out on to 
 the pavement and, in front of the whole Square, detained an 
 unwilling head-master for quite another minute. 
 
 His face was deeply flushed as he returned into the shop. 
 The assistants bent closer over their work. He did not 
 instantly rush into the parlour and communicate with Con- 
 stance. He had dropped into a way of conducting many 
 operations by his own unaided brain. His confidence in his 
 skill had increased with years. Further, at the back of his mind, 
 there had established itself a vision of Mr. Povey as the seat 
 of government and of Constance and Cyril as a sort of perma- 
 nent opposition. He would not have admitted that he saw 
 such a vision, for he was utterly loyal to his wife ; but it was 
 there. This unconfessed vision was one of several causes which 
 had contributed to intensify his inherent tendency towards 
 Machiavellianism and secretiveness. He said nothing to Con- 
 stance, nothing to Cyril ; but, happening to encounter Amy in 
 the showroom, he was inspired to interrogate her sharply. The 
 result was that they descended to the cellar together, Amy 
 weeping. Amy was commanded to hold her tongue. And as 
 she went in mortal fear of Mr. Povey she did hold her tongue. 
 
 Nothing occurred for several days. And then one morning 
 
CRI1V4E 201 
 
 — it was Constance's birthday : children are nearly always hor- 
 ribly unlucky in their choice of days for sin — Mr. Povey, h'aving 
 executed mysterious movements in the shop after Cyril's 
 departure to school, jammed his hat on his head and ran forth 
 in pursuit of Cyril, whom he intercepted with two other boys, 
 at the corner of Oldcastle Street and Acre Passage. 
 
 Cyril stood as if turned into salt. " Come back home ! " 
 said Mr. Povey, grimly; and for the sake of the other boys; 
 " Please." 
 
 " But I shall be late for school, father," Cyril weakly urged. 
 
 " Never mind." 
 
 They passed through the shop together, causing a terrific 
 concealed emotion, and then they did violence to Constance 
 by appearing in the parlour. Constance was engaged in cutting 
 straws and ribbons to make a straw-frame for a water-colour 
 drawing of a moss-rose which her pure-hearted son had given 
 her as a birthday present. 
 
 " Why — what — ? " she exclaimed. She said no more at 
 the moment because she was sure, from the faces of her men, 
 that the time was big with fearful events. 
 
 " Take your satchel off," Mr. Povey ordered coldly. "And 
 your mortar-board," he added with a peculiar intonation, as if 
 glad thus to prove that Cyril was one of those rude boys who 
 have to be told to take their hats off in a room. 
 
 "Whatever's amiss?" Constance murmured under her 
 breath, as Cyril obeyed the command. " Whatever's amiss ? '.' 
 
 Mr. Povey made no immediate answer. He was in charge 
 of these proceedings, and was very anxious to conduct them 
 with dignity and with complete effectiveness. Little fat man 
 over fifty, with a wizened face, grey-haired and grey-bearded, 
 he was as nervous as a youth. His heart beat furiously. And 
 Constance, the portly matron who would never see forty again, 
 was just as nervous as a girl. Cyril had gone very white. All 
 three felt physically sick. 
 
 " What money have you got in your pockets ? " Mr. Povey 
 demanded, as a commencement. 
 
 Cyril, who had had no opportunity to prepare his case, 
 offered no reply. 
 
 " You heard what I said," Mr. Povey thundered. 
 
 " I've got three-halfpence," Cyril murmured glumly, looking 
 down at the floor. His lower lip seemed to hang precariously 
 away from his gums. 
 
202 THE OLD -WIVES' TALE 
 
 " Where did you get that from ? " 
 
 " It's part of what mother gave me," said the boy. 
 
 " I did give him a threepenny bit last week," Constance 
 put in guiltily. " It was a long time since he had had any 
 money." 
 
 "If you gave it him, that's enough," said Mr. Povey, 
 quickly, and to the boy : " That's all you've got ? " 
 
 " Yes, father," said the boy. 
 
 " You're sure ? " 
 
 " Yes, father." 
 
 Cyril was playing a hazardous game for the highest stakes, 
 and under grave disadvantages; and he acted for the best 
 He guarded his own interests as well as he could. 
 
 Mr. Fovey found himself obliged to take a serious risk. 
 " Empty your pockets, then." 
 
 Cyril, perceiving that he had lost that particular game, 
 emptied his pockets. 
 
 " Cyril," said Constance, " how often have I told you to 
 change your handkerchiefs oftener ! Just look at this ! " 
 
 Astonishing creature ! She was in the seventh hell of sick 
 apprehension, and yet she said that I >- . - 
 
 After the handkerchief emerged the common schoolboy 
 stock of articles useful and magic, and then, last, a silver 
 florin ! 
 
 Mr. Povey felt relief, 
 
 " Oh, Cyril ! " whimpered Constance. 
 
 "Give it your mother," said Mr. Povey. 
 
 The boy stepped forward awkwardly, and Constance, 
 weeping, took the coin. 
 
 " Please look at it, mother," said Mr. Povey. " And tell 
 me if there's a cross marked on it." 
 
 Constance's tears blurred the coin. She had to wipe her 
 eyes. 
 
 " Yes," she whispered faintly. " There's something on 
 it." 
 
 " I thought so," said Mr. Povey. " Where did you steal it 
 from ? " he demanded. 
 
 " Out of the till," answered Cyril. 
 
 " Have you ever stolen anything out of the till before?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "Yes, what." 
 
 "Yes, father." 
 
CRIME 203 
 
 "Take your hands out of your pockets and stand up 
 straight, if you can. How often ? " 
 
 « I— I don't know, father." 
 
 " I blame myself," said Mr. Povey, frankly. " I blame 
 myself. The till ought always to be locked. All tills ought 
 always to be locked. But we felt we could trust the assistants. 
 If anybody had told me that I ought not to trust you, if 
 anybody had told me that my own son would be the thief, 
 I should have — well, I don't know what I should have 
 said!" 
 
 Mr. Povey was quite justified in blaming himself. The 
 fact was that the functioning of that till was a patriarchal 
 survival, which he ought to have revolutionized, but which it 
 had never occurred to him to revolutionize, so accustomed to 
 it was he. In the time of John Baines, the till, with its three 
 bowls, two for silver and one for copper (gold had never been 
 put into it), was invariably unlocked. The person in charge 
 of the shop took change from it for the assistants, or tempo- 
 rarily authorized an assistant to do so. Gold was kept in a 
 small linen bag in a locked drawer of the desk. The contents 
 of the till- were never checked by any system of book-keeping, 
 as there was no system of book-keeping ; when all transactions, 
 whether in payment or receipt, are in cash — the Baineses 
 never owed a penny save the quarterly wholesale accounts, 
 which were discharged instantly to the travellers — a system 
 of book-keeping is not indispensable. The till was situate 
 immediately at the entrance to the shop from the house ; it 
 was in the darkest part of the shop, and the unfortunate Cyril 
 had to pass it every day on his way to school. The thing was 
 a perfect device for the manufacture of young criminals. 
 
 "And how have you been spending this money?" Mr. 
 Povey inquired. 
 
 Cyril's hands slipped into his pockets again. Then, 
 noticing the lapse, he dragged them out. 
 
 " Sweets," said he. 
 
 "Anything else?" 
 
 " Sweets and things." 
 
 " Oh 1 " said Mr. Povey. " Well, now you can go down 
 into the cinder-cellar and bring up here all the things there 
 are in that little box in the corner. Off you go ! " 
 
 And off went Cyril. He had to swagger through the 
 kitchen. 
 
204 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 "What did I tell you, Master Cyril?" Amy unwisely asked 
 of him. " You've copped it finely this time." 
 
 ' Copped ' was a word which she had learned from Cyril, 
 
 " Go on, you old bitch ! " Cyril growled. 
 
 As he returned from the cellar, Amy said angrily : 
 
 " I told you I should tell your father the next time you 
 called me that, and I shall. Yoii mark my words." 
 
 " Cant ! cant ! " he retorted. " Do you think I don't 
 know who's been canting ? Cant ! cant : " 
 
 Upstairs in the parlour Samuel was explaining the matter 
 to his wife. There had been a perfect epidemic of smoking 
 in the school. The head-master had discovered it and, he 
 hoped, stamped it out. What had disturbed the head-master 
 far more than the smoking was the fact that a few boys had 
 been found to possess somewhat costly pipes^ cigar-holders, or 
 cigarette-holders. The head-master, wily, had not confiscated 
 these articles ; he had merely informed the parents concerned. 
 In his opinion the articles came from one single source, a 
 generous thief; he left the parents to ascertain which of 
 them had brought a thief into the world. 
 
 Further information Mr. Povey had culled from Amy, and 
 there could remain no doubt that C}^:!! had been providing 
 his chums with the utensils of smoking, the till supplying the 
 means. He had told Amy that the thifags which he secreted 
 in the cellar had been presented to him by blood-brothers. 
 But Mr. Povey did not believe that. Anyhow, he had marked 
 every silver coin in the till for three nights, and had watched 
 the till in the mornings fi-om behind the merino-pile; and 
 the florin on the parlour-table spoke of his success as a 
 detective. 
 
 Constance felt guilty on behalf of Cyril. As Mr. Povey 
 outlined his case she could not free herself from an entirely 
 irrational sensation of sin ; at any rate of special responsibility. 
 Cyril seemed to be her boy and not Samuel's boy at all. She 
 avoided her husband's glance. This was very odd. 
 
 Then Cyril returned, and his parents composed their faces, 
 and he deposited, next to the florin, a sham meerschaum pipe 
 in a case, a tobacco-pouch, a cigar of which one end had been 
 charred but the other not cut, and a half-empty packet of 
 cigarettes without a label. 
 
 Nothing could be hid from Mr. Povey. The details were 
 distressing. 
 
CRIME 805 
 
 " So Cyril is a liar and a thief, to say nothing of this 
 smoking ! " Mr. Povey concluded. 
 
 He spoke as if Cyril had invented strange and monstrous 
 sins. But deep down in his heart a little voice was telling 
 him, as regards the smoking, that he had set the example. 
 Mr. Baines had never smoked. Mr. Critchlow never smoked. 
 Only men like Daniel smoked. 
 
 Thus far Mr. Povey had conducted the proceedings to his 
 own satisfaction. He had proved the crime. He had made 
 Cyril confess. The whole affair lay revealed. Well — what 
 next? Cyril ought to have dissolved in repentance; some- 
 thing dramatic ought to have occurred. But Cyril simply 
 stood with hanging, sulky head, and gave no sign of proper 
 feeling. 
 
 Mr. Povey considered that, until something did happen, 
 he must improve the occasion. 
 
 " Here we have trade getting worse every day," said he (it 
 was true), "and you are robbing your parents to make a 
 beast of yourself, and corrupting your companions ! I wonder 
 your mother never smelt you ! " 
 
 " I never dreamt of such a thing 1 " said Constance, 
 grievously. 
 
 Besides, a young man clever enough to rob a till is 
 usually clever enough to find out that the secret of safety in 
 smoking is to use cachous and not to keep the stuff in your 
 pockets a minute longer than you can help. 
 
 " There's no knowing how much money you have stolen," 
 said Mr. Povey. " A thief ! " 
 
 If Cyril had stolen cakes, jam, string, cigars, Mr. Povey 
 would never have said 'thief as he did say it. But money I 
 Money was different. And a till was not a cupboard or a 
 larder. A till was a till. Cyril had struck at the very basis 
 of society. 
 
 " And on your mother's birthday ! " Mr. Povey said further. 
 
 " There's one thing I can do ! " he said. " I can burn all 
 this. Built on lies! How dared you ? " 
 
 And he pitched into the fire — not the apparatus of crime, 
 but the water-colour drawing of a moss-rose and the straws 
 and the blue ribbon for bows at the corners. 
 
 " How dared you ? " he repeated. 
 
 " You never gave me any money," Cyril muttered. 
 
 He thought the marking of coins a mean trick, and the 
 
206 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 ,dragging-in of bad trade and his mother's birthday roused a 
 familiar devil that usually slept quietly in his breast. 
 
 " What" s that you say ? " Mr. Povey almost shouted. 
 
 " You never gave me any money," the devil repeated in a 
 louder tone than Cyril had employed.^ 
 
 (It was true. But Cyril * had only to ask,' and he would 
 have received all that was good for him.) 
 
 Mr. Povey sprang up. Mr. Povey also had a devil. The 
 two devils gazed at each other for an instant ; and then, 
 noticing that Cyril's head was above Mr. Povey's, the elder 
 devil controlled itself. Mr. Povey had suddenly had as much 
 drama as he wanted. 
 
 " Get away to bed ! " said he with dignity. 
 
 Cyril went, defiantly. 
 
 " He's to have nothing but bread and water, mother," Mr. 
 Povey finished. He was, on the whole, pleased with himself. 
 
 Later in the day Constance reported, tearfully, that she 
 had been up to Cyril and that Cyril had wept. Which was to 
 Cyril's credit. But all felt that life could never be the same 
 again. During the remainder of existence this unspeakable 
 horror would lift its obscene form between them. Constance 
 had never been so unhappy. Occasionally, when by herself, 
 she would rebel for a brief moment, as one rebels in secret 
 against a mummery which one is obliged to treat seriously. 
 "After all," she would whisper, "suppose he has taken a 
 few shillings out of the till! What then? What does it 
 matter?" But these moods of moral insurrection against 
 society and Mr. Povey were very transitory. They were come 
 and gone in a flash. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 ANOTHER CRIME 
 
 One night — ^it was late in the afternoon of the same year, 
 about six months after the tragedy of the florin — Samuel Povey 
 was wakened up by a hand on his shoulder and a voice that 
 whispered: "Father!" 
 
 The thief and the liar was standing in his night-shirt by 
 the bed. Samuel's sleepy eyes could just descry him in the 
 thick gloom. 
 
 "What — what?" questioned the father, gradually coming 
 to consciousness. " What are you doing there ? " 
 
 "I didn't want to wake mother up," the boy whispered. 
 " There's someone been throwing dirt or something at our 
 windows, and has been for a long time." 
 
 "Eh, what?" 
 
 Samuel stared at the dim form of the thief and liar. 
 The boy was tall, not in the least like a little boy ; and yet, 
 then, he seemed to his father as quite a Httle boy, a little 
 ' thing ' in a night-shirt, with childish gestures and childish 
 inflections, and a childish, delicious, quaint anxiety not to 
 disturb his mother, who had lately been deprived of sleep 
 owing to an illness of Amy's which had demanded nursing. 
 His father had not so perceived him for years. In that instant 
 the conviction that Cyril was permanently unfit for human 
 society finally expired in the father's mind. Time had already 
 weakened it very considerably. The decision that, be Cyril 
 what he might, the summer holiday must be taken as usual, 
 had dealt it a fearful blow. And yet, though Samuel and 
 Constance had grown so accustomed to the companionship of 
 a criminal that they frequently lost memory of his guilt for 
 long periods, nevertheless the convention of his leprosy had 
 
 ao; 
 
THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 more or less persisted with Samuel until that moment : when it 
 vanished with strange suddenness, to Samuel's conscious relief. 
 
 There was a rain of pellets on the window. 
 
 " Hear that ? " demanded Cyril, whispering dramatically. 
 " And it's been like that on my window too." 
 
 Samuel arose. " Go back to your room 1 " he ordered in 
 the same dramatic whisper ; but not as father to son — rather 
 as conspii-ator to conspirator. 
 
 Constance slept. They could hear her regular breathing. 
 
 Barefooted, the elderly gowned figure followed the younger, 
 and one after the other they creaked down the two steps which 
 separated Cyril's room from his parents'. 
 
 " Shut the door quietly 1 " said Samuel. 
 
 Cyril obeyed. 
 
 And then, having lighted Cyril's gas, Samuel drew the 
 blind, unfastened the catch of the window, and began to open 
 it with many precautions of silence. All the sashes in that 
 house were difficult to manage. Cyril stood close to his 
 father, shivering without knowing that he shivered, astonished 
 only that his father had not told him, to get back into bed at 
 once. It was, beyond doubt, the proudest hour of Cyril's 
 career. In addition to the mysterious circumstances of the 
 night, there was in the situation that thrill which always com- 
 municates itself to a father and son when they are afoot together 
 upon an enterprise unsuspected by the woman from whom 
 their lives have no secrets. 
 
 Samuel put his head out of the window. 
 
 A man was standing there. 
 
 " That you, Samuel ? " The voice came low. 
 
 " Yes," replied Samuel, cautiously, " It's not Cousin Daniel, 
 is it?" 
 
 " I want ye," said Daniel Povey, curtly. 
 
 Samuel paused. " I'll be down in a minute," he said. 
 
 Cyril at length received the command to get back into bed 
 at once. 
 
 "Whatever's up, father?" he asked joyously. 
 
 " I don't know. I must put some things on and go and 
 see." 
 
 He shut down the window on all the breezes that were 
 pouring into the room. * 
 
 " Now quick, before I turn the gas out ! " he admonished, 
 his hand on the gas-tap. 
 
ANOTHER CRIME 
 
 '•You'll tell me in the morning, won't you, father ?" 
 
 " Yes," said Mr. Povey, conquering his habitual impulse to 
 say ' No.' 
 
 He crept back to the large bedroom to grope for clothes. 
 
 When, having descended to the parlour and lighted the 
 gas there, he opened the side-door, expecting to let Cousin 
 Daniel in, there was no sign of Cousin Daniel Presently he 
 saw a figure standing at the corner of the Square. He whistled 
 — Samuel had a singular faculty of whistling, the envy of his 
 son — and Daniel beckoned to him. He nearly extinguished 
 the gas and then ran out, hatless. He was wearing most of 
 his clothes, except his linen collar and necktie, and the collar 
 of his coat was turned up. 
 
 Daniel advanced before him, without waiting, into the 
 confectioner's shop opposite. Being part of the most modem 
 building in the Square, Daniel's shop was provided with the 
 new roll-down iron shutter, by means of which you closed 
 your establishment with a motion similar to the winding of a 
 large clock, instead of putting up twenty separate shutters one 
 by one as in the sixteenth century. The little portal in the 
 vast sheet of armour was ajar, and Daniel had passed into the 
 gloom beyond. At the same moment a policeman came along 
 on his beat, cutting off Mr. Povey from Daniel. 
 
 " Good-night, officer ! Brrr ! " said Mr. Povey, gathering 
 his dignity about him and holding himself as though it was 
 part of his normal habit to take exercise bareheaded and 
 coUarless in St. Luke's Square on cold November nights. 
 He behaved so because, if Daniel had desired the services 
 of a policeman, Daniel would of course have spoken to 
 this one. 
 
 "Goo' night, sir," said the policeman, after recognizing 
 him. 
 
 " What time is it ? " asked Samuel, bold. 
 
 " A quarter-past one, sir." 
 
 The policeman, leaving Samuel at the little open door, 
 went forward across the lamplit Square, and Samuel entered 
 his cousin's shop. 
 
 Daniel Povey was standing behind the door, and as Samuel 
 came in he shut the door with a startling sudden movement. 
 Save for the twinkle of gas, the shop was in darkness. It had 
 the empty appearance which a well-managed confectioner's 
 and baker's always has at night. The large brass scales near 
 
 r 
 
210 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 the flour-bins glinted j and the glass cake-stands, with scarce 
 a tart among them, also caught the faint flare of the gas. 
 
 " What's the matter, Daniel ? Anything wrong ? " Samuel 
 asked, feeling boyish as he usually did in the presence of 
 Daniel. 
 
 The well-favoured white-haired man seized him with one 
 hand by the shoulder in a grip that convicted Samuel of 
 frailty. 
 
 "Look here, Sam'l," said he in his low, pleasant voice, 
 somewhat altered by excitement. "You know as my wife 
 drinks?" 
 
 He stared defiantly at Samuel. 
 
 "N — no," said Samuel. "That is — no one's ever 
 said—" 
 
 This was true. He did not know that Mrs. Daniel Povey, 
 at the age of fifty, had definitely taken to drink. There had 
 been rumours that she enjoyed a glass with too much gusto ; 
 but ' drinks ' meant more than that. 
 
 " She drinks," Daniel Povey continued. " And has done 
 this last two year ! " 
 
 " I'm very sorry to hear it," said Samuel, tremendously 
 shocked by this brutal rending of the cloak of decency. 
 
 Always, everybody had feigned to Daniel, and Daniel had 
 feigned to everybody, that his wife was as other wives. And 
 now the man himself had torn to pieces in a moment the veil 
 of thirty years' weaving. 
 
 " And if that was the worst I " Daniel murmured reflec- 
 tively, loosening his grip. 
 
 Samuel was excessively disturbed. His cousin was hinting 
 at matters which he himself, at any rate, had never hinted at 
 even to Constance, so abhorrent were they ; matters unutter- 
 able, which hung like clouds in the social atmosphere of the 
 town, and of which at rare intervals one conveyed one's cog- 
 nizance, not by words, but by something scarce perceptible in 
 a glance, an accent. Not often is a town such as Bursley 
 starred with such a woman as Mrs. Daniel Povey. 
 
 " But what's wrong ? " Samuel asked, trying to be firm. 
 
 And, " What is wrong ? " he asked himself. " What does 
 all this mean, at after one o'clock in the morning ? " 
 
 " Look here, Sam'l," Daniel recommenced, seizing his 
 shoulder again. " I went to Liverpool com market to-day, 
 and missed the last train, so I came by the mail from Crewe. 
 
ANOTHER CRIME > 2]] 
 
 And what do I find ? I find Dick sitting on the sta^ in the 
 dark pretty nigh naked." / 
 
 " Sitting on the stairs ? Dick ? " , 
 
 " Ay I This is what I come home to ! " r 
 
 "But—" 
 
 " Hold on ! He's been in bed a couple of days with a 
 feverish cold, caught through lying in damp sheets as his 
 mother had forgot to air. She bringsliim no supper to-night. 
 He calls out. No answer. Then he gets up to go down- 
 stairs and see what's happened, and he slips on th' stairs 
 and breaks his knee, or puts it out or summat. Sat there 
 hours, seemingly 1 Couldn't walk neither up nor down." 
 
 " And was your — wife — was Mrs. — ? " 
 
 " Dead drunk in the parlour, Sam'l." 
 
 " But the servant ? " 
 
 "Servant ! " Daniel Povey laughed. " We can't keep our 
 servants. They won't stay. You know that." 
 
 He did. Mrs. Daniel Povey's domestic methods and 
 idiosyncrasies could at any rate be freely discussed, and they 
 were. 
 
 "And what have you done?" 
 
 " Done? Why, I picked him up in my arms and carried 
 him upstairs again. And a fine job I had too 1 Here I 
 Come here ! " 
 
 Daniel strode impulsively across the shop — the counter- 
 flap was up — ^and opened a door at the back. Samuel followed. 
 Never before had he penetrated so far into his cousin's secrets. 
 On the left, within the doorway, were the stairs, dark ; on the 
 right a shut door ; and in front an open door giving on to 
 a yard. At the extremity of the yard he discerned a building, 
 vaguely lit, and naked figures strangely moving in it 
 
 " What's that ? Who's there ? " he asked sharply. 
 
 "That's the bakehouse," Daniel replied, as if surprised 
 at such a question. " It's one of their long nights." 
 
 Never, during the brief remainder of his life, did Samuel 
 eat a mouthful of common bread without recalling that mid- 
 night apparition. He had lived for half a century, and 
 thoughtlessly eaten bread as though loaves grew ready-made 
 on trees. 
 
 " Listen ! " Daniel commanded him. 
 
 He cocked his ear, and caught a feeble, complaining wail 
 from an upper floor. 
 
212 \ THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " That's, Dick ! That is I " said Daniel Povey. 
 
 It soimded more like the distress of a child than of an 
 adventurous young man of twenty-four or so. 
 
 " But is be in pain ? Haven't you fetched the doctor ? " 
 
 " Not yet," answered Daniel, with a vacant stare. 
 
 Samuel gazed- at him closely for a second. And Daniel 
 seemed to him very old and helpless and pathetic, a man 
 unequal to the situation in which he found himself j and yet, 
 despite the dignijfied snow of his age, wistfully boyish. Samuel 
 thought swiftly : " This has been too much for him. He's 
 almost out of his mind. That's the explanation. Some one's 
 got to take charge, and I must" And all the courageous 
 resolution of his character braced itself to the crisis. Being 
 without a collar, being in slippers, and his suspenders im- 
 perfectly fastened anyhow, — these things seemed to be a part 
 of the crisis. 
 
 " I'll just run upstairs and have a look at him," said 
 Samuel, in a matter-of-fact tone. 
 
 Daniel did not reply. 
 
 There was a glimmer at the top of the stairs. Samuel 
 mounted, found the gas-jet, and turned it on full. A dingy, 
 dirty, untidy passage was revealed, the very antechamber of 
 discomfort. Guided by the moans, Samuel entered a bed- 
 room, which was in a shameful condition of neglect, and lighted 
 only by a nearly expired candle. Was it possible that a house- 
 mistress could so lose her self-respect ? Samuel thought of his 
 own abode, meticulously and impeccably 'kept,' and a hard 
 bitterness against Mrs. Daniel surged up in his souL 
 
 " Is that you, doctor ? " said a voice from the bed j the 
 moans ceased. 
 
 Samuel raised the candle. 
 
 Dick lay there, his face, on which was a beard of several 
 daysl growth, distorted by anguish, sweating; his tousled 
 brown hair was limp with sweat. 
 
 " Where the hell's the doctor ? " the young man demanded 
 brusquely. Evidently he had no curiosity about Samuel's 
 presence; the one thing that struck him was ithat Samuel 
 was not the doctor. 
 
 " He's coming, he's coming," said Samuel, soothingly. 
 
 " Well, if he isn't here soon I shall be danm well dead," 
 said Dick, in feeble resentful anger. " I can tell you that" 
 
 Samuel deposited the candle and ran downstairs. " I say, 
 
ANOTHER CRIME 213 
 
 Daniel," he said, roused and hot, " this is really ridiculous. 
 Why on earth didn't you fetch the doctor while you were 
 waiting for me ? Where's the missis ? " 
 
 Daniel Povey was slowly emptying grains of Indian com 
 out of his jacket-pocket into one of the big receptacles behind 
 the counter on the baker's side of the shop. He had pro- 
 visioned himself with Indian com as ammunition for Samuel's 
 bedroom window ; he was now returning the surplus. 
 
 " Are ye going for Harrop ? " he questioned hesitatingly. 
 
 " Why, of course ! " Samuel exclaimed. " Where's the 
 missis ? " 
 
 " Happen you'd better go and have a look at her," said 
 Daniel Povey. " She's in th' parlour." 
 
 He preceded Samuel to the shut door on the right. When 
 he opened it the parlour appeared in full illumination. 
 
 « Here 1 Go in ! " said Daniel. 
 
 Samuel went in, afraid. In a room as dishevelled and 
 filthy as the bedroom, Mrs. Daniel Povey lay stretched 
 awkwardly on a worn horse-hair sofa, her head thrown back, 
 her face discoloured, her eyes bulging, her mouth wet and 
 yawning: a sight horribly offensive. Samuel was frightened j 
 he was struck with fear and with disgust. The singing gas 
 beat down ruthlessly on that dreadful figure. A wife and 
 mother ! The lady of a house ! The centre of order ! The 
 fount of healing ! The balm for worry, and the refuge of dis- 
 tress ! She was vile. Her scanty yellow-grey hair was dirty, 
 her hollowed neck all grime, her hands abominable, her black 
 dress in decay. She was the dishonour of her sex, her situa- 
 tion, and her years. She was a fouler obscenity, than the in- 
 experienced Samuel had ever conceived. And by the door 
 stood her husband, neat, spotless, almost stately, the man who 
 for thirty years had marshalled all his immense pride to suffer 
 this woman, the jolly man who had laughed through thick aniJ 
 thin ! Samuel remembered when they were married. And he 
 remembered when, years after their marriage, she was still as 
 pretty, artificial, coquettish, and adamantine in her caprices as 
 a young harlot with a fool at her feet. Time and the slow 
 wrath of God had changed her. 
 
 He remained master of liimself and approached her ; then 
 stopped. 
 
 " But — " he stammered, 
 
 " Ay, Sam'l, lad ! " said the old man from the door. " I 
 
214 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 doubt I've killed her ! I doubt I've killed her ! I took and 
 shook her. I got her by the neck. And before I knew where 
 I was, I'd done it She'll never drink brandy aga^n. This is 
 what it's come to I " 
 
 He moved away. 
 
 All Samuel's flesh tingled as a heavy wave of emotion 
 rolled through his being. It was just as if some one had dealt 
 him a blow unimaginably tremendous. His heart shivered, as 
 a ship shivers at the mountainous crash of the waters. He 
 was numbed. He wanted to weep, to vomit, to die, to sink 
 away. But a voice was whispering to him : " You will have to go 
 through with this. You are in charge of this." He thought of 
 his wife and child, innocently asleep in the cleanly pureness of 
 Ms home. And he felt the roughness of his coat-collar round 
 his neck and the insecurity of his trousers. He passed out of 
 the room, shutting the door. And across the yard he had a 
 momentary glimpse of those nude nocturnal forms, uncon- 
 sciously attitudinizing in the bakehouse. And dowa the stairs 
 came the protests of Dick, driven by pain into a monotonous 
 silly blasphemy. 
 
 " I'll fetch Harrop," he said, melancholy, to his cousin. 
 
 The doctor's house was less than fifty yards off, and the 
 doctor had a night-bell, which, though he was a much older 
 man than his father had been at his age, he still answered 
 promptly. No need to bombard the doctor's premises with 
 Indian corn ! While Samuel was parleying with the doctor 
 through a window, the question ran incessantly through his 
 mind : "What about telling the police?" 
 
 But when, in advance of old Harrop, he returned to 
 Daniel's shop, lo ! the policeman previously encountered had 
 returned upon his beat, and Daniel was talking to him in the 
 little doorway. No other soul was about. Down King Street, 
 along Wedgwood Street, up the Square, towards Brougham 
 Street, nothing but gas-lamps burning with their everlasting 
 patience, and the blind fagades of shops. Only in the second 
 storey of the Bank Building at the top of the Square a light 
 showed mysteriously through a blind. Somebody ill there 1 
 
 The policeman was in a high state of nervous excitement. 
 
 That had happened to him which had never happened to him 
 
 before. Of the sixty policemen in Bursley, just he had been 
 
 chosen by fate to fit the socket of destiny. He was startled. 
 
 « What's this, what's this, Mr. Povey ?" he turned hastily 
 
ANOTHER CRIME 215 
 
 to Samuel " What's this as Mr. Councillor Povey is a-telling 
 me?" 
 
 " You come in, sergeant," said DanieL 
 
 " If I come in," said the policeman to Samuel, " you mun' 
 go along Wedgwood Street, Mr. Povey, and bring my mate. 
 He should be on Duck Bank, by rights." 
 
 It was astonishing, when once the stone had begun to roll, 
 how quickly it ran. In half an hour Samuel had actually 
 parted from Daniel at the police-office behind the Shambles, 
 and was hurrying to rouse his wife so that she could look after 
 Dick Povey until he might be taken off to Pirehill Infirmary, 
 as old Harrop had instantly, on seeing him, decreed. 
 
 " Ah I " he reflected in the turmoil of his soul : " God is not 
 mocked ! " That was his basic idea : God is not mocked ! 
 Daniel was a good fellow, honourable, brilliant ; a figure in 
 the world. But what of his licentious tongue ? What of his 
 frequenting of bars ? (How had he come to miss that train 
 from Liverpool ? How ?) For many years he, Samuel, had 
 seen in Daniel a living refutation of the authenticity of the 
 old Hebrew menaces. But he had been wrong, after all ! God 
 is not mocked ! And Samuel was aware of a revulsion in 
 himself towards that strict codified godliness from which, in 
 thought, he had perhaps been slipping away. 
 
 And with it all he felt, too, a certain officious self-import- 
 ance, as he woke his wife and essayed to break the news to 
 her in a manner tactfully calm. He had assisted at the most 
 overwhelming event ever known in the history of the town. 
 
 II 
 
 "Your muffler — I'll get it," said Constance. "Cyril, run 
 upstairs and get father's muffler. You know the drawer." 
 
 Cyril ran. It behoved everybody, that morning, to be 
 prompt and efficient. 
 
 " I don't need any muffler, thank you," said Samuel, 
 coughing and smothering the cough. 
 
 " Oh ! But, Sam — " Constance protested. 
 
 " Now please don't worry me ! " said Samuel with frigid 
 finality. " I've got quite enough — 1 " He did not finish. 
 
 Constance sighed as her husband steppedj nervous and 
 self-important, out of the side-door into the street. It was 
 early, not yet eight o'clock, and the shop still unopened. 
 
216 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " Your father couldn't wait," Constance said to Cyril when 
 he had thundered down the stairs in his heavy schoolboy boots, 
 " Give it to me." She went to restore the muffler to its place. 
 
 The whole house was upset, and Amy still an invalid I 
 Existence was disturbed; there vaguely seemed to be a 
 thousand novel things to be done, and yet she could think 
 of nothing whatever that she needed to do at that moment ; so 
 she occupied herself with the muffler. Before she reappeared 
 Cyril had gone to school, he who was usually a laggard. 'I"he 
 truth was that he could no longer contain within himself a 
 recital of the night, and in particular of the fact that he had 
 been the first to hear the summons of the murderer on the 
 window-pane. This imperious news had to be imparted to 
 somebody, as a preliminary to the thrilling of the whole school ; 
 and Cyril had issued forth in search of an appreciative and 
 worthy confidant. He was scarcely five minutes after his father. 
 
 In St. Luke's Square was a crowd of quite two hundred 
 persons, standing moveless in the November mud. The body 
 of Mrs. Daniel Povey had already been taken to the Tiger 
 Hotel, and young Dick Povey was on his way in a covered 
 wagonette to Piregill Infirmary on the other side of Knype. 
 The shop of the crime was closed, and the blinds drawn at the 
 upper windows of the house. There was absolutely nothing 
 to be seen, not even a policeman. Nevertheless the crowd 
 stared with an extraordinary obstinate attentiveness at the 
 fatal building in Boulton Terrace. Hypnotized by this face of 
 bricks and mortar, it had apparently forgotten all earthly ties, 
 and, regardless of breakfast and a livelihood, was determined to 
 stare at it till the house fell down or otherwise rendered up its 
 secret. Most of its component individuals wore neither over- 
 coats nor collar, but were kept warm by a scarf round the neck 
 and by dint of forcing their fingers into the furthest inch of 
 their pockets. Then they would slowly lift one leg after the 
 other. Starers of infirm purpose would occasionally detach 
 themselves from the throng and sidle away, ashamed of their 
 fickleness. But reinforcements were continually arriving. 
 And to these new-comers all that had been said in gossip had 
 to be repeated and repeated : the same questions, the same 
 answers, the same exclamations, the same proverbial philo- 
 sophy, the same prophecies recurred in all parts of the Square 
 with an uncanny iterance. Well-dressed men spoke to mere 
 professional loiterers; for this unparalleled and glorious 
 
ANOTHER CRIME 217 
 
 sensation, whose uniqueness grew every instant more impres- 
 sive, brought out the essential brotherhood of mankind. All 
 had a peculiar feeling that the day was neither Sunday nor 
 week-day, but some eighth day of the week. Yet in the St. 
 Luke's Covered Market dose by, the stall-keepers were pre- 
 paring their stalls just as though it was Saturday, just as 
 though a Town Councillor had not murdered his wife — at 
 last ! It wa« stated, and restated infinitely, that the Povey 
 baking had been taken over by Brindley, the second-best 
 baker and confectioner, who had a stall in the market. And 
 it was asserted, as a philosophical truth, and reasserted in- 
 finitely, that there would have been no sense in wasting good 
 food. 
 
 Samuel's emergence stirred the multitude. But Samuel 
 passed up the Square with a rapt expression j he might have 
 been under an illusion, caused by the extreme gravity of his 
 preoccupations, that he was crossing a deserted Square. He 
 hurried past the Bank and down the Turnhill Road, to the 
 private residence of 'Young Lawton,' son of the deceased 
 ' Lawyer Lawton.' Young Lawton followed his father's pro- 
 fession; he was, as his father had been, the most successful 
 solicitor in the town (though reputed by his learned rivals to 
 be a fool), but the custom of calling men by their occupations 
 had died out with horse-cars. Samuel caught young Lawton 
 at his breakfast, and presently drove with him, in the Lawton 
 buggy, to the police-station, where their arrival electrified a 
 crowd as large as that in St. Luke's Square. Later, they drove 
 together to Hanbridge, informally to brief a barrister; and 
 Samuel, not permitted to be present at the first part of the 
 interview between the solicitor and the barrister, was humbled 
 before the pomposity of legal etiquette. 
 
 It seemed to Samuel a game. The whole rigmarole of 
 police and police-cells and formalities seemed insincere. His 
 cousin's case was not like any other case, and, though formali- 
 ties might be necessary, it was rather absurd to pretend that 
 it was like any other case. In what manner it differed from 
 other cases Samuel did not analytically inquire. He thought 
 young Lawton was self-important, and Daniel too humble, in 
 the colloquy of these two, and he endeavoured to indicate, 
 by the dignity of his own demeanour, that in his opinion the 
 proper relative tones had not been set. He could not under- 
 stand Daniel's attitude, for he lacked imagination to realize 
 
218 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 what Daniel had been through. After all, Daniel was not a 
 murderer; his wife's death was due to accident, was simply 
 a mishap. 
 
 But in the crowded and stinking court-room of the Town 
 Hall, Samuel began to feel qualms. It occurred that the 
 Stipendiary Magistrate was sitting that morning at Bursley. 
 He sat alone, as not one of the Borough Justices cared to 
 occupy the Bench while a Town Councillor was in the dock. 
 The Stipendiary, recently appointed, was a young man, from 
 the southern part of the county; and a Town Councillor of 
 Bursley was no more to him than a petty tradesman to a man 
 of fashion. He was yout'ifuUy enthusiastic for the majesty 
 and the impartiality of English justice, and behaved as though 
 the entire responsibility for the safety of that vast fabric rested 
 on his shoulders. He and the barrister from Hanbridge had 
 had a historic quarrel at Cambridge, and their behaviour to 
 each other was a lesson to the vulgar in the art of chill and 
 consummate politeness. Young Lawton, having been to 
 Oxford, secretly scorned the pair of them, but, as he had 
 engaged counsel, he of course was precluded from adding to 
 the eloquence, which chagrined him. These three were the 
 aristocracy of the court-room ; they knew it ; Samuel Povey 
 knew it ; everybody knew it, and felt it. The barrister brought 
 an unexceptionable zeal to the performance of his duties ; he 
 referred in suitable terms to Daniel's character and high posi- 
 tion in the town, but nothing could hide the fact that for him 
 too his client was a petty tradesman accused of simple murder. 
 N'aturally the Stipendiary was bound to show that before the 
 law all men are equal — ^the Town Councillor and the common 
 tippler ; he succeeded. The policeman gave his evidence, 
 and the Inspector swore to what Daniel Povey had said when 
 charged. The hearing proceeded so smoothly and quickly 
 that it seemed naught but an empty rite, with Daniel as a lay 
 figure in it. The Stipendiary achieved marvellously the illusion 
 that to him a murder by a Town Councillor in St. Luke's 
 Square was quite an everyday matter. Bail was inconceivable, 
 and the barrister, being unable to suggest any reason why the 
 Stipendiary should grant a remand — indeed, there was no 
 reason — Daniel Povey was committed to the Stafford Assizes 
 for trial. The Stipendiary instantly turned to the consideration 
 of an alleged offence against the Factory Acts by a large local 
 firm of potters. The young magistrate had mistaken his 
 
ANOTHER CRIME 219 
 
 vocation. With his steely calm, with his imperturbable de- 
 tachment from weak humanU]^ he ought to have been a 
 General of the Order of Jesuilsfi 
 
 Daniel was remov'ed — he did not go : lie was removed, by 
 two bare-headed co)i stables. Samuel wanted to have speech 
 with him, and could not. And later, Samuel stood in the 
 porch of the Town Hall, and Daniel appeared out of a 
 corridor, still in the keeping of two policemen, helmeted now. 
 And down below at the bottom of the broad flight of steps, 
 up which passed dancers on the nights of subscription balls, 
 was a dense crowd, held at bay by other policemen ; and 
 beyond the crowd a black van. And Daniel — to his cousin 
 a sort of Christ between thieves — was hurried past the privi- 
 leged loafers in the corridor, and down the broad steps. A 
 murmuring wave agitated the crowd. Unkempt idlers and 
 ne'er-do-wells in corduroy leaped up like tigers in the air, 
 and the policemen fought them back furiously. And Daniel 
 and his guardians shot through the little living lane. Quick ! 
 Quick ! For the captive is more sacred even than a messiah. 
 The law has him in charge ! And like a feat of prestidigitation 
 Daniel disappeared into the blackness of the van. A door 
 slammed loudly, triumphantly, and a whip cracked. The 
 crowd had been balked. It was as though the crowd had 
 yelled for Daniel's blood and bones, and the faithful constables' 
 had saved him from their lust. 
 
 Yes, Samuel had qualms. He had a sickness in the 
 stomach. 
 
 The aged Superintendent of Police walked by, with the 
 aged Rector. The Rector was Daniel's friend. Never before 
 had the Rector spoken to the Nonconformist Samuel, but now 
 he spoke to him ; he squeezed his hand. 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Povey ! " he ejaculated grievously. 
 
 "I — I'm afraid it's serious!" Samuel stammered. He 
 hated to admit that it was serious, but the words came out of 
 his mouth. 
 
 He looked at the Superintendent of Police, expecting the 
 Superintendent to assure him that it was not serious j but the 
 Superintendent only raised his small white-bearded chin, saying 
 nothing. The Rector shook his head, and shook a senile tear 
 out of his eye. 
 
 After another chat with young Lawton, Samuel, on behalf 
 of Daniel, dropped his pose of the righteous man to whom a 
 
220 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 mere mishap has occurred, and who is determined, with the 
 lofty pride of innocence, to indulge all the whims of the law, 
 to be more royalist than the king. He perceived that the law 
 must be fought with its own weapons, that no advantage must 
 be surrendered, and every possible advantage seized, ' He was 
 truly astonished at himself that such a pose had ever been 
 adopted. His eyes were opened ; he saw things as they were. 
 
 He returned home through a Square that was more in- 
 terested than ever in the fagade Of his cousin's house. People 
 were beginning to come from Hanbridge, Knype, Longshaw, 
 Turnhill, and villages such as Moorthome, to gaze at that 
 fagade. And the fourth edition of the Signal, containing a 
 full report of what the Stipendiary and the barrister had said 
 to each other, was teing cried. 
 
 In his shop he found customers, as absorbed in the triviali- 
 ties of purchase as though nothing whatever had happened. 
 He was shocked j he resented their callousness. 
 
 " I'm too busy now," he said curtly to one who accosted 
 him. 
 
 "Sam!" his wife called him in a low voice. She was 
 standing behind the till. 
 
 " What is it ? " He was ready to crush, and especially to 
 crush indiscreet babble in the shop. He thought she was 
 going to vent her womanly curiosity at once. 
 
 " Mr. Huntbach is waiting for you in the parlour," said 
 Constance. 
 
 "Mr. Huntbach?" 
 
 "Yes, from Longshaw." She whispered, "It's Mrs, 
 Povey's cousin. He's come to see about the funeral and so 
 on, the — the inquest, I suppose." 
 
 Samuel paused. " Oh, has he ! " said he defiantly. 
 " Well, I'll see him. If he wants to see me, I'll see him." 
 
 That evening Constance learned all that was in his mind 
 of bitterness against the memory of the dead woman whose 
 failings had brought Daniel Povey to Stafford gaol and Dick 
 to the Pirehill Infirmary. Again and again, in the ensuing 
 days, he referred to the state of foul discomfort which he had 
 discovered in Daniel's house. He nursed a feud against all 
 her relatives, and when, after the inquest, at which he gave 
 evidence full of resentment, she was bvuried, he vented an 
 angry sigh of relief, and said : " Well, jVj out of the way I" 
 Thenceforward he had a mission, religious in its solemn 
 
ANOTHER CRIME 221 
 
 intensity, to defend and save Daniel. He took the enterprise 
 upon himself, spending the whole of himself upon it, to the 
 neglect of his business and the scorn of his health. He lived 
 solely for Daniel's trial, pouring out money in preparation for 
 it. He thought and spoke of nothing else. The affair was 
 his one preoccupation. And as the weeks passed, he became 
 more and more sure of success, more and more sure that he 
 would return with Daniel to Bursley in triumph after the 
 assize. He was donvinced of the impossibility that 'anything 
 should happen ' to Daniel ; the circumstances were too clear, 
 too overwhelmingly in Daniel's favour. 
 
 When Brindley, the second-best baker and confectioner, 
 made an offer for Daniel's business as a going concern, he was 
 indignant at first. Then Constance, and the lawyer, and 
 Daniel (whom he saw on every permitted occasion) between 
 them persuaded him that if some arrangement was not made, 
 and made quickly, the business would lose all its value, and 
 he consented, on Daniel's behalf, to a temporary agreement 
 under which Brindley should reopen the shop and manage it 
 on certain terms until Daniel regained his freedom towards the 
 end of January. He would not listen to Daniel's plaintive 
 insistence that he would never care to be seen in Bursley again. 
 He pooh-poohed it He protested furiously that the whole 
 town was seething with sympathy for Daniel; and this was 
 true. He became Daniel's defending angel, rescuing Duniel 
 from Daniel's own weakness and apathy. He became, indeed, 
 Daniel. 
 
 One morning the shop-shutter was wound up, and Brindley, 
 inflated with the importance of controlling two estab- 
 lishments, strutted in and out under the sign of Daniel 
 Povey. And traffic in bread and cakes and flour was resum' d. 
 Apparently the sea of time had risen and covered Daniel and 
 all that was his ; for his wife was under earth, and Dick 
 lingered at Pirehill, unable to stand, and Daniel was locktd 
 away. Apparently, in the regular flow of the life of the Squarej 
 Daniel was forgotten. But not in Samuel Povey's heart was 
 he forgotten ! There, before an altar erected to the martyr, 
 the sacred flame of a new faith burned with fierce consistency. 
 Samuel, in his greying middle-age, had inherited the eternal 
 youth of the apostle. 
 
222 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 III 
 
 On the dark winter morning when Samuel set off to the 
 grand assize, Constance did not ask his views as to what 
 protection he would adopt against the weather. She silently 
 ranged special underclothing, and by the warmth of the fire, 
 which for days she had kept ablaze in the bedroom, Samuel 
 silently donned the special underclothing. Over that, with 
 particular fastidious care, he put his best suit. Not a word 
 was spoken. Constance and he were not estranged, but 
 the relations between them were in a state of feverish 
 excitation. Samuel had had a cold on his flat chest for weeks, 
 and nothing that Constance could invent would move it. A 
 few days in bed or even in one room at a uniform temper- 
 ature would have surely worked the cure. Samuel, however, 
 would not stay in one room; he would not stay in the 
 house, nor yet in Bursley. He would take his lacerating 
 cough on chilly trains to Stafford. He had no ears for reason ; 
 he simply could not listen ; he was in a dream. After 
 Christmas a crisis came. Constance grew desperate. It was 
 a battle between her will and his that occurred one night when 
 Constance, marshalling all her forces, suddenly insisted that 
 he must go out no more until he was cured. In the fight 
 Constance was scarcely recognizable. She deliberately gave 
 way to hysteria; she was no longer soft and gentle; she flung 
 bitterness at him like vitriol; she shrieked like a common 
 shrew. It seems almost incredible that Constance should 
 have gone so far ; but she did. She accused him, amid sobs, 
 of putting his cousin before his wife and son, of not caring 
 whether or not she was left a widow as the result of this 
 obstinacy. And she ended by crying passionately that she 
 might as well talk to a post. She might just as well have 
 talked to a post Samuel answered quietly and coldly. He 
 told her that it was useless for her to put herself about, as 
 he should act as he thought fit. It was a most extraordinary 
 scene, and quite unique in their annals. Constance was 
 beaten. She accepted the defeat, gradually controlling her 
 sobs and changing her tone to the tone of the vanquished. 
 She kissed him in bed,, kissing the rod. And he gravely 
 kissed her. 
 
 Henceforward she knew, in practice, what the inevitable, 
 
ANOTHER CRIME 
 
 when you have to live with it, may contain of anguish wretched 
 and humiliating. Her husband was risking his life, so she was 
 absolutely convinced, and she could do nothing ; she had come 
 to the bed-rock of Samuel's character. She felt that, for the 
 time being, she had a madman in the house, who could not be 
 treated according to ordinary principles. The continual strain 
 aged her. Her one source of relief was to talk with Cyril. 
 She talked to him without reserve, and the words 'your 
 father,' 'your father,' were everlastingly on her complaining 
 tongue. Yes, she was utterly changed. Often she would 
 weep when alone. ' 
 
 Nevertheless she frequently forgot that she had been 
 beaten. She had no notion of honourable warfare. She was 
 always beginning again, always firing under a flag of truce; 
 and thus she constituted a very inconvenient opponent. Samuel 
 was obliged, while hardening on the main point, to compromise 
 on lesser questions. She too could be formidable, and when 
 her lips took a certain pose, and her eyes glowed, he would 
 have put on forty mufflers had she commanded. Thus it was 
 she who arranged all the details of the supreme journey to 
 Stafford. Samuel was to drive to Knype, so as to avoid the 
 rigours of the Loop Line train from Bursley and the waiting on 
 cold platforms. At Knype he was to take the express, and to 
 travel first-class. 
 
 After he was dressed on that gas-lit morning, he learnt bit 
 by bit the extent of her elaborate preparations. The breakfast 
 was a special breakfast, and he had to eat it all. Then the 
 cab came, and he saw Amy put hot bricks into it. Constance 
 herself put goloshes over his boots, not because it was damp, 
 but because indiarubber keeps the feet warm. _ Constance her- 
 self bandaged his neck, and unbuttoned his waistcoat and stuck 
 an extra flannel under his dickey. Constance herself warmed 
 his woollen gloves, and enveloped him in his largest overcoat. 
 
 Samuel then saw Cyril getting ready to go out. " Where 
 are you off? " he demanded. 
 
 " He's going with you as far as Knype," said Constance, 
 grimly. " He'll see you into the train and t)ien come back 
 here in the cab." 
 
 She had sprung this indignity upon him. She glared. 
 Cyril glanced with timid bravado from one to the other. Samuel 
 had to yield. 
 
 Thus in the winter darkness — for it was not yet dawn— 
 
224 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Samuel set forth to the trial, escorted by his son. The 
 reverberation of his appalling cough from the cab was the last 
 thing that Constance heard. 
 
 During most of the day Constance sat in * Miss InsuU's 
 corner' in the shop. Twehty years ago this very corner 
 had been hers. But now, instead of large millinery-boxes 
 enwrapped in brown paper, it was shut off from the rest of the 
 counter by a rich screen of mahogany and ground-glass, and 
 within the enclosed space all the apparatus necessary to the 
 activity of Miss Insull had been provided for. However, it 
 remained the coldest part of the whole shop, as Miss InsuU's 
 fingers testified. Constance established herself there more 
 from a desire to do something, to interfere in something, than 
 from a necessity of supervising the shop, though she had said 
 to Samuel that she would keep an eye on the shop. Miss Insull, 
 whose throne was usurped, had to sit by the stove with less 
 important creatures; she did not like it, and her underlings 
 suffered accordingly. 
 
 It was a long day. Towards tea-time, just before Cyril 
 was due from school, Mr. Critchlow came surprisingly in. 
 That is to say, his arrival was less of a surprise to Miss Insull 
 and the rest of the staff than to Constance. For he had lately 
 formed an irregular habit of popping in at tea-time, to chat 
 with Miss Insull. Mr. Critchlow was still defying time. He 
 kept his long, thin figure perfectly erect. His features had not 
 altered. His hair and beard could not have been whiter than 
 they had been for years past. He wore, his long while apron, 
 and over that a thick reefer jacket. In his long, knotty fingers 
 he carried a copy of the Signed. 
 
 Evidently he had not expected to find the corner occupied 
 by Constance. She was sewing, 
 
 " So it's you ! " he said, in his unpleasant, grating voice, 
 not even glancing at Miss Insull. He had gained the reputa- 
 tion of being the rudest old man in Bursley. But his general 
 demeanour expressed indifference rather than rudeness. It 
 was a manner that said : " You've got to take me as I am. I 
 may be an egotist, hard, mean, and convinced ; but those who 
 don't like it can lump it I'm indifferent." 
 
 He put one elbow on the top of the screen, showing the 
 Signal, 
 
 " Mr. Critchlow ! " said Constance, primly ; she had 
 acquired Samuel's dislike of him. 
 
ANOTHER CRIME 225 
 
 " It's begun ! " he observed with mysterious glee. 
 
 " Has it ? " Constance said eagerly. " Is it in the paper 
 already ? " 
 
 She had been far more disturbed about her husband's 
 health than about the trial of Daniel Povey for murder, but her 
 interest in the trial was of course tremendous. And this news, 
 that it had actually begun, thrilled her. 
 
 " Ay ! " said Mr. Critchlow. " Didn't ye hear the Signal 
 boy hollering just now all over the Square ? " 
 
 " No," said Constance. For her, newspapers did not exist. 
 She never had the idea of opening one, never felt any curiosity 
 which she could not satisfy, if she could satisfy it at all, with- 
 out the powerful aid of the press. And even on this day it had 
 not occurred to her that the ^«^fl/ might be worth opening. 
 
 " Ay ! " repeated Mr. Critchlow. " Seemingly it began at 
 two o'clock — or thereabouts." He gave a moment of his 
 attention to a noisy gas-jet, which he carefully lowered. 
 
 "What does it say?" 
 
 "Nothing yet!" said Mr. Critchlow; and they read the 
 few brief sentences, under their big heading, which described , 
 the formal commencement of the trial of Daniel Povey for the 
 murder of his wife. " There was some as said," he remarked, 
 pushing up his spectacles, " that grand jury would alter the 
 charge, or summat ! " He laughed, grimly tolerant of the extreme 
 absurdity. " Ah ! " he added contemplatively, turning his head 
 to see if the assistants were listening. They were. It would 
 have been too much, on such a day, to expect a strict adherence 
 to the etiquette of the shop. 
 
 Constance had been hearing a good deal lately of grand 
 juries, but she had understood nothing, nor had she sought to 
 understand. 
 
 " I'm very glad it's come on so soon," she said. " In a 
 sense, that is ! I was afraid Sam might be kept at Stafford for 
 days. Do you think it will last long ? " 
 
 " Not it ! " said Mr. Critchlow, positively. " There's naught 
 in it to spin out." 
 
 Then a silence, punctuated by the sound of stitching. 
 
 Constance would really have preferred not to converse with 
 the old man j but the desire for reassurance, for the calming of 
 her own fears, forced her to speak, though she knew well that 
 Mr. Critchlow was precisely the last man in the town to 
 give moral assistance if he thought it was wanted. 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " I do hope everything will be all right 1 " she murmured. 
 
 " Everything'll be all right ! " he said gaily. " Every- 
 thing"!! be all right. Only it'll be all wrong for Dan." 
 
 " Whatever do you mean, Mr. Critchlow ? " she protested. 
 Nothing, she reflected, could rouse pity in that heart, not 
 even a tragedy like Daniel's. She bit her lip for having spoken. 
 
 " Well," he said in loud tones, frankly addressing the girls 
 round the stove as much as Constance. " I've met with some 
 rare good arguments this new year, no mistake ! There's been 
 some as say that Dan never meant to do it. That's as may 
 be. But if it's a good reason for not hanging, there's an end to 
 capital punishment in this country. ' Never meant ' 1 There's 
 a lot of 'em as ' never meant ' t Then I'm told as she 
 was a gallivanting woman and no housekeeper, and as often 
 drunk as sober. I'd no call to be told that. If strangling is 
 a right punishment for a wife as spends her time in drinking 
 brandy instead of sweeping floors and airing sheets, then Dan's 
 safe. But I don't seem to see Judge Lindley teUing the jury 
 as it is. I've been a juryman under Judge Lindley myself — and 
 more than once — ^and I don't seem to see him, like ! " He 
 paused with his mouth open. "As for all them nobs," he 
 continued, " including th' rector, as have gone to Stafford to 
 kiss the book and swear that Dan's reputation is second to 
 none — ^if they could ha' sworn as Dan wasn't in th* house 
 at all that night, if they could ha' sworn he was in Jericho, 
 there'd ha' been some sense in their going. But as it is, they'd 
 ha' done better to stop at home and mind their business. 
 Bless us ! Sam wanted me to go ! " 
 
 He laughed again, in the faces of the horrified and angry 
 women. 
 
 " I'm surprised at you, Mr. Critchlow 1 I really am I " 
 Constance exclaimed. 
 
 And the assistants inarticulately supported her with vague 
 sounds. Miss Insull got up and poked the stove. Every 
 soul in the establishment was loyally convinced that Daniel 
 Povey would be acquitted, and to breathe a doubt on the 
 brightness of this certainty was a hideous crime. The 
 conviction was not within the domain of reason; it was an 
 act of faith ; and arguments merely fretted, without in the 
 slightest degree disturbing it. 
 
 "Ye may be I" Mr. Critchlow gaily concurred. He was 
 very content. 
 
ANOTHER CRIME mi 
 
 Just as he shuffled round to leave the shop, Cyril entered. 
 
 "Good afternoon, Mr. Critchlow," said Cyril, sheepishly 
 polite. 
 
 Mr. Critchlow gazed hard at the boy, then nodded his head 
 several times rapidly, as though to say: "Here's another fool 
 in the making ! So the generations follow one another I " He 
 made no answer to the salutation, and departed. 
 
 Cyril ran round to his mother's corner, pitching his bag on 
 to the showroom stairs as he passed them. Taking off his hat, 
 he kissed her, and she unbuttoned his overcoat with her cold 
 hands. 
 
 " What's old Methuselah after? " he demanded. 
 
 " Hush ! " Constance softly corrected him. " He came in 
 to tell me the trial had started." 
 
 " Oh, I knew that 1 A boy bought a paper and I saw it. 
 I say, mother, will father be in the paper?" And then in a 
 different tone : " I say, mother, what is there for tea ? " 
 
 When his stomach had learnt exactly what there was for 
 tea, the boy began to show an immense and talkative curiosity 
 in the trial. He would not set himself to his home-lessons. 
 " It's no use, mother," he said, " I can't." They returned to 
 the shop together, and Cyril would go every moment to the 
 door to listen for the cry of a newsboy. Presently he hit upon 
 the idea that perhaps newsboys might be crying the special 
 edition of the Signal in the market-place, in front of the Town 
 Hall, to the neglect of St. Luke's Square. And nothing would 
 satisfy him but he must go forth and see. He went, without 
 his overcoat, promising to run. The shop waited with a 
 strange anxiety. Cyril had created, by his restless movements 
 to and fro, an atmosphere of strained expectancy. It seemed 
 now as if the whole town stood with beating heart, fearful of 
 tidings and yet burning to get them. Constance pictured 
 Stafford, which she had never seen, and a court of justice, 
 which she had never seen, and her husband and Daniel in it 
 And she waited. 
 
 Cyril ran in. " No I " he announced breathlessly. 
 " Nothing yet" 
 
 " Don't take cold, now you're hot," Constance advised. 
 
 But he would keep near the door. Soon he ran off again. 
 
 And perhaps fifteen seconds after he had gone, the strident 
 cry of a Signal boy was heard in the distance, faint and indis- 
 tinct at first, then clearer and louder. 
 
Tfl[E OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " There's a paper ! " said the apprentice. 
 
 " Sh ! " said Constance, listening. 
 
 « Sh ! " echoed Miss Insull. 
 
 "Yes, it is !" said Constance. " Miss Insull, just step out 
 and get a paper. Here's a hilfpenny." 
 
 The halfpenny passed quickly from one thimbled hand to 
 another. Miss Insull scurried. 
 
 She came in triumphantly with the sheet, which Constance 
 tremblingly took. Constance could not find the report at first. 
 Miss Insull pointed to it, and read — 
 
 " ' Summing up ! ' Lower down, lower down ! ' Afl:er an 
 absence of thirty-five minutes the jury found the prisoner guilty 
 of murder, with a recommendation to mercy. The judge 
 assumed the black cap and pronounced sentence of death, 
 saying that he would forward the recommendation to the 
 proper quarter.' " 
 
 Cyril returned. " Not yet !" he was saying — when he saw 
 the paper lying on the counter. His crest fell. 
 
 Long after the shop was shut, Constance and Cyril waited 
 in the parlour for the arrival of the master of the house. Con- 
 stance was in the blackest despair. She saw nothing but death 
 around her. She thought : misfortunes never come singly. 
 Why did not Samuel come ? All was ready for him, everything 
 that her imagination cpuld suggest, in the way of food, remedies, 
 and the means of warmth. Amy was not allowed to go to bed, 
 lest she might be needed. Constance did not even hint that 
 Cyril should go to bed. The dark, dreadful minutes ticked 
 themselves off on the mantelpiece until only five minutes sepa- 
 rated Constance from the moment when she would not know 
 what to do next. It was twenty-five minutes past eleven. If 
 at half-past Samuel did not appear, then he could not come 
 that night, unless the last train from Stafford was inconceivably 
 late. 
 
 The sound of a carriage 1 It ceased at the door. Mother 
 and son sprang up. 
 
 Yes, it was Samuel ! She beheld him once more. And 
 the sight of his condition, moral and physical, terrified her. 
 His great strapping son and Amy helped him upstairs. " Will 
 he ever come down those stairs again ? " This thought lanced 
 Constance's heart. The pain was come and gone in a moment, 
 but it had surprised her tranquil commonsense, which was 
 naturally opposed to, and gently scornful of, hysterical fears. 
 
ANOTHER CRIME 
 
 As she puffed, with her stoutness, up the stairs, that bland 
 cheerfulness of hers cost her an immense effort of will. She 
 was profoundly troubled ; great disasters seemed to be slowly 
 approaching her from all quarters. 
 
 Should she send for the doctor ? No. To do so would 
 only be a concession to the panic instinct. She knew exactly 
 what was the matter with Samuel : a severe cough persistently 
 neglected, no more. As she had expressed herself many times 
 to inquirers, "He's never been what you may call ill." 
 Nevertheless, as she laid him in bed and possetted him, how 
 frail and fragile he looked ! And he was so exhausted that he 
 would not even talk about the trial, 
 
 " If he's not better to-morrow I sAa// send for the doctor ! " 
 she said to herself. As for his getting up, she swore she would 
 keep him in bed by force if necessary. 
 
 IV 
 
 The next morning she was glad and proud that she had not 
 yielded to a scare. For he was most strangely and obviously 
 better. He had slept heavily, and she had slept a little. True 
 that Daniel was condemned to death ! Leaving Daniel to his 
 fate, she was conscious of joy springing in her heart. How 
 absurd to have asked herself: " Will he ever come down those 
 stairs again ? " ! 
 
 A message reached her from the forgotten shop during the 
 morning, that Mr. Lawton had called to see Mr. Povey. 
 Already Samuel had wanted to arise, but she had forbidden it 
 in the tone of a woman who is dangerous, and Samuel had 
 been very reasonable. He now said that Mr. Lawton must be 
 asked up. She glanced round the bedroom. It was • done ' ; 
 it was faultlessly correct as a sick chamber. She agreed to the 
 introduction into it of the man from another sphere, and after 
 a preliminary minute she left the two to talk together. This 
 visit of young Lawton's was a dramatic proof of Samuel's 
 importance, and of the importance of the matter in hand. 
 The august occasion demanded etiquette, and etiquette said 
 that a wife should depart from her husband when he had to 
 transact affairs beyond the grasp of a wife. 
 
 The idea of a petition to the Home Secretary took shape 
 at this interview, and before the day was out it had spread 
 
230 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 over the town and over the Five Towns, and it was in the 
 Signal. The Signal spoke of Daniel Povey as ' the condemned 
 man.' And the phrase startled the whole district into an 
 indignant agitation for his reprieve. The district woke up to 
 the fact that a Town Councillor, a figure in the world, an 
 honest tradesman of unspotted character, was cooped solitary 
 in a little cell at Stafford, waiting to be hanged by the neck 
 till he was dead. The district determined that this must not 
 and should not be. Why ! Dan Povey had actually once . 
 been Chairman of the Bursley Society for the Prosecution of 
 Felons, that association for annual eating and drinking, whose 
 members humorously called each other ' felons ' ! Impos- 
 sible, monstrous, that an ex-chairman of the ' Felons ' should 
 be a sentenced criminal ! 
 
 However, there was nothing to fear. No Home Secretary 
 would dare to run counter to the jury's recommendation and 
 the expressed wish of the whole district Besides, the Home 
 Secretary's nephew was M.P. for the Knype division. Of 
 course a verdict of guilty had been inevitable. Everybody 
 recognized that now. Even Samuel and all the hottest 
 partisans of Daniel Povey recognized it. They talked as if 
 they had always foreseen it, directly contradicting all that they 
 had said on only the previous day. Without any sense of any 
 inconsistency or of shame, they took up an absolutely new 
 position. The structure of blind faith had once again 
 crumbled at the assault of realities, and unhealthy, un-English 
 truths, the statement of which would have meant ostracism 
 twenty-four hours earlier, became suddenly the platitudes of 
 the Square and the market-place. ^ 
 
 Despatch was necessary in the affair of the petition, for 
 the condemned man had but three Sundays. But there was 
 delay at the beginning, because neither young Lawton nor any 
 of his colleagues was acquainted with the proper formula of a 
 petition to the Home Secretary for the reprieve of a criminal 
 condemned to death. No such petition had been made in the 
 district within living memory. And at first, young Lawton 
 could not get sight or copy of any such petition anywhere, in 
 the Five Towns or out of them. Of course there must exist 
 a proper formula, and of course that formula and no other 
 could be employed. Nobody was bold enough to suggest 
 that young Lawton should commence the petition, " To the 
 Most Noble the Marquis of Welwyn, K.C.B., May it please 
 
; ANOTHER CRIME 231 
 
 yonr. Lordship," and end it, " And your petitioners will evei 
 pray ! " and insert between those phrases a simple appeal for 
 the reprieve, with a statement of reasons. No 1 the formula 
 consecrated by tradition must be found. And, after DanieJ 
 had arrived a day and a half nearer death, it was found. A 
 lawyer at Alnwick had the draft of a petition which had 
 secured for a murderer in Northumberland twenty years' penal 
 servitude instead of sudden death, and on request he lent it to 
 young Lawton. The prime movers in the petition felt that 
 Daniel Povey was now as gobd as saved. Hundreds of forms 
 were printed to receive signatures, and these forms, together 
 with copies of the petition, were laid on the counters of all the 
 principal shops, not merely in Bursley, but in the other towns. 
 They were also to be found at the offices of the Signal, in rail- 
 way waiting-rooms, and in the various reading-rooms ; and on 
 the second of Daniel's three Sundays they were exposed in the 
 porches of churches and chapels. Chapel-keepers and vergers 
 would come to Samuel and ask with the heavy inertia of their 
 stupidity : " About pens and ink, sir ? " These officials had 
 the air of audaciously disturbing the sacrosanct routine of 
 centuries in order to confer a favour. 
 
 Samuel continued to improve. His cough shook him less, 
 and his appetite increased. Constance allowed him to 
 establish himself in the drawing-room, which was next to the 
 bedroom, and of which the grate was particularly efficient. 
 Here, in an old winter overcoat, he directed the vast affair of 
 the petition, which grew daily to vaster proportions. Samuel 
 dreamed of twenty thousand signatures. Each sheet held 
 twenty signatures, and several times a day he counted the 
 sheets j the supply of forms actually failed once, and Constance 
 herself had to hurry to the printers to oider more. Samuel 
 was put into a passion by this carelessness of the printers'. 
 He offered Cyril sixpence for every sheet of signatures which 
 the boy would obtain. At first Cyril was too shy to canvas, 
 but his father made him blush, and in a few hours Cyril had 
 developed into an eager canvasser. One whole day he stayed 
 away from school to canvas. Altogether he earned oyer 
 fifteen shillings, quite honestly except that he got a companion 
 to forge a couple of signatures with addresses lacking at the 
 end of a last sheet, generously rewarding him with sixpence, 
 the value of the entire sheet. 
 
 When Samuel had received a thousand sheets with twenty 
 
232 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 thousand signatures, he set his heart on twenty-five thousand 
 signatures. And he also announced his firm intentioh of 
 accompanying young Lawton to London with the petiion. 
 The petition had, in fact, become one of the most rem^kable 
 petitions of modern times. So the Signal said. The Signal 
 gave a daily account of its progress, and its progress was 
 astonishing. In certain streets every householder had signed 
 it. The first sheets had been reserved for the signatures of 
 members of Parliament, ministers of religion, civic dignitaries, 
 justices of the peace, etc. These sheets were nobly filled. 
 The aged Rector of Bursley signed first of all ; after him the 
 Mayor of Bursley, as was right ; then sundry M. P.'s. 
 
 Samuel emerged from the drawing-room. He went into 
 the parlour, and, later, into the shop ; and no evil consequence 
 followed. His cough was nearly, but not quite, cured. The 
 weather was extraordinarily mild for the season. He repeated 
 that he should go with the petition to London ; and he went j 
 Constance could not validly oppose the journey. She, too, 
 was a little intoxicated by the petition. It weighed consider- 
 ably over a hundredweight. The crowning signature, that of 
 the M.P. for Knype, was duly obtained in London, and 
 Samuel's one disappointment was that his hope of twenty-five 
 thousand signatures had fallen short of realization — by only a 
 few score. The few score could have been got had not time 
 urgently pressed. He returned from London a man of mark, 
 full of confidence ; but his cough was worse again. 
 
 His confidence in the power of public opinion and the 
 inherent virtue of justice might have proved to be well placed, 
 had not the Home Secretary happened to be one of your 
 humane oflScials. The Marquis of Welwyn was celebrated 
 through every stratum of the governing classes for his humane 
 instincts, which were continually fighting against his sense of 
 duty. Unfortunately his sense of duty, which he had inherited 
 from several centuries of ancestors, made havoc among his 
 humane instincts on nearly every occasion of conflict. It was 
 reported that he suffered horribly in consequence. Others 
 also suffered, for he was never known to advise a remission of 
 a sentence of flogging. Certain capital sentences he had 
 commuted, but he did not commute Daniel Povey's. He 
 covild not permit himself to be influenced by a wave of popular 
 sentiment, and assuredly not by his own nephew's signature. 
 He gave to the case the patient, remorseless examination which 
 
ANOTHER CRIME 233 
 
 he gave to every case. He spent a sleepless night in trying to 
 discover a reason for yielding to his humane instincts, but' , 
 without success. As Judge Lindley remarked in his confi- 
 dential report, the sole arguments in favour of Daniel were 
 provocation and his previous high character ; and these were 
 no sort of an argument The provocation was utterly 
 inadequate, and the previous high character was quite too 
 ludicrously beside the point. So once more the Marquis's 
 humane instincts were routed and he suffered horribly. 
 
 On the Sunday morning after the day on which the Signal 
 had printed the menu of Daniel Povey's supreme breakfast, 
 and the exact length of the ' drop ' which the executioner had 
 administered to him, Constance and Cyril stood together at 
 the window of the large bedroom. The boy was in his best 
 clothes; but Constance's garments gave no sign of the 
 Sabbath. She wore a large apron over an old dress that was 
 rather tight for her. She was pale and looked ill. 
 
 " Oh, mother ! " Cyril exclaimed suddenly. " Listen 1 I'm 
 sure I can hear the band." 
 
 She checked him with a soundless movement of her lips"; 
 and they both glanced anxiously at the silent bed, Cyril with 
 a gesture of apology for having forgotten that he must make 
 no noise. 
 
 The strains of the band came from down King Street, in 
 the direction of St. Luke's Chuirch. The music appeared to 
 linger a long time in the distance, and then it approached, 
 growing louder, and the Bursley Town Silver Prize Band passed 
 under the window at the solemn pace of Handel's " Dead 
 March." The effect of that requiem, heavy with its own 
 inherent beauty and with the vast weight of harrowing 
 tradition, was to wring the tears from Constance's eyes; they 
 fell on her aproned bosom, and she sank into a chair. And 
 though the cheeks of the trumpeters were puffed out, and 
 though the drummer had to protrude his stomach and arch 
 his spine backwards lest he should tumble over his drum, 
 there was majesty in the passage of the band. The boom of 
 the drum, desolating the interruptions of the melody, made 
 sick the heart, but with a lofty grief; and the dirge seemed to 
 be weaving a purple pall that covered every meanness. 
 
234 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 The bandsmen were not all in black, but they all wore 
 crape on their sleeves and their instruments were knotted with 
 crape. They carried in their hats a black-edged card. Cyri' 
 held one of these cards in his hands. It ran thus : 
 
 SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 DANIEL POVEY 
 
 A TOWN COUNCILLOR OF THIS TOWN 
 
 JUDICIALLY MURDERED AT 8 O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING 
 
 8th FEBRUARY 1 888 
 
 "he was MORE SINNED AGAINST THAN SINNING." 
 
 In the wake of the band came the aged Rector, bare-headed, 
 and wearing a surplice over his overcoat ; his thin white hair 
 was disarranged by the breeze that played in the chilly sun- 
 shine ; his hands, were folded on a gilt-edged book. A curate, 
 churchwardens, and sidesmen followed. And after these, 
 tramping through the dark mud in a procession that had 
 apparently no end, wound the unofficial male multitude, nearly 
 all in mourning, and all, save the more aristocratic, carrying 
 the memorial card in their hats. Loafers, women, and children 
 had collected on the drying pavements, and a window just 
 opposite Constance was ornamented with the entire family of 
 the landlord of the Sun Vaults. In the great bar of the Vaults 
 a barman was craning over the pitchpihe screen that secured 
 privacy to drinkers. The procession continued without break, 
 eternally rising over the verge of King Street 'bank,' and 
 eternally vanishing round the corner into St. Luke's Square ; 
 at intervals it was punctuated by a clergyman, a Nonconformist 
 minister, a town crier, a group of foremen, or a few Rifle 
 Volunteers. The watching crowd grew as the procession 
 lengthened. Then another band was heard, also playiiig the 
 march from Saul. The first band had now reached the top of 
 the Square, and was scarcely audible from King Street. The 
 reiterated glitter in the sun of memorial cards in hats gave 
 the fanciful illusion of an impossible whitish snake that was 
 straggling across the town. Three-quarters of an hour elapsed 
 before the tail of the snake came into view, and a rabble of 
 unkempt boys closed in upon it, filling the street. 
 
 "I shall go to the drawing-room window, mother," said 
 Cyril. 
 
 She nodded. He crept out of the bedroom. 
 
ANOTHER CRIME 235 
 
 St. Luke's Square was a sea of hats and memorial cards. 
 Most of the occupiers of the Square had hung out flags at half- 
 mast, and a flag at half-mast was flying over the Town Hall in 
 the distance. Sightseers were at every window. The two 
 bands had united at the top of the Square j and behind them, 
 on a North Staffordshire Railway lorry, stood the white-clad 
 Rector and several black figures. The Rector was speaking ; 
 but only those close to the lorry could hear his feeble treble 
 voice. 
 
 Such was the massive protest of Bursley against what 
 Bursley regarded as a callous injustice. The execution of 
 Daniel Povey had most genuinely excited the indignation of 
 the town. That execution was not only an injustice ; it was 
 an insult, a humiliating snub. And the worst was that the 
 rest of the country had really discovered no sympathetic 
 interest in the affair. Certain London papers, indeed, in 
 commenting casually on the execution, had slurred the morals 
 and manners of the Five Towns, professing to regard the 
 district as notoriously beyond the realm of the Ten Command- 
 ments. This had helped to render furious the townsmen. 
 This, as much as anything, had encouraged the spontaneous 
 outburst of feeling which had culminated in a St. Luke's 
 Square full of people with memorial cards in their hats. The 
 demonstration had scarcely been organized ; it had somehow 
 organized itself, employing the places of worship and a few 
 clubs as centres of gathering. And it proved an immense 
 success. There were seven or eight thousand people in the 
 Square, and the pity was that England as a whole could not 
 have had a glimpse of the spectacle. Since the execution of 
 the elephant, nothing had so profoundly agitated Bursley. 
 Constance, who left the bedroom momentarily for the drawing- 
 room, reflected that the death and burial of Cyril's honoured 
 grandfather, though a resounding event, had not caused one- 
 tenth of the stir which she beheld. But then John Baines had 
 killed nobody. 
 
 The Rector spoke too long ; every one felt that. But at 
 length he finished. The bands performed the Doxology, and 
 the immense multitudes began to disperse by the eight streets 
 that radiate from the Square. At the same time one o'clock 
 struck, and the public-houses opened with their customary 
 admirable promptitude. Respectable persons, of course, 
 ignored the public-houses and hastened homewards to a 
 
THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 delayed dinner. But in a town of over thirty thousand souls 
 there are sufficient dregs to fill all the public-houses on an 
 occasion of ceremonial excitement. Constance saw the bar of 
 the Vaults crammed with individuals whose sense of decent 
 fitness was imperfect. The barman and the landlord and the 
 principal members of the landlord's family were hard put to 
 it to quench that funereal thirst. Constance, as she ate a 
 little meal in the bedroom, could not but witness the orgy. 
 A bandsman with his silver instrument was prominent at tlie 
 counter. At five minutes to three the Vaults spewed forth a 
 squirt of roysterers who walked on the pavement as on a 
 tight-rope ; among them was the bandsman, his silver instrument 
 only half enveloped in its bag of green serge. He establisljied 
 an equilibrium in the gutter. It would not have mattered so 
 seriously if he had not been a bandsman. The barman and 
 the landlord pushed the ultimate sot by force into the street 
 and bolted the door (till six o'clock) just as a policeman 
 strolled along, the first policeman of the day. It became 
 known that similar scenes were enacting at the thresholds of 
 other inns. And the judicious were sad. 
 
 VI 
 
 When the altercation between the policeman and the 
 musician in the gutter was at its height, Samuel Povey became 
 restless ; but since he had scarcely stirred ' through the per- 
 formances of the bands, it was probably not the cries of the 
 drunkard that had aroused him. 
 
 He had shown very little interest in the preliminaries of 
 the great demonstration. The flame of his passion for the 
 case of Daniel Povey seemed to have shot up on the day 
 before the execution, and then to have expired. On that day 
 he went to Stafford in order, by permit of the prison governor, 
 to see his cousin for the last time. His condition then was 
 undoubtedly not far removed from monomania. ' Unhinged ' 
 was the conventional expression which frequently rose in 
 Constance's mind as a description of the mind of her hus- 
 band ; but she fought it down ; she would not have it ; it was 
 too crude — with its associations. She would only admit that 
 the case had ' got on ' his mind. A startling proof of this was 
 that he actually suggested taking Cyril with him to see the 
 
ANOTHER CRIME 237 
 
 condemned man. He wished Cyril to see Daniel; he said 
 gravely that he thought Cyril ought to see him. The pro- 
 posal was monstrous, inexplicable — or explicable only by the 
 assumption that his mind, while not unhinged, had temporarily 
 lost its balance. Constance opposed an absolute negative, 
 and Samuel being in every way enfeebled, she overcame. As 
 for Cyril, he was divided between fear and curiosity. On the 
 whole, perhaps Cyril regretted that he would not be able to 
 say at school that he had had speech with the most celebrated 
 killer of the age on the day before his execution. 
 
 Samuel returned hysterical from Stafford. His account of 
 the scene, which he gave in a very loud voice, was a most 
 absurd and yet pathetic recital, obviously distorted by memory. 
 When he came to the point of the entrance of Dick Povey, 
 who was still at the hospital, and who had been specially 
 driven to Stafford and / carried into the prison, he wept 
 without restraint. His hysteria was painful in a very high 
 degree. 
 
 He went to bed — of his own accord, for his cough had 
 improved again. And on the following day, the day of the 
 execution, he remained in bed till the afternoon. In the 
 evening the Rector sent for him to the Rectory to discuss 
 the proposed demonstration. On the next day, Saturday, he 
 said he should not get u[). Icy showers were sweeping the 
 town, and his cough was worse after the evening visit to 
 the Rector. Constance had no apprehensions about him. 
 The most dangerous part of the winter was over, and there 
 was nothing now to force him into indiscretions. She said to 
 herself calmly that he should stay in bed as long as he liked, 
 that he could not have too much repose after the cruel fatigues, 
 physical and spiritual, which he had suffered. His cough was 
 short, but not as troublesome as in the past ; his face flushed, 
 dusky, and settled in gloom; and he was slightly feverish, 
 with quick pulse and quick breathing — the symptoms of a 
 renewed cold. He passed a wakeful night, broken by brief 
 dreams in which he talked. At dawn he had some hot food, 
 asked what day it was, frowned; and seemed to doze off at 
 once. At eleven o'clock he had refused food. And he had 
 intermittently dozed during the progress of the demonstration 
 and its orgiastic sequel. 
 
 Constance had food ready for his waking, and she ap- 
 proached the bed and leaned over him. The fever had 
 
238 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 increased somewhat, the breathing was more rapid, and his 
 lips were covered with tiny purple pimples. He feebly shook 
 his head, with a disgusted air, at her mention of food. It 
 was this obstinate refusal of food which first alarmed her. A 
 little uncomfortable suspicion shot up in her : Surely there's 
 nothing the matter with him ? 
 
 Something — impossible to say what — caused her to bend 
 still lower, and put her ear to his chest. She heard within 
 that mysterious box a rapid succession of thin, dry, crackling 
 sounds : sounds such as she would have produced by rubbing 
 her hair between her fingers close to her ear. The crepita- 
 tion ceased, then recommenced, and she perceived that it 
 coincided with the intake of his breath. He coughed ; the 
 sounds were intensified ; a spasm of pain ran over his face ; 
 and he put his damp hand to his side. 
 
 " Pain in my side 1 " he whispered with difficulty. 
 
 Constance stepped into the drawing-room, where Cyril was 
 sketching by the fire. 
 
 "Cyril," she said, "go across and ask Dr. Harrop to 
 come round at once. And if he isn't in, then his new 
 partner." 
 
 "Is it for father?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " What's the matter ? " 
 
 " Now do as I say, please," said Constance, sharply, 
 adding : " I don't know what's the matter. Perhaps nothing. 
 But I'm not satisfied." 
 
 The venerable Harrop pronounced the word ' pneumonia.' 
 It was acute double pneumonia that Samuel had got. During 
 the three worst months of the year, he had escaped the fatd 
 perils which await a man with a flat chest and a chronic cough, 
 who ignores his condition and defies the weather. But a 
 journey of five hundred yards to the Rectory had been one 
 journey too many. The Rectory was so close to the shop 
 that he had not troubled to wrap himself up as for an excursion 
 to Stafibrd. He survived the crisis of the disease and then 
 died of toxaemia, caused by a heart that would not do its duty 
 by the blood. A casual death, scarce noticed in the reaction 
 after the great febrile demonstration 1 Besides, Samuel Povey 
 never could impose himself on the burgesses. He lacked 
 individuality. He was little. (^I have often laughed at Samuel 
 Povey. But I hked and respected him.] He was a very 
 
ANOTHER CRIME 839 
 
 honest man. I have always been glad to think that, at the 
 end of his life, destiny took hold of him and displayed, to the 
 observant, the vein of greatness which runs through every soul 
 without exception. He embraced a cause^ lost it, and died 
 of it 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE WIDOW 
 
 Constance, alone in the parlour, stood expectant by the set 
 tea-table. She was not wearing weeds ; her mother ahd she, 
 on the death of her father, had talked of the various disadvan- 
 tages of weeds ; her mother had worn them unwillingly, and 
 only because a public opinion not sufficiently advanced had 
 intimidated her. Constance had said : " If ever I'm a widow 
 I won't wear them," positively, in the tone of youth ; and Mrs. 
 Baines had repUed : " I hope you won't, my dear." That was 
 over twenty years ago, but Constance perfectly remembered. 
 And now, she was a widow ! How strange and how impressive 
 was life I And she had kept her word ; not positively, not 
 without hesitations ; for though times were changed, Bursley 
 was still Bursley ; but she had kept it. 
 
 This was the first Monday after Samuel's funeral. Exist- 
 ence in the house had been resumed on the plane which would 
 henceforth be the normal plane. Constance had put on for 
 tea a dress of black silk with a jet Jarooch of her mother's. Her 
 hands, just meticulously washed, had that feeling of being dirty 
 which comes from roughening of the epidermis caused by 
 a day spent in fingering stuffs. She had been ' going through ' 
 Samuel's things, and her own, and ranging all anew. It was 
 astonishing how little the man had collected, of ' things,' in the 
 course of over half a century. All his clothes were contained 
 in two long drawers and a short one. He had the least 
 possible quantity of haberdashery and linen, for he invariably 
 took from the shop such articles as he required, when he 
 required them, and he would never preserve what was done 
 with. He possessed no jewellery save a set of gold studs, 
 a gcarf-ring, and a wedding-ring ; the wedding-ring was buried 
 
 240 
 
THE WIDOW 241 
 
 with him. Once, when Constance had offered him her father's 
 gold watch and chain, he had politely refused it, saying that he 
 preferred his own — a silver watch (with a black cord) which 
 kept excellent time ; he had said later that she might save 
 the gold watch and chain for Cyril when he was twenty-one. 
 Beyond these trifles and a half-empty box of cigars and a pair of 
 spectacles, he left nothing personal to himself. Some men 
 leave behind them a litter which takes months to sift and dis- 
 tribute. But Samuel had not the mania for owning. Constance 
 put his clothes in a box, to be given away gradually (all except 
 an overcoat and handkerchiefs which might do for Cyril) ; she 
 locked up the watch and its black cord, the spectacles and the 
 scarf-ring j she gave the gold studs to Cyril ; she climbed on a 
 chair and hid the cigar-box on the top of her wardrobe ; and 
 scarce a trace of Samuel remained ! 
 
 By his own wish the funeral had been as simple and private 
 as possible. One or two distant relations, whom Constance 
 scarcely knew and who would probably not visit her again until 
 she too was dead, came — and went. And lo ! the affair was 
 over. The simple celerity of the funeral would have satisfied 
 even Samuel, whose tremendous self-esteem hid itself so 
 effectually behind such externals that nobody had ever fully 
 perceived it. Not even Constance quite knew Samuel's secret 
 opinion of Samuel. Constance was aware that he had a ridicu- 
 lous side, that his greatest lack had been a lack of spectacular 
 dignity. Even in the coffin, where nevertheless most people 
 are finally effective, he had not been imposing — with his 
 finicky little grey beard persistently sticking up. 
 
 The vision of him in his coffin — there in the churchyard, 
 just at the end of King Street ! — with the lid screwed down on 
 that unimportant beard, recurred frequently in the mind of the 
 widow, as something untrue and misleading. She had to say 
 to herself : " Yes, he is really there ! And that is why I have 
 this particular feeling in my heart." She saw him as an object 
 pathetic and wistful, not majestic. And yet she genuinely 
 thought that there could not exist another husband quite so 
 honest, quite so just, quite so reliable, quite so good, as Samuel 
 had been. What a conscience he had ! How he would try, 
 and try, to be fair with her ! Twenty years she could remember, 
 of ceaseless, constant endeavour on his part to behave rightly 
 to her ! She could recall many an occasion when he had 
 obviously checked himself, striving against his tendency to cold 
 
 R 
 
242 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 abruptness and to suUenness, in order to give her the respect 
 due to a wife. What loyalty was his 1 How she could depend 
 on him I How much better he was than herself (she thought 
 with modesty) ! 
 
 His death was an amputation for her. But she faced it with 
 calmness. She was not bowed with sorrow. She did not nurse 
 the idea that her life was at an end ; on the contrary, she 
 obstinately put it away from her, dwelling on Cyril. She did 
 not indulge in the enervating voluptuousness of grief. She had 
 begun in the first hours of bereavement by picturing herself as 
 one marked out for the blows of fate. She had lost her father 
 and her mother, and now her husband. Her career seemed to 
 be punctuated by interments. But after a while her gentle 
 commonsense came to insist that most human beings lose their 
 parents, and that every marriage must end in either a widower 
 or a widow, and that all careers are punctuated by interments. 
 Had she had not nearly twenty-one years of happy married life ? 
 (Twenty-one years — rolled up ! The sudden thought of their 
 naive ignorance of life, hers and his, when they were first 
 married, brought tears into her eyes. How wise and ex- 
 perienced she was now !) And had she not Cyril ? Com- 
 pared to many women, she was indeed very fortunate. 
 
 The one visitation which had been specially hers was the 
 disappearance of Sophia. And yet even that was not worse 
 than the death outright of Sophia, was perhaps not so bad. 
 For Sophia might return out of the darkness. The blow of 
 Sophia's flight had seemed unique when it was fresh, and long 
 afterwards ; had seemed to separate the Baines family from all 
 other families in a particular shame. But at the age of forty- 
 three Constance had learnt that such events are not uncommon 
 in families, and strange sequels to them not unknown. Think- 
 ing often of Sophia, she hoped wildly and frequently. 
 
 She looked at the clock ; she had a little si)asm of nervous- 
 ness lest Cyril might fail to keep his word on that first day of 
 their new regular life together. And at the instant he burst 
 into the room, invading it like an armed force, having previously 
 laid waste the shop in his passage. 
 
 " I'm not late, mother ! I'm not late I " he cried proudly. 
 
 She smiled warmly, happy in him, drawing out of him balm 
 and solace. He did not know that in that stout familiar body 
 before him was a sensitive, trembling soul that clutched at him 
 ecstatically as the one reality in the universe. He did not know 
 
THE WIDOW 243 
 
 that that evening meal, partaken of without hurry after school 
 had released him to her, was to be the ceremonial sign of their 
 intimate unity and their interdependence, a tender and 
 delicious proof that they were 'all in all to each other': he saw 
 only his tea, for which he was hungry — ^just as hungry as though 
 his father were not scarcely yet cold in the grave. 
 
 But he saw obscurely that the occasion demanded some- 
 thing not quite ordinary, and so exerted himself to be boyishly 
 charming to his mother. She said to herself ' how good he 
 was,' He felt at ease and confident in the future, because he 
 detected beneath her customary judicial, impartial mask a 
 clear desire to spoil him. 
 
 After tea, she regretfully left him, at his home-lessons, in 
 order to go into the shop. The shop was the great unsolved 
 question. What was she to do with the shop ? Was she to 
 continue the business or to sell it ? With the fortunes of her 
 father and her aunt, and the economies of twenty years, she 
 had more than sufficient means. She was indeed rich, accord- 
 ing to the standards of the Square ; nay, wealthy I Therefore 
 she was under no material compulsion to keep the shop. 
 Moreover, to keep it would mean personal superintendence and 
 the burden of responsibility, from which her calm lethargy 
 shrank. On the other hand, to dispose of the business would 
 mean the breaking of ties and leaving the premises : and froin 
 this also she shrank. Young Lawton, without being asked, 
 had advised her to sell. But she did not want to sell. She 
 wanted the impossible : that matters should proceed in the 
 future as in the past, that Samuel's death should change nothing 
 save in her heart. 
 
 In the meantime Miss Insull was priceless. Constance 
 thoroughly understood one side of the shop ; but Miss Insull 
 understood both, and the finance of it also. Miss Insull could 
 have directed the establishment with credit, if not with brilliance. 
 She was indeed directing it at that moment. Constance, how- 
 ever, felt jealous of Miss Insull ; she vvas conscious of a slight 
 antipathy towards the faithful one. She did not care to be in 
 the hands ' of Miss Insull. 
 
 There were one or two customers at the millinery counter. 
 They greeted her with a deplorable copiousness of tact. Most 
 tactfully they avoided any reference to Constance's loss ; but 
 by their tone, their glances, at Constance and at each other, 
 and their heroically restrained sighs, they spread desolation 
 
244 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 as though they had been spreading ashes instead of butter on 
 bread. The assistants, too, had a special demeanour for the 
 poor lone widow which was excessively trying to her. She 
 wished to be natural, and she would have succeeded, had they 
 not all of them apparently conspired together to make her task 
 impossible. 
 
 She moved away to the other side of the shop, to Samuel's 
 desk, at which he used to stand, staring absently out of the 
 little window into King Street while murmurously casting 
 figures. She lighted the gas-jet there, arranged the light 
 exactly to suit her, and then lifted the large flap of the desk 
 and drew forth some account books. 
 
 " Miss InsuU ! " she called, in a low, clear voice, with a 
 touch of haughtiness and a touch of command in it. The pose, 
 a comical contradiction of Constance's benevolent character, 
 was deliberately adopted ; it illustrated the effects of jealousy 
 on even the softest disposition. 
 
 Miss Insull responded. . She had no alternative but to 
 respond. And she gave no sign of resenting her employer's 
 attitude. But then Miss Insull seldom did give any sign of 
 being human. » 
 
 The customers departed, one after another, obsequiously 
 sped , by the assistants, who thereupon lowered the gases 
 somewhat, according to sascular rule ; and in the dim eclipse, 
 as they restored boxes to shelves, they could hear the tranquil, 
 regular, half-whispered . conversation of the two women at the 
 desk, discussing accounts ; and then the chink of gold. 
 
 Suddenly there was an irruption. One of the assistants 
 sprang instinctively to the gas ; but on perceiving that the 
 disturber of peace was only a slatternly girl, hatless and im- 
 perfectly clean, she decided to leave the gas as it was, and 
 put on a condescending, suspicious demeanour. 
 
 " If you please, can I speak to the missis ? " said the girl, 
 breathlessly. 
 
 She seemed to be about eighteen years of age, fat and 
 plain. Her blue frock was torn, and over it she wore a rough 
 brown apron, caught up at one corner to the wai.t. Her bare 
 fore-arms were of brick-red colour. 
 
 "What is it?" demanded the assistant. 
 
 Miss Insull looked over her shoulder across the shop. " It 
 must be Maggie's— Mrs. HoUins's daughter !" said Miss Insull 
 under her breath. 
 
THE WIDOW ' 245 
 
 " What can she want ? " said Constance, leaving the desk 
 instantly ; and to the girl, who stood sturdily holding her own 
 against the group of assistants: "You are Mrs. Hollins's 
 daughter, aren't you ? " 
 
 " Yes, mum." 
 
 " What's your name ? " 
 
 " Maggie, mum. And, if you please, mother's sent me to 
 ask if you'll kindly give her a funeral card." 
 
 " A funeral card ? " 
 
 "Yes. Of Mr. Povey. She's been expecting of one, and 
 she thought as how perhaps you'd forgotten it, especially as 
 she wasn't asked to the funeral" 
 
 The girl stopped. 
 
 Constance perceived that by mere negligence she had 
 seriously wounded the feelings of Maggie, senior. The truth 
 was, she had never thought of Maggie. She ought to have 
 remembered that funeral cards were almost the sole orna- 
 mentation of Maggie's abominable cottage. 
 
 " Certainly," she replied after a pause. " Miss Insull, there 
 are a few cards left in the desk, aren't there ? Please put me 
 one in an envelope for Mrs. HoUins." 
 
 She gave the heavily bordered envelope to the ruddy wench, 
 who enfolded it in her apron, and with hurried, shy thanks 
 ran off. 
 
 "Tell your mother I send her a card with pleasure," 
 Constance called after the girl. 
 
 The strangeness of the hazards of life made her thoughtful. 
 She, to whom Maggie had always seemed an old woman, was 
 a widow, but Maggie's husband survived as a lusty invalid; 
 And she guessed that Maggie, vilely struggling in squalor and 
 poverty, was somehow happy in her frowsy, careless way. 
 She went back to the accounts, dreaming. 
 
 II 
 
 When the shop had been closed, under her own critical 
 and precise superintendence, she extinguished the last gas in 
 it and returned to . the parlour, wondering where she might 
 discover some entirely reliable man or boy to deal with the 
 shutters night and morning. Samuel had ordinarily dealt with 
 the shutters himself, and on extraordinary occasions and 
 during holidays Miss Insull and one of her subordinates 
 
THE OLD WIVES^ TALE 
 
 had struggled with their unwieldiness. But the extraordinary 
 occasion had now become ordinary, and Miss Insull could not 
 be expected to continue indefinitely in the functions of a male. 
 Constance had a mind to engage an errand-boy, a luxury 
 against which Samuel had always set his face. She did not 
 dream of asking the herculean Cyril to open and shut shop. 
 
 He had apparently finished his home-lessons. The books 
 were pushed aside, and he was sketching in lead-pencil on a 
 drawing-block. To the right of the fireplace, over the sofa, 
 there hung an engraving after Landseer, showing a lonely stag 
 paddling into a lake. The stag at eve had drunk or was 
 about to drink his fill, and Cyril was copying him. He had 
 already indicated a flight of birds in the middle distance; 
 vague birds on the wing being easier than detailed stags, he 
 had begun with the birds. 
 
 Constance put a hand on his shoulder. "Finished your 
 lessons ? " she murmured caressingly. 
 
 Before speaking, Cyril gazed up at the picture with a 
 frowning, busy expression, and then replied in an absent- 
 minded voice : 
 
 " Yes." And after a pause : " Except my arithmetic. I 
 shall do, that in the morning before breakfast." 
 
 "Oh, Cyril !" she protested. 
 
 It had been a positive ordinance, for a long time past, 
 that there should be no sketching until lessons were done. 
 In his father's lifetime Cyril had never dared to break it. 
 
 He bent over his block, feigning an intense absorption. 
 Constance's hand slipped from his shoulder. She wanted to 
 command him formally to resume his lessons. But she could 
 not. She feared an argument ; s£!ne mistrusted herself. And, 
 moreover, it was so soon after his father's death ! 
 
 "You know you won't have time to-morrow morning I" 
 she said weakly. 
 
 " Oh, mother 1 " he retorted superiorly. " Don't worry." 
 And then, in a cajoling tone : " I've wanted to do that stag for 
 ages." 
 
 She sighed and sat down in her rocking-chair. He went 
 on sketching, rubbing out, and making queer expostulatory 
 noises against his pencil, or against the diflSculties needlessly 
 invented by Sir Edwin Landseer. Once he rose and changed 
 the position of the gas-bracket, staring fiercely at the engraving 
 as though it had committed a sia 
 
THE WIDOW 247 
 
 Amy came to lay the supper. He did not acknowledge 
 that she existed. 
 
 "Now, Master Cyril, after you with that table, if you 
 please ! " She announced herself brusquely, with the privilege 
 of an old servant and a woman who would never see thirty 
 again. 
 
 "What a nuisance you are. Amy!" he gruffly answered. 
 " Look here, mother, can't Amy lay the cloth on that half of 
 the table? I'm right in the middle of my drawing. There's 
 plenty of room there for two." 
 
 He seemed not to be aware that, in the phrase ' plenty of 
 room for two,' he had made a callous reference to their loss. 
 The fact was, there rvas plenty of room for two. 
 
 Constance said quickly : " Very well, Amy. For this once." 
 
 Amy grunted, but obeyed. 
 
 Constance had to summon him twice from art to nourish- 
 ment. He ate with rapidity, frequently regarding the picture 
 with half-shut, searching eyes. When he had finished, he re- 
 filled his glass with water, and put it next to his sketching-block. 
 
 " You surely aren't thinking of beginning to paint at this 
 time of night ! " Constance exclaimed, astonished. 
 
 " Oh yes, mother ! " he fretfully appealed. " It's not late." 
 
 Another positive ordinance of his father's had been that 
 there should be nothing after supper except bed. Nine 
 o'clock was the latest permissible moment for going to bed. 
 It was now less than a quarter to. 
 
 " It only wants twelve minutes to nine," Constance pointed 
 out. 
 
 "Well, what if it does?" 
 
 " Now, Cyril," she said, " I do hope you are going to be 
 a good boy, and not cause your mother anxiety." 
 
 But she said it too kindly. 
 
 He said sullenly : " I do think you might let me finish it. 
 I've begun it It won't take me long." 
 
 She made the mistake of leaving the main point. " How 
 can you possibly choose your colours properly by gas-light ? " 
 she said. 
 
 " I'm going to do it in sepia," he replied in triumph. 
 
 " It mustn't occur again," she said. 
 
 He thanked God for a good supper, and sprang to the 
 harmonium, where his paint-box was. Amy cleared away. 
 Constance did crochet-work. There was silence. The clock 
 
248 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 struck nine, and it also struck half-past nine. She warned 
 him repeatedly. At ten minutes to ten she said persuasively ; 
 
 " Now, Cyril, when the clock strikes ten I shall really put 
 the gas out" 
 
 The clock struck ten. 
 
 " Half a mo, half a mo I " he cried. " I've done I I've 
 done!" 
 
 Her hand was arrested. 
 
 Another four minutes elapse^, and then he jumped up. 
 "There you are!" he said proudly, showing her the block. 
 And all his gestures were full of grace and cajolery, 
 
 " Yes, it's very good," Constance said, rather indifferently. 
 
 " I don't believe you care for it I " he accused her, but with 
 a bright smile. 
 
 " I care for your health," she said. " Just look at that 
 dock!" 
 
 He sat down in the other rocking-chair, deliberately. 
 
 " Now, Cyril ! " 
 
 "Well, mother, I suppose you'll let me take my boots off!" 
 He said it with teasing good-humour. 
 
 When he kissed her good night, she wanted to cling to him, 
 so affectionate was his kiss ; but she could not throw off the 
 habits of restraint which she had been originally taught and 
 had all her life practised. She keenly regretted the inability. 
 
 In her bedroom, alone, she listened to his movements as 
 he undressed. The door between the two rooms was un- 
 latched. She had to control a desire to open it ever so little 
 and peep at him. He would not have liked that He could 
 have enriched her heart beyond all hope, and at no cost to 
 himself; but he did not know his power. As she could not 
 cling to him with her hands, she clung to him with that heart 
 of hers, while moving sedately up and down the room, alone. 
 And her eyes saw him through the solid wood of the door. 
 At last she got heavily into bed. She thought with placid 
 anxiety, in the dark : " I shall have to be firm with CyriL" 
 And she thought also, simultaneously : " He really must be a 
 good boy. He must." And clung to him passionately, with- 
 out shame ! Lying alone there in the dark, she could be as 
 unrestrained and girlish as her heart chose. When she 
 loosed her hold she instantly saw the boy's father arranged in 
 his coffin, or flitting about the room. Then she would hug 
 that vision too, for the pleasure of the pain it gave her. 
 
THE WIDOW 849 
 
 III 
 
 She was reassured as to Cyril during the next few days. 
 He did not attempt to repeat his ingenious naughtiness of the 
 Monday evening, and he came directly home for tea ; more- 
 over he had, as a kind of miracle performed to dazzle her, 
 actually arisen early on the Tuesday morning and done his 
 arithmetic. To express her satisfaction she had manufactured 
 a specially elaborate straw-frame for the sketch after Sir Edwin 
 Landseer, and had hung it in her bedroom : an honour which 
 Cjrril appreciated. She was as happy as a woman suffering 
 from a recent amputation can be ; and compared with the long 
 nightmare created by Samuel's monomania and illness, her 
 existence seemed to be now a beneficent calm. 
 
 Cyril, she thought, had realized the importance in her eyes 
 of tea, of that evening hour and that companionship which 
 were for her the flowering of the day. And she had such con- 
 fidence in his goodness that she would pour the boiling water 
 on the Horniman tea-leaves even before he arrived ; certainty 
 could not be more sure. , And then, on the Friday of the first 
 week, he was late ! He bounded in, after dark, and the state 
 of his clothes indicated too clearly that he had been playing 
 football in the mud that was a grassy field in summer. 
 
 " Have you been kept in, my boy?" she asked, for the 
 sake of form. 
 
 " No, mother," he said casually. " We were just kicking 
 the ball about a bit. Am I iate ? " 
 
 " Better go and tidy yourself," she said, not replying to his 
 question. " You can't sit down in that state. And I'll have 
 some fresh tea made. This is spoilt." 
 
 "Oh, very well!" 
 
 Her sacred tea — ^the institution which she wanted to 
 hallow by long habit, and which was to count before every- 
 thing with both of them — had been carelessly sacrified to the 
 kicking of a football in mud ! And his father buried not ten 
 days ! She was wounded : a deep, clean, dangerous wound 
 that would hot bleed. She tried to be glad that he had not 
 lied; he might easily have lied, saying that he had been 
 detained for a fault and could not help being late. No I He 
 was not given to lying; he would lie, like any human being, 
 when a great occasion demanded such prudence, but he was 
 
250 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 not a liar ; he might fairly be called a truthful boy. She tried 
 to be glad, and did not succeed. She would have preferred 
 him to have lied. 
 
 Amy, grumbling, had to boil more water. 
 
 When he returned to the parlour, superficially cleaned, 
 Constance expected him to apologize in his roundabout bojdsh 
 way ; at any rate to woo and , wheedle her, to show by some 
 gesture that he was conscious of having put an affront on her. 
 But his attitude was quite otherwise. His attitude was rather 
 brusque and overbearing and noisy. He ate a very consider- 
 able amount of jam, far too quickly, and then asked for more, 
 in a tone of a monarch who calls for his own. And ere tea 
 was finished he said boldly, apropos of nothing: 
 
 " I say, mother, you'll just have to let me go to the School 
 of Art after Easter." 
 
 And stared at her with a fixed challenge in his eyes. 
 
 He meant, by the School of Art, the evening classes at the 
 School of Art. His father had decided absolutely against the 
 project. His father had said that it would interfere with his 
 ^lessons, would keep him up too late at night, and involve 
 absence from home in the evening. The last had always been 
 the real objection. His father had not been able to believe 
 that Cyril's desire to study art sprang purely from his love 
 of art ; he could not avoid suspecting that it was a plan to 
 obtain freedom in the evenings — that freedom which Samuel 
 had invariably forbidden. In all Cyril's suggestions Saiuel 
 had been ready to detect the same scheme lurking. He had 
 finally said that when Cyril left school and took to a vocation, 
 then he could study art at night if he chose, but not before. 
 
 " You know what your father said ! " Constance replied. 
 
 " But, mother ! That's all very well ! I'm sure father 
 would have agreed. If I'm going to take up drawing I ought 
 to do it at once. That's what the drawing-master says, and 
 I suppose he ought to know." He finished on a tone of 
 insolence. 
 
 " I can't allow you to do it yet," said Constance, quietly. 
 " It's quite out of the question. Quite 1 " 
 
 He pouted and then he sulked. It was war between them. 
 At times he was the image of his Aunt Sophia. He would 
 not leave the subject alone ; but he would not listen to Con- 
 stance's reasoning. He openly accused her of harshness. He 
 asked her how she could expect him to get on if she thwarted 
 
THE WIDOW 251 
 
 him in his most earnest desires. He pointed to other boys 
 whose parents were wiser. 
 
 " If s all very fine of you to put it on father ! " he observed 
 sarcastically. 
 
 He gave up his drawing entirely. 
 
 When she hinted that if he attended the School of Art she 
 would be condemned to solitary evenings, he looked at her as 
 
 though saying : "Well, and if you are ?" He seemed to 
 
 have no heart. 
 
 After several weeks of intense unhappiness she said : " How 
 many evenings do you want to go ? " 
 
 The war was over. 
 
 He was charming again. When she was alone she could 
 cling to him again. And she said to herself: "If we can be 
 happy together only when I give way to him, I must give way 
 to him." And there was ecstasy in her yielding. " After all," 
 she said to herself, " perhaps it's very important that he should 
 go to the School of Art." She solaced herself with such 
 thoughts on three solitary evenings a week, waiting for him t6 
 come hornet 
 
CHAPTER VI.I 
 
 BRICKS AND MORTAR 
 
 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 pro- 
 longed 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 land- 
 lord.' 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 auetion, at tht 
 252 
 
BRICKS AND MORTAR 253 
 
 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 erec- 
 tions 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 commo'dious 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. Con- 
 stance 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 j 
 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. 
 Critdhlow abruptly presented himself before Constance at 
 the millinery counter; he was waving a poster. 
 
 " Well I" 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 1 I've got 
 quite enough house property as it is." 
 
254 THE OLD WIVES' TALEv 
 
 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 youi" she added, with Mr. Critchlow's own 
 brusqueness. 
 
 " Me 1 Buy property in St. Luke's Square 1 " Mr. 
 Crltchlow 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^bolition 
 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 
 
BRICKS AND MORTAR 255 
 
 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 selfconsciously, with a sort of shamed air; 
 it might have been tl^t 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 awk- 
 wardness. 
 
 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 1 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 auctibneer sipped and loudly smacked, and said : " Ah 1 " 
 
 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 1 Offer wine to Mr. Critchlow 1" he exclaimed 
 
256 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 buUyingly, 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 WilUam 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 com- 
 modious 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 
 
BRICKS AND MORTAR 257 
 
 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 tipaes. 
 
 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, gentle- 
 men, 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 derk 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. 
 
 Constonce 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 InsuU 
 
 ■ 
 
268 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 Iain 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 Con- 
 stance, 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 exclama- 
 tion. 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 deUberately 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 aifair." 
 
 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 comers 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 
 
BRICKS AND MORTAR 259 
 
 be true, the substance of the rumours that had floated like 
 vapours in the Square for eight years and more t 
 
 "What . . .?" she began. 
 
 " Me, and her ! " He jerked his head in the direction of 
 Miss InsuU. 
 
 The dog had leisurely strolled forward to inspect the edges 
 of the fianc'e'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 I 
 
 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 occu- 
 pation she had no curiosity, no intelligence, no ideas. Super- 
 stitions and prejudices, deep and violent, served her for ideas j 
 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, 
 
260 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 con- 
 templating 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 111 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. 
 
BRICKS AND MORTAR S61 
 
 " Here 1 " said Mr. Critchlow, with increasing impatience. 
 " Follow me, will ye ? " 
 
 Constance obeyed. Miss InsuU sidled after Constance, 
 and the dog after Miss InsuU. 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 1 " 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 
 k 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 comer 
 
262 THE OLD WIVES' TAEE 
 
 of King Street into the Square and so to his own shop, which 
 ignored the Thursday half-holiday. Miss InsuU left soon 
 afterwards. 
 
 Ill 
 
 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 dust-sheets. She and Cyril lived between bare boards and 
 dust-sheets 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 
 
BRICKS AND MORTAR 263 
 
 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, up- 
 stairs 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 ovei 
 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, motlier, 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 fi-ee 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 Ciitchlow would pay the price of a desire 
 
26* THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 bad 
 been too soon pasted on to new plaster and would pot 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 im- 
 pressive sight of all — that the grimy window of the abandoned 
 room at the top of the abandoned staircase next to the bed- 
 room 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 einployed 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 friendli- 
 ness. " I'm a silly woman 1 " 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 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE PROUDEST MOTHER 
 
 In the year 1893 there was a new and strange man living at 
 No. 4, St. Luke's Square. Many people remarked on the 
 phenomenon. Very few of his like had ever been seen in 
 Bursley before. One of the striking things about him was 
 the complex way in which he secured himself by means of 
 glittering chains. A chain stretched across his waistcoat, 
 passing through a special button-hole, without a button, in 
 the middle. To this cable were firmly linked a watch at one 
 end and a pencil-case at the other; the chain also served 
 as a protection against a thief who might attempt to snatch 
 the fancy waistcoat entire. Then there were longer chains, 
 beneath the waistcoat, partly designed, no doubt, to deflect 
 bullets, but serving mainly to enable the owner to haul up 
 penknives, cigarette-cases, match-boxes, and key-rings from 
 the profundities of hip-pockets. An essential portion of the 
 man's braces, visible sometimes when he played at tennis, 
 consisted of chain, and the upper and nether halves of his 
 cuff'links were connected by chains. Occasionally he was to 
 be seen chained to a dog. 
 
 A reversion, conceivably, to a mediaeval type I Yes, but 
 also the exemplar of the excessively modern I Externally he 
 was a consequence of the fact that, years previously, the 
 leading tailor in Bursley had permitted his son to be 
 apprenticed in London. The father died; the son had the 
 wit to return and make a fortune while creating a new tyg§ 
 in the town, a type of which multiple chains were but one 
 feature, and that the least expensive if the most salient. For 
 instance, up to the historic year in which the young tailor 
 created the type, any cap was a cap in Bursley, and any collar 
 
 265 
 
266 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 was a collar. But thenceforward no cap was a cap, and no 
 collar was a collar, which did not exactly conform in shape 
 and material to certain sacred caps and collars guarded by the 
 young tailor in his back shop. None knew why these sacred 
 caps and collars were sacred, but they were ; their sacredness 
 endured for about six months, and then suddenly — again none 
 knew why — they fell from their estate and became lower than 
 ofFal for dogs, and were supplanted on the altar. The type , 
 brought into existence by the young tailor was to be recognized 
 by its caps and collars, and in a similar manner by every other 
 article of attire, except its boots. Unfortunately the tailor did 
 not sell boots, and so imposed on his creatures no mystical 
 creed as to boots. This was a pity, for the boot-makers of the 
 town happened not to be inflamed by the type-creating passion 
 as the tailor was, and thus the new type finished abruptly at 
 the edges of the tailor's trousers. 
 
 The man at No. 4, St. Luke's Square had comparatively 
 small and narrow feet, which gave him an advantage ; and as 
 he was endowed with a certain vague general physical distinc- 
 tion he managed, despite the eternal untidiness of his hair, to 
 be eminent among the type. Assuredly the frequent sight of 
 him in her house flattered the pride of Constance's eye, which 
 rested on him almost always with pleasure. He had come 
 into the house with startling abruptness soon after Cyril left 
 school and was indentured to the head-designer at " Peel's," 
 that classic earthenware manufactory. The presence of a man 
 in her abode disconcerted Constance at the beginning; but 
 she soon grew accustomed to it, perceiving that a man would 
 behave as a man, and must be expected to do so. This man, 
 in truth, did what he liked in all things. Cyril having always 
 been regarded by both his parents as enormous, one would 
 have anticipated a giant in the new man ; but, queerly, he was 
 slim, and little above the average height Neither in enormity 
 nor in many other particulars did he resemble the Cyril whom 
 he had supplanted. His gestures were lighter and quicker ; ' 
 he had nothing of Cyril's ungainliness ; he had not Cyril's 
 limitless taste for sweets, nor Cyril's terrific hatred of gloves, 
 barbers, and soap. He was much more dreamy than Cyril, 
 and much busier. In fact, Constance only saw him at meal- 
 times. He was at Peel's in the day and at the School of Art 
 every night. He would dream during a meal, even; and, 
 without actually saymg so, he gave the impression that he was 
 
THE TROUDEST MOTHER 267 
 
 the busiest man in Bursley, wrapped in occupations and pre- 
 occupations as in a blanket — a blanket which Constance had 
 difficulty in penetrating. 
 
 Constance wanted to please him ; she lived for nothing but 
 to please him ; he was, however, exceedingly difficult to please, 
 not in the least because he was hypercritical and exacting, but 
 because he was indifferent. Constance, in order to satisfy her 
 desire of pleasing, had to make fifty efforts, in the hope that 
 he'might chance to notice one. He was a good man, amaz- 
 ingly industrious — when once Constance had got him out of 
 bed in the morning; with no vices; kind, save when Con- 
 stance mistakenly tried to thwart him ; charming,, with a 
 curious strain of humour that Constance only half understood., 
 Constance was unquestionably vain about him, and she could 
 honestly find in him little to blame. But whereas he was the 
 whole of her universe, she was merely a dim figure in the back- 
 ground of his. Every now and then, with his gentle, elegant 
 raillery, he would apparently rediscover her, as though saying : 
 "Ah! You're still there, are you?" Constance could not 
 meet him on the plane where his interests lay, and he never 
 knew the passionate intensity of her absorption in that minorj 
 part of his life which moved on her plane. He never worried 
 about her solitude, or guessed that in throwing her a smile and 
 a word at supper he was paying her meagrely for three hours 
 of lone rocking in a rocking-chair. 
 
 The worst of it was that she was quite incurable. No 
 experience would suffice to cure her trick of continually 
 expecting him to notice things which he never did notice. One 
 day he said, in the midst of a silence : " By the way, didn't 
 father leave any boxes of cigars ? " She had the steps up into 
 her bedroom and reached down from the dusty top of the 
 wardrobe the box which she had put there after Samuel's 
 funeral. In handing him the box she was doing a great 
 deed. His age was nineteen, and she was ratifying his pre- 
 cocious habit of smoking by this solemn gift. He entirely 
 ignored the box for several days. She said timidly : " Have 
 you tried those cigars?" "Not yet," he replied. "I'll try 
 'era one of these days." Ten days later, on a Sunday when 
 he chanced not to have gone out with his aristocratic friend 
 Matthew Peel-Swynnerton, he did at lenglh open the box and 
 take out a cigar. " Now," he observed roguishly, cutting the 
 cigar, " we shall see, Mrs. Plover 1 " He often called her Mrs. 
 
268 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Plover, for fun. Though she liked him to be sufficiently 
 interested in her to tease her, she did not like being called 
 Mrs. Plover, and she never failed to say: "I'm not Mrs. 
 Plover." He smoked the cigar slowly, in the rocking-chair, 
 throwing his head back and sending clouds to the ceiling. 
 And afterwards he remarked : " The old man's cigars weren't 
 so bad." "Indeed!" she answered tartly, as if maternally 
 resenting this easy patronage. But in secret she was deligljted. 
 There was something in her son's favourable verdict on her 
 husband's cigars that thrilled her. 
 
 And she looked at him. Impossible to see in him any 
 resemblance to his father ! Oh 1 He was a far more brilliant, 
 more advanced, more complicated, more seductive being than 
 his homely father 1 She wondered where he had come from. 
 And yet ... ! If his father had lived, what would have 
 occurred between them? Would the boy have been openly 
 smoking cigars in the house at nineteen ? 
 
 She laboriously interested herself, so far as he would allow, 
 in his artistic studies and productions. A back attic on the 
 second floor was now transformed into a studio — a naked apart- 
 ment which smelt of oil and of damp clay. Often there were 
 traces of clay on the stairs. For working in clay he demanded of 
 his mother a smock, and she made-a smock, on the model of a 
 genuine smock which she obtained from a country-woman who 
 sold eggs and butter in the Covered Market. Into the shoulders 
 of the smock she put a week's fancy-stitching, taking the 
 pattern from an old book of embroidery. One day when he 
 had seen her stitching morn, noon, and afternoon, at the 
 smock, he said, as she rocked idly after supper : " I suppose 
 you haven't forgotten all about that smock I asked you for, 
 have you, mater ? " She knew that he was teasing her ; but, 
 while perfectly realizing how foolish she was, she nearly 
 always acted as though his teasing was serious ; she picked up 
 the smock agaiu from the sofa. When the smodk was finished 
 he examined it intently ; tiien eyclaimedwith an air of surprise : 
 " By Jove 1 That's beautiful ! Where did you get this 
 pattern ? " He continued to stare at it, smiling in pleasure. 
 He turned over the tattered leaves of the embroidery-book 
 with the same naive, charmed astonishment, and carried the 
 book away to the studio. " I must show that to Swynnerton," 
 he said. As for her, the epithet 'beautiful ' seemed a strange 
 epithet to apply to a mere piece of honest stitchery done in a 
 
THE PROUDEST MOTHER 269 
 
 pattern, and a stitch with which she had been familiar all her 
 life. The fact was she understood his 'art' less and less. 
 The sole wall decoration of his studio was a Japanese print, 
 which struck her as being entirely preposterous, considered as 
 a picture. She much preferred his own early drawings of 
 moss-roses and picturesque castles — things that he now 
 mercilessly contemned. Later, he discovered her cutting out 
 another smock. "What's that for?" he inquired. "Well," 
 she said, "you can't manage with one smock. What shall 
 you do when that one has to go to the wash ? " " Wash ! " he 
 repeated vaguely. " There's no need for it to go to the wash." 
 " Cyril," she replied, " don't try my patience ! I was 
 thinking of making you half-a-dozen." He whistled. " With 
 all that stitching?" he questioned, amazed at the undertaking. 
 "Why not?" she said. In her young days, no sempstress 
 ever made fewer than half-a-dozen of anything, and it was 
 usually a dozen ; it was sometimes half-a-dozen dozen. " Well," 
 he murmured, " you have got a nerve ! I'll say that." 
 
 Similar things happened whenever he showed that he was 
 pleased. If he said of a dish, in the local tongue : " I could 
 do a bit of that ! " or if he simply smacked his lips over it, sh^ 
 would surfeit him with that dish. 
 
 II 
 
 On a hot day in August, just before they were to leave 
 Bursley for a month in the Isle of Man, Cyril came home, pale 
 and perspiring, and dropped on to the sofa. He wore a grey 
 alpaca suit, and, except his hair, which in addition to being 
 very untidy was damp with sweat, he was a masterpiece of 
 slim^«legance, despite the heat. He blew out great sighs, and 
 restfed his head on the antimacassared arm of the sofa. 
 
 "Well, mater," he said, in a voice of factitious calm, 
 " I've got it." He was looking up at the ceiling. 
 
 "Got what?" 
 
 " The National Scholarship. Swynnerton says it's a sheer 
 fluke. But I've got it. Great glory for the Bursley School 
 of Art 1" 
 
 " National Scholarship ? " she said. " What's that ? What 
 is it?" 
 
 " Now, mother ! " he admonished her, not without testiness. 
 "Don't go and say I've never breathed a word about it I" 
 
270 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 He lit a cigarette, to cover his self-consciousness, for he 
 perceived that she was moved far beyond the ordinary. 
 
 Never, in fact, not even by the death bf her husband, had 
 she received such a frightful blow as that which the dreamy 
 ■ Cyril had just dealt her. 
 
 It was not a complete surprise, but it was nearly a complete 
 surprise. A few months previously he certainly had mentioned, 
 in his incidental way, the subject of a National Scholarship. 
 Apropos of a drinking-cup which he had designed, he had said 
 that the director of the School of Art had suggested that it 
 was good enough to compete for the National, and that as he 
 was otherwise qualified for the competition he might as well 
 send the cup to South Kensington. He had added that Peel- 
 Swynnerton had laughed at the notion as absurd. On that 
 occasion she had comprehended that a National Scholarship 
 involved residence in London. She ought to have begun to 
 live in fear, for Cyril had a most disturbing habit of making a 
 mere momentary reference to matters which he deemed very 
 important and which occupied a large share of his attention. 
 He was secretive by nature, and the rigidity of his father's 
 rule had developed this trait in his character. But really he 
 had spoken of the competition with such an extreme casual- 
 ness that with little effort she had dismissed it from her 
 anxieties as involving a contingency so remote as to be 
 negligible. She had, genuinely, almost forgotten it. Only at 
 rare intervals had it wakened in her a dull transitory pain — 
 like the herald of a fatal malady. And, as a woman in the 
 opening stage of disease, she had hastily reassured herself: 
 " How silly of me ! This can't possibly be anything serious I " 
 
 And now she was condemned. She knew it She knew 
 there could be no appeal. She knew that she might as 
 usefully have besought mercy from a tiger as from her good, 
 industrious, dreamy son. 
 
 " It means a pound a week," said Cyril, his self-conscious- 
 ness intensified by her silence and by the dreadful look on 
 her face. " And of course free tuition." 
 
 " For how long?" she managed to say. 
 
 " Well," said he, " that depends. Nominally for a year. 
 But if you behave yourself it's always continued for three 
 years." 
 
 If he stayed for three years he would never come back : 
 that was a certainty. 
 
THE PROUDEST MOTHER 271 
 
 How she rebelled, furious and despairing, against the 
 fortuitous cruelty of things ! She was sure that he had not, tilt 
 then, thought seriously of going to London. But the fact that 
 the Government would admit hira free to its classrooms and 
 give him a pound a week besides, somehow forced him to go 
 to London. It was not the lack of means that would have 
 prevented him from going. Why, then, should the presence of 
 means induce him to go ? There was no logical reason. The 
 whole affair was disastrously absurd. The art-master at the 
 Wedgwood Institution had chanced, merely chanced, to suggest 
 that the drinking-cup should be sent to South Kensington. 
 And the result of this caprice was that she was sentenced to 
 solitude for life 1 It was too monstrously, too incredibly 
 wicked ! 
 
 With what futile and bitter execration she murmured in her 
 heart the word ' If.' If Cyril's childish predilections had not 
 been encouraged ! If he had only been content to follow his 
 father's trade ! If she had flatly refused to sign his indenture 
 at Peel's and pay the premium ! If he had not turned from 
 colour to clay ! If the art-master had not had that fatal 
 'idea'] If the judges for the competition had decided 
 otherwise ! If only she had brought Cyril up in habits of 
 obedience, sacrificing temporary peace to permanent security ! 
 
 For after all he could not abandon her without her consent. 
 He was not of age. And he would want a lot more money, 
 which he could obtain from none but her. She could refuse. 
 ... No ! She could not refuse. He was the master, the 
 tyrant. For the sake of daily pleasantness she had weakly 
 yielded to him at the start ! She had behaved badly to herself 
 and to him. He was spoiled. She had spoiled him. And 
 he was about to repay her with lifelong misery, and nothing 
 would deflect him from his course. The usual conduct of the 
 spoilt child ! Had she not witnessed it, and moralized upon 
 it, in other families ? 
 
 " You don't seem very chirpy over it, mater 1 " he said. 
 
 She went out of the room. His joy in the prospect of 
 departure from the Five Towns, from her, though he masked 
 it, was more manifest than she could bear. 
 
 The Signal, the next day, made a special item of the news. 
 It appeared that no National Scholarship had been won in the 
 Five Towns for eleven years. The citizens were exhorted to 
 remember that Mr. Fovey had gained his success in open 
 
272 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 competition with the cleverest young students of the entire 
 kingdom — and in a branch of art which he had but recently 
 taken up ; and further, that the Government offered only eight 
 scholarships each year. The name of Cyril Povey passed from 
 lip to lip. And nobody who met Constance, in street or shop, 
 could refrain from informing her that she ought to be a proud 
 mother, to have such a son, but that truly they were not 
 surprised . . . and how proud his poor father would have 
 been ! A few sympathetically hinted thiat maternal pride was 
 one of those luxuries that may cost too dear. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The holiday in the Isle of Man was of course ruined for 
 her. She could scarcely walk because of the weight of a lump 
 of lead that she carried in her bosom. On the brightest days 
 the lump of lead was always there. Besides, she was so obese. 
 In ordinary circumstances they might have stayed beyond the 
 month. An indentured pupil is not strapped to the wheel like 
 a common apprentice. Moreover, the indentures were to be 
 cancelled. But Constance did not care to stay. She had to 
 prepare for his departure to London. She had to lay the 
 faggots for her own martyrdom. 
 
 In this business of preparation she showed as much silliness, 
 she betrayed as perfect a lack of perspective, as the most 
 superior son could desire for a topic of affectionate irony. 
 Her preoccupation with petty things of no importance what- 
 ever was worthy of the finest traditions of fond motherhood. 
 However, Cyril's careless satire had no effect on her, save that 
 once she got angry, thereby startling him ; he quite correctly 
 and sagely laid this unprecedented outburst to the account of 
 her wrought nerves, and forgave it. Happily for the smooth- 
 ness of Cyril's translation to London, young Peel-Swynnerton 
 was acquainted with the capital, had a brother in Chelsea, 
 knew of reputable lodgings, was, indeed, an encyclopaedia of 
 the town, and would himself spend a portion of the autumn 
 there. Otherwise, the preliminaries which his mother would 
 have insisted on by, means of tears and hysteria might have 
 proved fatiguing to Cyril. 
 
 The day came when on that day week Cyril would be 
 gone. Constance steadily fabricated cheerfulness against the 
 prospect. She said : 
 
THE PROUDEST MOTHER 873 
 
 " Suppose I come with you ? " 
 
 He smiled in toleration of this joke as being a passable 
 quality of joke. And then she smiled in the same sense, 
 hastening to agree with him that as a joke it was not a 
 bad joke. 
 
 In the last week he was very loyal to his tailor. Many 
 a young man would have commanded new clothes after, not 
 before, his arrival in London. But Cyril had faith in his 
 creator. 
 
 On the day of departure the household, the very house 
 itself, was in a state of excitation. He was to leave early. 
 He would not listen to the project of her accompanying 
 him as far as Knype, where the Loop Line joined the main. 
 She might go to Bursley Station and no further. When she 
 rebelled he disclosed the merest hint of his sullen-churlish^ side,' 
 and she at once yielded. During breakfast she did not cry, 
 but the aspect of her face made him protest 
 
 " Now, look here, mater 1 Just try to remember that I 
 shall be back for Christmas. It's barely three months," 
 And he lit a cigarette. 
 
 She made no reply. 
 
 Amy lugged a Gladstone bag down the crooked stairs. A 
 trunk was already close to the door; it had wrinkled the 
 carpet and deranged the mat. 
 
 "You didn't forget to put the haii-brush in, did you, 
 Amy ? " he asked. 
 
 " N— no, Mr. Cyril," she blubbered. 
 
 " Amy I " Constance sharply corrected her, as Cyril ran 
 upstairs, "I wonder you can't control yourseU' better than 
 that." 
 
 Amy weakly apologized. Although treated almost as one 
 of the family, she ought not to have forgotten that she was 
 a servant. What right had she to weep over Cyril's luggage ? 
 This question was put to her in Constance's tone. 
 
 The cab came. Cyril tumbled downstairs with exaggerated 
 carelessness, and with exaggerated carelessness he joked at 
 the cabman. 
 
 " Now, mother ! " he cried, when the luggage was stowed, 
 "Do you want me to miss this train?" But he knew that 
 the margin of time was ample. It was his fiin 1 
 
 " Nay, I can't be hurried 1 " she said, fixing her bonnet 
 " Amy, as soon as we are gone you can clear this table." 
 
 T 
 
274 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 She climbed heavily into the cab, 
 
 " That's it ! Smash the springs ! " Cyril teased her. 
 
 The horse got a stinging cut to recall him to the serious- 
 ness of life. It was a fine, bracing autumn morning, and the 
 driver felt the need of communicating his abundant energy 
 to some one or something. They drove off, Amy staring after 
 them from the door. Matters had been so marvellously well 
 arranged that they arrived at the station twenty minutes before 
 the train was due. 
 
 " Never mind ! " Cyril mockingly comforted his mother. 
 " You'd rather be twenty minutes too soon than one minute 
 too late, wouldn't you ? " 
 5, His high spirits had to come out somehow. 
 
 Gradually the minutes passed, and the empty slate-tinted 
 platform became dotted with people to whom that train was 
 nothing but a Loop Line train, people who took that train 
 every week-day of their lives and knew all its eccentricities. 
 
 And they heard the train whistle as it started from Tum- 
 hill. And Cyril had a final word with the porter who was 
 in charge of the luggage. He made a handsome figure, 
 and he had twenty pounds in his pocket. When he returned 
 to Constance she was sniffing, and through her veil he could 
 see that her eyes were circled with red. But through her veil 
 she could see liothing. The train rolled in, rattling to a stand- 
 still. Constance lifted her veil and kissed him; and kissed 
 her life out. He smelt the odour of her crape. He was, for 
 an instant, close to her, close; and he seemed to have an 
 overwhelmingly intimate glimpse into her secrets ; he seemed 
 to be choked in the sudden strong emotion of that crape. He 
 felt queer. 
 
 " Here you are, sir ! Second smoker ! " called the porter. 
 
 The daily frequenters of the train boarded it with their 
 customary disgust. 
 
 " I'll write as soon as ever I get there ! " said Cyril, of his 
 own accord. It was the best he could muster. 
 
 With what grace he raised his hat I 
 
 A sliding-away ; clouds of steam ; and she shared the dead 
 platform with milk-cans, two porters, and Smith's noisy boy ! 
 
 She walked home, very slowly and painfully. The lump 
 of lead was heavier than ever before. And the townspeople 
 saw the proudest mother in Bursley walking home. 
 
 " After all," she argued with her soul angrily, petulantly, 
 
THE PROUDEST MOTHER 275 
 
 " could you expect the boy to do anything else ? He is a 
 serious student, he has had a brilliant success, and is he to 
 be tied to your apron-strings ? The idea is preposterous. It 
 isn't as if he was an idler, or a bad son. No mother could 
 have a better son. A nice thing, that he should stay all his 
 life in Bursley simply because you don't like being left 
 alone I " 
 
 Unfortunately one might as well argue with a mule as with 
 one's soul. Her soul only kept on saying monotonously : 
 " I'm a lonely old woman now. I've nothing to live for any 
 more, and I'm no use to anybody. Once I was young and 
 proud. And this is what my life has come to ! This is 
 the end 1" 
 
 When she reached home, Amy had not touched the break- 
 fast things ; the carpet was still wrinkled, and the mat still out 
 of place. And, through the desolating atmosphere of reaction 
 after a terrific crisis, she marched directly upstairs, entered his 
 plundered room, and beheld the disorder of the bed in which 
 he had slept 
 
BOOK III 
 
 SOPHIA 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ELOPEMENT 
 
 Her soberly rich dress had a countrified air, as she waited, 
 ready for the streets, in the bedroom of the London hotel 
 on the afternoon of the first of July, 1866; but there was 
 nothing of the provincial in that beautiful face, nor in that 
 bearing at once shy and haughty j and her eager heart soared 
 beyond geographical boundaries. 
 
 It was the Hatfield Hotel, in Salisbury Street, between the 
 Strand and the river. Both street and hotel are now gone, 
 lost in the vast foundations of the Savoy and the Cecil ; but 
 the type of the Hatfield lingers with ever-increasing shabbiness 
 in Jermyn Street. In 1866, with its dark passages and crooked 
 stairs, its candles, its carpets and stuffs which had outhved 
 their patterns, its narrow dining-room where a thousand busy 
 flies ate together at one long table, its acrid stagnant atmo- 
 sphere, and its disturbing sensation of dirt everywhere con- 
 cealing itself, it stood forth in rectitude as a good average 
 modern hotel. The patched and senile drabness of the 
 bedroom made an environment that emphasized Sophia's 
 flashing youth. She alone in it was unsullied. 
 
 There was a knock at the door, apparently gay and jaunty. 
 But she thought, truly : " He's nearly as nervous as I am ! " 
 And in her sick nervousness she coughed, and then tried to 
 take full possession of herself. The moment had at last come 
 
 276 
 
THE ELOPEMENT 277 
 
 which would divide her life as a battle divides the history of 
 a nation. Her mind in an instant swept backwards through 
 an incredible three months. 
 
 The schemings to obtain and to hide Gerald's letters at 
 the shop, and to reply to them I The far more complex and 
 dangerous duplicity practised upon her majestic aunt at Axe 1 
 The visits to tlie Axe post-office 1 The three divine meetings 
 with Gerald at early morning by the canal-feeder, when he had 
 told her of his inheritance and of the harshness of his uncle 
 Boldero, and with a rush of words had spread before her the 
 prospect of eternal bliss 1 The nights of fear ! The sudden, 
 dizzy acquiescence in his plan, and the feeling of universal 
 unreality which obsessed her ! The audacious departure from 
 her aunt's, showering a cascade of appalling lies ! Her dismay 
 at Knype Station ! Her blush as she asked for a ticket to 
 London ! The ironic, sympathetic glance of the porter, who 
 took charge of her trunk ! And then the thunder of the 
 incoming train I Her renewed dismay when she found that 
 it was very full, and her distracted plunge into a compartment 
 with six people already in it ! And the abrupt reopening of 
 the carriage-door and that curt inquisition from an inspector : 
 " Where for, please ? Where for ? Where for ? " Until her turn 
 was reached : " Where for, miss ? " and her weak little reply : 
 " Euston " ! And more violent blushes I And then the long, 
 steady beating of the train over the rails, keeping time to the 
 rhythm of the unanswerable voice within her breast : " Why 
 are you here ? Why are you here ? " And then Rugby ; and 
 the awful ordeal of meeting Gerald, his entry into the compart- 
 ment, the rearrangement of seats, and their excruciatingly 
 painful attempts at commonplace conversation in the publicity 
 of the carriage ! (She had felt that that part of the enterprise had 
 not been very well devised by Gerald.) And at last London ; 
 the thousands of cabs, the fabulous streets, the general roar, 
 all dream-surpassing, intensifying to an extraordinary degree 
 the obsession of unreality, the illusion that she could not really 
 have done what she had" done, that she was not really doing 
 what she was doing 1 
 
 Supremely and finally, the delicious torture of the clutch 
 of terror at her heart as she moved by Gerald's side through 
 the impossible adventure! Who was this rash, mad Sophia? 
 Surely not herself ! 
 
 The knock at the door was impatiently repeated. 
 
278 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " Come in," she said timidly, 
 
 Gerald Scales came in. Yes, beneath that mien of a 
 commercial traveller who has been everywhere and through 
 everything, he was very nervous. It was her privacy that, with 
 her consent, he had invaded. He had engaged the bedroom 
 only with the intention of using it as a retreat for Sophia until 
 the evening, when they were to resume their travels. It ought 
 not to have had any disturbing significance. But the mere 
 disorder on the washstand, a towel lying on one of the cane 
 chairs, made him feel that he was affronting decency, and so 
 increased his jaunty nervousness. The moment was painful ; 
 the moment was difficult beyond his skill to handle it naturally. 
 
 Approaching her with factitious ease, he kissed her through 
 her veil, which she then lifted with an impulsive movement, 
 and he kissed ^ler again, more ardently, perceiving that her 
 ardour was exceeding his. This was the first time they had 
 been alone together since her flight from Axe. And yet, with 
 his worldly experience, he was naive enough to be surprised 
 that he could not put all the heat of passion into his embrace, 
 and he wondered why he was not thrilled at the contact with 
 hfer ! However, the powerful clinging of her lips somewhat 
 startled his senses, and also delighted him by its silent promise. 
 He could smell the stuflF of her veil, the sarsenet of her bodice, 
 and, as it were wrapped in these odours as her body was 
 wrapped in its clothes, the faint fleshly perfume of her body 
 itself. Her face, viewed so close that he could see the almost 
 imperceptible down on those fruit-like cheeks, was astonish- 
 ingly beautiful; the dark eyes were exquisitely misted ; and he 
 could feel the secret loyalty of her soul ascending to him. She 
 was very slightly taller than her lover ; but somehow she hung 
 from him, her body curved backwards, and her bosom pressed 
 against his, so that instead of looking up at her gaze he looked 
 down at it. He preferred that ; perfecfly proportioned though 
 he was, his stature was a delicate point with him. His spirits 
 rose by the uplift of his senses. His fears slipped away ; he 
 began to be very satisfied with himself. He was the in- 
 heritor of twelve thousand pounds, and he had won this 
 unique creature. She was his capture; he held her close, 
 permittedly scanning the "ftiinutiae of her skin, permittedly 
 crushing her flimsy silks. Something in him had forced her 
 tQ Jay her modesty on the altar of his desire. And the sun 
 brightly shone. So he kissed her yet more ardently, and with 
 
THE ELOPEMENT 279 
 
 the slightest touch of a victor's condescension ; and her burn- 
 ing response more than restored the self-confidence which he 
 had been losing. 
 
 " I've got no one but you now," she murmured in a melting 
 voice. 
 
 She fancied in her ignorance that the expression of this 
 sentiment would please him. She was not aware that a man 
 is usually rather chilled by it, because it proves to him that 
 the other is thinking about his responsibilities and not abcffj^ 
 his privileges. _ Certainly it calmed Gerald, though without 
 imparting to him her sense of his responsibilities. He smiled 
 vaguely. To Sophia his smile was a miracle continually 
 renewed; it mingled dashing gaiety with a hint of wistful 
 appeal in a manner that never failed to bewitch her. A 
 less innocent girl than Sophia might have divined from that 
 adorable half-feminine smile that she could do anything with 
 Gerald except rely on him. But Sophia had to learn. 
 
 "Are you readyt" he asked, placing his hands on her 
 shoulders and holding her away from him. 
 
 "Yes," she said, nerving herself. Their faces were still 
 very near together. 
 
 " Well, would you like to go and see the D016 pictures ? " 
 
 A simple enough question I A proposal felicitous enough 1 
 Dor^ was becoming known even in the Five Towns, not, 
 assuredly, by his illustrations to the Contes Drolatiques oi 
 Balzac — but by his shuddering Biblical conceits. In pious 
 circles Dord was saving art from the reproach of futility and 
 frivolity. It was indubitably a tasteful idea on Gerald's part ' 
 to take his love of a summer's afternoon to gaze at the 
 originals of those prints which had so deeply impressed the 
 Five Towns. It was an idea that sanctified the profane 
 adventure. 
 
 Yet Sophia showed signs of affliction. Her colour went 
 and came ; her throat made the motion of swallowing j there 
 was a muscular contraction over her whole body. And she 
 drew herself from him. Her glance, however, did not leave 
 him, and his eyes fell before hers. 
 
 "But what about the — wedding?" she breathed. 
 
 That sentence seemed to cost all her pride j but she was 
 obliged to utter it, and to pay for it, 
 
 " Oh," he said lightly and quickly, just as though she had 
 reminded him of a detail that might have been forgotten, " I 
 
280 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 was just going to tell you. It can't be done here. There's 
 been some change in the rules. I only found out for certain 
 late last night. But I've ascertained that it'll be as simple as 
 ABC before the English Consul at Paris ; and as I've got 
 the tickets for us to go over to-night, as we arranged . . ." 
 He stopped. 
 
 She sat down on the towel-covered chair, staggered. She 
 b^eved what he said. She did not suspect that he was using 
 the classic device of the seducer. It was his casualness that 
 staggered her. Had it really been his intention to set oflfon 
 an excursion and remark as an afterthought : " By the way,vs 
 can't be married as I told you at half-past two to-day"? 
 Despite her extreme ignorance and innocence, Sophia held a 
 high opinion of her own commonsense and capacity for looking 
 after herself, and she could scarcely believe that he was expect- 
 ing her to go to Paris, and at night, without being married. 
 She looked pitiably young, virgin, raw, unsophisticated ; help- 
 less in the midst of dreadful dangers. Yet her head was full 
 of a blank astonishment at being mistaken for a simpleton 1 
 The sole explanation could be that Gerald, in-somematters, 
 must himsglf be a confiding simpleton. He had noTreSected. 
 He had not sufficiently realized the immensity of her sacrifice 
 in flying with him even to London. She felt sorry for him. 
 She had the woman's first glimpse of the necessity for some 
 adjustment of outlook as an essential preliminary to uninter- 
 rupted happiness. 
 
 " It'll be all right 1 " Gerald persuasively continued. 
 
 He looked at her, as she was not looking at him. She was 
 nineteen. But she seemed to him utterly mature and mys- 
 terious. Her face baffled him j her mind was a foreign land. 
 Helpless in one sense she might be j yet she, and not he, stood 
 for destiny; the future lay in the secret and capricious workings 
 of ihat mind. 
 
 " Oh no ! " she exclaimed curtly. " Oh no I " 
 
 "Oh no what?" 
 
 " We can't possibly go like that," she said. 
 
 " But don't I tell you it'll be all right? " he protested. " If 
 we stay here and they come after you ... I Besides, I've got 
 the tickets and all." 
 
 " Why didn't you tell me sooner ? " she demanded. 
 
 "But how could I?" he grumbled. "Have we had a 
 single minute alone?" 
 
THE ELOPEMENT «81 
 
 This was nearly trae. They could not have discussed the 
 formalities of marriage in the crowded train, nor during the 
 hurried lunch with a dozen cocked ears at the same table. He 
 saw himself on sure ground here. 
 
 " Now, could we ? " he pressed. 
 
 " And you talk about going to see pictures ! " was her reply. 
 
 Undoubtedly this had been a grave error of tact. He 
 recognized that it was a stupidity. And so he resented it, as 
 though she had committed it and not he. 
 
 " My dear girl," he said, hurt, " I acted for the best. It 
 isn't my fault if rules are altered and officials silly." 
 
 " You ought to have told me before," she persisted sullenly. 
 
 "But how couia I?" 
 
 He almost believed in that moment that he had really 
 intended to marry her, and that the ineptitudes of red-tape had 
 prevented him from achieving his honourable purpose. Whereas 
 he had done nothing whatever towards the maniage. 
 
 " Oh no I Oh no ! " she repeated, with heavy lip and liquid 
 eye. " Oh no ! " 
 
 He gathered that she was flouting his suggestion of Paris. 
 
 Slowly and nervously he approached her. She did not stir 
 nor look up. Her glance was fixed on the washstand. He 
 bent down and murmured : 
 
 " Come, now. It'll be all right. You'll travel in the ladies' 
 saloon on the steam-packet." 
 
 She did not stir. He bent lower and touched the back 
 of her neck with his lips. And she sprang up, sobbing and 
 angry. Because she was mad for him she hated him furiously. 
 All tenderness had vanished. 
 
 " I'll thank you not to touch me ! " she said fiercely. She 
 had given him her lips a moment ago, but now to graze her 
 neck was an insult. 
 
 He smiled sheepishly. " But really you must be reason- 
 able," he argued. " What have I done ? " 
 
 " It's what you haven't done, I think I " she cried. " Why 
 didn't you tell me while we were in the cab ? " 
 
 " I didn't care to begin worrying you just then," he replied : 
 which was exactly true. 
 
 The fact was, he had of course shirked telling her that no 
 marriage would occur that day. Not being a professional 
 seducer of young girls, he lacked skill to do a difficult thing 
 simply. 
 
THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " Now come along, little girl," he went on, with just a trifle 
 of impatien<^e. " Let's go out and enjoy ourselves. I assure 
 you that everything will be all right in Paris." 
 
 " That's what you said about coming to London," she 
 retorted sarcastically through her sobs. "And look at 
 you ! " 
 
 Did he imagine for a single instant that she would have 
 come to London with him save on the understanding that she 
 was to be married immediately upon arrival ? This attitude of 
 an indignant question was not to be reconciled with her belief 
 that his excuses for himself were truthful. But she did not 
 remark the discrepancy. 
 
 Her sarcasm wounded his vanity. 
 
 " Oh, very well ! " he muttered. " If you don't choose to 
 believe what I say ! " He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 She said nothing ; but the sobs swept at intervals through 
 her frame, shaking it. 
 
 Reading hesitation in her face, he tried again. "Come 
 along, little girl. And wipe your eyes." And he approached 
 her. She stepped back. 
 
 " No, no ! " she denied him, passionately. He had es- 
 teemed her too cheaply. And she did not care to be called 
 ' little girl.' 
 
 " Then what shall you do ? " he inquired, in a tone which 
 blended mockery and bullying. She was making a fool of 
 him. 
 
 " I can tell you what I shan't do," she said. " I shan't go 
 to Paris." Her sobs were less frequent. 
 
 " That's not my question," he said icily. " I want to know 
 ■ what you will do." 
 
 There was now no pretence of affectionateness either on 
 her part or on his. They might, to judge from their attitudes, 
 have been nourished from infancy on mutual hatred. 
 
 " What's that got to do with you ? " she demanded. 
 
 " It's got everything to do with me," he said. 
 
 " Well, you can go and find out ! " she said. 
 
 It was girlish ; it was childish ; it was scarcely according to 
 the canons for conducting a final rupture ; but it was not the 
 less tragically serious. Indeed, the spectacle of this young girl 
 absurdly behaving like one, in a serious crisis, increased the 
 tragicalness o( the situation even if it did not heighten it. The 
 idea that ran through Gerald's brain was the ridiculous folly of 
 
THE ELOPEMENT 283 
 
 having anything to do with young girls. He was quite blind to 
 her beauty. 
 
 *" Go ' ? " he repeated her word. " You mean that ? " 
 
 " Of course I mean it," she answered promptly. 
 
 The coward in him urged him to take advantage of her 
 ignorant, helpless pride, and leave her at her word. He 
 remembered the scene she had made at the pit shaft, and he 
 said to himself that her charm was not worth her temper, and 
 that he was a fool ever to have dreamed that it was, and that 
 he would be doubly a fool now not to seize the opportunity of 
 withdrawing from an insane enterprise. 
 
 " I am to go ? " he asked, with a sneer. 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 " Of course if you order me to leave you, I must. Can I 
 do anything for you ? " 
 
 She signified that he could not. 
 
 " Nothing ? You're sure ? " 
 
 She frowned. 
 
 " Well, then, good-bye." He turned towards the door. 
 
 " I suppose you'd leave me here without money or any- 
 thing?" she said in a cold, cutting voice. And her sneer was 
 far more destructive th'an his. It destroyed in him the last 
 trace of compassion for her. 
 
 " Oh, I beg pardon ! " he said, and swaggeringly counted 
 out five sovereigns on to a chest of drawers. 
 
 She rushed at them. " Do you think I'll take your odious 
 money ? " she snarled, gathering the coins in her gloved hand. 
 
 Her first impulse was to throw them in his face ; but she 
 paused and then flung them into a corner of the room. 
 
 " Pick them up ! " she commanded him. 
 
 " No, thanks," he said briefly ; and left, shutting the door. 
 
 Only a very little while, and they had been lovers, exuding 
 tenderness with every gesture, like a perfume ! Only a very 
 little while, and she had been deciding to telegraph con- 
 descendingly to her mother that she was ' all right '■ 1 And now 
 the dream was utterly dissolved. And the voice of that hard 
 commonsense which spake to her in her wildest moods grew 
 loud in asserting that the enterprise could never have come to 
 any good, that it was from its inception an impossible enter- 
 prise, unredeemed by the slightest justification. An enormous 
 folly! Yes, an elopement; but not like a real elopement; 
 always unreal I She liad always known that it was only an 
 
284 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 imitation of an elopement, and must end in some awful dis- 
 appointment. She had never truly wanted to run away ; but 
 something within her had pricked her forward in spite of her 
 protests. The strict notions of her elderly relatives were right 
 after all. It was she who had been wrong. And it was she 
 who would have to pay. 
 
 ' " I've been a wicked girl," she said to herself grimly, in the 
 midst of her ruin. 
 
 She faced the fact. But she would not repent; at any 
 rate she would never sit on that stool. She would not exchange 
 the remains of her pride for the means of escape from the 
 worst misery that life could offer. On that point she knew 
 herself. And she set to work to repair and renew her pride. 
 
 Whatever happened she would not return to the Five 
 Towns, She could not, because she had stolen money from 
 her Aunt Harriet. As much as she had thrown back at 
 Gerald, she had filched from her aunt, but in the form of a 
 note. A prudent, mysterious instinct had moved her to take 
 this precaution. And she was glad. She would never have 
 been able to dart that sneer at Gerald about money if she had 
 really needed money. So she rejoiced in her crime ; though, 
 since Aunt Harriet would assuredly discover the loss at once, 
 the crime eternally prevented her from going back to her 
 family. Never, never would she look at her mother with the 
 eyes of a thief ! 
 
 (In truth Aunt Harriet did discover the loss, and very 
 creditably said naught about it to anybody. The knowledge 
 of it would have twisted the knife in the maternal heart.) 
 
 Sophia was also glad that she had refused to proceed to 
 Paris. The recollection of her firmness in refusing flattered 
 her vanity as a girl convinced that she could take care of 
 herself. To go to , Paris unmarried would have been an 
 inconceivable madness. The mere thought of the enormity 
 did outrage to her moral susceptibilities. No, Gerald had 
 most perfectly mistaken her for another sort of girl ; as, for 
 instance, a shop-assistant or a barmaid ! 
 
 With this the catalogue of her satisfactions ended. She 
 had no idea at all as to what she ought to do, or could do. 
 The mere prospect of venturing out of the room intimidated 
 her. Had Gerald left her trunk in the hall ? Of course he 
 had. What a question! But what would happen to her? 
 London . . . London had merely dazed her. She could do 
 
THE ELOPEMENT 285 
 
 nothing for herself. She was as helpless as a rabbit in 
 London. She drew aside the window-curtain and had a 
 glimpse of the river. It was inevitable that she should think 
 of suicide ; for she could not suppose that any girl had ever 
 got herself into a plight more desperate than hers. " I could 
 sUp out at night and drown myself," she thought seriously. 
 "A nice thing that would be for Gerald ! " 
 
 Then loneliness, like a black midnight, overwhelmed her, 
 swiftly wasting her strength, disintegrating her pride in its 
 horrid flood. She glanced about for support, as a woman in 
 the open street who feels she is going to faint, and went blindly 
 to the bed, falling on it with the upper part of her body, in an 
 attitude of abandonment She wept, but without sobbing. 
 
 II 
 
 Gerald Scales walked about the Strand, staring up at its 
 high narrow houses, crushed one against another as though 
 they had been packed, unsorted, by a packer who thought of 
 nothing but economy of space. Except by Somerset House, 
 King's College, and one or two theatres and banks, the 
 monotony of mean shops, with several storeys unevenly 
 perched over them, was unbroken. Then Gerald encountered 
 Exeter Hall, and examined its prominent fagade with a 
 provincial's eye ; for despite his travels he was hot very 
 familiar with London. Exeter Hall naturally took his mind 
 back to his Uncle Boldero, that great and ardent Noncon- 
 formist, and his own godly youth. It was laughable to muse 
 upon what his uncle would say and think, did the old man 
 know that his nephew had run away with a girl, meaning to 
 seauce her in Paris. It was enormously funny ! 
 
 However, he had done with all that. He was well out of 
 it. She had told him to go, and he had gone. She had 
 money to get home ; she had nothing to do but use the tongue 
 in her head. The rest was her affair. He would go to Paris 
 alone, and find another amusement. It was absurd to have 
 supposed that Sophia would ever have suited him. Not in 
 such a family as the Baineses could one reasonably expect to 
 discover an ideal mistress. No ! there had been a mistake. 
 The whole business was wrong. She had nearly made a fool 
 of hiih. But he was not the man to be made a fool of. He 
 had keot his dignity intact. 
 
THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 So he said to himself. Yet all the time his dignity, and 
 his pride also, were bleeding, dropping invisible blood along 
 the length of the Strand pavements. 
 
 He was at Salisbury Street again. He pictured her in the 
 bedroom. Damn her! He wanted her. He wanted her 
 with an excessive desire. He hated to think that he had been 
 baulked. He hated to think that she would remain immacu- 
 late. And he continued to picture her in the exciting privacy 
 of that cursed bedroom. 
 
 Now he was walking down Salisbury Street. He did not 
 wish to be walking down Salisbury Street; but there he 
 was! 
 
 "Oh, hell!" he murmured. "I suppose I must go 
 through with it." 
 
 He felt desperate. He was ready to pay any price in 
 order to be able to say to himself that he had accomplished 
 what he had set his heart on. 
 
 " My wife hasn't gone out, has she ? " he asked of the haU- 
 porter. 
 
 " I'm not sure, sir; I think not," said the hall-porter. 
 
 The fear that Sophia had already departed made him sick. 
 When he noticed her trunk still there, he took hope and ran 
 upstairs. 
 
 He saw her, a dark crumpled, sinuous piece of humanity, 
 half on and half off the bed, silhouetted against the bluish- 
 white counterpane ; her hat was on the floor, with the spotted 
 veil trailing away from it. This sight seemed to him to be the 
 most touching that he had ever seen, though her face was 
 hidden. He forgot everything except the deep and strange 
 emotion which affected him. He approached the bed. She- 
 did not stir. 
 
 Having heard the entry and knowing that it must be 
 Gerald who had entered, Sophia forced herself to remain still. 
 A wild, splendid hope shot up in her. Constrained by all the 
 power of her will not to move, she could not stifle a sob that 
 had lain in ambush in her throat. 
 
 The sound of the sob fetched tears to the eyes of Gerald. 
 
 " Sophia ! " he appealed to her. 
 
 But she did not stir. Another sob shook her. 
 
 " Very well, then," said Gerald. " We'll stay in London 
 till we can be married. I'll arrange it. I'll find a nice 
 boarding-house for you, and I'll tell the people you're my 
 
THE ELOPEMENT 287 
 
 cousin. I shall stay on at this hotel, and I'll come and see 
 you every day." 
 
 A silence. 
 
 " Thank you ! " she blubbered. " Thank you ! " 
 
 He saw that her little gloved hand was stretching out 
 towards him, like a feeler ; and he seized it, and knelt down 
 and took her clumsily by the waist. Somehow he dared not 
 kiss her yet. 
 
 An immense relief surged very slowly through them both. 
 
 " I— I — really " She began to say something, but the 
 
 articulation was lost in her sobs. 
 
 "What? What do you say, dearest?" he questioned 
 eagerly. 
 
 And she made another effort. " I really couldn't have gone 
 to Paris with you without being married," she succeeded at 
 last. " I really couldn't." 
 
 " No, no 1 " he soothed her. " Of course you couldn't. It 
 was I who was wrong. But you didn't know how I felt. . , . 
 Sophia, it's all right now, isn't it ? " 
 
 She sat up and kissed him fairly. 
 
 It was so wonderful and startling that he burst openly into 
 tears. She saw in the facile intensity of his emotion a 
 guarantee of their future happiness. And as he had soothed 
 her, so now she soothed him. They clung together, equally 
 surprised at the sweetj^exquisite, blissful melancholy which 
 drenched them ffirough and through. It was remorse for 
 having quarrelled, for having lacked faith in the supreme 
 Tightness of the high adventure. Everything was right, and 
 would be right ; and they had been criminally absurd. It was 
 remorse ; but it was pure bliss, and worth the quarrel ! Gerald 
 resumed his perfection again in her eyes 1 He was the soul of 
 goodness and honour ! And for him she was again the ideal 
 mistress, who would, however, be also a wife. As in his mind 
 he rapidly ran over the steps necessary to their marriage, he 
 kept saying to himself, far off' in some remote cavern of the 
 brain : " I shall have her ! I shall have her ! " He did not 
 reflect that this fragile slip of the Baines stock, unconsciously 
 drawing upon the accumulated strength of generations of honest 
 living, had put a defeat upon him. 
 
 After tea, Gerald, utterly content with the universe, 
 redeemed his word and found an irreproachable boarding- 
 house for Sophia in Westminster, near the Abbey. She 
 
288 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 was astonished at the gUbness of his lies to the landlady about 
 her, and about their circumstances generally. He also found 
 a church and a parson, close by, and in half an hour the for- 
 malities preliminary to a marriage were begun. He explained 
 to her that as she was now resident in London, it would be 
 simpler to recommence the business entirely. She sagaciously 
 agreed. As she by no means wished to wound him again, she 
 made no inquiry about those other formalities which, owing to 
 red-tape, had so unexpectedly proved abortive ! She knew 
 she was going to be married, and that sufficed. The next day 
 she carried out her filial idea of telegraphing to her mother. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 SUPPER 
 
 They had been to Versailles and had dined there. A tram 
 had sufficed to take them out; but for the return, Gerald, who 
 had been drinking champagne, would not be content with less 
 than a carriage. Further, he insisted on entering Paris by way 
 of the Bois and the Arc de Triomphe. Thoroughly to appease 
 his conceit, it would have been necessary to swing open the 
 gates of honour in the Arc and allow his fiacre to pass through ; 
 to be forced to drive round the monument instead of under it 
 hurt the sense of fitness which champagne engenders. Gerald 
 was in all his pride that day. He had been displaying the 
 wonders to Sophia, and he could not escape the cicerone's 
 secret feeling : that he himself was somehow responsible for 
 the wonders. Moreover, he was exceedingly satisfied with the 
 eifect produced by Sophia^ 
 
 Sophia, on arriving in Paris with the ring on her triumphant 
 finger, had timidly mentioned the subject of frocks. None 
 would have guessed from her tone that she was possessed by 
 the desire for French clothes as by a devil. She had been 
 surprised and delighted by the eagerness of Gerald's response. 
 Gerald, too, was possessed by a devil. He thirsted to see her 
 in French clothes. He knew some of the shops and ateliers in 
 the Rue de la Paix, the Rue de la Chauss^e d'Antin, and the 
 Palais Royal. He was much more skilled in the lore of frocks 
 than she, for his previous business in Paris had brought him 
 into relations with the great firms ; and Sophia suffered a brief 
 humiliation in the discovery that his private opinion of her 
 dresses was that they were not dresses at alL She had been 
 aware that they were not Parisian, nor even of London ; but 
 
 289 o 
 
290 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 she had thought them pretty good It healed her wound, 
 however, to reflect that Gerald had so marvellously kept his 
 own counsel in order to spare her self-love. Gerald had taken 
 her to an establishment in the Chaussde d'Antin. It was not 
 one of what Gerald called ks grandes maisons, but it was on the 
 very fringe of them, and the real haute couture was practised 
 therein ; and Gerald was remembered there by name. 
 
 Sophia had gone in trembling and ashamed, yet in her 
 heart courageously determined to emerge uncompromisingly 
 French. But the models frightened her. They surpassed even 
 the most fantastic things that she had seen in the streets. She 
 recoiled before them and seemed to hide for refuge in Gerald, 
 as it were appealing to him for moral protection, and answering 
 to him instead of to the saleswoman when the saleswoman 
 offered remarks in stiff English. The prices also frightened 
 her. The simplest trifle here cost sixteen pounds ; and her 
 mother's historic ' silk,' whose elaborateness .had cost twelve 
 pounds, was supposed to have approached the inexpressible 1 
 Gerald said that she was not to think about prices. She was, 
 however, forced by some instinct to think about prices — she 
 who at home had scorned the narrowness of life in the Square. 
 In the Square she was understood to be quite without common- 
 sense, hopelessly imprudent > yet here, a spring of sagacity 
 seemed to be welling up in her all the time, a continual anti- 
 dote against the general madness in which she found herself. 
 With extraordinary rapidity she had formed a habit of preaching 
 moderation to Gerald. She hated to ' see money thrown away,' 
 and her notion of the boundary line between throwing money 
 away and judiciously spending it was still the notion of the 
 Square. 
 
 Gerald would laugh. But she would say, piqued and 
 blushing, but self-sure : " You can laugh ! " It was all deliciously 
 agreeable. 
 
 On this evening she wore the first of the new costumes. 
 She had worn it all day. Characteristically she had chosen 
 something which was not too special for either afternoon or 
 evening, for either warm or cold weather. It was of pale blue 
 taffetas striped in a darker blue, with the corsage cut in 
 basques, and the underskirt of a similar taffetas, but unstriped. 
 The effect of the ornate overskirt falling on the plain under- 
 skirt with its small double volant was, she thought, and Gerald 
 too, adorable. The waist was higher than any she had had 
 
SUPPER 291 
 
 before, and the crinoline expansive. Tied round her head with 
 a large bow and flying blue ribbons under the chin, was a fragile 
 flat capote like a baby's bonnet, which allowed her hair to 
 escape in front and her great chignon behind. A large spotted 
 veil flew out from the capote over the chignon. Her double 
 skirts waved amply over Gerald's knees in the carriage, and she 
 leaned back against the hard cushions and put an arrogant 
 look into her face, and thought of nothing but the intense 
 throbbing joy of life, longing with painful ardour for more and 
 more pleasure, then and for ever. 
 
 As the carriage slipped downwards through the wide, empty 
 gloom of the Champs Elysdes into the brilliant Paris that was 
 waiting for them, another carriage drawn by two white horses 
 flashed upwards and was gone in dust. Its only occupant, 
 except the coachman and footman, was a woman. Gerald 
 stared after it 
 
 " By Jove ! " he exclaimed. " That's Hortense ! " 
 
 It might have been Hortense, or it might not. But he 
 instantly convinced himself that it was. Not every evening did 
 one meet Hortense driving alone in the Champs Elys^es, and 
 in August too ! 
 
 " Hortense ? " Sophia asked simply. 
 
 " Yes. Hortense Schneider." 
 
 "Who is she?" 
 
 " You've never heard of Hortense Schneider? " 
 
 " No ! " 
 
 " Well ! Have you ever heard of Offenbach ?" 
 
 " I— I don't know. I don't think so." 
 
 He had the mien of utter incredulity. " You don't mean 
 to say you've never heard oi Bluebeard i" 
 
 "I've heard of Bluebeard, of course," said she. "Who 
 hasn't?" 
 
 " I mean the opera — Offenbach's." 
 
 She shook her head, scarce knowing even what an opera 
 was. 
 
 " Well, well 1 What next ? " 
 
 He implied that such ignorance stood alone in his ex- 
 perience. Really he was delighted at the cleanness of the slate 
 on which he had to write. And Sophia was not a bit alarmed. 
 She relished instruction from his lips. It was a pleasure to her 
 to learn from that exhaustless st-ore of worldly knowledge. _ To 
 the world she would do her best to assume omniscience in its 
 
292 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 ways, but to him, in her present mood, she liked to play the 
 ignorant, uninitiated little thing. 
 
 "Why," he said, "the Schneider has been the rage since 
 last year but one. Absolutely the rage" 
 
 " I do wish I'd noticed her ! " said Sophia. 
 
 " As soon as the Varidtds reoperis we'll go and see her," 
 he replied, and then gave his detailed version of the career of 
 Hortense Schneider. 
 
 More joys for her in the near future I She had yet scarcely 
 penetrated the crust of her bliss. She exulted in the dazzling 
 destiny which comprised freedom, fortune, eternal gaiety, and 
 the exquisite Gerald. 
 
 As they crossed the Place de la Concorde, she inquired, 
 " Are we going back to the hotel ? " 
 
 "No," he said. "I thought we'd go and have supper 
 somewhere, if it isn't too early." 
 
 " After all that dinner?" 
 
 " All what dinner ? You ate about five times as much as 
 me, anyhow ! " 
 
 " Oh, I'm ready I " she said. 
 
 She was. This day, because it was the first day of her 
 French frock, she regarded as her dil>ui in the dizzy life of 
 capitals. She existed in a rapture of bliss, an ecstasy which 
 could feel no fatigue, either of body or spirit 
 
 II 
 
 It was after midnight when they went into the Restaurant 
 Sylvain; Gerald, having decided not to go to the hotel, had 
 ' changed his mind and called there, and having called there, 
 had remained a long time : this of course ! Sophia was 
 already accustoming herself to the idea that, with Gerald, it 
 was impossible to predict accurately more than five minutes of 
 the future. 
 
 As the chasseur held open the door for them to enter, and 
 Sophia passed modestly into the glowing yellow interior of the 
 restaurant, followed by Gerald in his character of man-of-the- 
 world, they drew the attention of Sylvain's numerous and 
 glittering guests. No face could have made a more provocative 
 contrast to the women's faces in those screened rooms than 
 the face of Sophia, so chilillike between the baby's bonnet 
 
SUPrER 293 
 
 and the huge bow of ribbon, so candid, so charmingly 
 conscious of its own pure beauty and of the fact that she was 
 no longer a virgin, but the equal in knowledge of any woman 
 alive. She saw around her, clustered about the white tables, 
 multitudes of violently red lips, powdered cheeks, cold, hard 
 eyes, self-possessed arrogant faces, and insolent bosoms. What 
 had impressed her more than anything else in Paris, more even 
 than the three-horsed omnibuses, was the extraordinary self- 
 assurance of all the women, their unashamed posing, their 
 calm acceptance of the public gaze. They seemed to say : 
 " We are the renowned Parisiennes." They frightened her': 
 they appeared to her so corrupt and so proud in their 
 corruption. She had already seen a dozen women in various 
 situations of conspicuousness apply powder to their complexions 
 with no more ado than if they had been giving a pat to their 
 hair. She could not understand such boldness. As for them, 
 they marvelled at the phenomena presented in Sophia's 
 person ; they admired ; they admitted the style of the gown ; 
 but they envied neither her innocence nor her beauty; they 
 envied nothing but her youth and the fresh tint of her cheeks. 
 
 " Encore des Anglais 1" said some of them, as if that ex- 
 plained all. 
 
 Gerald had a very curt way with waiters; and the more 
 obsequious they were, the haughtier he became ; and a head- 
 waiter was no more to him than a scullion. He gave loud- 
 voiced orders in French of which both he and Sophia were 
 proud, and a table was laid for them in a comer near 'one of the 
 large windows. Sophia settled herself on the bench of green 
 velvet, and began to ply the ivory fan which Gerald had given 
 her. It was very hot ; all the windows were wide open, and 
 the sounds of the street mingled clearly with the tinkle of 
 the supper-room. Outside, against a sky of deepest purple, 
 Sophia could discern the black skeleton of a gigantic building ; 
 it was the new opera house. 
 
 " All sorts here 1 " said Gerald, contentedly, after he had 
 ordered iced soup and sparkling Moselle. Sophia did not 
 know what Moselle was, but she imagined that anything would 
 be better than champagne. 
 
 Sylvain's was then typical of the Second Empire, and 
 particularly famous as a supper-room. Expensive and gay, it 
 provided, with its discreet decorations, a sumptuous scene 
 where lorettes, actresses, respectable women, and an occasional 
 
THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 grisette in luck, could satisfy their curiosity as to each other. 
 In its catholicity it was highly correct as a resort ; not many 
 other restaurants in the centre could have successfully fought 
 against the rival attractions of the Bois and the dim groves 
 of the Champs Elys^es on a night in August. The com- 
 plicated richness of the dresses, the yards and yards of fine 
 stitchery, the endless ruching, the hints, more or less incautious, 
 of nether treasures of embroidered linen ; and, leaping over 
 all this to the eye, the vivid colourings of silks and muslins, 
 veils, plumes and flowers, piled as it were pell-mell in heaps 
 on the universal green cushions to the furthest vista of the 
 restaurant, and aU multiplied in gilt mirrors — the spectacle 
 intoxicated Sophia. Her eyes gleamed. She drank the soup 
 with eagerness, and tasted the wine, tho«gh no desire on her 
 part to like wine could make her like it ; and then, seeing 
 pineapples on a large table covered with fruits, she told Gerald 
 that she should like some pineapple, and Gerald ordered one. 
 She gathered her self-esteem and her wits together, and 
 began to give Gerald her views on the costumes. She could ■ 
 do so with impunity, because her own was indubitably beyond 
 criticism. Some she wholly condemned, and there was not 
 one which earned her unreserved . approval. All the absurd 
 fastidiousness of her schoolgirlish provinciality emerged in 
 that eager, affected torrent of remarks. However, she was 
 clever enough to read, after a time, in Gerald's tone and 
 features, that she was making a tedious fool of herself. And 
 she adroitly shifted her criticism from the taste to the viork — 
 she put a strong accent on the word' — and pronounced that to 
 be miraculous beyond description. She reckoned that she 
 knew what dressmaking and millinery were, and her little fund 
 of expert knowledge caused her to picture a whole necessary 
 cityful of girls stitching, stitching, and stitching day and night 
 She had wondered, during the few odd days that they had 
 spent in Paris, between visits to Chantilly and other places, at 
 the massed luxury of the shops ; she had wondered, starting 
 with St. Luke's Square as a standard, how they could all thrive. 
 But now in her first real glimpse of the banal and licentious 
 profusion of one among a hundred restaurants, she wondered 
 that the shops were so few. She thought how splendid was 
 all this expensiveness for trade. Indeed, the notions chasing 
 each other within that lovely and foolish head were a sur- 
 prising medley. 
 
SUPPER 295 
 
 " Well, what do you think of Sylvain's ? " Gerald asked, 
 impatient to be assured that his Sylvain's had duly over- 
 whelmed her. 
 
 "Oh, Gerald ! " she murmured, indicating that speech 
 was inadequate. And she just furtively touched his hand 
 with hers. 
 
 The ennui due to her critical disquisition on the short- 
 comings of Parisian costume cleared away from Gerald's 
 face. 
 
 "What do you suppose those people there are talking 
 about? " he said with a jerk of the head towards a chattering 
 group of three gorgeous lorettes and two middle-aged men at 
 3ie next table but one. 
 
 " What are they talking about ? " 
 
 "They're talking about the execution of the murderer 
 Rivain that takes place at Auxerre the day after to-morrow. 
 They're arranging to make up a party and go and see it." 
 
 " Oh, what a horrid idea ! " said Sophia. 
 
 " Guillotine, you know 1 " said Gerald. 
 
 "But can people see it ? " 
 
 "Yes, of course." 
 
 " WeU, I think it's horrible." 
 
 "Yes, that's why people like to go and see it. Besides, 
 the man isn't an ordinary sort of criminal at all. He's very 
 young and good-looking, and well connected. And he killed 
 the celebrated Claudine . . ." 
 
 "Claudine?" 
 
 "Claudine Jacquinot. 01 course you wouldn't know. 
 She was a tremendous — er — ^wrong 'un here, in the forties. 
 Made a lot of money, and retired to her native town." 
 
 Sophia, in spite of her efforts to maintain the rtle of a 
 woman who has nothing to learn, blushed. 
 
 "Then she was older than he is." 
 
 " Thirty -five years older, if a day." 
 
 " What did he kill her for ? " 
 
 "She wouldn't give him enough money. She was his 
 mistress — or rather one of 'em. He wanted money for a 
 young lady friend, you see. He killed her and took all the 
 jewels she was wearing. Whenever he went to see her she 
 always wore all her best jewels — and you may bet a woman 
 like that had a few. It seems she had been afraid for a long 
 time that he meant to do for her." 
 
296 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " Then why did she see him? And why did she wear her 
 jewels?" 
 
 " Because she liked being afraid, goose 1 Some women only 
 enjoy themselves when they're terrified. Queer, isn't it ? " 
 
 Gerald insisted on meeting his wife's gaze as he finished 
 these revelations. He pretended that such stories were the 
 commonest things on earth, and that to be scandalized by 
 them was infantile. Sophia, thrust suddenly into a strange 
 civilization perfectly frank in its sensuality and its sensuousness, 
 under the guidance of a young man to whom her half-formed 
 intelligence was a most diverting toy — Sophia felt mysteriously 
 uncomfortable, disturbed by sifiister, flitting phantoms of 
 ideas which she only dimly apprehended. Her eyes fell 
 Q-erald laughed self-consciously. She would not eat any more 
 pineapple. 
 
 Immediately afterwards there came into the restaurant an 
 apparition which momentarily stopped every conversation in 
 the room. It was a tall and mature woman who wore over a 
 dress of purplish-black silk a vast flowing sortie de bal of 
 vermilion velvet, looped and tasselled with gold. No other 
 costume could live by the side of that garment, Arab in 
 shape, Russian in colour, and Parisian in style. It blazed. 
 The woman's heavy coiffure was bound with fillets of gold 
 braid and crimson rosettes. She was followed by a young 
 Englishman in evening dress and whiskers of the most exact 
 correctness. The woman sailed, a little breathlessly, to a 
 table next to Gerald's, and took possession of it with an air 
 of use, almost of tedium. She sat down, threw the cloak from 
 her majestic bosom, and expanded her chest. Seeming to 
 ignore the Englishman, who superciliously assumed the seat 
 opposite to her, she let her large scornful eyes travel round 
 the restaurant, slowly and imperiously meeting the curiosity 
 which she had evoked. Her beauty had undoubtedly been 
 dazzling, it was still effulgent j but the blossom was about to 
 fall She was admirably rouged and powdered; her arms 
 were glorious ; her lashes were long. There was little fault, 
 save the excessive ripeness of a blonde who fights in vain 
 against obesity. And her clothes combined audacity with the 
 propriety of fashion. She carelessly deposed costly trinkets 
 on the table, and then, having intimidated the whole company, 
 she accepted the menu from the head-waiter and began to 
 study it 
 
SUPPER 297 
 
 " That's one of 'em ! " Gerald whispered to Sophia. 
 
 "One of what?" Sophia whispered. 
 
 Gerald raised his eyebrows wamingly, and winked. The 
 Englishman had overheard ; and a look of frigid displeasure 
 passed across his proud face. Evidently he belonged to a 
 rank much higher than Gerald's ; and Gerald, though he could 
 always comfort himself by the thought that he had been to a 
 university with the best, felt his own inferiority and could not 
 hide that he felt it. Gerald was wealthy; he came of a 
 wealthy family ; but he had not the, habit of wealth. When " 
 he spent nj(oney furiously, heSidiTwith'bravacIoTtoo conscious 
 of grandear and too conscious of the difficulties of acquiring 
 that which he threw away. For Gerald had earned money. 
 This wh/iskered Englishman had never earned money, never 
 known she value of it, never imagined himself without as much 
 of it as/ he might happen to want. He had the face of one 
 accustomed to give orders and to look down upon inferiors. 
 He jfras absolutely sure of himself. That his companion 
 chiefly ignored him did not appear to incommode him in the 
 least. She spoke to him in French. He replied in English, 
 veay briefly ; and then, in English, he commanded the supper. 
 A/soon as the champagne was served he began to drink ; in 
 th^ intervals of drinking he gently stroked his whiskers. The 
 iman spoke no more. 
 
 Gerald talked more loudly. With that aristocratic English- 
 an observing him, he could not remain at ease. And not 
 nly did he talk more loudly ; he brought into his conversation 
 [■eferences to money, travels, and worldly experiences. While 
 seeking to impress the Englishman, he was merfely becoming 
 ridiculous to the Englishman; and obscurely he was aware 
 f this. Sophia noticed and regretted it. Still, feeling very 
 Unimportant herself, she was reconciled to the superiority 
 of the whiskered Englishman as to a natural fact. Gerald's 
 behaviour slightly lowered him in her esteem. Then she 
 looked at him — at his well-shaped neatness, his vivacious 
 .face, his excellent clothes, and decided that he was much 
 fto be preferred to any heavy-jawed, long-nosed aristocrat 
 alive. 
 
 The woman whose vermilion cloak lay around her like a 
 fortification spoke to her escort. He did not understand. 
 He tried to express himself in French, and failed. Then the 
 woman recommenced, talking at length. When she had done 
 
298 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 he shook his head. His acquaintance with French was limited 
 to the vocabulary of food. 
 
 " Guillotine 1 " he murmured, the sole word of her dis- 
 course that he had understood. 
 
 " Qui, oui 1 Guillotine. Enfin . . . I " cried the woman 
 excitedly. Encouraged by her success in conveying even one 
 word of her remarks, she began a third time. 
 
 " Excuse me," said Gerald. " Madame is talking about 
 the execution at Auxerre the day after to-morrow. N'est-ce- 
 pas, madame, que vous parliez de Rivain ? " 
 
 The Englishman glared angrily at Gerald's officious inter- 
 ruption. But the woman smiled benevolently on Gfirald, and 
 insisted on talking to her friend through him. And the 
 Englishman had to make the best of the situation. 
 
 " There isn't a restaurant in Paris to-night where they aren't 
 talking about that execution," said Gerald on his own acccount 
 
 "Indeed!" observed the Englishman. 
 
 Wine affected them in different ways. \ 
 
 Now a fragile, short young Frenchman, with an extre 
 pale face ending in a thin black imperial, appeared at^ 
 entrance. He looked about, and, recognizing the woman 
 the scarlet cloak, very discreetly saluted her. Then he 
 Gerald, and his worn, fatigued features showed a sudden, 
 startled smile. He came rapidly forward, hat in hand, seized 
 Gerald's palm and greeted him effusively. 
 
 " My wife," said Gerald, with the solemn care of a ma|n 
 who is determined to prove that he is entirely sober. 
 
 The young man became grave and excessively ceremoniousli 
 He bowed low over Sophia's hand and kissed it. Her impulse} 
 was to laugh, but the gravity of the young man's deference 
 stopped her. She glanced at Gerald, blushing, as if to say |f 
 " This comedy is not my fault." Gerald said something, the 
 young man turned to him and his face resumed its welJ 
 coming smile. 
 
 "This is Monsieur Chirac," Gerald at length completed j 
 the introduction, " a friend of mine when I lived in Paris." 
 
 He was proud to have met by accident an acquaintance ir 
 a restaurant. It demonstrated that he was a Parisian, and\ 
 improved his standing with the whiskered Englishman and the 
 vermilion cloak. 
 
 " It is the first time you come Paris, madame ? " Chirac^ 
 addressed himself to Sophia, in limping, timorous English. 
 
SUrPER 299 
 
 " Yes," she giggled. He bowed again. 
 
 Chirac, with his best compUments, fehcitated Gerald upon 
 his marriage. 
 
 " Don't mention it ! " said the humorous Gerald in 
 English, amused at his own wit ; and then : " What about 
 this execution ? " 
 
 " Ah ! " replied Chirac, breathing out a long breath, and 
 smiling at Sophia. " Rivain ! Rivain ! " He made a large, 
 important gesture with his hand. 
 
 It was at once to be seen that Gerald had touched the 
 topic which secretly ravaged the supper-world as a subterranean 
 fire ravages a mine. 
 
 " I go ! " said Chirac, with pride, glancing at Sophia, who 
 smiled self-consciously. 
 
 Chirac entered upon a conversation with Gerald in French. 
 Sophia comprehended that Gerald was surprised and impressed 
 by what Chirac told him and that Chirac in turn was surprised. 
 Then Gerald laboriously found his pocket-book, and after 
 some fumbling with it handed it to Chirac so that the latter 
 might write in it. 
 
 " Madame ! " murmured Chirac, resuming his ceremonious 
 stiffness in order to take leave. " Alors, c'est entendu, mon 
 cher ami ! " he said to Gerald, who nodded phlegmatically. 
 And Chirac went away to the next table but one, where were 
 the three lorettes and the two middle-aged men. He was 
 received there with enthusiasm. 
 
 Sophia began to be teased by a little fear that Gerald was 
 not quite his usual self She did not think of him as tipsy. 
 The idea of his being tipsy would have shocked her. She did 
 not think clearly at all. She was lost and dazed in the labyrinth 
 of new and vivid impressions into which Gerald had led her. 
 But her prudence was awake. 
 
 " I think I'm tired," she said in a low voice. 
 
 "You don't want to go, do you?" he asked, hurt. 
 
 ««WeU " 
 
 " Oh, wait a bit ! " 
 
 The owner of the vermilion cloak spoke again to Gerald, 
 who showed that he was flattered. While talking to her he 
 ordered a brandy-and-soda. And then he could not refrain 
 from displaying to her his familiarity with Parisian life, and he 
 related how he had met Hortense Schneider behind a pair 
 of white horses. The vermilion doak grew even more sociable 
 
300 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 at the mention of this resounding name, and chattered with 
 the most agreeable vivacity. Her friend stared inimically. 
 
 " Do you hear that ? " Gerald explained to Sophia, who 
 was sitting silent. " About Hortense Schneider — ^you know, 
 we met her to-night. It seems she made a bet of a louis with 
 some fellow, and when he lost he sent her the louis set in 
 diamonds worth a hundred thousand francs. That's how they 
 go on here." 
 
 " Oh 1 " cried Sophia, further than ever in the labyrinth. 
 
 '"Scuse me," the Englishman put in heavily. He had 
 heard the words ' Hortense Schneider,' ' Hortense Schneider,' 
 repeating themselves in the conversation, and at last it had 
 occurred to him that the conversation was about Hortense 
 Schneider. "'Scuse me," he began again. "Are you — do 
 you mean Hortense Schneider?" 
 
 " Yes," said Gerald. " We met her, to-night." 
 
 " She's in Trouville," said the Englishman, flatly. 
 
 Gerald shook his head positively. 
 
 " I gave a supper to her in Trouville last night," said the 
 Englishman. " And she plays at the Casino Theatre to-night" 
 
 Gerald was repulsed but not defeated. " What is she 
 playing in to-night ? Tell me that ! " he sneered. 
 
 " I don't see why I sh'd tell you." 
 
 " Hm 1 " Gerald retorted. " If what you say is true, it's 
 a very strange thing I should have seen her in the Champs 
 Elysdes to-night, isn't it?" 
 
 The Englishman drank more wine. " If you want to insult 
 me, sir " he began coldly. 
 
 " Gerald ! " Sophia urged in a whisper. 
 
 " Be quiet 1 " Gerald snapped. 
 
 A fiddler in fancy costume plunged into the restaurant at 
 that moment and began to play wildly. The shock of his 
 strange advent momentarily silenced the quarrel ; but soon it 
 leaped up again, under the shelter of the noisy music, — the 
 common, tedious, tippler's quarrel. It rose higher and higher. 
 The fiddler looked askance at it over his fiddle. Chirac 
 cautiously observed it. Instead of attending to the music, the 
 festal company attended to the quarrel. Three waiters in a 
 group watched it with an impartial sporting interest. The 
 English voices grew more menacing. 
 
 Then suddenly the whiskered Englishman, jerking his head 
 towards the door, said more quietly : 
 
surrER 801 
 
 " Hadn't we better settle thish outside ? " 
 
 " At your service ! " said Gerald, rising. 
 
 The owner of the vermilion cloak lilted her eyebrows to 
 Chirac in fatigued disgust, but she said nothing. Nor did 
 Sophia say an> thing. Sophia was overcome by terror. 
 
 The swain of the cloak, dragging his coat after him across 
 the floor, left the restaurant without offering any apology or 
 explanation to his lady. 
 
 ," Wait here for me," said Gerald defiantly to Sophia. " I 
 shall be back in a minute." 
 
 " But, Gerald ! " She put her hand on his sleeve. 
 
 He snatched his arm away. "Wait here for me, I tell 
 you," he repeated. 
 
 The doorkeeper obsequiously opened the door to the two 
 unsteady carousers, for whom the fiddler drew back, still 
 playing. 
 
 Thus Sophia was left side by side with the vermilion cloak. 
 She was quite helpless. All the pride of a married woman 
 had abandoned her. She stood transfixed by intense shame, 
 staring painfully at a pillar, to avoid the universal assault of 
 eyes. She felt like an indiscreet little girl, and she looked like 
 one. No youthful radiant beauty of features, no grace and 
 style of a Parisian dress, no certificate of a ring, no premature 
 initiation into the mysteries, could save her from the appear- 
 ance of a raw fool whose foolishness had been her undoing. 
 Her face changed to its reddest, and remained at that, and all 
 the fundamental innocence of her nature, which had been 
 overlaid by the violent experiences of her brief companionship 
 with Gerald, rose again to the surface with that blush. Her 
 situation drew pity from a few hearts and a careless contempt 
 from the rest. But since once more it was a question of ces 
 Anglais, nobody could be astonished. 
 
 Without moving her head, she twisted her eyes to the 
 clock: half-past two. The fiddler ceased his dance and 
 made a collection in his tasselled cap. The vermilion cloak 
 threw a coin into the cap. Sophia stared at it moveless, 
 until the fiddler, tired of waiting, passed to the next table and 
 relieved her agony. She had no money at all. She set herself 
 to watch the clock ; but its fingers would not stir. 
 
 With an exclamation the lady of the cloak got up and 
 peered out of the window, chatted with waiters, and then 
 removed herself and her cloak to the next table, where she 
 
302 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 was received with amiable sympathy by the three lorettes, 
 Chirac, and the other two men. The party surreptitiously 
 examined Sophia from time to time. Then Chirac went out- 
 side with the head-waiter, returned, consulted with his friends, 
 and finally approached Sophia. It was twenty minutes past 
 three. 
 
 He renewed his magnificent bow. ">Iadarae," he said 
 carefully, " will you allow me to bring you to your hotel ? " 
 
 He made no reference to Gerald, partly, doubtless, because 
 his English was treacherous on difficult ground. 
 
 Sophia had not sufficient presence of mind to thank her 
 saviour. 
 
 " But the bill ? " she stammered. " The bill isn't paid." 
 
 He did not instantly understand her. But one of the 
 waiters had caught the sound of a familiar word, and sprang 
 forward with a slip of paper on a plate. 
 
 " I have no money," said Sophia, with a feeble smile. 
 
 " Je vous arrangerai 5a," he said. " What name of the 
 hotel ? Meurice, is it not ? " 
 
 " Hotel Meurice," said Sophia. " Yes." 
 
 He spoke to the head-waiter about the bill, which was 
 carried away like something obscene j and on his arm, which 
 he punctiliously offered and she could not refuse, Sophia left 
 the scene of her ignominy. She was so distraught that she 
 could not manage her crinoline in the doorway. No sign 
 anywhere outside of Gerald or his foe t 
 
 He put her into an open carriage, and in five minutes they 
 had clattered down the brilliant silence of the Rue de la Paix, 
 through the Place "Vend6me into the Rue de Rivolij and the 
 night-porter of the hotel was at the carriage-step. 
 
 " I tell them at the restaurant where you gone," said 
 Chirac, bare-headed under the long colonnade of the street 
 " If your husband is there, I tell him. Till to-morrow . . . I " 
 
 His manners were more wonderful than any that Sophia had 
 ever imagined. He might have been in the dark Tuileries on 
 the opposite side of the street, saluting an empress, instead of 
 taking leave of a raw little girl, who was still too disturbed even 
 to thank him. 
 
 She fled candle in hand up the wide, many-cornered stairs j 
 Gerald might be already in the bedroom, . . . drunk ! There 
 was a chance. But the gilt-fringed bedroom was empty. She 
 sat down at the velvet-covered table amid the shadows cast by 
 
SUPPER 803 
 
 the candle that wavered in the draught from the open window. 
 And she set her teeth and a cold fury possessed her in the hot 
 and languorous night. Gerald was an imbecile. That he 
 should have allowed himself to get tipsy was bad enough, but 
 that he should have exposed her to the horrible situation from 
 which Chirac had extricated her, was unspeakably disgraceful. 
 He was_ an imbecile. He had no common sense. With all 
 his captivating charm, he could not be relied upon not to make 
 himself and her ridiculous, tragically ridiculous. Compare him 
 with Mr. Chirac ! She leaned despairingly on the table. She 
 would not undress. She would not move. She had to realize 
 her position ; she had to see it. 
 
 Folly 1 Folly ! Fancy a commercial traveller throwing a 
 compromising piece of paper to the daughter of his customer 
 in the shop itself: that was the incredible folly with which 
 their relations had begun ! And his mad gesture at the pit- 
 shaft 1 And his scheme for bringing her to Paris unmarried 1 
 And then to-night ! Monstrous folly ! Alone in the bedroom 
 she was a wise and a disillusioned woman, wiser than any of 
 those dolls in the restaurant. 
 
 And had she not gone to Gerald, as it were, over the dead 
 body of her father, through lies and lies and again hes ? That 
 was how she phrased it to herself. . . . Over the dead body 
 of her father ! "How could such a venture succeed ? How could 
 she ever have hoped that it would succeed ? In that moment 
 she saw her acts with the terrible vision of a Hebrew prophet. 
 
 She thought of the Square and of her life there with her 
 mother and Sophia. Never would her pride allow her to return 
 to that life, not even if the worst happened to her that could 
 happen. She was one of those who are prepared to pay with- 
 out grumbling for what they have had. 
 
 There was a sound outside. She noticed that the dawn 
 had begun. The door opened and disclosed Gerald. 
 
 They exchanged a searching glance, and Gerald shut the 
 door. Gerald infected the air, but she perceived at once that 
 he was sobered. His lip was bleeding. 
 
 " Mr. Chirac brought me home," she said. 
 
 " So it seems," said Gerald, curtly. " I asked you to wait 
 for me. Didn't I say I should come back ? " 
 
 He was adopting the injured magisterial tone of the man 
 who is ridiculously trying to conceal from himself and others 
 that he has recently behaved like an ass. 
 
304 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 She resented the injustice. "I don't think you need talk 
 like that," she said. 
 
 " Like what ? " he bullied her, determined that she should 
 be in the wrong. 
 
 And what a hard look on his pretty face I 
 
 Her prudence bade her accept the injustice. She was his. 
 Rapt away from her own world, she was utterly dependent on 
 his good nature. 
 
 " I knocked my chin against the damned balustrade, coming 
 upstairs," said Gerald, gloomily. 
 
 She knew that was a lie. " Did you ? " she replied kindly, 
 " Let me bathe it" 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 AN AMBITION SATISFIED 
 
 She went to sleep in misery. All the glory of her new life 
 had been eclipsed. But when she woke up, a few hours later, 
 in the large, velvety stateliness of the bedroom for which Gerald 
 was paying so fantastic a price per day, she was in a brighter 
 mood, and very willing to reconsider her verdicts. Her pride 
 induced her to put Gerald in the right and herself in the wrong, 
 for she was too proud to admit that she had married a charming' 
 and irresponsible fool. And, indeed, ought she not to put her- 
 self in the wrong ? Gerald had told her to wait, and she had 
 not waited. He had said that he should return to the restau- 
 rant, and he had returned. Why had she not waited ? She 
 had not waited because she had behaved like a simpleton. She 
 had been terrified about nothing. Had she not been frequent- 
 ing restaurants now for a month past ? Ought not a married 
 woman to be capable of waiting an hour in a restaurant for her 
 lawful husband without looking a ninny ? And as for Gerald's 
 behaviour, how could he have acted differently ? The other 
 Englishman was obviously a brute and had sought a quarrel. 
 His contradiction of Gerald's statements was extremely offen- 
 sive. On being invited by the brute to go outside, what 
 could Gerald do but comply ? Not to have complied might 
 have meant a fight in the restaurant, as the brute was certainly 
 drunk. Compared to the brute, Gerald was not at all drunk, 
 merely a little gay and talkative. Then Gerald's fib about his 
 chin was natural ; he simply wished to minimize the fuss and 
 to spare her feelings. It was, in fact, just like Gerald to keep 
 perfect silence as to what had passed between himself and the 
 brute. However, she was convinced that Gerald, so lithe and 
 quick, had given that great brute with his supercilious ways as 
 good as he received, if not be iter. 
 
 305 X 
 
THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 And if she were a man and had asked her wife to wait in 
 a restaurant, and the wife had gone home under the escort of 
 another man, she would most assuredly be much more angry 
 than Gerald had been. She was very glad that she had con- 
 trolled herself and exercised a meek diplomacy. A quarrelhad 
 thus been avoided. Yes, the finish of the evening could not be 
 called a quarrel; after her nursing of his chin, nothing but 
 a slight coolness on his part had persisted. 
 
 She arose silently and began to dress, full of a determination 
 to treat Gerald as a goo^ wife ought to treat a husband. 
 Gerald did not stir ; he was an excellent sleeper : one of those 
 organisms that never want to go to bed and never want to get . 
 up. When her toilet was complete save for her bodice, there 
 was a knock at the door. She started. 
 
 " Ge aid 1 " She approached the bed, and leaned her nude 
 bosom over her husband, and put her arms round his neck. 
 This method of being brought back to consciousness did not 
 displease him. 
 
 The knock was repeated. He gave a grunt 
 
 "Some one's knocking at the door," she whispered. 
 
 " Then why don't you open it ? " he asked dreamily. 
 
 " I'm not dressed, darling." 
 
 He looked at her. " Stick something on your shoulders, 
 girl 1 " said he. " What does it matter ? " 
 
 There she was, being a simpleton again, despite her 
 resolution 1 
 
 She obeyed, and cautiously opened the door, standing 
 behind it. 
 
 A middle-aged whiskered servant, in a long white 
 apron, announced matters in French which passed her under- 
 standing. But Gerald had heard from the bed, and he 
 replied. "^ 
 
 " Bien, monsieur ! " The servant departed, with a bow, 
 down the obscure corridor. 
 
 "It's Chirac," Gerald explained when she had shut the 
 door. " I was forgetting I asked him to come and have 
 lunch with us, early. He's waiting in the drawing-room. 
 Just put your bodice on, and go and talk to him till I 
 come." 
 
 He jumped out of bed, and then, standing in his night- 
 garb, stretched himself and terrifically yawned, 
 
 " Me ? " Sophia questioned. 
 
AN AMBITION SATISFIED S07 
 
 , " Who else ? " said Gerald, with that curious satiric dryness 
 which he would sometimes import into his tone. 
 
 " But I can't speak French ! " she protested, 
 
 " I didn't suppose you could," said Gerald, with an increase 
 of dryness j " but you know as well as I do that he can speak 
 English." 
 
 "Oh, very well, then I" she murmured with agreeable 
 alacrity. 
 
 Evidently Gerald had not yet quite recovered from his 
 legitimate displeasure of the night He minutely examined his 
 mouth in the glass of the Louis Philippe wardrobe. It showed 
 scarcely a trace of battle. 
 
 " I say ! " he stopped her, as, nervous at the prospect before 
 her, she was leaving the room. " I was thinking of going to 
 Auxerre to-day." 
 
 " Auxerre ? " she repeated, wondering under what circum- 
 stances she had recently heard that name. Then she re- 
 membered: it was the place of execution of the murderer 
 Rivain. 
 
 " Yes," he said. " Chirac has to go. He's on a newspaper 
 now. He was an architect when I knew him. He's got to 
 go and he thinks himself jolly lucky. So I thought I'd go with 
 him." 
 
 The truth was that he had definitely arranged to go. 
 
 " Not to see the execution ? " she stammered. 
 
 "Why not?. I've always wanted to see an execution, 
 especially with the guillotine. And "executions are public in 
 France. It's quite the proper thing to go to them." 
 
 " But why do you want to see an execution ? " 
 
 " It just happens that I do want to see an execution. It's 
 a fancy of mine, that's all. I don't know that any reason is 
 necessary," he said, pouring out water into the diminutive 
 ewer. 
 
 She was aghast. " And shall you leave me here alone ? " 
 
 " Well," said he, " I don't see why my being married 
 should prevent me from doing something that I've always 
 wanted to do. Do you ? " 
 
 " Oh no ! " she eagerly concurred. 
 
 " That's all right," he said. " You can do exactly as you 
 like. Either stay here, or come with me. If you go to 
 Auxerre there's no need at all for you to see the execution. 
 Ifs an interesting old town — cathedral and so on. But of 
 
808 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 course if you can't bear to be in the same town u a, 
 guillotine, I'll go alone. I shall come back to-morrow," 
 
 It was plain where his wish lay. She stopped the phrases 
 that came to her lips, and did her best to dismiss the thoughts 
 which prompted them. ^ 
 
 " Of course I'll go," she said quietly. She hesitated, and 
 then went up to the washstand and kissed a part of his cheek 
 that was not soapy. That kiss, which comforted and some- 
 how reassured her, was the expression of a surrender whose 
 monstrousness she would not admit to herself. 
 
 In the rich and dusty drawing-room, Chirac and Chirac's 
 exquisite formalities awaited her. Nobody else was there. 
 
 " My husband . . ." she began, smiling and blushing. She 
 liked Chirac. 
 
 It was the first time she had had the opportunity of 
 using that word to other than a servant. It soothed her and 
 gave her confidence. She perceived after a few moments that 
 Chirac did genuinely admire her ; more, that she inspired him 
 with something that resembled awe. Speaking very slowly and 
 distinctly she said that she should travel with her husband to 
 Auxerre, as he saw no objection to that course ; implying that 
 if he saw no objection she was perfectly satisfied. Chirac 
 was concurrence itself. In five minutes it seemed to be the 
 most natural and proper thing in the world that, on her honey- 
 moon, she should be going with her husband to a particular 
 town because a notorious murderer was about to <je decapitated 
 there in public. 
 
 " My husband has always wanted to see an execution," she 
 said, later. " It would be a pity to ... " 
 
 " As psychological experience," replied Chirac, pronounc- 
 ing the / of the adjective, " it will be very interessant. ... To 
 observe one's self, in such circumstances . . ." He smiled 
 enthusiastically. 
 
 She thought how strange even nice Frenchmen were. 
 Imagine gomg to an execution in order to observe yourself ! 
 
 II 
 
 What continually impressed Sophia as strange, in the 
 behaviour not only of Gerald but of Chirac and other people 
 with whom she came into contact, was its ^ality of casualness. 
 
AN AMiJI'JlON SATISFIED 309 
 
 She had all her life been accustomed to see enterprises, 
 even minor ones, well pondered and then carefully schemed 
 beforehand. In St. Luke's Square there was always, in every 
 head, a sort of time-table of existence/prepared at least one 
 week in advance. But in Gerald's world nothing was pre- 
 arranged. Elaborate affairs were decided in a moment and 
 undertaken with extraordinary lightness. Thus the excursion 
 to Auxerre ! During lunch scarcely a word was said as to it ; 
 the conversation, in English for Sophia's advantage, turning, 
 as usual under such circumstances, upon the difficulty of 
 languages and the difftiences between countries. Nobody 
 would have guessed that any member of the party had any 
 preoccupation whatever for the rest of the day. The meal 
 was delightful to Sophia; not merely did she find Chirac 
 comfortingly kind and sincere, but Gerald was restored to the 
 perfection of his charm and his good humour. Then suddenly, 
 in the midst of cofifee, the question of trains loomed up like a 
 swift crisis. In five minutes Chirac had departed — whether to 
 his office or his home Sophia did not understand, and within a 
 quarter of an hour she and Gerald were driving rapidly to the 
 Gare de Lyon, Gerald stuffing into his pocket a large envelope 
 full of papers which he had received by registered post They 
 caught the train by about a minute, and Chirac by a few 
 seconds. Yet neither he nor Gerald seemed to envisage the 
 risk of inconvenience and annoyance which they had incurred 
 and escaped. Chirac chattered through the window with 
 another journalist in the next compartment. When she had 
 leisure to examine him, Sophia saw that he must have called 
 at his home to put on old clothes. Everybody except 
 herself and Gerald seemed to travel in his oldest clothes. 
 
 The train was hot, noisy, and dusty. But, one after 
 another, all three of them fell asleep and slept heavily, calmly, 
 like healthy and exhausted young animals. Nothing could 
 disturb them for more than a moment. To Sophia it appeared 
 to be by simple chance that Chirac aroused himself and them 
 at Laioche and sleepily seized her valise and got them all out 
 on to the platform, where they yawned and smiled, full of the 
 deep, half-realized ^satisfaction of repose. They drank nectar 
 from a wheeled buffet, drank it eagerly, in thirsty gulps, and 
 sighed with pleasure and relief, and Gerald threw down a coin, 
 refusing change with a lord's gesture. The local train to 
 Auxerre was full, and with a varied and sinister cargo. At 
 
310 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 length they were in the zone of the waiting guillotine. The 
 rumour ran that the executioner was on the train. No one 
 had seen him ; no one was sure of recognizing him, but every- 
 one hugged the belief that he was on the train. Although the 
 sun was sinking the heat seemed not to abate. Attitudes grew 
 more limp, more abandoned. Soot and prickly dust flew in 
 unceasingly at the open windows. The train stopped at 
 Bonnard, Chemilly, and Moneteau, each time before a waiting 
 crowd that invaded it. And at last, in the great station at 
 Auxerre, it poured out an incredible mass of befouled humanity 
 that spread over everything like an inundation. Sophia was 
 frightened. Gerald left the initiative to Chirac, and Chirac 
 took her arm and led her forward, looking behind him to see 
 that Gerald followed with the valise. Frenzy seemed to reign 
 in Auxerre. 
 
 The driver of a cab demanded ten francs for transporting 
 them to the Hotel de I'Ep^e. 
 
 " Bah ! " scornfully exclaimed Chirac, in his quality of 
 experienced Parisian who is not to be exploited by heavy-witted 
 provincials. 
 
 But the driver of the next cab demanded twelve francs. 
 
 "Jump in," said Gerald to Sophia. Chirac lifted his 
 eyebrows. 
 
 At the same moment a tall, stout man with the hard face 
 of a flourishing scoundrel, and a young, pallid girl on his arm, 
 pushed aside both Gerald and Chirac and got into the cab 
 with his companion. 
 
 Chirac protested, telling him that the cab was already 
 engaged. 
 
 The usurper scowled and swore, and the young girl laughed 
 boldly. 
 
 Sophia, shrinking, expected her escort to execute justice 
 heroic and final ; but she was disappointed. 
 
 " Brute ! " murmured Chirac, and shrugged his shoulders, 
 as the carriage drove ofi", leaving them foolish on the kerb. 
 
 By this time all the other cabs had been seized. They 
 walked to the Hotel de I'Ep^e, jostled by the crowd, Sophia 
 and Chirac in front, and Gerald following with the valise, 
 whose weight caused him to lean over to the right and his 
 left arm to rise. The avenue was long, straight, and misty 
 with a floating dust. »^ophia had a vivid sense of the romantic. 
 They saw towers and spires, and Chirac talked to her slowly 
 
AN AMBITION SATISFIED 811 
 
 and carefully of the cathedral and the famous churches. He 
 said that the stained glass was marvellous, and with much care 
 he catalogued for her all the things she must visit. They 
 crossed a river. She felt as though she was stepping into the 
 middle age. At intervals Gerald changed the valise from 
 hand to hand ; obstinately, he would not let Chirac touch it 
 They struggled upwards, through narrow curving streets. 
 
 " Voilk ! " said Chirac. 
 
 They were in front of the Hotel de I'Epde. Across the 
 street was a caf^ crammed with people. Several carriages 
 stood in front. The Hotel de I'Ep^e had a reassuring air of 
 mellow respectability, such as Chirac had claimed for it. He 
 had suggested this hotel for Madame Scales because it was 
 not near the place of execution. Gerald had said, " Of course 1 
 Of course ! " Chirac, who did not mean to go to bed, required 
 no room for himself. 
 
 The Hotel de I'Ep^e had one room to offer, at the price 
 of twenty-five francs. 
 
 Gerald revolted at the attempted imposition. "A nice 
 thing!" he grumbled, "that ordinary travellers can't get a 
 decent room at a decent price just because some one's going 
 to be guillotined to-morrow ! We'll try elsewhere 1" 
 
 His features expressed disgust, but Sophia fancied that he 
 was secretly pleased. 
 
 They swaggered out of the busy stir of the hotel, as those 
 must who, having declined to be swindled, wish to preserve 
 their importance in the face of the world. In the street a 
 cabman solicited them, and filled them with hope by saying 
 that he knew of a hotel that might suit them and would drive 
 ihem there for five francs. He furiously lashed his horse. 
 The mere fact of being in a swiftly moving carriage which 
 wayfarers had to avoid nimbly, maintained their spirits. They 
 had a near glimpse of the catheciral. The cab halted with a 
 bump, in a small square, in front of a repellent building which 
 bore the sign, ' Hotel de Vezelay.' The horse was bleeding. 
 Gerald instructed Sophia to remain where she was, and he and 
 Chirac went up four stone steps into the hotel. Sophia, stared 
 at by loose crowds that were promenading, gazed about her, 
 and saw that all the windows of the square were open and 
 most of them occupied by people who laughed and chattered. 
 Then there was a shout : Gerald's voice. He had appeared at 
 a window on the second floor of the hotel with Chirac and a 
 
312 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 very fat woman. Chirac saluted, and Gerald laughed carelessly, 
 and nodded. 
 
 " It's all right," said Gerald, having descended. 
 
 "How much do they ask?" Sophia inquired indiscreetly. 
 
 Gerald hesitated, and looked self-conscious. " Thirty-five 
 francs," he said. " But I've had enough of driving about It 
 seems we're lucky to get it even at that." 
 
 And Chirac shrugged his shoulders as if to indicate that 
 the situation and the price ought to be accepted philosophically. 
 Gerald gave the driver five francs. He examined the piece 
 and demanded a pourboire. 
 
 "Oh! Damn!" said Gerald, and, because he had no 
 smaller change, parted with another two francs. 
 
 " Is any one coming out for this damned valise ? " Gerald 
 demanded, like a tyrant whose wrath would presently fall if 
 the populace did not instantly set about minding their p's 
 and q's. 
 
 But nobody emerged, and he was compelled to carry the 
 bag himself. 
 
 The hotel was dark and malodorous, and every room 
 seemed to be crowded with giggling groups of drinkers. 
 
 "We can't both sleep in this bed, surely," said Sophia 
 when, Chirac having remained downstairs, she faced Gerald in 
 a small, mean bedroom. 
 
 "You don't suppose I shall go to bed, do you?" said 
 Gerald, rather brusquely. " It's for you. We're going to eat 
 now. Look sharp." 
 
 Ill 
 
 It was night She lay in the narrow, crimson-draped bed. 
 The heavy crimson curtains had been drawn across the dirty 
 lace curtains of the window, but the lights of the little square 
 faintly penetrated through chinks into the room. The sounds 
 of the square also penetrated, extraordinarily loud and clear, 
 for the unabated heat had compelled her to leave the window 
 open. She could not sleep. Exhausted though she was, there 
 was no hope of her being able to sleep. 
 
 Once again she was profoundly depressed. She remembered 
 the dinner with horror. The long, crowded table, with semi- 
 circular ends, in the oppressive and reeking dining-room lighted 
 
AN AMBITION SATISFIED 313 
 
 by oil-lamps I There must have been at least forty people at 
 that table. Most of them ate disgustingly, as noisily as pigs, 
 with the ends of the large coarse napkins tucked in at their 
 necks. All the service was done by the fat woman whom she 
 had seen at the window with Gerald, and a young girl whose 
 demeanour was candidly brazen. Both these creatu,res were 
 slatterns. Everything was dirty. But the food was good. 
 Chirac and Gerald were agreed that the food was good, 
 as well as the wine. " Remarquable ! " Chirac had said, of 
 the wine. Sophia, however, could neither eat nor drink 
 with relish. She was afraid. The company tshocked her by 
 its gestures alone. It was very heterogeneous in appearance, 
 some of the diners being well dressed, approaching elegance, 
 and others shabby. But all the faces, to the youngest, were 
 brutaUzed, corrupt, and shameless. The juxtaposition of old 
 men and young women was odious to her, especially when 
 those pairs kissed, as they did frequently towards the end 
 of the meal. Happily she was placed between Chirac and 
 Gerald. That situation seemed to shelter her even from the 
 conversation. She would have comprehended nothing of the 
 conversation, had it not been for the presence of a middle- 
 aged Englishnaan who sat at the opposite end of the table 
 with a youngish, stylish Frenchwoman whom she had seen at 
 Sylvain's on the previous night. The Englishman was evidently 
 under a promise to teach English to the Frenchwoman. He 
 kept translating for her into English, slowly and distinctly, and 
 she would repeat the phrases after him, with strange contor- 
 tions of the mouth. 
 
 Thus Sophia gathered that the talk was exclusively about 
 assassinations, executions, criminals, and executioners. Some 
 of the people there made a practice of attending every 
 execution. They were fountains of interesting gossip, and. 
 the lions of the meal. There was a woman who could recall 
 the dying words of all the victims of justice for twenty years 
 past. The table roared with hysteric laughter at one of this 
 woman's anecdotes. Sophia learned that she had related how 
 a criminal had said to the priest wljo was good-naturedly 
 trying to screen the sight of the guillotine from him with his 
 body : " Stand away now, parson. Haven't I paid to see 
 it?" Such was the Englishman's rendering. The wages of 
 the executioners and their assistants were discussed, and 
 differences of opinions led to ferocious arguments. A young 
 
314 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 and dandiacal fellow told, as a fact which he was ready to 
 vouch for with a pistol, how Cora Pearl, the renowned English 
 courtesan, had through her influence over a prefect of police 
 succeeded in visiting a criminal alone in his cell during the 
 night preceding his execution, and had only quitted him an 
 hour before the final summons. The tale won the honours of 
 the dinner. It was regarded as truly impressive, and inevitably 
 it led to the general inquiry : what could the highest personages 
 in the empire see to admire in that red-haired Englishwoman ? 
 And of course Rivain himself, the handsome homicide, the 
 centre and hero of the f^te, was never long out of the conversa- 
 tion. Several of the diners had seen him ; one or two knew 
 him and could give amazing details of his prowess as a man 
 of pleasure. Despite his crime, he seemed to be the object 
 of sincere fdolatry. It was said positively that a niece of his 
 victim had been promised a front place at the execution. 
 
 Apropos of this, Sophia gathered, to her intense astonish- 
 ment and alarm, that the prison was close by and that the 
 execution would take place at the corner of the square itself 
 in which the hotel was situated. Gerald must have known ; 
 he had hidden it from her. She regarded him sideways, with 
 distrust. As the dinner finished, Gerald's pose of a calm, 
 disinterested, scientific observer of humanity gradually broke 
 down. He could not maintain it in front of the increasing 
 license of the scene round the table. He was at length some- 
 what ashamed of having exposed his wife to the view of such 
 an orgy j his restless glance carefully avoided both Sophia and 
 Chirac. The latter, whose unaffected simpUcity of interest 
 in the affair had more than anything helped to keep Sophia in 
 countenance, observed the change in, Gerald and Sophia's 
 excessive discomfort, and suggested that they should leave 
 the table without waiting for the coffee. Gerald agreed 
 quickly. Thus had Sophia been released from the horror 
 of the dinner. She did not understand how a man so thought- 
 ful and kindly as Chirac — he had bidden her good night with 
 the most distinguished courtesy — could tolerate, much less 
 pleasurably savour, the gluttonous, drunken, and salacious 
 debauchery of the Hotel de Vezelay ; but his theory was, so 
 far as she could judge from his imperfect English, that what- 
 ever existed might be admitted and examined by serious 
 persons interested in the study of human nature. His face 
 seemed to say: "Why not?" His face seemed to say to 
 
AN AMBITION SATISFIED 315 
 
 I 
 
 Gerald and to herself: "If this incommodes you, what did 
 you come for ? " 
 
 (Jerald had left her at the bedroom door with a self- 
 conscious nod. She had partly undressed and lain down, 
 and instantly the hotel had transformed itself into a kind of 
 sounding-box. It was as if, beneath and within all the noises 
 of the square, every movement in the hotel reached her ears 
 through cardboard walls : distant shoutings and laughter below ; 
 rattlings of crockery below ; stampings up and down stairs ; 
 stealthy creepings up and down stairs; brusque calls; frag- 
 ments of song, whisperings ; long sighs suddenly stifled ; 
 mysterious groans as of torture, broken by a giggle ; quarrels 
 and bickering, — she was spared nothing in the strangely 
 resonant darkness. 
 
 Then there came out of the little square a great uproar 
 and commotion, with shrieks, and under the shrieks a confused 
 din. In vain she pressed her face into the pillow and listened 
 to the irregular, prodigious noise of her eyelashes as they 
 scraped the rough linen. The thought had somehow intro- 
 duced itself into her head that she miist arise and go to the 
 window and see all that was to seen. She resisted. She said 
 to herself that the idea was absurd, that she did not wisA to 
 go to the window. Nevertheless, while arguing with herself, 
 she well knew that resistance to the thought was useless and 
 that ultimately her legs would obey its command. 
 
 When ultimately she yielded to the fascination and went 
 to the window and pulled ^side one of the curtains, she had 
 a feeling of relief. 
 
 The cool, grey beginnings of dawn were in the sky, and 
 every detail of the square was visible. Without exception all 
 the windows were wide open and filled with sightseers. In 
 the background of many windows were burning candles or 
 lamps that the fjar distant approach of the sun was already 
 killing. In front of these, on the frontier of two mingling 
 lights, the attentive figures of the watchers were curiously 
 silhouetted. On the red-tiled roofs, too, was a squatted 
 population. Below, a troop of gendarmes, mounted on 
 caracoling horses stretched in line across the square, was 
 gradually sweeping the entire square of a packed, gesticulating, 
 cursing crowd. The operation of this immense besom was 
 very slow. As the spaces of the square were cleared they 
 began to be dotted by privileged persons, journalists or law 
 
316 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 officers or their friends, who walked to and fro in conscious 
 pride; among them Sophia descried Gerald and Chirac, 
 strolling arm-in-arm and talking to two elaborately dad girls, 
 who were also arm-in-arm. 
 
 Then she saw a red reflection coming from one of the side 
 streets of which she had a vista ; it was the swinging lantern 
 of a waggon drawn by a gaunt grey -horse. The vehicle 
 stopped at the end of the square from which the besom had 
 started, and it was immediately surrounded by the privileged, 
 who, however, were soon persuaded to stand away. The 
 crowd, amassed now at the principal inlets of the square, gave 
 a formidable cry and burst into the refrain — 
 
 "Le voilil 
 Nicolas I 
 Ah I Ah I Ah I " 
 
 The clamour became furious as a group of workmen in 
 blue blouses drew piece by piece all the components of the 
 guillotine from the waggon and laid them carefully on the 
 ground, under the superintendence of a man in a black frock- 
 coat and a silk hat with broad flat brims ; a little fussy man 
 of nervous gestures. And presently the red columns had 
 risen upright from the ground and were joined at the top by 
 an acrobatic climber. As each part was bolted and screwed 
 to the growing machine the man in the high hat carefully 
 tested it. In a short time that seemed very long, the guillotine 
 was finished save for the triangular steel blade which lay 
 shining on the ground, a cyno^u^e. The executioner pointed 
 to it, and two men picked it up and slipped it into its groove, 
 and hoisted it to the summit of the machine. The executioner 
 peered at it interminably amid a universal silence. Then he 
 actuated the mechanism, and the mass of metal fell with a 
 muffled, reverberating thud. There were a few faint shrieks, 
 blended together, and then an overpowering racket of cheers, 
 shouts, hootings, and fragments of song. The blade was 
 again lifted, instantly reproducing silence, and again it fell, 
 liberating a new bedlam. The executioner made a movement 
 of satisfaction. Many women at the windows clapped 
 enthusiastically, and the gendarmes had to fight brutally 
 against the fi]erce pressure of the crowd. The workmen 
 doffed their blouses and put on coats, and Sophia was 
 
AN AMIUTION SATISFIED 817 
 
 disturbed to see them coming in single file towards the hotel, 
 followed by the executioner in the silk hat. 
 
 IV 
 
 There was a tremendous opening of doors in the Hotel de 
 Vezelay, and much whispering on thresholds, as "the execu- 
 tioner and his band entered solemnly. Sophia heard them 
 tramp upstairs ; they seemed to hesitate, and then apparently 
 went into a room on the same landing as hers. A door 
 banged. But Sophia could hear the regular sound of new 
 voices talking, and then the rattling of glasses on a tray. The 
 conversation which came to her from the windows of the hotel 
 now showed a great increase of excitement. She could not 
 see the people at these neighbouring windows without showing 
 her own head, and this she would not do. The boom of a 
 heavy bell striking the hour vibrated over the roofs of the 
 square ; she supposed that it might be the cathedral clock. In 
 a corner of the square she saw Gerald talking vivaciously 
 alone with one of the two girls who had been together. She 
 wondered vaguely how such a girl had been brought up, and 
 what her parents thought — or knew ! And she was conscious 
 of an intense pride in herself, of a measureless haughty feeling 
 of superiority. 
 
 Her eye caught the guillotine again, and was held by it. 
 Guarded by gendarmes, that tall and simple object did most 
 menacingly dominate the square with its crude red columns. 
 Tools and a large open box lay on the ground beside it. The 
 enfeebled horse in the waggon had an air of dozing on his 
 twisted legs. Then the first rays of the sun shot lengthwise 
 across the square at the level of the chimneys; and Sophia 
 noticed that nearly all the lamps and candles had been 
 extinguished. Many people at the windows were yawning ; 
 they laughed foolishly after they had yawned. Some were 
 eating and drinking. Some were shouting conversations from 
 one house to another. The mounted gendarmes were still 
 pressing back the feverish crowds that growled at all the 
 inlets to the square. She saw Chirac walking to and fro 
 alone. But she could not find Gerald. He could not have 
 left the square. Perhaps he had returned to the hotel and 
 would come up to see if she was comfortable or if she 
 
318 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 needed anything. Guiltily she sprang back into- bed. 
 When last she had surveyed the room it had been dark; 
 now it was bright and every detail stood clear. Yet she 
 had the sensation of having been at the window only a few 
 minutes. 
 
 She waited. But Gerald did not come. She could hear 
 chiefly the steady hum of the voices of the executioner and his 
 aids. She reflected that the room in which they were must be 
 at the back. The other sounds in the hotel grew less notice- 
 able. Then, after an age, she heard a door open, and a low 
 voice say something commandingly in French, and then a ' Oui, 
 monsieur,' and a general descent of the stairs. The execu- 
 tioneer and his aids were leaving. "You," cried a drunken 
 English voice from an upper floor — it was the middle-aged 
 Englishman translating what the executioner had said — " you, 
 you will take the head." Then a rough laugh, and the repeat- 
 ing voice of the Englishman's girl, still pursuing her studies in 
 English : " You will take ze 'ead. Yess, sair." And another 
 laugh. At length quiet reigned in the hotel. Sophia said to 
 herself : " I won't stir from this bed till it's aU over and Gerald 
 comes back ! " 
 
 She doz.ed, under the sheet, and was awakened by a 
 tremendous shrieking, growling, and yelling : a phenomenon of 
 human bestiality that far surpassed Sophia's narrow experi- 
 ences. Shut up though she was in a room, perfectly secure, 
 the mad fury of that crowd, balked at the inlets to the square, 
 thrilled and intimidated her. It sounded as if they would be 
 capable of tearing the very horses to pieces. " I must stay 
 where I am," she murmured. And even while saying it she 
 rose and went to the window again and peeped out. The 
 torture involved was extreme, but she had not sufficient force 
 within her to resist the fascination. Sue stared greedily into 
 the bright square. The first thing she saw was Gerald coming 
 out of a house opposite, followed after a few seconds by the 
 girl with whom he had previously been talking. Gerald 
 glanced hastUy up at the figade of the hotel, and then 
 approached as near as he could to the red columns, in front of 
 which were now drawn a line of gendarmes with naked swords. 
 A second and larger waggon, with two horses, waited by the 
 side of the other one. The racket beyond the square con- 
 tinued and even grew louder. But the couple of hundred 
 persons within the cordons, and all the inhabitants of the 
 
AN AMBITION SATISFIED 819 
 
 windows, drunk and sober, gazed in a fixed and sinister 
 enchantment at the region of the guillotine, as Sophia gazed. 
 " I cannot stand this ! " she told herself in horror, but she 
 could not move ; she could not move even her eyes. 
 
 At intervals the crowd would burst out in a violent 
 staccato — 
 
 •• Le voili I 
 Nicholas ! 
 Ahl Ahl Ahl" 
 
 And the final * Ah ' was devilish. 
 
 Then a gigantic passionate roar, the culmination of the 
 mob's fierce savagery, crashed against the skies. The line of 
 maddened horses swerved and reared, and seemed to fall on 
 the furious multitude while the statue-like gendarmes rocked 
 over them. It was a last effort to break the cordon, and it 
 failed. 
 
 From the little street at the rear of the guillotine 
 appeared a priest, walking backwards, and holding a crucifix 
 high in his right hand, and behind him came the handsome 
 hero, his body all crossed with cords, between two warders, 
 who pressed against him and supported him on either side. 
 He was certainly very young. He lifted his chin gallantly, 
 but his face was incredibly white. Sophia discerned that the 
 priest was trying to hide the sight of the guillotine from the 
 prisoner with his body, just as in the story which she had 
 heard at dinner. 
 
 Except the voice of the priest, indistinctly rising and 
 falling in the prayer for the dying, there was no sound in the 
 square or its environs. The windows were now occupied by 
 groups turned to stone with distended eyes fixed on the little 
 procession. Sophia had a tightening of the throat, and the 
 hand trembled by which she held the curtain. The central 
 figure did not seem to her to be alive ; but rather a doll, a 
 marionette wound up to imitate the action of a tragedy. She 
 saw the priest offer the crucifix to the mouth of the marionette, 
 which with a clumsy unhuman shoving of its corded shoulders 
 butted the thing away. And as the procession turned and 
 stopped shecould plainly see that the marionette's nape and 
 shoulders were bare, his shirt having been slit. It was 
 horrible. "Why do I stay here?" she asked herself 
 hysterically. But she did not stir. The victim had dis- 
 appeared now in the midst of a group of men. Then she 
 
320 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 perceived him prone under the red column, between the 
 grooves. The silence was now broken only by the tinkling of 
 horses' bits in the corners of the square. The line of gen- 
 dwmes in front of the scaffold held their swords tightly and 
 looked over their noses, ignoring the privileged groups that 
 peered almost between their shoulders. 
 
 And. Sophia waited, horror-struck. She saw nothing but 
 the gleaming triangle of metal that was suspended high above 
 the prone, attendant victim. She felt like a lost soul, torn too 
 soon from shelter, and exposed for ever to the worst hazards of 
 destiny. Why was she in this strange, incomprehensible town, 
 foreign and inimical to her, watching with agonized glance this 
 cruel, obscene spectacle? Her sensibilities were all a bleed- 
 ing mass of wounds. Why? Only yesterday, and she had 
 been an innocent, timid creature in Bursley, in Axe, a foolish 
 creature who deemed the concealment of letters a supreme 
 excitement. Either that day or this day was not real. Why 
 was she imprisoned alone in that odious, indescribably odious 
 hotel, with no one to soothe and comfort her, and carry her 
 away? 
 
 The distant bell boomed once. Then a monosyllabic 
 voice sounded, sharp, low, nervous ; she recognized the voice 
 of the executioner, whose name she had heard but could not 
 remember. There was a clicking noise . . . 
 
 She shrank down to the floor in terror and loathing, 
 and hid her face, and shuddered. Shriek after shriek, from 
 various windows, rang on her ears in a fusillade j and then 
 the mad yell of the penned crowd, which, like herself, had 
 not seen but had heard, extinguished all other noise. Justice 
 was done^ The great ambition of Gerald's life was at last 
 satisfied. 
 
 Later, amid the stir of the hotel, there came a knock at her 
 door, impatient and nervous. Forgetting, in her tribulation, 
 that she was without her bodice, she got up from the floor in a 
 kind of miserable dream, and opened. Chirac stood on the 
 landing, and he had Gerald by the arm. Chirac looked worn 
 out, curiously fragile and pathetic ; but Gerald was the very 
 image of death. The attainment of ambition had utterly 
 
AN AMBITION SATISFIED 821 
 
 destroyed his equilibrium; his curiosity had proved itself 
 stronger than his stomach. Sophia would have pitied him had 
 she in that moment been capable of pity. Gerald staggered 
 past her into the room, and sank with a groan on to the bed. 
 Not long since he had been proudly conversing with impudent 
 women. Now, in swift collapse, he was as flaccid as a sick 
 hound and as disgusting as an aged drunkard. 
 
 " He is some little souffrant" said Chirac, weakly. 
 
 Sophia perceived in Chirac's tone the assumption that of 
 course her present duty was to devote herself to the task of 
 restoring her shamed husband to his manly pride. 
 
 " And what about me ? " she thought bitterly. 
 
 The fat woman ascended the stairs Uke a tottering blanc- 
 mange, and began to gabble to Sophia, who understood 
 nothing whatever. 
 
 " She wants sixty francs," Chirac said, and in answer to 
 Sophia's startled question, he explained that Gerald had agreed 
 to pay a hundred francs for the room, which was the landlady's 
 own — fifty francs in advance and the fifty after the execution. 
 The other ten was for the dinner. The landlady, distrusting 
 the whole of her clien&k, was collecting her accounts instantly 
 on the completion of the spectacle. 
 
 Sophia made no remark as to Gerald's lie to her. Indeed, 
 Chirac had heard it. She knew Gerald for a glib liar to others, 
 but she was naively surprised when he practised upon herself. 
 
 " Gerald 1 Do you hear ? " she said coldly. 
 
 The amateur of severed heads only groaned. 
 
 With a movement of irritation she went to him and felt in 
 his pockets for his purse j he acquiesced, still groaning, Chirac 
 helped her to choose and count the coins. 
 
 The fat woman, appeased^ pursued her way. 
 
 " Good-bye, madame ! " said Chirac, with his customary 
 courtliness, transforming the landing of the hideous hotel into 
 some imperial antechamber. 
 
 " Are you going away ? " she asked, in surprise. Her dis- 
 tress was so obvious that it tremendously flattered him. He 
 would have stayed if he could. But he had to return to Paris 
 to write and deliver his article. 
 
 " To-morrow, I hope ! " he murmured sympathetically, 
 kissing her hand. The gesture atoned somewhat for the sordid- 
 ness of her situation, and even corrected the faults of her attire. 
 Always afterwards it seemed to her that Chirac was an old 
 
 T 
 
THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 and intimate friend ; he had successfully passed through the 
 ordeal of seeing ' the wrong side ' of the stuff of her life. 
 
 She shut the door on him with a lingering glance, and 
 reconciled herself to her predicament. 
 
 Gerald slept. Just as he was, he slept heavily. 
 
 This was what he had brought her to, then ! The horrors 
 of the night, of the dawn, and of the morning ! Ineffable 
 suffering and humiliation; anguish and torture that could 
 never be forgotten ! And after a fatuous vigil of ungnessed 
 license, he had tottered back, an offensive beast, tQ sleep the 
 day away in that filthy chamber ! He did not possess even 
 enough spirit to play the rtk of roysterer to the end. And 
 she was bound to him ; far, far from any other human aid ; cut 
 off irrevocably by her pride from those who perhaps would 
 have protected her from his dangerous folly. The deep con- 
 viction henceforward formed a permanent part of her general 
 consciousness that he was simply an irresponsible and thought- 
 less fool ! He was without sense. Such was her brilliant and 
 godlike husband, the man who had given her the right to call 
 Jerself a married woman ! He was a fool; With all her 
 ignorance of the world she could see that nobddy but an arrant 
 imbecile could have brought her to the present pass. Her 
 native sagacity revolted. Gusts of feelirig came over her in 
 which she could have thrashed him into the realization of his 
 responsibilities. 
 
 Sticking out of the breast-pocket of his soiled coat was the 
 packet which he had received on the previous day. If he had 
 not already lost it, he could only thank his luck. She took it 
 There were English bank-notes in it for two hundred pounds, 
 a letter from a banker, and other papers. With precautions 
 against noise she tore the envelope and the letter and papers 
 into small pieces, and then looked about for a place to hide 
 them. A cupboard suggested itself. She got on a chair, and 
 pushed the fragments out of sight on the topmost shelf, where 
 they may well be to this day. She finished dressing, and then 
 sewed the notes into the lining of her skirt. She had no silly, 
 delicate notions about stealing. She obscurely felt that, in the 
 care of a man like Gerald, she might find herself in the most 
 monstrous, the most impossible dilemmas. Those notes, safe 
 and secret in her skirt, gave her confidence, reassured her 
 afiainst the perils of the future, and endowed her with inde- 
 pendence. The act was characteristic of her enterprise and 
 
AN AMBITION SATISFIED 323 
 
 of her fundamental prudence. It approached the heroic. 
 And her conscience hoHy^fended its righteousness. 
 
 She decided that when he discovered his loss, she would 
 merely deny all knowledge of the envelope, for he had not 
 spoken a word to her about it. He never mentioned the 
 details of money ; he had a fortune. However, the necessity 
 for this untruth did not occur. He made no reference what- 
 ever to his loss. The fact was, he thought he had been careless 
 enough to let the envelope be filched from him during the 
 excesses of the night. 
 
 All day till evening Sophia sat on a dirty chair, without 
 food, while Gerald slept. She kept repeating to herself, in 
 amazed resentment : " A hundred francs for this room ! A 
 hundred francs I And he hadn't the pluck to tell me ! " She 
 could not have expressed her contempt. 
 
 Long before sheer ennui forced her to look out of the 
 window again, every sign of justice had been removed from 
 the square. Nothing whatever remained in the heavy August 
 sunshine save gathered heaps of filth where the horses had 
 reared and caracoled. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 A CRISIS FOR GERALD 
 
 For a time there existed in the minds of both Gerald and 
 Sophia the remarkable notion that twelve thousand pounds 
 represented the infinity of wealth, that this sum possessed 
 special magical properties which rendered it insensible to the 
 process of subtractioij. It seemed impossible that twelve 
 thousand pounds, while continually getting less, could ulti- 
 mately quite disappear. The notion lived longer in the 
 mind of Gerald than in that of Sophia ; for Gerald would never 
 look at a disturbing fact, whereas Sophia's gaze was morbidly 
 fascinated by such phenomena. In a life devoted to travel 
 and pleasure Gerald meant not to spend more than six hundred 
 a year, the interest on his fortune. Six hundred a year is 
 less than two pounds a day, yet Gerald never paid less than 
 two pounds a day in hotel bills alone. He hoped that he was 
 living on a thousand a year, had a secret fear that he might be 
 spending fifteen hundred, and was really spending about two 
 thousand five hundred. ' Still, the remarkable notion of the 
 inexhaustibility of twelve thousand pounds always reassured 
 him. The faster the money went, the more vigorously this 
 notion flourished in Gerald's mind. When twelve' had 
 unaccountably dwindled to three, Gerald suddenly decided 
 that he must act, and in a few months he lost two thousand 
 on the Paris Bourse. The adventure frightened him, and in 
 his panic he scattered a couple of hundred in a frenzy of high 
 living. 
 
 But even .with only twenty thousand francs left out of 
 three hundred thousand, he held closely to the belief that 
 natural laws would in his case somehow be suspended. He 
 had heard ef men who were once rich begging bread and 
 
 324 
 
A CRISIS FOR GERALD 325 
 
 sweeping crossings, but he felt quite secure against such risOj 
 by simple virtue of the axiom that he was he. However, he 
 meant to assist the axiom by efforts to earn money. When 
 these continued to fail, he tried to assist the axiom by borrow- 
 ing money ; but he found that his uncle had definitely done 
 with him. He would have assisted the axiom by stealing 
 money, but he had neither the nerve nor the knowledge to. be 
 a swindler ; he was not even sufficiently expert to cheat at 
 cards. 
 
 He had thought in thousands. Now he began to think in 
 hundreds, in tens, daily and hourly. He paid two hundred 
 francs in railway fares in order to live economically in a 
 village, and shortly afterwards another two hundred francs in 
 railway fares in order to live economically in Paris. And to 
 celebrate the arrival in Paris and the definite commencement 
 of an era of strict economy and serious search for a livelihood, 
 he spent a hundred francs on a dinner at the Maison Dorde 
 and two balcony stalls at the Gymnase. In brief, he omitted 
 nothing — no act, no resolve, no self-deception^-of Jiie typic^il 
 fool in his situation ; always convinced that his difiiculties and ' 
 his wisdom were quite exceptional. 
 
 In May, 1870, on an afternoon, he was ranging nervously 
 to and fro in a three-cornered bedrooni of a little hotel at the 
 angle of the Rue Fontaine and the Rue Laval (now the Rue 
 Victor Masse), within half a minute of the Boulevard de 
 Clichy. It had come to that — an exchange of the 'grand 
 boulevard ' for the ' boulevard extdrieur ' ! Sophia sat on a 
 chair at the grimy window, glancing down in idle disgust of 
 life at the Clichy-Oddon omnibus which was casting oif its 
 tip-horse at the corner of the Rue Chaptal. The noise of 
 petty, hurried traffic over the bossy paving stones was deafen- 
 ing. The locality was not one to correspond with an ideal. 
 There was too much humanity crowded into those narrow 
 hilly streets; humanity seemed to be bulging out at the 
 windows of the high houses. Gerald healed his pride by say- 
 ing that this was, after all, the real Paris, and that the cookery 
 was as good as could be got anywhere, pay what you would. 
 He seldom ate a meal in the little salons on the first floor 
 without becoming ecstatic upon the cookery. To hear him, 
 he might have chosen the hotel on its superlative merits, 
 without regard to expense. And with his air of use and 
 custom, he did indeed look like a connoisseur of Paris who 
 
THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 knew better than to herd with vulgar tourists in the pens of the 
 Madeleine quarter. He was dressed with some distinction; 
 good clothes, when put to the test, survive a change of 
 fortune, as a Roman arch survives the luxury of departed 
 empire. Only his collar, large V-shaped front, and wristbands, 
 which bore the ineflfaceable signs of cheap laundering, 
 reflected the shadow of impending disaster. 
 
 He glanced sideways, stealthily, at Sophia. She, too, was 
 still dressed with distinction ; in the robe of black faille, the 
 cashmere shawl, and the little black hat with its falling veil, 
 there was no apparent symptom of beggary. She would have 
 been judged as one of those women who content themselves 
 with few clothes but good, and, greatly aided by nature, make 
 a little go a long way. Good black will last for eternity ; it 
 discloses no secrets of modification and mending, and it is not 
 transparent. 
 
 At last Gerald, resuming a suspended conversation, said as 
 it were doggedly : 
 
 " I tell you I haven't got five francs altogether I and you 
 can feel my pockets if you like," added the habitual liar in 
 him, fearing incredulity. 
 
 "Well, and what do you expect me to do?" Sophia 
 inquired. 
 
 The accent, at once ironic and listless, in which she put 
 this question, showed that strange and vital things had 
 happened to Sophia in'the four years which had elapsed since 
 her marriage. It did really seem to her, indeed, that the 
 Sophia whom Gerald had espoused was dead and gone, and 
 that another Sophia had come into her body : so intensely 
 conscious was she of a fundamental change in herself under 
 the stress of continuous experience. And though this was but 
 a seeming, though she was still the same Sophia more fully 
 disclosed, it was a true seeming. Indisputably more beautiful 
 than when Gerald had unwillingly made her his legal wife, she 
 was now nearly twenty-four, and looked perhaps somewhat 
 older than her age. Her frame was firmly set, her waist 
 thicker, neither slim nor stout The lips were rather hard, 
 and she had a habit of tightening her mouth, on the same 
 provocation as sends a snail into its shell. No trace was left 
 of immature gawkiness in her gestures or of simplicity in her 
 intonations. She was a woman of commanding and slightly 
 arrogant charm, not in the least degree the charm of innocence 
 
A CRISIS FOR GERALD 827 
 
 and ingenuousness. Her eyes were the eyes of one who has 
 lost her illusions too violently and too completely. Her gaze, 
 coldly comprehending, implied familiarity with the abjectness 
 of human nature. Gerald had begun and had finished her 
 education. He had not ruined her, as a bad professor may 
 ruin a fine voice, because her moral force immeasurably 
 exceeded his ; he had unwittingly produced a masterpiece, but 
 it was a tragic masterpiece. - Sophia was such a woman as, by 
 a mere glance as she utters an opinion, will make a man say 
 to himself, half in desire and half in alarm lest she reads him 
 too : " By Jove ! she must have been through a thing or two. 
 She knows what people are 1 " 
 
 The marriage was, of course, a calamitous folly. From 
 the very first, from the moment when the commercial traveller 
 had with incomparable rash fatuity thrown the paper pellet 
 over the counter, Sophia's awakening commonsense had told 
 her that in yielding to her instinct she was sowing misery ami 
 shame for herself; but she had gone on, as if under a spell. 
 It had needed the irretrievableness of flight from home ta 
 begin the breaking of the trance. Once fully awakened out <Jt 
 the trance, she had recognized her marriage for what it was. 
 She had made neither the best nor the worst of it. She had 
 accepted Gerald as one accepts a climate. She saw again and 
 again that he was irreclaimably a fool and a prodigy of irre- 
 sponsibleness. She tolerated him, now with sweetness, now 
 bitterly ; accepting always his caprices, and not permitting her- 
 self to have wishes of her own She was ready to pay the 
 price of pride and of a moment's imbecility with a lifetime of 
 self-repression. It was high, but it was the price. She had 
 acquired nothing but an exceptionally good knowledge of the 
 French language (she soon learnt to scorn Gerald's glib 
 maltreatment of the tongue), and she had conserved nothing 
 but her dignity. She knew that Gerald was sick of her, that 
 he would have danced for joy to be rid of he^; ; that he was 
 constantly unfaithful; that he had long since ceased to be 
 excited by her beauty. She knew also that at bottom he was 
 
 ^ a little afraid of her ; here was her sole moral consolation. 
 The thing that sometimes struck her as surprising was that he 
 had not abandoned her, simply and crudely walked off one 
 day and forgotten to take her with him. " 
 
 They hated each other, but in different ways. She 
 
 loathed him, and he resented her. 
 
THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " What do I expect you to do ? " he repeated after her. 
 " Why don't you write home to your people and get some 
 money out of them ? " 
 
 Now that he had said what was in his mind, he faced her 
 with a bullying swagger. Had he been a bigger man he might 
 have tried tlie effect of physical bulJying on her. One of his 
 numerous reasons for resenting her was that she was the taller 
 of the two. 
 
 She made no reply. 
 
 " Now you needn't turn pale and begin all that fuss over 
 again. What I'm suggesting is a perfectly reasonable thing. 
 If I haven't got money I haven't got it. I can't invent it." 
 
 She perceived that he was ready for one of their periodical 
 tempestuous quarrels. But that day she felt too tired and 
 unwell to quarrel. His warning against a repetition of ' fuss ' 
 had reference to the gastric dizziness from which she had been 
 suffering for two years. It would take her usually after a meal. 
 She did not swoon, but her head swam and she could not 
 stand. She would sink down wherever she happened to be, 
 and, her face alarmingly white, murmur faintly: "My salts." 
 Within five minutes the attack had gone and left no trace. 
 She had been through one just after lunch. He resented this 
 affection. He detested being compelled to hand the smelling- 
 bottle to her, and he would have avoided doing so if her pallor 
 did not always alarm him. Nothing but this pallor convinced 
 him that the attacks were not a deep ruse to impress him. 
 His attitude invariably implied that she could cure the malady 
 if she chose, but that through obstinancy she did not choose, 
 
 " Are you going to have the decency to answer my question, 
 or aren't you ? " 
 
 "What question?" Her vibrating voice was low and 
 restrained. 
 
 " Will you write to your people ? " 
 
 " For money ? " 
 
 The sarcasm of her tone was diabolic. She could not have 
 kept the sarcasm out of her tone ; she did not attempt to keep 
 it out She cared little if it whipped him to fury. Did he 
 imagine, seriously, that she would be capable of going on her 
 knees to her family ? She ? Was he unaware that his wife was 
 the proudest and the most obstinate woman on earth, that all 
 her behaviour to him was the expression of her pride and her 
 obstinacy? Ill and weak though she felt, she marshalled 
 
A CRISIS FOR GERALD 
 
 together all the forces of her character to defend her resolve 
 never, never to eat the bread of humiliation."! She was abso- 
 lutely determined to be dead to her familyT* Certainly, one 
 December, several years previously, she had seen English 
 Christmas cards in an English shop in the Rue de Rivoli, and 
 in a sudden gush of tenderness towards Constance, she had 
 despatched a coloured greeting to Constance and her mother. 
 And having initiated the custom, she had continued it That 
 was not like asking a kindness ; it was bestowing a kindness. 
 But except for the annual card, she was dead to St. Luke's 
 Square. She was one of those daughters who disappear and 
 are not discussed in the family circle. The thought of her 
 immense foolishness, the little tender thoughts of Constance, 
 some flitting souvenir, full of unwilling admiration, of a regal 
 gesture of her mother, — these things only steeled her against 
 any sort of resurrection after death. 
 
 And he was urging her to write home for money I Why, 
 she would not even have paid a visit in splendour to St. Luke's 
 Square. Never should they know what she had suffered ! 
 And especially her Aunt Harriet, from whom she had stolen ! 
 
 " Will you write to your people ? " he demanded yet again, 
 emphasizing and separating each word. 
 
 " No," she said shortly, with terrible disdain. 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Because I won't." The curling line of her lips, as they ■ 
 closed on each other, said all the rest; all the cruel truths 
 about his unspeakable, inane, coarse follies, his laziness, his 
 excesses, his lies, his deceptions, his bad faith, his truculenc6, 
 his improvidence, his shameful waste and ruin of his life and 
 hers. She doubted whether he realized his baseness and her 
 wrongs, but if he could not read them in her silent contumely, 
 she was too proud to recite them to him. She haH" never 
 complained, save in uncontrolled moments of anger. 
 
 " If that's the way you're going to talk — all right ! " he 
 snapped, furious. Evidently he was baffled. 
 
 She kept silence. She was determined to see what he 
 would do in the face of her inaction. 
 
 "You know, I'm not joking," he pursued. "We shall 
 starve." 
 
 " Very well," she agreed. " We shall starve." 
 
 She watched him surreptitiously, and she was almost sure 
 that he really had come to the end of his tether. His voice, 
 
330 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 which never alone convinced, carried a sort of conviction now. 
 He was penniless. In four years he had squandered twelve 
 thousand pounds, and had nothing to show for it except an 
 enfeebled digestion and a tragic figure of a wife. One small 
 point of satisfaction there was — and all the Baines in her 
 clutched at it and tried to suck satisfaction from it — their 
 manner of travelling about from hotel to hotel had made it 
 impossible for Gerald to run up debts. A few debts he might 
 have, unknown to her, but they could not be serious. 
 
 , So-they looked at one another, in hatred and despair. The 
 inevitable had arrived. For months she had fronted it in 
 bravado, not concealing from herself that it lay in waiting. 
 For years he had been sure that though the inevitable might 
 happen to others it could not happen to him. There it was 1 
 He was conscious of a heavy weight in his stomach, and she 
 of a general numbness, enwrapping her fatigue. Even then 
 he could not believe that it was true, this disaster. As for 
 Sophia she was reconciling herself with bitter philosophy to the 
 eccentricities of fate. Who would have dreamed that she, a 
 young girl brought up, etc. ? Her mother could not have 
 improved the occasion more uncompromisingly than Sophia 
 did — behind that disdainful mask. 
 
 "Well— if that's it ... I" Gerald exploded at length, puffing. 
 And he puffed out of the room and was gone in a second. 
 
 II 
 
 She languidly picked up a book, the moment Gerald had 
 departed, and tried to prove to herself that she was sufficiently 
 in command of her nerves to read. For a long time reading 
 had been her chief solace. But she could not read. She 
 glanced round the inhospitable chamber, and thought of the 
 hundreds of rooms — some splendid and some vile, but all arid 
 in their unwelcoming aspect — through which she had passed 
 in her progress from mad exultation to calm and cold disgust. 
 The ceaseless din of the street annoyed her jaded ears. And 
 a great wave of desire for peace, peace of no matter what kind, 
 swept through her. And then her deep distrust of Gerald 
 reawakened ; in spite of his seriously desperate air, which had 
 a quality of sincerity quite new in her experience of him, she 
 could not be entirely sure that, fn asserting utter penury, he 
 was not after all merely using a trick to get rid of her. 
 
A CRISIS FOR GERALD 331 
 
 She sprang up, threw the book on the bed, and seized her 
 gloves. She would follow him, if she could. She would do 
 what she had never done before — she would spy on him. 
 Fighting against her lassitude, she descended the long winding 
 stairs, and peeped forth from the doorway into the street. 
 The ground floor of the hotel was a wine-shop ; the stout land- 
 lord was lightly flicking one of the three little yellow tables 
 that stood on the pavement. He smiled with his customary 
 benevolence^ and silently pointed in the direction of the Rue 
 Notre Dame de Lorette. She saw Gerald down there in the 
 distance. He was smoking a cigar. 
 
 He seemed to be a little man without a care. The smoke 
 of the cigar came first round his left cheek and then round his 
 right, sailing away into nothing. He walked with a gay spring, 
 but not quickly, flourishing his cane as freely as the. traffic of 
 the pavement would permit, glancing into all the shop windows 
 and into the eyes of all the women under forty. This was not 
 at all the same man as had a moment ago been spitting angry 
 menaces at her in the bedroom of the hotel. It was a fellow 
 of blithe charm, ripe for any adventurous joys that destiny 
 had to offer. 
 
 Supposing he turned round and saw her ? 
 
 If he turned round and saw her and asked her what she 
 was doing there in the street, she would tell him plainly : 
 " I'm following you, to find out what you do." 
 
 But he did not turn. He went straight forward, deviating 
 at the church, where the crowd became thicker, into the Rue 
 du Faubourg Montmartre, and so to the boulevard, which he 
 crossed. The whole city seemed excited and vivacioub. 
 Cannons boomed in slow succession, and flags were flying. 
 Sophia had no conception of the significance of those guns, 
 for, though she read a great deal, she never read a newspaper ; 
 the idea of opening a newspaper never occurred to her. But 
 she was accustomed to the feverish atmosphere of Paris. She 
 had lately seen regiments of cavalry flashing and prancing in 
 the Luxembourg Gardens, and had much admired the fine 
 picture. She accepted the booming as another expression of 
 the high spirits that had to find vent somehow iii this feverish 
 empire. She so accepted it and forgot it, using all the 
 panorama of the capital as a dim background for her exac&- 
 bated egoism. 
 
 She was obliged to walk slowly, because Gerald walked 
 
THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 slowly. A beautiful woman, or any woman not positively hag- 
 like or venerable, who walks slowly in the streets of Paris 
 becomes at once the cause of inconvenient desires, as repre- 
 senting the main objective on earth, always transcending in 
 importance politics and affairs. Just as a true patriotic 
 Englishman cannot be too busy to run after a fox, so a 
 Frenchman is always ready to forsake all in order to follow 
 a woman whom he has never before set eyes on. Many men 
 thought twice about her, with her romantic Saxon mystery of 
 temperament, and her Parisian clothes ; but all refrained from 
 affronting her, not in the least out of respect for the gloom in 
 her face, but from an expert conviction that those rapt eyes 
 were fixed immovably on another male. She walked unscathed 
 amid the frothing hounds as though protected by a spell. 
 
 On the south side of the boulevard, Gerald proceeded 
 down the Rue Montmartre, and then turned suddenly into 
 the Rue Croissant. Sophia stopped and asked the price of 
 some combs which were exposed outside a litde shop. Then 
 she went on, boldly passing the end of the Rue Croissant. 
 No shadow of Gerald ! She saw the signs of newspapers all 
 along the street, Le Bien Public, La Presse Libre, La 
 Patrii. There was a creamery at the corner. She entered 
 it, asked for a cup of chocolate, and sat down. She wanted to 
 drink coffee, but every doctor had forbidden coffee to her, on 
 account of her attacks of dizziness. Then, having ordered 
 'chocolate, she felt that, on this occasion, when she had need 
 of strength in her great fatigue, only coffee could suffice her, 
 and she changed the order. She was close to the door, and 
 Gerald could not escape her vigilance if he emerged at that 
 end of the street. She drank the coffee with greedy satis- 
 faction, and waited in the creamery till she began to feel 
 conspicuous there. And then Gerald went by the door, 
 within six feet of her. He turned the corner and continued 
 his descent of the Rue Montmartre. She paid for her coffee 
 and followed the chase. Her blood seemed to be up. Her lips 
 were tightened, and her thought was: "Wherever he goes, 
 I'll go, and I don't care what happens." She despised him. 
 She felt herself above him. She felt that somehow, since 
 quitting the hotel, he had been gradually growing more and 
 more vile and meet to be exterminated. She imagined 
 infamies as to the Rue Croissant. There was no obvious 
 ground for this intensifying of her attitude towards him; it wai 
 
A CRISIS FOR GERALD 
 
 merely the result of the chase. All that could be definitely 
 charged against him was the smoking of a cigar. 
 
 He stepped into a tobacco-shop, and came out with a 
 longer cigar than the first one, a more expensive article, 
 stripped off its collar, and lighted it as a millionaire might 
 have lighted it. This was the man who swore that he did not 
 possess five francs. 
 
 She tracked him as far as the Rue de Rivoli, and then 
 lost him. There were vast surging crowds in the Rue de 
 Rivoli, and much bunting, and soldiers and gesticulatory 
 policemen. The general effect of the street was that all things 
 were brightly waving in the breeze. She was caught in the 
 crowd as in the current of a stream, and when she tried to 
 sidle out of it into a square, a row of smiling policemen barred 
 her passage; she was a part of the traffic that they had to 
 regulate. She drifted till the Louvre came into view. After 
 all, Gerald had only strolled forth to see the sight of the day, 
 whatever it might be 1 She knew not what it was. She had no 
 curiosity about it. In the middle of all that thickening mass 
 of humanity, staring with one accord at the vast monument of 
 royal and imperial vanities, she thought, with her characteristic 
 grimness, of the sacrifice of her whole career as a school- 
 teacher for the chance of seeing Gerald once a quarter in the 
 shop. She gloated over that, as a sick appetite will gloat over 
 tainted food. And she saw the shop, and the curve of the 
 stairs up to the show-room, and the pier-glass in the show- 
 room. 
 
 Then the guns began to boom again, and splendid carriages 
 swept one after another from under a majestic archway and 
 glittered westward down a lane of spotless splendid uniforms. 
 The carriages were laden with still more splendid uniforms, 
 and with enchanting toilets. Sophia, in her modestly stylish 
 black, mechanically noticed how much easier it was for attired 
 women to sit in a carriage now that crinolines had gone. 
 That was the sole impression made upon her by this glimpse 
 of the last fSte of the Napoleonic Empire. She knew not that 
 the supreme pillars of imperialism were exhibiting themselves 
 before her; and that the eyes of those uniforms and those 
 toilettes were full of the legendary beauty of Eugenie, and 
 their ears echoing to the long phrases of Napoleon the Third 
 about his gratitude to his people for their confidence in 
 him as showh by the plebiscite, and about the ratification of 
 
334 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 constitutional reforms guaranteeing order, and about the empire 
 having been strengthened at its base, and about showing force 
 by moderation and envisaging the future without fear, and 
 about the bosom of peace and liberty, and the eternal con- 
 tinuance of his dynasty. 
 
 She just wondered vaguely what was afoot 
 
 When the last carriage had rolled away, and the guns and 
 acclamations had ceased, the crowd at length began to scatter. 
 She was carried by it into the Place du Palais Royal, and in a 
 few moments she managed to withdraw into the Rue des Bons 
 Enfants and was free. 
 
 The coins in her purse amounted to three sous, and there- 
 fore, though she felt exhausted to the point of illness, she had 
 to return to the hotel on foot. Very slowly she crawled up- 
 wards in the direction of the Boulevard, through the expiring 
 gaiety of the city. Near the Bourse a fiacre overtook her, and 
 in the fiacre were Gerald and a woman. Gerald had not seen 
 her ; he was talking eagerly to his ornate companion. All his 
 body was alive. The fiacre was out of sight in a moment, 
 but Sophia judged instantly the grade of the woman, who was 
 evidently of the discreet class that frequented the big shops of 
 an afternoon with something of their own to sell. 
 
 Sophia's grimness increased. The pace of the fiacre, her 
 fatigued body, Gerald's delightful, careless vivacity, the attrac- 
 tive streaming veil of the nice, modest courtesan — everything 
 conspired to increase it. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Gerald returned to the bedroom which contained his wife 
 and all else that he owned in the world at about nine o'clock 
 that evening. Sophia was in bed. She had been driven to 
 bed by weariness. She would have preferred to sit up to 
 receive her husband, even if it had meant sitting up all night, 
 but her body was too heavy for her spirit. She lay in the 
 dark. She had eaten nothing. Gerald came straight into 
 the room. He struck a match, which burned blue, with a 
 stench, for several seconds, and then gave a clear, yellow 
 flame. He lit a candle ; and saw his wife. 
 
 " Oh ! " he said ; " you're there, are you ? " 
 
 She offered no reply. 
 
A CRISIS FOR GERALD 335 
 
 "Won't speak, eh?" he said. "Agreeable sort of wife ! 
 Well, have you made up your mind to do what I told you ? 
 I've come back especially to know." 
 
 She still did not speak. 
 
 He sat down, with his hat on, and stuck out his feet, 
 wagging them to and fro on the heels. 
 
 "I'm quite without money," he went on. "And I'm sure 
 your people will be glad to lend us a bit till I get some. 
 Especially as it's a question of you starving as well as me. 
 If I had enough to pay your fares to Bursley I'd pack you off. 
 But I haven't." 
 
 She could only hear his exasperating voice. The end of 
 the bed was between her eyes and his. 
 
 " Liar ! " she said, with uncompromising distinctness. The 
 word reached him barbed with all the poison of her contempt 
 and disgust. 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 " Oh ! I'm a liar, am I ? Thanks. I lied enough to 
 get you, I'll admit. But you never complained of that. I 
 remember beginning the New Year well with a thumping lie 
 just to have a sight of you, my vixen. But you didn't com- 
 plain then. I took you with only the clothes on your back. 
 And I've spent every cent I had on you. And now I'm spun, 
 you call me a liar." 
 
 She said nothing. 
 
 "However," he went on, "this is going to come to an 
 end, this is ! " 
 
 He rose, changed the position of the candle, putting it on 
 a chest of drawers, and then drew his trunk from the wall, and 
 knelt in front of it. 
 
 She gathered that he was packing his clothes. At first 
 she did not comprehend his reference to beginning the New 
 Year. Then his meaning revealed itself. That story to her 
 mother about having been attacked by ruffians at the bottom 
 of King Street had been an invention, a ruse to account 
 plausibly for his presence on her mother's doorstep ! And she 
 had never suspected that the story was not true. In spite of 
 her experience of his lying, she had never suspected that that 
 particular statement was a lie. What a simpleton she was 1 
 
 There was a continual movement in the robm for about 
 a quarter of an hour. Then a key turned in the lock of the 
 trunk. 
 
336 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 His head popped up over the foot of the bed. " This isn't 
 a joke, you know," he said. 
 
 She kept silence. 
 
 "I give you one more chance. Will you write to your 
 mother — or Constance if you Uke — or won't you ?" 
 
 She scorned to reply in any way. 
 
 "I'm your husband," he said. "And it's your duty to 
 obey me, particularly in an affair like this. I order you to 
 write to your mother." 
 
 The corners of her lips turned downwards. 
 
 Angered by her mute obstinacy, he broke away from the 
 bed with a sudden gesture. 
 
 " You do as you like," he cried, putting on his overcoat, 
 "and I shall do as I like. You can't say I haven't warned 
 you. If s your own deliberate choice, mind you ! Whatever 
 happens to you you've brought on yourself." He lifted and 
 shrugged his shoulders to get the overcoat exactly into place 
 on his shoulders. 
 
 She would not speak a word, not even to insist that she 
 was indisposed. 
 
 He pushed his trunk outside the door, and returned to 
 the bed. 
 
 " You understand," he said menacingly j " I'm off." 
 
 She looked up at the foul ceiling. 
 
 " Hm I " he sniffed, bringing his reserves of pride to combat 
 the persistent silence that was damaging his dignity. And he 
 went off, sticking his head forward like a pugilist. 
 
 " Here ! " she muttered. " You're forgetting this." 
 
 He turned. 
 
 She stretched her hand to the night-table and held up a 
 red circlet. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " It's the bit of paper off the cigar you bought in the Rue 
 Montmartre this afternoon," she answered, in a significant 
 tone. 
 
 He hesitated, then swore violently, and bounced out of the 
 foom. He had made her suffer, but she was almost repaid for 
 everything by that moment of cruel triumph. She exulted in 
 it, and never forgot it. 
 
 Five minutes later, the gloomy menial in felt slippers and 
 alpaca jacket, who seemed to pass the whole of his life flitting 
 in and out of bedrooms like a rabbit in a warren, carried 
 
A CRISIS FOR GERALD 337 
 
 Gerald's trunk downstairs. She recognized the peculiar tread 
 of his slippers. 
 
 Then there was a knock at the door. The landlady entered, 
 actuated by a legitimate curiosity. 
 
 " Madame is suflFering ? " the landlady began. 
 
 Sophia refused offers of food and nursing. 
 
 " Madame knows without doubt that monsieur has gone 
 away?" 
 
 " Has he paid the bill ? " Sophia asked bluntly. 
 
 "But yes, ma dame, till to-morrow. Then madame has 
 want of nothing?" 
 
 " If you will extinguish the candle," said Sophia. 
 
 He had deserted her, then ! 
 
 " All this," she reflected, listening in the dark to the 
 ceaseless rattle of the street, "because mother and Constance 
 wanted to see the elephant, and I had to go into father's 
 room! I should never have caught sight of him from the 
 drawing-room window I " 
 
 IV 
 
 She passed a night of physical misery, exasperated by the 
 tireless rattling vitality of the street. She kept saying to 
 herself : " I'm all alone now, and I'm going to be ill. I am ill." 
 She saw herself dying in Paris, and heard the expressions of 
 facile sympathy and idle curiosity drawn forth by the sight 
 of the dead body of this foreign woman in a little Paris hotel. 
 She reached the stage, in the gradual excruciation of her 
 nerves, when she was obliged to concentrate her agonized 
 mind on an intense and painful expectancy of the next new 
 noise, which when it came increased her torture and decreased 
 her strength to support it. She went through all the intermi- 
 nable dilatoriness of the dawn, from the moment when she 
 could scarcely discern the window to the moment when she 
 could read the word ' Bock ' on the red circlet of paper which 
 had tossed all night on the sea of the counterpane. She knew 
 she would never sleep again. She could not imagine herself 
 asleep ; and then she was startled by a sound that seemed to 
 clash with the rest of her impressions. It was a knocking at 
 the door. With a start she perceived that she must have been 
 asl ep. 
 
 X 
 
338 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " Enter," she murmured. 
 
 There entered the menial in alpaca. His waxen face 
 showed a morose commiseration. He noiselessly approached 
 the bed — he seemed to have none of the characteristics of a 
 man, but to be a creature infinitely mysterious and aloof from 
 humanity — and held out to Sophia a visitiirg card in his grey 
 hand. 
 
 It was Chirac's card. 
 
 "Monsieur asked for monsieur," said the waiter. "And 
 then, as monsieur is gone away he demanded to see madame. 
 He says it is very important." 
 
 Her heart jumped, partly in vague alarm, and partly' with a 
 sense of relief at this chance of speaking to some one whom 
 she knew. She tried to reflect rationally. 
 
 " What time is it? " she inquired. 
 
 " Eleven o'clock, madame." 
 
 This was surprising. The fact that it was eleven o'clock 
 destroyed the remains of her self-confidence. How could it 
 bri eleven o'clock, with the dawn scarcely finished ? 
 
 " He says it is very important," repeated the waiter, imper- 
 turbably and solemnly. " Will madame see him an instant ? " 
 
 Between resignation and anticipation she said : " Yes." 
 
 " It is well, madame," said the waiter, disappearing without 
 a sound. 
 
 she sat up and managed to drag her moHnie from a chair 
 and put it round her shoulders. Then she sank back from 
 weakness, physical and spiritual. She hated to receive Chirac 
 in a bedroom, and particularly in that bedroom. But the 
 hotel had no public room except the dining-room, which 
 began to be occupied after eleven o'clock. Moreover, she 
 could not possibly get up. Yes, on the whole she was pleased 
 to see Chirac. He was almost her only acquaintance, as- 
 suredly the only being whom she could by any stretch of 
 meaning call a friend, in the whole of Europe. Gerald and 
 she had wandered to and fro, skimming always over the real 
 life of nations, and never penetrating into it. There was no 
 place for them, because they had made none. With the 
 exception of Chirac, whom an accident of business had thrown 
 into Gerald's company years before, they had no social 
 relations. Gerald was not a man to make friends ; he did not 
 seem to need friends, or at any rate to feel the want of them. 
 But, as chance had given him Chirac, he maintained the 
 
A CRISIS i'OR GERALD 339 
 
 connection whenever they came to Paris. Sophia, of course, 
 had not been able to escape from the solitude imposed by 
 existence in hotels. Since her marriage she had never spoken 
 to a woman in the way of intimacy. But once or twice she 
 had approached intimacy with Chirac, whose wistful admira- 
 tion for her always aroused into activity her desire to 
 charm. 
 
 Preceded by the menial, he came into the room hurriedly, 
 apologetically, with an air of acute anxiety. And as he saw 
 her lying on her back, with flushed features, her hair dis- 
 arranged, and only the grace of the silk ribbons of her 
 matink to mitigate the melancholy repulsiveness of her 
 surroundings, that anxiety seemed to deepen. 
 
 " Dear madame," he stammered, " all my excuses ! " He 
 hastened to the bedside and kissed her hand — a little peck, 
 according to his custom. " You are ill ? " 
 
 " I have my migraine," she said. " You want Gerald ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said diffiilently. " He had promised " 
 
 " He has left me," Sophia interrupted him in her weak and 
 fatigued voice. She closed her eyes as she uttered the words. 
 
 "Left you?" He glanced round to be sure that the 
 waiter had retired. 
 
 " Quitted me I Abandoned me ! Last night ! " 
 
 " Not possible ! " he breathed. 
 
 She nodded.. She felt intimate with him. Like all 
 secretive persons, she could be suddenly expansive at times. 
 
 " It is serious ? " he questioned. 
 
 " All that is most serious," she replied. 
 
 " And you ill ! Ah, the wretch ! Ah, the wretch ! That, 
 for example ! " He waved his hat about. 
 
 "What is it you want, Chirac?" she demanded, in a 
 confidential tone. ~ 
 
 "Eh, well," said Chirac. "You do not know where he 
 has gone ? " 
 
 " No. What do you want ? " she insisted. 
 
 He was nervous. He fidgetted. She guessed that, though 
 warm with sympathy for her plight, he was preoccupied by 
 interests and apprehensions of his own. He did not refuse 
 her request temporarily to leave the astonishing matter of her 
 situation in order to discuss the matter of his visit. 
 
 " Eh, well I He came to me yesterday afternoon m the 
 Rue Croissant to bqwoy? some money." 
 
S40 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 She understood then the object of Gerald's stroll on the 
 previous afternoon. 
 
 " I hope you didn't lend him any," she said. 
 
 " Eh, well 1 It was like this. He said he ought to have 
 received five thousand francs yesterday morning, but that he 
 had had a telegram that it would not arrive till to-day. And 
 he had need of five hundred francs at once. I had not five 
 hundred francs " — he smiled sadly, as if to insinuate that he 
 did not handle such sums — " but I borrowed it from the cash- 
 box of the journal. It is necessary, absolutely, that I should 
 return it this morning." He spoke with increased seriousness. 
 "Your husband said he would take a cab and bring me the 
 money immediately on the arrival of the post this morning — 
 about nine o'clock. Pardon me for deranging you with such 
 a " 
 
 He stopped. She could see that he really was grieved to 
 derange ' her, but that circumstances pressed. 
 
 " At my paper," he murmured, " it is not so easy as that 
 to — in fine 1 " 
 
 Gerald had genuinely been at his last francs. He had not lied 
 when she thought he bad lied. The nakedness of his character 
 showed now. Instantly upon the final and definite cessation ol 
 the lawful supply of money, he had set his wits to obtain money 
 unlawfully. He had, in fact, simply stolen it from Chirac, 
 with the ornamental addition of endangering Chirac's reputation 
 and situation — ^as a sort of reward to Chirac for the kindness ! 
 And, further, no sooner had he got hold of the money than it 
 had intoxicated him, and he had yielded to the first fatuous 
 temptation. He had no sense of responsibility, no scruple. 
 And as for common prudence — had he not risked permanent 
 disgrace and even prison for a paltry sum which he would 
 certainly squander in two or three days ? Yes, it was indubi- 
 table that he would stop at nothing, at nothing whatever. 
 
 " You did not know that he was coming to me ? " asked 
 Chirac, pulling his short, silky brown beard. 
 
 " No," Sophia answered. 
 
 " But he said that you had charged him with your friendli- 
 nesses to me 1" He nodded his head once or twice, sadly but 
 candidly accepting, in his quality of a Latin, the plain facts of 
 human nature — reconciling himself to them at once. 
 
 Sophia revolted at tliis crowning detail of the structure of 
 Gerald's rascality. 
 
A CRISIS FOR GERALD 341 
 
 " It is fortunate that I can pay you," she said. 
 
 " But " he tried to protest. 
 
 " I have quite enough money." 
 
 She did not say this to screen Gerald, but merely from 
 amour-propre. She would not let Chirac think that she was 
 the wife of a man bereft of all honour. And so she clothed 
 Gerald with the rag of having, at any rate, not left hef in 
 destitution as well as in sickness. Her assertion seemed a 
 strange one, in view of the fact that he had abandoned her on 
 the previous evening— ^that is to say, immediately after the 
 borrowing from Chirac. But Chirac did not examine the 
 statement 
 
 "Perhaps he has the intention to send me the money. 
 Perhaps, after all, he is now at the offices " 
 
 " No," said Sophia, " He is gone. Will you go down- 
 stairs and wait for me. We will go together to Cook's office. 
 It is English money I have." 
 
 "Cook's?" he repeated. The word now so potent had 
 then little significance. " But you are ilL You cannot " 
 
 " I feel better." 
 
 She did. Or rather, she felt nothing except the power of 
 her resolve to remove the painful anxiety from that wistful 
 brow. The shame of the trick played on Chirac awakened 
 new forces in her. She dressed in a physical torment which, 
 however, had no more reality than a nightmare. She searched 
 in a place where even an inquisitive husband would not think 
 of looking, and then, painfully, she descended the long stairs, 
 holding to the rail, which swam round and round her, carrying 
 the whole staircase with it. " After all," she thought, " I can't 
 be seriously ill, or I shouldn't have been able to get up and 
 go out like this. I never guessed early this morning that I 
 could do it ! I can't possibly be as ill as I thought I was ! " 
 
 And in the vestibule she encountered Chirac's face, 
 lightening at the sight of her, which proved to him that his 
 deliverance was really to be accomplished, 
 
 "Permit me " 
 
 " I'm all right," she smiled, tottering. " Get a cab." It 
 suddenly occurred to her that she might quite as easily have 
 given him the money in English notes ; he could have changed 
 them. But she had not thought. Her brain would not 
 operate. She was dreaming and waking together. 
 
 He helped her into the cab. 
 
342 THE OLD WIVES^ TALE 
 
 In the bureau de change there was a little knot of English 
 people, with naive, romantic, and honest faces, quite different 
 from the faces outside in the street. No corruption in those 
 faces, but a sort of wondering and infantile sincerity, rather 
 out of its element and lost in a land too unsophisticated, 
 seeming to belong to an earlier age! Sophia liked their 
 tourist stare, and their plain and ugly clothes. She longed to 
 be back in England, longed for a moment with violence, 
 drowning in that desire. 
 
 The English clerk behind his brass bars took her notes, 
 and carefully examined them one by one. She watched him, 
 not entirely convinced of his reality, and thought vaguely of 
 the detestable morning when she had abstracted the notes 
 from Gerald's pocket. She was filled with pity for the simple, 
 ignorant Sophia of those days, the Sophia who still had a few 
 ridiculous illusions concerning Gerald's character. Often, 
 since, she had been tempted to break into the money, but she 
 had always withstood the temptation, saying to herself that an 
 hour of more urgent need would come. It had come. She 
 was proud of her firmness, of the force of will which had 
 enabled her to reserve the fund intact. The clerk gave, her a 
 keen look, and then asked her how she would take the French 
 money. And she saw the notes falling down one after 
 another on to the counter as the clerk separated them with a 
 snapping sound of the paper. 
 
 Chirac was beside her. 
 
 " Does that make the count ? " she said, having pushed 
 towards him five hundred-franc notes. 
 
 " I should not know how to thank you," he said, accepting 
 the notes. " Truly " 
 
 His joy was unmistakably eager. He had had a shock 
 and a fright, and he now saw the danger past. He could 
 return to the cashier of his newspaper, and fling down the 
 money with a lordly and careless air, as if to say : " When it is 
 a question of these English, one can always be sure 1 " But 
 first he would escort her to the hotel. She declined — she did 
 not know why, for he was her sole point of moral support in 
 all France. He insisted. She yielded. So she turned her 
 
A CRISIS FOR GERALD 843 
 
 back, with regret, on that Uttle English oasis in the Sahara of 
 Paris, and staggered to the fiacre. 
 
 And now that she had done what she had to do, she lost 
 control of her body, and reclined flaccid and inert. Chirac 
 was evidently alarmed. He did not speak, but glanced at her 
 from time to time with eyes full of fear. The carriage 
 appeared to her to be swimming amid waves over great 
 depths. Then she was aware of a heavy weight against her 
 shoulder ; she had slipped down upon Chirac, unconscious. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 FEVER 
 
 Then she was lying in bed in a small room, obscure because 
 it was heavily curtained ; the light came through the inner pair 
 of curtains of icru lace, with a beautiful soft silvery quality. 
 A man was standing by "the side of the bed — not Chirac. 
 
 " Now, madame," he said to her, with kind firmness, and 
 speaking with a charming exaggerated purity of the vowels. 
 " You have the mucous fever. I have had it myself. You 
 will be forced to take baths, very frequently. I must ask you 
 to reconcile yourself to that, to be good." 
 
 She did not reply. It did not occur to her to reply. But 
 she certainly thought that this doctor — he was probably a 
 doctor — was overestimating her case. She felt better than she 
 had felt for two days. Still, she did not desire to move, nor 
 was she in the least anxious as to her surroundings. She lay 
 ' quiet; 
 
 A woman in a rather coquettish deshabille watched over 
 her with expert skill. 
 
 Later, Sophia seemed to be revisiting the sea on whose 
 waves the cab had swum ; but now she was under the sea, in 
 a watery gulf, terribly deep ; and the sounds of the world 
 came to her through the water, sudden and strange. Hands 
 seized her and forced her from the subaqueous grotto where 
 s_he had hidden into new alarms. And she briefly perceived 
 that there was a large bath by the side of the bed, and that she 
 was being pushed into it. The water was icy cold. After 
 that her outlook upon things was for a time clearer and more 
 precise. She knew from fragments of talk which she heard 
 that she was put into the cold bath by her bed every three 
 hours, night and day, and that she remained in it for ten 
 
 344 
 
FEVER 845 
 
 minutes. Always, before the bath, she had to drink a glass 
 of wine, and sometimes another glass while she was in the 
 bath. Beyond this wine, and occasionally a cup of soup, she 
 took nothing, had no wish to- take anything. She grew 
 perfectly accustomed to these extraordinary habits of life, to 
 this merging of night and day into one monotonous and end- 
 less repetition of the same rite amid the same circumstances on 
 exactly the same spot; Then followed a period during which 
 she objected to being constantly wakened up for this annoying 
 immersion. And she fought against it even in her dreams. 
 Long days seemed to pass when she could not be sure 
 whether she had been put into the bath or not, when all 
 external phenomena were disconcertingly interwoven with 
 matters which she knew to be merely fanciful. And then she 
 was overwhelmed by the hopeless gravity of her state. She 
 felt that her state was desperate. She felt that she was dying. 
 Her unhappiness was extreme, not because she was dying, but 
 because the veils of sense were so puzzling, so exasperating, 
 and because her exhausted body was so vitiated, in every fibre, 
 by disease. She was perfectly aware that she was going to 
 die. She cried aloud for a pair of scissors. She wanted to cut 
 off her hair, and to send pari of it to Constance and part of it 
 to her mother, in separate packages. She insisted upon 
 separate packages. Nobody would give her a pair of scissors. 
 She implored, meekly, haughtily, furiously, but nobody would 
 satisfy her. It seemed to her shocking that all her hair 
 should go with her into her coffin while Constance and her 
 mother had nothing by which to remember her, no tangible 
 souvenir of her beauty. Then she fought for the scissors. 
 She clutched at some one — always through those baffling veils 
 — who was putting her into the bath by the bedside, and 
 fought frantically. It appeared to her that this some one was 
 the rather stout woman who had supped at Sylvain's with the 
 quarrelsome Englishman four years ago. She could not rid 
 herself of this singular conceit, though she knew it to be 
 absurd. ... , 
 
 A long time afterwards — it seemed like a century — she did 
 actually and unmistakably see the woman sitting by her bed, 
 and the woman was crying. 
 
 " Why are you crying? " Sophia asked wonderingly. 
 
 And the other, younger, woman, who was standing at the 
 foot of the bed, replied : 
 
346- THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " You do well to ask 1 It is you who have hurt her, in your 
 delirium, when you so madly demanded the scissors." 
 
 The stout woman smiled with the tears on her cheeks ; but 
 Sophia wept, from remorse. The stout woman looked old, 
 worn, and untidy. The other one was much younger. Sophia 
 did not trouble to inquire from them who they were. 
 
 That little conversation formed a brief interlude in the 
 delirium, which overtook her again and distorted everything. 
 She forgot, however, that she was destined to die. 
 
 One day her brain cleared. She could be sure that she had 
 gone to sleep in the morning and not wakened till the evening. 
 Hence she had not been put into the bath. 
 
 " Have I had my baths ? " she questioned. 
 
 It was the doctor who faced her. 
 
 " No," he said, " the baths are finished." 
 
 She knew from his face that she was out of danger. More- 
 over, she was conscious of a new feeling in her body, as though 
 the fount of physical energy within her, long interrupted, had 
 recommenced to flow — but very slowly, a trickling. It was a 
 rebirth. She was not glad, but her body itself was glad ; her 
 body had an existence of its own. 
 
 She was now often left by herself in the bedroom. To the 
 right of the foot of the bed was a piano in walnut, and to the 
 left a chimney-piece with a large mirror. She wanted to look 
 at herself in the mirror. But it was a very long way off. She 
 tried to sit up, and could not. She hoped that one day she 
 would be able to get as far as the mirror. She said not a word 
 about this to either of the two women. 
 
 Often they would sit in the bedroom and talk without 
 ceasing. Sophia learnt that the stout woman was named 
 Foucault, and the other Laurence. Sometimes Laurence 
 would address Madame Foucault as Aim^e, but usually she 
 was more formal. Madame Foucault always called the other 
 Laurence. 
 
 Sophia's curiosity stirred and awoke. But she could not 
 obtain any very exact information as to where she was, except 
 that the house was in the Rue Brdda, off the Rue Notre Dame 
 de Lorette. She recollected^ vaguely that the reputation of the 
 street was sinister. It appeared that, on the day when she had 
 gone out with Chirac, the upper part of the Rue Notre Dame 
 de Lorette was closed for repairs — (this she remembered) — 
 and that the cabman had turned up the Rue Brdda in order to 
 
FEVER 847 
 
 make a detour, and that it was just 'opposite to the house of 
 Madame Foucault that she had lost consciousness. Madame 
 Foucault happened to be getting into a cab at the moment ; 
 but she had told Chirac nevertheless to carry Sophia into the 
 house, and a policeman had helped. Then, when the doctor 
 came, it was discovered that she could not be moved, save to 
 a hospital, and both Madame Foucault and Laurence were 
 determined that no friend of Chirac's should be committed 
 to the horrors of a Paris hospital, Madame Foucault had 
 suffered in one as a patient, and Laurence had been a nurse in 
 another. . . . 
 
 Chirac was now away. The women talked loosely of a 
 war. 
 
 "How kind you have been!" murmured Sophia, with 
 humid eyes. 
 
 But they silenced her with gestures. She was not to talk. 
 They seemed to have nothing further to tell her. They said 
 Chirac would be returning perhaps soon, and that she could 
 talk to him. Evidently they both held Chirac in affection. 
 They said often that he was a charming boy. 
 
 Bit by bit Sophia comprehended the length and the 
 seriousness of her illness, and the immense devotion of the 
 two women, and the terrific disturbance of their lives, and 
 her own debility. She saw that the women were strongly 
 attached to her, and she could not understand why, as she had 
 never done anything for them, whereas they had done every- 
 thing for her. She had not learnt that benefits rendered, not 
 benefits received, are the cause of such attachments. 
 
 All the time she was plotting, and gathering her strength to 
 disobey orders and get as far as the mirror. Her preliminary 
 studies and her preparations were as elaborate as those of a 
 prisoner arranging to escape from a fortress. The first 
 attempt was a failure. The second succeeded. Though she 
 could not stand without support, she managed by clinging to 
 the bed to reaclj a chair, and to push the chair in front of 
 her until it approached the mirror. The enterprise was 
 exciting and terrific. Then she saw a face in the glass : 
 white, incredibly emaciated, with great, wild, staring eyes; 
 and the shoulders were bent as though with age. It was a 
 painful, almost a horrible sight It frightened her, so that 
 in her alarm she recoiled from it. Not attending sufiS- 
 ciently to the chair, she sank to the ground. She could not 
 
348 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 pick herself up, and she was caught there, miserably, by her 
 angered jailers. The vision of her face taught her more 
 eflSciently than anything else the gravity of her adventure. 
 As the women Ufted her inert, repentant mass into the 
 bed, she reflected, " How queer my life is 1 " It seemed to 
 her that she ought to have been trimming hats in the show- 
 room instead of bemg in that curtained, mysterious, Parisian 
 interior. 
 
 II 
 
 One day Madame Foucault knocked at the door of Sophia's 
 little room (this ceremony of knocking was one of the indica- 
 tions that Sophia, convalescent, had been reinstated in her 
 rights as an individual), and cried : 
 
 " Madame, one is going to leave you all alone for some 
 time." 
 
 "Come in," said Sophia, who was sitting up in an arm- 
 chair, and reading. 
 
 Madame Foucault opened the door. " One is going to 
 leave you all alone for some time," she repeited in a low, 
 confidential voice, sharply contrasting with her shriek behind 
 the door. 
 
 Sophia nodded and smiled, and Madame Koucault also 
 • nodded and smiled. But Madame Foucault's face quickly 
 resumed its anxious expression. 
 
 "The servant's brother marries himself to-day, and she 
 implored me to accord her two days — what would you? 
 Madame Laurence is out. And I must go out. It is 
 four o'clock. I shall re-enter at six o'clock striking. There- 
 fore . . ." 
 
 " Perfectly," Sophia concurred. 
 
 She looked curiously at Madame Foucault, who was care- 
 fully made up and arranged for the street, in a dress of yellow 
 tussore with blue ornaments, bright lemon-coloured gloves, a 
 little blue bonnet, and a little white parasol not wider when 
 opened than her shoulders. Cheeks, lips, and eyes were 
 heavily charged with rouge, powder, or black. And that too 
 abundant waist had been most cunningly confined in a belt 
 that descended beneath, instead of rising above, the lower 
 masses of the vast torso. The general effect was worthy of 
 
FEVER 349 
 
 the effort that must have gone to it Madame Foucault 
 was not rejuvenated by her toilette, but it almost procured 
 her pardon for the crime of being over forty, fat, creased, 
 and worn out. It was one of those defeats that are a 
 triumph. 
 
 " You are very chic," said Sophia, uttering her admiration. 
 
 " Ah I " said Madame Foucault, shrugging the shoulders of 
 disillusion. " Chic ! What does that do ? " 
 
 But she was pleased. 
 
 The front-door banged. Sophia, by herself for the first 
 time in the flat into which she had been carried unconscious 
 and which she had never since left, had the disturbing sensation 
 of being surrounded by mysterious rooms and mysterious things. 
 She tried to continue reading, but the sentences conveyed 
 nothing to her. She rose — she cbuld walk now a little — and 
 looked out of the window, through the interstices of the pattern 
 of the lace curtains. The window gave on the courtyard, which 
 was about sixteen feet below her. A low wall divided the 
 courtyard from (that of the next house. And the windows of 
 the two houses, only to be distinguished by the different tints 
 of their yellow paint, rose tier above tier in level floors, con- 
 tinuing beyond Sophia's field of vision. She pressed her face 
 against the glass, and remembered the St. Luke's Square of 
 her childhood ; and just as there from the showroom window 
 she could not even by pressing her face against the glass see 
 the pavement, so here she could not see the roof; the court- 
 yard was like the bottom of a well. There was no end to the 
 windows ; six storeys she could count, and the sills of a seventh 
 were the limit of her view. Every window was heavily cur- 
 tained, like her own. Some of the upper ones had green sun- 
 blinds. Scarcely any sound! Mysteries brooded without "as 
 well as within the flat of Madame Foucault. Sophia saw a 
 bodiless hand twitch at a curtain and vanish. She noticed a 
 green bird in a tiny cage on a sill in the next house. A woman 
 whom she took to be the concierge appeared in the courtyard, 
 deposited a small plant in the track of a ray of sunshine that 
 lighted a corner for a couple of hours in the afternoon, and 
 disappeared again. Then she heard a piano — somewhere. 
 That was all. The feeling that secret and strange lives were 
 being lived behind those baffling windows, that humanity was 
 everywhere intimately pulsing around her, oppressed her spirit' 
 vet not quite unpleasantly. The environment softened her 
 
S50 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 glance upon the spectacle of existence, insomuch that sadness 
 became a voluptuous pleasure. And the environment threw 
 her back on herself, into a sensuous contemplation of the 
 fundamental fact of Sophia Scales, formerly Sophia Baines. 
 
 She turned to the room, with the marks of the bath on the 
 floor by the bed, and the draped piano that was never opened, 
 and her two trunks filling up the corner opposite the door. 
 She had the idea of thoroughly examining those trunks, which 
 Chirac or somebody else must have fetched from the hotel. 
 At the top of one of them was her purse, tied up with old 
 ribbon and ostentatiously sealed ! How comical these French 
 people were when they deemed it necessary to be serious ! 
 She emptied both trunks, scrutinizing minutely all her goods, 
 and thinking of the varied occasions upon which she had 
 obtained them. Then she carefully restored them, her mind 
 full of souvenirs newly awakened. 
 
 She sighed as she straightened her back. A clock struck 
 in another room. It seemed to invite her towards discoveries. 
 She had been in no other room of the flat. She knew nothing 
 of the rest of the flat save by sound. For neither of the other 
 women had ever described it, nor had it occurred to them that 
 Sophia might care to leave her room though she could not 
 leave the house. 
 
 She opened her door, and glanced along the dim corridor, 
 with which she was familiar. She knew that the kitchen lay 
 next to her little room, and that next to the kitchen came the 
 front-door. On the opposite side of the corridor were four 
 double-doors. She crossed to the pair of doors facing her 
 own little door, and quietly turned the handle, but the doors 
 were locked; the same with the next pair. The third pair 
 yielded, and she was in a large bedroom, with three windows 
 on the street. She saw that the second pair of doors, which she 
 had failed to unfasten, also opened into this room. Between 
 the two pairs of doors was a wide bed. In front of the central 
 window was a large dressing-table. To the left of the bed, 
 half hiding the locked doors, was a large screen. On the 
 marble mantelpiece, reflected in a huge mirror that ascended 
 to the ornate cornice, was a gilt-and-basalt clock, with pendants 
 to match. On the opposite side of the room from this was a 
 long wide couch. The floor was of polished oak, with a skin 
 on either side of the bed. At the foot of the bed was a small 
 writing-table, with a penny bottle of ink on it. A few coloured 
 
FEVER 351 
 
 prints and engravings — representing, for example, Louis 
 Philippe and his family, and people perishing on a raft — broke 
 the tedium of the walls. The first impression on Sophia's eye 
 was one of sombre splendour. Everything had the air of being 
 richly ornamented, draped, looped, carved, twisted, brocaded 
 into gorgeousness. The dark crimson bed-hangings fell from 
 massive rosettes in majestic folds. The counterpane was 
 covered with lace. The window-curtains had amplitude beyond 
 the necessary, and they were suspended from behind fringed 
 and pleated valances. The green sofa and its sateen cushions 
 were stiff with applied embroidery. The chandelier hanging 
 from the middle of the ceiling, modelled to represent cupids 
 holding festoons, was a glittering confusion of gilt and lustres : 
 the lustres tinkled when Sophia stood on a certain part of 
 the floor. The cane-seated chairs were completely gilded. 
 There was an efifect of spaciousness. And the situation of 
 the bed between the two double-doors, with the three windows 
 in front and other pairs of doors communicating with other 
 rooms on either hand, produced in addition an admirable 
 symmetry. 
 
 But Sophia, with the sharp gaze of a woman brought up in 
 the traditions of a modesty so proud that it scorns ostentation, 
 quickly tested and condemned the details of this chamber that 
 imitated every luxury. Nothing in it, she found, was ' good.' 
 And in St. Luke's Square 'gootiness' meant honest workman- 
 ship, permanence, the absence of pretence. All the stuflFs wer^ 
 (^ap and showy and shabby ; all the furniture was cracked, 
 warped, or broken. The clock showed five minutes past twelve 
 at five o'clock. And further, dust was everywhere, except in 
 those places where even the most perfunctory cleaning could 
 not have left it. In the obscurer pleatings of draperies it lay 
 thick. Sophia's lip curled, and instinctively she lifted her 
 peignoir. One of her mother's phrases came into her head : 'a 
 lick and a promise.' And then another: "If you want to 
 leave dirt, leave it where everybody can see it, not in the 
 comers." 
 
 She peeped behind the screen, and all the horrible welter 
 of a cabinet de toilette met her gaze : a repulsive medley of foul 
 waters, stained vessels and cloths, brushes, sponges, powders, 
 and pastes. Clothes were hung up in disorder on rough 
 nails ; among them she recognized a dressing-gown of Madame 
 Foucault's, and, behind affairs of later date, the dazzling scarlet 
 
852 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 cloak in which she had first seen Madame Foucault, dilapi- 
 dated now. So this was Madame Foucault's room 1 This 
 was the bower from which that elegance emerged, the JltL 
 from which had sprung the mature blossom ! 
 
 She passed fi-om that room direct to another, of which the 
 shutters were closed, leaving it in twilight. This room too 
 was a bedroom, rather smaller than the middle one, and having 
 only one window, but furnished with the same dubious opulence. 
 Dust covered it everywhere, and small footmarks were visible 
 in the dust on the floor. At the back was a small door, papered 
 to match the wall, and within this door was a cabinet de toilette, 
 with no light and no air ; neither in the room nor in the closet 
 was there any sign of individual habitation. She traversed 
 the main bedroom again and found another bedroom to 
 balance the second one, but open to the full light of day, and 
 in a state of extreme disorder ; the double-pillowed bed had 
 not even been made ; clothes and towels draped all the fur- 
 niture ; shoes were about the floor, and on a piece of string 
 tied across the windows hung a single white stocking, wet. At 
 the back was a cabinet de toilette, as dark as the dther one, a 
 vile malodorous mess of appliances whose familiar forms loomed 
 vague and extraordinarily sinister in the dense obscurity. 
 Sophia turned away with the righteous disgust of one whose 
 preparations for the gaze of the world are as candid and simple 
 as those of a child. Conceuled dirt shocked her as much as 
 it would, have shocked her mother j and as for the trickeries 
 of the toilet table, she contemned them as harshly as a young 
 saint who has never been tempted contemns moral weakness. 
 She thought of the strange flaccid daily life of those two 
 women, whose hours seemed to slip unprofitably away without 
 any result of achievement. She had actually witnessed 
 nothing; but since the beginning of her convalescence her 
 ears had heard, and she could piece the evidences togtether 
 There was never any sound ia the flat, outside the kitchen, 
 until noon. Then vague noises and smells would commence. 
 And about one o'clock Madame Foucault, disarrayed, would 
 come to inquire if the servant had attended to the needs of 
 the invalid. Then the odours of cookery would accentuate 
 themselves; bells rang; fragments of conversations escaped 
 through doors ajar; occasionally a man'.s voice or a heavy 
 step ; then the fragrance of coffee ; sometimes the sound of a 
 kiss, the banging of the front door, the noise of brushing, or 
 
FEVER S53 
 
 of the shaking of a carpet, a little scream as at some trifling 
 domestic contretemps. Laurence, still in a dressing-gown, 
 would lounge into Sophia's room, dirty, haggard, but polite 
 with a curious stiff ceremony, and would drmk her coffee there., 
 This wandering in peignoirs would continue till three o'clock, 
 and then Laurence might say, as if nerving herself to an un- 
 usual and immense effort : " I must be dressed by five o'clock. 
 I have not a moment." Often Madame Foucault did not dress 
 at all ; on such days she would go to bed immediately after 
 dinner, with the remark that she didn't know what was the 
 matter with her, but she was exhausted. And then the servant 
 would retire to her seventh floor, and there would be silence 
 until, now and then, faint creepings were heard at midnight or 
 after. Once or twice, through the chinks of her door, Sophia 
 had seen a light at two o'clock in the morning, just before 
 the dawn. 
 
 Yet these were the women who had saved her life, who 
 between them had put her into a cold bath every three hours 
 night and day for weeks ! Surely it was impossible after that to 
 despise them for shiftlessness and talkative idling in peignoirs ; 
 impossible to despise them for anything whatever 1 Bat 
 Sophia, conscious of her inheritance of strong and resolute 
 character, did despise them as poor things. The one point 
 on which she envied them was their formal manners to her, 
 which seemed to become more dignified and graciously distant 
 as her health improved. It was always • Madame,' ' Madame,' 
 to her, with an intonation of increasing deference. They might 
 have been apologizing to her for themselves. 
 
 She prowled into all the corners of the flat j but she dis- 
 covered no more rooms, nothing but a large cupboard crammed 
 with Madame Foucault's dresses. Then she went back to the 
 large bedroom, and enjoyed the busy movement and rattle of 
 the sloping street, and had long, vague yearnings for strengi h 
 and for freedom in wide, sane places. She decided that on 
 the morrow she would dress herself 'properly,' and never agajn 
 wear a peignoir j the peignoir and all that it represented dis- 
 gusted her. And while looking at the street she ceased to see 
 it and saw Cook's office and Chirac helping her into the 
 carriage. Where was he ? Why had he brought her to this 
 impossible abode? What did he mean by such conduct? 
 , . . But could he have acted otherwise ? He had done the 
 one thing that he could do. . . . Chance ! . . . Chance ! 
 
 3 A 
 
854 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 And why an impossible abode ? Was one place more impos- 
 sible than another ? . . . All this came of running away from 
 home with Gerald. It was remarkable that she seldom thought 
 of Gerald. He had vanished from her life as he had come 
 into it — madly, preposterously. She wondered what the next 
 stage in her career would be. She certainly could not forecast 
 it. Perhaps Gerald was starving, or in prison. . . . Bah ! 
 That exclamation expressed her appalling disdain of Gerald 
 and of the Sophia who had once deemed him the paragon of 
 men. Bah ! 
 
 A carriage stopping in front of the house awakened her 
 from her. meditation. Madame Foucault and a man very 
 much younger than Madame Foucault got out of it, Sophia 
 fled. After all, this prying into other people's rooms was 
 quite inexcusable. She dropped on to her own bed and 
 picked up a book, in case Madame Foucault should come in. 
 
 Ill 
 
 In the evening, just after night had fallen, Sophia on the bed 
 heard the sound of raised and acrimonious voices in Madame 
 Foucault's room. Nothing except dinner had happened since 
 the arrival of Madame Foucault and the young man. These 
 two had evidently dined informally in the bedroom on a dish 
 or so prepared by Madame Foucault, who had herself served 
 Sophia wich her invalid's repast. The odours of cookery still 
 hung in the air. 
 
 The noise of virulent discussion increased and continued, 
 and then Sophia could hear sobbing, broken by short and 
 fierce phrases from the man. Then the door of the bedroom 
 opened brusquely. " J'en ai soupd I" exclaimed the man, in 
 tones of angry disgust. " Laisse-moi, je te prie ! " And then 
 a soft muffled sound, as of a struggle, a quick step, and the 
 very violent banging of the front door. After that there was 
 a noticeable silence, save for the regular sobbing. Sophia 
 wondered when it would cease, that monotonous sobbing. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " she called out from her bed. 
 
 The sobbing grew louder, like the sobbing of a child who 
 has detected an awakening of sympathy and instinctively 
 begins to practise upon it. In the end Sophia arose and 
 put on the peignoir which she had almost determined never 
 to wear again. 
 
FEVER 355 
 
 The broad corridor was lighted by a small, smelling oil- 
 lamp with a crimson globe. That soft, transforming radiance 
 seemed to paint the whole corridor with voluptuous luxury: 
 so much so that it was impossible to believe that the smell 
 came from the lamp. Under the lamp lay Madame Foucault 
 on the floor, a shapeless mass of lace, frilled linen, and corset ; 
 her light brown hair was loose and spread about the floor 
 At the first glance, the creature abandoned to grief made a 
 romantic and striking picture, and Sophia thought for an 
 instant that she had at length encountered life on a plane 
 that would correspond'fo her dreams of romance. And she was 
 impressed, with a feeling somewhat akin to that of a middling 
 commoner when confronted with a viscount. There was, in 
 the distance, something imposing and sensational about that 
 prone, trembling figure. The tragic works of love were 
 therein apparently manifest, in a sort of dignified beauty. But 
 when Sophia bent over Madame Foucault, and touched her 
 flabbiness, this illusion at once vanished ; and instead of being 
 dramaticaily pathetic the woman was ridiculous. Her face, 
 especially as damaged by tears, could not support the ordeal 
 of inspection it was horrible; not a picture, but a palette; 
 or like the coloured design of a pavement artist after a heavy 
 shower. Her great, relaxed eyelids alone would have rendered 
 any face absurd ; and there were monstrous details far worse 
 than the eyelids. Then she was amazingly fat; her fle:h 
 seemed to be escaping at all ends from a corset strained to 
 the utmost limit. And above her boots — she was still wearing 
 dainty, high-heeled, tightly laced boots — the calves bulged 
 suddenly out. 
 
 As a woman of between forty and fifty, the obese sepulchre 
 of a dead vulgar beauty, she had no right to passions and tears 
 and homage, or even the means of life ; she had no right to 
 expose herself picturesquely beneath a crimson glow in all the 
 panoply of ribboned garters and lacy seductiveness. It was 
 silly; it was disgraceful. She ought to have known that only 
 youth and slimness have the right to appeal to the feelings by 
 indecent abandonments. 
 
 Such were the thoughts that mingled with the sympathy 
 of the beautiful and §lim Sophia as she bent down to Madame 
 Foucault. She was sorry for her landlady, but at the same 
 time she despised her, and resented her woe. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " she asked quietly. 
 
856 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " He has chucked me ! " stammered Madame Foucault. 
 " And he's the last. I have no one now ! " 
 
 She rolled over in the most grotesque manner, kicking up 
 her legs,- with a fresh outburst of sobs. Sophia felt quite 
 ashamed for her. 
 
 " Come and lie down. Come now ! " she said, with a 
 touch of sharpness. " You mustn't he there like that." 
 
 Madame Foucault's behaviour was really too outrageous. 
 Sophia helped her, morally rather than physically, to rise, 
 and then persuaded her into the large bedroom. Madame 
 Fouckult fell on the bed, of which the counterpane had been 
 thrown oyer the foot Sophia covered the lower part of her 
 heaving body with the counterpane. 
 
 " Now, calm yourself, please 1 " 
 
 This room too was lit in crimson, by a small lamp that 
 stood on the night-table, and though the shade of the lamp 
 was cracked, the general effect of the great chamber was 
 incontestably romantic Only the pillows of the wide bed 
 and a small semicircle of floor were illuminated, all the rest 
 lay in shadow. Madame Foucault's head had dropped 
 between the pillows. A tray containing dirty plates and 
 glasses and a wine-bottle was speciously picturesque on the 
 writing-table. 
 
 Despite her genuine gratitude to Madame Foucault for 
 astounding care during her illness, Sophia did not like her 
 landlady, and the present scene made her coldly wrathful. 
 She saw the probability of having another's troubles piled on 
 the top of her own. She did not, in her mind, actively object, 
 because she felt that she could not be more hopelessly miser- 
 able than she was ; but she passively resented the imposition. 
 Ser reason told her that she ought to sympathize with this 
 ageing, ugly, disagreeable, undignified woman j but her heart 
 was reluctant; her heart did not want to know anything at 
 all about Madame Foucault, nor to enter in any way into her 
 private life. 
 
 " I have not a single friend now," stammered Madame 
 Foucault, 
 
 " Oh yes, you have," said Sophia, cheerfully. "You have 
 Madame Laurence." 
 
 " Laxurence — that is not a friend. You know what I mean." 
 
 " And me 1 I am your friend I " said Sophia, in obedience 
 to her conscience. 
 
FEVER 857 
 
 •• You are very kind," replied Madame Foucault, from the 
 pillow. " But you know what I mean." 
 
 The fact was that Sophia did know what she meant. The 
 terms of their intercourse had been suddenly changed. There 
 was no pretentious ceremony now, but the sincerity that disaster 
 brings. The vast structure of make-believe, which between 
 them they had gradually built, had crumbled to nothing. 
 
 " I never treated badly any man in my life," whimpered 
 Madame Foucault. " I have always been a good girl. There 
 is not a man who can say I have not been a good girl. Never 
 was I a girl like the rest. And every one has said so. Ah ! when 
 I tell you that once I had a hotel in the Avenue de la Reine 
 Hortense. Four horses ... I have sold a horse to Madame 
 Musard. . . . You know Madame Musard. . . . But one cannot 
 make economies. Impossible to make economies ! Ah 1 In 
 'fifty-six I was spending a hundred thousand francs a year. That 
 cannot last. Always I have said to myself: 'That cannot 
 last.' Always I had the intention. . , . But what would you ? 
 I installed myself here, and borrowed money to pay for the 
 furniture. There did not remain to me, one jewel. The men 
 are poltroons, all ! I could let three bedrooms for three hundred 
 and fifty francs a month, and with serving meals and so on I 
 could live." 
 
 "Then that," Sophia interrupted, pointing to her own 
 bedroom across the corridor, " is your room ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Madame Foucault. " I put you in it because 
 at the moment all these were let. They are so no longer. 
 Only one — Laurence — and she does not pay me always. 
 What would you ? Tenants — that does not find itself at the 
 present hour. ... I have nothing, and I owe. And he quits 
 me. He chooses this moment to quit me ! And why ? For 
 nothing. For nothing. That is not for his money that I 
 regret him. No, no I You know, at his age — he is twenty- 
 five — and with a woman like me — one is not generous ! No. 
 I loved him. And then a man is a moral support, always. I 
 loved him. It is at my age, mine, that one knows how to love. 
 Beauty goes always, but not the temperament I Ah, that — 
 No I . . . I loved him. I love him." 
 
 Sophia's face tingled with a sudden emotion caused byjhe 
 repetition of those last three words, whose spell no usage can • 
 mar. But she said nothing. 
 
 " Do you know what I shall become ? There is nothing 
 
358 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 but that for me. And I know of such, who are there already. 
 A charwoman ! Yes, a charwoman ! More soon or more 
 late. Well, that is life. What would you ? One exists always." 
 Then in a different tone : " I demand your pardon, madame, 
 for talking like this. I ought to have shame." 
 
 And Sophia felt that in listening she also ought to be ashamed. 
 But she wat not ashamed. Everything seemed very natural, 
 and even ordinary. And, moreover, Sophia was foil of the 
 sense of her superiority over the woman on the bed. Four 
 years ago, in the Restaurant Sylvain, the ingenuous and 
 ignorant Sophia had shyly sat in ^we of the resplendent 
 courtesan, with her haughty stare, her large, easy gestures, and 
 her imperturbable contempt for the man who was paying. 
 And now Sophia knew that she, Sophia, knew all that was to 
 be known about human nature. She had not merely youth, 
 beauty, and virtue, but knowledge-T^nowledge enough to 
 reconcile her to her own misery. vSne had a vigorous, clear 
 miiid, and a clean conscience. She could look any one in the 
 face, and judge every one too as a woman of the world. Whereas 
 this obscene wreck on the bed had nothing whatever left. She 
 had not mer^y lost her effulgent beauty, she had become 
 repulsive. ''She could never have had any commonsense, nor 
 any force of character. Her haughtiness in the day of glory 
 was simply fatuous, based on stupidity. She had passed 
 the years in idleness, trailing about all day in stuffy rooms, 
 and emerging at night to impress nincompoops ; continually 
 meaning to do things which she never did, continually surprised 
 at the lateness of the hour, continually occupied with the most 
 foolish trifles. And here she was at over forty writhing 
 about on the bare floor because a boy of twenty-five (who must 
 be a worthless idiot) had abandoned her after a scene of 
 ridiculous shoutings and stampings. She was dependent on 
 the caprices of a young scamp, the last donkey to turn from 
 her with loathing ! Sophia thought : " Goodness ! If I had 
 been in her place I shouldn't have been like that I should 
 have been rich. I should have saved hke a miser. I wouldn't 
 have been dependent on anybody at that igeT" If I couldn't 
 have made a better courtesan than this pitiable woman, I 
 would have drowned myself." 
 
 In the harsh vanity of her conscious capableness and young 
 strength she thought thus, half forgetting her own follies, and 
 half excusing them on the ground of inexperience. 
 
FEVER 859 
 
 Sophia wanted to go round the flat and destroy every 
 crimson lampshade in it. She wanted to shake Madame 
 Foucault into self-respect and sagacity Moral reprehension, 
 though present in her mind, was only faint. Certainly she felt 
 the immense gulf between the honest woman and the wanton, 
 but she did not feel it as she would have expected to feel it 
 " What a fool you have been 1 " she thought ; nots; " Wha-t a 
 sinner ! " With her precocious cynicism, which was somewhat 
 unsuited to the lovely northern youthfulness of that face, she 
 said to herself that the whole situation and their relative 
 attitudes would have been different if only Madame Foucault 
 had had the wit to amass a fortune, as (according to Gerald) 
 some of her rivals had succeeded in doing. 
 
 And all the time she was thinking, in another part of her 
 mind : " I ought not to be here. It's no use arguing. I 
 ought not to be here. Chirac did the only thing for me there 
 was to do. Rut I must go now." 
 
 Madame Foucault continued to recite her woes, chiefly 
 financial, in a weak voice damp with tears ; she also continued 
 to apologize for mentioning herself. She had finished sobbing, 
 and lay looking at the wall, away from Sophia, who stood 
 inesolute near the bed, ashamed for her companion's weakness 
 and incapacity. 
 
 "You must not forget," said Sophia, irritated by the 
 unrelieved darkness of the picture drawn by Madame Foucault, 
 " that at least I owe you a considerable sum, and that I am 
 only waiting for you to tell me how much it is. I have asked 
 you twice dready, I think." 
 
 " Oh, you are still suffering ! " said Madame Foucault. 
 
 " I am quite well enough to pay my debts," said Sophia. 
 
 " I do not like to accept money from you," said Madame 
 Foucault. 
 
 "But why not?" 
 
 " You will have the doctor to pay." 
 
 •' Please do not talk in that way," said Sophia. " I have 
 money, and I can pay for everything, and I shall pay for 
 everything." 
 
 She was annoyed because she was sure that Madame 
 Foucault was only making a pretence of delicacy, and that in 
 any case her delicacy was preposterous. Sophia had remarked 
 this on the two previous occasions when she had mentioned 
 the subject of bills. Madame Foucault would not treat her as 
 
360 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 an ordinary lodger, now that the illness was past. She wanted, 
 as it were, to complete brilliantly what she had begun, and to 
 live in Sophia's memory as a .unique figure of lavish philan- 
 thropy. This was a sentiment, a luxury that she desired to 
 offer herself: the thought that she had played providence to a 
 respectable married lady in distress ; she frequently hinted at 
 Sophia's misfortunes and helplessness. But she could not 
 afford the luxury. She gazed at it as a poor woman gazes at 
 costly stuffs through the glass of a shop- window. The truth 
 was, she wanted the luxury for nothing. For a double reason 
 Sophia was exasperated : by Madame Foucault's absurd desire, 
 and by a natural objection to the roie of a subject for 
 philanthropy. She would not admit that Madame Foucault's 
 devotion as a nurse entitled her to the satisfaction of being a 
 philanthropist when there was no necessity for philanthropy. 
 
 " How long have I been here ? " asked Sophia. 
 
 "I don't know," murmured Madame Foucault "Eight 
 weeks — or is it nine ? " 
 
 " Suppose we say nine," said Sophia. 
 
 "Very well," agreed Madame Foucault, apparently 
 reluctant. 
 
 " Now, how much must I pay you per week ? " 
 
 " I don't want anything — I don't want anything ! You are 
 a friend of Chirac's. You " 
 
 " Not at all ! " Sophia interrupted, tapping her foot and 
 biting her lip. "Naturally I must pay." 
 
 Madame Foucault wept quietly. 
 
 "Shall I pay you seventy-five francs a week?" said 
 Sophia, anxious to end the matter, 
 
 " It is too much ! " Madame Foucault protested, in- 
 sincerely. 
 
 " What ? For all you have done for me ? " 
 
 " I speak not of that," Madame Foucault modestly 
 replied. 
 
 If the devotion was not to be paid for, then seventy-five 
 francs a week was assuredly too much, as during more than 
 half the time Sophia had had almost no food. Madame 
 Foucault was therefore within the truth when she again 
 protested, at sight of the bank-notes which Sophia brought 
 from her trunk : 
 
 " I am sure that it is too much." 
 
 " Not at all 1 " Sophia repeated. " Nine weeks at seventy- 
 
FEVER 861 
 
 five. That makes six hundred and seventy-five. Here are 
 seven hundreds." 
 
 " I have no change," said Madame Foucault. " I have 
 nothing." 
 
 "That will pay for the hire of the bath,V said Sophia. 
 
 She laid the notes on the pillow. Madame Foucault 
 looked at them gluttonously, as any other ptrson would have 
 done in her place. She did not touch them. After an instant 
 she burst into wild tears. 
 
 "But why do you cry ?" Sophia asked, softened. 
 
 " I — I don't know ! " spluttered Madame Foucault. " You 
 are so beautiful. I am so content that we saved you." Her 
 great wet eyes rested on Sophia. 
 
 It was sentimentality. Sophia ruthlessly set it down as 
 sentimentality. But she was touched. She was suddenly 
 moved. Those women, such as they were in their foolishness, 
 probably had saved her life — and she a stranger ! Flaccid as 
 they were, they had been capable of resolute perseverance 
 there. It was possible to say that chance had thrown them 
 upon an enterprise which they could not have abandoned till 
 they or death had won. It was possible to say that they 
 hoped vaguely to derive advantage from their labours. But 
 even then ? Judged by an ordinary standard, those women had 
 been angels of mercy. And Sophia was despising them, cruelly 
 taking their motives to pieces, accusing them of incapacity 
 when she herself stood a supreme proof of their capacity in, at 
 any rate, one direction I In a rush of emotion she saw her 
 hardness and her injustice. 
 
 She bent down. "Never can I forget how kind you have 
 been to me. It is incredible ! Incredible 1 " She spoke 
 softly, in tones loaded with genuine feeling. It was all she 
 said. She could not embroider on the theme. She had no 
 talent for thanksgiving. 
 
 Madame Foucault made the beginning of a gesture, as if 
 she meant to kiss Sophia with those thick, marred lips ; but 
 refrained. Her head sank back, and then she had a recur- 
 rence of the fit of nervous sobbing. Immediately afterwards 
 there was the sound of a latchkey in the front-door of the 
 flat ; the bedroom door was open Still sobbing very violently, 
 she cocked her ear, and pushed the bank-notes under the 
 pillow. 
 
 Madame Laurence — as she was called : Sophia had never 
 
362 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 heard her surname — came straight into the bedroom, and 
 beheld the scene with astonishment in her dark twinkling eyes. 
 She was usually dressed in black, because people said that 
 black suited her, and because black was never out of fashion ; 
 black was an expression of her idiosyncrasy. She showed a 
 certain elegance, and by comparison with the extreme 
 disorder of Madame Foucault and the deshabille of Sophia 
 her appearance, all fresh from a modish restaurant, was 
 brilliant; it gave her an advantage over the other two — that 
 moral advantage which ceremonial raiment always gives. 
 
 " What is it that passes ? " she demanded. 
 
 " He has chucked me, Laurence ! " exclaimed Madame 
 Foucault, in a sort of hysteric scream which seemed to force 
 its way through her sobs. From the extraordinary freshness 
 of Madame Foucaulfs woe, it might have been supposed that 
 her young man had only that instant strode out. 
 
 Laurence ' and Sophia exchanged a swift glance ; and 
 Laurence, of course, perceived that Sophia's relations with her 
 landlady and nurse were now of a different, a more candid 
 order. She indicated her perception of the change by a single 
 slight movement of the eyebrows. 
 
 " But listen, Aimde," she said authoritatively. " You must 
 not let yourself go like that. He will return," 
 
 " Never ! " cried Madame Foucault. " It is finished. And 
 he is the last 1" 
 
 Laurence, ignoring Madame Foucault, approached Sophia, 
 " You have an air very fatigued," she said, caressing Sophia's 
 shoulder with her gloved hand. "You are pale like every- 
 thing. All this is not for you. It is not reasonable to 
 remain here, you still suffering I At this hour 1 Truly not 
 reasonable ! " 
 
 Her hands persuaded Sophia towards the corridor. And, in 
 fact, Sophia did then notice her own exhaustion. She departed 
 from the room with the ready obedience of physical weakness, 
 and shut her door. 
 
 After about half an hour, during which she heard confused 
 noises and murmurings, her door half opened. 
 
 "May I enter, since you are not asleep?" It was 
 Laurence's voice. Twice, now, she had addressed Sophia 
 without adding the formal ' madame.' 
 
 " Enter, I beg you," Sophia called from the bed. "I am 
 reading." 
 
FEVER 363 
 
 Laurence came in. Sophia was both glad and sorry to see 
 her. She was eager to hga r gossip which, how ever, she felt she^ 
 ought to despiseT'^oreover, she kneTrtHaFirthey talked that 
 nighnhey would talk as friends, and that Laurence would ever 
 afterwards treat her with the familiarity of a friend. This she 
 dreaded. Still, she knew that she would yield, at any rate, to 
 the temptation to listen to gossip. 
 
 " I have put her to bed," said Laurence, in a whisper, as 
 she cautiously closed the door. " The poor woman ! Oh, 
 what a charming bracelet ! It is a true pearl, naturally ? " 
 
 Her roving eye had immediately, with an infalliole instinct, 
 caught sight of a bracelet which, in taking stock of her posses- 
 sions, Sophia had accidentally left on the piano. She picked 
 it up, and then put it down again. 
 
 " Yes," said Sophia. She was about to add : " It's nearly 
 all the jewellery I possess ; " but she stopped. 
 
 Laurence moved towards Sophia's bed, and stood over it 
 as she had often done in her quality as nurse. She had taken 
 off her gloves, and she made a piquant, pretty show, with her 
 thirty years, and her agreeable, slightly roguish face, in which 
 were mingled the knowingness of a street boy and the con- 
 fidence of a woman who has ceased to be surprised at the 
 influence of her snub nose on a highly intelligent man. 
 
 "Did she tell you what they had quarrelled about?" 
 Laurence inquired abruptly. And not only the phrasing of 
 the question, but the assured tone in which it was uttered, 
 showed that Laurence meant to be the familiar of Sophia. 
 
 "Not a word ! " said Sophia. 
 
 In this brief question and reply, all was crudely implied 
 that had previously been supposed not to exist. The relations 
 between the two women were altered irretrievably in a moment. 
 
 " It must have been her fault ! " said Laurence. " With 
 men she is insupportable. I have never understood how that 
 poor woman has made her way. With women she is charming. 
 But she seems to be incapable of not treating men like dogs. 
 Some men adore that, but they are few. Is it not ? " 
 
 Sophia smiled. 
 
 "I have told her! How many times have I told her! 
 But it is useless. It is stronger than she is, and if she finishes 
 on straw one will be able to say that it was because of that. 
 But truly she ought not to have asked him here I Truly that 
 was too much ! If he knew . . . 1 " 
 
364 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 "Why not?" asked Sophia, awkwardly. The answer 
 startled her. 
 
 " Because her room has not been disinfected." 
 
 " But I thought all the flat had been disinfected ? " 
 
 " All except her room." 
 
 " But why not her room ? " 
 
 Laurence shrugged her shoulders. " She did not want to 
 disturb her things ! Is it that I know, I ? She is like that. 
 She takes an idea — and then, there you are ! " 
 
 " She told me every room had been disinfected." 
 
 " She told the same to the police and the doctor." 
 
 " Then all the disinfection is useless ? " 
 
 " Perfectly ! But she is like that. This flat might be very 
 remunerative; but wi.h her, never ! She has not even paid for 
 the furniture — after two years ! " 
 
 " But what will become of her ? " Sophia asked. 
 
 «*Ah^— that!" Another shrug of the shoulders. "All 
 that I know is that it will be necessary for me to leave here. 
 The last time I brought Monsieur Cerf here, she was ex- 
 cessively rude to him. She has doubtless told you about 
 Monsieur Cerf ? " 
 
 " No. Who is Monsieur Cerf?" 
 
 "Ahl She has not told you? That astonishes me. 
 Monsieur Cerf, that is my friend, you know." 
 
 " Oh 1 " murmured Sophia. 
 
 " Yes," Laurence proceeded, impelled by a desire to impress 
 Sophia and to gossip at large. " That is my friend. I knew 
 him at the hospital. It was to please him that I left the 
 hospital. After that we quarrelled for two years ; but at the 
 end he gave me right. I did not budge. Two years I It is 
 long. And I had left the hospital. I could have gone back. 
 But I would not. That is not a life, to be nurse in a Paris 
 hospital 1 No, I drew myself out as well as I could. . . . He 
 is the most charming boy you can imagine ! And rich now ; 
 that is to say, relatively. He has a cousin infinitely more rich 
 than he. I dined with them both to-night at the Maison 
 Dorde. For a luxurious boy, he is a luxurious boy — the 
 cousin I mean. It appears that he has made a fortune in 
 Canada." 
 
 " Truly 1 " said Sophia, with politeness. Laurence's hand 
 was playing on the edge of the bed, and Sophia observed for 
 the first time that it bore a wedding-ring. 
 
FEVER 865 
 
 "You remark my ring?" Laurence laughed. " That is he 
 —the cousin. 'What!' he said, 'you do not wear an 
 alliance 1 An alliance is more proper. We are going to 
 arrange that after-dinner.' I said that all the jewellers' shops 
 would be closed. ' That • is all the same to me,' he said. 
 ' We will open one.' And in effect ... it passed like that. 
 He succeeded! Is it not beautiful?" She held forth her 
 hand. 
 
 " Yes," said Sophia. " It is very beautiful." 
 
 " Yours also is beautiful," said Lautence, with an extremely 
 puzzling intonation. 
 
 " It is just the ordinary English wedding-ring," said Sophia. 
 In spite of herself she blushed. 
 
 " ' Now I have married you. It is I, the cur^,' said he — 
 the cousin — when he put the ring on my finger. Oh, he is 
 excessively amusing! He pleases me much. And he is all 
 alone. He asked me whether I knew among my friends a 
 sympathetic, pretty girl, to make four with us three for a picnic. 
 I said I was not sure, but I thought not. Whom do I know ? 
 Nobody. I'm not a woman like the rest. I am always 
 discreet. I do not like casual relations. . . . But he is very 
 well, the cousin. Brown eyes. ... It is an idea — will you 
 come, one day ? He speaks English. He loves the English. 
 He is all that is most correct, the perfect gentleman. He 
 would arrange a dazzling f6te. I am sure he would be en- 
 chanted to make your acquaintance. Enchanted ! ... As 
 for my Charles, happily he is completely mad about me — 
 otherwise I should have fear." 
 
 She smiled, and in her smile was a genuine respect for 
 Sophia's face. 
 
 " I fear I cannot come," said Sophia. She honestly en- 
 deavoured to keep out of her reply any accent of moral 
 superiority, but she did not quite succeed. She was not at all 
 horrified by Laurence's suggestion. She meant simply to 
 refuse it ; but she could not do so in a natural voice. 
 
 "It is true you are not yet strong enough," said the 
 imperturbable Laurence, quickly, and with a perfect imitation 
 of naturalness. " But soon you must make a little promenade." 
 She stared at her ring. "After all, it is more proper," she 
 observed judicially. " With a wedding-ring one is less likely 
 to be annoyed. What is curious is that the idea never before 
 came to me. Yet . . .* 
 
366 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 "You like jewellery?" said Sophia. 
 
 " If I like jewellery ! " — with a gesture of the hands. 
 
 " Will you pass me that bracelet ? " 
 
 Laurence obeyed, and Sophia clasped it roiind the girl's 
 wrist. 
 
 " Keep it," Sophia said. 
 
 " For me ? " Laurence exclaimed, ravished. " It is too 
 much." 
 
 " It is not enough/' said Sophia. " And when you look at 
 it, you must remember how kind you were to me, and how 
 grateful I am." 
 
 " How nicely you say that ! " Laurence said ecstatically. 
 
 And Sophia felt that she had indeed said it rather nicely. 
 This giving of the bracelet, souvenir of one of the few capricious 
 follies that Gerald had committed for her and not for himself, 
 pleased Sophia very much. 
 
 " I am afraid your nursing of me forced you to neglect 
 Monsieur Gerf," she added. 
 
 " Yes, a little ! " said Laurence, impartially, with a small 
 pout of haughtiness. " It is true that he used to .complain. 
 But I soon put him straight. What an idea ! He knows 
 there are things upon which I do not joke. It is not he who 
 will quarrel a second time ! Believe me ! " 
 
 Laurence's absolute conviction of her power was what 
 impressed Sophia, To Sophia she seemed to be a vulgar little 
 piece of goods, with dubious charm- and a glance that was 
 far too brazen. Her movements were vulgar. And Sophia 
 wondered how she had established her empire and upon what 
 it rested. 
 
 " I shall not show this to Aimde," whispered Laurence, 
 indicating the bracelet. 
 
 " As you wish," said Sophia, 
 
 "By the way, have I told you that war is declared?" 
 Laurence casually remarked. 
 
 " No," said Sophia. " What war ? " 
 
 "The scene with Aimde made me forget it. . . . With 
 Germany. The city is quite excited. An immense crowd in 
 front of the new Opdra. They say we shall be at Berlin in a 
 month — or at most two months." 
 
 " Oh I " Sophia muttered. " Why is there a war ? " 
 
 " Ah I It is I who asked that Nobody knows. It is 
 those Prussians." 
 
FEVER 367 
 
 •• Don't you think we ought to begin again with the dis- 
 infecting ? " Sophia asked anxiously. " I must speak to 
 Madame Foucault." 
 
 Laurence told her not to worry, and went off to show 
 the bracelet to Madame Foucault. She had privately decided 
 that this was a pleasure which, after all, she could not deny 
 herself 
 
 IV 
 
 About a fortnight later — it was a fine Saturday in early 
 August — Sophia, with a large pinafore over her dress, was 
 finishing the portentous preparations for disinfecting the flat. 
 Part of the affair was already accomplished, her own room and 
 the corridor having been fumigated on the previous day, in 
 spite of the opposition of Madame Foucault, who had taken 
 amiss Laurence's tale-bearing to Sophia. Laurence had left 
 the flat— under exactly what circumstances Sophia knew not, 
 but she guessed that it must have been in consequence of 
 a scene elaborating the tiff caused by Madame Foucault's 
 resentment against Laurence. The brief, factitious friendli- 
 ness between Laurence and Sophia had gone like a dream, 
 and Laurence had gone like a dream. The servant had 
 been dismissed ; in her place Madame Foucault employed a 
 charwoman each morning for two hours. Finally, Madame 
 Foucault had been suddenly called away that morning by a 
 letter to her sick father at St. Mammbs-sur-Seine, Sophia was 
 delighted at the chance. The disinfecting of the flat had 
 become an obsession with Sophia — the obsession of a con- 
 valescent whose perspective unconsciously twists things to the 
 most wry shapes. She had had trouble on the day before 
 with Madame Foucault, arid she was expecting more serious 
 trouble when the moment arrived for ejecting Madame 
 Foucault as well as all her movable belongings from Madame 
 Foucault's own room. Nevertheless, Sophia had been deter- 
 mined, whatever should happen, to complete an honest 
 fumigation of the entire flat. Hence the eagerness with 
 which, urging Madame Foucault to go to her father, Sophia 
 had protested that she was perfectly strong and could 
 manage by herself for a couple of days. Owing to the 
 parti^ suppression of the ordinary railway services in favour 
 
368 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 of military needs, Madame Foucault could not hope to go 
 and return on the same day. Sophia had lent her a louis. 
 
 Pans of sulphur were mysteriously burning in each of the 
 three front rooms, and two pairs of doors had been pasted 
 over with paper, to prevent the fumes from escaping. The 
 charwoman had departed. Sophia, with brush, scissors, flour- 
 paste, and new.s-sheets, was sealing the third pair of doors, 
 when there was a ring at the front door. 
 
 She had only to cross the corridor in order to open. 
 
 It was Chirac. She was not surprised to see him. The 
 outbreak of the war had induced even Sophia and her landlady 
 to look through at least one newspaper during the day, and she 
 had in this way learnt, from an article signed by Chirac, that he 
 had returned to Paris after a mission into the Vosges country 
 for his paper. 
 
 He started ' on seeing her. " Ah ! " He breathed out 
 the exclamation slowly. And then smiled, seized her hand, 
 and kissed it. 
 
 The sight of his obvious extreme pleasure in meeting her 
 again was the sweetest experience that had fallen to Sophia for 
 years. 
 
 " Then you are cured ? " 
 
 " Quite." 
 
 He sighed. " You know, this is an enormous relief to me, 
 to know, veritably, that you are no longer in danger. You 
 gave me a fright . . . but a fright, my dear madame 1 " 
 
 She smiled in silence. 
 
 As he glanced inquiringly up and down the corridor, she 
 said — 
 
 " I'm all alone in the flat. I'm disinfecting it" 
 
 " Then that is sulphur that I smell ?" 
 
 She nodded. " Excuse me while I finish this door," she 
 said. 
 
 He closed the front-door. " But you seem to be quite at 
 home here I " he observed. 
 
 "I ought to be," said she. 
 
 He glanced again inquiringly up and down the corridor. 
 " And you are really all alone now ? " he asked, as though to be 
 doubly sure. 
 
 She explained the circumstances. 
 
 "I owe you my most sincere excuses for bringing you 
 here," he said confidentially. 
 
FEVER S69 
 
 "^But why?" she replied, looking intently at her door. 
 "They have been most kind to me. Nobody could have , 
 been kinder. And Madame Laurence being such a good 
 nurse " 
 
 " It is true," said he. " That was a reason. In effect 
 they are both very good-natured little women. , . . You 
 comprehend, as journalist it arrives to me to know all kinds 
 of people . . ." He snapped his fingers . . . "And as we 
 were opposite the house. In fine, I pray you to excuse 
 me . . . 
 
 " Hold me this paper," she said. " It is necessary that 
 every crack should be covered ; also between the floor and the 
 door." • . 
 
 "You English are wonderful," he murmured, as he took 
 the paper. " Imagine you doing that 1 Then," he added, 
 resuming the confidential tone, " I suppose you will leave the 
 Foucault now, hein ? " 
 
 " I suppose so," she said carelessly. 
 
 « You go to England ? " 
 
 She turned to him, as she patted the creases out of a strip 
 of paper with a duster, and shook her head. 
 
 "Not to England?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " If it is not indiscreet, where are you going ? " 
 
 " I don't know," she said candidly. 
 
 And she did not know. She was without a plan. Her 
 brain told her that she ought to return to Bursley, or, at the 
 least, write. But her pride would not hear of such a surrender. 
 Her situation would have to be far more desperate than it was 
 before she could confess her defeat to her family even in a 
 letter. A thousand times no I That was a point which she 
 had for ever decided. She would face any disaster, and any- 
 other shame, rather than the shame of her family's forgiving 
 reception of her. 
 
 " And you ? " she asked. " How does it go ? This 
 war?" 
 
 He told her, in a few words, a few leading facts about 
 himself. " It must not be said," he added of the war, " but 
 that will turn out ill 1 I — I know, you comprehend." 
 
 " Truly ? " she answered with casualness. 
 
 " You have heard nothing of him ? " Chirac asked. 
 
 "Who? Gerald?" 
 
 a B 
 
370 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 He gave a gesture. 
 
 " Nothing ! Not a word I Nothing 1 " 
 
 " He will have gone back to England 1 " 
 
 " Never ! " she said positively. 
 
 "But why not?" 
 
 " Because he prefers France. He really does like France. 
 I think it is the only real passion he ever had." 
 
 " It is astonishing," reflected Chirac, " how France is loved I 
 And yet ... ! But to live, what will he do ? Must live ! " 
 
 Sophia merely shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "Then it is finished between you two?" he muttered 
 awkwardly. 
 
 She nodded. She was on her knees, at the lower crack of 
 the doors. 
 
 " There 1 " she said, rising. " It's well done, isn't it ? 
 That is all." 
 
 She smiled at him, facing him squarely, in the obscurity of 
 the untidy and shabby corridor. Both felt that they had 
 become very intimate. He was intensely flattered by her 
 attitude, and she knew it. 
 
 " Now," she said, " I will take oflF my pinafore. Where 
 can I niche you ? There is only my bedrojm, and I want 
 that. What are we to do ? " 
 
 " Listen," he suggested diffidently. " Will you do me the 
 honour to come for a drive ? That will do you good. There 
 is sunshine. And you are always very pale." 
 
 " With pleasure," she agreed cordially. 
 
 While dressing, she heard him walking up and down the 
 corridor ; occasionally they exchanged a few words. Before 
 leaving, Sophia pulled off the piper from one of the key-holes 
 of the sealed suite of rooms, and they peered through, one 
 after the other, and saw the green glow of the sulphur, and 
 were troubled by its uncanniness. And then Sophia refixed 
 the paper. 
 
 In descending the stairs of the house she felt the infirmity 
 of her knees ; but in other respects, though she had been out 
 only once before since her illness, she was conscious of a 
 sufficient strength. A disinclination for any enterprise had 
 prevented her from t&,king the air as she ought to have done, 
 but within the flat she had exercised her limbs in many small 
 tasks. The little Chirac, nervously active and restless, wanted 
 to take her arm, but she would not allow it. 
 
FEVER 871 
 
 The concierge and part of her family stared curiously at 
 Sophia as she passed under the archway, for the course of her 
 illness had excited the interest of the whole house. Just as 
 the carriage was driving off, the concierge came across the 
 pavement and paid her compliments, and then said : 
 
 " You do not know by hazard why Madame Foucault has 
 not returned for lunch, madame?" 
 
 " Returned for lunch 1 " said Sophia. " She will not come 
 back till to-morrow." 
 
 The concierge made a face. " Ah I How curious it is I 
 She told my husband that she would return in two hours. It 
 is very grave I Question of business." 
 
 " I know nothing, madame," said Sophia. She and Chirac 
 looked at each other. The concierge murmured thanks and 
 went off muttering indistinctly. 
 
 The fiacre turned down the Rue Laferrifere, the horse 
 slipping and sliding as usual over the cobblestones. Soon 
 they were on the boulevard, making for the Champs Elysdes 
 and the Bois de Boulogne. 
 
 The fresh breeze and bright sunshine and the large 
 freedom of the streets quickly intoxicated Sophia — intoxicated 
 her, that is to say, in quite a physical sense. She was almost 
 drunk, with the heady savour of life itself A mild ecstasy of 
 well-being overcame her. She saw the flat as a horrible, vile 
 prison, and blamed herself for not leaving it sooner and 
 oftener. The air was medicine, for body and mind too. Her 
 perspective was instantly corrected. She was happy, living 
 neither in the past nor in the future, but in and for that hour. 
 And beneath her happiness moved a wistful melancholy for 
 the Sophia who had suffered such a captivity and such woes. 
 She yearned for more and yet more delight, for careless orgies 
 of passionate pleasure, in the midst of which she would forget 
 all trouble. Why had she refused the offer of Laurence? 
 Why had she not rushed at once into the splendid fire of 
 joyous indulgence, ignormg everything but the crude, sensuous 
 instinct ? Acutely aware as she was of her youth, her beauty, 
 and her charm, she wondered at her refusal. She did not 
 regret her refusal. She placidly observed it as the result of 
 some tremendously powerful motive in herself, which could 
 not be questioned or reasoned with — ^which was, in fact, the 
 essential her. 
 
 *' Do I look like an invalid ? " she asked, leaning back 
 
372 THE OLD \VIVES' TALE 
 
 luxuriously in the carriage among the crowd of other 
 vehicles. 
 
 Chirac hesitated. " My faith ! Yes ! " he said at length. 
 " But it becomes you. If I did not know that you have little 
 love for compliments, I " 
 
 " But I adore compliments 1 " she exclaimed. " What 
 made you think that ? " 
 
 " Well, then," he youthfully burst out, " you are more 
 ravishing than ever." 
 
 She gave herself up deliciously to his admiration. 
 
 After a silence, he said : " Ah ! if you knew how dis- 
 quieted I was about you, away there . . . ! I should not know 
 how to tell you. Veritably disquieted, you comprehend ! 
 What could I do ? Tell me a little about your illness." 
 She recounted details. 
 
 As the fiacre entered the Rue Royale, they noticed a crowd 
 of people in front of the Madeleine shouting and cheering. 
 
 The cabman turned towards them. " It appears there has 
 been a victory ! " he said. 
 
 " A victory I If only it was true I " murmured Chirac, 
 cynically. 
 
 In the Rue Royale people were running frantically to and 
 fro, laughing and gesticulating in glee. The customers in the 
 cafds stood on their chairs, and even on tables, to watch, and 
 occasionally to join in, the sudden fever. The fiacre was 
 slowed to a walking pace. Flags and carpets began to show 
 from the upper storeys of houses. The crowd grew thicker 
 and more febrile. " Victory ! Victory 1 " rang hoarsely, 
 shrilly, and hoarsely again in the air. 
 
 " My God 1 " said Chirac, trembling. " It must be a true 
 victory 1 We are saved ! We are saved 1 ... Oh yes, it 
 is true 1 " 
 
 " But naturally it is true 1 What are you saying ? " 
 demanded the driver. 
 
 At the Place de la Concorde the fiacre had to stop alto- 
 gether. The immense square was a sea of white hats and 
 flowers and happy faces, with carriages anchored like boats on 
 its surface. Flag after flag waved out from neighbouring roofs 
 in the breeze that tempered the August sun. Then hats 
 began to go up, and cheers rolled across the square like 
 echoes of firing in an enclosed valley. Chirac's driver jumped 
 madly on to his seat, and cracked his whip. 
 
FE\'ER 373 
 
 "Vive la France!" he bawled with all the force of his 
 lungs. 
 
 A thousand throats answered him. 
 
 Then there was a stir behind them. Another carriage was 
 being slowly forced to the front. The crowd was pushing ii, 
 and crying, "Marseillaise! Marseillaise!" In the carriaee 
 was a woman alone ; not beautiful, but distinguished, and with 
 the assured gaze of one who is accustomed to homage and 
 multitudino'is applause. 
 
 "It is Gueymard !" said Chirac to Sophia. He was very 
 pale. And he too shouted, " Marseillaise I " All his features 
 were distorted. , 
 
 The woman rose and spoke to her coachman, who offered 
 his hand and she climbed to the box seat, and stood on it and 
 bowed several times. 
 
 "Marseillaise!" The cry continued. Then a roar of 
 cheers, and then silence spread round the square like an 
 inundation. And amid this silence the woman began to sing 
 the Mar.'^eillaise. As she sang, the tears ran down her 
 cheeks. Everybody in the vicinity was weeping or sternly 
 frowning. In the pauses of the first verse could be heard the 
 rattle of horses' bits, or a whistle of a tug on the river. The 
 refrain, signalled by a proud challenging toss of Gueymard's 
 head, leapt up like a tropical tempest, formidable, overpower- 
 ing. Sophia, who had had no warning of the emotion gather- 
 ing within her, sobbed violently. At the close of the hymn 
 Gueymard's carriage was assaulted by worshippers. All around, 
 in the tumult of shouting, men were kissing and embracing 
 each other ; and hats went up continually in fountains. Chirac 
 leaned over the side of the carriage and wrung the hand of a 
 man who was standing by the wheel. 
 
 " Who is that ? " Sophia asked, in an unsteady voice, to 
 break the inexplicable tension within her, 
 
 " I don't know," said Chirac. He was weeping like a 
 child. And he sang out : " Victoiy I To Berlin 1 Victory 1 " 
 
 Sophia walked alone, with tired limbs, up the damaged 
 oak stairs to the flat. Chirac had decided that, in the circum- 
 stances of the victory, he would do well to go to the offices of 
 
374 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 his paper rather earlier than usual. He had brought her back 
 to the Rue Br^da. They had taken leave of each other in a 
 sort of dream or general enchantment due to their participa- 
 tion in the vast national delirium which somehow dominated 
 individual feelings. They did not define their relations. They 
 had been conscious only of emotion. 
 
 The stairs, which smelt of damp even in summer, disgusted 
 Sophia. She thought of the flat with horror and longed for 
 green places and luxury. On the landing were two stoutish, 
 ill-dressed men, of middle age, apparently waiting, Sophia 
 found her key and opened the door. 
 
 " Pardon, madame ! " said one of the men, raising his hat, 
 and they both pushed into the flat after her. They stared, 
 puzzled, at the strips of paper pasted on the doors. 
 
 "What do you want?" she asked haughtily. She was 
 very frightened. The extraordinary irruption brought her 
 down with a shock to the scale of the individual. 
 
 " I am the concierge," said the man who had addressed 
 her. He had the air of a superior artisan. " It was my wife 
 who spoke to you this afternoon. This,'' pointing to his 
 companion, " this is the law. I regret it, but . . ." 
 
 The law saluted and shut the front door. Like the 
 concierge, the law emitted an odour — the odour of uncleanli- 
 ness on a hot August day. 
 
 "The rent?" exclaimed Sophia. 
 
 " No, madame, not the rent : the furniture ! " 
 
 Then she learnt the history of the furniture. It had 
 belonged to the concierge, who had acquired it from a 
 previous tenant and sold it on credit to Madame Foucault. 
 Madame Foucault had signed bills and had not met them. 
 She had made promises and broken them. She had done 
 everything except discharge her liabilities. She had been 
 warned and warned again. That day had been fixed as the 
 last limit, and she had solemnly assured her creditor that on 
 that day she would pay. On leaving the house she had stated 
 precisely and clearly that she would return before lunch with 
 all the money. She had made no mention of a sick father. 
 
 Sophia slowly perceived the extent of Madame Foucault's 
 duplicity and moral cowardice. No doubt the sick father was 
 an invention. The woman, at the end of a tether which no 
 ingenuity of lies could further lengthen, had probably absented 
 herself solely to avoid the pain of witnessing the seizure. 
 
FEVER 875 
 
 She would do anything, however silly, to avoid an immediate 
 unpleasantness. Or perhaps she had absented herself without 
 any particular aim, but simply in the hope that something 
 fortunate might occur. Perhaps she had hoped that Sophia, 
 taken unawares, would generously pay. Sophia smiled grimly. 
 
 " Well," she said. " I can't do anything. I suppose you 
 must do what you have to do. You will let me pack up my 
 own affairs ? " 
 
 " Perfectly, madame ! " 
 
 She warned them as to the danger of opening the sealed 
 rooms. The man of the law seemed prepared to stay in the 
 corridor indefinitely. No prospect of delay disturbed him. 
 
 Strange and disturbing, the triumph of the concierge ! 
 He was a locksmith by trade. He and his wife and their 
 children lived in two little dark rooms by the archway — an 
 insignificant fragment of the house. He was away from home 
 about fourteen hours every day, except Sundays, when he 
 washed the courtyard. All the other duties of the concierge 
 were performed by the wife. The pair always looked poor, 
 untidy, dirty, and rather forlorn. But they were steadily 
 levying toll on everybody in the big house. They amassed 
 money in forty ways. They lived for money, and all men 
 have what they live for. With what arrogant gestures Madame 
 Foucault would descend from a carnage at the great door I 
 What respectful attitudes and tones the ageing courtesan would 
 receive from the wife and children of the concierge ! But 
 beneath these conventional fictions the truth was that the 
 concierge held the whip. At last he was using it. And he 
 had given himself a half-holiday in order to celebrate his 
 second acquirement of the ostentatious furniture and the 
 crimson lampshades. This was one of the dramatic crises ■ip 
 his career as a man of substance. The national thrill of 
 victory had not penetrated into the flat with the concierge 
 and the law. The emotions of the concierge were entirely 
 independent of the Napoleonic foreign policy. 
 
 As Sophia, sick with a sudden disillusion, was putting h«r 
 things together, and wondering where she was to go, and 
 whether it would be politic to consult Chirac, she heard a 
 fluster at the front door : cries, protestations, implorings. Her 
 own door was thrust open, and Madame Foucault burst in. 
 
 " Save me I " exclaimed Madame Foucault, sinking to the 
 ground. 
 
S76 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 The feeble theatricality of the gesture offended Sophia's 
 taste. She asked sternly what Madame Foucault expected 
 her to do. Had not Madame Foucault knowingly exposed 
 her, without the least warning, to the extreme annoyance of 
 this visit of the law, a visit which meant practically that 
 Sophia was put into the street ? 
 
 " You must not be hard 1 " Madame Foucault sobbed. 
 
 Sophia learnt the complete history of the woman's efforts 
 to pay for the furniture: a farrago of folly and deceptions. 
 Madame Foucault confessed too much. Sophia scorned con- 
 fession for the sake of confession. She scorned the impulse 
 which forces A weak creature to insist on its weakness, to 
 revel in remorse, and to find an excuse for its conduct in the 
 very fact that there is no excuse. She gathered that Madame 
 Foucault had in fact gone away in the hope that Sophia, 
 trapped, would pay ; and that in the end, she had not even had 
 the courage of her own trickery, and had run back, driven by 
 panic into audacity, to fall at Sophia's feet, lest Sophia might 
 not have yielded and the furniture have been seized. From 
 beginning to end the conduct of Madame Foucault had been 
 fatuous and despicable and wicked. Sophia coldly condemned 
 Madame Foucault for having allowed herself to be brought 
 into the world with such a weak and maudlin character, and 
 for having allowed herself to grow old and ugly. As a sight 
 the woman was positively disgraceful. 
 
 " Save me ! " she exclaimed again. " I did what I could 
 for you 1 " 
 
 Sophia hated her. But the logic of the appeal was 
 irresistible. 
 
 " But what can I do ? " she asked reluctantly. 
 
 " Lend me the money. You can. If you don't, this will 
 be the end for me." 
 
 " And a good thing, too !" thought Sophia's hard sense. 
 
 "How much is it?" Sophia glumly asked. 
 
 " It isn't a thousand francs ! " said Madame Foucault with 
 eagerness. " All my beautiful furniture will go for less than a 
 thousand francs 1 Save me ! " 
 
 She was nauseating Sophia. 
 
 " Please rise," said Sophia, her hands fidgeting un- 
 decidedly. 
 
 " I shall repay you, surely 1" Madame Foucault asseverated. 
 « I swear. I " 
 
FEVER 877 
 
 "Does she take me for a fool?" thought Sophia, "with 
 her oaths I " 
 
 " No ! " said Sophia. " I won't lend you the money. But 
 I tell you what I will do. I will buy the furniture at that 
 price ; and I will promise to re-sell it to you as soon as you 
 can pay me. Like that, you can be tranquil. But I have 
 very little money. I must have a guarantee. The furniture 
 must be mine till you pay me." 
 
 " You are an angel of charity ! " cried Madame Foucault, 
 embracing Sophia's skirts. " I will do whatever you wish. 
 Ah 1 You Englishwomen are astonishing." 
 
 Sophia was not an angel of charity. What she had 
 promised to do involved sacrifice and anxiety without the 
 prospect of reward. But it was not charity. It was part of 
 the price Sophia paid for the exercise of her logical faculty ; 
 she paid it unwillingly. ' I did what I could for you 1 ' Sophia 
 would have died sooner than remind any one of a benefit 
 conferred, and M.idame Foucault had committed precisely 
 that enormity. The appeal was inexcusable to a fine mind ; 
 but it was eifective. 
 
 The men were behind the door, listening. Sophia paid 
 out of her stock of notes. Needless to say, the total was 
 more and not less than a thousand francs. Madame Foucault 
 grew rapidly confidential with the man. Without consulting 
 Sophia, she asked the bailiff to draw up a receipt transferring 
 the ownership of all the furniture to Sophia j and the baiUff, 
 struck into obligingness by glimpses of Sophia's beauty, con- 
 sented to do so. There was much conferring upon forms of 
 words, and flourishing of pens between thick, vile fingers, and 
 scattering of ink. 
 
 Before the men left Madame Foucault uncorked a bottle 
 of wine for them, and helped them to drink it. Throughout 
 the evening she was insupportahly deferential to Sophia, who 
 was driven to bed. Madame Foucault contentedly went up 
 to the sixth floor to occupy the servant's bedroom. She was 
 glad to get so far away from the sulphur, of which a few faint 
 fumes had penetrated into the corridor. 
 
 The next morning, after a stifling night of bad dreams, 
 Sophia was too ill to get up. She looked round at the 
 furniture in the httle room, and she imagined the furniture in 
 the other rooms, and dismally thought : " All this furniture is 
 mine. She will never pay me ! I am saddled with it." 
 
878 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 It was cheaply bought, but she probably could not sell it 
 for even what she had paid. Still, the sense of ownership was 
 reassuring. 
 
 The charwoman brought her coffee, and Chirac's news- 
 paper; from which she learnt that the news of the victory 
 which had sent the city mad on the previous day was utterly 
 false. Tears came into her eyes as she ^azed absently at all 
 the curtained windows of the courtyard. She had youth and 
 loveliness; according to the rules she ought to have been 
 irresponsible, gay, and indulgently watched over by the wisdom 
 of admiring age. But she felt towards the French nation as a 
 mother might feel towards adorable, wilful children suffering 
 through their own charming foolishness. She saw France 
 personified in Chirac. How easily, despite his special know- 
 ledge, he had yielded to the fever 1 Her heart bled for France 
 and Chirac on that morning of reaction and of truth. She 
 could not bear to recall the scene in the Place de la Concorde. 
 Madame Foucault had not descended. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SIEGE 
 
 Madame Foucault came into Sophia's room one afternoon 
 with a pecuHar guilty expression on her large face, and she held 
 her peignoir close to her exuberant body in folds consciously 
 majestic, as though endeavouring to prove to Sophia by her 
 carriage that despite her shifting eyes she was the most 
 righteous and sincere woman that ever lived. 
 
 It was Saturday, the third of September, a beautiful day. 
 Sophia, suffering from an unimportant relapse, had remained 
 in a state of inactivity, and had scarcely gone out at all. She 
 loathed the flat', but lacked the energy to leave it every day. 
 There was no sufficiently definite object in leaving it. She 
 could not go out and look for health as she might have looked 
 for flowers. So she remained in the flat, and stared at the 
 courtyard and the continual mystery of lives hidden behind 
 curtains that occasionally moved. And the painted yellow 
 walls of the house, and the papered walls of her room pressed 
 upon her and crushed her. For a few days Chirac had called 
 daily, animated by the most adorable solicitude. Then he 
 had ceased to call. She had tired of reading the journals ; 
 they lay unopened. The relations between Madame Foucault 
 and herself, and her status in the flat of which she now legally 
 owned the furniture, — these things were left unsettled. But 
 the question of her board was arranged on the terms that she 
 halved the cost of food and service with Madame Foucault } 
 her expenses were thus reduced to the lowest possible — about 
 eighteen francs a week. An idea hung in the air — like a 
 scientific discovery on the point of being made by several 
 independent investigators simultaneously — that she and 
 Madame Foucault should co-operate in order to let furnished 
 
 379 
 
880 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 rooms at a remunerative profit. Sophia felt the nearness of 
 the idea and she wanted to be shocked at the notion of any 
 avowed association between herself and Madame Foucault ; 
 but she could not be. 
 
 " Here are a lady and a gentleman who want a bedroom," 
 began Madame Foucault, " a nice large bedroom, furnished." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Sophia ; " who are they ? " 
 
 " They will pay a hundred and thirty francs a month, in 
 advance, for the middle bedroom." 
 
 "You've shown it to them already?" said Sophia. And 
 her tone implied that somehow she was conscious of a right to 
 overlook the affair of Madame Foucault. 
 
 " No," said the other. " I said to myself that first I would 
 ask you for a counsel." 
 
 " Then will they pay all that for a room they haven't seen ? " 
 
 " The fact is," said Madame Foucault, sheepishly. " The 
 lady has seen the room before. I know her a little. It is a 
 former tenant. She lived here some weeks." 
 
 " In that room ? " 
 
 " Oh no ! She was poor enough then." 
 
 "Where are they?" 
 
 " In the corridor. She is very well, the lady. Naturally 
 one must live, she like all the world ; but she is veritably well. 
 Quite respectable ! One would never say . . . Then there 
 would be the meals. We could demand one franc for the 
 cafk au lait, two and a half francs for the lunch, and three 
 francs for the dinner. Without counting other things, Th it 
 would mean over five hundred francs a month, at least. And 
 what would they cost us ? Almost nothing 1 By what appears, 
 he is a plutocrat ... I could thus quickly repay you." 
 
 " Is it a married couple ? " 
 
 " Ah 1 You know, one cannot demand the marriage 
 certificate." Madame Foucault indicated by a gesture that • 
 the Rue Br^da was not the paradise of saints. 
 
 " When she came before, this lady, was it with the same 
 man ? " Sophia asked coldly. 
 
 " Ah, my faith, no ! " exclaimed Madame Foucault, bridling. 
 " It was a bad sort, the other, a . . . ! Ah, no." 
 
 " Why do you ask my advice ? " Sophia abruptly questioned, 
 in a hard, inimical voice. " Is it that it concerns me ? " 
 
 Tears came at once into the eyes of Madame Foucault 
 " Do not be unkind," she implored. 
 
THE SIEGE 881 
 
 " I'm not unkind," said Sophia, in the same tone. 
 
 " Shall you leave me if I accept this offer ? " 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 " Yes," said Sophia, bluntly. She tried to be large-hearted, 
 large-minded, and sympathetic ; but there was no sign of these 
 qualities in her speech. 
 
 "And if you take with you the furniture which is 
 yours . . . !" 
 
 Sophia kept silence. 
 
 " How am I to live, I demand of you ? " Madame Foucault 
 asked weakly. 
 
 "By being respectable and dealing with respectable 
 people ! " said Sophia, uncompromisingly, in tones of steel. 
 
 " I am unhappy ! " murmured the elder woman. " How- 
 ever, you are more strong than I ! " 
 
 She brusquely dabbed her eyes, gave a little sob, and ran 
 out of the room. Sophia listened at the door, and heard her 
 dismiss the would-be tenants of the best bedroom. She 
 wondered that she should possess such moral ascendancy over 
 the woman, she so young and ingenuous ! For, of course, she 
 had not meant to remove the furniture. She could hear 
 Madame Foucault sobbing quietly in one of the other rooms ; 
 and her lips cuiled. 
 
 Before evening a truly astonishing event happened. Per- 
 ceiving that Madame Foucault showed no signs of bestirring 
 herself) Sophia, with good nature in her heart but not on her 
 tongue, went to her, and said :, 
 
 " Shall I occupy myself with the dinner ? " 
 
 Madame Foucault sobbed more loudly. 
 
 "That would be very amial)le on your part," Madame 
 Foucault managed at last to reply, not very articulately. 
 
 Sophia put a hat on and went to the grocer's. The grocer, 
 who kept a busy establishment at the corner of the Rue 
 Clausel, was a middle-aged and wealthy man. He had sent 
 his young wife and two children to Normandy until victory 
 over the Prussians should be more assured, and he asked 
 Sophia whether it was true that there was a good bedroom to 
 let in the flat where she lived. His servant was ill of small- 
 pox ; he was attacked by anxieties and fears on all sides j he 
 would not enter his own fl it on account of possible infection ; 
 he liked Sophia, and Madame Foucault had been a customer of 
 his, with intervals, for twenty years, Within an hour he had 
 
THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 arranged to rent the middle bedroom at eighty francs a month, 
 and to take his meals there. The terms were modest, but the 
 respectability was prodigious. All the glory of this tenancy 
 fell upon Sophia. 
 
 Madame Foucault was deeply impressed. Character- 
 istically she began at once to construct a theory that Sophia 
 had only to walk out of the house in order to discover ideal 
 tenants for the rooms. Also she regarded the advent of the 
 grocer as a reward from Providence for her self-denial in 
 refusing the profits of sinfulness. Sophia felt personally 
 responsible to the grocer for his comfort, and so she herself 
 undertook the preparation of the room, Madame Foucault 
 was amazed at the thoroughness of her housewifery, and at the 
 ingenuity of her ideas for the arrangement of furniture. She 
 sat and watched with admiration sycophantic but real. 
 
 That night, when Sophia was in bed, Madame Foucault 
 came into the room, and dropped down by the side of the 
 bed, and begged Sophia to be her moral support for ever. 
 She confessed herself generally. She explained how she had 
 always hated the negation of respectability ; how respectability 
 was the one thing that she had all her life passionately desired. , 
 She said that if Sophia would be her partner in the letting of 
 furnished rooms to respectable persons, she would obey her in 
 everything. She gave Sophia a list of all the traits in Sophia's 
 character which she admired. She asked Sophia to influence 
 her, to stand by her. She iiisisted that she would sleep on the 
 sixth floor in the servant's tiny room ; and she had a vision of 
 three bedrooms let to successful tradesmen. She was in an 
 tcstasy of repentance and good intentions. 
 
 Sophia consented to the business proposition ; for she had 
 nothing else whatever in prospect, and she shared Madame 
 Foucault's rosy view about the remunerativeness of the bed- 
 rooms. . With three tenants who took meals the two women 
 would be able to feed themselves for nothing and still make a 
 profit on the food ; and the rents would be clear gain. 
 
 And she felt very sorry for the ageing, feckless Madame 
 Foucault, whose sincerity was obvious. The association 
 between them w;ould be strange ; it would have been impos- 
 sible to explain it to St. Luke's Square. . . . And yet, if 
 ^gthere was anything at all in the virtue of Christian charity, 
 what could properly be urged against the association ? 
 
 "Ahl" murmured Madame Foucault, kissing Sophia's 
 
THE SIEGE H S83 
 
 hands, " it is to-day, then, that I recommence my life. You 
 will see — you will see ! You have saved me ! " 
 
 It was a strange sight, the time-worn, disfigured courtesan, 
 half prostrate before the beautiful young creature proud and 
 unassailable in the instinctive force of her own character. It 
 was almost a didactic tableau, fraught with lessons for the 
 vicious. Sophia was happier than she had been for years. 
 She had a purpose- in existence ; she had a fluid soul to mould^ 
 to her will according to her wisdom ; and there was a large 
 compassion to her credit. Public opinion could not intimi- 
 date her, for in her case there was no public opinion; she 
 knew nobody ; nobody had the right to question her doings. 
 
 The next day, Sunday, they both worked hard at the bed- 
 looms from early morning. The grocer was installed in his 
 chamber, and the two other rooms were cleansed as they had 
 never been cleansed. At four o'clock, the weather being more 
 magnificent than ever, Madame Foucault said : 
 
 " If we took a promenade on the boulevard ? " 
 
 Sophia reflected. They were partners. " Very well," she 
 agreed. 
 
 The boulevard was crammed with gay, laughing crowds. 
 All the cafds were full. None, who did not know, could have 
 guessed that the news of Sedan was scarcely a day old in the 
 capital. Delirious joy reigned in the glittering sunshine. As 
 the two women strolled along, content with their industry and 
 their resolves, they came to a National Guard, who, perched 
 on a ladder, was chipping away the " N " from the official sign 
 of a court-tradesman. He was exchanging jokes with a circle 
 of open mouths. It was in this way that Madame Foucault 
 and Sophia learnt of the establishment of a republic. 
 
 " Vive la rdpublique 1 " cried Madame Foucault, incontin- 
 ently, and then apologized to Sophia for the lapse. 
 
 They listened a long while to a man who was telling strange 
 histories of the Empress. 
 
 Suddenly Sophia noticed that Madame Foucault was no 
 longer at her elbow. She glanced about, and saw her in 
 earnest conversation with a young man whose face seemed 
 familiar. . She remembered it was the young man with whom 
 Madame Foucault had quarrelled on the night when Sophia 
 found her prone in the corridor ; the last remaining worshipper 
 of the courtesan. 
 
 The woman's face was quite changed by her agitation. 
 
384. THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Sophia drew away, offended. She watched the pair from a 
 distance for a few moments, and then,(lF!mousJn_diaiIluaian, 
 she escaped from the fever of the boulevardsand walked 
 quietly home. Madame Foucault did not return. Apparently 
 Madame Foucault was doomed to be the t gy of cha nge. Two 
 days later Sophia received a scrawled letter from her, with the 
 information that her lover had required that she should accom- 
 pany him to Brussels, as Paris would soon be getting dangerous. 
 " He adores me always. He is the most delicious boy. As 
 I have always said, this is the grand passion of my life. I am 
 happy. He would not permit me to come to you. He has 
 spent two thousand francs on clothes for me, since naturally 
 I had nothing." And so on. No word of apology. Sophia, in 
 reading the letter, allowed for a certain exaggeration and 
 twisting of the truth. 
 
 " Young fool 1 Fool ! " she burst out angrily. She did 
 not mean herself ; she meant the fatuous adorer of that dilapi- 
 dated, horrible woman. She never saw her agaia Doubtless 
 Madame Foucault fulfilled her own prediction as to her ultimate 
 destiny, but in Brussels. 
 
 II 
 
 Sophia still possessed about a hundred pounds, and had 
 she chosen to leave Paris and France, there was nothing to 
 prevent her from doing so. Perhaps if she had chanced to 
 visit the Gare St. Lazare or the Gare du Nord, the sight of 
 tens of thousands of people flying seawards might have stirred 
 in her the desire to flee also from the vague coming danger. 
 But she did not visit those termini ; she was too busy looking 
 after M. Niepce, her grocer. Moreover, she would not quit 
 her furniture, which seemed to her to be a sort of rock. With 
 a flat full of furniture she considered that she ought to be able 
 to devise a livelihood ; the enterprise of becoming independent 
 was already indeed begun. She ardently wished to be inde- 
 pendent, to utilize in her own behalf the gifts of organization, 
 foresight, commonsense and tenacity which she knew she 
 possessed and which had lain idle. And she hated the idea 
 of flight. 
 
 Chirac returned as unexpectedly as he had gone; an 
 expedition for his paper had occupied him. With his lips he 
 
I 
 
 THE SIEGE 885 
 
 urged her to go, but his eyes spoke differently. He had, one 
 afternoon, a mood of candid despair, such as he would have 
 dared to show only to one in whom he felt great confidence. 
 "They will come to Paris," he said; "nothing can stop them. 
 And . . • then . . . ! " He gave a cynical laugh. But when 
 he urged her to go she said : 
 
 "And what about my furniture? And I've promised M. 
 Niepce to look after him." 
 
 Then Chirac informed her that he was without a lodging, 
 and that he would like to rent one of her rooms. She agreed. 
 Shortly afterwards he introduced a middle-aged acquaint- 
 ance named Carlier, the secretary-general of his newspaper, 
 who wished to rent a bedroom. Thus by good fortune Sophia 
 let all her rooms immediately, and was sure of over two hundred 
 francs a month, apart from the profit on meals supplied. On 
 this latter occasion Chirac (and his companion too) was quite 
 optimistic, reiterating an absolute certitude that Paris could 
 never be invested. Briefly, Sophia did not believe him. She 
 believed the candidly despairing Chirac. She had no informa- 
 tion, no wide theory, to justify her pessimism ; nothing but the 
 inward conviction that the race capable of behaving as she had 
 seen it behave in the Place de la Concorde, was bound to be 
 defeated. She loved the French race; but all the practical 
 Teutonic sagacity in her wanted to take care of it in its diffi- 
 culties, and was rather angry with it for being so unfitted to 
 take care of itself. 
 
 She let the men talk, and wiih careless disdain of their 
 discussions and their certainties she went about her business 
 of preparation. At this period, overworked and harassed by 
 novel responsibilities and risks, she was happier, for days 
 together, than she had ever been, simply because she had a 
 purpose in life and was depending upon herself. Her ignorance, 
 of the military and political situation was complete ; the situa- 
 tion did not interest her. What interested her was that she 
 had three men to feed wholly or partially, and that the price 
 of eatables was rising. She bought eatables. She bought 
 fifty pecks of potatoes at a franc a peck, and another fifty 
 pecks at a franc and a quarter — double the normal price ; ten 
 hams at two and a half francs a pound ; a large quantity of 
 tinned vegetables and fruits, a sack of flour, rice, biscuits, 
 coffee, Lyons sausage, dried prunes, dried figs, and much wood 
 and charcoal. But the chief of her purchases was cheese, of 
 
 s c 
 
THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 which her mother used to say that bread and cheese and water 
 made a conipletrdiet. Many of these articles she obtained from 
 her grocer. All of them, except the flour and the biscuits, she 
 stored in the cellar belonging to the flat j after several days' 
 delay, for the Parisian workmen were too elated by the advent 
 of a republic to stoop to labour, she caused a new lock to be 
 fixed on the cellar-door. Her activities were the sensation of 
 the house. Everybody admired, but no one imitated. 
 
 One morning, on going to do her marketing, she found a 
 notice across the shuttered windows of her creamery in the 
 Rue Notre Dame de Lorette: "Closed for want of milk." 
 The siege had begun. Ln was in the closing of the creamery 
 that the siege was figureofor her ; in this, and in eggs at five 
 sous a piece. She went elsewhere for her milk and 'pajd a 
 franc a litre for it. That evening she told her lodgers that 
 the price of meals would be/ doubled, and that if any gentle- 
 man thought that he could get equally good meals elsewhere, 
 he was at liberty to get them elsewhere. Her position was 
 strengthened by the appearance of another candidate for a 
 room, a friend of Niepce. She at once offered him her own 
 room, at a hundred and fifty francs a month. 
 
 " You see," she said, " there is a piano in it" 
 
 " But I don't play the piano," the man protested, shocked 
 at the price. 
 
 " That is not my fault," she said. 
 
 He agreed to pay the price demanded for the room because 
 of the opportunity of getting good meals much cheaper than 
 in the restaurants. Like M. Niepce, he was a ' siege-widower,' 
 his wife having been put under shelter in Brittany. Sophia 
 took to the servant's bedroom on the sixth floor. It measured 
 nine feet by seven, and had no window save a skylight ; but 
 Sophia was in a fair way to realize a profit of at least four 
 pounds a week, after paying for everything. 
 
 On the night when she installed herself in that chamber, 
 amid a world of domestics and poor people, she worked very 
 late, and the rays of her candles shot up intermittently through 
 the skylight into a black heaven; at intervals she flitted up 
 and down the stairs with a candle. Unknown to her a crowd 
 gradually formed opposite the house in the street, and at 
 about one o'clock in the morning a file of soldiers woke the 
 concierge and invaded the courtyard, and every window was 
 suddenly populated with heads. Sophia was called upon to 
 
THE SIEGE 887 
 
 prove that she was not a spy signalling to the Prussians. 
 Three quarters of an hour passed before her innocence 
 was established and the staircases cleared of uniforms and 
 dishevelled curiosity. The childish, impossible unreason of 
 the suspicion against her completed in Sophia's mind the ruin 
 of the reputation of the French people as a sensible race. 
 She was extremely caustic the next day to her boarder^. 
 Except for this episode, the frequency of military uniforms 
 in the streets, the price of food, and the fact that at least one 
 house in four was flying either the ambulance flag or the flag 
 of a foreign embassy (in an absurd hope of immunity from the 
 impending bombardment) the siege did not exist for Sophia. 
 The men often talked about their guard-duty, and disappeared 
 for a day or two to the ramparts, but she was too busy to 
 listen to them. She thought of nothing but her enterprise, 
 which absorbed all her powers. She arose at six a,m., in the 
 dark, and by seven-thirty M. Niepce and his friend had been 
 served with breakfast, and much general work was already 
 done. At eight o'clock she went out to market. When asked 
 why she continued to buy at a high price articles of which 
 she had a store, she would reply : " I am keeping all that till 
 things are much dearer." This was regarded as astounding 
 astuteness. 
 
 On the fifteenth of October she paid the quarter's rent of 
 the flat, four hundred francs, and was accepted as tenant. 
 Her ears were soon quite accustomed to the sound of cannon, 
 and she felt that she had always been a citizeness of Paris, 
 and that Paris had always been besieged. She did not specu- 
 late about the end of the siege j she lived from day to day. 
 Occasionally she had a qualm of fear, when the .firing grew 
 momentarily louder, or when she heard that battles had been 
 fought in such and such a suburb. But then she said it was 
 absurd to be afraid when you were with a couple of million 
 people, all in the same plight as yourself. Sne grew reconciled 
 to everything. She even began to like her tiny bedroom, 
 partly because it was so easy to keep warm (the question of 
 artificial heat was growing acute in Paris), and partly because 
 it ensured her privacy. Down in the flat, whatever was done 
 or said in one room could be more or less heard in all the 
 others, owing to the prevalence of doors. 
 
 Her existence, in the first half of November, had become 
 regular with a monotony almost absolute. Only the number 
 
888 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 of meals served to her boarders varied slightly from day to 
 day. All these repasts, save now and then one in the evening, 
 were carried into the bedrooms by the charwoman. Sophia 
 did not allow herself to be seen much, except in the after- 
 noons. Though Sophia continued to increase her prices, and 
 was now selling her stores at an immense profit, she never 
 approached the prices current outside. She was very indignant 
 against the exploitation of Paris by its shopkeepers, who had 
 vast supplies of provender, and were hoarding for the rise. 
 But the force of their example was too great for her to ignore 
 it entirely ; she contented herself with about half their gains. 
 Only to M, Niepce did she charge more than to the others, 
 because he was a shopkeeper. The four men appreciated 
 their paradise. In them developed that agreeable feeling of 
 security which solitary males find only under the roof of a 
 landlady who is at once prompt, honest, and a votary of 
 cleanliness, Sophia hung a slate near the front-door, and on 
 this slate they wrote their requests for meals, for being called, 
 for laundry-work, etc Sophia never made a mistake, and 
 never forgot. The perfection of the domestic machine amazed 
 these men, who had been accustomed to something quite 
 different, and who every day heard harrowing stories of dis- 
 comfort and swindling from their acquaintances. They even 
 admired Sophia for making them pay, if not too high, still 
 high. They thought it wonderful that she should tell them 
 the price of all things in advance, and even show them how 
 to avoid expense, particularly in the matter of warmth. She 
 arranged rugs for each of them, so that they could sit com- 
 fortably in their rooms with nothing but a small charcoal heater 
 for the hands. Quite naturally they came to regard her as the 
 paragon and miracle of women. They endowed her with every 
 fine quality. According to them there had never been such 
 a woman in the history of mankind ; there could not have 
 been ! She became legendary among their friends : a young 
 and elegant creature, surpassingly beautiful, proud, queenly, 
 unapproachable, scarcely visible, a marvellous manager, a fine 
 cook and artificer of strange English dishes, utterly reliable, 
 utterly exact and with habits of order ... 1 They adored 
 the slight English accent which gave a touch of the exotic 
 to her very correct and freely idiomatic French. In short, 
 Sophia was perfect for them, an impossible woman. What* 
 ever she did was right. 
 
THE SIEGE 889 
 
 And she went up to her room every night with limbs 
 exhausted, but with head clear enough to balance her accounts 
 and go through her money. She did this in bed with thick 
 gloves on. If often she did not sleep well, it was not because 
 of the distant guns, but because of her preoccupation with the 
 subject of finance. She was making money, and she wanted _ 
 _to make ipore. She was always inventing ways of economy. 
 She was so anxious to achieve independence that money was j 
 always in her mind. She began to love gold, to love hoarding / 
 it, and to hate paying it away. ^ 
 
 One morning her charwoman, who by good fortune was 
 nearly as precise as Sophia herself, failed to appear. When 
 the moment came for serving M. Niepce's breakfast, Sophia 
 hesitated, and then decided to look after the old man personally. 
 She knocked at his door, and went boldly in with the tray and 
 candle. He started at seeing her; she was wearing a blue 
 apron, as the charwoman did, but there could be no mistaking 
 her for the charwoman. Niepce looked older in bed than 
 when dressed. He had a rather ridiculous, undignified appear- 
 ance, common among old men before their morning toilette 
 is achieved ; and a nightcap did not improve it. His rotund 
 paunch lifted the bed-clothes, upon which, for the sake of 
 extra warmth, he had spread unmajestic garments. Sophia 
 smiled to herself; but the contempt implied by that secret 
 smile was softened by the thought : " Poor old man ! " She 
 told him briefly that she supposed the charwoman to be 
 ill. He coughed and moved nervously. *^is benevolent and 
 simple face beamed on her paternally as she fixed the tray by 
 the bed. 
 
 "I really must open the window for one little second"' 
 she said, and did so. The chill air of the street came through 
 the closed shutters, and the old man made a noise as of 
 shivering. She pushed back the shutters, and closed the 
 window, and then did the same with the other two windows. 
 It was almost day in the room. 
 
 " You will no longer need the candle,'' she said, and came 
 back to the bedside to extinguish it. 
 
 The benign and fatherly old man put his arm round her 
 waist Fresh from the tonic of pure air, and with the notion 
 of his ridiculousness still in her mind, she was staggered for 
 an instant by this gesture. She had never given a thought to 
 the temperament of the old grocer, the husband of a young 
 
S90 THE OU) WIVES' TALE 
 
 wife. She could not always imaginatively keep in mind the 
 eflfect of her own radiance, especially under such circumstances. 
 But after an instant her precocious cynicism, which had slept, 
 sprang up. " Naturally 1 I might have expected it!" she 
 thought with blasting scorn. 
 
 " Take away your hand 1 " she said bitterly to the amiable 
 old fool. She did not stir. 
 
 He obeyed, sheepishly. 
 
 " Do you wish to remain with me ? " she asked, and as he 
 did not immediately answer, she said in a most commanding 
 tone : " Answer, then ! " 
 
 " Yes," he said feebly. 
 
 " Well, behave properly." 
 
 She went towards the door. 
 
 "I wished only — " he stammered. 
 
 " I do not wish to know what you wished," she said. 
 
 Afterwards she wondered how much of the incident had 
 been overheard. The other breakfasts she left outside the 
 respective doors j and in future Niepce's also. 
 
 The charwoman never came again. She had caught small- 
 pox and she died of it, thus losing a good situation. Strange 
 to -say, Sophia did not replace her; the temptation to save her 
 wages and food was too strong. She could not, however, 
 stand waiting for hours at the door of the official baker and 
 the official butcher, one of a long line of frozen women, for the 
 daily rations of bread and tri-weekly rations of meat. She 
 employed the concierge's boy, at two sous an hour, to do this. 
 Sometimes he would come in with his hands so blue and 
 cold that he could scarcely hold the precious cards which gave 
 the right to the rations and which cost Chirac an hour or two 
 of waiting at the mayoral offices each week. Sophia might 
 have fed her flock without resorting to the official rations, but 
 she would not sacrifice the economy which they represented. 
 She demanded thick clothes for the concierge's boy, and 
 received boots from Chirac, gloves from Carlier, and a great 
 overcoat from Niepce. The weather increased in severity, and 
 provisions in price. One day she sold to the wife of a chemist 
 who lived on the first floor, for a hundred and ten francs, a ham 
 for which she had paid less than thirty francs. She was conscious 
 of a thrill of joy in receiving a beautiful banknote and a gold 
 coin in exchange for a mere ham. By this time her total cash 
 resources had grown to nearly five thousand francs. It was 
 
THE SIEGE 891 
 
 astounding. And the reserves in the cellar were still consider-, 
 able, and the sack of flour that encumbered the kitchen was still 
 more than half full. The death of the faithful charwoman, 
 when she heard of it, produced but little effect on Sophia, wljoJ 
 was so overworked and soj:ompletely absorbed in her own 
 affairs that she had no nervous energyTo' spare Tor sentimental] 
 regrets. The charwoman, by whose side she had regularly 
 passed many hours in the kitchen, so that she knew every 
 crease in her face and fold of her dress, vanished out of 
 Sophia's memory. 
 
 Sophia cleaned and arranged two of the bedrooms in the 
 morning, and two in the afternoon. She had stayed in hotels 
 where fifteen bedrooms were in charge of a single chamber- 
 maid, and she thought it would be hard if she could not 
 manage four in the intervals of cooking and other work ! 
 This she said to herself by way of excuse for not engaging 
 another charwoman. One afternoon she was rubbing the 
 brass knobs of the numerous doors in M. Niepce's room, when 
 the grocer unexpectedly came in. 
 
 She glanced at him sharply. There was a self-conscious 
 look in his eye. He had entered the flat noiselessly. She 
 remembered having told him, in response to a question, that 
 she now did his room in the afternoon. Why should he have 
 left his shop ? He hung up his hat behind the door, with the 
 meticulous care of an old man. Then he took off his overcoat 
 and rubbed his hands. 
 
 " You do well to wear gloves, madame," he said. " It is 
 dog's weather." 
 
 , "I do not wear them for the cold," she replied. "I wear 
 them so as not to spoil my hands." 
 
 " Ah ! truly ! Very well 1 Very well ! May I demand 
 some wood? Where shall I fi>nd it? I do not wish to 
 derange you." 
 
 She refused his help, and brought wood from the kitchen, 
 counting the logs audibly before him. 
 
 "Shall I light the fire now?" she asked. 
 
 " I will light it," he said. 
 
 " Give me a match, please." 
 
 As she was arranging the wood and paper, he said : 
 " Madame, will you listen to me ? " 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " Do not be angry," he said. " Have I not proved that I 
 
392 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 am capable of respecting you? I continue in that respect. 
 It is with all that respect that I say to you that I love you, 
 madame. . . . No, remain calm, I implore you ! " The fact 
 was that Sophia showed no sign of not remaining calm. " It 
 is true that I have a wife. Bat what do you wish . . . ? . S!ie 
 is far away. I love you madly," he proceeded with dignidcd 
 respect " I know I am old ; but I am rich. I understand 
 your character. You are a lady, you are decided, direct, 
 sincere, and a woman of business. I have the greatest respect 
 for you. One can talk to you as one could not to an'oihcr 
 woman. You prefer directness and sincerity^ Madame, 1 w ill 
 give you two thousand francs a month, and all you require 
 from my shop, if you will be amiable to me. I am very 
 solitary, I need the society of a charming creature who would 
 be sympathetic. Two thousand francs a month. It is money." 
 
 He wiped his shiny head with his hand. 
 
 Sophia was bending over the fiie. She turned her head 
 towards him. 
 
 " Is that all ? " she said quietly., 
 
 "You could count on my discretion," he said in a low 
 voice. " I appreciate your scruples. I would come, very late, 
 to your room on the sixth. One could arrange . . . You see, 
 I am direct, like you." 
 
 She had an impulse to order him tempestuously out of the 
 flat ; but it was not a genuine impulse. He was an old fool. 
 Why not treat him as guch ? To take him seriously would be 
 absurd. Moreover, he was a very remunerative boarder. 
 
 " Do not be stupid," she said with cruel tranquillity. 
 " Do not be an old fool." 
 
 And the benign but fatuous middle-aged lecher saw the 
 enchanting vision of Sophia, with her natty apron and her 
 amusing gloves, sweep and fade from the room. He left the 
 house, and the expensive fire warmed an empty room. 
 
 Sophia was angry with him. He had evidently planned 
 the proposal. If capable of respect, he was evidently also 
 capable of chicane. But she supposed these Frenchmen were 
 all alike : disgusting ; and decided that it was useless to worry 
 over a universal fact. They had simply no shame, and she 
 had been very prudent to establish herself far away on the 
 sixth floor. She hoped that none of the other boarders had 
 overheard Niepce's outrageous insolence. She was not Sure 
 if Chirac was not writing in his room. 
 
THE SIEGE S93 
 
 That night there was no sound of cannon in the distance, 
 and Sophia for some time was unable to sleep. She woke Up 
 with a start, after a doze, and struck a match to look at her 
 watch. It had stopped. She had forgotten to wind it up, 
 which omission indicated that the grocer had perturbed her 
 more than she thought. She could not be sure how long she 
 had slept. The hour might be two o'clock or it might be six 
 o'clock. Impossible for her to rest ! She got up and dressed 
 (in case it should be as late as she feared) and crept down 
 the interminable creaking stairs with the candle. As she 
 descended, the conviction that it was the middle of the night 
 grew upon her, and she stepped more softly. There was no 
 sound save that caused by her footfalls. With her latchkey she 
 cautiously opened the front door of the flat and entered. She 
 could then hear the noisy ticking of the small, cheap clock in 
 the kitchen. At the same moment another door creaked, and 
 Chirac, with hair all tousled, but fully dressed, appeared in the 
 corridor. 
 
 " So you have decided to sell yourself to him ! " Chirac 
 whispered. 
 
 She drew away instinctively, and she could feel herself 
 blushing. She was at a loss. She saw that Chirac was in a 
 furious rage, tremendously moved. He crept towards her, half 
 crouching. She had never seen anything so theatrical as his 
 movement, and the twitching of his face. She felt that she too 
 ought to be theatrical, that she ought nobly to scorn his 
 infamous suggestion, his unwarrantable attack. Even supposing 
 that she had decided to sell herself to the old pasha, did that 
 concern him? A dignified silence, an annihilating glance, 
 were all that he deserved. But she was iwt capable of this ' 
 heroic behaviour. 
 
 " What time is it ? " she added weakly. 
 
 " Three o'clock," Chirac sneered. 
 
 "I forgot to wind up my watch," she said. "And so I 
 came down to see." 
 
 " In effect ! " He spoke sarcastically, as if saying : " I've 
 waited for you, and here you are." 
 
 She said to herself that she owed him nothing, but all t^ 
 time she felt that he and she were the only young people in I 
 that flat, and that she did owe to him the proof that she was- 
 guiltless of the supreme dishonour of youth. She collected 
 her forces and looked at him. 
 
394 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " You should be ashamed," she said. " You will wake the 
 others." 
 
 " And M. Niepce — will he need to be wakened ? ' 
 
 •' M. Niepce is not her^," she said. 
 
 Niepce's door was unlatched. She pushed it open, and 
 went into the room, which was empty and bore no sign of 
 having been used. 
 
 "Come and satisfy yourself I" she insisted. 
 
 Chirac did so. His face fell. 
 
 She took her watch from her pocket. 
 
 " And now wind my watch, and set it, please." 
 
 She ■ saw that he was in anguish. He could not take the 
 watch. Tears came into his eyes. Then he hid his face, and 
 dashed away. She heard a sob-impeded murmur that-sounded 
 like, " Forgive me ! " and the banging of a door. And in 
 the stillness she heard the regular snoring of M. Carlier. 
 She too cried. Her vision was blurred by a mist, and she 
 stumbled into the kitchen and seized the clock, and carried it 
 with her upstairs, and shivered in the intense cold of the night. 
 She wept gently for a very long time. " What a shame I 
 What a shame 1 " she said to herself. Yet she did not quite 
 blame Chirac. The frost drove her into bed, but not to sleep. 
 She continued to cry. At dawn her eyes were inflamed with 
 weeping. She was back in the kitchen then. Chirac's door ' 
 was wide open. He had left the flat. On the slate was 
 written, " I shall not take meals to-day." 
 
 Ill 
 
 Their relations were permanently changed. For several 
 days they did not meet at all; and when at the end of the 
 week Chirac was obliged at last to face Sophia in order to pay 
 his bill, he had a most grievous expression. It was obvious 
 that he considered himself a criminal without any defence to 
 offer for his crime. He seemed to make no attempt to hide 
 his state of mind. But he said nothing. As for Sophia, she 
 preserved a mien of amiable cheerfulness. She exerted herself 
 to convince him by her attitude that she bore no resentment, 
 that she had determined to forget the incident, that in short 
 she was the forgiving angel of his dreams. She did not, 
 however, succeed entirely in being quite natural. Confronted 
 
THE SIEGE 895 
 
 by his misery, it would have been impossible for her to be 
 quite natural, and at the same time quite cheerful ! 
 
 A little later the social atmosphere of the flat began to grow 
 querulous, disputatious and perverse. The nerves of every- 
 hqdy were seriously strained. This applied to the whole city. 
 Days of heavy rains followed the Sharf) frosts, and the town 
 was, as it were, sodden with woe. The gates were closed: 
 And though nine-tenths of the inhabitants never went outside 
 the gates, the definite and absolute closing of them demoralized 
 all hearts. Gas was no longer supplied. Rats, cats, and 
 thorough-bred horses were being eaten and pronounced ' not 
 bad.' The siege had ceased to be a novelty. Friends did 
 not invite one another to a 'siege-dinner' as to a picnic. 
 Sophia, fatigued by regular overwork, became weary of the 
 situation. She was angry with the Prussians for dilatoriness, 
 and with the French for inaction, and she poured out her 
 English spleen on her boarders. The boarders told each other 
 in secret that the patronne was growing formidable. Chiefly 
 she bore a grudge against the shopkeepers j and when, upon a 
 rumour of peace, the shop-windows one day suddenly blos- 
 somed with prodigious quantities of all edibles, at highest 
 prices, thus proving that the famine was artificially created, 
 Sophia was furious. M. Niepce in particular, though he sold 
 goods to her at a special discount, suffered indignities. A 
 few days later that benign and fatherly man put himself 
 lamentably in the wrong by attempting to introduce into his 
 room a charming young creature who knew how to be 
 sympathetic. Sophia, by an accident unfortunate for the 
 grocer, caught them in the corridor. She was beside herself, 
 but the only outward symptoms were a white face and a cold 
 steely voice that grated like a rasp on the susceptibilities of the 
 adherents of Aphrodite. At this period Sophia had certainly 
 developed into a ternuggjit — without knowing it ! 
 
 She would often insist now on talking about the siege, and 
 hearing everything that the men could tell her. Her com- 
 ments, made without the least regard for the justifiable delicacy 
 of their feelings as Frenchmen, sometimes led to heated 
 exchanges. When all Montmartre and the Quartier Brdda was 
 impassioned by the appearance from outside of the Thirty- 
 second battalion, she took the side of the populace, and would 
 not credit the solemn statement of the journalists, proved by 
 documents, that these maltreated soldiers were not cowards in 
 
396 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 flight. She supported the women who had spit in the faces 
 of the Thirty-second. She actually said that if she had met 
 them, she would have spit too. Really, she was convinced of 
 the innocence of the Thirty-second, but something prevented 
 her from admitting it. The dispute ended with high words 
 between herself and Chirac. 
 
 The next day Chirac came home at an unusual hour, 
 knocked at the kitchen door, and said : 
 
 " I must give notice to leave you." 
 
 " Why ? " she demanded curtly. 
 
 She was kneading flour and water for a potato-cake. Her 
 potato-cakes were the joy of the household. 
 
 " My paper has stopped ! " said Chirac. 
 
 "Oh!" she added thoughtfully, but not looking at him. 
 " That is no reason why you should leave." 
 
 " Yes," he said. " This place is beyond my means. I do 
 not need to tell you that in ceasing to appear the paper has 
 omitted to pay its debts. The house owes me a month's 
 salary. So I must leave." 
 
 " No ! " said Sophia. " You can pay me when you have 
 money." 
 
 He shook his head. "I have no intention of accepting 
 your kindness." 
 
 " Haven't you got any money? " she abruptly asked 
 
 " None," said he. " It is the disaster — quite simply ! " 
 
 " Then you will be forced to get into debt somewhere." 
 
 " Yes, but not here ! Not to you 1 " 
 
 " Truly, Chirac," she exclaimed, with a cajoling voice, " you 
 are not reasonable." 
 
 " Nevertheless it is like that ! " he said with decision. 
 
 " Eh, well 1 " she turned on him menacingly. " It will not 
 be like that ! You understand me ? You will stay. And you 
 will pay me when you can. Otherwise we shall quarrel. Do 
 you imagine I shall tolerate your childishness ?' Just because 
 you were angry last night " 
 
 " It is not that," he protested. "You ought to know it is 
 not that." (She did.) "It is solely that I cannot permit 
 myself to " 
 
 " Enough 1 " she cried peremptorily, stopping him. And 
 then in a quieter tone, " And what about Carlier ? Is he also 
 in the ditch?" 
 
 " Ah i he has money," said Chirac, with sad envy. 
 
THE SIEGE 897 
 
 " You also, one day," said she. « You stop— in any case 
 until after Christmas, or we quarrel. Is it agreed?" Her 
 accent had softened. 
 
 " You are too good ! " he yielded. " I cannot quarrel with 
 you. But it pains me to accept " 
 
 " Oh ! " she snapped, dropping into the vulgar idiom, 
 " you make me sweat with your stupid pride. Is it that that 
 you call friendship ? Go away now. How do you wish that 
 I should succeed with this cake while you station yourself there 
 to distract me ? " 
 
 IV 
 
 But in three days' Chirac, with amazing luck, fell into 
 another situation, and on the Journal des Dibats. It was the 
 Prussians who had found him a place. The celebrated 
 Payenneville, second greatest chroniqueur of his timie, had 
 caught a cold while doing his duty as a national guard, and had 
 died of pneumonia. The weather was severe again; soldiers 
 were being frozen to death at Aubervilliers. Payenneville's 
 position was taken by another man, whose post was oflFered to 
 Chirac He told Sophia of his good fortune with unconcealed 
 vanity. 
 
 " You with your smile 1 " she said impatiently. " One can 
 refuse you nothing !" 
 
 She behaved just as though Chirac had disgusted her. 
 She humbled him. But with his fellow-lodgers his airs 
 of importance as a member of the editoral staff of the 
 D'ebats were comical in their ingenuousness. On the v^ 
 same day Carlier gave notice to leave Sophia. He was 
 comparatively rich ; but the habits which had enabled him 
 to arrive at independence in the uncertain vocation of a 
 journalist would not allow him, while he was earning nothing, 
 to spend a sou more than was absolutely necessary. He had 
 decided to join forces with a widowed sister, who was 
 accustomed to parsimony as parsimony is understood in 
 France, and who was living on hoarded potatoes and wine. 
 
 " There 1 " said Sophia, " you have lost me a tenant 1 " 
 
 And she insisted, half jocularly and half seriously, that 
 Carlier was leaving because he could not stand Chirac's 
 infantile conceit The flat was full of acrimonious words. 
 
398 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 On Christmas morning Chirac lay in bed rather late ; the 
 newspapers did not appear that day. Paris seemed to be in a 
 sort of stupor. About eleven o'clock he came to the kitchen 
 door. 
 
 " I must speak with you," he said. His tone impressed 
 Sophia. 
 
 " Enter," said she. 
 
 He went in, and closed the door like a conspirator. " We 
 must have a little fSte," he said. " You and I." 
 
 " FSte ! " she repeated. " What an idea I How can I 
 leave?" 
 
 If the idea had not appealed to the secrecies of her heart, 
 stirring desires and souvenirs upon which the dust of time lay 
 thick, she would not have begun by suggesting difficulties ; she 
 would have begun by a flat refusal. 
 
 " That is nothing," he said vigorously. •' It is Christmas, 
 and I must have a chat with you. We cannot chat here. I 
 have not had a true little chat with you since you were ill. 
 You will come with me to a restaurant for lunch." 
 
 She laughed. " And the lunch of my lodgers ? " 
 
 " You will serve it a little earlier. We will go out 
 immediately afterwards, and we will return in time for you to 
 prepare dinner. It is quite simple." 
 
 She shook her head. " You are mad," she said crossly, 
 
 " It is necessary that I should offer you something," he 
 went on scowling. " You comprehend me ? I wish you to 
 lunch with me to-day. I demand it, and you are not going to 
 . refuse me." 
 
 He was very close to her in the little kitchen, and he spoke 
 fiercely, buUyingly, exactly as she had spoken to him when 
 insisting that he should live on credit with her for a while. 
 
 " You are very rude," she parried. 
 
 "If I am rude, it is all the same to me," he held out 
 uncompromisingly. " You will lunch with me ; I hold to it." 
 
 " How can I be dressed ? " she protested. 
 
 " That does not concern me. Arrange that as you can." 
 
 It was the most curious invitation to a Christmas dinner 
 imaginable. 
 
 At a quarter past twelve they issued forth side by side, 
 heavily clad, into the mournful streets. The sky, slate- 
 coloured, presaged snow. The air was bitterly cold, and yet 
 damp. There were no fiacres in the little three-cornered place 
 
THE SIEGE 899 
 
 which forms the mouth of the Rue ClauseL In the Rue Notre 
 Dame de Lorette a single empty omnibus was toiling up the 
 steep glassy slope, the horses slipping and recovering them- 
 selves in response to the whip- cracking, which sounded in the 
 streets as in an empty vault. Higher up, in the Rue Fontaine, 
 one of the few shops that were open displayed this announce- 
 ment: "A large selection of cheeses for New Year's gifts'' 
 They laughed. 
 
 "Last year at this moment," said Chirac, " I was thinking 
 of only one thing — the masked ball at the opera. I could not 
 'sleep after it This year, even the churches are not open. 
 And you ? " 
 
 She put her lips together. " Do not ask me," she said 
 
 They proceeded in silence. 
 
 " We are triste, we others," he said. " But the Prussians, 
 in their trenches, they cannot be so gay, either ! Their families 
 and their Christmas trees must be lacking to them. Let us 
 laugh!" 
 
 The Place Blanche and the Boulevard de Clichy were no 
 more lively than the lesser streets and squa^'es. There was no 
 life anywhere, scarcely a sound ; not even the sound of cannon. 
 Nobody knew anything ; Christmas had put the city into a 
 lugubrious trance of hopelessness. Chirac took Sophia's arm 
 across the Place Blanche, and a few yards up the Rue Lepic he 
 stopped at a small restaurant, famous among the initiated, and 
 known as " The Little Louis." They entered, descending by 
 two steps into a confined and sombrely picturesque interior. 
 
 Sophia saw that they were expected. Chirac must have 
 paid a previous visit to the restaurant that morning. Several 
 disordered tables showed that people had already lunched, and 
 left J but in the corner was a table for two, freshly laid in the 
 best manner of such restaurants ; that is to say, with a red-and- 
 white checked cloth, and two other red-aad-white cloths, 
 almost as large as the table-cloth, folded as serviettes and 
 arranged flat on two thick plates between solid steel cutlery j a 
 salt-cellar, out of which one ground rock-salt by turning a 
 handle, a pepper-castor, two knife-rests, and two common 
 tumblers. The phenomena which differentiated this table 
 from the ordinary table were a champagne bottle and a couple 
 of champagne glasses. Champagne was one of the few items 
 which had not increased in price during the siege. 
 
 The landlord and his wife were eating in another corner, 
 
400 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 a fat, slatternly pair, whom no privations of a siege could 
 have emaciated. The landlord rose. He was dressed as a 
 chef, all in white, with the sacred cap; but a soiled white. 
 Everything in the place was untidy, unkempt and more or less 
 unclean, except just the table upon which champagne was 
 waiting. And yet the restaurant was agreeable, reassuring. 
 The landlord greeted his customers as honest friends. His 
 greasy face was honest, and so was the pale, weary, humorous 
 face of his wife. Chirac saluted her. 
 
 "You see," said she, across from the other corner, indi- 
 cating a bone on her plate. " This is Diane ! " 
 
 " Ah 1 the poor animal ! " exclaimed Chirac, sympatheti- 
 cally. 
 
 " What would you ? " said the landlady. " It cost too dear 
 to feed her. And she was so mignonnel One could not 
 watch her grow thin ! " 
 
 " I was saying to my wife," the landlord put in, " how 
 she would have enjoyed that bone — Diane 1 " He roared 
 with laughter. 
 
 Sophia and the landlady exchanged a curious sad smile at 
 this pleasantry, which had been re-discovered by the landlord 
 for perhaps the thousandth time during the siege, but which he 
 evidently regarded as quite new and original. 
 
 "Eh, welll" he continued confidentially to Chirac. "I 
 have found for you something very good — half a duck." And 
 in a still lower tone : " And it will not cost you too dear." 
 
 No attempt to realize more than a modest profit was ever 
 made in that restaurant. It possessed a regular clientele who 
 knew the value of the little money they had, and who knew 
 also how to appreciate sincere and accomplished cookery. The 
 landlord was the chef, and he was always referred to as the 
 chef, even by his wife. 
 
 " How did you get that ? " Chirac asked. 
 
 " Ah 1 " said the landlord, mysteriously. " I have one of my 
 friends, who comes from Villeneuve St. Georges — refugee, you 
 know. In fine ..." A wave of the fat hands, suggesting 
 that Chirac should not inquire too closely. 
 
 " In effect I " Chirac commented. " But it is very chic, 
 thatl" 
 
 " I believe you that it is chid" said the landlady, sturdily. 
 
 " It is charming," Sophia murmured politely. 
 
 " And then a quite little salad 1" said the landlord. 
 
THE SIEGE 401 
 
 '• But that— that is still more striking ! " said Chirac. 
 
 The landlord winked. The fact was that the commerce 
 which resulted in fresh green vegetables in the heart of a 
 beleagured town was notorious. ' 
 
 " And then also a quite little cheese ! " said Sophia, 
 slightly imitating the tone of the landlord, as she drew from 
 the inwardness of her cloak a small round parcel. It con- 
 tained a Brie cheese, in fairly good condition. It was worth 
 at least fifty francs, and it had cost Sophia less than two 
 fi-ancs. The landlady joined the landlord in inspecting this 
 wondrous jewel. Sophia seized a knife and cut a slice for the 
 landlady's table, 
 
 " Madame is too good 1 " said the landlady, confused by 
 this noble generosity, and bearing the gift off to her table as 
 a fox-terrier will hurriedly seek solitude with a sumptuous 
 morsel. The landlord beamed. Chirac was enchanted. In 
 the intimate and unaffected cosiness of that interior the vast, 
 stupefied melancholy of the city seemed to be forgotten, to 
 have lost its sway. 
 
 Then the landlord brought a hot brick for the feet of 
 madame. It was more an acknowledgment of the slice of 
 cheese than a necessity, for the restaurant was very warm ; the 
 tiny kitchen opened directly into it, and the door between the 
 two was open ; there was no ventilation whatever. 
 
 " It is a friend of mine," said the landlord, proudly, in the 
 way of gossip, as he served an undescribed soup, " a butcher 
 in the Faubourg St. Honord, who has bought the three 
 elephants of the Jardin des Plantes for twenty-seven thousand 
 francs." 
 
 Eyebrows were lifted. He uncorked the champagne. 
 
 As she drank the first mouthful (she had long lost her 
 youthful aversion for wine) Sophia had a glimpse of herself 
 in a tilted mirror hung rather high on the opposite wall. It 
 was several months since she had attired herself with cere- 
 moniousness. The sudden unexpected vision of elegance 
 and pallid beauty pleased her. And the instant effect of 
 the champagne was to renew in her mind a forgotten concep- 
 tion of the goodness of life and of the joys which she bad so 
 long niissed. 
 
 a D 
 
402 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 At half-past two they were alone in the little salon of the 
 restaurant, and vaguely in their dreamy and feverish minds 
 that were too preoccupied to control with precision their warm, 
 relaxed bodies, there floated the illusion that the restaurant 
 belonged to them and that in it they were at home. It was 
 no longer a restaurant, but a retreat and shelter from hard life. 
 The chef and his wife were dozing in an inner room. The 
 champagne was drunk; the adorable cheese was eaten; and 
 they were sipping Marc de Bourgogne. They sat at right 
 angles to one another, close to one another, with brains a- 
 swing ; fiiU of good nature and quicks sympathy ; their flesh 
 content and yet expectant. In a pause of the conversation 
 (which, entirely banal and fragmentary, had seemed to reach 
 the acme of agreeableness), Chirac put his hand on the hand 
 of Sophia as it rested limp on the littered table. Accidentally 
 she caught his eye ; she had not meant to do so. They both 
 became self-conscious His thin, bearded face had more than 
 ever that wistfulness which always softened towards him the 
 uncompromisingness of her character. He had the look of 
 a child. For her, Gerald had sometimes shown the same look. 
 But indeed she was now one of those women for whom all men, 
 and especially all men in a tender mood, are invested with 
 a certain incurable quality of childishness. She had not with- 
 drawn her hand at once, and so she could not withdraw it 
 at all. 
 
 He gazed at her with timid audacity. Her eyes were 
 liquid. 
 
 " What are you thinking about?" she asked. 
 
 "I was asking myself what I should have done if you had 
 refiised to come." 
 
 " And what should you have done ? " 
 
 "Assuredly something terribly inconvenient," he replied, 
 with the large importance of a man who is in the domain 
 of pure supposition. He leaned towards her. " My very 
 dear friend," he said in a different voice, getting bolder. 
 
 It was infinitely sweet to her, voluptuously sweet, this 
 basking in the heat of temptation. It certainly did seem to 
 her, then, the one real pleasure in the world. Her body 
 might have been saying to his : " See how ready I am I " Her 
 
THE SIEGE 403 
 
 body might have been saying to his : " Look into my mind. 
 For you I have no modesty. Look and see all that is there." 
 The veil of convention seemed to have been rent. Their 
 attitude to each other was almost that of lover and mistress, 
 between whom a single glance may be charged with the secrets 
 of the past and promises for the future. Morally she was his 
 mistress in that moment. 
 
 He released her hand and put his arm round her waist. 
 
 " I love thee," he whispered with great emotion. 
 
 Her face changed and hardened. " You must not do that," 
 she said, coldly, unkindly, harshly. She scowled. She would 
 not abate one crease in her forehead to the appeal of his sur- 
 prised glance. Yet she did not want to repulse him. The 
 instinct which repulsed him was not within her control. Just 
 as a shy man will obstinately refuse an invitation which he is 
 hungering to accept, so, though not from shyness, she wa^ 
 compelled to repulse Chirac. Perhaps if her desires had not 
 been laid to sleep by excessive physical industry and nervous 
 strain, the sequel might have bpen different. 
 
 Chirac, like most men who have once found a woman 
 weak, imagined that he understood women profoundly. He 
 thought of women as the Occidental thinks of the Chinese, as 
 a race apart, mysterious but capable of being infallibly com- 
 prehended by the application of a few leading principles of 
 psychology. Moreover he was in earnest ; he was hard driven, 
 and he was honest. He continued, respectfully obedient in 
 withdrawing his arm : 
 
 " Very dear friend," he urged with undaunted confidence, 
 " you must know that I love you." 
 
 She shook her head impatiently, all the time wondering 
 what it was that prevented her from slipping into his arms. 
 She knew that she was treating him badly by this brusque 
 change of front ; but she could not help it. Then she began 
 to feel sorry for him. 
 
 "We have been very good friends," he said. "I have 
 always admired you enormously. I did not think that I 
 should dare to love you until that day when I overheard that 
 old villain Niepce make his advances. Then, when I 
 perceived my acute jealousy, I knew that I was loving you. 
 Ever since, I have thought only of you. I swear to you that 
 if you will not belong to me, it is already finished for me ! 
 Altogether! Never have I seen a woman like you! So 
 
404 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 strong, so proud, so kind, and so beautiful 1 You are astonish- 
 ing, yes, astonishing! No other woman could have drawn 
 herself out of an impossible situation as you have done, since 
 the disappearance of your husband. For me, you are a woman 
 unique. I am very sincere. Besides, you know it. . . . Dear 
 friend I " 
 
 She shook her head passionately. 
 
 She did not love him. But she was moved. And she 
 wanted to love him. She wanted to yield to him, only liking 
 him, and to love afterwards. But this obstinate instinct held 
 her back. 
 ' " I do not say, now," Chirac went on. " Let me hope." 
 
 The Latin theatricality of his gestures and his tone made 
 her sorrowful for him. 
 
 " My poor Chirac 1 " she plaintively murmured, and began 
 to put on her gloves. 
 
 " I shall hope 1 " he persisted. 
 
 She pursed her lips. He seized her violently by the waist. 
 She drew her face away from his, firmly. She was not hard, 
 not angry now. Disconcerted by her compassion, he loosed 
 her. 
 
 " My poor Chirac," she said, " I ought not to have come. 
 I must go. It is perfectly useless. Believe me." 
 " No, no 1 " he whispered fiercely. 
 
 She stood up and the abrupt movement pushed the table 
 gratingly across the floor. The throbbing spell of the flesh 
 was snapped like a stretched string, and the scene over. The 
 landlord, roused from his doze, stumbled in. Chirac had 
 nothing but the bill as a reward for his pains. He was 
 bafiled. 
 
 They left the restaurant, silently, with a foolish air. 
 Dusk was falling on the mournful streets, and the lamp- 
 lighters were lighting the miserable oil lanips that had 
 replaced gas. They two, and the lamphghters, and an 
 omnibus were alone in the streets. The gloom was awful ; it 
 was desolating. The universal silence seemed to be the 
 [silence of despair. Steeped in woe, Sophia thought wearily 
 upon the hopeless problem of existence. For it seemed to her 
 [ that she and Chirac had created this woe out of nothing, and 
 I yet it was an incurable woe 1 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 SUCCESS 
 
 Sophia lay awake one night in the room lately quitted by 
 Carlier. That silent negation of individuality had come and 
 gone, and left scarcely any record of himself either in his 
 room or in the memories of those who had surrounded his 
 existence in the house. Sophia had decided to descend from 
 the sixth floor, partly because the temptation of a large room, 
 after months in a cubicle, was rather strong; but more 
 because of late she had been obliged to barricade the door of 
 the cubicle with a chest of drawers, owing to the propensities 
 of a new tenant of the sixth floor. It was useless to complain 
 to the concierge ; the sole effective argument was the chest of 
 drawers, and even that was frailer than Sophia could have 
 wished. Hence, finally, her retreat. 
 
 She heard the front-door of the flat open ; then it was shut 
 with nervous violence. The resonance of its closing would 
 have certainly wakened less accomplished sleepers than M. 
 Niepce and his friend, whose snores continued with un- 
 disturbed regularity. After a pause of shuffling, a match 
 was struck, and feet crept across the corridor with the most 
 exaggerated precautions against noise. There followed the 
 unintentional bang of another door. It was decidedly the 
 entry of a man without the slightest natural aptitude for furtive 
 irruptions. The clock in M. Niepce's room, which the grocer 
 had persuaded to exact time-keeping, chimed three with its 
 delicate ting. 
 
 For several days past Chirac had been mysteriously engaged 
 very late at the bureaux of the DBats. No one knew the 
 nature of his employment ; he said nothing, except to inform 
 
 40s 
 
406 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Sophia that he would continue to come home about three 
 o'clock until further notice. She had insisted on leaving in 
 his room the materials and apparatus for a light meal. 
 Naturally he had protested, with the irrational obstinacy of a 
 physically weak man who sticks to it that he can defy the laws 
 of nature. But he had protested in vain. 
 
 His general conduct since Christmas Day had frightened 
 Sophia, in spite of her tendency to stifle facile alarms at their 
 birth. He had eaten scarcely anything at all, and he went 
 about with the face of a man dying of a broken heart The 
 change in him was indeed tragic. And instead of improving, 
 he grew worse. " Have I done this ? " Sophia asked herself. 
 " It is impossible that I should have done this ! It is absurd 
 and ridiculous that he should behave so ! " Her thoughts 
 were employed alternately in sympathizing with him and in 
 despising him, in blaming herself and in blaming him. When 
 they spoke, they spoke awkwardly, as though one or both of 
 them had committed a shaineful crime, which could not even 
 be mentioned. The atmosphere of the flat was tainted by the 
 horror. And Sophia could not ofi'er him a bowl of soup 
 without wondering how he would look at her or avoid looking, 
 and without carefully arranging in advance her own gestures 
 and speech. Existence was a nightmare of self-consciousness. 
 
 " At last they have unmasked their batteries 1 " he had 
 exclaimed with painful gaiety two days after Christmas, when 
 the besiegers had recommenced their cannonade. He tried 
 to imitate the strange, general joy of the city, which had been 
 roused from apathy by the recurrence of a familiar noise j but 
 the effort was a deplorable failure. And Sophia condemned 
 not merely the failure of Chirac's imitation, but the thing 
 imitated. " Childish 1 " she thought. Yet, despise the feeble- 
 ness of Chirac's behaviour as she might, she was deeply 
 impressed, genuinely astonished, by the gravity and persistence 
 of the symptoms. " He must have been getting himself into a 
 state about me for a long time," she thought. "Surely he 
 could not have gone mad like this all in a day or two ! But I 
 never noticed anything. No ; honestly I never noticed any- 
 thing ! " And just as her behaviour in the restaurant had 
 shaken Chirac's confidence in his knowledge of the other sex, 
 so now the singular behaviour of Chirac shook hers. She was 
 taken aback. She was frightened, though she pretended not 
 to be frightened. 
 
SUCCESS 407 
 
 She lived over and over again the scene in the restaurant. 
 She asked herself over and over again if really she had not 
 beforehand expected him to make love to her in the restaurant. 
 She could not decide exactly when she had begun to expect a 
 declaration J but probably a long time before the meal was 
 finished. She had foreseen it, and might have stopped it. 
 But she had not chosen to stop it. Curiosity concerning not 
 merely him, but also herself, had tempted her tacitly to 
 encourage him. She asked herself over and over again why 
 she had repulsed him. It struck her as curious that she had 
 repulsed him. Was it because she was a married woman ? 
 Was it because she had moral scrufiles ? Was it at bottom 
 because she did not care for him ? Was it because she could 
 not care for anybody ? Was it because his fervid manner of 
 love-making offended her English phlegm ? And did she feel 
 pleased or displeased by his forbearance in not renewing the 
 assault ? She could not answer. She did not know. 
 
 But all the time she knew that she wanted love. Only, 
 she conceived a different kind of love : placid, regular, some- 
 what stem, somewhat above the plane of whims, moods, 
 caresses, and all mere fleshly contacts. Not that she con- 
 sidered that she despised these things (though she did) |. 
 What she wanted was a love that was too proud, too indepen- 
 dent, to exhibit frankly either its joy or its pain. She hated a 
 display of sentiment. And even in the most intimate aban- 
 donments she would have made reserves, and would have 
 expected reserves, trusting to a lover's powers of divination, 
 and to her own ! The foundation of her character was a 
 haughty moral independence, and this quality was what she 
 most admired in others. 
 
 Chirac's inability to draw from his own pride strength to 
 sustain himself against the blow of her refusal gradually killed 
 in her the sexual desire which he had aroused, and which 
 during a few days flickered up under the stimulus of fancy 
 and of regret. Sophia saw with increasing clearness that her 
 unreasoning instinct had been right in saying him nay. And 
 when, in spite of this, regrets still visited her, she would 
 comfort herself in thinking : " I cannot be bothered with all 
 that sort of thing. It is not worth while. What does it lead 
 to ? Is not life complicated enough without that ? No, no !( 
 I will stay as I am. At any rate I kn ow what I am in for, as 
 things are I" And she would reflect upon her "Eopeful 
 
408 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 financial situation, and the approaching prospect of a con- 
 stantly sufficient income. And a little thrill of impatience 
 against the interminable and gigantic foolishness of the siege 
 would take her. 
 
 But her self-conciousness in presence of Chirac did not 
 abate. 
 
 As she lay in bed she awaited accustomed sounds which 
 should have connoted Chirac's definite retirement for the 
 niyht. Her ear, however, caught no sound whatever from his 
 room. Then she imagined that there was a smell of burning 
 in the flat. She sat up, and sniffed anxiously, of a sudden 
 wideawake and apprehensive. And then she was sure that the 
 smell of burning was not in her imagination. The bedroom 
 was in perfect darkness. Feverishly she searched with her 
 right hand for the matches on the night-table, and knocked 
 candlestick and matches to the floor. She seized her dressing- 
 gown, which was spread over the bed, and put it on, aiming 
 for the door. Her feet were bare. She discovered the door. 
 In the passage she could discern nothing at first, and then she 
 made out a thin line of light, which iiidicated the bottom of 
 Chirac's door. The smell of burning was strong and unmis- 
 takable. iShe went towards the faint light, fumbled for the 
 door-handle with her palm, and opened. It did not occur to 
 her to call out and ask what was the matter. 
 
 The house was not on fire ; but it might have been. She 
 had left on the ta ^le at the foot of Chirac's bed a small 
 cooking-lamp, and a saucepan of bouillon. All that Chirac 
 had to do was to ignite the lamp and put the saucepan on it. 
 He had ignited the lamp, having previously raised the double 
 wicks, and had then dropped into the chair by the table just as 
 he was, and sunk forward and gone to sleep with his head 
 lying sideways on the table. He had not put the saucepan on 
 the lamp; he had not lowered the wicks, and the flames, 
 capped with thick black smoke, were waving slowly to and fro 
 within a few inches of his loose hair. His hat had rolled along 
 the floor ; he was wearing his great overcoat and one woollen 
 glove ; the other glove had lodged on his slanting knee. A 
 candle was also burning. 
 
 Sophia hastened forward, as it were surreptitiously, and 
 with a forward-reaching movement turned down the wicks of 
 the lamp ; black specks were falling on the table ; happily the 
 saucepan was covered, or the bouillon would have been ruined. 
 
SUCCESS 409 
 
 Chirac made a heart-rending spectacle, and Sophia was 
 aware of deep and painful emotion in seeing him thus. He 
 must have been utterly exhausted and broken by loss of sleep. 
 He was a man incapable of regular hours, incapable of 
 treating his body with ■ decency. Though going to bed at 
 three o'clock, he had continued to rise at his usual hour. He 
 looked like one dead ; but more sad, more wistful. Outside 
 in the street a fog reigned, and his thin draggled beard was 
 jewelled with the moisture of it. His attitude had the uncon- 
 sidered and violent prostration of an overspent dog. *The 
 beaten animal in him was expressed in every detail of that 
 posture. It showed even in his white, drawn eyelids, and in 
 the falling of a finger. All his face was very sad. It appealed 
 for mercy as the undefended face of sleep always appeals ; it 
 was so helpless, so exposed, so simple. It recalled Sophia to 
 a sense of the inner mysteries of life, reminding her some- 
 how that humanity walks ever on a thin crust over terrific 
 abysses. She did not physically shudder; but her soul 
 shuddered. 
 
 She mechanically placed the saucepan on the lamp, and 
 the noise awakened Chirac. He groaned. At first he did not 
 perceive her. When he saw that some one was looking down 
 at him, he did not immediately realize who this some one was. 
 He rubbed his eyes with his fists, exactly like a baby, and sat 
 up, and the chair cracked. 
 
 "What then?" he demanded. "Oh, madame, I ask 
 pardon. What?" 
 
 " You have nearly destroyed the house," she said. " I 
 smelt fire, and I came in. I was just in time. There is no 
 danger now. But please be careful." She made as if to move 
 towards the door. 
 
 " But what did I do ? " he asked, his eyelids wavering. 
 
 She explained. 
 
 He rose from his chair unsteadily. She told him to sit 
 down again, and he obeyed as though in a dream. 
 
 " I can go now," she said. 
 
 "Wait one moment," he murmured. "I ask pardon. I 
 should not know how to thank you. You are truly too good. 
 Will you wait one moment ? " 
 
 His tone was one of supplication. He gazed at her, a little 
 dazzled by the light and by her. The lamp and the candle 
 illuminated the lower part of her face, theatrically, and 
 
410 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 showed the texture of her blue flannel peignoir ; the pattern 
 of a part of the lace collar was silhouetted in shadow on her 
 cheek. Her face was flushed, and her hair hung down 
 unconfined. Evidently he could not recover from his excus- 
 able astonishment at the apparition of such a figure in his 
 room. 
 
 "What is it — now?" she said. The faint, quizzical 
 emphasis which she put on the ' now ' indicated the essential 
 of her thought. The sight of him touched her and filled her 
 with a womanly sympathy. But that sympathy was only the 
 envelope of her disdain of him. She could not admire weak- 
 ness. She could but pity it with a pity in which scorn was 
 mingled. Her instinct was to treat him as a child. He had 
 failed in human dignity. And it seemed to her as if she had 
 not previously been quite certain whether she could not love 
 him, but that now she was quite certain. She was close to 
 him. She saw the wounds of a soul that could not hide its 
 wounds, and she resented the sight. She W£ls hard. She 
 would not make allowances. And she revelled in her hard- 
 ness. Contempt — a good-natured, kindly, forgiving contempt 
 — that was the kernel of the sympathy which exteriorly warmed 
 her !. Contempt for the lack of self control which had resulted 
 in this swift degeneration of a man into a tortured victim ! 
 Contempt for the lack of perspective which magnified a mere 
 mushroom passion till it filled the whole field of life ! Con- 
 tempt for this feminine slavery to sentiment I She felt tha.t she 
 might have been able to give herself to Chirac as one gives a 
 toy to an infant. But of loving him . . . ! No ! She was 
 conscious of an immeasurable superiority to him, for she was 
 conscious of the freedom of a strong mind. 
 
 " I wanted to tell you," said he, " I am going away." 
 
 " Where ? " she asked. 
 
 " Out of Paris." 
 
 "Out of Paris? How?" 
 
 " By balloon ! My journal . . . ! It is an affair of great 
 importance. You understand. I offered myself. What would 
 you?" 
 
 " It is dangerous," she observed, waiting to see if he 
 would put on the silly air of one who does not understand 
 fear. 
 
 " Oh ! " the poor fellow muttered with a fatuous intonation 
 and snapping of the fingers. " That is all the same to me. 
 
SUCCESS 41 1 
 
 Yes, it is dangerous. Yes, it is dangerous ! " he repeated. 
 " But what would you . . . ? For me . . . ! " 
 
 She wished that she had not mentioned danger. It hurt 
 her to watch him incurring her ironic disdain. 
 
 " It will be the night after to-morrow," he said. " In the 
 courtyard of .the Gare du Nord. I want you to come and see 
 me go. I particularly want you to come and see me go. I 
 have asked Carlier to escort you." 
 
 He might have been sayiiig, "I am offering myself to 
 martyrdom, and you must assist at the spectacle." 
 
 She despised him yet more. 
 
 " Oh ! Be tranquil," he said. " I shall not worry you. 
 Never shall I speak to you again of my love. I know you. 
 I know it would be useless. But I hope you will come and 
 wish me bon voyage." 
 
 " Of course, if you really wish it," she replied with cheerful 
 coolness. 
 
 He seized her hand and kissed it. 
 
 Once it had pleased her when he kissed her hand. But 
 now she did not like it. It seemed hysterical and foolish to 
 her. She felt her feet to be stone-cold on the floor. 
 
 " I'll leave you now," she said. " Please eat your soup." 
 
 She escaped, hoping he would not espy her feet. 
 
 II 
 
 The courtyard of the Nord Railway Station was lighted 
 by oil-lamps taken from locomotives ; their silvered reflectors 
 threw dazzling rays from all sides on the under portion of the 
 immense yellow mass of the balloon ; the upper portion was 
 swaying to and fro with gigantic ungainliness in the strong 
 breeze. It was only a small balloon, as balloons are measured, 
 but it seemed monstrous as it wavered over the human forms 
 that were agitating themselves beneath it The cordage was 
 silhouetted against the yellow taffetas as high up as the widest 
 diameter of the balloon, but above that all was vague, and 
 even spectators standing at a distance could not clearly 
 separate the summit of the great sphere from the darkly 
 moving sky. The car, held by ropes fastened to stakes, rose 
 now and Ihen a few inches uneasily from the ground. The 
 sombre and severe architecture of the station-buildings 
 
412 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 enclosed the balloon on every hand; it had only one way 
 of escape. Over the roofs of that architecture, which shut 
 out the sounds of the city, came the irregular booming of the 
 bombardment. Shells were falling in the southern quarters 
 of Paris, doing perhaps not a great deal of damage, but still 
 -plunging occasionally into the midst of some domestic interior 
 and making a sad mess of it. The Parisians were convinced 
 that the shells were aimed maliciously at hospitals and 
 museums ; and when a child happened to be blown to pieces 
 their unspoken comments upon the Prussian savagery were 
 bitter. Their faces said: "Those barbarians cannot even 
 spare our children ! " They amused themselves by creating a 
 market in shells, paying more for a live shell than a dead- 
 one, and modifying the tariff according to the supply. And 
 as the cattle-market was empty, and the vegetable-market 
 was empty, and beasts no longer pastured on the grass of the 
 parks, and the twenty-five million rats of the metropolis were too 
 numerous to furnish interest to spectators, and the Bourse was 
 practically deserted, the traffic in shells sustained the starving 
 mercantile instinct during a very dull period. But the effect 
 on the nerves was deleterious. The nerves of everybody were 
 like nothing but a raw wound. Violent anger would spring 
 up magically out of laughter, and blows out of caresses. This 
 indirect consequence of the bombardment was particularly 
 noticeable in the group of men under the balloon. Each 
 behaved as if he were controlling his temper in the most 
 difficult circumstances. Constantly they all gazed upwards 
 into the sky, though nothing could possibly be distinguished 
 there save the blurred edge of a flying cloud. But the boom- 
 ing came from that sky; the shells that were dropping on 
 Montrouge came out of that sky ; and the balloon was going 
 up into it; the balloon was ascending into its mysteries, to 
 brave its dangers, to sweep over the encircling ring of fire and 
 savages. 
 
 Sophia stood apart with Carlier. Carlier had indicated 
 a particular spot, under the shelter of the colonnade, where 
 he said it was imperative that they should post themselves. 
 Having guided Sophia to this spot, and impressed upon her 
 that they were not to move, he seemed to consider that the 
 activity of his rtk was finished, and spoke no word. With 
 the very high silk hat which he always wore, and a thin old- 
 fashioned overcoat whose collar was turned up, he made a 
 
SUCCESS 413 
 
 rather grotesque figure. Fortunately the night was not very 
 cold, or he might have passively frozen to death on the edge 
 of that feverish group. Sophia soon ignored him. She 
 watched the balloon. An aristocratic old man leaned against 
 the car, watch in hand ; at intervals he scowled, or stamped 
 his foot. An old sailor, tranquilly smoking a pipe, walked 
 round and round the balloon, staring at it ; once he climbed 
 up into the rigging, and once he jumped into the car and 
 angrily threw out of it a bag, which some one had placed in it. 
 But for the most part he was calm. Other persons of authority 
 hurried about, talking and gesticulating; and a number of 
 workmen waited idly for orders. 
 
 " Where is Chirac ? " suddenly cried the old man with the 
 watch. 
 
 Several voices deferentially answered, and a man ran away 
 into the gloom on an errand. 
 
 Then Chirac appeared, nervous, self-conscious, restless. 
 He was enveloped in a fur coat that Sophia had never seen 
 before, and he carried dangling in his hand a cage containing 
 six pigeons whose whiteness stirred uneasily within it. The 
 sailor took the cage from him and all the persons of authority 
 gathered round to inspect the wonderful birds upon which, 
 apparently, momentous affairs depended. When the group 
 separated, the sailor was to be seen bending over the edge of 
 the car to deposit the cage safely. He then got into the car, 
 still smoking his pipe, and perched himself negligently on the 
 wickerwork. The man with the watch was conversing with 
 Chirac ; Cliirac nodded his head frequently in acquiescence, 
 and seemed to be saying all the time : " Yes, sir I Perfectly 
 sir ! I understand, sir ! Yes, sir 1 " 
 
 Suddenly Chirac turned to the car and put a question to 
 the sailor, who shook his head. Whereupon Chirac gave a 
 gesture of submissive despair to the man with the watch. 
 And in an instant the whole throng was in a ferment. 
 
 " The victuals ! " cried the man with the watch. " The 
 victuals, name of God I Must one be indeed an idiot to 
 forget the victuals ! Name of God — of God ! " 
 
 Sophia smiled at the agitation, and at the inefficient 
 management which had never thought of food. For it 
 appeared that the food had not merely been forgotten j it was 
 a question which had not even been considered. She could 
 not help despising all that crowd of self-important and fussy 
 
414 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 males to whom the idea had not occurred that even balloonists 
 must eat. And she wondered whether everything was done 
 like that. After a delay that seemed very long, the problem 
 of victuals was solved, chiefly, as far as Sophia could judge, 
 by means of cakes of chocolate and bottles of. wine, 
 
 " It is enough 1 It is enough 1 " Chirac shouted passion- 
 ately several times to a knot of men who began to argue with 
 him. 
 
 Then he gazed round furtively, and with an inflation of 
 the chest and a patting of his fur coat he came directly 
 towards Sophia. Evidently Sophia's position had been pre- 
 arranged between him and Carlier. They could forget food, 
 but they could think of Sophia's position ! 
 
 All eyes followed him. Those eyes could not, in the gloom, 
 distinguish Sophia's beauty, but they could see that she was 
 young and slim and elegant, and of foreign carriage. That 
 was enough. The very air seem to vibrate with the intense 
 curiosity of those eyes. And immediately Chirac grew into 
 the hero of some brilliant and romantic adventure. Immedi- 
 ately he was envied and admired by every man of authority 
 present. What was she ? Who was she ? Was it a serious 
 passion or simply a caprice ? Had she flung herself at him ? 
 It was undeniable that lovely creatures did sometimes fling 
 themselves at lucky mediocrities. Was she a married woman ? 
 An artiste ? A girl ? Such queries thumped beneath over- 
 coats, while the correctness of a ceremonious demeanour was 
 strictly observed. 
 
 Chirac uncovered, and kissed her hand. The wind dis- 
 arranged his hair. She saw that his face was very pale and 
 anxious beneath the swagger of a sincere desire to be brave. 
 
 " Well, it is the moment ! " he said. 
 
 " Did you all forget the food?" she asked. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. "What will you? One 
 cannot think of everything." 
 
 "I hope you will have a safe voyage," she said. 
 
 She had already taken leave of him once, in the house, 
 and heard all about the balloon and the sailor-aeronaut and 
 the preparations ; and now she had nothing to say, nothing 
 whatever. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders again. "I hope sol" he 
 murmured, but in a tone to convey that he had no such hope. 
 
 " The wind isn't too strong ? " she suggested. 
 
SUCCESS 415 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders again. " What would you ? " 
 
 " Is it in the direction you want ? " 
 
 "Yes, nearly," he admitted unwillingly. Then rousing 
 himself: " Eh, well, madame. You have been extremely 
 amiable to come. I held to it very much — that you should 
 come. It is because of you I quit Paris." 
 
 She resented the speech by a frown. 
 
 " Ah ! " he implored in a whisper. " Do not do that. 
 Smile on me. After all, it is not my fault. Remember that 
 this may be the last time I see you, the last time I regard 
 your eyes." 
 
 She smiled. She was convinced of the genuineness of the 
 emotion which expressed itself in all this flamboyant behaviour. 
 And she had to make excuses to herself on behalf of Chirac. 
 She smiled to give him pleasure. The hard commonsense 
 in her might sneer, but indubitably she was the centre of a 
 romantic episode. The balloon darkly swinging there 1 The 
 men waiting ! The secrecy of the mission 1 And Chirac, bare- 
 headed in the wind that was to whisk him away, telling her in 
 fatalistic accents that her image had devastated his life, while 
 envious aspirants watched their colloquy ! Yes, it was romantic. 
 And she was beautiful 1 Her beauty was an active reality that 
 went about the world playing tricks in spite of herself. The 
 thoughts that passed through her mind were the large, splendid 
 thoughts of romance. And it was Chirac who had aroused 
 them ! A real drama existed, then, triumphing over the acci- 
 dental absurdities and pettinesses of the situation. Her final 
 words to Chirac were tender and encouraging. 
 
 He hurried back to the balloon, resuming his cap. He 
 was received with the respect due to one who comes fresh 
 from conquest He was sacred. 
 
 Sophia rejoined Carlier, who had withdrawn, and began to 
 talk to him with a self-conscious garrulity. She spoke without 
 reason and scarcely noticed what she was saying. Already 
 Chirac was snatched out of her Ufe, as other beings, so many 
 of them, had been snatched. She thought of their first meetings^ 
 and of the sympathy which had always united them. He-had 
 lost his simplicity, now, in the self-created crisis of his fa.te, 
 and had sunk in her esteem. And she was determined to like 
 him all the more because he had sunk in her esteem. She 
 wondered whether he really had undertaken this adventure 
 from sentimental disappointment She wondered whether, if 
 
416 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 she had not forgotten to wind her watch one night, they would 
 still have been living quietly under the same roof in the Rue 
 Br^da. 
 
 The sailor climbed definitely into the car ; he had covered 
 himself with a large cloak. Chirac had got one leg over the 
 side of the car, and eight men were standing by the ropes, 
 when a horse's hoofs clattered through the guarded entrance 
 to the courtyard, amid an uproar of sudden excitement. The 
 shiny chest of the horse was flecked with the classic foam, 
 
 " A telegram from the Governor of Paris I " 
 
 As the orderly, checking his mount, approached the group, 
 even the old man with the watch raised his hat. The orderly 
 responded, bent down to make an inquiry, which Chirac 
 answered, and then, with another exchange of salutes, the 
 official telegram was handed over to Chirac, and the horse 
 backed away from the crowd. It was quite thrilling. Carlier 
 was thrilled. 
 
 " He is never too prompt, the Governor. It is a quality 1 " 
 said Carlier, with irony. 
 
 Chirac entered the car. And then the old man with the 
 watch drew a black bag from the shadow behind him and 
 entrusted it to Chirac, who accepted it with a profound 
 deference and hid it. The sailor began to issue commands. 
 The men at the ropes were bending down now. Suddenly the 
 balloon rose about a foot and trembled. The sailor continued 
 to shout. All the persons of authority gazed motionless at the 
 balloon. The moment of suspense was eternal. 
 
 "Let go alll" cried the sailor, standing up, and clinging 
 to the cordage. Chirac was seated in the car, a mass of dark 
 fur with a small patch of white in it The men at the ropes 
 were a knot of struggling confused figures. 
 
 One side of the car tilted up, and the sailor was nearly 
 pitched out. Three men at the other side had failed to free 
 the ropes. 
 
 " Let go, corpses I " the sailor yelled at them. 
 
 The balloon jumped, as if it were drawn by some terrific 
 impulse from the skies. 
 
 "Adieu 1" called Chirac, pulling his cap off and waving it 
 "Adieu!" 
 
 " Bon voyage I Bon voyage 1 " the little crowd cheered. 
 And then, " Vive la France!" Throats tightened, including 
 Sophia's. 
 
SUCCESS 417 
 
 But the top of the balloon had leaned over, destroying its 
 pear-shape, and the whole mass swerved violently towards the 
 wall of the station, the car swinging under it like a toy, and 
 an anchor under the car. There was a cry of alarm. Then 
 the great ball leaped again, and swept over the high glass 
 roof, escaping by inches the spouting. The cheers expired 
 instantly. . . . The balloon was gone. It was spirited away as 
 if by some furious and mighty power that had grown impatient 
 in waiting for it. There remained for a few seconds on the 
 collective retina of the spectators a vision of the inclined car 
 swinging near the roof like the tail of a kite. And then 
 nothing! Blankness ! Blackness! Already the balloon was 
 lost to sight in the vast stormy ocean of the night, a plaything 
 of the winds. The spectators became once more aware of the 
 dull booming of the cannonade. The balloon was already 
 perhaps flying unseen amid the wrack over those guns. 
 
 Sophia involuntarily caught her breath. A chill sense of 
 loneliness, of purposelessness, numbed her being. 
 
 Nobody ever saw Chirac or the old sailor again. The sea 
 must have swallowed them. Of the sixty-five balloons that left 
 Paris during the siege, two were not heard of. This was the 
 first of the two. Chirac had, at any rate, not magnified the 
 peril, though his intention was undoubtedly to magnify it. 
 
 Ill 
 
 This was the end of Sophia's romantic adventures in 
 France. Soon afterwards the Germans entered Paris, by 
 mutual agreement, and made a point of seeing the Louvre, 
 anfl departed, amid the silence of a city. For Sophia the 
 conclusion of the siege meant chiefly that prices went dow^ 
 Long before supplies from outside could reach Paris, the shop- 
 windows were suddenly full of goods which had arrived from 
 the shopkeepers alone knew where. Sophia, with the stock in 
 her cellar, could have held out for several weeks more, and it 
 annoyed her that she had not sold more of her good thmgs 
 while good things were worth gold. The signing of a treaty 
 at Versailles reduced the value of Sophia's two remaining 
 hams from about five pounds apiece to the usual price of 
 hams. However, at the end of January she found herself in 
 possession of a capital of about eight thousand francs, all the 
 furniture of the flat, and a reputation. She had earned it alL 
 
 3 K 
 
418 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Nothing could destroy the structure of her beauty, but she 
 looked worn and appreciably older. She wondered often when 
 Chirac would return. She might have written to Carlier or to 
 the paper ; but she did not. It was Niepce who discovered 
 in a newspaper that Chirac's balloon had miscarried. At the 
 moment the news did not affect her at all ; but after several 
 days she began to feel her loss in a dull sort of way ; and she 
 felt it more and more, though never acutely. She was perfectly 
 convinced that Chirac could never have attracted her power- 
 fjilly. She continued to dream, at rare intervals, of the kind 
 of passion that would have satisfied her, glowing but banked 
 down like a fire in some fine chamber of a rich but careful 
 household. 
 
 She was speculating upon what her future would be, and 
 whether by inertia she was doomed to stay for ever in the Rue 
 Brdda, when the Commune caught her. She was more vexed 
 than frightened by the Commune; vexed that a city so in 
 need of repose and industry should indulge in such antics. 
 For many people the Commune was a worse experience than 
 the siege; but not for Sophia. She was a woman and a 
 foreigner. Niepce was infinitely more disturbed than Sophia ; 
 he went in fear of his life. Sophia would go out to market 
 and take her chances. It is true that during one period the 
 whole population of the house went to live in the cellars, and 
 orders to the butcher and other tradesmen were given over 
 the party-wall into the adjoining courtyard, which com- 
 municated with an alley. A strange existence, and possibly 
 perilous ! But the women who passed through it and had also 
 passed through the siege, were not very much intimidated by 
 it, unless they happened to have husbands or lovers who were 
 active politicians. 
 
 Sophia did not cease, during the greater part of the year 
 jSyfj, to make a living and to save money. She watched 
 V&vefy sou, and she developed a tendency to demand from her 
 tenants all that they could pay. She excused this to herself 
 by ostentatiously declaring every detail of her prices in 
 advance. It came to the same thing in the end, with this 
 advantage, that the bills did not lead to unpleasantness. 
 Her difficulties commenced when Paris at last definitely 
 resumed its normal aspect and life, when all the women and 
 children came back to those city termini which they had left 
 in such huddled, hysterical throngs, when flats were re-opened 
 
SUCCESS 419 
 
 that had long been shut, and men who for a whole year had 
 had the disadvantages and the advantages of being without 
 wife and family, anchored themselves once more to the hearth. 
 Then it was that Sophia failed to keep all her rooms let. She 
 could have let them easily and constantly and at high rents ; 
 but not to men without encumbrances. Nearly every day she 
 refused attractive tenants in pretty hats, or agreeable gentle- 
 men who only wanted a room on condition that they might 
 offer hospitality to a dashing petticoat. It was useless to 
 proclaim aloud that her house was ' serious.' The ambition 
 of the majority of these joyous persons was to live in a 
 'serious' house, because each was sure that at bottom he 
 or she was a 'serious' person, and quite different from the 
 rest of the joyous world. The character of Sophia's flat, 
 instead of repelling the wrong kind of aspirant, infallibly 
 drew just that kind. Hope was inextinguishable in these 
 bosoms. They heard that there would be no chance for them 
 at Sophia's j but they tried nevertheless. And occasionally 
 Sophia would make a mistake, and grave unpleasantness 
 would occur before the mistake could be rectified. The fact 
 was that the street was too much for her. Few people would 
 credit that there was a serious boarding-house in the Rue 
 Brdda. The police themselves would not credit it. And 
 Sophia's beauty was against her. At that time the Rue 
 Br^da was perhaps the most notorious street in the centre of 
 Paris J at the height of its reputation as a warren of individual 
 improprieties; most busily creating that prejudice against 
 itself which, over thirty years later, forced the authorities to 
 change its name in obedience to the wish of its tradesmen. 
 When Sophia went out at about eleven o'clock in the morning 
 with her reticule to buy, the street was littered with women 
 who had gone out with reticules to buy. But wh'ereas Sophia 
 was fully dressed, and wore headgear, the others were in 
 dressing-gown and slippers, or opera-cloak and slippers, 
 having slid directly out of unspeakable beds and omitted to 
 brush their hair out of their puffy eyes. In the little shops of 
 the Rue Brdda, the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette, and the Rue 
 des Martyrs, you were very close indeed to the primitive 
 instincts of human nature. It was wonderful ; it was amusing ; 
 it was excitingly picturesque; and the universality of the 
 manners rendered moral indignation absurd. But the neigh- 
 bourhood was certainly not one in which a woman of Sophia's 
 
420 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 race, tmining, and character, could comfortably earn a living, 
 or even exist. She could not fight against the entire street. 
 She, and not the street, was out of place and in the wrong. 
 Little wonder that the neighbours lifted their shoulders when 
 they spoke of her ! What beautiful woman but a mad English- 
 woman would have had the idea of estabUshing herself in the 
 Rue Brdda with the intention of living like a nun and com- 
 pelling others to do the same ? 
 
 By dint of continual ingenuity, Sophia contrived to win 
 somewhat more than her expenses, but she was slowly driven 
 to admit to herself that the situation could not last. 
 
 Then one day she saw in Galignanis Messenger an adver- 
 tisement of an English pension for sale in the Rue Lord 
 Byron, in the Champs Elysdes quarter. It belonged to some 
 people named Frensham, and had enjoyed a certain popularity 
 before the war. The proprietor and his wife, however, had 
 not sufficiently allowed for the vicissitudes of politics in Paris. 
 Instead of saving money during their popularity they had put 
 it on the back and on the fingers of Mrs. Frensham. The 
 siege and the Commune had almost ruined them. With 
 capital they might have restored themselves to their former 
 pride ; but their capital was exhausted. Sophia answered the 
 advertisement. She impressed the Frenshams, who were 
 delighted with the prospect of dealing in business with an 
 honest English face. Like many English people abroad they 
 were most strangely obsessed by the notion that they had 
 quitted an island of honest men to live among thieves and 
 robbers. They always implied that dishonesty was unknown 
 in Britain. They offered, if she would take over the lease, to 
 sell all their furniture and their renown for ten thousand francs. 
 She declined, the price seeming absurd to her. When they 
 asked her to name a price, she said that she preferred not to 
 do so. Upon entreaty, she said four thousand francs. They 
 then allowed her to see that they considered her to have been 
 quite right in hesitating to name a price so ridiculous. And 
 their confidence in the honest English face seemed to have 
 been shocked. Sophia left. When she got back to the Rue 
 Brdda she was relieved that the matter had come to nothing. 
 She did not precisely foresee what her future was to be, but at 
 any rate she knew that she shrank from the responsibility of the 
 Pension Frensham. The next morning she received a letter 
 offering to accept six thousand. She wrote and declined. 
 
SUCCESS 421 
 
 She was indifferent and she would not budge from -four 
 thousand. The Frenshams gave way. They were pained, 
 but they gave way. The glitter of four thousand francs in cash, 
 and freedom, was too tempting. 
 
 Thus Sophia became the proprietress of the Pension Fren- 
 sham in the cold and correct Rue Lord Byron. She made room 
 in it for nearly all her other furniture, so that instead of being 
 under-furnished, as pensions usually are, it was over-furnished. 
 She was extremely timid at first, for the rent alone was four 
 thousand francs a year; and the prices of the quarter were 
 alarmingly different from those of the Rue Brdda. She lost a 
 lot of sleep. For some nights, after she had been installed in 
 the Rue Lord Byron about a fortnight, she scarcely slept at 
 all, and she ate no more than she slept. She cut down expen- 
 diture to the very lowest, and frequently walked over to the 
 Rue Brdda to do her marketing. With the aid, of a char- 
 woman at six sous an hour she accomplished everything. And 
 though clients were few, the feat was in the nature of a miracle ; 
 for Sophia had to cook. 
 
 The articles which George Augustus Sala wrote under the 
 title " Paris herself again " ought' to have been paid for in gold 
 by the hotel and pension-keepers of Paris. They awakened 
 English curiosity and the desire to witness the scene of terrible 
 events. Their effect was immediately noticeable. In less 
 than a year after her adventurous purchase, Sophia had 
 acquired confidence, and she was employing two servants, 
 working them very hard at low wages. She had also acquired 
 the landlady's manner. She was known as Mrs. Frensham. 
 Across the balconies of two windows the Frenshams had left a 
 gilded sign, " Pension Frensham," and Sophia had not removed 
 it. She often explained that her name was not Frensham ; but 
 in vain. Every visitor inevitably and persistently addressed her 
 according to the sign. It was past the general comprehension 
 that the proprietress of the Pension Frensham might bear 
 another name than Frensham. But later there came into 
 being a class of persons, habitues of the Pension Frensham, 
 who knew the real name of the proprietress ahd were proud of 
 knowing it, and by this knowledge were distinguished from the 
 herd. What struck Sophia was the astounding similarity of 
 her guests. They all asked the same questions, made the same 
 exclamations, went out on the same excursions, returned with 
 the same judgments, and exhibited the same unimpaired 
 
422 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 assurance that foreigners were really very peculiar people. 
 They never seemed to advance in knowledge. There was a 
 constant stream of explorers from England who had to be set 
 on their way to the Louvre or the Bon Marchd. 
 
 Sophia's sole interest was in her profits. The excellence 
 of her house was firmly established. She kept it up, and she 
 kept the modest prices up. Often she had to refuse guests. 
 She naturally did so with a certain distant condescension. Her 
 manner to guests increased in stiff formality; and she was 
 excessively firm with undesirables. She grew to be seriously 
 convinced that no pension as good as hers existed in the 
 world, or ever had existed, or ever could exist. Hers was the 
 acme of niceness and respectability. Her preference for the 
 respectable rose to a passion. And there were no faults in 
 her establishment. Even the once despised showy furniture 
 of Madame Foucault had mysteriously changed into the best 
 conceivable furniture ; and its cracks were hallowed. 
 
 She never heard a word of Gerald nor of her family. In 
 the thousands of people who stayed under her perfect roof, 
 not one mentioned Bursley nor disclosed a knowledge of 
 anybody that Sophia had known. Several men had the wit to 
 propose marriage to her with more or less skilfulness, but none 
 of them was skilful enough to perturb her heart She had 
 forgotten the face of lovp. She was a landlady. She was the 
 landlady : efficient, stylish, diplomatic, and tremendously 
 experienced. There was no trickery, no baseness of Parisian 
 life that she was not acquainted with and armed against. She 
 could not be startled and she could not be swindled. 
 
 Years passed, until there was a vista of years behind her. 
 Sometimes she would think, in an unoccupied moment, " How 
 strange it is that I should be here, doing what I am doing ! " 
 But the regular ordinariness of her existence would instantly 
 seize her again. At the end of 1878, the Exhibition Year, 
 her Pension consisted of two floors instead of one, and she 
 had turned the two hundred pounds stolen from Gerald into 
 over two thousand. 
 
BOOK IV 
 
 WHAT LIFE IS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 frensham's 
 
 Matthew Peel-Swynnerton sat in the long dining-room of 
 the Pension Frensham, Rue Lord Byron, Paris ; and he 
 looked out of place there. It was an apartment about thirty 
 feet in length, and of the width of two windows, which 
 sufficiently lighted one half of a very long table with round 
 ends. The gloom of the other extremity was illumined by 
 a large mirror in a tarnished gilt frame, which filled a good 
 portion of the wall opposite the windows. Near the mirror 
 was a high folding-screen of four leaves, and behind this screen 
 could be heard the sound of a door continually shutting and 
 opening. In the long wall to the left of the windows were two 
 doors, one dark and important, a door of state, through which 
 a procession of hungry and a procession of sated solemn self- 
 conscious persons passed twice daily, and the other, a smaller 
 door, glazed, its glass painted with wreaths of roses, not an 
 original door of the house, but a late breach in the wall, that 
 seemed to lead to the dangerous and to the naughty. The 
 wall-paper and the window drapery were rich and forbidding, 
 dark in hue, mysterious of pattern. Over the state-door was a 
 pair of antlers. And at intervals, so high up as to defy 
 inspection, engravings and oil-paintings made oblong patches 
 on the walls. They were hung from immense nails with 
 porcelain heads, and they appeared to depict the more majestic 
 
 423 
 
424 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 aspect of man and nature. One engraving, over the mantel- 
 piece and nearer earth than the rest; unmistakably showed 
 Louis Philippe and his family in attitudes of virtue. Beneath 
 this royal group, a vast gilt clock, flanked by pendants of the 
 same period, gave the right time — a quarter past seven. 
 
 And down the room, filling it, ran the great white table, 
 bordered with bowed heads and the backs of chairs. There 
 were over thirty people at the table, and the peculiarly 
 restrained noisiness of their knives and forks on the plates 
 proved that they were a discreet and a correct people. Their 
 clothes — blouses, bodices, and jackets — did not flatter the lust 
 of the eye. Only two or three were in evening dress. They 
 spoke little, and generally in a timorous tone, as though silence 
 had been enjoined. Somebody would half-whisper a remark, 
 and then his neighbour, absently fingering her bread and lift- 
 ing gaze from her plate into vacancy, would conscientiously 
 weigh the remark and half-whisper in reply : " I dare say." 
 But a few spoke loudly and volubly, and were regarded by tiie 
 rest, who envied them, as underbred. 
 
 Food was quite properly the chief preoccupation. The 
 diners ate as those eat who are paying a fixed price per day 
 for as much as they can consume while observing the rules of 
 the game. Without moving their heads they glanced out of 
 the comers of their eyes, watching the manoeuvres of the three 
 starched maids who served. They had no conception of food 
 save as portions laid out in rows on large silver dishes, and 
 when a maid bent over them deferentially, balancing the dish, 
 they summed up the offering in an instant, and in an instant 
 decided how much they could decently take, and to what 
 extent they could practise the theoretic liberty of choice. 
 And if the food for any reason did not tempt them, or if it 
 egregiously failed to coincide with their aspirations, they con- 
 sidered themselves aggrieved. For, according to the game, 
 they might not command ; they had the right to seize all that 
 was presented under their noses, like genteel tigers ; and they 
 had the right to refuse : that was all. The dinner was thus a 
 series of emotional crises for the diners, who knew only that 
 full dishes and clean plates came endlessly from the banging 
 door behind the screen, and that ravaged dishes and dirty 
 plates vanished endlessly through the same door. They were 
 all eating similar food simultaneously ; they began together and 
 they finished together. The flies that haunted the paper- 
 
FRENSHAM'S 425 
 
 bunches which hung from the chandeliers to the level of the 
 flower-vases, were more free. The sole event that chequered 
 the exact regularity of the repast was the occasional arrival of 
 a wine-bottle for one of the guests. The receiver of the wine- 
 bottle signed a small paper in exchange for it and wrote largely 
 a number on the label of the bottle j then, staring at the 
 number and fearing that after all it might be misread by a 
 stupid maid or an unscrupulous compeer, he would re-write 
 the number on another part of the label, even more largely. 
 
 Matthew Peel-Swynnerton obviously did not belong to this 
 world. He was a young man of twenty-five or so, not hand- 
 some, but elegant. Though he was not in evening dress, 
 though he was, as a fact, in a very light grey suit, entirely 
 improper to a dinner, he was elegant. The suit was admirably 
 cut, and nearly new ; but he wore it as though he had never 
 worn anything else. Also his demeanour, reserved yet free 
 from self-consciousness, his method of handling a knife and 
 fork, the niceties of his manner in transferring food from the 
 silver dishes to his plate, the tone in which he ordered half a 
 bottle of wine— all these details infallibly indicated to the 
 company that Matthew Peel-Swynnerton was their superior. 
 Some folks hoped that he was the son of a lord, or even a lord. 
 He happened to be fixed at the end of the table, with his back 
 to the window, and there was a vacant chair on either side of 
 him ; this situation favoured the hope of his high rank. In 
 truth, he was the son, the grandson, and several times the 
 nephew, of earthenware manufacturers. He noticed that the 
 large ' compote ' (as it was called in his trade) which marked 
 the centre of the table, was the production of his firm. This 
 surprised him, for Peel, Swynnerton and Co., known and 
 revered throughout the Five Towns as ' Peels,' did not cater 
 for cheap markets. 
 
 A late guest startled the room, a fat, flabby, middle-aged 
 man whose nose would have roused the provisional hostility of 
 those who have convinced themselves that Jews are not as 
 other men. His nose did not definitely brand him as a usurer 
 and a murderer of Christ, but it was suspicious. His clothes 
 hung loose, and might have been anybody's clothes. He 
 advanced with brisk assurance to the table, bowed, somewhat 
 too eflFusively, to several people, and sat down next to Peel- 
 Swynnerton. One of the maids at once brought him a plate of 
 soup, and he said : " Thank you, Marie." smiling at her. He 
 
426 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 was evidently a habitu6 of the house; His spectacled eyes 
 beamed the superiority which comes of knowing girls by their 
 names. He was seriously handicapped in the race for sus- 
 tenance, being two and a half courses behind, but he drew 
 level with speed and then, having accomplished this, he sighed, 
 and pointedly engaged Peel-Swynnerton with his sociable 
 glance. 
 
 " Ah I " he breathed out. " Nuisance when you come in 
 late, sir!" 
 
 Peel-Swynnerton gave a reluctant affirmative. 
 
 " Doesn't only upset you I It upsets the house I Servants 
 don't like it!" 
 
 " No," murmured Peel-Swynnerton, " I suppose not." 
 
 " However, it's not often Tra late," said the man. " Can't 
 help it sometimes. Business ! Worst of these French business 
 people is that they've no notion of time. Appointments . . . t 
 God bless my soul ! " 
 
 " Do you come here often ? " asked Peel-Swynnerton. He 
 detested the fellow, quite inexcusably, perhaps because his 
 serviette was tucked under his chin ; but he saw that the fellow 
 was one of your determined talkers, who always win in the 
 end. Moreover, as being clearly not an ordinary tourist in 
 Paris, the fellow mildly excited his curiosity. 
 
 " I live here," said the other. " Very convenient for a 
 bachelor, you know. Have done for years. My office is just 
 close by. You may know my name — Lewis Mardon." 
 
 Peel-Swynnerton hesitated. The hesitation convicted him 
 of not ' knowing his Paris ' well. 
 
 " House-agent," said Lewis Mardon, quickly. 
 
 " Oh yes," said Peel-Swynnerton, vaguely recalling a 
 vision of the name among the advertisements on newspaper 
 kiosks. 
 
 " I expect," Mr. Mardon went on, " my name is as well- 
 know as anybody's in Paris." 
 
 " I suppose so," assented Peel-Swynnerton, 
 
 The conversation fell for a few moments. 
 
 " Staying here long ? " Mr. Mardon demanded, having 
 added up Peel-Swynnerton as a man of style and of means, 
 and being puzzled by his presence at that table. 
 
 " I don't know," said Peel-Swynnerton. 
 
 This was a lie, justified in the utterer's opinion as a repulse 
 to Mr. Mardon's vulgar inquisitiveness, such inquisitiveness as 
 
FRENSIIAlVrS 487 
 
 might have been expected from a fellow who tucked his 
 serviette under his chin. Peel-Swynnerton knew exactly how 
 long he would stay. He would stay until the day after the 
 morrow ; he had only about fifty francs in his pocket. He 
 had been making a fool of himself in another quarter of Paris, 
 and he had descended to the Pension Frensham as a place 
 where he could be absolutely sure of spending not more than 
 twelve francs a day. Its reputation was high, and it was con- 
 venient for the Galliera Museum, where he was making some 
 drawings which he had come to Paris expressly to make, and 
 without which he could not reputably return to England. He 
 was capable of foolishness, but he was also capable of wisdom, 
 and scarcely any pressure of need would have induced him to 
 write home for money to replace the money spent on making 
 himself into a fool. 
 
 Mr. Mardon was conscious of a check. But, being of an 
 accommodating disposition, he at once tried another direction. 
 
 " Good food here, eh ? " he suggested. 
 
 "Very," said Peel-Swynnerton, with sincerity. "I was 
 quite " 
 
 At that moment, a tall straight woman of uncertain age 
 pushed open the principal door and stood for an instant in the 
 doorway. Peel-Swynnerton had just time to notice that she 
 was handsome and pale, and that her hair was black, and then 
 she was gone again, followed by a clipped poodle that accom- 
 panied her. She had signed with a brief gesture to one of the 
 servants, who at once set about lighting the gas-jets over the 
 table. 
 
 " Who is that ? " asked Peel-Swynnerton, without reflecting 
 that it was now he who was making advances to the fellow 
 whose napkin covered all his shirt-front 
 
 "That's the missis, that is," said Mr. Mardon, in a lower 
 and semi-confidential voice. 
 
 "Ohl Mrs. Frensham?" 
 
 " Yes. But her real name is Scales," said Mr. Mardon, 
 proudly. 
 
 " Widow, I suppose ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And she runs the whole show ?" 
 
 "She runs the entire contraption," said Mr. Mardon, 
 solemnly; "and don't you make any mistake!" He was 
 getting familiar. 
 
428 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Peel-Swynnerton beat him off once more, glancing with 
 careful, uninterested nonchalance at the gas-burners which 
 exploded one after another with a little plop under the appli- 
 cation of the maid's taper. The white table gleamed more 
 whitely than ever under the flaring gas. People at the end of 
 the room away from the window instinctively smiled, as though 
 the sun had begun to shine. The aspect of the dinner was 
 changed, ameliorated ; and with the reiterated statement that 
 the evenings were drawing in though it was only July, con- 
 versation became almost general. In two minutes Mr. Mardon 
 was genially talking across the whole length of the table. The 
 meal finished in a state that resembled conviviality. 
 
 Matthew Peel-Swynnerton might not go out into the 
 CTeguscular,delights of Paris. Unless he remained within the 
 sKeftSrTjfThe Pension, he could not hope to complete success- 
 fully his re-conversion from folly to wisdom. So he bravely 
 passed through the small rose-embroidered door into a small 
 glass-covered courtyard, furnished with palms, wicker arm- 
 chairs, and two small tables ; and he lighted a pipe and pulled 
 out of his pocket a copy of The Referee. That retreat was 
 called the Lounge ; it was the only part of the Pension where 
 smoking was not either a positive crime or a transgression 
 against good form. He felt lonely. He said to himself grimly 
 in one breath that pleasure was all rot, and in the next he 
 sullenly demanded of the universe how it was that pleasure 
 could not go on for ever, and why he was not Mr. Barney 
 Bamato. Two old men entered the retreat and burnt cigar- 
 ettes with many precautions. Then Mr. Lewis Mardon 
 appeared and sat down boldly next to Matthew, like a privileged 
 friend. After all, Mr. Mardon was better than nobody what- 
 ever, and Matthew decided to suffer him, especially as he 
 began without preliminary skirmishing to talk about life in 
 Paris. An irresistible subject ! Mr. Mardon said in a worldly 
 tone that the existence of a bachelor in Paris might easily be 
 made agreeable. But that, of course, for himself — well, he 
 preferred, as a general rule, the Pension Frensham sort of 
 thing; and it was excellent for his business. Still he could 
 not ... he knew . . . He compared the advantages of what 
 he called ' knocking about ' in Paris, with the equivalent in 
 London. His information about London was out of date, and 
 Peel-Swynnerton was able to set him right on important details. 
 But his information about Paris was infinitely precious and 
 
FRENSHAM'S 429 
 
 interesting to the younger man, who saw that he had hitherto 
 lived under strange misconceptions. 
 
 " Have a whiskey ? " asked Mr. Mardon, suddenly. " Very 
 good here ! " he added. 
 
 " Thanks I " drawled Peel-Swynnerton. 
 
 The temptation to listen to Mr. Mardon as long as Mr. 
 Mardon would talk was not to be overcome. And presently, 
 when the old men had departed, they were frankly telling 
 each other stories in the dimness of the retreat. Then, when 
 the supply of stories came to an end, Mr. Mardon smacked 
 his lips over the last drop of whiskey and ejaculated : " Yes ! " 
 as if giving a general confirmation to all that had been 
 said. 
 
 " Do have one with me," said Matthew, politely. It was 
 the least he could do. 
 
 The second supply of whiskies was brought into the lounge 
 by Mr. Mardon's Marie. He smiled on her familiarly, and 
 remarked that he supposed she would soon be going to bed 
 after a hard day's work. She gave a moue and a flounce in 
 reply, and swished out. 
 
 " Carries herself well, doesn't sSe ?" observed Mr. Mardon, 
 as though Marie had been an exhibit at an agricultural show. 
 " Ten years ago she was very fresh and pretty, but of course it 
 takes it out of 'em, a place like this I " 
 
 " But still," said Peel-Swynnerton, " they must like it or 
 they wouldn't stay — that is, unless things are very different 
 here from what they are in England." 
 
 The conversation seemed to have stimulated him to 
 examine the woman question in all its bearings, with 
 philosophic curiosity. 
 
 " Oh ! They like it," Mr. Mardon assured him, as one 
 who knew. " Besides, Mrs. Scales treats 'em very well. I 
 know that. She's told me. She's very particular " — ^he looked 
 around to see if walls had ears — " and, by jove, you've got to 
 be \ but she treats 'em well. You'd scarcely believe the wages 
 they get, and pickings. Now at the Hotel Moscow — know 
 the Hotel Moscow ? " 
 
 Happily Peel-Swynnerton did. He had been advised to 
 avoid it because it catered exclusively for English visitors, but 
 in the Pension Frensham he had accepted something even 
 more exclusively British than the Hotel Moscow. Mr, Mardon 
 was quite relieved at his affirmative. 
 
430 THE OLD WIVES' TAI^ 
 
 " The Hotel Moscow is a limited company now," said he ; 
 " English." 
 
 "Really?" 
 
 " Yes. I floated it. It was my idea. A great success ! 
 That's how I know all about the Hotel Moscow." He looked 
 at the walls again. "I wanted to do the same here," he 
 murmured, and Peel-Swynnerton had to show that he 
 appreciated this confidence. " But she never would agree. 
 I've tried her all ways. No go ! It's a thousand pities'." 
 
 " Paying thing, eh ? " 
 
 " This place ? I should say it was I And I ought to be 
 able to judge, I reckon. Mrs. Scales is one of the shrewdest 
 women you'd meet in a day's march. She's made a lot of 
 money here, a lot of money. And there's no reason why a 
 place like this shouldn't be five times as big as it is. Ten 
 times. The scope's unlimited, my dear sir. All that's wanted 
 is capital. Naturally she has capital of her own, and she 
 could get more. But then, as she says, she doesn't want 
 the place any bigger. She says it's now just as big as she 
 can handle. That isn't so. She's a woman who could handle 
 anything — a. born manager — but even if it was so, all she 
 would have to do would be to retire — only leave us the place 
 and the name. It's the name that counts. And she's made 
 the name of Frensham worth something, I can tell you ! " 
 
 "Did she get the place from her husband?" asked Peel- 
 Swynnerton. Her own name of Scales intrigued him. 
 
 Mr. Mardon shook his head. " Bought it on her own, 
 after the husband's time, for a song — a. song 1 I know, because 
 I knew the original Frenshams." 
 
 "You must have been in Paris a long time," said Peel- 
 Swynnerton. 
 
 Mr. Mardon could never resist an opportunity to talk about 
 himself. His was a wonderful history. And Peel-Swynnerton, 
 while scorning the man for his fatuity, was impressed. And 
 when that was finished — 
 
 " Yes ! " said Mr. Mardon after a pause, reaffirming every- 
 thing in general by a single monosyllable. 
 
 Shortly afterwards he rose, saying that his habits were 
 regular. 
 
 "Good-night," he said with a mechanical smile. 
 " G - good - night," said Peel-Swynnerton, trying to 
 force the tone of fellowship and not succeeding. Their 
 
FRENSHAM'S 431 
 
 intimacy, which had sprung up like a mushroom, suddenly fell 
 into dust. Peel-Swynnerton's unspoken comment to Mr. 
 Mardon's back was : "Ass ! " Still, the sum of Peel-Swynner- 
 ton's knowledge had indubitably been increased during the 
 evening. And the hour was yet early. Half-past ten ! The 
 FoUes-Marigny, with its beautiful architecture and its crowds 
 of white toilettes, and its frothing of champagne and of beer, 
 and its musicians in tight red coats, was just beginning to be 
 aUve — and at a distance of scarcely a stone's-throw ! Peel- 
 Swynnerton pictured the terraced, glittering hall, which had 
 been the prime origin of his exceeding foolishness. And he 
 pictured all the other resorts, great and small, garlanded with 
 white lanterns, in the Champs Elys^es ; and the sombre aisles 
 of the Champs Elysdes where mysterious pale figures walked 
 troublingly under the shade of trees, while snatches of wild 
 song or absurd brassy music floated up from the resorts and 
 restaurants. He wanted to go out and spend those fifty 
 francs that remained in his pocket After all, why not 
 telegraph to England for more money ? " Oh, damn it ! " he 
 said savagely, and stretched his arms and got up. The Lounge 
 was very small, gloomy and dreary. 
 
 One brilliant incandescent light burned in the hall, crudely 
 illuminating the wicker fauteuils, a corded trunk with a blue- 
 and-red label on it, a Fitzroy barometer, a map of Paris, a 
 coloured poster of the Compagnie Transatlantique, and the 
 mahogany retreat of the hall-portress. In that retreat was not 
 only the hall-portress — ^an aged woman with a white cap above 
 her wrinkled pink face — but the mistress of the establishment. 
 They were murmuring together softly ; they seemed to be well 
 disposed to one another. The portress was respectful, but the 
 mistress was respectful also. The hall, with its one light 
 tranquilly burning, was bathed in an honest calm, the calm 
 of a day's work accomplished, of gradual relaxation from 
 tension, of growing expectation of repose. In its simplicity 
 it affected Peel-Swynnertcn as a tpedicine tonic for nerves 
 might have affected him. In that hall, though exterior noc- 
 turnal life was but just stirring into activi>:f, it seemed that the 
 middle of the night had come, and that these two women alone 
 watched in a mansion full of sleepers. And all the recitals 
 which Peel-Swynnerton and Mr. Mardon had exchanged sank 
 to the level of pitiably foolish gossip. Peel-Swynnerton felt 
 that his duty to the house was to retire to bed. He felt, too, 
 
THE OLD WIVES'^ TALE 
 
 that he could not leave the house without saying that he was 
 going out, and that he lacked the courage deliberately to tell 
 these two women that he was going out — at that time of 
 night ! He dropped into one of the chairs and made a second 
 attempt to peruse The Referee. Useless ! Either his mind 
 was outside in the Champs Elys^es, or his gaze would wander 
 surreptitiously to the figure of Mrs. Scales. He could not 
 well distinguish her face because it was in the shadow 
 of the mahogany. 
 
 Then the portress came forth from her box, and, slightly 
 bent, sped actively across the hall, smiling pleasantly at the 
 guest as she passed him, and disappeared up the stairs. 
 The mistress was alone in the retreat. Peel-Swynnerton 
 jumped up brusquely, dropping the paper with a rustle, 
 and approached her. 
 
 '.' Excuse me/' he said deferentially. " Have any letters 
 come for me to-night ? " 
 
 He knew that the arrival of letters for him was impossible, 
 since nobody knew his address. 
 
 " What name ? " The question was coldly polite, and the 
 questioner looked him full in the face. Undoubtedly she was 
 a handsome woman. Her hair was greying at the temples, 
 and the skin was withered and crossed with lines. But she 
 was handsome. She was one of those women of whom to 
 their last on earth the stranger will say : " When she was 
 young she must have been worth looking at 1 " — with a little 
 transient regret that beautiful young women cannot remain for 
 ever young. Her voice was firm and even, sweet in tone, and 
 yet morally harsh from incessant traffic with all varieties of 
 human nature. Her eyes were the impartial eyes of one who 
 is always judging. And evidently she was a proud, even a 
 haughty creature, with her careful, controlled politeness. 
 Evidently she considered herself superior to no matter what 
 guest. Her eyes announced that she had lived and learnt, 
 they she knew more about life than any one whom she was 
 likely to meet, and that having pre-eminently succeeded in 
 life, she had tremendous confidence in herself. The proof 
 of her success was the unique Frensham's. A consciousness 
 of the uniqueness of Frensham's was also in those eyes. 
 Theoretically Matthew Peel-Swynnerton's mental attitude 
 towards lodging-house keepers was condescending, but here 
 it was not condescending. ; It had the real respectfulness of 
 
FRENSHAM'S 433 
 
 a man who for the moment at any rate is impressed beyond 
 his calculations. His glance fell as he said — 
 
 " Peel-Swynnerton." Then he looked up again. 
 
 He said the words awkwardly, and rather fearfully, as if 
 aware that he was playing with fire. If this Mrs. Scales 
 was the long-vanished aunt of his friend, Cyril Povey, she 
 must know those two names, locally so famous. Did she 
 start? Did she show a sign of being perturbed? At first 
 he thought he detected a symptom of emotion, but in an 
 instant he was sure that he had detected nothing of the sort, 
 and that it was silly to suppose that he was treading on the 
 edge of a romance. Then she turned towards the letter-rack 
 at her side, and he saw her face in profile. It bore a suddei^ 
 and astonishing likeness to the profile of Cyril Povey; a 
 resemblance unmistakable and finally decisive. The nose, 
 and the curve of the upper lip were absolutely Cyril's. 
 Matthew Peel-Swynnerton felt very queer. He felt like a 
 criminal in peril of being caught in the act, and he could 
 not understand why he should feel so. The landlady looked 
 in the ' P ' pigeon-hole, and in the ' S ' pigeon-hole, 
 
 " No," she said quietly, " I see nothing for you." 
 
 Taken with a swift rash audacity, he said : " Have you had 
 any one named Povey here recently ? " 
 
 " Povey ? " 
 
 " Yes. Cyril Povey, of Bursley — in the Five To*ms." 
 
 He was very impressionable, very sensitive, was Matthew 
 Peel-Swynnerton. His voice trembled as he spoke. But hers 
 also trembled in reply. 
 
 " Not that I remember ! No 1 Were you expecting him 
 to be here ? " 
 
 " Well, it wasn't at all sure," he muttered. " Thank you. 
 Good-night." 
 
 " Good-night," she said, apparently with the simple per- 
 functoriness of the landlady who says good-night to dozens 
 of strangers every evening. 
 
 He hurried away upstairs, and met the portress coming 
 down. "Well, welll" he thought. "Of all the queer 
 
 things ! " And he kept nodding his head. At last he 
 
 had encountered something really strange in the spectacle of 
 existence. It had fallen to him to discover the legendary 
 woman who had fled from Bursley before he was bom, and 
 of whom nobody knew anything. What news for Cyril I 
 
 t r 
 
434 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 What a staggering episode I He had scarcely any sleep that 
 night. He wondered whether he would be able to meet Mrs. 
 Scales without self-consciousness on the morrow. However, 
 he was spared the curious ordeal of meeting her. She did not 
 appear at all on the following day ; nor did he see her before 
 he left. He could not find a pretext for asking why she was 
 invisible. 
 
 II 
 
 The hansom" of Matthew Peel-Swynnerton drew up in 
 front of No. 26, Victoria Grove, Chelsea; his kit-bag was on 
 the roof of the cab. The cabman had a red flower in his 
 buttonhole. Matthew leaped out of the vehicle, holding his 
 straw hat on his head with one hand. On reaching the pave- 
 ment he checked himself suddenly and became carelessly 
 calm. Another straw-hatted and grey-clad figure was standing 
 at the side-gate of No. 26 in the act of lighting a cigarette. 
 
 " Hello, Matt ! " exclaimed the second figure, languidly, 
 and in a veiled voice due to the fact that he was still holding 
 the match to the cigarette and puffing. "What's the meaning 
 of all this fluster ? You're just the man I want to see." 
 
 He threw away the match with a wave of the arm, and 
 took Matthew's hand for a moment, blowing a double shaft 
 of smoke through his nose. 
 
 " I want to see you, too," said Matthew. " And I've only 
 got a minute. I'm on my way to Euston. I must catch the 
 twelve-five." 
 
 He looked at his friend, and could positively see no feature 
 of it that was not a feature of Mrs. Scales's face. Also, the 
 elderly woman held her body in exactly the same way as the 
 young man. It was entirely disconcerting. 
 
 " Have a cigarette," answered Cyril Povey, imperturbably. 
 He was two years younger than Matthew, from whom he had 
 acquired most of his vast and intricate knowledge of life and 
 art, with certain leading notions of deportment ; whose pupil 
 indeed he was in all the things that matter to young men. 
 But he had already surpassed his professor. He could pretend 
 to be old much more successfully than M:) tthew could. 
 
 The cabman approvingly watched the ignition of the 
 second cigarette, and then the cabman pulled out a cigar, 
 
FRENSHAM'9 435 
 
 and showed his large, white teeth, as he bit the end off it 
 The appearance and manner of his fare, the quality of the 
 kit-bag, and the opening gestures of the interview between the 
 two young dukes, had put the cabman in an optimistic mood. 
 He had no apprehensions of miserly and ungentlemanly con- 
 duct by his fare upon the arrival at Euston. He knew the 
 language of the tilt of a straw hat And it was a magnificent 
 day in London. The group of the two elegances dominated 
 by the perfection of the cabman made a striking tableau 
 of triumphant masculinity, content with itself, and needing 
 nothing. 
 
 Matthew lightly took Cyril's arm, and drew him further 
 down the street, past the gate leading to the studio (hidden 
 behind a house) which Cyril rented. 
 
 " Look here, my boy," he began, " I've found your aunt" 
 
 "Well, that's very nice of you," said Cyril, solemnly. 
 " That's a friendly act. May I ask what aunt ? " 
 
 " Mrs. Scales," said Matthew. " You know " 
 
 " Not the " Cyril's face changed. , 
 
 " Yes, precisely ! " said Matthew, feeling that he was not 
 being cheated of the legitimate joy caused by making a 
 sensation. Assuredly he had made a sensation in Victoria 
 Grove. 
 
 When he had related the whole story, Cyril said : " Then 
 she doesn't know you know ? " 
 
 " I don't think so. No, I'm sure she doesn't She may 
 guess." 
 
 " But how can you be certain you haven't made a mistake ? 
 It may be that " 
 
 " Look here, my boy," Matthew interrupted him. " I've 
 not made any mistake." 
 
 " But you've no proof." 
 
 " Proof be damned !" said Matthew, nettled. " I tell you 
 it's her I" 
 
 " Oh ! All right ! All right 1 What puzzles me most is 
 what the devil you were doing in a place like that. Accord- 
 ing to your description of it, it must be a " 
 
 " I went there because I was broke," said Matthew. 
 
 "Razzle?" 
 
 Matthew nodded. 
 
 "Pretty stiff, that 1" commented Cyril, when Matthew had 
 narrated the prologue to Frensham's. 
 
436 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " Well, she absolutely swore she never took less than two 
 hundred francs. And she looked it, tool And she was 
 worth it ! I had the time of my Hfe with that woman. I can 
 tell you one thing — no more English for me 1 They simply 
 aren't in it." 
 
 " How old was she ? " 
 
 Matthew reflected judicially. "I should say sliie was 
 thirty." The gaze of admiration and envy was upon him. 
 He had the legitimate joy of making a second sensation. 
 " I'll let you know more about that when I come back," he 
 added. " I can open your eyes, my child." 
 , Cyril smiled sheepishly. " Why can't you stay now ?" he 
 asked. " I'm going to take the cast of that Verrall girl's arm 
 this afternoon, and I know I can't do it alone. And Robson's 
 no good. You're just the man I want" 
 
 " Can't ! " said Matthew. 
 
 " Well, come into the studio a minute, anyhow." 
 
 " Haven't time ; I shall miss my train." 
 
 " I don't care if you miss forty trains. You must come in. 
 You've got to see that fountain," Cyril insisted crossly. 
 
 Matthew yielded. When they emerged into the street 
 again, after six minutes of Cyril's savage interest in his own 
 work,. Matthew remembered Mrs. Scales. 
 
 " Of course you'll write to your mother ? " he said. 
 
 " Yes," said Cyril, " I'll write ; but if you happen to see 
 her, you might tell her." 
 
 " I will," said Matthew. " Shall you go over to Paris ? " 
 
 " What ! To see Auntie ? " He smiled. " I don't know. 
 Depends. If the mater will fork out all my exes . . . it's 
 an idea," he said lightly, and then without any change of 
 tone, " Naturally, if you're going to idle about here all morning 
 you aren't likely to catch the twelve-five." 
 
 Matthew got into the cab, while the driver, the stump of 
 a cigar between his exposed teeth, leaned forward and lifted 
 the reins away from the tilted straw hat. 
 
 " By-the-by, lend me some silver," Matthew demanded. 
 " It's a good thing I've got my return ticket. I've run it as 
 fine as ever I did in my life." 
 
 Cyril produced eight shillings in silver. Secure in the 
 possession of these riches, Matthew called to the driver — 
 
 " Euston— Kke hell ! " 
 
 ^' Yes, sir," said the driver, cahnly. 
 
FRENSHAM'S 437 
 
 " Not coming my way I suppose ? " Matthew shouted as 
 an afterthought, just when the cab began to move. 
 
 "No. Barber's," Cyril shouted in answer, and waved 
 his hand. 
 
 The horse rattled into Fulhain^ Road. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Three days later Matthew Peel-Swynnerton was walking 
 along Bursley Market Place when, just opposite the Town 
 Hall, he met a short, fat, middle-aged lady dressed in black,' 
 with a black embroidered mantle, and a small bonnet tied 
 with black ribbon and ornamented with jet fruit and crape 
 leaves. As she stepped slowly and carefully forward she had 
 the dignified, important look of a provincial woman who has 
 always been accustomed to deference in her native town, and 
 whose income is ample enough to extort obsequiousness from 
 the vulgar of all ranks. But immediately she caught sight of 
 Matthew, her face changed. She became simple and naive. 
 She blushed slightly, smiling with a timid pleasure. For her, 
 Matthew belonged to a superior race. He bore the almost 
 sacred name of Peel. His family had been distinguished in 
 the district for generations. ' Peel ! ' You could without 
 impropriety utfer it in the same breath with 'Wedgwood.' 
 And 'Swynnerton' stood not much lower. Neither her self- 
 respect, which was great, nor her commonsense, which far 
 exceeded the average, could enable her to extend as far as the 
 Peels the theory that one man is as good as another. The 
 Peels never shopped in St. Luke's Square. Even in its golden 
 days the Square could not have expected such a condescension. 
 The Peels shopped in London or in Stafford; at a pinch, in 
 Oldcastle. That was the distinction for the ageing stout lady 
 in black. Why, she had not in six years recovered from her 
 surprise that her son and Matthew Peel-Swynnerton treated 
 each other rudely as equals ! She and Matthew did not 
 often meet, but they liked each other. Her involuntary 
 meekness flattered him. And his rather elaborate homage 
 flattered her. He admired her fundamental goodness, and 
 her occasional raps at Cyril seemed to put him into ecstasies 
 of joy. 
 
 " Well, Mrs. Povey," he greeted her, standing over her 
 
4,38 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 with his hat raised, (It was a fashion he had picked up in 
 Paris.) " Here I am, you see." ^ , , 
 
 " You're quite a stranger, Mr. Matthew. I needn t ask you 
 how you are. Have you been seeing anything of my boy lately?" 
 
 " Not since Wednesday," said Matthew. " Of course he's 
 written to you ? " 
 
 " There's no ' of course ' about it," she laughed faintly. 
 « I had a short letter from him on Wednesday morning. He 
 said you were in Paris." 
 
 " But since that — hasn't he written ? " 
 
 " If I hear from him on Sunday I shall be lucky, bless 
 ye!" said Constance, grimly. "It's not letter-writing that 
 will kill Cyril." 
 
 "But do you mean to say he hasn't " Matthew 
 
 stopped. 
 
 "Whatever's amiss?" asked Constance. 
 
 Matthew was at a loss to know what to do or say. " Oh, 
 nothing." 
 
 " Now, Mr. Matthew, do please " Constance's tone 
 
 had suddenly quite changed. It had become firm, command- 
 ing, and gravely suspicious. The conversation had ceased to 
 be small-talk for her. 
 
 Matthew saw how nervous and how fragile she was. He 
 had never noticed before that she was so sensitive to trifles, 
 though it was notorious that nobody could safely discuss 
 Cyril with her in terms of chaff. He was really astounded at 
 that youth's carelessness, shameful carelessness. That Cyril's 
 attitude to his mother was marked by a certain benevolent 
 negligenccT— this Matthew knew; but not to have written to 
 her with the important news concerning Mrs. Scales was 
 utterly inexcusable; and Matthew determined that he would 
 tell Cyril so. He felt very sorry for Mrs. Povey. She seemed 
 pathetic to him, standing there in ignorance of a tremendous 
 fact which she ought to have been aware of. He was very 
 content that he had said nothing about Mrs. Scales to anybody 
 except his own mother, who had prudently enjoined silence 
 upon him, saying that his one duty, having told Cyril, was to 
 keep his mouth shut until the Poveys talked. Had it not 
 been for his mother's advice he would assuredly have spread 
 the amazing tale, and Mrs. Povey might have first heard of it 
 from a stranger's gossip, which would have been too cruel 
 upon her. 
 
FRENSHAM'S 439 
 
 « Oh ! " Matthew tried to smile gaily, archly. " You're 
 bound to hear from Cyril to-morrow." 
 
 He wanted to persuade her that he was concealing merely 
 some delightful surprise from her. But he did not succeed 
 With all his experience of the world and of women he was 
 not clever enough to deceive that simple woman. 
 
 "I'm waiting, Mr. Matthew," she said, in a tone that 
 flattened the smile out of Matthew's sympathetic face. She 
 was ruthless. The fact was, she had in an instant convinced 
 herself that Cyril had met some girl and was engaged to be 
 married. She could think of nothing else. "What has 
 Cyril been doing ? " she added, after a pause. 
 
 " It's nothing to do with Cyril," said he. 
 
 "Then what is it?" 
 
 " It was about — Mrs. Scales," he murmured, nearly trem- 
 bling. As she offered no response, merely looking around 
 her in a peculiar fashion, he said : " Shall we walk along a 
 bit ? " And he turned in the direction in which she had been 
 going. She obeyed the suggestion. 
 
 " What did ye say ? " she asked. The name of Scales for 
 a moment had no significance for her. But when she com- 
 prehended it she was afraid, and so she said vacantly, as 
 though wishing to postpone a shock : " What did ye say ?" 
 
 " I said it was about Mrs. Scales. You know I m-met 
 her in Paris." And he was saying to himself : " I ought not to 
 be telling this poor old thing here in the street. But what can 
 I do?" 
 
 " Nay, nay ! " she muttered. 
 
 She stopped and looked at him with a worried expression. 
 Then he observed that the hand that carried her reticule was 
 making strange purposeless curves in the air, and her rosy face 
 went the colour of cream, as though it had been painted with 
 one stroke of an unseen brush. Matthew was very much put 
 about. 
 
 " Hadn't you better " he began. 
 
 " Eh," she said j " I must sit me " Her bag dropped. 
 
 He supported her to the door of Allman's shop, the 
 ironmonger's. Unfortunately, there were two steps up into 
 the shop, and she could not climb them. She collapsed like a 
 sack of flour on the first step. Young Edward Allman ran to 
 the door. He- was wearing a black apron and fidgeting with 
 it in his excitement 
 
440 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 "Don't lift her up— don't try to lift her up, Mr. Peel- 
 Swynnerton I " he cried, as Matthew instinctively began to do 
 the wrong thing. 
 
 Matthew stopped, looking a fool and feeling one, and 
 he and young Allman contemplated each other helpless for 
 a second across ' the body of Constance Povey. A part of 
 the Market Place now perceived that the unusual was 
 occurring. It was Mr. S^awcross, the chemist next door to 
 AUman's, who dealt adequately with the situation. He had 
 seen all, while selling a Kodak to a young lady, and he ran out 
 with salts. Constance recovered very rapidly. She had not 
 quite swooned. She gave a long sigh, and whispered weakly 
 that she was all right. The three men helped her into the 
 lofty dark shop, which smelt of nails and of stove-polish, and 
 she was balanced on a ricketty chair. 
 
 " My word I " exclaimed young Allman, in his loud voice, 
 when she could smile and the pink was returning reluctantly to 
 her cheeks. " You mustn't frighten us like that, Mrs. Povey ! " 
 
 Matthew said nothing. He had at last created a genuine 
 sensation. Once again he felt like a criminal, and could not 
 understand why. 
 
 Constance announced that she would walk slowly home, 
 down the Cock-yard and along Wedgwood Street. But when, 
 glancing round in her returned strength, she saw the hedge of 
 faces at the doorway, she agreed with Mr. Shawcross that 
 she would do better to have a cab. Young Allman went to 
 the door and whistled to the unique cab that stands for ever at 
 the grand entrance to the Town Hall. 
 
 " Mr. Matthew will come with me," said Constance. 
 
 " Certainly, with pleasure," said Matthew. 
 
 And she passed through the little crowd of gapers on Mr. 
 Shawcross's arm. 
 
 " Just take care of yourself, missis," said Mr. Shawcross to 
 her, through the window of the cab. " It's fainting weather, 
 and we're none of us any younger, seemingly." 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 " I'm awfully sorry I upset you, Mrs. Povey,' said Matthew, 
 when the cab moved. 
 
 She shook her head, refusing his apology as unnecessary. 
 Tears filled her eyes. In less than a minute the cab had 
 stopped in front of Constance's light-grained door. She 
 demanded her reticule from Matthew, who had carried it 
 
FRENSHAM'S 441 
 
 since it fell. She would pay the cabman; Never before had 
 Matthew pennitted a woman to pay for a cab in which he had 
 ridden ; but there was no arguing with Constance. Constance 
 was dangerous. 
 
 Amy Bates, still inhabiting the cave, had seen the cab- 
 wheels through the grating of her window and had panted 
 up the kitchen stairs to open the door ere Constance had 
 climbed the steps. Amy, decidedly over forty, was a woman 
 of authority. She wanted to know what was the matter, and 
 Constance had to tell her that she had 'felt unwell.' Amy 
 took the hat and mantle and departed to prepare a cup of tea. 
 When they were alone Constance said to Matthew : 
 
 " Now, Mr. Matthew, will you please tell me ? " 
 
 " It's only this," he began. 
 
 And as he told it, in quite a few words, it indeed had the 
 air of being ' only that.' And yet his voice shook, in sympathy 
 with the ageing woman's controlled but visible emotion. It , 
 ■ seemed to him that gladness should have filled the absurd 
 little parlour, but the spirit that presided had no name ; it was 
 certainly not joy. He himself felt very sad, desolated. He 
 would have given much money to have been spared the 
 experi^ce. He knew simply that in the memory of the 
 stout, comical, nice woman in the rocking-chair he had stirred 
 old, old things, wakened slumbers that might have been 
 eternal. He did not know that he was sitting on the very 
 spot where the sofa had been on which Samuel Povey lay 
 when a beautiful and shameless young creature of fifteen 
 extracted his tooth. He did not know that Constance was 
 sitting in the very chair in which the memorable Mrs. Baines 
 had sat in vain conflict with that same unconquerable girl. 
 He did not know ten thousand matters that were rushing 
 violently about in the vast heart of Constance. 
 
 She cross- questioned him in detail. But she did not put 
 the questions which he in his innocence expected ; such as, 
 if her sister looked old, if her hair was grey, if she was stout 
 or thin. And until Amy, mystiiied and resentful, had served 
 the tea, on a little silver tray, she remained comparatively 
 calm. It was in the middle of a gulp of tea that she broke 
 down, and Matthew had to take the cup from her. 
 
 « I can't thank you, Mr. Matthew," she wept. " I couldn't 
 thank you enough." 
 
 " But I've done nothing," he protested. 
 
442 THE OLD WIVES' TALE" 
 
 She shook her head. " I never hoped for this. Never 
 hoped for it I " she went on. " It makes me soJiaEpy— in a 
 way. . . . You mustn't take any notice of me. I'm silly. 
 You must kindly write down that address for me. And I 
 must write to Cyril at once. And I must see Mr. Critchlow." 
 
 " It's really very funny that Cyril hasn't written to you," 
 said Matthew. 
 
 "Cyril has not been a good son," she said with sudden, 
 solemn coldness. "To think that he should have kept 
 that . . . 1 " She wept again. 
 
 At length Matthew saw the possibility of leaving. He felt 
 her warm, soft, crinkled hand round his fingers. 
 
 " You've behaved very nicely over this," she said. " And 
 very cleverly. In every thing — ^both over there and here. 
 Nobody could have shown a nicer feeling than you've shown. 
 It's a great comfort to me that my son has got you for a 
 friend." 
 
 When he thought of his escapades, and of all the know- 
 ledge, unutterable in Bursley, fantastically impossible in Bursley, 
 which he had imparted to her son, he marvelled that the 
 maternal instinct should be so deceived. Still, he felt that 
 her praise of him was deserved. 
 
 Outside, he gave vent to a 'Phew' of relief. He smiled, 
 in his worldliest manner. But the smile was a sham. A 
 pretence to himself! A childish attempt to disguise from 
 himself how profoundly he had been moved by a natural 
 scene I 
 
 IV 
 
 On the night when Matthew Peel-Swynnerton spoke to 
 Mrs. Scales, Matthew was not the only person in the Pension 
 Frenshara who failed to sleep. When the old portress came 
 downstairs from her errand, she observed that her mistress 
 was leaving the mahogany retreat. 
 
 " She is sleeping tranquilly, the poor one 1 " said the 
 portress, discharging her commission, which had been to 
 learn the latest news of the mistress's indisposed dog, Fossette. 
 In saying this her ancient, vibrant voice was rich with sympathy 
 for the suffering animal. And she smiled. She was rather 
 like a figure out of an almshouse, with her pink, apparently 
 
FRENSHAM'S 44,3 
 
 brittle skin, her tight black dress, and frilled white cap. She 
 stooped habitually, and always walked quickly, with her head 
 a few inches in advance of her feet. Her grey hair was scanty. 
 She was old ; nobody perhaps knew exactly how old. Sophia 
 had taken her with the Pension, over a quarter of a century 
 before, because she was old and could not easily have found 
 another place. Although the clientele was almost exclusively 
 English, she spoke only French, explaining herself to Britons 
 by means of benevolent smiles. 
 
 " I think I shall go to bed, Jacqueline," said the mistress, 
 in reply. 
 
 A strange reply, thought Jacqueline. The unalterable 
 custom of Jacqueline was to retire at midnight and to rise at 
 five-thirty. Her mistress also usually retired about midnight, 
 and during the final hour mistress and portress saw a good 
 deal of each other. And considering that Jacqueline had just 
 been sent up into the mistress's own bedroom to glance at 
 Fossette, and that the bulletin was satisfactory, and that 
 madame and Jacqueline had several customary daily matters 
 to discuss, it seemed odd that madame should thus be going 
 instantly to bed. However, Jacqueline said nothing but : 
 
 " Very well, madame. And the number 32 ? " 
 
 " Arrange yourself as you can," said the mistress, curtly. 
 
 "It is well, madame. Good evening, madame, and a 
 good night." 
 
 Jacqueline, alone in the hall, re-entered her box and set 
 upon one of those endless, mysterious tasks which occupied her 
 when she was not rushing to and fro or whistling up the tubes. 
 
 Sophia, scarcely troubling even to glance into Fossette's 
 round basket, undressed, put out the light, and got into bed. 
 She felt extremely and inexplicably gloomy. She did not 
 wish to reflect; she strongly wished not to reflect; but her 
 mind insisted on reflection — a monotonous, futile, and distress- 
 ing reflection. Povey ! Povey 1 Could this be Constance's 
 Povey, the unique Samuel Povey? That is to say, not he, 
 but his son, Constance's son. Had Constance a grown-up 
 son ? Constance must be over fifty now,, perhaps a grand- 
 mother ! Had she really married Samuel Povey ? Possibly 
 she was dead. Certainly her mother must be dead, and Aunt 
 Harriet and Mr. Critchlow. If alive, her mother must be at 
 least eighty years of age. 
 
 The cumulative effect of merely remaining inactive when 
 
444 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 one ought to be active, was terrible. ' Undoubtedly she should 
 have communicated with her family. It was silly not to have 
 done so. After all, even if she had, as a child, stolen a trifle 
 of money from her wealthy aunt^/what would that have 
 mattered ? She had been proud. VShe was criminally proud. 
 That was her vice. She admitted it frankly. But she could 
 not alter her pride. Everybody had some weak spot. Her 
 reputation for sagacity, for compaonsense, was, she knew, 
 enormous ; she always ifelt, when people were talking to her, 
 that they regarded her as a very unusually wise woman. And 
 yet she had been guilty of the capital folly of cutting herself 
 off from her family. She was ageing, and she was alone in 
 the world. She was enriching herself; she had the most 
 perfectly managed and the most respectable Pension in the 
 world (she sincerely believed), and she was alone in the world. 
 Acquaintances she had — French people who never offered nor 
 accepted hospitality other than tea or wine, and one or two 
 members of the English commercial colony — but her one 
 friend was Fossette, aged three years! She was the most 
 solitary person on earth. She had hfeard no word of Gerald, 
 no word of anybody. Nobody whatever could truly be 
 interested in her fate. This was what she had achieved after 
 a quarter of a century of ceaseless labour and anxiety, during 
 which she had not once been away froni the Rue Lord Byron 
 for more thaii thirty hours at a stretch. It was appalling — 
 the passage of years ; and the passage of years would grow 
 more appalling. Ten years hence, where would she be ? She 
 pictured herself dying. Horrible ! 
 
 Of course there was nothing to prevent her from going 
 back to Bursley and repairing the grand error of her girlhood. 
 No, nothing except the fact that her whole soul recoiled from 
 the mere idea of any such enterprise ! She was a fixture in 
 the Rue Lord Byron. She was a part of the street. She 
 knew all that happened or could happen there. She was 
 attached to it ^ly the heavy chains of habit. In the chill way 
 of long use she loved it. There 1 The incandescent gas- 
 burner of the street-lamp outside had been turned down, as it 
 was turned down every night! If it is possible to love such a 
 phenomenon, she loved that phenomenon. That phenomenon 
 was a portion of her life, dear to her. 
 
 An agreeable young man, that Peel-Swynnerton 1 Then 
 evidently, since her days in Bursley, the Peels and the 
 
FRENSHAM'S 445 
 
 Swynnertons, partners in business, must have intermarried, or 
 there must have been some aflFair of a will. Did he suspect 
 who she was ? He had had a very self-conscious, guilty look. 
 No I He could not have suspected who she was. The idea 
 was ridiculous. Probably he did not even know that her 
 name was Scales. And even if he knew her name, he had 
 probably never heard of Gerald Scales, or the story of her 
 flight. Why, he could not have been born until after she had 
 left Bursley I Besides, the Peels were always quite aloof from 
 the ordinary social life of the town. No ! He could not have 
 suspected her identity. It was infantile to conceive such 
 a thing. 
 
 And yei,^ she inconsequently proceeded in the tangle of her 
 afflicted mind, supposing he had suspected it ! Supposing by 
 some queer chance, he had heard her forgotten story, and 
 casually put two and two together ! Supposing even that 
 he were merely to mention in the Five Towns that the 
 Pension Frensham was kept by a Mrs. Scales. ' Scales ? 
 Scales ? ' people might repeat. ' Now, what does that remind 
 me of?' And the ball might roll and roll till Constance or 
 somebody picked it up ! And then ... 
 
 Moreover — a detail of which she had at first unaccountably 
 failed to mark the significance — this Peel Swynnerton was a 
 friend of the Mr. Povey as to whom he had inquired. . . . 
 In that case it could not be the same Povey. Impossible that 
 the Peels should be on terms of friendship with Samuel Povey 
 or his connections 1 But supposing after all they were ! Sup- 
 posing something utterly unanticipated and revolutionary had 
 happened in the Five Towns 1 
 
 She was dir-'^irbed. She was insecure. She foresaw 
 inquiries being made concerning her. She foresaw an immense 
 family fuss, endless tomfoolery, the upsetting of her existence, 
 the destruction of her calm. And she sank away from that 
 prospect She could not face it. She did not want to face it. 
 " No," she cried passionately in her soul, " Fve lived alone, 
 and I'll stay as I am. I can't change at my time of life." 
 And her attitude towards a possible invasion of her solitude 
 became one of resentment. " I won't have it I I won't have 
 xitl I will be left alone. Constance! What can Constance 
 be to me, or I to her, now ? " The vision of any change in 
 her existence was in the highest degree painful to her. And 
 not only painfull It frightened her. It made her shrink. 
 
446 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 But she could not dismiss it. . . . She could not argue herself 
 out of it. The apparition of Matthew Peel-Swynnerton had 
 somehow altered the very stuff of her fibres. 
 
 And surging on the outskirts of the central storm of her 
 brain were ten thousand apprehensions about the management 
 of the Pension. All was black, hopeless. The Pension might 
 have been the most complete business failure that gross care- 
 lessness and incapacity had ever provoked. Was it not the 
 fact that she had to supervise everything herself, that she 
 could depend on no one ? Were she to be absent even for a 
 single day the entire structure would inevitably fall. Instead 
 of working less she worked harder. And who could guarantee 
 that her investments were safe ? 
 
 When dawn announced itself, slowly discovering each 
 object in the chamber, she was ill. Fever seemed to rage in 
 her head. And in and round her mouth she had strange sen- 
 sations. Fossette stirred in the basket near the large desk on 
 which multifarious files and papers were ranged with minute 
 particularity. 
 
 " Fossette I " she tried to call out ; but no sound issued from 
 her lips. She could not move her tongue. She tried to protrude 
 it, and could not. For hours she had been conscious of a head- 
 ache. Her heart sank. She was sick with fear. Her memory 
 flashed to her father and his seizure. She was his daughter ! 
 Paralysis I " Qa. serait le comble 1 " she thought in French, 
 horriiied. Her fear became abject 1 " Can I move at all ? " 
 she thought, and madly jerked her head. Yes, she could 
 move her head slightly on the pillow, and she could stretch 
 her right arm, both arms. Absurd cowardice ! Of course it 
 was not a seizure I She reassured herself. Still, she could 
 not put her tongue out. Suddenly she began to hiccough, and 
 she had no control over the hiccough. She put her hand to 
 the bell, whose ringing would summon the man who slept in a 
 pantry off the hall, and suddenly the hiccough ceased. Her 
 hand dropped. She was better. Besides, what use in ringing 
 for a man if she could not speak to him through the door ? 
 She must wait for Jacqueline. At six o'clock every morning, 
 summer and winter, Jacqueline entered her mistress's bed- 
 room to release the dog for a moment's airing under her own 
 supervision. The clock on the mantelpiece showed five 
 minutes past three. She had three hours to wait Fossette 
 pattered across the room, and sprang on to the bed and nestled 
 
FRENSHAM'S 447 
 
 down. Sophia ignored her, but Fossette, being herself unwell 
 and torpid, did not seem to care. 
 
 Jacqueline was late. In the quarter of an hour between 
 six o'clock and a quarter past, Sophia suffered the supreme 
 pangs of despair and verged upon insanity. It appeared to 
 her that her cranium would blow off under pressure from 
 within. Then the door opened silently, a few inches. Usually 
 Jacqueline came into the room, but sometimes she stood 
 behind the door and called in her soft, trembling voice, 
 " Fossette ! Fossette I " And on this morning she did not 
 come into the room. The dog did not immediately respond. 
 Sophia was in an agony. She marshalled all her volition, all 
 her self-control and strength, to shout : 
 
 "Jacgtteline/" 
 
 It came out of her, a horribly difBcult and misshapen birth, 
 but it came. She was exhausted. 
 
 " Yes, madame." Jacqueline entered. 
 
 As soon as she had a glimpse of Sophia she threw up her 
 hands. Sophia stared at her, wordless. 
 
 " I will fetch the doctor — myself," whispered Jacqueline, 
 and fled. 
 
 "Jacqueline/" The woman stopped. Then Sophia 
 determined to force herself to make a speech, and she 
 braced her muscles to an unprecedented effort "Say not 
 a word to the others." She could not bear that the whole 
 household should know of her illness. Jacqueline nodded 
 and vanished, the dog following. Jacqueline understood. 
 She lived in the place with her mistress as with a fellow- 
 conspirator. 
 
 Sophia began to feel better. She could get into a sitting 
 posture, though the movement made her dizzy. By working 
 to the foot of the bed she could see herself in the glass of the 
 wardrobe. And she saw that the lower part of her face was 
 twisted out of shape. 
 
 The doctor, who knew her, and who earned a lot of money 
 in her house, told her frankly what had happened. Paralysie 
 glosso-laUo-laryngie was the phrase he used. She understood. 
 A very slight attack ; due to overwork and worry. He ordered 
 absolute rest and quiet. 
 
 "Impossible!" she said, genuinely convinced that she 
 alone was indispensable. 
 
 " Repose the most absolute ! " he repeated. 
 
448 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 She marvelled that a few words with a man who chanced 
 to be named Peel-Swynnerton could have resulted in such a 
 disaster, and drew a curious satisfaction from this fearful proof 
 that she was so highly-strung. But even then she did not 
 realize how profoundly she had been disturbed. 
 
 "My darling Sophia " 
 
 The inevitable miracle had occurred. Her suspicions 
 concerning that Mr. Peel-Swynnerton were well-founded, after 
 all 1 Here was a letter from Constance ! The writing on the 
 envelope was not Constance's ; but even before examining it 
 she had had a peculiar qualm. She received letters from 
 England nearly every day asking about rooms and prices (and 
 on many of them she had to pay threepence excess postage, 
 because the writers carelessly or carefully forgot that a penny 
 stamp was not sufficient) ; there was nothing to distinguish 
 this envelope, and yet her first glance at it had startled her j 
 and when, deciphering the smudged post-mark, she made out 
 the word ' Bursley,' her heart did literally seem to stop, and 
 she opened the letter in quite violent tremulation, thinking to 
 herself: " The doctor would say this is very bad for me." Six 
 days had elapsed since her attack, and she was wonderfully 
 better; the distortion of her face had almost disappeared. 
 But the doctor was grave; he ordered no medicine, merely 
 a tonic; and monotonously insisted on 'repose the most 
 absolute,' on perfect mental calm. He said little else, allowing 
 Sophia to judge from his silences the seriousness of her 
 condition. Yes, the receipt of such a letter must be bad 
 for her I 
 
 She controlled herself while she read it, lying in her 
 dressing-gown against several pillows on the bed ; a mist did 
 not form in her eyes, nor did she sob, nor betray physically 
 that she was not reading an order for two rooms for a week. 
 But the expenditure of nervous force necessary to self-control 
 was terrific. 
 
 Constance's handwriting had changed; it was, however, 
 easily recognizable as a development of the neat caligraphy of 
 the girl who could print window-tickets. The ' S ' of Sophia 
 
FRENSHAM'S 449 
 
 was formed in the same way as she had formed it in the last 
 letter which she had received from her at Axe ! 
 
 "My Darling Sophia, 
 
 " I cannot tell you how overjoyed I was to learn that 
 after all these years you are alive and well, and doing so well 
 too. I long to see you, my dear sister. It was Mr. Peel- 
 Swynnerton who told me. He is a friend of Cyril's. Cyril is 
 the name of my son. I married Samuel in 1867. Cyril was 
 born in 1874 at Christmas. He is now twenty-two, and doing 
 very well in London as a student of sculpture, though so 
 young. He won a National Scholarship. There were only 
 eight, of which he won one, in all England. Samuel died in 
 1888. If you read the papers you must have seen about the 
 Povey affair. I mean of course Mr. Daniel Povey, Confectioner. 
 It was that that killed poor Samuel. Poor mother died in 
 1875. It doesn't seem so long. Aunt Harriet and Aunt 
 Maria are both dead. Old Dr. Harrop is dead, and his son 
 has practically retired. He has a partner, a Scotchman. Mr. 
 Critchlow has married Miss Insull. Did you ever hear of 
 such a thing? They have taken over the shop, and I live in 
 the house part, the other being bricked up. Business in the 
 Square is not what it used to be. The steam trams take all 
 the custom to Hanbridge, and they are talking of electric 
 trams, but I dare say it is only talk. I have a fairly good' 
 servant. She has been with me a long time, but servants are 
 not what they were. I keep pretty well, except for my sciatica 
 and palpitation. Since Cyril went to London I have been 
 very lonely. But I try to cheer up and count my blessings. 
 I am sure I have a great deal to be thankful for. And now 
 this news of you ! Please-write to me a long letter, and tell 
 me all about yourself. It is a long way to Paris. But surely 
 now you know I am still here, you will come and pay me a 
 visit — at least. Everybody would be most glad to see you. 
 And I should be so proud and glad. As I say, I am all alone. 
 Mr. Critchlow says I am to say there is a deal of money waiting 
 for you. You know he is the trustee. There is the half-share 
 of mother's and also of Aunt Harriet's, and it has been accumu- 
 lating. By the way, they are getiing up a subscription for 
 Miss Chetwynd, poor old thing. Her sister is dead, and she 
 is in poverty. I have put myself down for jQzo. Now, my 
 dear sister, please do write to me at once. You see it is still 
 
 3 G 
 
450 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 the old address. I remain, my darling Sophia, with much 
 love, your affectionate sister, 
 
 "Constance Povey. 
 " P.S. — I should have written yesterday, but I was hot fit. 
 Every time I sat down to write, I cried." 
 
 " Of course," said Sophia to Fossette, " she expects me to 
 go to her, instead of her coming to me ! And yet who's the 
 busiest ? " 
 
 But this observation was not serious. It was merely a 
 trifle of affectionate malicious embroidery that Sophia put on 
 fhe edge of her deep satisfaction. The very spirit of simple^ 
 iQve seemed to emanate from the paper on which Constance 
 had written. And this spirit woke suddenly and completely 
 Sophia's love for Constance. Constance ! At that moment 
 there was assuredly for Sophia no creature in the world like 
 Constance. Constance personified for her the qualities of the 
 Baines family. Constance's letter was a great letter, a perfect • 
 letter, perfect in its artlessness ; the natural expression of the 
 Biines character at its best. Not an awkward reference in 
 the whole of it 1 No clumsy expression of surprise at anything 
 that she, Sophia, had done, or failed to do ! No mention of 
 Gerald ! Just a sublime acceptance of the situation as it was, 
 and the assurance of undiminished love ! Tact ? No ; it was 
 something finer than tact ! Tact was conscious, skilful. Sophia 
 was certain that the notion of tactfulness had not entered 
 Constance's head. Constance had simply written out of her 
 heart. And that was what made the letter so splendid. Sophia 
 was convinced that no one but a Baines could have written 
 such a letter. 
 
 She felt that she must rise to the height of that letter, that 
 she too must show her Baines blood. And she went primly 
 to her desk, and began to write (on private notepaper) in that 
 imperious large hand of hers that was so different from 
 Constance's. She began a little stiffly, but after a few lines 
 her generous and passionate soul was responding freely to the 
 appeal of Constance. She asked that Mr. Critchlow should 
 pay ;^20 for her to the Miss Chetwynd fund. She spoke of 
 her Pension and of Paris, and of her pleasure in Constance's 
 letter. But she said nothing as to Gerald, nor as to the 
 possibility of a visit to the Five Towns. She finished the 
 letter in a blaze of love, and passed from it as from a dream 
 
FRENSHAM'S 451 
 
 to the sterile banality of the daily life of the Pension Frensham, 
 feeling that, compared to Constance's afiFection, nothing else* 
 had any worth. 
 
 But she would not consider the project of going to Bursley. 
 Never, never would she go to Bursley. If Constance chose 
 to come to Paris and see her, she would be delighted, but sh£^ 
 herself would not budge. The mere notion of any change laX 
 her existence intimidated her. And as for returning to 
 Bursley itself . . . no, no 1 
 
 Nevertheless, at the Pension Frensham, the future could 
 not be as the past. Sophia's health forbade that She knew 
 that the doctor was right. Every time that she made an effprt, 
 she knew intimately and speedily that the doctor was right. 
 Only her will-power was unimpaired ; the machinery by which 
 will-power is converted into action was mysteriously damaged. 
 She was aware of the fact. But she could not face it yet. 
 Time would have to elapse before she could bring herself to 
 face that fact. She was getting an old woman. She could no 
 longer draw on reserves. Yet she persisted to every one that 
 she was quite recovered, and was abstaining from her custom- 
 ary work simply from an excess of prudence. Certainly her 
 face had recovered. And the Pension, being a machine all of 
 whose parts were in order, continued to run, apparently, with 
 its usual smoothness. It is true that the excellent chef began 
 to peculate, but as his cuisine did not suffer, the result was not 
 noticeable for a long period. The whole staff and many of 
 the guests knew that Sophia had been indisposed ; and they 
 knew no more. 
 
 When by hazard Sophia observed a fault in the daily 
 conduct of the house, her first impulse was to go to the root of 
 it and cure it, her second was to leave it alone, or to palliate 
 it by some superficial remedy. Unperceived, and yet vaguely 
 suspected by various people, the decline of the Pension 
 Frensham had set in. The tide, having risen to its highest, 
 was receding, but so little that no one could be sure that it had 
 turned. Every now and then it rushed up again and washed 
 the furthest stone. 
 
 Sophia and Constance exchanged several letters. Sophia 
 said repeatedly that she could not leave Paris. At length she 
 roundly asked Constance to come and pay her a visit. She 
 made the suggestion with fear — for the prospect of actually 
 seeing her beloved Constance alarmed her — but she could do 
 
452 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 no less than make it. And in a few days she had a reply to 
 say that Constance would have come, under Cyril's charge, 
 but that her sciatica was suddenly much worse, and she was 
 obliged to lie down every day after dinner to rest her legs. 
 Travelling was impossible for her. The fates were combining 
 against Sophia's decision. 
 
 And now Sophia began to ask herself about her duty to 
 Constance. The truth was that she was groping round to find 
 an excuse for reversing her decision. She was afraid to 
 reverse it, yet tempted. She had the desire to do something 
 which she objected to doing. It was like the desire to throw 
 one's self over a high balcony. It drew her, drew her, and she 
 drew back against it. The Pension was now tedious to her. 
 It bored her even to pretend to be the supervising head of the 
 Pension. Throughout the house discipline had loosened. 
 
 She wondered when Mr. Mardon would renew his over- 
 tures for the transformation of her enterprise into a limited 
 company. In spite of herself she would deliberately cross his 
 path and give him opportunities to begin on the old theme. 
 He had never before left her in peace for so long a period. 
 No doubt she had, upon his last assault, absolutely convinced 
 hirh that his efforts had no smallest chance of success, and he 
 had made up his mind to cease them. With a single word she 
 could wind him up again. The merest hint, one day when he 
 was paying his bill, and he would be beseeching her. But she 
 could not utter the word. 
 
 Then she began to say openly that she did not feel well, 
 that the house was too much for her, and that the doctor had 
 imperatively commanded rest. She said this to every one 
 except Mardon. And every one somehow persisted in not say- 
 ing it to Mardon. The doctor havmg advised that she should 
 spend more time in the open air, she would take afternoon 
 drives in the Bois with Fossette. It was October. But Mr. 
 Mardon never seemed to hear of those drives. 
 
 One morning he met her in the street outside the house. 
 
 " I'm sorry to hear you're so unwell," he said confidentially, 
 after they had discussed the health of Fossette. 
 
 " So unwell ! " she exclaimed as if resenting the statement. 
 " Who told you I was so unwell ? " 
 
 " Jacqueline. She told me you often said that what you 
 needed was a complete change. And it seems the doctor says 
 so, too." 
 
FRENSHAM'S 453 
 
 " Oh ! doctors I " she murmured, without however denying 
 the truth of Jacqueline's assertion. She saw hope in Mr. 
 Mardon's eyes. 
 
 " Of course, you know," he said, still more confidentially, 
 " if you should happen to change your mind, I'm always ready 
 to form a little syndicate to take this" — he waved discreetly at 
 the Pension — " off your hands." 
 
 She shook her head violently, which was strange, consider- 
 ing that for weeks she had been wishing to hear such words 
 from Mr, Mardon. ^ 
 
 " You needn't give it up altogether,!' he said. " You could 
 retain your hold on it. We'd make you manageress, with a 
 salary knd' a share in the profits. You'd be mistress just as 
 much as you are now." 
 
 "Oh !" she said carelessly.' " If I gave it up, I should ^ve 
 it up entirely. No half measures for me." 
 
 With the utterance of that sentence, the history of Fren- 
 sham's as a private undertaking was brought to a close. 
 Sophia knew it. Mr. Mardon knew it. Mr. Mardon's heart 
 leapt. He saw in his imagination the formation of the 
 preliminary syndicate, with himself at its head, and then the 
 re-sale by the syndicate to a limited company at a profit. He 
 saw a nice little profit for his own private personal self of a 
 thousand or so — gained in a moment. The plant, his hope, 
 which he had deemed dead, blossomed with miraculous 
 suddenness. 
 
 " Well," he said. " Give it up entirely, then 1 Take a 
 holiday for life. You've deserved it, Mrs. Scales." 
 
 She shook her head once again. 
 
 " Think it over," he said. 
 
 " I gave you my answer years ago," she said obstipately, 
 while fearing lest he should take her at her word. 
 
 " Oblige me by thinking it over," he said. " I'll mention 
 it to you again in a few days." 
 
 " It will be no use," she said. 
 
 He took his leave, waddling down the street in his vague 
 clothes, conscious of his fame as Lewis Mardon, the great 
 house-agent of the Champs Elysdes, known throughout Europe 
 and America. 
 
 In a few days he did mention it a,gain. 
 
 "There's only one thing that makes me dream of it even 
 for a moment," said Sophia. " And that is my sister's health." 
 
454 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " Your sister ! " he exclaimed. He did not know she had 
 a sister. Never had she spoken of her family. 
 
 " Yes. Her letters are beginning to worry me." 
 
 " Does she live in Paris ? " 
 
 " No. In Staffordshire. She has never left home." 
 « And to preserve her pride intact she led Mr. Mardon to 
 think that Constance was in a most serious way, whereas in 
 truth Constance had nothing^ worse than her sciatica, and even 
 that was somewhat better. 
 
 Thus she yielded. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE MEETING 
 
 Soon after dinner one day in the following spring, Mr, 
 Critchlow knocked at Constance's door. She was seated in 
 the rocking-chair in front of the fire in the parlour. She wore 
 a large ' rough ' apron, and with the outlying parts of the apron 
 she was rubbing the moisture out of the coat of a young wire- 
 haired fox-terrier, for whom ho more original name had been 
 found than ' Spot.' It is true that he had a spot. Constance 
 had more than once called the world to witness that she 
 would never have a young dog again, because, as she said, 
 she could not be always running about after them, and they 
 ate the stuffing out of the furniture. But her last dog had 
 lived too long ; a dog can do worse things than eat furnitLire; 
 and, in her natural reaction against age in dogs, and also in 
 the hope of postponing as long as possible the inevitable 
 sorrow and upset which death causes when it takes ofif a 
 domestic pet, she had not known how to refuse the very 
 desirable fox-terrier aged ten months that an acquaintance 
 had offered to her. Spot's beautiful pink skin could be seen 
 under his disturbed hair ; he was exquisitely soft to the touch, 
 and to himself he was loathsome. His eyes continually peeped 
 forth between corners of the agitated towel, and they were full 
 of inquietude and shame. 
 
 Amy was assisting at this performance, gravely on the 
 watch to see that Spot did not escape into the coal-cellar. 
 She opened the door to Mr. Critchlow's knock. Mr. Critchlow 
 entered without any formalities, as usual. He did not seem 
 to have changed. He had the same quantity of white hair, 
 he wore the same long white apron, and his voice (which 
 
 4SS 
 
456 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 showed however an occasional tendency to shrillness) had the 
 same grating quality. He stood fairly straight He was 
 carrying a newspaper in his vellum hand. 
 
 " Well, missis 1 " he said. 
 
 " That will do, thank you, Amy," said Constance, quietly. 
 Amy went slowly. 
 
 " So ye're washing him for her ! " said Mr. Critchlow. 
 
 "Yes," Constance admitted. Spot glanced sharply at the 
 aged man. 
 
 "An' ye seen this bit in the paper about Sophia?" he 
 asked, holding the Signed for her inspection. 
 
 " About Sophia?" cried Constance. " What's amiss ?" 
 
 "Nothing's amiss. But they've got it. It's in the 
 ' Staffordshire day by day ' column. Here ! I'll read it ye." 
 He drew a long wooden spectacle-case from his waistcoat 
 pocket, and placed a second pair of spectacles on his nose. 
 Then he sat down on the sofa, his knees sticking out 
 pointedly, and read : " ' We understand that Mrs. Sophia Scales, 
 proprietress of the famous Pension Frensham in the Rue Lord 
 Byron, Paris ' — it's that famous that nobody in th' Five Towns 
 has ever heard of it — ' is about to pay a visit to her native 
 town, Bursley, after an absence of over thirty years. Mrs. 
 Scales belonged to the well-known and highly respected 
 family of Baines. She has recently disposed of the Pension 
 Frensham to a limited company, and we are betraying no 
 secret in stating that the price paid ran well into five figures.' 
 So ye see ! " Mr. Critchlow commented. 
 
 " How do those Signal people find out things ? " Constance 
 murmured. 
 
 " Eh, bless ye, I don't know," said Mr. Critchlow. 
 
 This was an untruth. Mr. Critchlow had himself given 
 the information to the new editor of the Signal, who had soon 
 been made aware of Critchlow's passion for the press, and 
 who knew how to make use of it. 
 
 " I wish it hadn't appeared just to-day," said Constance. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Oh 1 I don't know, I wish it hadn't." 
 
 "Well, I'll be touring on, missis," said Mr. Critchlow, 
 meaning that he would go. 
 
 He left the paper, and descended the steps with senile 
 deliberation. It was characteristic that he had shown no 
 curiosity whatever as to the details of Sophia's arrival. 
 
THE MEETING 457 
 
 Constance removed her apron, wrapped Spot up in it, and 
 put him in a comer of the sofa. She then abruptly sent Amy 
 out to buy a penny time-table. 
 
 "I thought you were going by tram to Knype," Amy 
 observed. 
 
 " I have decided to go by train," said Constance, with 
 cold dignity, as if she had decided the fate of nations. She 
 hated such observations from Amy, who unfortunately lacked, 
 in an increasing degree, the supreme gift of unquestioning 
 obedience. 
 
 When Amy came breathlessly back, she found Constance 
 in her bedroom, withdrawing crumpled balls of paper from the 
 sleeves of her second-best mantle. Constance scarcely ever 
 wore this mantle. In theory it was destined for chapel on 
 wet Sundays ; in practice it had remained long in the ward- 
 robe, Sundays having been obstinately fine for weeks and 
 weeks together. It was a mantle that Constance had never 
 really liked. But she was not going to Knype to meet Sophia 
 in her everyday mantle ; and she had no intention of donning 
 her best mantle for such an excursion. To make her first 
 appearance before Sophia in the best mantle she had — this 
 would have been a sad mistake of tactics ! Not only would 
 it have led to an anti-climax on Sunday, but it would have 
 given to Constance the air of being in awe of Sophia. Now 
 Constance was in truth a little afraid of Sophia; in thirty 
 years Sophia might have grown into anything, whereas 
 Constance had remained just Constance. Paris was a great 
 place ; and it was immensely far off. And the mere sound 
 of that limited company business was intimidating. Imagine 
 Sophia having by her own efforts created something which a 
 real limited company wanted to buy and had bought I Yes, 
 Constance was afraid, but she did not mean to show her fear 
 in her mantle. After all, she was the elder. And she had 
 her dignity too — and a lot of it — tucked away in her secret 
 heart, hidden within the mildness of that soft exterior. So 
 she had decided on the second-best mantle, which, being 
 seldom used, had its sleeves stuffed with paper to the end that 
 they might keep their shape and their ' fall' The little balls 
 of paper were strewed over the bed. 
 
 " There's a train at a quarter to three, gets to Knype at 
 ten minutes past," said Amy, officiously. " But supposing it 
 was only three minutes late and the London train was prompt, 
 
458 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 then you might miss her. Happen you'd better take the two 
 fifteen to be on the safe side." 
 
 "Let me look," said Constance, firmly. "Please put all 
 this paper in the wardrobe." 
 
 She would have preferred not to follow Amy's sugges- 
 tion, but it was so incontestably wise that she was obliged to 
 accept it. 
 
 *' Unless ye go by tram," said Amy. " That won't mean 
 starting quite so soon." 
 
 But Constance would not go by tram. If she took the 
 tram she would be bound to meet people who had read the 
 Signal, and who would say, with their stupid vacuity : " Going' 
 to meet your sister at Knype ? " And then tiresome conversa- 
 tions would-foUow. Whereas, in the train, she would choose a 
 compartment, and would be far less likely to encounter 
 chatterers. 
 
 There was now not a minute to lose. And the excitement 
 which had been growing in that house for days past, under a 
 pretence of calm, leapt out swiftly into the light of the sun, 
 and was unashamed. Amy had to help her mistress make herself 
 as comely as she could be made without her best dress, mantle, 
 and bonnet. Amy was frankly consulted as to effects. The 
 barrier of class was lowered for a space. Many years had 
 elapsed since Constance had been conscious of a keen desire to 
 look smart. She was reminded of the days when, in full fig for 
 chapel, she would dash downstairs on a Sunday morning, and, 
 assuming a pose for inspection at the threshold of the parlour, 
 would demand of Samuel : "Shall I do?" Yes, she used to dash 
 downstairs, like a child, and yet in those days she had thought 
 herself so sedate and mature 1 She sighed, half with lancinating 
 regret, and half in gentle disdain of that mercurial creature 
 aged less than thirty. At fifty-one she regarded herself as old. 
 And she was old. And Amy had the tricks and manners of an 
 old spinster. Thus the excitement in the house was an ' old ' 
 excitement, and, like Constance's desire to look smart, it had 
 its ridiculous side, which was also its tragic side, the side that 
 would have made a boor guffaw, and a hysterical fool cry, and 
 a wise man meditate sadly upon the earth's fashion of renewing 
 itself. 
 
 At half-past one Constance was dressed, with the exception 
 of her gloves. She looked at the clock a second time to make 
 sure that she might safely glance round the house without fear 
 
THE MEETING 459 
 
 of missing the train. She went up into the bedroom on the 
 second-floor, her and Sophia's old bedroom, which she had 
 prepared with enormous care for Sophia. The airing of that 
 room had been an enterprise of days, for, save by a minister 
 during the sittings of the Wesleyan Methodist Conference at 
 Bursley, it had never been occupied since the era when Maria 
 InsuU used occasionally to sleep in the house. Cyril clung to 
 his old room on his visits. Constance had an ample supply of 
 solid and stately furniture, and the chamber destined for Sophia 
 was lightened in every corner by the reflections of polished 
 mahogany. It was also faintly impregnated with the odour of 
 furniture paste — an odour of which no housewife need be 
 ashamed. Further, it had been re-papered in a delicate blue, 
 with one of the new ' art ' patterns. It was a ' Baines ' roony* 
 And Constance did not care where Sophia came from, nor what 
 Sophia had been accustomed to, nor into what limited company 
 Sophia had been transformed — that room was adequate ! It 
 could not have been improved upon. You had only to look 
 at the crocheted mats — even those on the washstand under 
 the white-and-gold ewer and other utensils. It was folly 
 to expose such mats to the splashings of a washstand, but it 
 was sublime folly. Sophia might remove them if she cared. 
 Constance was house-proud; house-pride had slumbered 
 within her ; now it blazed forth. 
 
 A fire brightened the drawing-room, which was a truly 
 magnificent apartment, a museum of valuables collected by the 
 Baines and the Maddack families since the year 1840, 
 tempered by the latest novelties in antimacassars and 
 aloths. In all Bursley there could have been few drawing- 
 rooms to compare with Constance's. Constance knew it. 
 She was not afraid of her drawing-room being seen by anybody. 
 
 She passed for an instant into her own bedroom, where. 
 Amy was patiently picking balls of paper from the bed. 
 
 " Now you quite understand about tea ? " Constance 
 asked. 
 
 " Oh yes, 'm," said Amy, as if to say : " How much oftener 
 are you going to ask me that question?" "Are you off' 
 now, 'm?" 
 
 " Yes," said Constance. " Come and fasten the front-door 
 after me." 
 
 They descended together to the parlour. A white cloth 
 for tea lay folded on the table. It was of the finest damask 
 
460 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 that skill could choose and money buy. It was fifteen years 
 old, and had never been spread Constance would not have 
 produced it for the first meal, had she not possessed two other 
 of equal eminence. On the harmonium were ranged several 
 jams and cakes, a Bursley pork-pie, and some pickled salmon ; 
 with the necessary silver. All was there. Amy could not go 
 wrong. And crocuses were in the vases on the mantelpiece. 
 Her ' garden,' iil the phrase which used to cause Samuel to 
 think how extraordinarily feminine she was ! It was a long 
 time since she had had a ' garden ' on the mantelpiece. Her 
 interest in her chronic sciatica and in her palpitations had 
 grown at the expense of her interest in gardens. Often, when 
 she had finished the complicated processes by which her 
 furniture and other goods were kept in order, she had strength 
 only to ' rest.' She was rather a fragile, small, fat woman, soon 
 out of breath, easily marred. This business of preparing for 
 the advent of Sophia had appeared to her genuinely colossal. 
 However, she had come through it very well. She was in 
 pretty good health ; only a little tired, and more than a little 
 anxious and nervous^as she gave the last glance. 
 
 "Take away that apron, do!" she said to Amy, pointing 
 to the rough apron in' the corner of the sofa. " By the way, 
 (phere is Spot ? " 
 
 " Spot, m'm ? " Amy ejaculated. 
 
 Eoth their hearts jumped. Amy instinctively looked out 
 of the window. He was there, sure enough, in the gutter, 
 studying the indescribabilities of King Street. He had 
 obviously escaped when Amy came in from buying the 
 time-table. The woman's face was guilty. 
 
 " Amy, I wonder a/ you 1" exclaimed Constance, tragically. 
 She opened the door. 
 
 " Well, I never did see the like of that dog ! " murmured 
 Amy. 
 
 " Spot ! " his mistress commanded. " Come here at once. 
 Do you hear me ? " 
 
 Spot turned sharply and gazed motionless at Constance. 
 Then with a toss of the head he dashed off to the corner of 
 the Square, and gazed motionless again. Amy went forth to 
 catch him. After an age she brought him in, squealing. He 
 was in a state exceedingly offensive to the eye and to the nose. 
 He had effectively got rid of the smell of soap, which he 
 loathed. Constance could have wept. It did really appear to 
 
THE MEETING 461 
 
 her that nothing had gone right that day. And Spot had the 
 most innocent, trustful air. Impossible to make him realize 
 that his aunt Sophia was coming. He would have sold his 
 entire farnily into servitude in order to buy ten yards of King 
 Street gutter. 
 
 " You must wash him in the scullery, that's all there is for 
 it," said Constance, controlling herself. " Put that apron on, 
 and don't forget one of your new aprons when you open the 
 door. Better shut him up in Mr. Cyril's bedroom when you've 
 dried him." 
 
 And she went, charged with worries, clasping her bag and 
 her umbrella and smoothing her gloves, and spying downwards 
 at the folds of her mantle. 
 
 " That" s a funny way to go to Bursley Station, that is," said 
 Amy, observing that Constance was descending King Street 
 instead of crossing it into Wedgwood Street. And she caught 
 Spot ' a fair clout on the head,' to indicate to him that she had 
 him alone in the house now. 
 
 Constance was taking a round-about route to the station, 
 so that, if stopped by acquaintances, she should not be too 
 obviously going to the station. Her feelings concerning the 
 arrival of Sophia, and concerning the town's attitude towards it, 
 were very complex. 
 
 She was forced to hurry. And she had risen that morning 
 with plans perfectly contrived for the avoidance of hurry. She 
 disliked hurry because it always ' put hei about.' 
 
 II 
 
 The express from London was late, so that Constance had 
 three-quarters of an hour of the stony calmness of Knype 
 platform when it is waiting for a great train. At last the 
 porters began to cry, " Macclesfield, Stockport, and Man- 
 chester train ; " the immense engine glided round the curve, 
 dwarfing the carriages behind it, and Constance had a supreme 
 tremor. The calmness of the platform was transformed into a 
 tn'elee. Little Constance found herself left on the fringe of a 
 physically agitated crowd which was apparently trying to 
 scale a precipice surmounted by windows and doors from 
 whose apertures looked forth defenders of the train. Knype 
 platform seemed as if it would never be reduced to order 
 again. And Constance did not estimate highly the chances 
 
462 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 of picking out an unknown Sophia from that welter. She was 
 very seriously perturbed. All the muscles of her face were 
 drawn as her gaze wandered anxiously from end to end of the 
 train. 
 
 • Presently she saw a singular dog. Other people also saw it. 
 It was of the colour of chocolate ; it had a head and shoulders 
 richly covered with hair that hung down in thousands of tufts 
 like the tufts of a modern mop such as is bought in shops. 
 This hair stopped suddenly rather less than halfway along the 
 length of the dog's body, the remainder of which was naked 
 and as smooth as marble. The effect was to give to the' 
 inhabitants of the Five Towns the impression that the dog had 
 forgotten an essential part of its attire and was outraging 
 decency. The ball of hair which had been allowed to grow oq 
 the dog's tail, and the circles of hair which ornamented its 
 ankles, only served to intensify the impression of indecency. 
 A pink ribbon round its neck completed the outrage. The 
 animal had absolutely the air of a decked trollop. A chain 
 ran taut from the creature's neck into the middle of a small 
 crowd of persons gesticulating over trunks, and Constance 
 traced it to a tall and distinguished woman in a coat and skirt 
 with a rather striking hat. A beautiful and aristocratic woman, 
 Constance thought, at a distance! Then the strange idea 
 came to her ; " That's Sophia ! " She was sure. . . . She was 
 not sure. . . . She was sure. The woman emerged from the 
 crowd. Her eye fell on Constance. They both hesitated, 
 and, as it were, wavered uncertainly towards each other. 
 
 "I should have known you anywhere," said Sophia, with 
 apparently careless tranquillity, as she stooped to kiss Con- 
 stance, raising her veil. 
 
 Constance saw that this marvellous tranquillity must be 
 imitated, and she imitated it very well. It was a .' Baines ' 
 tranquillity. But she noticed a twitching of her sister's lips. 
 The twitching comforted Constance, proving to her that she 
 was not alone in foolishness. There was also something queer 
 about the permanent lines of Sophia's mouth. That must be 
 due to the ' attack ' about which Sophia had written. 
 
 " Did Cyril meet you? " asked Constance. It was all that 
 she could think of to say. 
 
 " Oh yes ! " said Sophia, eagerly. " And I went to his 
 studio, and he saw me off at Euston. He is a very nice boy. 
 I love him." 
 
THE MEETING 463 
 
 ' She said ' I love him ' with the intonation of Sophia aged 
 fifteen. Her tone and imperious gesture sent Constance flying 
 back to the 'sixties. "She hasn't altered one bit," Constance 
 thought with joy. |' Nothing could change Sophia." And at 
 the back of that notion was a more general notion : "Nothing 
 could change a Baines." It was true that Constance's Sophia 
 had not changed. Powerful individualities remain undis- 
 figured by no matter what vicissitudes. After this revelation 
 of the original Sophia, arising as it did out of praise of 
 Cyril, Constance felt easier, felt reassured. 
 
 " This is Fossette," said Sophia, pulling at the chain. 
 
 Constance knew not what to reply. Surely Sophia could 
 not be aware what she did in bringing such a dog to a place 
 where people were so particular as they are in the Five 
 Towns. 
 
 " Fossette ! " She repeated the name in an endearing 
 accent, half stooping towards the dog. After all, it was not the 
 dog's fault. Sophia had certainly mentioned a dog in her 
 letters, but she had not prepared Constance for the spectacle 
 of Fossette. 
 
 All that happened in a moment. A porter appeared with 
 two trunks belonging to Sophia. Constance observed that 
 they were superlatively ' good ' trunks ; also that Sophia's 
 clothes, though ' on the showy side,' were superlatively ' good." 
 The getting of Sophia's ticket to Bursley occupied them next, 
 and soon the first shock of meeting had worn oif. 
 
 In a second-class compartment of the Loop Line train, 
 with Sophia and Fossette opposite to her, Constance had 
 leisure to ' take in ' Sophia. She came to the conclusion that, 
 despite her slenderness and straightness and the general effect 
 of the long oval of her face under the hat, Sophia looked her 
 age. She saw that Sophia must have been through a great 
 deal ; her experiences were damagingly printed in the details 
 of feature. Seen at a distance, she might have passed for a 
 woman of thirty, even for a girl, but seen across a narrow 
 railway carriage she was a woman whom suffering had aged. 
 Yet obviously her spirit was unbroken. Hear her tell a 
 doubtful porter that of course she should take Fossette with 
 her into the carriage ! See her shut the carriage door with 
 the expressed intention of keeping other people out ! She 
 was accustomed to command. At the same time her face had 
 an almost set smile, as though she had said to herself: "I 
 
464 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 will die smiling." Constance felt sonyfor her. While recog- 
 nizing in Sophia a superior in charm, in experience, in know- 
 ledge of the world and in force of personality, she yet with a 
 kind of undisturbed, fundamental superiority felt sorry for Sophia. 
 
 "What do you think?" said Sophia, absently fingering 
 Fossette. " A man came up to nie at Euston, while Cyril was 
 getting my ticket, and said, ' Eh, Miss Baines, I haven't seen ye 
 for over thirty years, but I know you're Miss Baines, or were^— 
 and you're looking bonny.' Then he went off. I think it 
 must have been Holl, the grocer." 
 
 " Had he got a long white beard ? " 
 - "Yes." 
 
 " Then it was Mr. Holl. He's been Mayor twice. He's 
 an alderman, you know." 
 
 " Really ! " said Sophia. " But wasn't it queer ? " 
 
 "Ehl Bless us!" exclaimed Constance. "Don't talk 
 about queer ! It's terrible how time flies." 
 
 The conversation stopped, and it refused to start again. 
 Two women who are full of affectionate curiosity about each 
 other, and who have not seen each other for thirty years, and 
 who are anxious to confide in each other, ought to discover no 
 difficulty in talking ; but somehow these two could not talk. 
 Constance perceived that Sophia was impeded by the same 
 awkwardness as herself. 
 
 " Well I never 1 " cried Sophia, suddenly. She had glanced 
 out of the window and had seen two camels and an elephant in 
 a field close to the line, amid manufactories and warehouses 
 and adveriisements of soap. 
 
 "Ohl" said Constance. "That's Bamum's, you know. 
 They have what they call a central dep6t here, because if s the 
 middle of England." Constance spoke proudly. (After all, 
 there can be only one middle.) It was on her tongue to say, 
 in her ' tart ' manner, that Fossette ought to be with the 
 camels, but she refrained. Sophia hit on the excellent idea of 
 noting all the buildings that were new to her and all the land- 
 marks that she remembered. It was surprising how little the 
 district had altered. 
 
 " Same smoke 1 " said Sophia. 
 
 " Same smoke 1 " Constance agreed. 
 
 " It's even worse," said Sophia. 
 
 " Do you think so ? " Constance was slightly piqued. " But 
 they're doing something now for smoke abatement." 
 
THE MEETING 465 
 
 " I must have forgotten how dirty it was I " said Sophia. " I 
 suppose that's it. I'd no idea . . . 7 " 
 
 "Really!" said Constance. Then, in candid admission, 
 " The fact is, it is dirty. You can't imagine what work it 
 makes, especially with window-curtains." 
 
 As the train puffed under Trafalgar Road, Constance 
 pointed to a new station that was being built there, to be called 
 ' Trafalgar Road ' station. 
 
 " Won't it be strange ? " said she, accustomed to the eternal 
 sequence of Loop Lane stations — Turnhill, Bursley, Bleak- 
 ridge, Hanbridge, Cauldon, Knype, Trent Vale, and Longshaw. 
 A 'Trafalgar Road' inserting itself between Bleakridge and 
 Hanbridge seemed to her excessively curious. 
 
 " Yes, I suppose it will," Sophia agreed. 
 
 " But of course it's not the same to you," said Constance, 
 dashed. She indicated the glories of Bursley Park, as the 
 train slackened for Bursley, with modesty. Sophia gazed, and 
 vaguely recognized the slopes where she had taken her first 
 walk with Gerald Scales. 
 
 Nobody accosted them at Bursley Station, and they drove 
 to the Square in a cab. Amy was at the window ; she held up 
 Spot, who was in a plenary state of cleanliness, rivalling the 
 ■ purity of Amy's apron. 
 
 " Good afternoon, m'm," said Amy, officiously, to Sophia, as 
 Sophia came up the steps. 
 
 "Good afternoon, Amy," Sophia replied. She flattered 
 Amy in thus showing that she was acquainted with her name ; 
 but if ever a servant was put into her place by mere tone, Amy 
 was put into her place on that occasion. Constance trembled 
 at Sophia's frigid and arrogant politeness. Certainly Sophia 
 was not used to being addressed first by servants. But Amy 
 was not quite the ordinary servant. She was much older 
 than the ordinary servant, and she had acquired a partial 
 moral dominion over Constance, though Constance would 
 have warmly denied it. Hence Constance's apprehension. How- 
 ever, nothing happened. Amy apparently did not feel the snub. 
 
 " Take Spot and put him in Mr. Cyril's bedroom," Con- 
 stance murmured to her, as if implying : " Have I not already 
 told you to do that ? " The fact was, she was afraid for Spot's 
 life. 
 
 "Now, Fossette!" She welcomed the incoming poodle 
 kindly; the poodle 'began at once to sniff. 
 
 3 H 
 
466 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 The fat, red cabman was handling the trunks on the pave- 
 ment, and Amy was upstairs. For a moment the sisters were 
 alone together in the parlour. 
 
 - " So here I am ! " exclaimed the tall, majestic woman of 
 fifty. And her lips twitched again as she looked round the 
 room — so small to her. 
 
 " Yes, here you are ! " Constance agreed. She bit her Up, 
 and, as a measure of prudence to avoid breaking doFwn, she 
 bustled out to the cabman. A passing instant of emotion, like 
 a^fleck of foam on a wide and calm sea 1 
 
 The cabman blundered up and downstairs with trunks, and 
 saluted Sophia's haughty generosity, and then there was quiet- 
 ness. Amy was already brewing the tea in the cave. The 
 prepared tea-table in front of the fire made a glittering array. 
 
 " Now, what about Fossette ? " Constance voiced anxieties 
 that had been growing on her. 
 
 " Fossette will be quite right with me," said Sophia, firmly. 
 
 They ascended to the guest's room, which drew Sophia's 
 admiration for its prettiness. She hurried to Uie window and 
 looked out into the Square. 
 
 "Would you like a fire?" Constance asked, in a rather 
 perfunctory manner. For a bedroom fire, in seasons of normal 
 health, was still regarded as absurd in the Square. 
 
 " Oh no ! " said Sophia ; but with a slight failure to rebut 
 the suggestion as utterly ridiculous. 
 
 " Sure ? " Constance questioned. 
 
 " Quite, thank you," said Sophia. 
 
 " Well, I'll leave you. I expect Amy will have tea ready 
 directly." She went down into the kitchen. "Amy," she 
 said, " as soon as we've finished tea, light a fire in Mrs. Scales's 
 bedroom." 
 
 " In the top bedroom, m'm ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Constance climbed again to her own bedroom, and shut 
 the do6r. She needed a moment to herself, in the midst of 
 this terrific affair. She sighed with relief as she removed her 
 mantle. She thought : " At any rate we've met, and I've got 
 her here. She's very nice. No, she isn't a bit altered." She 
 hesitated to admit that to her Sophia was the least in the world 
 formidable. And so she said once more : " She's very nice. 
 She isn't a bit altered." And then : '■ Fancy her being here I 
 She really is here." With her perfect simplicity it did not 
 
THE MEETING 467 
 
 occur to Constance to speculate as to what Sophia thought 
 of her. 
 
 Sophia was downstairs first, and Constance found her 
 looking at the blank wall beyond the door leading to the 
 kitchen steps. 
 
 " So this is where you had it bricked up ? " said Sophia. 
 " Yes," said Constance. " That's the place." 
 " It makes me feel like people feel when they have tickling 
 in a limb that's been cut off 1 " said Sophia. 
 " Oh, Sophia ! " 
 
 The tea received a great deal of praise from Sophia, but 
 neither of them ate much. Constance found that Sophia 
 was like herself: she had to be particular about her food. 
 She tasted dainties for the sake of tasting, but it was a 
 bird's pecking. Not the twelfth part of the tea was con- 
 sumed. They dared not indulge caprices. Only their eyes 
 could feed. 
 
 After tea they went up to the drawing-room, and in the 
 corridor had the startling pleasure of seeing two dogs who 
 scurried about after each other in amity. Spot had found 
 Fossette, with the aid of Amy's incurable carelessness, and 
 had at once examined her with great particularity. She 
 seemed to be of an amiable disposition, and not averse 
 from the lighter distractions. For a long time the sisters 
 sat chatting together in the lit drawing-room to the agreeable 
 sound of happy dogs playing in the dark corridor. Those 
 dogs saved the situation, because they needed constant atten- 
 tion. When the dogs dozed, the sisters began to look 
 through photograph albums, of which Constance had several, 
 bound in plush or morocco. Nothing will sharpen the 
 memory, evoke the past, raise the dead, rejuvenate the ageing, 
 and cause both • sighs and smiles, like a collection of photo- 
 graphs gathered together during long years of life. Constance 
 had ausastonishing menagerie of unknown cousins and their 
 connections, and of townspeople; she had Cyril at all ages; 
 she had weird daguerrotypes of her parents and their 
 parents. The strangest of all was a portrait of Samuel 
 Povey as an infant in arms. Sophia checked an impulse to 
 laugh at it. But when Constance said : " Isn't it funny ? " 
 she did allow herself to laugh. A photograph of Samuel in 
 the year before his death was really imposing. Sophia star6d 
 at it, impressed. It was the portrait of an honest man. 
 
468 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 "How long have you been a widow?" Constance asked 
 in a low voice, glancing at upright Sophia over her spectacles, 
 a leaf of the album raised against her finger. 
 
 Sophia unmistakably flushed. "I don't know that I am a 
 widow," said she, with an air. " My husband left me in 1870, 
 and I've never seen nor heard of him since." 
 
 " Oh, my dear ! " cried Constance, alarmed and deafened 
 as by a clap of awful thunder. " I thought ye were a widow. 
 Mr. Peel-Swynnerton said he was told positively ye were a 
 widow. That's why I never. ..." She stopped. Her face 
 was troubled. 
 
 " Of course I always passed for a widow, over there," said 
 Sophia. 
 
 " Of course," said Constance quickly. " I see. ..." 
 
 " And I may be a widow," said Sophia. 
 
 Constance made no remark. This was a blow. Bursley 
 was such a particular place. Doubtless, Gerald Scales had 
 behaved like a scoundrel. That was sure ! 
 
 When, immediately afterwards. Amy opened the drawing- 
 room door (having first knocked — the practice of encouraging 
 a servant to plunge without warning of any kind into a 
 drawing- room had never been favoured in that house) she saw 
 the sisters sitting rather near to each other at the walnut oval 
 table, Mrs Scales very upright, and staring into the fire, and 
 Mrs. Povey 'bunched up' and staring at the photograph 
 album J both seeming to Amy aged and apprehensive ; Mrs. 
 Povey's hair was quite grey, though Mrs. Scales' hair was 
 nearly as black as Amy's own. Mrs. Scales started at the sound 
 of the knock, and turned her head. 
 
 " Here's Mr. and Mrs. Critchlow, m'ra," announced Amy. 
 
 The sisters glanced at one another, with lifted foreheads. 
 Then Mrs. Povey spoke to Amy as though visits at half-past 
 eight at night were a customary phenomenon of the house- 
 hold. Nevertheless, she trembled to think what outrageous 
 thing Mr. Critchlow might say to Sophia after thirty years' 
 absence. The occasion was great, and it might also be 
 terrible. 
 
 " Ask them to come up," she said calmly. 
 
 But Amy had the best of that encounter. " I have done," 
 she replied, and instantly produced them out of the darkness 
 of the corridor. It was providential : the. sisters had made no 
 remark that the Critchlows might not hear. 
 
THE MEETING 469 
 
 Then Maria Critchlow, simpering, had to greet Sophia. 
 Mrs. Critchlow was very agitated, from sheer nervousness. 
 She curvetted ; she almost pranced ; and she made noises with 
 her mouth as though she saw some one eating a sour apple. 
 She wanted to show Sophia how greatly she had changed from 
 the young, timid apprentice. Certainly since her marriage she 
 had changed. As manager of other people's business she had 
 not felt the necessity of being effusive to customers, but as 
 proprietress, anxiety to succeed had dragged her out of her 
 capable and mechanical indifference. It was a pity. Her 
 consistent dullness had had a sort of dignity; but genial, she 
 was merely ritiiculous. Animation cruelly displayed her 
 appalling commonness and physical shibbiness. Sophia's 
 demeanour was not chilly ; but it indicated that Sophia had no 
 wish to be eyed over as a freak of nature. 
 
 Mr. Critchlow advanced very slowly into the room. " Ye 
 still carry your head on a stiff neck," said he, deliberately 
 examining Sophia. Then with great care he put out his long 
 thin arm and took her hand. " Well, I'm rare and glad 
 to see ye ! " 
 
 Every one was thunderstruck ■ at this expression of joy. 
 Mr. Critchlow had never been known to be glad to see any- 
 body. 
 
 "Yes," twittered Maria, "Mr. Critchlow would come in 
 to-night Nothing would do but he must come in to-night." 
 
 " You didn't tell me this afternoon," said Constance, " that 
 you were going to give us the pleasure of your company like 
 this." 
 
 He looked momentarily at Constance. " No,'' he grated, 
 " I don't know as I did." 
 
 His gaze flattered Sophia. Evidently he treated this 
 experienced and sad woman of fifty as a young girl And in 
 presence of his extreme age she felt like a young girl, re- 
 membering the while how as a young girl she had hated him; 
 Repulsing the assistance of his wife, he arranged an armchair 
 in front of the fire and meticulously put himself into it. 
 Assuredly he was much older in a drawing-room than behind 
 the counter of his shop. Constance had noticed that in the 
 afternoon. A live coal fell out of the fire. He bent forward, 
 wet his fingers, picked up the coal and threw it back into the 
 fire. 
 
 "Well," said Sophia. " I wouldn't have done that." 
 
470 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " I never saw Mr. Critchlow's equal for picking up hot 
 cinders," Maria giggled. 
 
 Mr. Critchlow deigned no remark. " When did ye leave 
 this Paris ? " he demanded of Sophia, leaning back, and putting 
 his hands on the arras of the chair. 
 
 " Yesterday morning," said Sophia. 
 
 " And what'n ye been doing with yeself since yesterday 
 morning ? " 
 
 " I spent last night in London," Sophia replied. 
 
 "Oh, in London, did ye?" 
 
 " Yes. Cyril and I had an evening together.'' 
 
 " Eh ? Cyril ! What's yer opinion o' Cyril, Soi)hia ? " 
 
 " I'm very proud to have Cyril for a nephew," said Sophia. 
 
 " Oh I Are ye ? " The old man was obviously ironic. 
 
 " Yes I am," Sophia insisted sharply. " I'm not going to 
 hear a word said against Cyril." 
 
 She proceeded to an enthusiastic laudation of Cyril 
 which rather overwhelmed his mother. Constance was 
 pleased; she was delighted. And yet somewhere in her 
 mind was an uncomfortable feeling that Cyril, having taken 
 a fancy to his brilliant aunt, had tried to charm her as 
 he seldom or never tried to charm his mother. Cyril and 
 Sophia had dazzled and conquered each other ; they were of 
 the same type; whereas she, Constance, being but a plam 
 person, could not glitter. 
 
 She rang the bell and gave instructions to Amy about food 
 — fruit cakes, coffee and hot milk, on a tray ; and Sophia also 
 spoke to Amy, murmuring a request as to Fossette. 
 
 " Yes, Mrs. Scales," said Amy, with eager deference. 
 
 Mrs. .Critchlow smiled vaguely from a low chair near the 
 curtained window. Then Constance lit another burner of 
 the chandelier. In doing so, she gave a little sigh; it was 
 a sigh of relief Mr. Critchlow had behaved himself. Now 
 that he and Sophia had met, the worst was over. Had Con- 
 stance known beforehand that he would pay a call, she would 
 have been agonized by apprehensions, but now that he had 
 actually come she was glad he had come. 
 
 When he had silently sipped some hot milk, he drew a 
 thick bunch of papers, white and blue, from his bulging 
 breast-pocket. 
 
 "Now, Maria Critchlow," he called, edging round his chair 
 slightly. " Ye'd best go back home." 
 
THE MEETING 471 
 
 Maria Critchlow was biting at a bit of walnut cake, while 
 in her right haad, all seamed with black lines, she held a cup 
 of coffee. 
 
 " But, Mr. Critchlow ! " Constance protested. 
 
 " I've got business with Sophia, and I must get it done. 
 I've got for to render an account of my stewardship to Sophia, 
 under her father's will, and her mother's will, and her aunt's 
 will, and it's nobody's business but mine and Sophia's, I 
 reckon. Now then," he glanced at his wife, " off with ye !" 
 
 Maria rose, half-kittenish and half-ashained. 
 
 " Surely you don't want to go into all that to-night," said 
 Sophia. She spoke softly, for she had already fully perceived 
 that Mr. Critchlow must be managed with the tact which the 
 capricious obstinacies of advanced age demanded. " Surely 
 you can wait a day or two. I'm in no hurry." 
 
 " Haverit I waited long enough t " he retorted fiercely. 
 
 There was a p luse. Maria Critchlow moved. 
 
 " As for you being in no hurry, Sophia," the old man went 
 on, " nobody can say as yoiive been in a hurry." 
 
 Sophia had suffered a check. She glanced hesitatingly at 
 Constance. 
 
 " Mrs. Critchlow and I will go down into the parlour/' 
 said Constance, quickly. " There is a bit of fire there." 
 
 " Oh no. I won't hear of such a thing ! " 
 
 "Yes, we will, won't we, Mrs. Critchlow?" Constance 
 insisted, cheerfully but firmly. She was determined that in 
 her house Sophia should have all the freedom and con- 
 veniences that she could have had in her own. If a private 
 room was needed for discussions between Sophia and her 
 trustee, Constance's pride was piqued to supply that room. 
 Further, Constance was glad to get Maria out of Sophia's 
 sight. She was accustomed to Maria; with her it did not 
 matter ; but she did not care that the teeth of Sophia should 
 be set on edge by the ridiculous demeanour of Maria. So 
 those two left the drawing-room, and the old man began to 
 open the papers which he had been preparing for weeks. 
 
 There was very little fire in the parlour, and Constance, in 
 addition to being bored by Mrs. Critchlow's inane and inquisi- 
 tive remarks, felt chilly, which was bad for her sciatica. She 
 wondered whether Sophia would have to confess to Mr. 
 Critchlow that she was not certainly a widow. She thought 
 that steps ought to be taken to ascertain, through Birkinshaws, 
 
472 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 if anything was known of Gerald Scales. But even that course 
 was set with perils. Supposing that he still lived, an unspeak- 
 able villain (Constance could only think of him as an unspeak- 
 able villain), and supposing that he molested Sophia, — what 
 scenes ! What shame in the town ! Such frightful thoughts 
 ran endlessly through Constance's mind as she bent over the 
 fire endeavouring to keep alive a silly conversation with Maria 
 Critchlow. 
 
 Amy passed through the parlour to go to bed. There was 
 no other way of reaching the upper part of the house. 
 
 " Are you going to bed, Amy ? " 
 
 "Yes'm." 
 
 "Where is Fossette?" 
 
 "In the kitchen, m'm," said Amy, defending herself 
 " Mrs. Scales told me the dog might sleep in the kitchen 
 with Spot, as they was such good friends. I've opened the 
 bottom drawer, and Fossit is lying in that." 
 
 " Mrs. Scales has brought a dog with her ! " exclaimed 
 Maria. 
 
 " Yes'm 1" said Amy, drily, before Constance could 
 answer. She implied everything in that affirmative. 
 
 "You area, family for dogs," said Maria. "What sort of 
 dog is it?" 
 
 " Well," said Constance. •' I don't know exactly what 
 they call it. It's a French dog, -one of those French dogs." 
 Amy was lingering at the stairfoot. " Good night, Amy, 
 thank you." 
 
 Amy ascended, shutting the door. 
 
 " Oh ! I see 1 " Maria muttered. " Well, I never ! " 
 
 It was ten o'clock before sounds above indicated that the 
 first interview between trustee and beneficiary was finished. 
 
 " I'll be going on to open our side-door," said Maria. 
 " Say good night to Mrs. Scales for me." She was not sure 
 whether Charles Critchlow had really meant her to go home, 
 or whether her mere absence from the drawing-room had 
 contented him. So she departed. He came down the stairs 
 with the most tiresome slowness, went through the parlour in 
 silence, ignoring Constance, and also Sophia, who was at his 
 heels, and vanished. ' 
 
 As Constance shut and bolted the front-door, the sisters 
 looked at each other, Sophia faintly smiling. It seemed to 
 them that they understood each other better when they did 
 
THE MEETING 473 
 
 not speak. With a glance, they exchanged their ideas on 
 the subject of Charles Critchlow and Maria, and learnt that 
 their ideas were similar. Constance said nothing as to the 
 private interview. Nor did Sophia. At present, on this the first 
 day, they could only achieve intimacy by intermittent flashes. 
 
 " What about bed ? " asked Sophia. 
 
 " You must be tired," said Constance. 
 
 Sophia got to the stairs, which received a little light from 
 the corridor gas, before Constance, having tested the window- 
 fastening, turned out the gas in the parlour. They climbed 
 the lower flight of stairs together. 
 
 " I must just see that your room is all right," Constance 
 said. 
 
 " Must you ? " Sophia smiled. 
 
 They climbed the second flight, slowly. Constance was 
 out of breath. 
 
 " Oh, a fire 1 How nice ! " cried Sophia. " But why did 
 you go to all that trouble ? I told you not to." 
 
 " It's no trouble at all," said Constance, raising the gas 
 in the bedroom. Her tone implied that bedroom fires were 
 a quite ordinary incident of daily life in a place like Bursley. 
 
 "Well, my dear, I hope you'll find everything comfort- 
 able," said Constance. 
 
 " I'm sure I shall. Good night, dear." 
 
 " Good night, then." 
 
 They looked at each other again, with timid affectionate- 
 ness. They did not kiss. The thought in both their minds 
 was : " We couldn't keep on kissing every day." But there 
 was a vast amount of quiet, restrained affection, of mutual 
 confidence and respect, even of tenderness, in their tones. 
 
 About half an hour later a dreadful huUaballoo smote the 
 ear of Constance. She was just getting into bed. She listened 
 intenriy, in great alarm. It was undoubtedly those dogs 
 fighting, and fighting to the death. She pictured the kitchen 
 as a battlefield, and Spot slain. Opening the door, she stepped 
 out into the corridor. 
 
 "Constance," said a low voice above her. She jumped. 
 "Is that you?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well, don't bother to go down to the dogs; they'll stop 
 in a moment. Fossette won't bite. I'm so sorry she's 
 upsetting the house." 
 
474 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Constance stared upwards, and discerned a pale shadow. 
 The dogs did soon cease their altercation. This short colloquy 
 in the dark affected Cphstance strangely. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The next morning, after a night varied by periods of 
 wakefulness not unpleasant, Sophia arose and, taking due 
 precautions against cold, went to the window. It was 
 Saturday ; she had left Paris on the Thursday. She looked 
 forth upon the Square, holding aside the blind. She had 
 expected, of course, to find that the Square had shrunk in 
 size; but nevertheless she was startled to see how small it 
 was. It seemed to her scarcely bigger than a courtyard. She 
 could remember a winter morning when from the window she 
 had watched the Square under virgin snow in the lamplight, 
 and the Square had been vast, and the first wayfarer, crossing 
 it diagonally and leaving behind him the irregular impress of 
 his feet, had appeared to travel for hours over an interminable 
 white waste before vanishing past HoU's shop in the direction 
 of the Town Hall. She chiefly recalled the Square under 
 snow; cold mornings, and the coldness of the oil-cloth at the 
 window, and the draught of cold air through the ill-fitting sash 
 (it was put right now) ! These visions of herself seemed 
 beautiful to her ; her childish existence seemed beautiful ; the 
 storms and tempests of her girlhood seemed beautiful ; even 
 the great sterile expanse of tedium when, after giving up a 
 scholastic career, she had served for two years in the shop — 
 even this had a strange charm in her memory. 
 
 And she thought that not for millions of pounds would she 
 live her life over again. 
 
 In its contents the Square had not surprisingly changed 
 during the immense, the terrifying interval that separated her 
 from her virginity. On the east side, several shops had been 
 thrown into one, and forced into a semblance of eternal unity 
 by means of a coat of stucco. And there was a fountain at 
 the north end which was new to her. No other constructional 
 change I But the moral change, the sad declension from the 
 ancient proud spirit of the Square — this was painfully de- 
 pressing. Several establishments lacked tenants, had obviously 
 lacked tenants for a long time j ' To let ' notices hung in their 
 
THE MEETING 475 
 
 stained and dirty upper windows, and clung insecurely to their 
 closed shutters. And on the sign-boards of these establishments 
 were names that Sophia did not know. The character of most 
 of the shops seemed to have worsened ; they had become 
 pettifogging little holes, unkempt, shabby, poor ; they had no 
 brightness, no feeling of vitality. And the floor of the Square 
 was littered with nondescript refuse. The whole scene, paltry, 
 confined, and dull, reached for her the extreme of provin- 
 ciality. It was what the Frenclr called, with a pregnant 
 intonation, la province. This being said, there was nothing 
 else to say. Bursley, of course, was in the provinces ; Bursley 
 must, in the nature of things, be typically provincia,!. But in 
 her mind it had always been differentiated from the common 
 province; it had always had an air, a distinction, and especially 
 St Luke's Square 1 That illusion was now gone. Still, the 
 alteration was not wholly in herself; it was not wholly sub- 
 jective. The Square really had changed for the worse; it 
 might not be smaller, but it had deteriorated. As a centre of 
 commerce it had assuredly approached very near to death. 
 On a Saturday morning thirty years ago it would have been 
 covered with linen-roofed stalls, and chattering country-folk, 
 and the stir of bargains. Now, Saturday morning was like 
 any other morning in the Square, and the glass-roof of St. 
 Luke's market in Wedgwood Street, which she could see from 
 her window, echoed to the sounds of noisy commerce. In 
 that instance business had simply moved a few yards to the 
 east ; but Sophia knew, from hints in Constance's letters and 
 in her talk, that business in general had moved more than a 
 few yards, it had moved a couple of miles — to arrogant and 
 pushing Hanbridge, with its electric light and its theatres and 
 its big, advertising shops. The heaven of thick smoke over 
 the Square, the black deposit on painted woodwork, the 
 intermittent hooting of steam syrens, showed that the whole- 
 sale trade of Bursley still flourished. But Sophia had no 
 memories of the wholesale trade of Bursley ; it meant nothing 
 to the youth of her heart ; she was attached by intimate links 
 to the retail traffic of Bursley, and as a mart old Bursley was 
 done for. 
 
 She thought : " It would kill me if I had to live here. It's 
 deadening. It weighs on you. And the dirt, and the horrible 
 ugliness ! And the way they talk, and the way they think ! I 
 felt it first at Knype station. The Square is rather picturesque, 
 
4,76 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 but it's such a poor, poor little thing ! Fancy having to look 
 at it every morning of one's life 1 No 1 " She almost 
 shuddered. 
 
 For the time being she had no home. To Constance she 
 was ' paying a visit.' _ . _ 
 
 Constance did not appear to realize the awful conditions of 
 dirt, decay, and provinciality in which she was living. Even 
 Constance's house was extremely inconvenient, dark, and no 
 doubt unhealthy. Cellar-kitchen, no hall, abominable stairs,, 
 and as to hygiene, simply mediaeval She could not under- 
 stand why Constance had remained in the house. Constance 
 had plenty of money and might live where, she; liked, and in a 
 good modern house. Yet she stayed in the Square. " I 
 daresay she's got used to it," Sophia thought leniently. " I 
 daresay I should be just the. same in her place." But she did 
 hot really think so, and she could not understand Constance's 
 state of mind. 
 
 Certainly she could not claim to have ' added up ' Constance 
 yet. Slie considered that her sister was in some respects utterly 
 provincial — what they used to call in the Five Towns a * body.' 
 Somewhat too diffident, not assertive enough, not erect enough ; 
 with curious provincial pronunciations, accents, gestures, 
 mannerisms, and inarticulate ejaculations; with a curious 
 narrowness of outlook ! But at the same time Constance 
 was very shrewd, and she was often proving by some bit of a 
 remark that she knew what was what, despite her provinciality. 
 In judgments upon hunian nature they undoubtedly thdiight 
 alike, and there was a strong natural general sympathy between 
 them. And at the bottom of Constance was something fine. 
 At intervals Sophia discovered herself secretly patronizing 
 Constance, but reflection would always cause her to cease 
 from patronage and to examine her own defences. Constance, 
 besides being the essence of kindness, was no fool. Constance 
 could see through a pretence, an absurdity, as quickly as 
 any one. Constance did honestly appear to Sophia to be 
 superior to any Frenchwoman that she had ever encountered. 
 She saw supreme in Constance that quality which she had 
 recognized in the porters at Newhaven on landing — the 
 ' quality of an honest and naive good-will, of powerful simplicity. 
 That quality presented itself to her as the greatest in the 
 world, and it seemed to be in the very air of England. She 
 could even detect it in Mr. Critchlow, whom, for 3ie rest, she 
 
THE MEETING . 477 
 
 liked, admiring the brutal force of his character. She par- 
 doned his bruUlity to his wife. She found it proper. "After 
 all,]l^she said, " supposing he hadn't married her, what would 
 she have been ? Nothing but a slave ! She's infinitely better 
 off as his wife. In fact she's lucky. And it would be absurd 
 for him to treat her otherwise than he does treat her." (Sophia 
 did not divine that her masterful Critchlow had once wanted 
 Maria as one might want a star.) ' " 
 
 But to be always with such people ! To be always with 
 Constance ! To be always in the Bursley atmosphere, physical 
 and mental 1 
 
 She pictured Paris as it would be on that very morning — 
 bright, clean, glittering ; the neatness of the Rue Lord Byron, 
 and the magnificent slanting splendour of the Champs Elysdes. 
 Paris had always seemed beautiful to her ; but the life of Paris had 
 not seemed beautiful to her. Yet now it did seem beautiful. 
 She could delve down into the earlier years of her owner- 
 ship of the Pension, and see a regular, placid beauty in her 
 daily life there. Her life there, even so late as a fortnight ago, 
 seemed beautiful ; sad, but beautiful. It had passed into 
 history. She sighed when she thought of the innumerable 
 interviews with Mardon, the endless formalities required by 
 the English and the French law and by the particularity of 
 the Syndicate. She had been through all that. She had 
 actually been through it and it wa,s over. She had bought 
 the Pension for a song and sold it for great riches. She had 
 developed from a nobody into the desired of Syndicates. And 
 after long, long, monotonous, strenuous years of possession 
 the day had come, the emotional moment had come, when she 
 had yielded up the keys of ownership to Mr. Mardon and a 
 man from the Hotel Moscow, and had paid her servants for the 
 last time and signed the last receipted bill. The men had 
 been very gallant, and had requested her to stay in the 
 Pension as their guest until she was ready to leave Paris. But 
 she had declined that She could not have borne to remain 
 in the Pension under the reign of another. Sh6 had left at 
 once and gone to a hotel with her few goods while finally 
 disposing of certain financial questions. And one evening 
 Jacqueline had come to see her, and had wept. 
 
 Her exit from the Pension Frensham struck her now as 
 poignantly pathetic, in its quickness and its absence of cere- 
 monial. Ten steps, and her career as finished, closed. 
 
478 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Astonishitjg, with what liquid tenderness she turned and 
 looked back on that hard, fighting, exhausting life in Paris ! 
 For, even if she had unconsciously liked it, she had never 
 enjoyed it. She had always compared France disadvan- 
 tageously with England, always resented the French tempera- 
 ment in business, always been convinced that ' you never knew 
 where you were' with French tradespeople. And now they 
 flitted before her endowed with a wondrous charm ; so polite 
 in their lying, so eager to spare your feelings and to reassure 
 you, so neat and prim. And the French shops, so exquisitely 
 arranged 1 Even a butcher's shop in Paris was a pleasure to 
 the eye, whereas the butcher's shop in Wedgwood Street, 
 which she remembered of old, and which she had glimpsed 
 from the cab — what a bloody shambles ! She longed for Paris 
 again. She longed to stretch her lungs in Paris. These 
 people in Bursley did not suspect what Paris was. They did 
 not appreciate and they never would appreciate the marvels 
 that she had accomplished in a theatre of marvels. They 
 probably never realized that the whole of the rest of the world 
 was not more or less like Bursley. They had no curiosity, 
 Even Constance was a thousand times more interested" in 
 relating trifles of Bursley gossip than in listening to details of 
 life in Paris. Occasionally she had expressed a mild, vapid 
 surprise at things told to her by Sophia ; but she was not really 
 impressed, because her curiosity did not extend beyond 
 Bursley. She, like the rest, had the formidable, thrice-callous 
 egotism of the provinces. And if Sophia had informed her that 
 the heads of Parisians grew OKt of their navels she would have 
 murmured : " Well, well ! Bless us ! I never heard of such 
 things ! Mrs. Brindley's second boy has got his head quite 
 crooked, poor little fellow ! " 
 
 Why should Sophia feel sorrowful ? She did not know. 
 She was free; free to go where she liked and do what 
 she liked. She had no responsibilities, no cares. The 
 thought of her husband had long ago ceased to rouse in her 
 any feeling of any kind. She was rich. Mr. Critchlow had 
 accumulated for her about as much money as she had herself 
 acquired. Never could she spend her income I She did not 
 know how to spend it She lacked nothing that was procur- 
 able.' She had no desires except the direct desire for happiness. 
 If thirty thousand pounds or so could have bought a son like 
 Cyril, she would have bought one for herself. She bitterly 
 
THE MEETING 479 
 
 regretted that she had no child. In this, she envied Con- 
 stance. A child seemed to be the one commodity worth 
 havipg. She was too free, too exempt from responsibilities. 
 Jji spite of Constance she was alone in the world. The 
 strangeness of the hazards of life overwhelmed her. Here 
 she was at fifty, alone. 
 
 But the idea of leaving Constance, having once rejoined 
 her, did not please Sophia. It disquieted her. She could not 
 see herself living away from Constance. She was alone — but 
 Coniitance was there. 
 
 She was downstairs first, and she had a little conversation 
 with Amy. And she stood on the step of the front-door while 
 Fossette made a preliminary inspection of Spot's gutter. She 
 found the air nipping. 
 
 Constance, when she descended, saw stretching across one 
 side of the breakfast-table an umbrella, Sophia's present to her 
 from Paris. It was an umbrella such that a better could not 
 ' be bought. It would have impressed even Aunt Harriet 
 The handle was of gold, set with a circlet of opalines. The 
 tips of the ribs were also of gold. It was this detail which 
 staggered Constance. Frankly, this development of luxury 
 had been unknown arid unsuspected in the Square. That the 
 tips of the ribs should match the handle . . . that did truly 
 beat everything I Sophia -said calmly that the device was 
 'quite common. But she did not conceal that the umbrella 
 was strictly of the highest class and that it might be shown to 
 queens without shame. She intimated that the frame (a 
 ' Fox's Paragon'), handle, and tips, would outlast many silks. 
 Constance was childish with pleasure. 
 
 They decided to go out marketing together. The un- 
 spoken thought in their minds was that as Sophia would have 
 to be introduced to the town sooner or later, it might as well 
 be sooner. 
 
 Constance looked at the sky. " It can't possibly rain," she 
 said. " I shall take my umbrella." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 
 
 Sophia wore list slippers in the morning. It was a habit 
 which she had formed in the Rue Lord Byron — ^by accident 
 rather than with an intention to utilize list slippers for the 
 effective supervision of servants. These list slippers were the 
 immediate cause of important happenings in St. Luke's Square. 
 Sophia had been with Constance one calendar month — it was, 
 of course, astonishing how quickly the time had passed ! — and 
 she had become familiar with the house. Restraint had 
 gradually ceased to mark the relations of the sisters. Con- 
 stance, in particular, hid nothing from Sophia, who was made 
 aware of the minor and major defects of Amy and all the other 
 creakings of the household machine. Meals were eaten off 
 the ordmary tablecloths, and on the days for 'turning out' the 
 parlour, Constance assumed, with a little laugh, that Sophia 
 would excuse Amy's apron, which she had not had time to 
 change. In brief, Sophia was no -longer a stranger, and 
 nobody felt bound to pretend that things were not exactly 
 what they were. \la spite of the foulness and the provinciality 
 of Bursley, Sophia enjoyed the intimacy with Constance. As 
 for Constance, she was enchanted. The inflections of their 
 voices, when they were talking to each other very privately, 
 were often tender, and these sudden surprising tendernesses 
 secretly thrilled both of them. 
 
 On the fourth Sunday morning Sophia put on her dressing- 
 gown and those list slippers very early, and paid a visit to 
 Constance's bedroom. She was somewhat concerned about 
 Constance, and her concern was pleasurable to her. She m4de 
 the most of it. Amy, with her lifelong carelessness about 
 doors, had criminally failed to latch the street-door of the 
 
 4&> 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 481 
 
 parlour on the previous morning, and Constance had only 
 perceived the omission by the phenomenon of frigidity in her 
 legs at breakfast. She always sat with her back to the door, in 
 her mother's fluted rocking-chair ; and Sophia on the spot, but 
 not in the chair, occupied by John Baines in the forties, and 
 in the seventies and later by Samuel Povey. Constance had 
 been alarmed by that frigidity. " I shall have a return of my 
 sciatica ! " she had exclaimed, and Sophia was startled by the 
 apprehension in her tone. Before evening the sciatica had 
 indeed revisited Constance's sciatic nerve, and Sophia for the 
 first time gained an idea of what a pulsating sciatica can do in 
 the way of torturing its victim. Constance, in addition to the 
 sciatica, had caught a sneezing cold, and the act of sneezing 
 caused her the most acute pain, Sophia had soon stopped 
 the sneezing. Constance was got to bed. Sophia wished to 
 summon the doctor, but Constance assured her that the doctor 
 would have nothing new to advise. Constance suffered 
 . angelically. The weak and exquisite sweetness of her smile, as 
 she lay in bed under the stress of twinging pain amid hot- 
 water bottles, was amazing to Sophia. It made her think 
 upon the reserves of Constance's character, and upon the 
 Jtatiety of the manifestations of the Baines' blood. 
 
 So on the Sunday morning she had arisen early, just after 
 Amy. 
 
 She discovered Constance to be a little better, as regards 
 the neuralgia, but exhausted by the torments of a sleepless 
 night. Sophia, though she had herself not slept well, felt 
 somehow conscience-stricken for having slept at all. 
 
 " You poor dear ! " she murmured, brimming with 
 sympathy. " I shall make you some tea at once, myself." 
 
 " Oh, Amy will do it," said Constance. 
 
 Sophia repeated with a resolute intonation : " I shall make 
 it myself." And afteir being satisfied that there was no instant 
 need for a renewal of hot-water bottles, she went further 
 downstairs in those list slippers. 
 
 As she was descending the dark, kitchen steps she heard 
 Amy's voice in pettish exclamation: "Oh, get ovA, you/" 
 followed by a yelp from Fossette. She had a swift movement 
 of anger, which she controlled. The relations between her 
 and Fossette were not marked by transports, and her rule over 
 dogs in general was severe ; even when alone she very seldom 
 kissed the animal passionately, according to the general habit 
 
 2 I 
 
482 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 of people owning dogs. But she loved Fossette. And, more- 
 over, her love for Fossette had been lately sharpened by the 
 ridicule which Bursley had showered upon that strange beast. 
 Happily for Sophia's amour propre, there was no means of 
 getting Fossette shared in Bursley, and thus Fossette was 
 daily growing less comic to the Bursley eye. Sophia could 
 therefore without loss of dignity yield to force of circumstances 
 what she would not have yielded to popular opinion. She 
 guessed that Amy had no liking for the dog, but the accent 
 which Amy had put upon the ' yoti' seemed to indicate that 
 Amy was making distinctions between Fossette and Spot, and 
 this disturbed Sophia much more than Fossette's yelp. 
 
 Sophia coughed, and entered the kitchen. 
 
 Spot was lapping his morning milk out of a saucer, while 
 Fossette stood wistfully, an amorphous mass of thick hair," 
 under the table. 
 
 " Good morning, Amy," said Sophia, with dreadful polite- 
 ness. 
 
 " Good morning, m'm," said Amy, glumly. 
 
 Amy knew that Sophia had heard that yelp, and Sophia 
 knew that she knew. The pretence of politeness was horrible. 
 Both the women felt as though the kitchen was sanded with 
 gunpowder and there were lighted matches about. Sophia 
 had a very proper grievance against Amy on account of the 
 open door of the previous day. Sophia thought that, after 
 such a sin, the least Amy could do was to show contrition and 
 amiability and an anxiety to please : which things Amy had 
 not shown. Amy had a grievance against Sophia because 
 Sophia had recently thrust upon her a fresh method of cooking 
 green vegetables. Amy was a strong opponent of new or 
 foreign methods. Sophia was not aware of this grievance, for 
 Amy had hidden it under her customary cringing politeness to 
 Sophia. 
 
 They surveyed each other like opposing armies. 
 
 " What a pity you have no gas-stove here ! I want to 
 make some tea at once for Mrs. Povey," said Sophia, inspect- 
 ing the just-bom fire. 
 
 " Gas-stove, m'm ? " said Amy, hostilely. It was Sophia's 
 list slippers which had finally decided Amy to drop the mask 
 of deference. 
 
 She made no effort to aid Sophia ; she gave no indication 
 as to where the various necessaries for tea were to be found. 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 483 
 
 Sophia got the kettle, and washed it out. Sophia got the 
 smallest teapot, and, as the tea-leaves had been left in it, she 
 washed out the teapot also, with exaggerated noise and 
 meticulousness. Sophia got the sugar and the other trifles, 
 and Sophia blew up the fire with the bellows. And Amy did 
 nothing in particular except encourage Spot to drink. 
 
 " Is that all the milk you give to Fossette ? " Sophia 
 demanded coldly, when it had come to Fossette's turn. She 
 was waiting for the water to boil. The saucer for the bigger 
 dog, who would have made two of Spot, was not half full. 
 
 " It's all there is to spare, m'm," Amy rasped. 
 
 Sophia made no reply. Soon afterwards she departed, 
 with the tea successfully made. If Amy had not been a 
 mature woman of over forty she would have snorted as Sophia 
 went away. But Amy was scarcely the ordinary silly girl. 
 
 Save for a certain primness as she offered the tray to her 
 sister, Sophia's demeanour gave no sign whatever that the 
 Amazon in her was aroused. Constance's eager trembling 
 pleasure in the tea touched her deeply, and she was exceed- 
 ingly thankful that Constance had her, Sophia, as a succour in 
 time of distress. 
 
 A few minutes later, Constance, having first asked Sophia 
 what time it was by the watch in the watch-case on the chest 
 of drawers (the Swiss clock had long since ceased to work), 
 pulled the red tassel of the bell-cord over her bed. A bell 
 tinkled far away in the kitchen. 
 
 " Anything I can do ? " Sophia inquired. 
 
 "Oh no, thanks," said Constance. "I only want my 
 letters, if the postman has come. He ought to have been 
 here long ago." 
 
 Sophia had learned during her stay that Sunday morning 
 was the morning on which Constance expected a letter from 
 Cyril. It was a definite arrangement between mother and son 
 that Cyril should write on Saturdays, and Constance on 
 Sundays. Sophia knew that Constance set store by this letter, 
 becoming more and more preoccupied about Cyril as the end 
 of the week approached. Since Sophia's arrival Cyril's letter 
 had not failed to come, but once it had been naught save a 
 scribbled line or two, and Sophia gathered that it was never 
 a certainty, and that Constance was accustomed, though not 
 reconciled, to disappointments. Sophia had been allowed to 
 read the letters. They left a faint impression on her mind 
 
484 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 that her favourite was perhaps somewhat negligent in liis 
 relations with his mother. 
 
 There was no reply to the bell. Constance rang ag^iin 
 without effect. 
 
 With a brusque movement Sophia left the bedroom by 
 way of Cyril's room. 
 
 " Amy," she called over the banisters, " do you not hear 
 your mistress's bell? " 
 
 "I'm coming as quick as I can, m'm." The voice was 
 still very glum. 
 
 Sophia murmured something inarticulate, staying till assured 
 that Amy really was coming, and then she passed back into 
 Cyril's bedroom. She waited there, hesitant, not exactly on 
 the watch, not exactly unwilling to assist at an interview 
 between Amy and Amy's mistress ; indeed, she could not have 
 surely analyzed her motive for remaining in Cyril's bedroom, 
 with the door ajar between that room and Constance's. 
 
 Amy reluctantly mounted the stairs and went into her 
 mistress's bedroom with her chin in the air. She thought that 
 Sophia had gone up to the second storey, where she ' belonged.' 
 She stood in silence by the bed, showing no sjrmpathy with 
 Constance, no curiosity as to the indisposition. She objected 
 to Constance's attack of sciatica, as being a too permanent 
 reproof of her carelessness as to doors. 
 
 Constance also waited, for the fraction oi a second, as if 
 expectant. 
 
 "Well, Amy," she said at length in her voice weakened 
 by fatigue and pain. " The letters ? " 
 
 " There ain't no letters," said Amy, grimly. " You might 
 have known, if there'd been any, I should have brought 'em 
 up. Postman went past twenty minutes agone. I'm always 
 being interrupted, and it isn't as if I hadn't got enough to 
 do — now ! " 
 
 She turned to leave, and was pulling the door open. 
 
 " Amy 1 " said a voice sharply. It was Sophia's. 
 
 The servant jumped, and in spite of herself obeyed the 
 implicit, imperious command to stop. 
 
 " You will please not speak to your mistress in that tone, 
 at any rate while I'm here," said Sophia, icily. "You 
 know she is ill and weak. You ought to be ashamed of 
 yourself 
 
 " I never " Amy began. 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 485 
 
 "I don't want to argue," Sophia said angrily. "Please 
 leave the room." 
 
 Amy obeyed. She was cowed, in addition to being 
 staggered. 
 
 To the persons involved in it, this episode was intensely 
 dramalic Sophia had surmised that Constance permitted 
 liberflSs of speech to Amy; she had even guessed that Amy 
 sometimes took licence to be rude. But that the relations 
 between them were such as to allow the bullying of Constance 
 by an Amy downright insolent — this had shocked and wounded 
 Sophia, who suddenly had a vision of Constance as the victim 
 of a reign of terror. " If the creature will do this while I'lii 
 here," said Sophia to herself, " what does she do when they 
 are alone together in the house ? " 
 
 "Well," she exclaimed, "I never heard of such goings-on! 
 And you let her talk to you in that style ! My riear Constance !" 
 
 Constance was sitting up in bed, the small tea-tray on her 
 knees. Her eyes were moist. The tears had iilled them when 
 she knew that there was no letter. Ordinarily the failure of 
 Cyril's letter would not have made her cry, but weakness had 
 impaired her self-control. And the tears having once got into 
 her eyes, she could not dismiss them. There they were ! 
 
 " She's been with me such a long time," Constance mur- 
 mured. " She takes liberties. I've corrected her once or twice." 
 
 " Liberties ! " Sophia repeated the word. " Liberties 1 " 
 
 " Of course I really ought not to allow it/' said Constance. 
 "I ought to have put a stop to it long since." 
 
 "Well," said Sophia, rather relieved by this symptom of 
 Constance's secret mind, "I do hope you won't think I'm 
 meddlesome, but truly it was too much for me. The words 
 were out of my mouth before I " She stopped. 
 
 "You were quite right, quite right," said Constance, seeing 
 before her in the woman of fifty the passionate girl of fifteen. 
 
 •' I've had a good deal of experience of servants," said 
 Sophia. 
 
 " I know you have," Constance put in. 
 
 "And I'm convinced that it never pays to stand any sauce. 
 Servants don't understand kindness and forbearance. And 
 this sort of thing grows and grows till you c^n't call your soul 
 your own." 
 
 "You are quite right," Constance said again, with even 
 more positiveness. 
 
486 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Not merely the conviction that Sophia was quite right, but 
 the desire to assure Sophia that Sophia was not meddlesome, 
 gave force to her utterance. Amy's allusion to extra work 
 shamed Amy's mistress as a hostess, and she was bound to 
 make amends. 
 
 " Now as to that woman," said Sophia in a lower voice, as 
 she sat down confidentially on the edge of the bed. And she 
 told Constance about Amy and the dogs, and about Amy's 
 rudeness in the kitchen. " I should never have dreamt of 
 mentioning such things," she finished. "But under the cir- 
 cumstances I feel it right that you should know. I feel you 
 ought to know." 
 
 And Constance nodded her head in thorough agreement. 
 She did not trouble to go into articulate apologies to her 
 guest for the actual misdeeds of her servant. The sisters 
 were now on a plane of intimacy where such apologies would 
 have been supererogatory. Their voices fell lower and lower, 
 and the case of Amy was laid bare and discussed to the 
 minutest detail. 
 
 Gradually they realized that what had occurred was a 
 crisis. They were both very excited, apprehensive, and 
 rather too consciously defiant. At the same time they were 
 drawn very close to each other, by Sophia's generous indignation 
 and by Constance's absolute loyalty. 
 
 A long time passed before Constance said, thinking about 
 something else : 
 
 " I expect it's been delayed in the post." 
 
 "Cyril's letter? Oh, no doubt I If you knew the posts in 
 France, my word ! " 
 
 Then they determined, with little sighs, to face the crisis 
 cheerfully. 
 
 In truth it was a crisis, and a great one. The sensation 
 of the crisis affected the atmosphere of the entire house. 
 Constance got up for tea and managed to walk to the drawing- 
 room. And when Sophia, after an absence in her own room, 
 came down to tea and found the tea all served, Constance 
 whispered : 
 
 " She's given notice ! And Sunday too I " 
 
 "What did she say?" 
 
 " She didn't say much," Constance replied vaguely, hiding 
 from Sophia that Amy had harped on the too great profusion 
 of mistresses in that house. " After all, it's just as well. She'll 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 487 
 
 be all right. She's saved a good bit of money, and she has 
 friends." 
 
 " But how foolish of her to give up such a good place 1 " 
 
 "She simply doesn't care," said Constance, who was a 
 little hurt by Amy's defection. " When she takes a thing into 
 her head she simply doesn't care. Shes got no common 
 sense. I've always known that." 
 
 " So you're going to leave, Aihy ? " said Sophia that evening, 
 as Amy was passing through the parlour on her way to bed. 
 Constance was already arranged for the night. 
 
 " I am, m'm," answered Amy, precisely. 
 
 Her tone was not rude, but it was firm. She had apparently 
 reconnoitred her position in calmness. 
 
 " I'm sorry I was obliged to correct you this morning," 
 said Sophia, with cheerful amicableness, pleased in spite of 
 herself with the woman's tone. " But I think you will see that 
 I had reason to." 
 
 " I've been thinking it over, m'm," said Amy, with dignity, 
 " and I see as I must leave." 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 " Well, you know best . . . Good night, Amy." 
 
 " Good night, m'm." 
 
 " She's a decent woman," thought Sophia, " but hopeless 
 for this place now." 
 
 The sisters were fronted with the fact that Constance had 
 a month in which to find a new servant, and that a new servant 
 would have to be trained in well-doing and might easily prove 
 disastrous. Both Constance and Amy were profoundly dis- 
 turbed by the prospective dissolution of a bond which dated 
 from the seventies. And both were decided that there was no 
 alternative to the dissolution. Outsiders knew merely that 
 Mrs. Povey's old servant was leaving. Outsiders merely saw 
 Mrs. Povey's advertisement in the Signal for a new servant. 
 They could not read hearts. Some of the younger generation 
 even said superiorly that old-fashioned women like Mrs. Povey 
 seemed to have servants on the brain, etc., etc. 
 
 II 
 
 "Well, have you got your letter?" Sophia demanded 
 cheerfully of Constance when she entered the bedroom the 
 next morning. 
 
488 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Constance merely shook her head. She was very depressed. 
 Sophia's cheerfulness died out. As she hated to be insincerely 
 optimistic, she said nothing. Otherwise she might have 
 remarked : " Perhaps the afternoon post will bring it" Gloom 
 reigned. To Constance particularly, as Amy had given notice 
 and as Cyril was 'remiss,' it seemed really that the time was 
 out of joint and life unworth living. Even the presence of 
 Sophia did not bring her much comf >rt. Immediately Sophia 
 left the room Constance's sciatica began to return, and in a 
 severe form. She had regretted this, less for the pain than 
 because she had just assured Sophia, quite honestly, that she 
 was not suffering ; Sophia had been sceptical After that it 
 was of course imperative that Constance should get up as 
 usual. She had said that she would get up as usual. Besides, 
 there was the immense enterprise of obtaining a new servant ! 
 Worries loomed mountainous. Suppose Cyril were dangerously 
 ill, and unable to write ! Suppose something had happened to 
 him 1 Supposing she never did obtain a new servant I , 
 
 Sophia, up in her room, was endeavouring to be philosophical, 
 and to see the world brightly. She was saying to herself that 
 she must take Constance in hand, that what Constance lacked 
 was energy, that Constance must be stirred out of her groove. 
 And in the cavernous kitchen Atny, preparing the nine-o'clock 
 breakfast, was meditating upon the ingratitude of employers 
 and wondering what the future held for her. She had a 
 widowed mother in the picturesque village of Sneyd, where 
 the mortal and immortal welfare of every inhabitant was 
 watched over by God's vicegerent, the busy Countess of 
 Chell ; she possessed about two hundred pounds of her own ; 
 her mother for years had been begging Amy to share her home 
 free of expense. But nevertheless Amy's mind was black with 
 foreboding and vague dejection. The house was a house of 
 sorrow, and these three women, each solitary, the devotees of 
 sorrow. And the two dogs wandered disconsolate up and down, 
 aware of the necessity for circumspection, never guessing that 
 ^|ie highly peculiar state of the atmosphere had been brought 
 S^ut by nothing but a half-shut door and an incorrect tone. 
 
 As Sophia, fully dressed this time, was descending to 
 breakfast, she heard Constance's voice, feebly calling her, and 
 found the convalescent still in bed. The truth could not be 
 concealed. Constance was once more in great pain, and her 
 moral condition was not favourable to fortitude. 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 489 
 
 "I wish you had told me, to begin with," Sophia could 
 not help saying, "then I should have known what 
 to do," 
 
 Constance did not defend herself by saying that the pain 
 had only recurred since their first interview that morning. She 
 just wept. 
 
 " I'm very low ! " she blubbered. 
 
 Sophia was surprised. She felt that this was not ' being a 
 Bain as.' 
 
 During the progress of that interminable April morning, 
 her acquaintance with the possibilities of sciatica as an agent 
 destructive of moral fibre was further increased. Constance 
 had no force at all to resist its activity. The sweetness of her 
 resignation seemed to melt into nullity. She held to it that 
 the doctor could do nothing for her. 
 
 About noon, when Sophia was moving anxiously around 
 her, she suddenly screamed. 
 
 " I feel as if my leg was going to burst ! " she cried. 
 That decided Sophia. As soon as Constance was a little 
 easier she went downstairs to Amy. 
 
 " Amy," she said, " it's a Doctor Stirling that your mistress 
 has when she's ill, isn't it ? " 
 « Yes, m'm." 
 " Where is his surgery ? " 
 
 " Well, m'm, he did live just opposite, with Dr. Harrop, 
 but latterly he's gone to live at Bleaknidge." 
 
 " I wish you would put your things on, and run up there 
 and ask him to call as soon as he can." 
 
 " I will, m'm," said Amy, with the greatest willingness. " I 
 thought I heard missis cry out." She was not effusive. 
 She was better than effusive : kindly and helpful with a certain 
 reserve. 
 
 " There's something about that "woman I like," said Sophia, 
 to herself For a proved fool. Amy was indeed holding her 
 own rather well. 
 
 Dr. Stirling drove down about two o'clock. He had now 
 been established in the Five Towns for more than a decade, 
 and the stamp of success was on his brow and on the proud 
 forehead of his trotting horse. He had, in the phrase of the 
 Signal, 'identified himself with the local life of the district.' 
 He was liked, being a man of broad sympathies. In his rich 
 Scotch accent he could discuss with equal ability the flavour of 
 
490 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 whisky or of a sermon, and he had more than sufficient tact 
 never to discuss either whiskies or sermons in the wrong place. 
 He had made a speech (responding for the learned professions) 
 at the annual dinner of the Society for the Prosecution of 
 Felons, and this speech (in which praise of red wine was 
 rendered innocuous by praise of books — his fine library was 
 notorious) had classed him as a wit with the American consul, 
 whose post-prandial manner was modelled on Mark Twain's. . 
 He was thirty-five years of age, tall and stoutish, with a 
 chubby boyish face that the razor left chiefly blue every 
 morning. 
 
 The immediate effect of his arrival on Constance was 
 miraculous. His presence almost cured her for a moment, just 
 as though her malady had been toothache and he a dentist. 
 Then, when he had finished his examination, the pain resumed 
 its sway over her. 
 
 In talking to her and to Sophia, he listened very seriously 
 to all that they said; he seemed to regard the case as the one 
 case that had ever aroused his genuine professional interest ; 
 but as it unfolded itself, in all its difficulty and urgency, so he 
 seemed, in his mind, to be discovering wondrous ways of 
 dealing with it; these mysterious discoveries seemed to give 
 him confidence, and his confidence was communicated to the 
 patient by means of faint sallies of humour. He was a highly 
 skilled doctor. This fact, however, had no share in his 
 popularity ; which was due solely to his rare gift of taking a 
 case very seriously while remaining cheerfuL 
 
 He said he would return in a quarter of an hour, and he 
 returned in thirteen minutes with a hypodermic syringe, with 
 which he attacked the pain in its central strongholds, 
 
 " What is it ? " asked Constance, breathing gratitude for 
 the relief. 
 
 He paused, looking at her roguishly from under lowered 
 eye-lids. 
 
 " I'd better not tell ye," he said, " It might lead ye into 
 mischief." 
 
 "Oh, but you must tell me, doctor," Constance insisted, 
 anxious that he should live up to his reputation for Sophia's 
 benefit, 
 
 " It's hydrochloride of cocaine," he said, and lifted a 
 finger. " Beware of the cocaine habit. It's ruined many a 
 respectable family. But if I hadn't had a certain amount of 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 491 
 
 confidence va yer strength of character, Mrs. Povey, I wouldn't 
 have risked it," 
 
 "He will have his joke, will the doctor!" Constance 
 smiled, in a brighter world. 
 
 He said he should come again about half-past five, and he 
 arrived about half-past six, and injected more cocaine. The 
 special importance of the case was thereby established. On 
 this second visit, he and Sophia soon grew rather friendly. 
 When she conducted him downstairs again he stopped chat- 
 ting with her in the parlour for a long time, as though he had 
 nothing else on earth to do, while his coachman walked the 
 horse to and fro in front of the door. 
 
 His attitude to her flattered Sophia, for it showed that he 
 took her for no ordinary woman. It implied a continual 
 assumption that she must be a mine of interest for any one who 
 was privileged to delve into her memory. So far, among 
 Constance's acquaintance, Sophia had met no one who showed 
 more than a perfunctory curiosity as to her life. Her return was 
 accepted with indifference. Her escapade of thirty years ago 
 had entirely lost its dramatic quality. Many people indeed 
 had never heard that she had run away from home to marry a 
 commercial traveller ; and to those who remembered, or had 
 been told, it seemed a sufficiently banal exploit — ^after thirty 
 years ! Her fear, and Constance's, that the town would be 
 murmurous with gossip was ludicrously unfounded. The 
 effect of time was such that even Mr. Critchlow appeared to have 
 forgotten even that she had been indirectly responsible for her 
 father's death. She had nearly forgotten it herself; when she 
 happened to think of it she felt no shame, no remorse, seeing 
 the death as purely accidental, and not altogether unfortunate. 
 On two points only was the town inquisitive: as to her 
 husband, and as to the precise figure at which she had sold the 
 pension. The town knew that she was probably not a widow, 
 for she had been obliged to tell Mr. Critchlow, and Mr. 
 Critchlow in some hour of tenderness had told Maria. But 
 nobody had dared to mention the name of Gerald Scales to 
 her. With her fashionable clothes, her striking mien of 
 command, and the legend of her wealth, she inspired respect, 
 if not awe, in the townsfolk. In the doctor's attitude there 
 was something of amaze j she felt it. Though the dull apathy 
 of the people she had hitherto met was assuredly not without 
 its advantageous side for her tranquillity of mind, it had touched 
 
492 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 her vanity, and the gaze of the doctor soothed the smart. He 
 had so obviously divined her interestingness ; he so obviously 
 wanted to enjoy it. 
 
 " I've just been reading Zola's ' Downfall,' " he said. 
 
 Her mind searched backwards, and recalled a poster. 
 
 " Oh ! " she replied. " ' La Debacle '?" 
 
 " Yes. What do ye think of it ? " His eyes lighted at the 
 prospect of a talk. He was even pleased to hear her give him 
 the title in French, 
 
 " I haven't read it," she said, and she was momentarily 
 sorry that she had not read it, for she could see that he was 
 dashed. The doctor had supposed that residence in a foreign 
 country involved a knowledge of the literature of that country. 
 Yet he had never supposed that residence in England involved 
 a knowledge of English literature. Sophia had read practically 
 nothing since 1870 ; for her the latest author was Cherbuliez. 
 Moreover, her impression of Zola was tTiat he was not at all 
 nice, and that he was the enemy of his race, though at that 
 date the world had scarcely heard of Dreyfus. Dr. Stirling 
 had too hastily assumed that the opinions of the bourgeois 
 uj)on art differ in different countries. 
 
 "And ye actually were in the siege of Paris?" he 
 questioned, trying again. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And the commune ? " 
 
 " Yes, the commune too." 
 
 " Well ! " he exclaimed. " It's incredible ! When I was 
 reading the ' Downfall ' the night before last, I said to myself 
 that you must have been through a lot of all that. I didn't 
 know I was going to have the pleasure of a chat with ye 
 so soon." 
 
 She smiled. " But how did you know I was in the siege 
 of Paris ? " she asked, curious. 
 
 " How do I know ? I know because I've seen that birth- 
 day card ye sent to Mrs. Povey in 1871, after it was over. 
 It's one of her possessions, that card is. She showed it me 
 one day when she told me ye were coming." 
 
 Sophia started. She had quite forgotten that card. It 
 had not occurred to her that Constance would have treasured 
 all those cards that she had despatched during the early years 
 of her exile. She responded as well as she could to his 
 eagerness for personal details concerning the siege and the 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 493 
 
 commune. He might have been disappointed at the prose 
 of her answers, had he not been determined not to be 
 disappointed 
 
 " Ye seem to have taken it all very quietly," he observed. 
 
 " Eh yes ! " she agreed, not without pride. " But it's a 
 ■ long time since." 
 
 Those events, as they existed in her memory, scarcely 
 warranted the tremendous fuss subsequently made about 
 them. What were they, after all? Such was her secret 
 thought. Chirac himself was now nothing but a faint shadow. 
 Still, were the estimate of those events true or false, she was a 
 woman who had been through them, and Dr. Stirling's high 
 appreciation of that fact was very pleasant to her. Their 
 friendliness approached intimacy. Night had fallen. Outside 
 could be heard the champing of a bit. 
 
 " I must be getting on," he said at last j but he did not 
 move. 
 
 " Then there is nothing else I am to do for my sister ? " 
 Sophia inquired. 
 
 "I don't think so," said he. "It isn't a question of 
 medicine." 
 
 "Then what is it a question of?" Sophia demanded 
 bluntly. 
 
 " Nerves," he said. " It's nearly all nerves. I know 
 something about Mrs. Povey's constitution now, and I was 
 hoping that your visit would do her good." 
 
 " She's been quite well — I mean what you may call quite 
 well — until the day before yesterday, when she sat in that 
 draught. She was better last night, and then this morning I 
 find her ever so much worse." 
 
 " No worries ? " The doctor looked at her coniidentially. 
 
 " What can she have in the way of worries ? " exclaimed 
 Sophia. " That's to say — real worries," 
 
 " Exactly ! " the doctor agreed. 
 
 " I tell her she doesn't know what worry is," said Sophia. 
 
 " So do I ! " said the doctor, his eyes twinkling. 
 
 "She was a. little upset because she didn't receive her 
 usual Sunday letter from Cyril yesterday. But then she was 
 weak and low." 
 
 " Clever youth, Cyril ! " mused the doctor. 
 
 " I think he's a particularly nice boy," said Sophia, eagerly. 
 
 " So you've seen him ? " 
 
494 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " Of course," said Sophia, rather stiffly. Did the doctor 
 suppose that she did not know her own nephew ? She went 
 back to the subject of her sister. " She is also a little bothered, 
 I think, because the servant is going to leave." 
 
 "Oh! So Amy is going to leave, is she?" He spoke 
 still lower. " Between you and me, it's no bad thing." 
 
 " I'm so glad you think so." 
 
 " In another few years the servant would have been the 
 mistress here. One can see these things coming on, but it's 
 so difficult to do anything. In fact ye can't do anything." 
 
 " I did something," said Sophia, sharply. " I told the 
 woman straight that it shouldn't go on while I was in the house. 
 I didn't suspect it at first — but when I found it out ... I can 
 tell you I" She let the doctor imagine what she could tell 
 him. 
 
 He smiled. "No," he said. "I can easily understand 
 that ye didn't suspect anything at first. When she's well and 
 bright Mrs. Povey could hold her own — so I'm told. But it 
 was certainly slowly getting worse." 
 
 " Then people talk about it ? " said Sophia, shocked. 
 
 "As a native of Bursley, Mrs. Scales," said the doctor, "ye 
 ought to know what people in Bursley do ! " Sophia put her 
 lips together. The doctor rose, smoothing his waistcoat. 
 "What does she bother with servants at all for?" he burst 
 out. "She's perfectly free. She hasn't got a care in the 
 world, if she only Tcnew it. Why doesn't she go out and about, 
 and enjoy herself? She wants stirring up, that's what your 
 sister wants." 
 
 " You're quite right," Sophia burst out in her turn. " That's 
 precisely what I say to myself; precisely I I was thinking it 
 over only this morning. She wants stirring up. She's got 
 into a rut." 
 
 "She needs to be jolly. Why doesn't she go to some 
 seaside place, and live in a hotel, and enjoy herself? Is there 
 anything to prevent her?" 
 
 " Nothing whatever." 
 
 " Instead of being dependent on a servant 1 I believe in 
 enjoying one's self — when ye've got the money to do it with ! 
 Can ye imagine anybody living in Bursley, for pleasure? And 
 especially in St. Luke's Square, right in the thick of it all I 
 Smoke ! Dirt 1 No air 1 No light 1 No scenery I No 
 amusements I What does she do it for ? She's in a rut." 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 495 
 
 " Yes, she's in a rut," Sophia repeated her own phrase, 
 which he had copied. 
 
 " My word ! " said the doctor. " Wouldn't I clear out and 
 enjoy myself if I could ! Your sister's a young woman." 
 
 " Of course she is ! " Sophia concurred, feeling that she 
 herself was even younger. " Of course she is 1 " 
 
 "And except that she's nervously organized, and has 
 certain predispositions, there's nothing the matter with her. 
 This sciatica — I don't^ say it would be cured, but it might be, 
 by a cornplete change and throwing off all these ridiculous 
 worries. "Not only does she live in the most depressing con- 
 ditions, but she suffers tortures for it, and there's absolutely 
 no need for her to be here at all." ■ 
 
 " Doctor," said Sophia, solemnly, impressed, " you are quite 
 right I agree with every word you say." 
 
 " Naturally she's attached to the place," he continued, 
 glancing round the room. "I know all about that. After 
 living here all her life ! But she's got to break herself of her 
 attachment. It's her duty to do so. She ought to show a 
 little energy. I'm deeply attached to my bed in the morning, 
 but I have to leave it." 
 
 " Of course," said Sophia, in an impatient tone, as though 
 disgusted with every person who could not perceive, or would 
 not subscribe to, these obvious truths that the doctor was 
 uttering. " Of course ! " 
 
 "What she needs is the bustle of life in a good hotel, a 
 good hydro, for instance. Among jolly people. Parties 1 
 Games 1 Excursions ! She wouldn't be the same woman. 
 You'd see. Wouldn't I do it, if I could ? Strathpeffer. She'd 
 soon forget her sciatica. I don't know what Mrs. Povey's 
 annual income is, but I expect that if she took it into her 
 head to live in the dearest hotel in England, there would be no 
 reason why she shouldn't" 
 
 Sophia lifted her head and smiled in calm amusement 
 " I expect so," she said superiorly. 
 
 "A hotel— that's the life. No worries. If ye want any- 
 thmg ye ring a bell. If a waiter gives notice, it's some one 
 else who has the worry, not you. But you know all about that, 
 Mrs. Scales." 
 
 " No one better," murmured Sophia. 
 
 " Good evening," he said abruptly, sticking out his hand. 
 "I'll be down in the morning." 
 
496 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 "Did you ever mention this to my sister?" Sophia 
 asked him, rising. 
 
 " Yes," said he. " But it's no use. Oh yes, I've told her. 
 But she does really think it's quite impossible. She wouldn't 
 even hear of going to live in London with her beloved son. 
 She won't listen." 
 
 " I never thought of that," said Sophia. " Good night" 
 
 Their hand-grasp was very intimate and mutually com- 
 prehending. He was pleased by the quick responsiveness of 
 her temperament, and the masterful vigour which occasionally 
 flashed out in her replies. He noticed the hardly perceptible 
 distortion of her handsome, worn face, and he said to himself : 
 " She's been through a thing or two," and : " She'll have to mind 
 her p's and q's." Sophia was pleased because he admired her, 
 and because with her he dropped his bedside jocularities, and 
 talked plainly as a sensible man will talk when he meets an 
 uncommonly wise woman, and because he echoed and 
 ampUfied her own thoughts. She honoured him by standing 
 at the door till he had driven off. 
 
 For a few moments she mused solitary in the parlour, and 
 then, lowering the gas, she went upstairs to her sister, who lay 
 in the dark, Sophia struck a match. 
 
 " You've been having quite a long chat with the doctor," 
 said Constance. " He's very good company, isn't he ? What 
 did he talk about this time ? " 
 
 "He wanted to know about Paris and so on," Sophia 
 answered; 
 
 " Oh ! I believe he's a rare student." 
 
 Lying there in the dark, the simple Constance never 
 suspected that those two active and strenuous ones had been 
 arranging her life for her, so that she should be jolly and live 
 for twenty years yet. She did not suspect that she had been 
 tried and found guilty of sinful attachments, and of being in a 
 rut, and of lacking the elements of ordinary sagacity. It had 
 not occurred to her that if she was worried and ill, the reason 
 was to be found in her own blind and stupid obstinacy. She 
 had thought herself a fairly sensible kind of creature. 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 497 
 
 III 
 
 The sisters had an early supper together in Constance's 
 bedroom. Constance was much easier. Having a fancy that 
 a little movement v»ould be beneficial, she had even got up for 
 a few moments and moved about the room. Now she sat 
 ensconced in pillows. A fire burned in the old-fashioned 
 ineffectual grate. From the Sun Vaults opposite came the 
 sound of a phonograph singing an invitation to God to save its 
 gracious queen. This phonograph was a wonderful novelty, . 
 and filled the Sun nightly. For a few evenings it had interested 
 the sisters, in spite of themselves, but they had soon sickened 
 of it and loathed it. Sophia became more and more obsessed 
 by the monstrous absurdity of the simple fact that she and 
 Constance were there, in that dark inconvenient house, wearied 
 by the gaiety of public-houses, blackened by smoke, surrounded 
 by mud, instead of being luxuriously installed in a beautiful 
 climate, amid scenes of beauty and white cleanliness. Secretly 
 she became more and more indignant. 
 
 Amy entered, bearing a letter in her coarse hand. As Amy ' 
 unceremoniously handed the letter to Constance, Sophia 
 thought : " If she was my servant she would hand letters on a 
 tray." (An advertisement had already been sent to the 
 Signal.) 
 
 Constance took the letter trembling. " Here it is at last," 
 she cried. 
 
 When she had put on her spectacles and read it, she 
 exclaimed : 
 
 " Bless us 1 Here's news 1 He's coming down I That's 
 why he didn't write on Saturday as usual." 
 
 She gave the letter to Sophia to read. It ran-^ 
 
 " Sunday midnight. 
 "Dear Mother, 
 
 "Just a line to say I am coming down to Bursley 
 on Wednesday, on business with Peels. I shall get to Knype 
 at 5.28, and take the Loop. I've been very busy, and as 
 I was coming down I didn't write on Saturday. I hope you 
 didn't worry. Love to yourself and Aunt Sophia. 
 
 "Yours, C." 
 
 « I must send him a line," said Constance, excitedly. 
 "What? To-night?" 
 
 a K 
 
498 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " Yes. Amy can easily catch the last post with it. Other- 
 wise, he won't know that I've got his letter." 
 
 She rang the bell. 
 
 Sophia thought : " His coining down is really no excuse for 
 his not writing on Saturday. How could she guess that he was 
 coming down? I shall have to put in -a little word to that 
 young man. I wonder Constance is so blind. She is quite 
 satisfied now that his letter has come." On behalf of the elder 
 generation she rather resented Constance's eagerness to write 
 in answer. 
 
 But Constance was not so blind. Constance thought 
 exactly as Sophia thought. In her heart she did not at all 
 justify or excuse Cyril. She remembered separately almost 
 every instance of his carelessness in her regard. " Hope I 
 didn't worry,, indeed !" she said to herself with a faint touch 
 of bitterness, apropos of the phrase in his letter. 
 
 Nevertheless she insisted on writing at once. And Amy 
 had to bring the writing materials. 
 
 " Mr. .Cyril is coming down on Wednesday," she said to 
 Amy with great dignity. 
 
 Amy's stony calmness was shaken, for Mr. Cyril was a great 
 deal to Amy. Amy wondered how she would be able to look 
 Mr. Cyril in the face when he knew that she had given notice. 
 
 In the middle of writing, on her knee, Constance looked 
 up at Sophia, and said, as though defending herself against 
 an accusation : " I didn't write to him yesterday, you know, 
 or to-day." 
 
 " No," Sophia murmured assentingly. 
 
 Constance rang the bell yet again, and Amy was sent out 
 to the post. 
 
 Soon afterwards the bell was rung for a fourth time, and not 
 answered. 
 
 " I suppose she hasn't come back yet. But I thought I 
 heard the door. What a long time she is 1 " 
 
 " What do you want ?" Sophia asked. 
 
 " I just want to speak to her," said Constance. 
 
 When the bell had been rung seven or eight times, Amy 
 at length re-appeared, somewhat breathless. 
 
 "Amy," said Constance, "let me examine those sheets, 
 will you ? " 
 
 "Yes'm," said Amy, apparently knowing what sheets, of 
 all the various and multitudinous sheets in that house. 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 499 
 
 "And the pillow-cases," Constance added as Amy left 
 the room. 
 
 So it continued. The next day the fever heightened. 
 Constance was up early, before Sophia, and trotting about 
 . the house like a girl. Immediately after breakfast Cyril's 
 bedroom was invested and revolutionized ; not till evening 
 was order restored in that chamber. And on the Wednesday 
 morning it had to be dusted afresh. Sophia watched the 
 preparations, and the increasing agitation of Constance's 
 demeanour, with an astonishment which she had real difficulty 
 in concealing. "Is the woman absolutely mad?" she asked 
 herself. The spectacle was ludicrous : or it seemed so to 
 Sophia, whose career had not embraced much experience of 
 mothers. It was not as if the manifestations of Constance's 
 anxiety were dignified or original or splendid. They were 
 just silly, ordinary fussinesses ; they had no sense in them. 
 Sophia was very careful to make no observation. She felt 
 that before she and Constance were very much older, she 
 had a very great deal to do, and that a subtle diplomacy 
 and wary tactics would be necessary. Moreover, Constance's 
 angelic temper was slightly affected by the strain of expecta- 
 tion. She had a tendency to rasp. After the high-tea was 
 set she suddenly sprang on to the sofa and lifted down the 
 ' Stag at Eve ' engraving. The dust on the top of the frame 
 incensed her. 
 
 "What are you going to do?" Sophia asked, in a final 
 marvel 
 
 " I'm going to change it with that one," said Sophia, 
 pointing to another engraving opposite the fireplace. " He 
 said the effect would be very much better if they were changed. 
 And his lordship is very particular." 
 
 Constance did not go to Bursley station to meet her sori. 
 She explained that it upset her to do so, and that also Cyril 
 preferred her not to come. 
 
 " Suppose I go to meet him," said Sophia, at half-past five. 
 The idea had visited her suddenly. She thought : " Then I 
 could talk to him before any one else." 
 
 " Oh, do ! " Constance agreed. 
 
 Sophia put her things on with remarkable expedition. She 
 arrived at the station a minute before the train came in. Only 
 a few persons emerged from the train, and Cyril was not 
 among them. A porter said that there was not supposed to 
 
500 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 be any connection between the Loop Line trains and the main 
 line expresses, and that probably the express had missed the 
 Loop. She waited thirty-five minutes for the next Loop, and 
 Cyril did not emerge from that train either. 
 
 Constance opened the front-door to her, and showed a 
 telegram — 
 
 " Sorry prevented last moment Writing. Cyril." 
 
 Sophia had known it. Somehow she had known that it 
 was useless to wait for the second train. Constance was silent 
 and calm ; Sophia also. 
 
 " What a shame 1 What a shame 1 " thumped Sophia's 
 heart. 
 
 It was the most ordinary episode. But beneath her calm 
 she was furious against her favourite. She hesitated. 
 
 " I'm just going out a minute," she said. 
 
 " Where ? " asked Constance. " Hadn't we better have 
 tea ? I suppose we must have tea." 
 
 " I shan't be long. I want to buy something." 
 
 Sophia went to the post-office and despatched a telegram. 
 Then, partially eased, she returned to the arid and painfiil 
 desolation of the house. 
 
 IV 
 
 The next evening Cyril sat at the tea-table in the parlour 
 with his mother and his aunt. To Constance his presence 
 there had something of the miraculous in it. He had come, 
 after all 1 Sophia was in a rich robe, and for ornament wore 
 an old silver-gilt neck-chain, which was clasped at the throat, 
 and fell in double to her waist, where it was caught in her 
 belt. This chain interested Cyril. He referred to it once or 
 twice^ and then he said : " Just let me have a look at that 
 chain," and put out his hand ; and Sophia leaned forward so 
 that he could handle it. His fingers played with it thus for 
 some seconds \ the picture strikingly affected Constance. At 
 length he dropped it, and said : " H'm 1 " After a pause he 
 said : " Louis Sixteenth, eh ? " and Sophia said : 
 
 "They told me so. But it's nothing; it only cost thirty 
 francs, you know." And Cyril took her up sharply : 
 
 "What does that matter?" Then after another pause 
 ke asked : " How often do you break a link of it?" 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 601 
 
 "Oh, often," she said. " It's always getting shorter." 
 
 And he murmured mysteriously : " H'm ! " 
 
 He was still mysterious, withdrawn within himself extra- 
 ordiiiarily uninterested in his physical surroundings. But that 
 evening he talked more than he usually did. He was benevo- 
 lent, and showed a particular benevolence towards his mother, 
 apparently exerting himself to answer her questions with full- 
 ness and heartiness, as though admitting frankly her right to 
 be curious. He praised the teaj he seemed to notice what 
 he was eating. He took Spot on his knee, and gazed in 
 admiration at Fossette. 
 
 "By Jove !" he said, "that's a dog, that is I . . . All the 
 same. . . ." And he burst out laughing. 
 
 " I won't have Fossette laughed at," Sophia warned him. 
 
 " No, seriously," he said, in his quality of an amateur of 
 dogs; "she is very fine." Even then he could not help 
 adding : " What you can see of her 1 " 
 
 Whereupon Sophia shook her head, deprecating such wit. 
 Sophia was very lenient towards him. Her leniency could be 
 perceived in her eyes, which followed his movements all the 
 time. "Do you think he is like me, Constance?" she 
 asked. 
 
 " I wish I was half as good-looking," said Cyril, quickly ; 
 and Constance said : 
 
 " As a baby he was very like you. He was a handsome 
 baby. He wasn't at all like you when he was at school. 
 These last few years he's begun to be like you again. He's 
 very much changed since he left school j he was rather heavy 
 and clumsy then." 
 
 " Heavy and clumsy 1 " exclaimed Sophia. " Well, I should 
 never have believed it ! " 
 
 " Oh, but he was ! " Constance insisted. 
 
 " Now, mater," said Cyril, " it's a pity you don't want that 
 cake cutting into. I think I could have eaten a bit of that 
 cake. But of course if it's only for show . . . 1 " 
 
 Constance sprang up, seizing a knife. 
 
 "You shouldn't tease your mother," Sophia told him. 
 "He doesn't really want any, Constance; he's regularly 
 stuffed himself!" 
 
 And Cyril agreed, " No, no, mater, don't cut it j I really 
 couldn't. I was only gassing." 
 
 But Constance could never clearly see through humour 
 
502 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 of that sort. She cut three slices of cake, and she held the 
 plate towards Cyril. 
 
 " I tell you I really couldn't ! " he protested. 
 
 " Come ! " she said obstinately. " I'm waiting 1 How 
 much longer must I hold this plate ? " 
 
 And he had to take a slice. So had Sophia. When she 
 was roused, they both of them had to yield to CoriF'ance. 
 
 With the dogs, and the splendour of the tea-table under 
 the gas, and the distinction of Sophia and Cyril, and the 
 conversation, which on the whole was gay and free, rising at 
 times to jolly garrulity, the scene in her parlour ought surely 
 to have satisfied Constance utterly. She ought to have been 
 quite happy, as her sciatica had raised the siege for a space. 
 But she was not quite happy. The circumstances of Cyril's 
 arrival had disturbed her; they had in fact wounded her, 
 though she would scarcely admit the wound. In the morn- 
 ing she had received a brief letter from Cyril to say that 
 he had not been able to come, and vaguely promising, or 
 half-promising, to run down at a later date. That letter had 
 the cardinal defects of all Cyril's relations with his mother; 
 it was casual, and it was not candid. It gave no hint of the 
 nature of the obstacle which had prevented him from coming. 
 Cyril had always been too secretive. She was gravely depressed 
 by the letter, which she did not show to Sophia, because it 
 impaired her dignity as a mother, and displayed her son in a 
 bad light. Then about eleven o'clock a telegram had come 
 for Sophia. 
 
 " That's all right," Sophia had said, on reading it. " He'll 
 be here this evening 1 " And she had handed over the tele- 
 gram, which read — 
 
 " Very well. Will come same train to-day." 
 
 And Constance learned that when Sophia had rushed out 
 just before tea on the previous evening, it was to telegraph 
 to Cyril. 
 
 " What did you say to him ? " Constance asked. 
 
 "Oh!" said Sophia, with a careless air, "I told him I 
 thought he ought to come. After all, you're more important 
 than any business, Constance 1 And I don't like him behaving 
 like that. I was determined he should come ! " 
 
 Sophia had tossed her proud head. 
 
 Constance had pretended to be pleased and grateful. But 
 the existence of a wound was incontestable. Sophia, then, 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 603 
 
 could do more with Cyril than she could 1 Sophia had only 
 met him once, and could simply twist him round her little 
 finger. He would never have done so much for his mother. 
 A fine sort of an obstacle it must have been, if a single 
 telegram from Sophia could overcome it ... 1 And Sophia, 
 too, was secretive. She had gone out and had telegraphed, 
 and had not breathed a word until she got the reply, sixteen 
 hours later. She was secretive, and Cyril was secretive. 
 They resembled one another. They had taken to one another. 
 But Sophia was a curious mixture. When Constance had 
 asked her if she should go to the station again to meet Cyril, 
 she had replied scornfully : " No, indeed ! I've done going to 
 meet Cyril. People who don't arrive must not expect to 
 be met." 
 
 When Cyril drove up to the door, Sophia had been in attend- 
 ance. She hurried down the steps. " Don't say anything about 
 my telegram," she had rapidly whispered to Cyril ; there was no 
 time for further explanation. Constance was at the top of the 
 steps. Constance had not heard the whisper, but she had 
 seen it; and she saw a guilty, puzzled look on Cyril's face, 
 afterwards an ineffectively concealed conspiratorial look on 
 both their faces. They had ' something between them,' from 
 which she, the mother, was shut out ! Was it not natural that 
 she should be wounded ? She was far too proud to mention 
 the telegrams. And as neither Cyril nor Sophia mentioned 
 them, the circumstances leading to Cyril's change of plan 
 were not referred to at all, which was very curious. Then 
 Cyril was more sociable than he had ever been; he was 
 different, under his aunt's gaze. Certainly he treated his 
 mother faultlessly. But Constance said to herself : " It is 
 because she is here that he is so specially nice to me." 
 
 When tea was finished and they were going upstairs to 
 the drawing-room, she asked him, with her eye on the ' Stag 
 at Eve ' engraving : 
 
 " Well, is it a success ? " 
 
 "What?" His eye followed hers. "Oh, you've changed 
 it I What did you do that for, mater ? " 
 
 "You said it would be better like that," she reminded 
 him. 
 
 "Did I?" He seemed genuinely surprised. "I don't 
 remember. I believe it is better, though," he added. "It 
 might be even better still if you turned it the other way up." 
 
604 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 He pulled a face to Sophia, and screwed up his shoulders, 
 as if to indicate : " I've done it, this time ! " 
 
 " How ? The other way up ? " Constance queried. Then 
 as she comprehended that he was teasing her, she said : " Get 
 away with you I " and pretended to box his ears. " You were 
 fond enough of that picture at one time ! " she said ironically. 
 
 "Yes, I was, mater," he submissively agreed. "There's 
 no getting over that." And he pressed her cheeks between 
 his hands and kissed her. 
 
 In the drawing-room he smoked cigarettes and played the 
 piano — ^waltzes of his' own composition. Constance and 
 Sophia did not entirely comprehend those waltzes. But they 
 agreed that all were wonderful and that one was very pretty 
 indeed. (It soothed Constance that Sophia's opinion coin- 
 cided with hers.) He said that that waltz was the worst of the 
 lot. When he had finished with the piano, Constance informed 
 him about Amy. "Oh I She told me," he said, "when she 
 brought me my water. I didn't mention it because I thought 
 it would be rather a sore subject." Beneath the casualness of 
 his tone there lurked a certain curiosity, a willingness to hear 
 details. He heard them. 
 
 At five minutes to ten, when Constance had yawned, he 
 threw a bomb among them on the hearthrug. 
 
 " Well," he said, " I've got an appointment with Matthew 
 at the Conservative Club at ten o'clock. I must go. Don't 
 wait up for me." 
 
 Both women protested, Sophia the more vivaciously. It 
 was Sophia now who was wounded. 
 
 " It's business," he said, defending himself " He's going 
 away early to-morrow, and it's my only chance." And as 
 Constance did not brighten he went on : " Business has to be 
 attended to. You mustn't think I've got nothing to do but 
 enjoy myself." 
 
 No hint of the nature of the business ! He never explained. 
 As to business, Constance knew only that she allowed him 
 three hundred a year, and paid his local tailor. The sum had 
 at first seemed to her enormous, but she had grown accus- 
 tomed to it. 
 
 " I should have preferred you to see Mr. Peel-Swynnerton 
 here," said Constance. "You could have had a room to 
 yourselves. I do not like you going out at ten o'clock at 
 night to a club." 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 505 
 
 "Well, good night, mater," he said, getting up. " See you 
 
 to-morrow. I shall take the key out of the door. It's true 
 my pocket will never be the same again." 
 
 Sophia saw Constance into bed, and provided her with 
 two hot-water bottles against sciatica. They did not talk 
 much. 
 
 IV 
 
 Sophia sat waiting on the sofa in the parlour. It appeared 
 to her that, though little more than a month had elapsed since 
 her arrival in Bursley, she had already acquired a new set of 
 interests and anxieties. Paris and her life there had receded 
 in the strangest way. Sometimes for hours she would 
 absolutely forget Paris. Thoughts of Paris were disconcert- 
 ing; for either Piris or Bursley must surely be unreal! As 
 she sat waiting on the sofa Paris kept coming into her mind. 
 Certainly it was astonishing that she should be just as pre- 
 occupied with her schemes for the welfare of Constance as she 
 had ever been preoccupied with schemes for the improvement 
 of the Pension Frensham. She said to herself: " My life has 
 been so queer — and yet every part of it separately seemed 
 ordinary enough — how will it end ? " 
 
 Then there were footfalls on the steps outside, and a key 
 was put into the door, which she at once opened. 
 
 "Oh!" exclaimed Cyril, startled, and also somewhat out 
 of countenance. " You're still up ! Thanks." He came in, 
 smoking the end of a cigar. " Fancy having to cart that 
 about ! " he murmured, holding up the great old-fashioned key 
 before inserting it in the lock on the inside. 
 
 "I stayed up," said Sophia, " because I wanted to talk to 
 you about your mother, and it's so difficult to get a chance." 
 
 Cyril smiled, not without self-consciousness, and dropped 
 into his mother's rocking-chair, which he had twisted round 
 with his feet to face the sofa. 
 
 " Yes," he said. " I was wondering what was the real 
 meaning of your telegram. What was it?" He blew out a 
 lot of smoke and waited for her reply. 
 
 " I thought you ought to come down," said Sophia, cheer- 
 fully but firmly. "It was a fearful disappointment to your 
 mother that you didn't come yesterday. And when she's ex- 
 pecting a letter from you and it doesn't come, it makes her ill." 
 
506 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " Oh, well ! " he said. " I'm glad it's no worse. I thought 
 from your telegram there was something seriously wrong. 
 And then when you told me not to mention it — when I came 
 in . . . I" 
 
 She saw that he failed to realize the situation, and she 
 lifted her head challengingly. 
 
 " You neglect your mother, young man," she said. 
 
 " Oh, come now, auntie ! " he answered quite gently. 
 « You mustn't talk like that. I write to her every week. I've 
 never missed a week. I come down as often as " 
 
 'You miss the Sunday sometimes," Sophia interrupted 
 him. 
 
 " Perhaps," he said doubtfully. " But what " 
 
 " Don't you understand that she simply lives for your 
 letters ? And if one doesn't come, she's very upset indeed — 
 can't eat I And it brings on her sciatica, and I don't know 
 what!" 
 
 He was taken aback by her boldness, her directness. 
 
 " But how silly of her I A fellow can't always " 
 
 " It may be silly. But there it is. You can't alter her. 
 And, after all, what would it cost you to be more attentive, 
 even to write to her twice a week ? You aren't going to tell 
 me you're so busy as all that ! I know a great deal more 
 about young men than your mother does." She smiled like 
 an aunt. 
 
 He answered her smile sheepishly. 
 
 " If you'll only put yourself in your mother's place . . . ! " 
 
 " I expect you're quite right," he said at length. " And 
 I'm much obliged to you for telling me. How was I to 
 know ? " He threw the end of the cigar, with a large sweeping 
 gesture, into the fire. 
 
 " Well, anyhow, you know now ! " she said curtly ; and she 
 thought : " You ought to have known. It was your business to 
 know." But she was pleased with the way in which he had 
 accepted her criticism, and the gesture with which he threw 
 away the cigar-end struck her as very distinguished. 
 
 " That's all right ! " he said dreamily, as if to say : " That's 
 done with." And he rose. 
 
 Sophia, however, did not stir. 
 
 " Your mother's health is not what it ought to be," she 
 went on, and gave him a full account of her conversation with 
 the doctor. 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 507 
 
 "Really!" Cyril murmured, leaning on the mantel-piece 
 with his elbow and looking down at her. " Stirling said that, 
 did he ? I should have thought she would have been better 
 where she is, in the Square." 
 
 " Why better in the Square ?" 
 
 "Oh, I don't know!" 
 
 "Neither do I!" 
 
 " She's always been here.'' 
 
 " Yes," said Sophia, " she's been here a great deal too long." 
 
 "What do you suggest?" Cyril asked, with impatience in 
 his voice against this new anxiety that was being thrust upon 
 him. 
 
 "Well," said Sophia, "what should you say to her 
 coming to London and living with you ? " 
 
 Cyril started back. Sophia could see that he was 
 genuinely shocked. " I don't think that would do at all," he 
 said. 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " Oh ! I don't think it would. London wouldn't suit her. 
 She's not that sort of woman. I really thought she was quite 
 all right down here. She wouldn't like London." He shook 
 his head, looking up at the gas ; his eyes had a dangerous 
 glare. 
 
 " But supposing she said she did ? " 
 
 "Look here," Cyril began in a new and brighter tone. 
 "Why don't you and she keep house together somewhere? 
 That would be the very " 
 
 He turned his head sharply. There was a noise on the 
 staircase, and the staircase door opened with its eternal creak. 
 
 " Yes," said Sophia. " The Champs Elysdes begins at the 
 
 Place de la Concorde, and ends . Is that you, 
 
 Constance ? " 
 
 The figure of Constance filled the doorway. Her face was 
 troubled. She had heard Cyril in the street, and had come 
 down to see why he remained so long in the parlour. She 
 was astounded to find Sophia with him. There they were, as 
 intimate as cronies, chattering about Paris 1 Undoubtedly she 
 was jealous ! Never did Cyril talk like that to her ! 
 
 " I thought you were in bed and asleep, Sophia," she said 
 weakly. " It's nearly one o'clock." 
 
 " No," said Sophia. " I didn't seem to feel like going to 
 bed ; and then Cyril happened to come in." 
 
508 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 But neither she nor Cyril could look innocent. And 
 Constance glanced from one to the other apprehensively. 
 
 The next morning Cyril received a letter which, he said — 
 mlh no further explanation — forced him to leave at once. He 
 intimated that there had been danger in his- coming just then, 
 and that matters had turned out as he had feared. 
 
 "You think over what I said," he whispered to Sophia 
 when they were alone for an instant, " and let me know." 
 
 A week before Easter the guests of the Rutland Hotel in 
 the Broad Walk, Buxton, being assembled, for afternoon tea 
 in the 'lounge' of that establishment, witnessed the arrival 
 of two middle-aged Ikdies and two dogs. Critically to examine 
 newcomers was one of the amusements of the occupants of 
 the lounge. This apartment, furnished ' in the oriental style,' 
 made a pretty show among the photographs in the illustrated 
 brochure of the hotel, and, though draughty, it was of all the 
 public rooms the favourite. It was draughty because only 
 separated from the street (if the Broad Walk can be called a 
 street) by two pairs of swinging-doors — in charge of two page- 
 boys. Every visitor entering the hotel was obliged to pass 
 through the lounge, and for newcomers the passage was an 
 ordeal; they were made to feel that they had so much to 
 learn, so much to get accustomed to ; like passengers who 
 join a ship at a port of call, they felt that the business lay 
 before them of creating a niche for themselves in a hostile and 
 haughty society. The two ladies produced a fairly favourable 
 impression at the outset by reason of their two dogs. It is 
 not every one who has the courage to bring dogs into an 
 expensive private hotel ; to bring one dog indicates that you 
 are not accustomed to deny yourself small pleasures for the 
 sake of a few extra shillings ; to bring two indicates that you 
 have no fear of hotel-managers and that you are in the habit 
 of regarding your own whim as nature's law. The shorter and 
 stouter of the two ladies did not impose herself with much 
 force on the collective vision of the Rutland ; she was dressed 
 in black, not fashionably, though with a certain unpretending 
 richness ; her gestures were timid and nervous ; evidently she 
 relied upon her tall companion to shield her in the first trying 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE B6d 
 
 contacts of hotel life. The tall lady was of a different stamp. 
 Handsome, stately, deliberate, and handsomely dressed in 
 colours, she had the assured hard gaze of a person who is 
 thoroughly habituated to the inspection ' of strangers. She 
 curtly asked one of the page-boys for the manager, and the 
 manager's wife tripped rapidly (Town the stairs in response, and 
 was noticeably deferential. Her voice was quiet and com- 
 manding, the voice of one who gives orders that are obeyed. 
 The opinion of the loimge was divided as to whether or not 
 they were sisters. ' 
 
 They vanished quietly upstairs in convoy of the manager's 
 wife, and they did not re-appear for the lounge tea, which in 
 any case would have been undrinkably stewed. It then became 
 known, by the agency of one of those guests, to be found in 
 every hotel, who acquire all the secrets of the hotel by the 
 exercise of unabashed curiosity on the personnel, that the two 
 ladies had engaged two bedrooms, Nos. 17 and 18, and the 
 sumptuous private parlour with a balcony on the first floor, 
 styled " C " in the nomenclature of rooms. This fact definitely 
 established the position of the new arrivals in the moral fabric 
 of the hotel. They were wealthy. They had money to throw 
 away. For even in a select hotel like the Rutland it is not 
 everybody who indulges in a private sitting-room ; there were 
 only four such apartments in the hotel, as against fifty bed- 
 rooms. 
 
 At dinner they had a small table to themselves in a corner. 
 The short lady wore a. white shawl over her shoulders. Her 
 almost apologetic manner during the meal confirmed the view 
 that she must be a very simple person, unused to the world 
 and its ways. The other continued to be imperial. She 
 ordered half-a-bottle of wine and drank two glasses. She 
 stared about her quite self-unconsciously, whereas the little 
 woman divided her glances between her companion and her 
 plate. They did not talk much. Immediately after dinner 
 they retired. ' Widows in easy circumstances ' was the verdict ; 
 but the contrast between the pair held puzzles that piqued the 
 inquisitive. 
 
 J8bp^ua had conquered again. Once more Sophia had 
 resolved to accomplish a thing and she had accomplished it. 
 Eve^ts nad fallen out thus. The advertisement for a general 
 seivant in the Signal had been a disheartening failure. A 
 few answers were received but of an entirely unsatisfactory 
 
510 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 character. Constance, a great deal more than Sophia, had 
 been astounded by the bearing and the demands of modem 
 servants. Constance was in despair. If Constance had not 
 had an immense pride she would have been ready to suggest 
 to Sophia that Amy should be asked to ' stay on.' But 
 Constance would have accepted a modem impudent wench 
 first. It was Maria Critchlow who got Constance out of her 
 difiSculty by giving her particulars of a reliable servant who 
 was about to leave a situation in which she had stayed for 
 eight years. Constance did not imagine that a servant 
 recommended by Maria Critchlow would suit her, but, being 
 in a quandary, she arranged to see the servant, and both she 
 and Sophia were very pleased with the girl — Rose Bennion by. 
 name. The mischief was that Rose would not be free until 
 about a month after Amy had left. Rose would have left her 
 old situation, but she had a fancy to go and spend a fortnight 
 with a married sister at Manchester before settling into new 
 quarters. Constance and Sophia felt that this caprice of 
 Rose's was really very tiresome and unnecessary. Of course 
 Amy might liave been asked to ' stay on ' just for a month. 
 Amy would probably have volunteered to do so had she been 
 aware of the circumstances. She was not, however, aware of 
 the circumstances. And Constance was determined not to be 
 beholden to Amy for anything. What could the sisters do? 
 Sophia, who conducted all the interviews with Rose and other 
 candidates, said that it would be a grave error to let Rose slip. 
 Besides, they had no one to take her place, no one who could 
 come at once. 
 
 The dilemma was appalling. At least, it seemed appalling 
 to Constaijce^ who really believed that no mistress had ever 
 been so 'awkwartlly fixed.' And yet, when Sophia first 
 proposed her solution, Constance considered it to be a quite 
 impossible solution. Sophia's idea was that they should lock 
 up the house and leave it on the same day as Amy left it, to 
 spend a few weeks in some holiday resort. To begin with, the 
 idea of leaving the house empty seemed to Constance a mad 
 idea. The house had never been left empty. And then — 
 going for a holiday in April I Constance had never been for 
 a holiday except in the month of August. No 1 The project 
 was beset with difficulties and dangers which could not be 
 overcome nor provided against. For example, "We can't 
 come back to a dirty house," said Constance. "And we 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 611 
 
 can't have a strange servant coming here before us." To 
 which Sophia had replied : " Then what shall you do ? " And 
 Constance, after prodigious reflection on the frightful pass to 
 which destiny had brought her, had said that she supposed 
 she would have to manage with a charwoman until Rose's 
 advent. She asked Sophia if she remembered old Maggie. 
 Sophia, of course, perfectly remembered. Old Maggie was 
 dead, as well as the drunken, amiable Hollins, but there was 
 a young Maggie (wife of a bricklayer) who went out charing 
 in the spare time left from looking after seven children. The 
 more Constance meditated upon young Maggie, the more 
 was she convinced that young Maggie would meet the case. 
 Constance felt she could trust young Maggie. 
 
 This expression of trust in Maggie was Constance's undoing. 
 Why should they not go away, and arrange with Maggie to 
 come to the house a few days before their return, to clean and 
 ventilate? The weight of reason overbore Constance. She 
 yielded unwillingly, but she yielded. It was the mention of 
 Buxton that finally moved her. She knew Buxton. Her old 
 landlady at Buxton was dead, and Constance had not visited 
 the place since before Samuel's death ; nevertheless its name 
 had a reassuring sound to her ears, and for sciatica its waters 
 and climate were admitted to be the best in England. Gradually 
 Constance permitted herself to be embarked on this perilous 
 enterprise of shutting up the house for twenty-five days. She 
 imparted the information to Amy, who was astounded. Then 
 she commenced upon her domestic preparations. She wrapped 
 Samuel's Family Bible in brown paper; she put Cyril's straw- 
 firamed copy of Sir Edwin Landse6r away in a drawer, and 
 she took ten thousand other precautions. It was grotesque ; 
 it was farcical ; it was what you please. And when, with the 
 cab at the door and the luggage on the cab, and the dogs 
 chained together, and Maria Critchlow waiting on the pave- 
 ment to receive the key, Constance put the key into the door 
 on the outside, and locked up the empty house, Constance's 
 face was tragic with innumerable apprehensions. |And Sophia 
 felt that she had performed a miracle. She had. 
 
 On the whole the sisters were well received in the hotel, 
 though they were not at an age which commands popularity. 
 In the criticism which was passed upon them — the free, 
 realistic and relentless criticism of private hotels — Sophia was 
 at first set down as overbearing. But in a few days this view 
 
512 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 was modified, and Sophia rose in esteem. The fact was that 
 Sophia's behaviour changed after forty-eight hours. The 
 Rutland Hotel was very good. It was so good as to disturb 
 Sophia'^ profound beliefs that there was in the world only one 
 truly high-class pension, and that nobody could teach the 
 creator of that unique pension anything about the art of 
 management. The food was excellent ; the attendance in the 
 bedrooms was excellent (and Sophia knew how difficult of 
 attainment was excellent bedroom attendance) ; and to the 
 eye the interior of the Rutland presented a spectacle far richer 
 than the Pension Frensham could show. The standard of 
 comfort was higher. The guests had a more distinguished 
 appearance. It is true that the prices were much higher, 
 ^phia was humbled. She had enough sense to adjust her 
 perspective. Further, she found herself ignorant of many 
 matters which by the other guests were taken for granted and 
 «sed as a basis for conversation. Prolonged residence in Paris 
 would not justify this ignorance ; it seemed rather to intensify 
 its strangeness. Thus, when someone of cosmopolitan experi- 
 ence, having learnt that she had lived in Paris for many years, 
 asked what had been going on lately at the Com^die Frangaise, 
 she had to admit that she had not been in a French theatre 
 for nearly thirty years. And when, on a Sunday, the same 
 person questioned her about the English chaplain in Paris, 
 lo ! she knew nothing but his name, had never even seen him ! 
 Sophia's life, in its way, had been as narrow as Constance's. 
 Though her experience of human nature was wide, she had 
 been in a groove as deep as Constance's. She had been 
 utterly absorbed in doing one single thing. 
 
 By tacit agreement she had charge of the expedition. She- 
 paid all the bills. Constance protested against the expensive- 
 ness of the affair several times, but Sophia quietened her by 
 sheer force of individuality. Constance had one advantage over 
 Sophia. She knew Buxton and its neighbourhood intimately, 
 and she was therefore in a position to show off the sights and 
 to deal with local peculiarities. In all other respects Sophia 
 led. 
 
 They very soon became acclimatized to the hotel. They 
 moved easily between Turkey carpets and sculptured ceilings ; 
 their eyes grew used to the eternal vision of themselves and 
 other slow-moving dignities in gilt mirrors, to the heaviness of 
 great oil-paintings of picturesque scenery, to the indications 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 613 
 
 of surreptitious dirt behind massive furniture, to the grey- 
 brown of the shirt-fronts of the waiters, to the litter of trays, 
 boots and pails in long corridors ; their ears were always 
 awake to the sounds of gongs and bells. They consulted the 
 barometer and ordered the daily carriage with the perfunctori- 
 ness of habit. They discovered what can be learnt of other 
 people's needlework in a hotel on a wet day. They performed 
 co-operative outings with fellow-guests. They invited fellow- 
 guests into their sitting-room. When there was an entertain- 
 ment they did not, avoid it. Sophia was determined to do 
 everything that could with propriety be done, partly as an 
 outlet for her own energy (which since she left Paris had been 
 accumulating), but more on Constance's account. She remem- 
 bered all that Dr. Stirling had said, and the heartiness of her 
 own agreement with his opinions. It was a great day when, 
 under tuition of an aged lady and in the privacy of their 
 parlour, they both began to study the elements of Patience. 
 Neither had ever played at cards. Constance was almost 
 afraid to touch cards, as though in the very cardboard there 
 had been something unrighteous and perilous. But the respect- 
 ability of a luxurious private hotel makes proper every act 
 that passes within its walls. And Constance plausibly argued 
 that no harm could come from a game which you played by 
 yourself. She acquired with some aptitude several varieties of 
 Patience. She said : " I think I could enjoy that, if I kept at 
 it But it does make my head Whirl." 
 
 Nevertheless Constance was not happy in the hotel. She 
 worried the whole time about her empty house. She antici- 
 pated difficulties and even disasters. She wondered again and 
 again whether she could trust the second Maggie in her house 
 alone, whether it would not be better tp return home earlier 
 and participate personally in the cleaning. She would have 
 decided to do so had it not been that she hesitated to subject 
 Sophia to the inconvenience of a house upside down. The 
 matter was on her mind, always. Always she was restlessly 
 anticipating the day when they would leave. She had care- 
 lessly left her heart behind in St. Luke's Square. She had 
 never stayed in a hotel before, and she did not like it. Sciatica 
 occasionally harassed her. Yet when it came to the point she 
 would not drink the waters. She said she never had drunk 
 them, and seemed to regard that as a reason why she never 
 should. Sophia had achieved a miracle in getting her to 
 
 2 L 
 
514 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Buxton for nearly a. month, but the ultimate grand effect 
 lacked brilliance. 
 
 Then came the fatal letter, the desolating letter, which 
 vindicated Constance's dark apprehensions. Rose Bennion 
 calmly wrote to say that she had decided not to come to 
 St. Luke's Square. She expressed regret for any inconvenience 
 which might possibly be caused; she was polite. But the 
 monstrousness of it ! Constance felt that this actually and 
 truly was the deepest depth of her calamities. There she was, 
 far from a dirty home, with no servant and no prospect of 
 a servant ! She bore herself bravely, nobly ; but she was 
 stricken. She wanted to return to the dirty home at once. 
 
 Sophia felt that the situation created by this letter would 
 demand her highest powers of dealing with situations, and she 
 determined to deal with it adequately. Great measures were 
 needed, for Constance's health and happiness were at stake. 
 She alone could act. She knew that she could not rely upon 
 Cyril. She still had an immense partiality for Cyril; she 
 thought him the most charming young man she had ever 
 known ; she knew him to be industrious and clever ; but in 
 his relations with his mother there was a hardness, a touch of 
 callousness. She explained it vaguely by saying that 'they 
 did not get on well together' j which was strange, considering 
 Constance's sweet affectionateness. Still, Constance could be 
 a little trying — at times. Anyhow, it was soon clear to Sophia 
 that the idea of mother and son living together in London was 
 entirely impracticable. No ! If Constance was to be saved 
 from herself, there was no one but Sophia to save her. 
 
 After half a morning spent chiefly in listening to Con- 
 stance's hopeless comments on the monstrous letter, Sophia 
 said suddenly that she must take the dogs for an airing. 
 Constance did not feel equal to walking out, and she would not 
 drive. She did not want Sophia to ' venture,' because the sky 
 threatened. However, Sophia did venture, and she returned a 
 few minutes late for lunch, full of vigour, with two happy dogs. 
 Constance was moodily awaiting her in the dining-room. 
 Constance could not eat. But Sophia ate, and she poured out 
 cheerfulness and energy as from a source inexhaustible. After 
 lunch it began to rain. Constance said she thought she should 
 retire directly to the sitting-room. " I'm coming too," said 
 Sophia, who was still wearing her hat and coat and carried her 
 gloves in her hand. In the pretentious and banal sitting-room 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 6I5 
 
 they sat down on either side the fire. Constance put a little 
 shawl round her shoulders, pushed her spectacles into her grey 
 hair, folded her hands, and sighed an enormous sigh : " Oh, 
 dear ! " She was the tragic muse, aged, and in black silk. 
 
 " I tell you what I've been thinking," said Sophia, folding 
 up her gloves. 
 
 " What ? " asked Constance, expecting some wonderful solu- 
 tion to come out of Sophia's active brain. 
 
 "There's no earthly reason why you should go back to 
 Bursley. The house won't run away, and it's costing nothing 
 but the rent. Why not take things easy for a bit ? " 
 
 "And stay here?" said Constance, with an inflection that 
 enlightened Sophia as to the intensity of her dislike of the 
 existence at the Rutland. 
 
 " No, not here," Sophia answered with quick deprecation. 
 " There are plenty of other places we could go to." 
 
 " I don't think I should be easy in my mind," said Con- 
 stance. " What with nothing being settled, the house " 
 
 " What does it matter about the house ? " 
 
 " It matters a great deal," said Constance, seriously, and 
 slightly hurt. " I didn't leave things as if we were going to be 
 away for a long time. It wouldn't dp." 
 
 " I don't see that anything could come to any harm, I really 
 don't ! " said Sophia, persuasively. "Dirt can always be cleaned, 
 after alL I think you ought to go about more. It would do 
 you good — all the good in the world. And there is no reason 
 why you shouldn't go about. You are perfectly free. Why 
 shouldn't we go abroad together, for instance, you and I ? I'm 
 sure you would enjoy it very much." 
 
 "Abroad?" murmured Constance, aghast, recoiling from 
 the proposition as from a grave danger. 
 
 " Yes," said Sophia, brightly and eagerly. She was deter- 
 mined to take Constance abroad. " There are lots of places 
 we could go to, and live very comfortably among nice English 
 people." She thought of the resorts she had visited with 
 Gerald in the sixties. They seemed to her like cities of a 
 dream. Tney came back to her as a dream recurs. 
 
 "I don't think going abroad would suit me," said 
 Constance. 
 
 "But why not? You don't know. You've never tried, 
 my dear." She smiled encouragingly. But Constance did 
 not smile. Constance was inclined to be grim. 
 
516 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " I don't think it would," said she, obstinately. . " I'm one 
 of your stay-at-homes. I'm not like you. We can't all be 
 alike," she added, with her ' tart ' accent. 
 
 Sophia suppressed a feeling of irritation. She knew that 
 she had a stronger individuality than Constance's. 
 
 " Well, then," she said, with undiminished persuasiveness, 
 "in England or Scotland. There are several places I should 
 like to visit — Torquay, Tunbridge Wells. Fve always under- 
 stood that Tunbridge Wells is a very nice town indeed, with 
 very superior people, and a beautiful climate," 
 
 "I think I shall have to be getting back to St. Luke's 
 Square," said Constance, ignoring all that Sophia had said. 
 " There's so much to be done." 
 
 Then Sophia looked at Constance with a more serious and 
 tesolute air; but still kindly, as though looking thus at 
 Constance for Constance's own good. 
 
 "You are making a mistake, Constance," she said, "if 
 you will alio* me to say so." 
 
 " A mistake ! " exclaimed Constance, startled. 
 
 " A very great mistake," Sophia insisted, observing that 
 she was creating an effect. 
 
 " I don't see how I can be making a mistake," Constance 
 said, gaining confidence in herself, as she thought the matter 
 over. 
 
 " No," said Sophia, " I'm sure you don't see it But you 
 are. You know, you are just a little apt to let yourself be a 
 slave to that house of yours. Instead of the house existing 
 for you, you exist for the house." 
 
 " Oh ! Sophia ! " Constance muttered awkwardly. " What 
 ideas you do have, to be sure ! " In her nervousness she 
 rose and picked up some embroidery, adjusting her spectacles 
 and coughing; When she sat down she said : " No one could 
 take things easier than I do as regards housekeeping, I 
 can assure you I let dozens of little matters go, rather than 
 bother myself." 
 
 "Then why do you bother now ? " Sophia posed her. 
 
 " I can't leave the place like that." Constance was hurt. 
 
 " There's one thing I can't understand," said Sophia, raising 
 her head and gazing at Constance again, "and that is, why 
 you live in St. Luke's Square at all." 
 
 " I must live somewhere. And I'm sure it's very 
 pleasant" 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 617 
 
 " In all that smoke I And with that dirt ! And the house 
 is very old." 
 
 " If s a great deal better built than a lot of those new 
 houses by the Park," Constance sharply retorted. In spite of 
 herself she resented any criticism of her house. She even 
 resented the obvious truth that it was old. 
 
 "You'll never get a servant to stay in that cellar-kitchen, 
 for one thing," said Sophia, keeping calm. 
 
 " Oh 1 I don't know about that ! I don't know about that ! 
 That Bennion woman didn't object to it, anyway. It's all 
 very well for you, Sophia, to talk like that. But I know 
 Bursley perhaps better than you do." She was tart again. 
 " And I can assure you that my house is looked upon as a very 
 good house indeed." 
 
 " Oh 1 I don't say it isn't ; I don't say it isn't. But you 
 would be better away from it. Every one says that." 
 
 " Every one ? " Constance looked up, dropping her work. 
 " Who ? Who's been talking about me ? " 
 
 " Well," said Sophia, " the doctor, for instance." 
 
 " Dr. Stirling ? I like that 1 He's always saying that Bursley 
 is one of the healthiest climates in England. He's always 
 sticking up for Bursley." 
 
 " Dr. Stirling thinks you ought to go away more — not stay 
 always in that dark house." If Sophia had sufficiently reflected 
 she would not have used the adjective ' dark.' It did not help 
 her cause. 
 
 "Oh, does he !" Constance fairly snorted. "Well, if it's 
 of any interest to Dr. Stirling, I like my dark house." 
 
 " Hasn't he ever told you you ought to go away more ? " 
 Sophia persisted. 
 
 "He may have mentioned it," Constance reluctantly 
 admitted. 
 
 "When he was talking to me he did a good deal more than 
 mention it. And I've a good mind to tell you what he said." 
 
 " Do ! " said Constance, politely. 
 
 "You don't realize how serious it is, I'm afraid," said 
 Sophia. " You can't see yourself." She hesitated a moment. 
 Her blood being stirred by Constance's peculiar inflection 
 of the phrase 'my dark house,' her judgment was slightly 
 obscured. She decided to give to Constance a fairly full 
 version of the conversation between herself and the doctor. 
 
 " It's a question of your health," she finished. " I think 
 
/, 
 
 518 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 it's my duty to talk to you seriously, and I have done. I hope 
 you'll take it as it's meant." 
 
 " Oh, of course 1 " Constance hastened to say. And she 
 thought : " It isn't yet three months that we've been together, 
 and she's trying already to get me under her thumb." 
 
 A pause ensued. Sophia at length said : " There's no doubt 
 that both your sciatica and your palpitations are due to nerves. 
 And you let your nerves get into a state because you worry 
 over trifles. A change would do you a tremendous amount 
 of good. It's just what you need. Reallyi you must admit, 
 Constance, that the idea of living always in a place like St. 
 Luke's Square, when you are perfectly free to do what you 
 like and go where you like — you must admit it's rather too 
 much," 
 
 Constance put her lips together and bent over her 
 embroidery. 
 
 " Now, what do you say ? " Sophia gently entreated. 
 
 " There's some of us like Bursley, black as it is 1 " said 
 Constance. And Sophia was surprised to detect tears in 
 her sister's voice. 
 
 " Now, my dear Constance," she remonstrated. 
 
 " It's no use ! " cried Constance, flinging away her work, 
 and letting her tears flow suddenly. Her face was distorted. 
 She was behaving just like a child. " It's no use ! I've got 
 to go back home and look after things. It's no use. Here 
 we are pitching money about in this place. It's perfectly 
 sinful. Drives, carriages, extras.! A shilling a day extra for 
 each dog. I never heard of such goings-on. And I'd sooner 
 be at home. That's it. I'd sooner be at home." This was 
 the first reference that Constance had made for a long time 
 to the question of expense, and incomparably the most violent. 
 It angered Sophia. 
 
 " We will count it that you are here as my guest," said 
 Sophia, loftily, " if that is how you look at it." 
 
 " Oh no ! " said Constance. " It isn't the money I grudge. 
 Oh no, we won't." And her tears were falling thick. 
 
 "Yes, we will," said Sophia, coldly. "I've only been 
 talking to you for your own good. I " 
 
 " Well," Constance interrupted her despairingly, " I wish 
 you wouldn't try to domineer over me ! " 
 
 "Domineer!" exclaimed Sophia, aghast. "Well, Con- 
 stance, I do think— ^" 
 
TOWARDS HOTEL LIFE 519 
 
 She got up and went to her bedroom, where the dogs were 
 imprisoned. They escaped to the stairs. She was shaking 
 with emotion. This was what came of trying to help other 
 people ! Imagine Constance . . . ! Truly Constance was 
 most unjust, and quite unlike her usual self! And Sophia 
 encouraged in her breast the feeling of injustice suffered. But 
 a voice kept saying to her : " You've made a mess of this. 
 You've not conquered this time. You're beaten. And the 
 situation is unworthy of you, of both of you. Two women 
 of fifty quarrelling like this 1 It's undignified. You've made 
 a mess of things." And to strangle the voice, she did her best 
 to encourage the feeling of injustice suffered. 
 
 ' Domineer ! ' 
 
 And Constance was absolutely in the wrong. She had not 
 argued at all. She had merely stuck to her idea like a mule ! 
 How difficult and painful would be the next meeting with 
 Constance, after this grievous miscarriage ! 
 
 As she was reflecting thus the door burst open, and Con- 
 stance stumbled, as it were blindly, into the bedroom. She 
 was still weeping. 
 
 " Sophia 1 " she sobbed, supplicatingly, and all her fat body 
 was trembling. " You mustn't kill me. . . I'm like that — you 
 can't alter me. I'm like that. I know I'm silly. But it's no 
 use ! " She made a piteous figure. 
 
 Sophia was aware of a lump in her throat. 
 
 "It's all right, Constance; it's all right. I quite under- 
 stand. Don't bother any morey 
 
 Constance, catching her breath at intervals, raised her wet, 
 worn face and kissed her. 
 
 .Sophia remembered the very words, ' You can't alter her,' 
 which she had used in remonstrating with Cyril. And now 
 she had been guilty of precisely the same unreason as that 
 with which she had reproached Cyril! She was ashamed, 
 both for herself and for Constance. Assuredly it had not 
 been such a scene as women of their age would want to go 
 through often. It was humiliating. She wished that it could 
 have been blotted out as though it had never happened. 
 Neither of them ever forgot it. They had had a lesson. And 
 particularly Sophia had had a lesson. Having learnt, they 
 left the Rutland, amid due ceremonies, and returned to St. 
 Luke's Square. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 END OF SOPHIA 
 
 Thk kitchen steps were as steep, dark, and difficult as ever. 
 Up those steps Sophia Scales, nine years older ihan when she 
 had failed to persuade Constance to leave the Square, was 
 carryinjg a large basket, weighted with all the heaviness of 
 Fossette. Sophia, despite her age, climbed the steps violenUy, 
 and burst with equal violence into the parlour, where slie 
 deposited the basket on the floor near the empty fireplace. 
 She was triumphant and breathless. She looked at Constance, 
 who had been standing near the door in the attitude of a 
 shocked listener. 
 
 " There 1 " said Sophia. " Did you hear how she talked ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Constance. " What shall you do ? " 
 
 " Well," said Sophia. " I had a very good mind to order 
 her out of the house at once. But then I thought I would take 
 no notice.' Her time will be up in three weeks. It's best to 
 be indifferent. If once they see they can upset you . . . 
 However, I wasn't going to leave Fossette down there to her 
 tender mercies a moment longer. She's simply not looked 
 after her at all." 
 
 Sophia went on her knees to the basket, and, pulling aside 
 the dog's hair, round about the head, examined the skin. 
 Fossette was a sick dog and behaved like one. Fossette, too, 
 was nine years older, and her senility was oflfensive. She was 
 to no sense a pleasant object. 
 
 " See here," said Sophia. 
 
 Constance also knelt to the basket. 
 
 " And here," said Sophia. " And here." . 
 
 The dog sighed, the insincere and pity-seeking sigh of a 
 spoilt animal. Fossette foolishly hoped by such appeals to be 
 
 520 
 
END OF SOPHIA 521 
 
 spared the annoying treatment prescribed for her by the 
 veterinary surgeon. 
 
 While the sisters were coddling her, and protecting her 
 from her own paws, and trying to persuade her that all was for 
 the best, another aged dog wandered vaguely into the room : 
 Spot. Spot had very few teeth, and his legs were stiff. He 
 had only one vice, jealousy. Fearing that Fossette might be 
 receiving the entire attention of his mistresses, he had come 
 to inquire into the situation. When he found the justification 
 of his gloomiest apprehensions, he nosed obstinately up to 
 Constance, and would not be put off. In vain Constance told 
 him at length that he was interfering with the treatment. In 
 vain Sophia ordered him sharply to go away. He would not 
 listen to reason, being furious with jealousy. He got his 
 foot into the basket. 
 
 " Will you 1 " exclaimed Sophia angrily, and gave him a 
 clout on his old head. He barked snappishly, and retired to 
 the kitchen again, disillusioned, tired of the world, and nursing 
 his terrific grievance. " I do declare," said Sophia, " that dog 
 gets worse and worse." 
 
 Constance said nothing. 
 
 When everything was done that could be done for 
 the aged virgin in the basket, the sisters rose from 
 their knees, stiffly ; and they began to whisper to each 
 other about the prospects of obtaining a fresh servant. 
 They also debated whether they could tolerate the criminal 
 eccentricities of the present occupant of the cave for yet 
 another three weeks. Evidently they were in the midst of a 
 crisis. To judge from Constance's face every imaginable woe 
 had been piled on them by destiny without the slightest regard 
 for their powers of resistance. Her eyes had the permanent 
 look of worry, and there was in them also something of the 
 self-defensive. Sophia had a bellicose air, as though the crea- 
 ture in the cave had squarely challenged her, and she was decided 
 to take up the challenge. Sophia's tone seemed to imply an 
 accusation of Constance. The general tension was acute. 
 
 Then suddenly their whispers expired, and the door 
 opened and the servant came in to lay the supper. Her nose 
 was high, her gaze cruel, radiant, and conquering. She was a 
 pretty and an impudent girl of about twenty-three. She knew 
 she was torturing her old and infirm mistresses. She did not 
 care. She did it purposely. Her motto was: War on 
 
522 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 employers, get all you can out of them, for they will get all 
 they can out of you. On principle — the sole principle she 
 possessed — she would not stay in a place more than six 
 months. She liked change. And employers did not like 
 change. She was shameless with men. She ignored all 
 ' orders as to what she was to eat and what she was not to eat. 
 She lived up to the full resources of her employers. She 
 could be to the last degree slatternly. Or she could be as 
 neat as a pin, with an apron that symbolized purity and pro- 
 priety, as to-night She could be idle during a whole day, 
 accumulating dirty dishes fromi morn till eve. On the other 
 hand she could, when she chose, work with astonishing celerity 
 and even thoroughness. In short, she was born to infuriate a 
 mistress like Sophia and to weir out a mistress like Constance. 
 Her strongest advantage in the struggle ,was that she enjoyed 
 altercation ; she revelled in a brawl ; she found peace tedious. 
 She was perfectly calculated to convince the sisters that times 
 had worsened, and that the world would never again be the 
 beautiful, agreeable place it once had been. 
 
 Her gestures as she laid the table were very graceful, in 
 the pert style. She dropped forks into their appointed 
 positions with disdain; she made slightly too much noise; 
 when she turned she manoeuvred her swelling hips as though 
 for the benefit of a soldier in a handsome uniform. 
 
 Nothing but the servant had been changed in that house. 
 The harmonium on which Mr. Povey used occasionally to 
 play was still behind the door ; and on the harmonium was 
 the tea-caddy of which Mrs, Baines used to carry the key 
 on her bunch. In the corner to the right of the fireplace 
 still hung the cupboard where Mrs. Baines stored her 
 pharmacopoeia. The rest of the furniture was arranged 
 as it had been arranged when the death of Mrs. Baines 
 endowed Mr. and Mrs. Povey with all the treasures of the 
 house at Axe. And it was as good as ever; better than 
 ever. Dr. Stirling often expressed the desire for a corner cup- 
 board like Mrs. Baines's corner cupboard. One item had been 
 added : the ' Peel ' compote which Matthew Peel-Swynnerton 
 had noticed in the dining-room of the Pension Frensham. 
 This majestic piece, which had been reserved by Sophia in the 
 sale of the pension, stood alone on a canterbury in the 
 drawing-room. She had stored it, with a few other trifles, in 
 Paris, and when she sent for it and the packing-case arrived, 
 
END OF SOPHIA 
 
 both she and Constance became aware that they were united 
 for the rest of their lives. Of worldly goods, except money, 
 securities, and clothes, that compote was practically all that 
 Sophia owned. Happily it was a first-class item, doing no 
 shame to the antique magnificence of the drawing-room. 
 
 In yielding to Constance's terrible inertia, Sophia had 
 meant nevertheless to work her own will on the interior of the 
 house. She had meant to bully Constance into modernizing 
 the dwelling. She did bully Constance, but the house defied 
 her. Nothing could be done to that house. If only it had 
 had a hall or lobby a complete transformation would have been 
 possible. But there was no access to the upper floor except 
 through the parlour. The parlour could not therefore be 
 turned into a kitchen and the basement suppressed, and the 
 ladies of the house could not live entirely on the upper floor. 
 The disposition of the rooms had to remain exactly as it had 
 always been. There was the same draught under the door, 
 the same darkness on the kitchen stairs, the same difficulties 
 with tradesmen in the distant backyard, the same twist in the 
 bedroom stairs, the same eternal ascending and descending of 
 pails. An efficient cooking-stove, instead of the large and 
 capacious range, alone represented the twentieth century in 
 the fixtures of the house. 
 
 Buried at the root of the relations between the sisters 
 was Sophia's grudge against Constance for refusing to leave 
 the Square. Sophia was loyaL She would not consciously 
 give with one hand while taking away with the pther, and in 
 accepting Constance's decision she honestly meant to close 
 her eyes to its stupidity. But she could not entirely succeed. 
 She could not avoid thinking that the angelic Constance had 
 been strangely and monstrously selfish in refusing to quit the 
 Square. She marvelled that a woman of Constance's sweet 
 and calm disposition should be capable of so vast and ruthless 
 an egotism. Constance must have known that Sophia would 
 notle^ her, and that the habitation of the Square was a 
 continual irk to Sophia. Constance had never been able to 
 advance a single argument for remaining in the Square. And 
 yet she would not budge. It was so inconsistent with the rest 
 of Constance's behaviour. See Sophia sitting primly there by 
 the table, a woman approaching sixty, with immense experience 
 written on the fine hardness of her worn and distinguished 
 face I Though her hair is not yet all grey, nor her figure bowed, 
 
524 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 you would imagine that she would, in her passage through the 
 world, have learnt better than to expect a character to be con- 
 sistent But no! She was ever disappointed and hurt by 
 Constance's inconsistency! And see Constance, stout and 
 bowed, looking more than her age with hair nearly white and 
 slightly trembling hands ! See that face whose mark is meek- 
 ness and the spirit of conciliation, the desire for peace — you 
 would not think that that placid soul could, while submitting 
 to it, inly rage against the imposed weight of Sophia's indi- 
 viduality. "Because I wouldn't turn out of my house to 
 please her," Constance would say to herself, " she fancies 
 she is entitled to do just as she likes." Not often did she 
 secretly rebel thus, but it occurred sometimes. They never 
 quarrelled. They, would have regarded separation as a 
 disaster. Considering the difference of their lives, they agreed 
 marvellously in their judgment of things. But that buried 
 question of domicile prevented a complete unity between 
 them. And its suble effect was to influence both of them to 
 make the worst, instead of the best, of the trifling mishaps 
 that disturbed their tranquillity. When annoyed, Sophia would 
 meditate upon the mere fact that they lived in the Square for 
 no reason whatever, until it grew incredibly shocking to her. 
 After all it was scarcely conceivable that they should be living 
 in the very middle of a dirty, ugly, industrial town simply 
 because Constance mulishly declined to move. Another thing 
 that curiously exasperated both of them upon occasion was 
 that, owing to a recurrence of her old complaint of dizziness 
 after meals, Sophia had been strictly forbidden to drink tea, 
 which she loved. Sophia chafed under the deprivation, and 
 Constance's pleasure was impaired because she had to drink it 
 alone. 
 
 While the brazen and pretty servant, mysteriously smiling 
 to herself, dropped food and utensils on to the table, Constance 
 and Sophia attempted to converse with negligent ease upon 
 indifferent topics, as though nothing had occurred that day to 
 mar the beauty of ideal relations between employers and 
 employed. The pretence was ludicrous. The young wench 
 saw through it instantly, and her mysterious smile developed 
 almost into a laugh. 
 
 " Please shut the door after you, Maud," said Sophia, as 
 the girl picked up her empty tray. 
 
 " Yes, ma'am," replied Maud, politely. 
 
END OF SOPHIA 625 
 
 She went out and left the door open. 
 
 It was a defiance, offered from sheer, youthful, wanton 
 mischief. 
 
 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. Con- 
 stance'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. Con- 
 stance trembled with painfijl excitement. The horror of 
 existence closed in upon her. She could imagine nothing 
 more appalUng 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 un- 
 necessarily 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 
 
526 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 thesf 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 1 
 
 " I'm not going to let her think she can spoil my appetite ! " 
 said Sophia, dauntless. Truly that woman's spirit was un- 
 quenchable. 
 
 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 wpuld 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," 
 
, END OF SOPHIA 527 
 
 cheerfully, politely, and coldly. It was a heroic scene. Imme- 
 diately 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." 
 
528 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 Fo-sette 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 belter not. Wp 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, 
 
JliWlJ Ub' BOI'HIA 629 
 
 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 practi- 
 cally 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 1 " 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 after- 
 noon 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 I " 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 
 
 2 M 
 
530 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 Fovey'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 motor-car 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, 
 
END OF SOPHIA 631 
 
 and saying to himself, behind his mask of efiFulgent 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 drawing- 
 room 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 1 " said she. 
 
 Her face frightened Constance, who was always expectant 
 
682 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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, offenng 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 1 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 con- 
 sequences 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 1" 
 
 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 fiv6 
 words of a telegram, suddenly, with no warning whatever. 
 
END OF SOPHIA 533 
 
 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 ha'd he been doing in those 
 thirty-six years ? He was an old, enfeebled man now ! He must 
 be a pretty sight 1 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 1 " The 
 mere idea of the journey to Manchester put Constance out of 
 her wits, seeming a business of unparalleled complexity and 
 difficulty. 
 
THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " Would you like me to come with you ? " 
 
 " Oh no ! I must go by myself." 
 
 Constance was relieved by tliis. 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 Con- 
 stance as too fantastic. 
 
 By a common instinct they both descended to the parlour. 
 
 "Now, wh'at 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 pave- 
 ment. 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 oflen 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 HoU," 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 HoU 1 We are engaged to be married, if you 
 please." 
 
 Constance and Sophia could not decently pour out their 
 griefe on the top of such news. The betrothed pair had 
 to come in and be congiratulated 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, 
 
END OF SOPHIA 635 
 
 ladylike girl Lily HoU 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 ^hich 
 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 your- 
 self 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 Con- 
 stance. 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. 
 
 Ill 
 
 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. 
 
636 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 whatever they are." He was very comforting, with his sugges- 
 tion 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 pre- 
 sents 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 
 
END OF SOPHIA 587 
 
 packed with more gold watches, adding to the extraordinary 
 glitter and shimmer of the shop. He choose 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 coitie 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, iAto 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. 
 
638 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 I " 
 
 "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 I 
 wish my wife had been here to receive you." 
 
 Tears came into Sophia's eyes. 
 
END OF SQPHIA 539 
 
 II 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 
 exceedmgly 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 1 . . . 
 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 leav- 
 ing 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 1 
 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, 
 
540 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 afiected 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 
 illtreated her ; he had abandoned her ; he had been a devious 
 riiscal ; 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 abund- 
 ant 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 1 And what shall 1 
 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 1 the irony of such a question 1 To be 
 jpung and seductive, to be able to kindle a man's eye— that 
 
END OF SOPHIA 64J 
 
 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 dis- 
 solved 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 consider- 
 able silence. . , . , 
 
 " Nothing," said Mr. Boldero m his low, soothing tones. 
 
642 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 " 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 I " 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 to- 
 night ! " she said. " And look at all there is to be done 1 " 
 
 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 to-morrow or the day after. ... No 1 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 HoU 
 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 hps 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 Man- 
 chester 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 frv ra 
 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 1 " 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 chang- 
 ing 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 
 
544 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 1" 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 then- placid and monotonous 
 existence, undisturbed by anything worse than the indisposi- 
 tion 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 HoU, 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 j 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 meet- 
 ing in the Town Hall. And the advent of the doctor and 
 
END OF SOPHIA 645 
 
 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 HoU 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 Man- 
 chester. Bat 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 
 troubhng 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. Shesaid she only knew what Sophiahad 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 attain. Constance was very deeply 
 impressed by Lily HoU's sensible, sympathetic attitude. " What- 
 ever 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 
 
 2 M 
 
546 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 only just returning from Hanbridge Theatre and Hanbridge 
 Music Hall. The use of the electrical apparatus was a dread 
 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. Every- 
 thing 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 outside 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 accumu- 
 lated nervous agitation was discharged on Maud like a 
 thunderclap. Constance continued to behave wonderfully. 
 
liJNU OF SOPHIA 547 
 
 She was the admiration of the doctor and Lily HoU. 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 abandon- 
 ment 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 
 iloor 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. IShe 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. iBhe perceived fully now for the first time 
 the greatness of that disastei\ Sophia's charm and Sophia's 
 beauty-'-what profit had they been to their owner ?'j She saw 
 pictures of Sophia's career, distorted and grotesque images 
 forrhed 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 I 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 
 
548 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 ? Jt 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 sinne^ It was therefore inevit- 
 able 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 
 Ifte 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 recogtiitTon 
 of the~handiwoTk 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 1 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 
 
END OF SOPHIA 649 
 
 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 follow- 
 ing — 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 
 motor-car, 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, thpugh 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 occasionj 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, tfiat 
 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 
 
550 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 impossible?" Constance said: "Because it would be im- 
 possible. 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, hving in comfort on an allowance trom 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 peimitting 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 finick- 
 ing. 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 
 
END OF SOPHIA 651 
 
 plan. Cyril ignored Mr. Critchlow entirely, and went to a 
 young lawyer at Hanbridge, a friend of his and of Matthew 
 Peel-Swynner ton'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, 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 stem 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 HoU and of Dick 
 
662 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 Poyey. 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 fort- 
 night 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 
 
 When, on a June afternoon about twelve months later, Lily 
 HoU 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 grand- 
 father, ' 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; 
 
 553 
 
554 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 though her bereavement had been the cause of a most genuine 
 and durable sorrow, it had been a relief to her. When Con- 
 stance was over fifty, the energetic and masterful Serbia had 
 burst in upon her letliargic 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. AH 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 percep- 
 tion that a cult for photographs might be carried to the 
 ridiculous, and a kind desire to hide all trace of this percep- 
 tion. 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 ser- 
 vants, a really excellent creature of thirty, who had known 
 
END OF CONSTANCE 555 
 
 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 photoj 
 graphs 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 photo- 
 graph album to another photograph album. 
 
 " Pass me that album on the second shelf of the 
 Canterbury, my dear," said Const^ince. 
 
 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 
 
556 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 woman to Constance's memory, and drew a pictur* 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 Con- 
 stance. " I'll give you this one." 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Povey ! I couldn't think ! " 
 
 "Yes, yesl" 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 myselC 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 1" murmured Lily, ecstatically. They kissed. Con- 
 stance 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 
 toil!" 
 
 " 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 ir,was when father wore it 
 My husband never would wear itj/He preferred his own. He 
 
END OF CONSTANCE 557 
 
 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 1 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 Lilyj 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 bone- 
 shaker, and his cap flying off. Afterwards it had been motor- 
 cars 1 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 I " she cried, flushing. " Here he is now ! " 
 
 " Bless us, bless us 1 " 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 1 " 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 
 ol his betrothed. At HoU's shop they had told him that she 
 
558 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 ivas with Mrs. Povey. Constance glanced at him, impressed 
 3y his jolly air of success. He seemed exactly like his breezy 
 ind self-confident advertisements in the Signal. He was abso- 
 iutely pleased with himself. He triumphed over his limp — 
 ;hat ever-present reminder of ai tragedy. Who would dream, 
 .0 look at his blond, laughing, scintillating face, astonishingly 
 ^oung for his years, that he had once passed through such a 
 light as that on which his father had killed his mother while 
 lie lay immovable and cursing, with a broken knee, in bed? 
 Constance had heard all about that scene from her husband, 
 ind 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 halt" 
 
 " Glad to see me ? " 
 
 " Oh, Dick I " she protested. 
 
 " Old lady's in one of her humours, eh ? 
 
 " No, no 1 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." 
 
END OF CONSTANCE 659 
 
 "Dick! How can you talk like that? . . . It's all very 
 well saymg I ought to keep her off balloons. You try to keep 
 her off balloons when once she begins, and see 1 " 
 " 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 1" 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 I " he murmured. It was an adverse ver4ict 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 1 " 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 1 " he greeted the animal loudly. She 
 
560 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 1 " 
 murmured Constance. 
 
 " Oh, ma'am !" said a startled voice behind the three. It 
 was Mary, original of the photograph, who had run unper- 
 ceived 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 1 " Constance 
 muttered. 
 
 " Yes, ma'am ! But they say she's not done it" 
 
 " By Jove 1 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 1 
 
END OF CONSTANCE 561 
 
 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 discover- 
 ing 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, Han- 
 bridge 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 InsuU. 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 
 
 a o 
 
562 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 that she was fighting against evolution, pot 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 1 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 ultinute 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 formid- 
 able 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 
 
END OF CONSTANCE B&3 
 
 this accusation (which everybody, however, took care not to 
 mention to Constance); it merely indicated, perhaps, the 
 secret aspirations of Maria InsuU, the virgin. The assistant 
 was properly scandalized, more by the crudity of Mrs. Critch- 
 low's language than by the alleged sin buried in the past. 
 Goodness knows what the assistant would have done 1 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 1 
 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. 
 
564 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 suifering 
 from disgust with the modem 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, Leicester- 
 shire, and adjacent counties. He had sold his own chemist's 
 stock and gone to live in a little house at the bottom of King- 
 street. It is doubtful whether he would have consented to 
 retire had not Alderman HoU died earlier in the year, thus end- 
 ing 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 oflfer 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 pro- 
 prieties 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 1 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 opemng 
 
END OF CONSTANCE 565 
 
 they arranged an orchestra or artillery of phonographs upon 
 the leads over the window of that part of the shop which had 
 been Mr. Criichlow'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 windovvs; in one window an over- 
 coat 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 even- 
 ing 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 shriiie. 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 regarcted 
 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 out- 
 rage her ancestral pride. She even said that she would give 
 
 up her house. . , , „ ^ , • ^ 
 
 But when, on the twenty-nmth 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 
 
566 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 
 telUng 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 lirgest 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 men- 
 tioned in the London dailies, and London journalists would 
 write such sentences as : " The Five Towns, which are of 
 course, as everybody knows, Hanbridge, Bjirsley, Knype, 
 Longshaw, and Turnhill. . , ," This was renown at last, for 
 the most maligned district in the country 1 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 afiair. But the partiality of the official world grew 
 flagrant The Mayor of Bursley openly proclaimed himself a 
 
END OF CONSTANCE 567 
 
 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 
 
568 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 were closed and the Federationists displayed their characteristic 
 lack of scruple in appropriating the children. The Federa- 
 tionists, 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-Federa- 
 tionists 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 Federa- 
 tionists 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 1 The impudence of it knocked the breath 
 out of its victims, and breath is very necessary in a polling con- 
 test 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. 
 
END OF CONSTANCE 569 
 
 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-FederaLionists 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 
 deUberation 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 liad 
 been very sympathetic, but raiher 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 aero- 
 naut, 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 
 
670 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 3ie 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 j 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 poli- 
 tician ; 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 
 
END OF CONSTANCE 671 
 
 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 already forgotten ! Did they know that, as a further 
 indirect consequence, she, the daughter of Bursle/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 1 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, or 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 ... I 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. 
 
572 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 HoU's shop, 
 and Lily might have spied her. 
 
 This was the miracle that breezy politicians witnessed with- 
 out 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. 
 
 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 vagu'ely 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 HoU, and ask her to telephone for 
 Dr. Stirling.'' 
 
END OF CONSTANCE 673 
 
 This was the beginning of Constance's last illness. Mary 
 most impressively informed Miss HoU 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 I " 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 fair 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. More- 
 over, her interest in the question had lessened. It was her 
 limbs that preoccupied 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 sensa- 
 tional 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 
 
674 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 escapade I Fatigued by pain, by nervous agitation, a,nd by 
 the immense moral and physical eflFort needed to cany 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.' Con- 
 stance 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 hef 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 for- 
 midable pain. Sciatica, at its most active, cannot be sur- 
 passed 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 com- 
 plaints 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 I" said 
 Constance. 
 
 " Never you fear 1 " 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 
 
END OF CONSTANCE 575 
 
 friends of whom Constance knew nothing. The address 
 appeared to be very uncertain ; there were several addresses, 
 paste restante in various towns. Cyril had sent postcards to 
 his mother. Dick and Lily went to the post-office and tele- 
 graphed to foreign parts. 
 
 VThough 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 recount- 
 ing 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, Con- 
 stance 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-reachiiig 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 1 " she would repeat. 
 And yet there had been something so fine about Sophia 1 
 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 re- 
 spected, 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 I 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 I" Despite her 
 habit of complaining about domestic trifles, she was, in the 
 essence of her character, ' a great body for making the best of 
 
576 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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 re- 
 membered all the sadness and all the humiliations which he 
 had caused her. Still, her affection was unimpaired. A son 
 might be worse th^n 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 contem- 
 plating 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 invari- 
 ably 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 pericar- 
 ditis that in a few days killed her. She died in the night, 
 alone with the night-nurse. By a curious chance the Wesleyan 
 
END OF CONSTANCE 677 
 
 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, b\it not by the 
 Midland Clothiers Company. Old people said to one another ; 
 "Have you heard that Mrs. Povey is dead? Eh, dear me i 
 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 sympa- 
 thetic grief, to picture to themselves all that she had been 
 through in her life. Possibly they imagined that they suc- 
 ceeded 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.j 
 
 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 Si^al was fuller than ever of 
 Federation.) 
 
 When the short fimeral procession started, Mary and 
 the infirm Fossette (sole relic of the coimection 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 ii, 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 
 
578 THE OLD WIVES' TALE 
 
 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. 
 
 THi nm